1. Introduction: From Literature and History to Theology
It should be clear by now that the task of reading the New Testament can never be a matter of ‘purely literary’ or ‘purely historical’ study, as though either of these could be removed from wider considerations of culture, worldviews, and especially theology. The model of ‘mere history’, in particular, is inadequate for a full appreciation of any text, and particularly one such as the New Testament. Equally, we suggested in the first chapter that a serious reading of the New Testament must show how this book, read in appropriate ways, might function with the authority which it has been deemed to have by the great majority of its readers down the years; but we also saw that the pre-critical and ‘modern’ ways of articulating this have not met with success. The aim of this chapter is to suggest what might be involved in a ‘theological’ reading that does not bypass the ‘literary’ and ‘historical’ readings, but rather enhances them; and to explore one possible model of letting this composite reading function as normative or authoritative. I am well aware that there are large areas of possible discussion left untouched here. The aim is not to provide an exhaustive account of the nature of theology, but to draw out some salient points about how the discipline works.
We have already seen that, beyond any cavil, all reading involves the reader as an active participant. To say that one is merely studying objective history, without other presuppositions, is no longer an option:
In every piece of work done according to the norms of historical science, the writer and the reader should be aware that a historical sketch can only take shape in the mind of a historian, and that in this process the historian himself, with all his intellectual furniture, is involved.1
There are therefore two levels at which we pass beyond ‘mere history’. First, in order to answer the question ‘Why?’ in relation to the past, we must move from the ‘outside’ of the event to the ‘inside’; this involves reconstructing the worldviews of people other than ourselves. Second, in doing this we cannot stand outside our own worldviews, any more than we can see without our own eyes. At both levels the reader must be clear about the worldviews involved, and must be on the lookout for potential peculiarities, inconsistencies or tensions. To this we shall return.
There is an irony here, in relation to our particular field, which should not escape us. It is a solidly established datum of history that Jews and Christians in the first century regarded the actual events in which they were taking part as possessing, in and of themselves, ultimate significance. They believed strongly that the events concerning Israel and her fate were not ‘bare events’, but possessed an ‘inside’, a ‘meaning’, which transcended mere chronicle. And, since their interpretative grid for understanding the inside of events had to do with belief in a creator god and the fulfilment of his purposes for the whole world by means of actions concerning his covenant people, they believed, oddly from the perspective of modern Western positivism, that the events in question were charged with a significance that related to all humans, and all time.2 Whatever we think of their particular viewpoint, we must say that they understood more about the real nature of history, that is, about the complex interaction of ‘event’ and ‘meaning’, than has been grasped by the ardent proponents of ‘scientific history’ in comparatively recent times.
But how are we to address historical questions in a more holistic manner, avoiding the reductionisms which have plagued scholarship? To answer this we must examine two categories that we have already invoked at various points, namely, ‘worldview’ and ‘theology’.
2. Worldview and Theology
The dimension which positivistic historiography has often lacked may be described in terms of worldview, and we must look at this concept first. I shall then argue that worldviews are in fact, from one point of view, profoundly theological, and we must therefore examine the meaning of ‘theology’ within this context. This will lead us to a consideration of Christian theology in particular, which will in turn prompt some reflections on theology in relation to the study of the New Testament.
(i) On Worldviews
Worldviews have to do with the presuppositional, pre-cognitive stage of a culture or society.3 Wherever we find the ultimate concerns of human beings, we find worldviews. From that point of view, as the echo of Paul Tillich in the phrase ‘ultimate concern’ will indicate, they are profoundly theological, whether or not they contain what in modern Western thought would be regarded as an explicit or worked-out view of a god-figure.4 ‘Worldview’, in fact, embraces all deep-level human perceptions of reality, including the question of whether or not a or gods exist, and if so what he, she, it or they is or are like, and how such a being, or such beings, might relate to the world. Though the metaphor of sight can over-dominate (worldview), the following analysis should make it clear that worldviews, in the sense I intend, include many dimensions of human existence other than simply theory.5
There are four things which worldviews characteristically do, in each of which the entire worldview can be glimpsed. First, as we have seen throughout this Part of the book, worldviews provide the stories through which human beings view reality. Narrative is the most characteristic expression of worldview, going deeper than the isolated observation or fragmented remark.
Second, from these stories one can in principle discover how to answer the basic questions that determine human existence: who are we, where are we, what is wrong, and what is the solution?6 All cultures cherish deep-rooted beliefs which can in principle be called up to answer these questions. All cultures (that is) have a sense of identity, of environment, of a problem with the way the world is, and of a way forward—a redemptive eschatology, to be more precise—which will, or may, lead out of that problem. To recognize this in relation to cultures can be as enlightening as to recognize that another human being within one’s own family or circle of acquaintance has a different personality-type from one’s own. It liberates all concerned from the constricting assumption that we all are, or should be, exactly alike.
Third, the stories that express the worldview, and the answers which it provides to the questions of identity, environment, evil and eschatology, are expressed (as we saw in the previous chapter) in cultural symbols. These can be both artifacts and events—festivals, family gatherings, and the like. In modern North America, the New York victory parade after a successful war brings together two of the most powerful symbols of the culture: the towering skyscrapers of business-orientated Manhattan, and the heroes of battle. Both, in their own fashion, demonstrate, promote and celebrate The American Way. In first-century Palestine, celebrating the Passover functioned similarly, with Jerusalem and the Temple taking the place of Manhattan, and the Passover sacrifice and meal taking the place of the victory parade. The buildings, instead of speaking of economic/ethnic goals, spoke of religious/ethnic ones; instead of the celebration speaking of triumph achieved over the forces of darkness, it spoke of vindication yet to come. All cultures produce and maintain such symbols; they can often be identified when challenging them produces anger or fear. Such symbols often function as social and/or cultural boundary-markers: those who observe them are insiders, those who do not are outsiders. And these symbols, as the acted and visible reminders of a worldview that normally remains too deep for casual speech, form the actual grid through which the world is perceived. They determine how, from day to day, human beings will view the whole of reality. They determine what will, and what will not, be intelligible or assimilable within a particular culture.
Fourth, worldviews include a praxis, a way-of-being-in-the-world. The implied eschatology of the fourth question (‘what is the solution?’) necessarily entails action. Conversely, the real shape of someone’s worldview can often be seen in the sort of actions they perform, particularly if the actions are so instinctive or habitual as to be taken for granted. The choice of a life-aim—to make money, to raise a family, to pursue a vocation, to change society or the world in a particular way, to live in harmony with the created order, to develop one’s own inner world, to be loyal to received traditions—reflects the worldview held; and so do the intentions and motivations with which the overall aim goes to work.7 Inconsistency of aim and action does not invalidate this, but merely shows that the issue is complicated, and that the answer to the third question (‘what is wrong?’) should certainly include human muddledness.
