Bible, Theology & Philosophy

Reposted with permission from Toward Conservative Christianity.

Thirtle’s Theory

I have been among those who committed the error of publicly reading a psalm and omitting to read the title. I reasoned that these titles probably belonged in the same category as the chapter and verse numbers of our Bibles: helpful, but by no means inspired.

I’ve since been divested of that view, and now see these titles as God-breathed, like all Scripture. One sees evidence for this in several ways. For example, the title of Psalm 18 is found within the text of 2 Samuel 22:1, showing the psalm title’s authenticity. It was not a later rabbinic interpolation. Further, some of the psalm titles (e.g. 46 & 58) were merely transliterated by the translators of the Greek Septuagint (c. 300-250 B.C.). This suggests that their meaning had already been lost by the time of the Septuagint, which in turn suggests great antiquity. They are much older than a post-exilic rabbinic commentary. Finally, Scriptures like Luke 20:42 quoting Psalm 110) take the title as true, for nowhere else is it stated that David himself wrote the psalm.

I was recently introduced to the fascinating theory of James Thirtle regarding the psalm titles. To quote the ISBE, Thirtle’s hypothesis is that

…both superscriptions and subscriptions were incorporated in the Psalter, and that in the process of copying the Psalms by hand, the distinction between the superscription of a given psalm and the subscription of the one immediately preceding it was finally lost. When at length the different psalms were separated from one another, as in printed editions, the subscriptions and superscriptions were all set forth as superscriptions. Thus it came about that the musical subscription of a given psalm was prefixed to the literary superscription of the psalm immediately following it. (John Richard Sampey, “Psalms, Book of,” in International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1939. 4:2487-94.)

Jonah: a paradox

Jonah is “a paradox: a prophet of God, and yet a runaway from God: a man drowned, and yet alive: a preacher of repentance, yet one that repines at repentance.”¹

In the early part of Joash’s reign, Jonah prophesied the restoration of Israel’s northern borders lost in wars with Syria and a time of prosperity and safety that would follow to rival the nation’s former greatness.² However, in her prosperity, Israel became complacent and arrogant thinking that they alone were the people under the divine favor and no other nation was so esteemed (Amos 9:7) by the Living God (Amos 6:1-8).

Exasperated with Israel’s unfaithfulness, God sent prophets to declare judgment against Israel warning them that He would use the Assyrians, whose capital city was Nineveh—a feared nation known for its cold-blooded barbarity—to punish and expel Israel from the land because of her sins (Hos. 9:3, 10:6, 11:5; Joel 1:6,7; Amos 9:11). In this setting God called Jonah to preach judgment against “Nineveh the great city for their wickedness” (NASB, Jon. 1:2). However, Jonah decided to make a run for it in the direction opposite Nineveh.

Jonah: his love for God and Israel

Some commentators attribute Jonah’s action to moral faults in his character but such accusations are unwarranted and implicitly denied within the narrative.³ In addition, there is the idea Jonah ran away because he was afraid for his own safety should he confront the powerful and evil people of Nineveh.

Read Part 1.

Thoughts on Christianity and science

In the imposing Munster Church of Strasbourg, France there is a clock which stands over two stories tall. Built in 1359, it shows not only hours and minutes but also motions of the planets and the phases of the moon. But through its moving figures and adorning paintings it also tells a message, namely, that time began with the creation and is heading toward the judgment of God at its end. This view of time was deeply embedded in the mind of Europeans before the Strasbourg clock was built.

We see few things as being as truth-telling or meaning-giving as time. We claim the right to vote on the basis of age. We celebrate athletes because they covered a distance in record time. We honor couples who have been married 50 years. People’s lives depend on how experts calculate according to minutes and seconds on the clock: airplane flights, space flights, train-track switches and hospital operations, just to name a few. Even Einstein’s theory of Relativity, which presents time-dilation, requires a constant related to time: the speed of light (299,792,458 meters per second).

The beginnings of science

All of the success of modern scientific venture goes back to the idea of the Strasbourg clock: a worldview based on the creation story. Alfred North Whitehead, hardly a believer in biblical Christianity, wrote (Science and the Modern World, 1925) that the basis of modern science is found in “the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher.”

Before the spread of Christianity civilizations believed in the cyclical view of time and history: birth → growth → apex → degeneration → cataclysmic destruction → rebirth, and so on. In addition, they believed the world was filled with and dominated by spirits whose activities in nature were often despotic.

