God and the Teaching of Theology

Steven Edward Harris

Description

Theologians today are facing a crisis of identity. Are they members of the academy or the church? Is it still possible to be members of both? In God and the Teaching of Theology, Steven Harris argues a way through the impasse by encompassing both church and academy within the umbrella of the divine economy. To accomplish this, Harris uses St. Paul’s description of this economy in the opening chapters of his first letter to the Corinthians.

Through Paul’s discussion of wisdom, the Spirit, and the apostles’ role in sharing that divine wisdom, theologians of the patristic, medieval, and Reformation eras found a description of their own work as educators; they discovered that they too had roles within the same divine economy.

This book thus offers a rich description of the teaching of theology as part of God’s own divine pedagogy, stretching from God the teacher himself, through the nature of students and teachers of theology, to the goal of this pedagogy: human salvation in the knowledge of God. In addressing the current identity crisis of theology faculties, Harris looks backward in order to chart a way forward. His book will appeal to academic theologians, and to theological and church educators, pastors, and Christians interested in the relationship between academic study and their faith.

God ordinarily teaches us about himself through other people. Paul, who is one of those chosen by God to teach others, begins 1 Corinthians by identifying himself as “called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God” (1:1). Paul is given the office and task of instructing the Church as an apostle not by his own volition but by the divine will, the θέλημα θεοῦ. He does not take it upon himself to teach the Gentiles the knowledge of God, but is given a role in the already existing plan of God our teacher, of which Paul is but a small part, to bring the world to know the wisdom found in Christ. God, in other words, directs the economy of his teaching as he wills. One’s role within this economy is dependent upon prior divine actions. Before, then, one can speak of theologians, their position and authority, their method and judgment, one must take a more ‘expansive’ view: one must begin with he who is wisdom and becomes wisdom for us, Christ, as well as he who knows this wisdom most intimately and reveals it to us as he lives within us, the Spirit. This is he who desires theologians for their task and makes them capable of taking it up; this is God our teacher. To say that God teaches suggests, first of all, that God is a teacher, that in and of himself he is able to teach. No creature first taught God: “For who has known the mind of the Lord? Who instructs him?” (1 Cor. 2:15). God, unlike human beings, is not wise by learning or by another’s wisdom, but rather is wise by his own wisdom; moreover, God does not become wise over time (i.e, discursively) but is the eternally wise God. God is, as the classical Christian tradition has it, the wisdom by which all creatures become wise. God, our teacher, is able to communicate his wisdom to humanity. God enables his human creatures to become wise by sharing his wisdom with them in Jesus Christ and allowing them to understand this wisdom by his Spirit. Through the sendings of the Son and the Spirit, God the Father teaches the world. Acting inseparably, Father, Son and Spirit enact this teaching work by which the divine wisdom is communicated to human beings. In the lapidary phrase of Wolfgang Musculus (1497-1563), “the Father reveals; the Son reveals; the Spirit reveals.” Each person of the Trinity, in accordance with their own particular roles in the divine economy, reveals the wisdom of God to those he has made to find their destiny in him. Able to reveal this wisdom, each person of the Trinity knows it perfectly themselves. Since the Son is all that the Father is, except what makes him the Father, and the Spirit is all that the Father and Son are, except what makes them Father and Son, “what the Father knows, the Son knows (and) the Spirit knows.” Each inseparably knows the wisdom that they are as infinitely wise and eternally wisdom itself, and inseparably they reveal this wisdom to the world in Christ, he who is wisdom in flesh. Christ, as we shall see, is both agent (chapter one) and object (chapter three) of the economy of divine teaching, he who teaches and he whom God’s students are taught. During his earthly ministry, Christ called and taught his disciples, sharing with them his divine wisdom, and died to procure the salvation that is the end of all his ways and works in the world, the epitome of his wisdom. Rising again from the dead, Christ commissioned his disciples to pass on what he had taught them, now to all nations, and to baptize as many as would believe in the name of the Father, Son and Spirit he had revealed to them, for the forgiveness of their sins (Mt. 28:19-20). This commissioning of the apostles, those who had learned from him as a μαθητής, a disciple or student, and were now going out as an ἀπόστολος, a messenger or envoy, one sent, was the continuation of Christ’s pedagogy on earth by means of human teachers. In God’s economy, those who had begun as students of Christ now went to bring his teaching to all the world. This, however, did not signal the end of a divine pedagogy and the beginning of a human one; rather, God chose to effect his pedagogy through human mediation. This had been the case under the old covenant, with the Levitical priesthood, and now it was beginning in a new way under the new covenant enacted by the shedding of Christ’s blood. The pouring out of the Spirit signaled a new moment in the divine pedagogy, in which the teaching of Christ would be carried on in the Church by human teachers under the instruction of the Spirit. The wisdom, the power and the plan upon which this economy depends remained (and remains) in God’s hands. It is God who intended this grand οἰκονομία, his economy of salvation, from all eternity and who now works it out through little human minds and voices, voices such as the apostle Paul. (excerpted from Introduction)