Worldviews are thus the basic stuff of human existence, the lens through which the world is seen, the blueprint for how one should live in it, and above all the sense of identity and place which enables human beings to be what they are. To ignore worldviews, either our own or those of the culture we are studying, would result in extraordinary shallowness.
We may set out the interacting functions of worldviews as follows:
There are various broad terms that we will do well to plot on this grid. To begin with, we may say that culture denotes particularly the praxis and symbols of a society, both of which are of course informed by the controlling story, and reflect particular answers to the worldview questions. Second, the slippery word religion likewise focuses upon symbol and praxis, but draws more specific attention to the fact that symbol and praxis point beyond themselves to a controlling story or set of controlling stories which invest them with wider significance. Third, theology concentrates on the questions and answers, and focuses specifically on certain aspects of them. I shall argue in this chapter that it is bound to integrate these with the controlling stories, and that it will be wise if it goes about this task fully conscious of the interrelation between questions and stories on the one hand and praxis and symbol on the other. Fourth, imagination and feeling can be plotted on the line between story and symbol, giving depth in different ways to praxis and questions. Fifth, mythology is, in many cultures, a way of speaking which reflects ‘a conception of reality that posits the ongoing penetration of the world of everyday experience by sacred forces’;8 that is, a way of integrating praxis and symbol with story and, at least implicitly, with answers to the key questions. Finally, literature, which at the level both of reading and of writing is of course part of praxis, is a complex phenomenon in which, both explicitly and implicitly, stories are told, questions are raised and answered, praxis is exemplified, and symbols are either discussed directly or, more likely, alluded to in metaphor and other ways. Literature is, obviously, closely linked with culture, imagination and feeling, and also frequently with religion and theology. Literature itself can then create or become a new symbol: poetry, bookshops, and theatrical performances, for instance, possess symbolic value in a culture. Thus many of the vital elements of historical and literary study can be plotted accurately and interestingly on the worldview model I have suggested.9
Worldviews, as I said earlier, are like the foundations of a house: vital, but invisible. They are that through which, not at which, a society or an individual normally looks; they form the grid according to which humans organize reality, not bits of reality that offer themselves for organization. They are not usually called up to consciousness or discussion unless they are challenged or flouted fairly explicitly, and when this happens it is usually felt to be an event of worryingly large significance. They can, however, be challenged; they can, if necessary, be discussed, and their truth-value called into question.10 Conversion, in the sense of a radical shift in worldview, can happen, whether in the case of a Saul on the road to Damascus or in the case of a member of a North American Indian or Inuit people who moves to the city and adopts the Western way of life. But worldviews normally come into sight, on a more day-to-day basis, in sets of beliefs and aims which emerge into the open, which are more regularly discussed, and which in principle could be revised somewhat without revising the worldview itself. Modern Western materialists hold a worldview of a certain sort, which expresses itself in basic beliefs about society and economic systems, and in basic aims about appropriate employment and use of time. These beliefs and aims are, as it were, shorthand forms of the stories which those who hold them are telling themselves and one another about the way the world is.11 It is perhaps possible for someone to become convinced that some of these basic beliefs and aims are misguided, and so (for instance) to change from being a Conservative Western materialist to being a Social Democrat Western materialist, or vice versa, without any fundamental alteration of worldview.
These basic beliefs and aims, which serve to express and perhaps safeguard the worldview, give rise in turn to consequent beliefs and intentions, about the world, oneself, one’s society, one’s god. These, in their turn, shade off in various directions, into opinions held and motivations acted upon with varying degrees of conviction. Many discussions, debates, and arguments take place at the level of consequent belief and intention, assuming a level of shared basic belief, and only going back there when faced with complete stalemate. Much political discussion, for instance, assumes not only a worldview, but also the set of basic beliefs and aims which are held to follow from that worldview. It takes place, not at those more fundamental levels, but at the level of the consequent beliefs, or the specific proposals for action (the ‘intentions’ in my scheme) which are held by some to be appropriate. This can be set out schematically:
So much, for the moment, for worldviews. How do they relate to, or include, what is normally thought of as ‘theology’?
(ii) On Theology
Theology, as we saw briefly a moment ago, turns the spotlight on certain particular dimensions of the worldview, of any worldview.12 It is possible to suggest a sharply focused definition of theology: theology is the study of gods, or a god. It is also possible, and today quite common, to work with a more wide-ranging definition, interacting with elements of the worldview-pattern: theology suggests certain ways of telling the story, explores certain ways of answering the questions, offers particular interpretations of the symbols, and suggests and critiques certain forms of praxis. This is what Norman Petersen is getting at in his analysis of theology and the ‘symbolic universe’:
From the perspective of the sociology of knowledge, theology and symbolic universe are distinguished as representing two different kinds of knowledge … Theology … is for the sociology of knowledge a kind of knowledge that is the product of systematic reflection upon a symbolic universe, and indeed of reflection that serves to maintain that universe when it is in some kind of jeopardy, as for example from the threats of doubt, of disagreement, or of competing symbolic universes … For this reason we can speak of a symbolic universe as a primary (pre-reflective) form of knowledge and theology as a secondary (reflective) form that is dependent on it.13
Thus, for instance, we saw in chapter 3 that many stories have a sense that the hero (the ‘agent’ in Griemas’ scheme) has been ‘sent’ on a ‘mission’, but it is not clear who did the sending. There is often a blank in the ‘sender’ category, as we saw in the case of Tolkien, and of de la Mare’s ‘The Listeners’. This reflects the widespread human consciousness of a purpose which comes from ‘beyond’, from ‘above’, or possibly from ‘within’. If pressed, some human communities would explicate this blank in terms of one or other of the traditional views of a god. Others would fill it in in terms of ‘forces of nature’. Others would speak in terms of mythology, psychology and/or sociology. All of these responses, and other possible ones, are essentially theological.
Theology thus tells stories about human beings and the world, stories which involve either a being not reducible to materialist analysis or at least a provocative space within the story-line where such a being might, by implication, be located. In the light of this story-telling activity, theology asks questions, as to whether there is a god, what relation this god has to the world in which we live, and what if anything this god is doing, or will do, about putting it to rights.