Among people who discuss such things, truth is understood to be a function of propositions. While the terms truth and reality are sometimes used interchangeably in popular conversations, they are distinguished in technical discussion. As a function of propositions, truth is (roughly speaking) about reality, but it is not reality itself.

Since Christians affirm the existence of a real, created world external to themselves, they typically incline toward some version of the correspondence theory of truth. Stated simply, the correspondence theory affirms that a proposition is true if and only if what it asserts corresponds to reality. Suppose someone proposes that the sun is shining outside. That proposition is true if and only if the sun actually is shining outside. If the sun is not shining outside, the proposition is false.

The nature of propositions is to make connections. This is the difference between naming and telling: telling always involves some form of predication. Propositions assert the existence of links between facts (ideas and objects), activities, and concepts. Consequently, propositions are always interpretive, which means that they are always more than merely factual.

The connective nature of propositions is important because of the interconnectedness of the universe. Simply to point and say “cow” is not particularly useful unless the notion of a cow can be connected to other aspects of reality. By making connections between “cow” and the rest of reality, propositions not only factually assert “cow,” but they construe what a cow means.

Truth, therefore, is more than a matter of asserting existence (though even an assertion of existence is already an interpretation). It is a matter of rightly construing the various aspects of the universe so that their relationship becomes evident. It is a matter of putting facts and connections in the right contexts. These contexts include not only material reality, but also moral and personal reality.

In their attempt to know and understand the universe, humans must pay attention to a bewildering variety of considerations. First, they must notice objects and events. Then they must grasp the connections between the objects and events. Furthermore, they must perceive how objects and events are connected, not merely to material reality, but also to moral reality. Finally, they must take account of the presence and character of personal reality.

The genius of modernism—especially in its more empirical permutations—was the insistence that reality could be known by assembling facts. It was supposed that an observer could accumulate fact after fact, eventually noticing patterns that allowed informed guesses as to the connections between facts. Given enough time, enough observers, and enough good guesses, moderns thought that they could unlock the secrets of the universe.

G. K. Chesterton spoke for the opposition. In his short story, “The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown,” pre-modernity and modernity are typified by two brothers, Basil and Rupert Grant. Rupert fancies himself a detective and, at one point in the story, is convinced that his facts have yielded the truth. Basil, however, is convinced of the opposite. The exchange between them follows.

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Biblical theology is a discipline that is long overdue for biblically-based scholarly attention in a more public, accepted and permeating manner. The Biblical Theology Movement, as spearheaded by Brevard S. Childs in the 1940s-60s, did not accomplish what it set out to do in reaction to the source and form criticism of liberal theology. Until the last ten to fifteen years, biblical theology as a discipline had been lying almost dormant in terms of major influence within the broader theological world.

There have been a number of major biblical theology works that have had a significant and timeless influence upon the Christian world. Authors such as Geerhardus Vos, William VanGemeren, Daniel Fuller, Walter Kaiser, Graeme Goldsworthy and Charles H. H. Scobie have made classic contributions to the cause. But regardless of how long these works have been around, one wonders if they have had the impact they and others had hoped for.

Perhaps the work accomplished by biblical theologians in the past 10-15 years signals the rise of a new biblical theology movement, one that will take Scripture seriously as we have it and not as we might assume or wish it to be—not just biblical theology in regards to the whole canon but applying that same method to its various sub themes.

With God’s Glory in Salvation Through Judgment, James Hamilton Jr. makes a significant contribution to the growing number of books seeking to tackle the daunting task of canonical biblical theology. Hamilton sees biblical theology as concerning itself “with what the Bible meant for the purpose of understanding what the Bible means” (p. 45). Thus, the purpose of biblical theology

is to sharpen our understanding of the theology contained in the Bible itself through an inductive, salvation-historical examination of the Bible’s themes and the relationships between those themes in their canonical context and literary form (p. 47).

From this purpose we see Hamilton’s binocular-like view of biblical theological method. The first lens looks at the canon itself. “I will interpret the Protestant canon, and the Old Testament will be interpreted in light of the ordering of the books in the Hebrew Bible” (p. 44). This is consistent with how biblical theology has been practiced traditionally. After all, the word “biblical” in this context implies dealing with the whole cannon.