Abbreviations

Acknowledgments

Introduction. Theologians in God’s Plan

1. God the Teacher of His Wisdom
2. The Divine Pedagogy in History
3. Wisdom, Divine and Human
4. The Students of the Divine Wisdom
5. The Position and Authority of God’s Teachers
6. The Method and Judgment of God’s Teachers
7. The End of the Divine Pedagogy

Conclusion. Knowing God

Appendix. Chronological Table of Commentators

Bibliography

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Christian Theology
• Biblical Studies
• Philosophie et théologie
• St. Paul
• Catholicism
• Exegesis
• Hermeneutics
• Theology
• Paul the Apostle
• First Epistle to the Corinthians
• Christianity
• History
• Saint Paul (Minnesota)

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 31 mai 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268105242
• Langue: English

Extrait

GOD AND THE TEACHING OF THEOLOGY
READING THE SCRIPTURES
Gary A. Anderson, Matthew Levering, and Robert Louis Wilken
series editors
GOD and THE TEACHING of THEOLOGY
Divine Pedagogy in 1 Corinthians 1–4

STEVEN EDWARD HARRIS
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
Copyright © 2019 by the University of Notre Dame
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Harris, Steven Edward, 1988– author.
Title: God and the teaching of theology :
divine pedagogy in 1 Corinthians 1/4 / Steven Edward Harris.
Description: Notre Dame, Indiana : University of Notre Dame Press, [2019] |
Series: Reading the Scriptures | Includes bibliographical references and indexes. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2019011966 (print) | LCCN 2019014703 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780268105235 (pdf) | ISBN 9780268105242 (epub) |
ISBN 9780268105211 (hardback : alk. paper) |
ISBN 0268105219 (hardback : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Bible. Corinthians, 1st, I–IV—Criticism,
interpretation, etc. | Theology—Study and teaching. | Economy of God. |
Wisdom—Biblical teaching. | God—Biblical teaching.
Classification: LCC BS2675.52 (ebook) |
LCC BS2675.52 .H37 2019 (print) | DDC 227/.206—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019011966
∞This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail]
Make me to know your ways, O Lord;
teach me your paths.
Lead me in your truth and teach me,
for you are the God of my salvation;
for you I wait all the day long.
Psalm 25:4–5 (ESV)
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Theologians in God’s Plan
ONE. God the Teacher of His Wisdom
TWO. The Divine Pedagogy in History
THREE. Wisdom, Divine and Human
FOUR. The Students of the Divine Wisdom
FIVE. The Position and Authority of God’s Teachers
SIX. The Method and Judgment of God’s Teachers
SEVEN. The End of the Divine Pedagogy
Conclusion: Knowing God
Appendix: Chronological Table of Commentators
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Scriptural Index
Name Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book started out life as a doctoral thesis under the supervision of Mark McIntosh and Lewis Ayres at the University of Durham. Mark’s intellectual generosity and intense empathy for ideas arising from the Christian past is somehow matched by his encouragement, concern, and hospitality. Upon Mark’s return to Chicago, Lewis was, thankfully, willing to take on the project as it stood and see it through to the finish, being characteristically humorous and forthright along the way. I must thank, in addition, Yves de Maaseneer and Vaiva Adomaityte of Katholeike Universiteit Leuven for helping me obtain a copy of Marie Hendrickx’s dissertation on Lombard and Aquinas. A special thanks to Don Wood, formerly of Aberdeen, whose course on the history of interpretation of John 4 in many ways inspired both the method and the themes of this project.
During this volume’s passage from adolescence to maturity, Mark Elliott and Franklin Harkins provided invaluable comments and guidance. I also thank the two anonymous reviewers, whose comments did substantially improve portions of the manuscript. I particularly thank them for inviting me to consider the scope and force of the book more broadly and to engage across biblical studies and historical and contemporary theology. I thank the series editor, Matthew Levering, for his initial enthusiasm in considering the manuscript; Stephen Little, the acquisitions editor, for all his work in the process; and the team at University of Notre Dame Press. Finally, a heartfelt word of thanks to my wife, Valerie, who has been unwaveringly supportive through these many long years.
My thanks for permission to reprint the following as part of Chapter 5 : “‘Was Thomas Crucified for You?’: 1 Corinthians 1:12–13 and the Premodern Critique of Theological Schools of Thought,” Journal of Theological Interpretation 9/2 (2015): 211–26.
INTRODUCTION
Theologians in God’s Plan
For if someone experiences love towards the Word, and if he enjoys hearing, speaking, thinking, lecturing, and writing about Christ, he should know that this is not a work of human will or reason but a gift of the Holy Spirit.
—Martin Luther, Lectures on Galatians (1535)