These questions obviously interact with the four major worldview questions. An atheist answers the theological questions with a negative to the first, leaving the rest untouched: there is no ‘god’, therefore there is no being to be in relation to the world or to deal with its evil; but the reply is still profoundly theological, and the answers then given to the other worldview questions reflect what, from a theological point of view, still count as a kind of theology. Materialism or totalitarianism, for instance, still have a recognizable theological shape, and such views could hold a meaningful debate with various orthodox theologies (e.g. Jewish or Christian ones) as to which of them is the original and which the parody.14
Theology’s story-telling and questioning activity is regularly focused in symbols, whether they be objects or actions. A Torah scroll, a wooden cross, a manual act, a procession, are all capable of evoking powerfully a whole set of stories and questions-and-answers. They can, of course, become flat and lifeless, though even when this happens they are often capable of remarkable recovery. But in principle theology has to take account of symbols, not least because, as we saw, the symbols of a society or culture may sometimes tell a truer story about the actual worldview than the ‘official’ stories or the ‘authorized’ answers to questions. If symbol and story do not fit each other, it is part of the task of theology to ask why, and to offer a critique of whichever partner is out of line.
Likewise, theology must take account of praxis. Prayer, sacraments, liturgy; almsgiving, acts of justice and peacemaking; all these integrate with story, question and symbol to produce a complete whole. Once more, while it may be tidier and easier to deal with official statements in the question-and-answer or story form, praxis may offer a truer account of how things actually are. Again, theology has the responsibility to offer a critique in such cases.
Theology is thus integrated closely with worldviews at every point. But what is theology talking about? Is it simply a meta-language, a fanciful way of attempting to invest reality with a significance not always perceived? Or does it refer to real entities beyond space-time reality? At this point, we must again invoke critical realism. Debates about the referent of god-language have a familiar shape: it is that which we have already studied in our discussions of epistemology, literature and history.
Pre-critical speech about gods, or a god, often seems to take it for granted that such a being, or such beings, exist, and that ordinary human language refers to this being or these beings without more ado. It is fairly clear, actually, that in every age sophisticated thinkers have been perfectly well aware of the problematic nature of this language and its referent, so that the phrase ‘pre-critical’ here refers, not to a period of history before the Enlightenment, but to a stage of (or perhaps a lack of) human awareness which can and does exist in every period of history, not least our own. Perhaps particularly our own, in fact: one distressing modern phenomenon is the spectacle of a would-be Christian positivism which imagines that god-language is clear and unequivocal, and that one can have the kind of certainty about it which Logical Positivism accorded to scientific or even mathematical statements. This sort of fundamentalism is simply the upside-down version of A. J. Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic.
But it is surely clear that language about a god, or gods, is not simply and uncomplicatedly referential in the positivist’s sense. There is no straight line that leads from humans to some sort of revelation and thence to unambiguously true statements about divine being(s):
| humans |
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revelation |
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god(s) |
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| simply observing revelation … and speaking truly about god(s) |
On the contrary. In our day we have seen both halves of the sequence strongly challenged. Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud persuaded a whole generation to be sceptical of revelation, and to see it not as pointing beyond itself to a divine reality but as pointing back to other aspects of human individual and/or corporate existence and identity. A strong hermeneutic of suspicion was thus introduced into modern reflection, suggesting that god-language could be reduced to terms of economic, political or sexual agendas:
| humans |
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revelation |
god(s) |
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| apparent revelation of the divine |
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<---------- |
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| shown up as revelation of structures of human existence |
Equally, where this critique has been held at bay, theologians have not found it at all easy to move beyond a belief in revelation itself to actual statements about the divine. Such statements all too easily collapse into restatements of the revelatory mode itself. Analysis of the actual being of a god, of ‘divine substance’, is conceived as highly problematic; all we can apparently talk about is what this god does, i.e. the revelation in action:
| humans |
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revelation |
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god(s) |
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| witnessing a real revelation, which seems to be about the divine, |
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<---------- |
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| but which only shows the effects of the divine, not the divine in itself |
Against these reductions, however, I propose a critically realist account. Language about religion and revelation does indeed reflect many elements in human consciousness, and can indeed be used as a weapon of oppression. But this does not vitiate all such language. Post-Nietzschean, post-Freudian and post-Marxian humans—artists, writers, musicians, lovers, as well as religious persons—still tell stories about aspects of reality that transcend power, sex and money. These aspects appear, for some, in the Bible and the Christian (or other religious) stories; for others, in the beauty of creation; for others, in other human beings; for others again, deep within themselves. This gives rise, of course, to enormous problems, about natural theology, revelation and reason, and so on. But these stories suggest that we must, however critically, recognize the presence of something we may as well call ‘revelation’:
| humans |
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revelation |
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initial signals of transcendence |
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<-------------------- |
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subject to reductionist critique |
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but telling stories that still affirm transcendence |
So, too, to reject the simplistic notion that revelation simply gives us access to the very being of a god does not mean that all we are aware of is revelation itself. Once again Story comes to the rescue. Recognition of god-language as fundamentally metaphorical does not mean that it does not have a referent, and that some at least of the metaphors may not actually possess a particular appropriateness to this referent. In fact, metaphors are themselves mini-stories, suggesting ways of looking at a reality which cannot be reduced to terms of the metaphor itself. As has become more widely recognized in recent writing, such metaphors and stories are in fact more basic within human consciousness than apparently ‘factual’ speech, and recognizing the essentially storied nature of god-talk is therefore no bar to asserting the reality of its referent. Indeed, within the Jewish and Christian worldviews, human speech, as the words spoken by those who are themselves made in the image of the creator, may be seen as in principle not just possibly adequate to the task of speaking of this god but actually appropriate to it. Of course, this will depend on whether the Jewish and Christian accounts of humans, and human speech, might turn out to be correct. If Deism were after all correct, the unknowable remote god it postulates would not readily be described in human language. But this debate cannot, obviously, be decided here.15
This leaves us with the following picture:
| revelation |
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god(s) |
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--------------------> |
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language apparently referring to the divine |
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<-------------------- |
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subject to critique as non-literal |
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| in principle reaffirmed as having potential referent via metaphor and appropriate story |
The possibility of god-talk having a referent does not mean, of course, that any and all talk about god, or God, is thereby legitimated as true. It is put, in principle, on the same footing as language about anything else. Once the possibility of a referent is recognized, the conversation can be opened up fruitfully. But if this language is not simply self-justifying, neither does it consist of private signals, referring simply to the inside of the speakers’ heads. This language belongs in the public domain. It is possible, as we have seen, to discuss worldviews, to see how they differ, and to change from holding one worldview to holding another; and it is quite possible to discuss the claims made about god(s), to assess their respective merits, to tell stories about divine being and behaviour which subvert one another, and to discern by this means which possibilities are serious contenders for truth. Critical realism can thus affirm the right of theological language to be regarded as an appropriate dimension of discourse about reality.
To sum up, then: ‘theology’ highlights what we might call the god-dimension of a worldview. Many thinkers, politicians and even biblical scholars notoriously dismiss ‘theology’ as if it were simply a set of answers that might be given to a pre-packaged set of abstract dogmatic questions, but it cannot possibly be reduced to that level. It provides an essential ingredient in the stories that encapsulate worldviews; in the answers that are given to the fundamental worldview questions; in the symbolic world which gives the worldview cultural expression; and in the practical agenda to which the worldview gives rise. As such it is a non-negotiable part of the study of literature and history, and hence of New Testament studies.
This discussion has, thus far, been deliberately unspecific about the actual content of what is asserted about god(s). We could, of course, introduce several variables into the scheme by examining some more specific sets of beliefs and claims. Thus, it would be quite possible for a critical realist to be an atheist, acknowledging that language could in principle refer to a being such as a god but claiming that in fact no such being exists. That is what one might say, in another sphere, about dragons. A Deist, believing in a distant god, detached from the world, inaccessible and remote, might be content to describe such a being in reasonably abstract and theoretical terms. A pantheist, believing that the word ‘god’ refers to everything that exists, and investing that ‘everything’ with the status of divine power and honour, would effectively draw the spirals of knowledge tighter and tighter until the difference between language about revelation or god and language about oneself and/or one’s own context were reduced to nothing. Whatever the system, theological or quasi-theological, we would discover that the god-language in question, and the place for it within the worldview, formed a vital part of the relevant culture.
But what about Christian god-language? Clearly, if we are to understand the language that the New Testament writers used, we need to understand the specific nature of early Christian (and, a fortiori, first-century Jewish) theology. Equally, if we are to understand what it might mean today to speak Christianly about the New Testament, or about the god whom Christians worship, some attempt must be made to see how such language might be held to function.
(iii) On Christian Theology
What then might a specifically Christian theology be? More, I take it, than simply an account of what Christians have believed in the past, or believe in the present, though those tasks will always be part of the whole. That whole includes a necessarily normative element. It will attempt not just to describe but to commend a way of looking at, speaking about, and engaging with the god in whom Christians believe, and with the world that this god has created. It will carry the implication that this is not only what is believed but what ought to be believed. To the relativist’s response, that this will seem very arrogant, Christian theology will reply that it can do no other. If it is not a claim about the whole of reality, seen and unseen, it is nothing. It is not a set of private aesthetic judgments upon reality, with a ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ clause attached. Even the relativist, after all, believes that relativism is universally true, and sometimes seeks to propagate that belief with missionary zeal. Christian theology only does what all other worldviews and their ancillary belief-systems do: it claims to be talking about reality as a whole.
How should one set about doing ‘Christian theology’? Two ways have been popular over the last two centuries. The first offers a rearrangement of timeless truths or propositions. It collects and reorders the material arranged by previous workers in the field. Its only point of reference beyond itself is the overarching system (in some cases, a philosophical model) according to which the selection and arrangement is made. This model has some uses, not least in attaining greater clarity of discourse, but in general it seems to me quite sterile, and unlikely to engage with the sort of issues raised within the present work.16 The second way of doing ‘Christian theology’ seeks actively to engage with current concerns in the world, whether through confrontation or integration.17 This seems in some ways more fruitful for a project of the sort I am engaged upon, but there are pitfalls here too. I propose to follow a rather different path, in line with the model of epistemology developed thus far, and thus working in line with some recent studies in narrative theology.18 Unlike most ‘narrative theology’, however, I shall attempt to integrate this approach with a historical focus. And this combined approach grows out of the analysis offered above of worldviews and how they work.
First, Christian theology tells a story, and seeks to tell it coherently. We have already summarized this story, and can do so again briefly. The story is about a creator and his creation, about humans made in this creator’s image and given tasks to perform, about the rebellion of humans and the dissonance of creation at every level, and particularly about the creator’s acting, through Israel and climactically through Jesus, to rescue his creation from its ensuing plight. The story continues with the creator acting by his own spirit within the world to bring it towards the restoration which is his intended goal for it. A good deal of Christian theology consists of the attempt to tell this story as clearly as possible, and to allow it to subvert other ways of telling the story of the world, including those which offer themselves as would-be Christian tellings but which, upon close examination, fall short in some way or other.
Second, this story, as the fundamental articulation of the worldview, offers a set of answers to the four worldview questions. We may set these out as follows, noting as we do some of the alternative views that are thereby ruled out. These, it should be noted, are at the present stage of my argument simply descriptive of what goes to make up the Christian worldview, not yet an argument that this worldview should be adopted.
(1) Who are we? We are humans, made in the image of the creator. We have responsibilities that come with this status. We are not fundamentally determined by race, gender, social class, geographical location; nor are we simply pawns in a determinist game.
(2) Where are we? We are in a good and beautiful, though transient, world, the creation of the god in whose image we are made. We are not in an alien world, as the Gnostic imagines; nor in a cosmos to which we owe allegiance as to a god, as the pantheist would suggest.
(3) What is wrong? Humanity has rebelled against the creator. This rebellion reflects a cosmic dislocation between the creator and the creation, and the world is consequently out of tune with its created intention. A Christian worldview rejects dualisms which associate evil with createdness or physicality; equally, it rejects monisms that analyse evil simply in terms of some humans not being fully in tune with their environment. Its analysis of evil is more subtle and far-reaching. It likewise rejects as the whole truth all partial analyses, such as those of Marx or Freud, which elevate half-truths to the status of the whole truth.19
(4) What is the solution? The creator has acted, is acting, and will act within his creation to deal with the weight of evil set up by human rebellion, and to bring his world to the end for which it was made, namely that it should resonate fully with his own presence and glory. This action, of course, is focused upon Jesus and the spirit of the creator. We reject, that is, solutions to the human plight which only address one part of the problem.
These four answers constitute an articulated ground-plan of the mainline or traditional Christian worldview. Many branches of Christianity, we should note, have not adopted precisely this ground-plan. In much post-Enlightenment thinking, for instance, many ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ Christians have shared the belief that the answers to (3) and (4) had to do with the problem of physicality and the means of escaping into a pure spiritual sphere. But a good case can be made out, I think, for this pattern as an overall account.