God ordinarily teaches us about himself through other people. This simple truth seems to be a commonplace in Christian experience: pastors, counselors, and spiritual directors regularly contribute to one’s understanding of God and his ways. Christians typically understand them to be called and gifted by God to serve in this capacity. Yet theologians, those whose work is to teach about God, often find it difficult to understand themselves in this light, as those whom God uses to teach others about himself. When they think about what they do, theologians often turn to their institutional situatedness and obligations, the advancement of (critical) knowledge and a history of academic discourse. Perhaps their self-understanding, whether spontaneous or reflective, is more closely connected to ideas of ecclesial situatedness, divine vocation, and even present divine teaching. But the connection of this self-understanding to a larger theological vision of divine pedagogy is difficult to make and not readily available in the whorl of twenty-first-century theological pluralism. 1
In the premodern period, roughly up until the seventeenth century, theologians, and other teachers of the knowledge of God such as pastors, bishops, and catechists, understood themselves to be sharing in God’s own “economy” of teaching. This was true even where this teaching was practiced primarily in the University. Efforts to retrieve an understanding of theological work within the divine pedagogy are sometimes tempted to disparage the University as a potential site of faithful theology. But while the present text will not make any particular case—prescriptive or prognostic—regarding the fate of theology in the modern University, it works to retrieve a premodern sensibility of theological education, in its broadest sense, as a mode of the divine pedagogy, whether undertaken in a Sunday homily, a monastery chapterhouse, an adult Bible study, or a University lecture hall. In so doing, it practices a theology of ressourcement or retrieval, 2 offering up what it finds in premodern theology in confidence that it will aid in the overcoming of some harmful modern inhibitions.
It is also a contribution to ecumenical theology. As we shall see, those who have done most in the past half century or so to retrieve the doctrine of divine pedagogy in relation to the teaching of theology have had their church’s particular concerns in mind. On the one hand, Protestant retrievals have tended to focus on God’s present teaching through scripture, so, where this concerns the theologian, presentations have centered on the individual theologian learning from God. Catholic retrievals, on the other hand, have tended to focus on God’s role in instituting apostolic succession and donating infallibility to the teaching office of the church to guarantee the continuing proclamation of the truth of the gospel, and thus on the theologian’s responsibility vis-à-vis that divinely instituted and preserved teaching office. While the present work will not, in itself, resolve certain Protestant-Catholic (and intra-Catholic) differences over questions such as the emergence of papal authority and the magisterium, the division between theologians and the magisterium, and the material and/or formal sufficiency of scripture, it will provide a common vision within which all of these things, and the teaching of theology more broadly, find their origin, nature, and end. It is this wider “economic” vision, I hope, that will contribute to ecumenical rapprochement and the reinvigoration of theological teaching, practice, and self-understanding.
To return to our thesis, then: God ordinarily teaches us about himself through other people. This relatively simple statement is advanced by way of retrieving and (re-)constructing a premodern doctrine of divine pedagogy found in commentary on 1 Corinthians 1–4 from Origen through the Reformation. Each of these aspects calls for some explanation in turn: First, an overview of themes in the doctrine of divine pedagogy, God’s teaching, in the history of theology; though by no means a full history, it will serve as orientation for the next section. 3 Second, the recovery of certain themes from the doctrine in recent Protestant and Catholic theology, with an eye toward ecumenical recovery and convergence. Third, an introduction to Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, the themes present in the first four chapters, and why theologians have often turned there when speaking about the nature and practice of theology. Fourth, a discussion of the method undertaken in this work, which is the constructive theological use of comparative historical exegesis, and the reason for turning to premodern commentary. Fifth, a brief history of the Greek and Latin commentarial traditions and the most important figures within them. Finally, a short overview of the work’s structure, which is organized, not according to the biblical text or historical chronology, but according to theological themes in the doctrine of divine pedagogy.
THEMES IN THE DOCTRINE OF DIVINE PEDAGOGY
This section, in place of a full history, highlights and introduces major themes in the doctrine of divine pedagogy as it developed out of scripture and theological reflection. In the gospels, to begin, Jesus is portrayed in his ministry as a rabbi surrounded by his disciples, teaching them and answering their quest