Third, this worldview has been given expression in a variety of socio-cultural symbols, both artifacts and cultural events. Churches and their furniture have articulated the worldview in soaring stone and decorated glass, expressing the majesty attributed to the creator and his transcendent presence within his world. Liturgy and para-liturgy (from processions to prayer meetings) have celebrated and enacted the worldview, becoming variously normative in different groups. A large variety of activities, from icon-painting to street evangelism, from the study of scripture to the setting up of sanctuaries and refuge homes for society’s casualties, have attained the status of symbols. Sometimes, as in any worldview and its symbolic expression, the symbols can be challenged. It is now widely recognized that the Crusades, though they were undertaken as a symbol of the victory of the gospel, in fact symbolized a message rather different from, and actually incompatible with, that of Jesus of Nazareth. But in principle the Christian worldview, like all others, has its symbols which enable its adherents to order and direct their lives appropriately, and to view the world and their tasks in it with some degree of coherence.
Finally, the Christian worldview gives rise to a particular type of praxis, a particular mode of being-in-the-world. Actually, this might be better expressed, in the Christian case, as being-for-the-world, since in the fundamental Christian worldview humans in general are part of the creator’s designed means of looking after his world, and Christians in particular are part of his means of bringing healing to the world. As with all other worldviews, of course, its adherents are not noticeably successful in attaining a complete correlation between their statements about their own being-in-the-world and their actual practice. This is in no way fatal to the theory; it merely means that Christians, like everybody else, are often muddled, mistaken, foolish and wayward, and are probably trying to ride at least one other horse at the same time as the Christian one. But in principle the Christian worldview supplies its adherents with a sense of direction, namely, the vocation to work in whatever way may be appropriate for the glory of the creator and the healing of his world.
This fundamental Christian worldview, expressed in the four ways outlined (story, answers to questions, symbols and praxis), gives rise in its turn to a system of basic beliefs, held at a more conscious level than the worldview itself. At this point more diversity appears, as different Christians in different cultures and contexts have addressed different issues in different ways, and have sought to emphasize now this, now that facet of Christian truth to make a particular point. But certain topics of belief are common to most branches of Christianity, while not forming a necessary part of the worldview itself: beliefs about the Christian god, about Jesus, beliefs about the divine spirit, beliefs about revelation, the Bible, tradition, the church. Some of these, like the traditional doctrines of trinity and incarnation, are perceived to serve as lock-nuts keeping aspects of the basic worldview in place: unless one believes something like this, it is felt, the worldview will collapse into a less desirable alternative. Debate then occurs as to whether this is in fact the case—whether, for instance, one can suspend belief in the traditional trinitarian dogmas while still holding firmly to something that remains recognizably Christian.
From these basic beliefs there will also follow certain consequent beliefs, which will vary more widely, but whose adherents will regard them as compatible with, or actually entailed by, some aspect of the basic beliefs. Thus a Christian individual or group might express its unseen and assumed worldview in a set of basic beliefs, say a credal formula. This can be discussed; sermons can be preached on it; it is public and observable. The group may well also hold a set of consequent beliefs: for instance, a particular view of scripture, or a particular way of articulating atonement-theology. Some in the group may come to regard these formulations as themselves ‘basic beliefs’: others will be more wary. The question of the status of different beliefs is itself a matter of some debate from time to time within the church: in the sixteenth century it was sometimes a matter of life and death.20 That there are different levels, however, seems to me manifestly the case. The overall point here is that a good deal of what is called ‘Christian theology’ consists of discussions and debates at the level of basic belief or consequent belief, not necessarily at the level of the Christian worldview itself. If theological study is to be fully aware of its own nature, however, it must include study of the whole range, from worldviews to every level of belief. This large theological task remains a necessary part of the literary and historical study of early Christianity.
From all this it should by now be clear that, like all worldviews, the Christian worldview is not simply a matter of a private language, a secret or arcane mystery which is of interest only to those who themselves profess the Christian faith. All worldviews, the Christian one included, are in principle public statements. They all tell stories which attempt to challenge and perhaps to subvert other worldview-stories. All of them provide a set of answers to the basic questions, which can be called up as required from the subconscious, and discussed. All commit their hearers to a way of being-in-the-world or being-for-the-world.
But the Christian claim in particular is committed to its own irreducible publicness. It claims to be telling a story about the creator and his world. If it allows this to collapse for a moment into a story about a god who is rescuing people out of the world, then it has abandoned something extremely fundamental in the worldview. Many of the early Fathers saw this very clearly; that is why they rejected Gnosticism. In fact, even if Gnostic dualism were true, the story would still be public, since, if the world is a place of ruin and there exists a god who can save people from it, this is news that ought to be shared. But if this dualism is avoided (as it has not always been in various forms of post-Enlightenment Christianity, not least fundamentalism) the publicness of the Christian claim is the more manifest.21
To what sort of speech, then, is Christian theology (whether in the first or the twenty-first century) committed? Christians find themselves compelled to speak of the creator and redeemer god as God, the one God: not a Deist god, an absentee landlord, nor one of the many gods that litter the world of paganism, nor yet the god who, in pantheism, is identified with the world; but the God who made and sustains all that is, who is active within the world but not contained within it. Christians are committed to speaking of this God in appropriate ways, namely, by stories which reflect and bring into articulation the basic Christian worldview-story. And, as we have already noted, metaphors are mini-stories, inviting the hearers into a world where certain things can be seen more clearly through this lens. They are not the icing on the cake, the embroidery around the edge of the picture, which could be removed without substantial loss. From the point of view of a Christian critical realism, we must say that story and metaphor, including myth, are ways in which, despite the almost boundless human capacity for self-deception, words in relation to the creator and redeemer God can be truly spoken.22
These will be words appropriate to the God of whom they speak. They will thus include, at a basic stage, praise and worship, and proclamation. They will also include the discussion of theology, since, at the level of basic or consequent belief, there will be stories to be told in order to articulate the basic worldview, support it, modify it where necessary, and subvert attractive but misleading alternatives. They will also address the questions raised by all worldviews, and do so by means of theological discussion. Again, they will explicate the symbols in which the culture finds expression, just as in Judaism the celebration of the Passover is explained, in answer to the question ‘Why is this night different from all other nights?’
In addition, they will be words about history. The Christian is committed to the belief that certain things are true about the past.23 This does not mean that the Christian historian is committed to finding material which ‘proves’ Christianity ‘true’, or to finding in the New Testament, as an earlier generation of exegetes tried to do, advance statements of highly developed points of Christian doctrine. Rather, it means doing serious history in the belief, which Christians share with some others, that the creator of the universe is also the lord of history, and in the further belief, peculiar to Christianity, that he has acted climactically, and not merely paradigmatically, in Jesus of Nazareth; that he has implemented that climactic act in the gift of his own spirit to his people; and that he will complete this work in the final renewal of all things. This belief will drive the Christian to history, as a hypothesis drives the scientist to the laboratory, not simply in the search for legitimation, but in the search for the modifications and adaptations necessary if the hypothesis is to stand the test of reality. The appeal to history with which the Enlightenment challenged the dogmatic theology of the eighteenth century and after is one which can and must be taken on board within the mainline Christian theological worldview. As Paul put it in a slightly different context, if we are deceived about these things we are of all humans the most to be pitied.24
If the Christian theologian is committed to speaking true words about the past, he or she is also committed to speaking true words about the present and the future. This means that a proper concern for history will be balanced by a proper concern for justice and peace. Though it is impossible to explore this theme further here, history and justice belong together, as humans are called to bring the divinely intended order to birth through their speech-acts. Words about the past and the future must all alike be used in the service of truth of every sort.
Finally, the Christian theologian is committed also to speaking true words about his or her own condition in engaging in these activities. One must speak of provisionality and partial insight, of truth to which one is totally committed but which can only be stated provisionally.25 Hence the need, within the worldview itself and the aims and intentions to which it gives rise, for faith, for hope, and (since agreement will always be difficult to attain) for love.
What will be the criteria according to which theological statements are to be judged? This again raises huge issues into which we cannot go here, but something at least may be said as the alternative to leaving a puzzling lacuna. If theology is not to be just a private game, in which the players agree on the rules while outsiders look on in perplexity, it must appeal to some sense of fittingness, or appropriateness. There must be, as in a scientific theory, a sense of clean simplicity, of things fitting together and making sense. A historical construct can present itself as more fitting and appropriate than some other construct, without appealing to any external a priori of a particular agenda which would thereby be legitimated or reinforced. A good example would be the arrangement of Monet’s eleven paintings of Rouen Cathedral in the 1990 Royal Academy exhibition. If, in other words, a particular way of approaching the historical and theological task results in a new coherence in the material itself, it may commend itself not only to those within the tradition from which the historian or theologian comes, but also to those outside it.
(iv) Worldviews, Theology and Biblical Studies
It will by now be clear that all study, all reading of texts, all attempts to reconstruct history, take place within particular worldviews. This could appear to force interpreters into a difficult choice, between (shall we say) a post-Enlightenment, modernist, Western worldview and a postmodern one, or between either of these and an overtly Christian one. Within that context, many have felt the pressure in recent decades to engage in scholarly work, including specialist study of the Bible, from within the post-Enlightenment modernist perspective, putting specifically Christian opinions on hold while the exercise is going on. This has been helped by the impression which is given, precisely within the post-Enlightenment worldview itself, that matters of religious opinion are simply private options which do not engage with the public world.
It should be clear, further, that this way of conceiving the problem is based on a mistake. All worldviews, including both the modernism of the Enlightenment and Christianity, claim to be public and comprehensive. They must therefore offer some account, along with everything else, of what the adherents of other worldviews are ‘really’ doing. To that extent, they overlap. The question is, whose account of everybody else makes most sense? Enlightenment modernism tries to subsume Christianity within it, by claiming that Christianity is simply a private religious option; but Christianity has a reply ready to hand: that it in turn can look the Enlightenment questions full in the face, can take them on board and work with them. If Christianity is committed to history, as I have argued, then it not only can but must work at history to meet the Enlightenment’s demand—not, indeed, the demand for ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’ history, which as we have seen is a positivist fantasy, but the desire for genuine historical reconstruction of actual events in the past, of the ‘inside’ of events as well as the ‘outside’. Christianity has nothing to fear from the appeal to history. It makes the same appeal itself.
Theology and biblical studies therefore need each other in a symbiotic relationship. (I deliberately refer to biblical studies in general, because I believe the wider point to be vital, even though I shall only here discuss the relation of this to the New Testament.) There are three points to be made here.
(1) Biblical studies needs theology, because only with theological tools can historical exegesis get at what the characters in the history were thinking, planning, aiming to do. This is to say no more than that if we were to write the history of the Greek philosophers we would need to study philosophy to understand what it was they were trying to say, and perhaps how their social and political actions reflected their discussions. Early Christianity cherished certain beliefs and aims, which can be traced back to their underlying worldview(s); New Testament readers are committed to studying the ‘inside’ of events in the first century, which includes finding what made early Christians tick; ergo, New Testament readers need to study theology. This becomes very important (for instance) when we consider the nature of Pauline theology: one cannot study Paul seriously without enquiring as to his worldview, mindset, basic and consequent beliefs, and practical aims and intentions.26
(2) Biblical studies needs theology, because only with the help of a fully theological analysis of contemporary culture can those who read the Bible be aware, as they need to be, of their own questions, presuppositions, aims and intentions. If anyone thinks that he or she comes without presuppositions, that the questions they ask are ‘neutral’, the study of worldviews and theology should disabuse them of the idea. Conversely, Christian theology can offer, in ways that I have outlined above, a set of aims and intentions which take up within themselves the aims and intentions contained within other projects, such as the Enlightenment one. Invoking ‘theology’ does not therefore mean summoning up a complete scheme of ready-made answers which will short-circuit the process of serious historical and critical exegesis, as is sometimes feared. On the contrary, it will set the historical critic free to work with clarity of aim and purpose.
(3) At the same time, theology—any theology—needs biblical studies, since the claims of any theology must sooner or later come into contact, perhaps conflict, with the stories contained in the Bible, and if a worldview of any sort is to be sustained it must be able to meet the challenge posed by its rivals. Hindus, Muslims, Deists and pantheists will therefore study the Bible to understand how Christianity works from within, in the hope that their own stories will be able to subvert the Christian one, or at least withstand its potential challenge, and establish themselves as a more adequate account of reality. How much more, though, does Christian theology need biblical studies. To be truly Christian, it must show that it includes the story which the Bible tells, and the sub-stories within it. Without this, it lapses into a mere ad hoc use of the Bible, finding bits and pieces to fit into a scheme derived from elsewhere. If finding a proof-text, or even a proof-theme, from the Bible, is what counts, then theology is simply reproducing the worst phenomenon of an earlier proof-texting biblicism, while often lacking the robust and courageous faith that frequently characterized such movements.
To be Christian, then, theology needs to tell the stories of Jesus and Paul, of the early church, and much besides. However difficult the task of reading the New Testament may be, it is harder still to conceive of the project of Christian theology in any meaningful sense without some articulable place for the New Testament and its writers, and without a clearly defined place for the Jesus of whom they speak. And about this topic—the place of Jesus within a Christian theology—we must offer some further reflections.
Granted the state of New Testament historical work in the last few decades, it is not surprising to find that systematic theologians are unsure which Jesus to choose to weave into their work. Most, equally unsurprisingly, choose a Jesus who just happens to fit the programme that was desired on other grounds. But at this point it is vital to remain within the boundaries of serious historical work. True, there will always be room for manoeuvre within certain rather narrow limits. But there is simply no point using the word ‘Jesus’ at all within theology unless one intends to refer to the Jesus who lived and died as a Jew of the first century. Unless quite strict controls are in place here, a whole range of theological debates wander off into pointlessness. And such controls are, I suggest, in place when we attempt serious ‘Christian theology’.
I am therefore proposing, as a way of conceiving the task that lies before us, that to study the world of the first century, and within that to study Jesus, Paul and the gospels, does not require that we adopt wholesale and uncritically either the Enlightenment worldview or any other that may be on offer within contemporary secular culture. This does not mean that we are to retreat, either into a pre-modern rejection of historical criticism, or (as the positivist will imagine) into a private sphere away from potential disagreements and alternative readings. Christian theology, if conceived in the way I have suggested, offers a perspective from which the issues addressed by the Enlightenment may be handled appropriately; the Christian historian need not pretend to be something else, as though being a Christian, or operating as such, would somehow invalidate the research. The Christian reader of the New Testament is committed to a task which includes within itself ‘early Christian history’ and ‘New Testament theology’, while showing that neither of these tasks, which I set out in chapter 1 above, can be self-sufficient. And this fuller reading of the New Testament neither ‘excludes’ nor ‘contains’ Jesus, nor does it merely presuppose him. Rather, it includes as one vital part of itself the task of telling the story of Jesus, with the assumption that this story took place within public history.
If it is thus possible to join together the three enterprises of literary, historical and theological study of the New Testament, and to do so in particular by the use of the category of ‘story’, what might become of the widespread belief that the New Testament is to be regarded as in some sense ‘normative’? Will this be a contradiction in terms, or at least in methods?
3. Theology, Narrative and Authority
I shall now argue that the conception of the task, the way of reading the New Testament, for which I have been arguing in the last three chapters, enables us to do what pre-modern Christian readers assumed they could do without difficulty, and what the ‘modernists’ found so many problems with, namely, to use the New Testament as in some way authoritative. This is not to go back to pre-modernism. We have abandoned biblicistic proof-texting, as inconsistent with the nature of the texts that we have (and anyone who thinks that this means abandoning biblical authority should ask themselves where the real authority lies in a method that effectively turns the Bible into something else). Nor can it easily be done within modernism itself. For better or worse, there has existed within the world of modernistic New Testament studies a kind of practical agreement to split off ‘descriptive’ and ‘normative’ readings of the Bible from one another. If we choose to move from an ‘is’ to an ‘ought’, from description of the past to authoritative statement, that is a choice made, it is felt, from outside the historical task itself. But need this in fact be so? Is there another model, consistent with serious literary, historical and theological study, which will result in the New Testament exercising that authority which Christians from the beginning have accorded to it?
Here I have a suggestion to make, which seems to me fairly obvious though not often explored. Since (a) stories are a key worldview indicator in any case, and (b) a good part of the New Testament consists of stories, of narratives, it might be a good idea to consider how stories might carry, or be vehicles for, authority. Stories may seem at first unpromising as a starting-point for authoritative exegesis. But we may be able to conceive of a working model which would make the point clear.27
Suppose there exists a Shakespeare play, most of whose fifth act has been lost. The first four acts provide, let us suppose, such a remarkable wealth of characterization, such a crescendo of excitement within the plot, that it is generally agreed that the play ought to be staged. Nevertheless, it is felt inappropriate actually to write a fifth act once and for all: it would freeze the play into one form, and commit Shakespeare as it were to being prospectively responsible for work not in fact his own. Better, it might be felt, to give the key parts to highly trained, sensitive and experienced Shakespearian actors, who would immerse themselves in the first four acts, and in the language and culture of Shakespeare and his time, and who would then be told to work out a fifth act for themselves.
Consider the result. The first four acts, existing as they did, would be the undoubted ‘authority’ for the task in hand. That is, anyone could properly object to the new improvisation on the grounds that some character was now behaving inconsistently, or that some sub-plot or theme, adumbrated earlier, had not reached its proper resolution. This ‘authority’ of the first four acts would not consist—could not consist!—in an implicit command that the actors should repeat the earlier parts of the play over and over again. It would consist in the fact of an as yet unfinished drama, containing its own impetus and forward movement, which demanded to be concluded in an appropriate manner. It would require of the actors a free and responsible entering in to the story as it stood, in order first to understand how the threads could appropriately be drawn together and then to put that understanding into effect by speaking and acting with both innovation and consistency. This model could and perhaps should be adapted further: it offers quite a range of possibilities.
This might provide, in our present context, a different account of authority, both in general and in relation to the New Testament, from the various ones normally imagined. We saw in chapter 1 some of the different ways in which ‘authority’ has been extracted from historical description(s) of the New Testament: we can make some aspect of Early Christianity normative; we can select certain theological themes within the New Testament writings themselves as central (the kingdom of god, justification by faith, or whatever); or we can include certain strands of the New Testament within a theological scheme whose beginning and end lie elsewhere. If, however, we take the model of the authority of the unfinished play, a different set of possibilities emerges. As we saw, part of the initial task of the actors chosen to improvise the new final act will be to immerse themselves with full sympathy in the first four acts, but not so as merely to parrot what has already been said.28 They cannot go and look up the right answers. Nor can they simply imitate the kinds of things that their particular character did in the early acts. A good fifth act will show a proper final development, not merely a repetition, of what went before. Nevertheless, there will be a rightness, a fittingness, about certain actions and speeches, about certain final moves in the drama, which will in one sense be self-authenticating, and in another gain authentication from their coherence with, their making sense of, the ‘authoritative’ previous text.29
Some notes about this model are worth making before we apply it briefly to our own subject-matter.30 First, it provides an analogy for the way in which any story, or any work of art, may possess in itself a kind of authority, particularly when in a state of needing completion. At this level, of course, the idea of the work being a play in five acts, with actors, is an unnecessary refinement: a symphony would do just as well, and the task of completion could be entrusted to a composer, not necessarily an improvising performer. Second, however, the model as I have outlined it provides a more direct and specific analogy to illustrate what I take to be at issue within the story of the creator and the creation as seen by the biblical writers, or at least some of them. This is where the idea of five acts, and of actors who are required to complete the work in their own improvisation, fits (I think) so well. The first use of the model, then, could be achieved without the second; that is to say, the model illustrates well the general point about unfinished works of art; but the second requires the first as its framework.
Among the detailed moves available within this model, which I hope to develop further elsewhere, is the possibility of seeing the biblical story as itself consisting of five acts. Thus: 1—Creation; 2—Fall; 3—Israel; 4—Jesus. The writing of the New Testament—including the writing of the gospels—would then form the first scene in the fifth act, and would simultaneously give hints (Romans 8, 1 Corinthians 15, parts of the Apocalypse) of how the play is supposed to end. The fact of Act 4 being what it is shows what sort of a conclusion the drama should have, without making clear all the intervening steps. The church would then live under the ‘authority’ of the extant story, being required to offer an improvisatory performance of the final act as it leads up to and anticipates the intended conclusion. The church is designed, according to this model, as a stage in the completion of the creator’s work of art: as Paul says in Ephesians 2:10, autou gar esmen poiema, we are his artwork.
If we apply this to the problem of ‘New Testament theology’ as normally conceived, and as discussed in chapter 1, such immersing of oneself in the extant material will require a differentiation between different levels of material. As scholars and others have become aware of a necessary distinction between the Testaments, especially when one is addressing the church or the world, so we may discover other differences. Though Bultmann was wrong in thinking he could effectively truncate Act 4, and, for that matter, a good deal of Acts 1–3 as well, he was right in discerning a difference between Act 4 (Jesus) and the beginning of Act 5 (the New Testament)—even though his drawing of the distinction actually distorted both. It matters that the story of Jesus, i.e. the story of Act 4, was written by the early church as part of its appropriate task in Act 5.31
Indeed, it might appear that the retelling of the story of the previous acts, as part of the required improvisation, is a necessary part of the task all through. The Israelites retold the story of creation and fall. Jesus retold, in parable and symbol, the story of Israel. The evangelists retold, in complex and multifaceted ways, the story of Jesus. This may suggest, from a new angle, that the task of history, including historical theology and theological history, is itself mandated upon the followers of Jesus from within the biblical story itself.
In addition, the notion that the writers of the New Testament were in some senses instituting a historical movement in which subsequent Christian generations may follow32 gives to the task of hermeneutics an angle and emphasis quite different from any of the regular options which we described earlier. We are not searching, against the grain of the material, for timeless truths. We are looking, as the material is looking, for and at a vocation to be the people of God in the fifth act of the drama of creation. The church inherits, at the end of the story, the task of restoring to the owner the fruits of the vineyard. if Act 3 is essentially tragic, the total play is to be the kind of comedy that triumphs over tragedy.
One or two objections might well be lodged at this point. Can we be sure that anyone would ever understand Acts 1–4, or indeed the beginning of Act 5, well enough to make all the required moves in the later parts of Act 5? The answer must surely be no. Certainty on such matters is precisely what we do not have. That is why faith, and obedience, remain essentially risky. Church history, and for that matter the stories of Israel, and of the disciples during Jesus’ ministry, are in fact littered with examples of individuals, groups and movements whose improvisations turned out to be based on a misreading of the story so far (though the question of which groups come into such a category would itself, obviously, be a matter of risky debate). But this does not mean that the overall task is impossible; merely that the actors remain fallible. The ultimate result is guaranteed, within the story itself, by the playwright’s gift of his own spirit to the actors, but this cannot be taken to validate in advance all that they do or say.
Another objection would be: surely, in the Christian story, Act 4 (Jesus, and particularly his death and resurrection) is so climactic and conclusive that there is little left to do in Act 5? There are two possible replies to this.
First, we should stress that part of the task of Act 5—the task begun in the earliest post-Easter church, and including the writing of the gospels—is to reflect on, draw out, and implement the significance of the first four Acts, more specifically, of Act 4 in the light of Acts 1–3. What is more, Act 4 positively demands such further work. Such reflection and action is not simply a matter of reading ideas off the surface of the fourth-Act story, which in any case was of course itself written in Act 5. Faithful improvisation in the present time requires patient and careful puzzling over what has gone before, including the attempt to understand what the nature of the claims made in, and for, the fourth Act really amount to.
Second, I suggest that the question assumes what needs to be demonstrated, i.e. that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus really does have such a climactic sense as to leave no room for any further work. I suspect that this belief comes from a latent anti-historical tendency, within some branches of modern scholarship, rather than from the text. Certainly Paul, our earliest witness to Christianity, continually couples the work of the spirit in the present with the achievement of Jesus in the past.
To sum up: I am proposing a notion of ‘authority’ which is not simply vested in the New Testament, or in ‘New Testament theology’, nor simply in ‘early Christian history’ and the like, conceived positivistically, but in the creator god himself, and this god’s story with the world, seen as focused on the story of Israel and thence on the story of Jesus, as told and retold in the Old and New Testaments, and as still requiring completion. This is a far more complex notion of authority than those usually tossed around in theological discourse. That is, arguably, what we need if we are to break through the log-jams caused by regular over-simplifications.
4. Conclusion
It is not easy to see at a glance what this model will mean in practice. That will have to wait until the substantial historical and theological exploration of Jesus, early Christianity and the New Testament has been undertaken. There are other elements that should be remembered, even though they cannot be included within the present project: the overall task implies a discussion of Old Testament theology, and a consideration of the world outside the Judaeo-Christian tradition, both of which are usually left out of consideration in New Testament study.33 But for the moment the task is clear. Literary, historical and theological exploration of the New Testament, and particularly of Jesus and Paul, is our goal. And if that is to be even a possibility, it is vital that we set out the historical context of the investigation as clearly as possible. We must therefore spend the next two Parts of this volume studying, first, the Judaism from within which Christianity came to birth, and, second, early Christianity itself, as the context not only of Paul and his writings but as the world within which people remembered, and wrote about, Jesus.