Tag Archives: exegesis

Really Glad About This Article

Posted on

I’m pretty excited about this new resource just added to DG’s Resource Library. It’s excellent content that has been inaccessible on the web. The process to get this up included transcribing the original document into electronic format (contracted out), translating it into HTML (including the 72 hyperlinked footnotes), inserting the images for the content that’s irreproducible otherwise.

Here’s the post. Below’s the body copy…

________

If you want to understand the message of 1 Peter,
or how hope in God’s grace affects our command to love,
or if you just want to see a lucid example of careful exegetical method. . .

let me commend to you John Piper’s 1980 article for Cambridge’s New Testament Studies: “Hope as the Motivation of Love: 1 Peter 3:9–12.”

A new web version has just been added to our Resource Library, full of the original British –ours, German lines, Greek inserts, and 72 footnotes (now hyperlinked).

Read the full article.

Here’s a snapshot of the work:

Method

In the long run it is the mutually correcting interaction between detailed analyses of particular texts (at the risk of conceptual myopia) and more general syntheses of an author’s total thought (at the risk of superficiality) which will yield the most balanced and true picture of how he may conceive of ethical motivation (or anything else).

Outline

  1. Introduction: the problem at hand
  2. The motif of hope as it’s grounded in the work of Christ and functions to motivate Christian behavior.
  3. 1 Peter 3:9–12 considered in detail.
  4. The conclusion as a result of points 2 and 3: general synthesis of the author’s thought and detailed analysis of a paritcular text.

Conclusion

Rather, when we hold the two parts together [points 2 and 3 above] a more balanced and true picture emerges of how 1 Peter aims to motivate enemy–love. . . .

Instead (taking the whole message of 1 Peter into account) we will recognize in our own ill will a failure to “hope fully” in the grace of Christ (1:13) who by bearing our own sins in his body (2:24) has brought us home to God (3:18) — our faithful creator (4:19). We will admit that not legalistic moral effort but a change of heart is demanded. To that end we will “be sober unto prayer” (4:7), and girding up our minds (1:13) will direct our attention to the reality of the Lord’s kindness in the living word (2:2, 3; 1:23). Thus by the grace of God we may experience a renewal of hope so that in all sincerity and earnestness (1:22) we can speak and act toward our enemy from a hopeful, humble and loving heart that truly desires his blessedness.

A New Hearing for an Old Word

Posted on

Alongside these editorial and compositional factors, moreover, are important hermeneutical signals that must be studied and assessed for their proper proportionality and significance. The juxtaposing of late and early is not just a matter of the clever matching of kindred themes or catchwords or the tidying up of historical gaps and inconsistencies after the fact.

He we approach the heart of canonical reading, that is, that aspect of God’s word to Israel that continues to press for a hearing and addresses new generations with an old word, borne of a specific time and specific application and, without shedding that, moving forward through time to enclose new readers and new situations.

Christopher Seitz, Prophecy and Hermeneutics, 239, paragraphing and italics mine

Seitz makes a very important point about the canonical approach that I think distinguishes it from hard historical-grammatical approaches and fluffy reader-response orientations.

A canonical reading continues to press for a hearing and addresses new generations with an old word. In order for the old word to apply to us we do not need to vicariously inhabit the world of pre-exilic Israel awaiting an impending judgment, nor a Second Temple Judaism that may have some serious issues with ethnocentrism. This old word continues to press for a hearing right now where we’re at in the economy of salvation.

And it is, in fact, an old word. This is to say that it does have a determinant meaning. The author did mean something. The text does mean something. Our task is not creative, but exegetical. And the conviction that drives our exegesis situates “exegesis” within a larger framework of God’s revelation. Exegesis cannot be the mere decoding of texts shrouded by centuries of historical and cultural differences. Exegesis is the turning of our ears toward an old word that continues to press for a hearing.

The Shema’ and Jesus Christ: The Significance of 1 Corinthians 8:6

Posted on

a       but for us there is one God, the Father,

b            from whom are all things and for whom we exist,

c       and one Lord, Jesus Christ,

d           through whom are all things and through whom we exist.


The statement has been composed from two sources, both clearly recognizable. One is the Shema’, the classic Jewish statement of the uniqueness of God, taken from the Torah itself, recited twice daily by all observant Jews, as we noticed in section 1. It is now commonly recognized that Paul has here adapted the Shema’ and produced, as it were, a Christian version of it. Not so widely recognized is the full significance of this. In the first and third lines of Paul’s formula (labeled a and c above), Paul has, in fact, reproduced all the words of the statement about YHWH in the Shema’ (Deut. 6:4: ‘The LORD our God, the LORD, is one’), but Paul has rearranged the words in such a way as to produce an affirmation of both one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ. It should be quite clear that Paul is including the Lord Jesus Christ in the unique divine identity. He is redefining monotheism as christological monotheism. If he were understood as adding the one Lord to the one God of whom the Shema’ speaks, then, from the perspective of Jewish monotheism, he would certainly be producing, not christological monotheism, but outright ditheism. The addition of a unique Lord to the unique God of the Shema’ would flatly contradict the uniqueness of the latter. The only possible way to understand Paul as maintaining monotheism is to understand him to be including Jesus in the unique identity of the one God affirmed in the Shema’. But this is, in any case, clear from the fact that the term ‘Lord’, applied here to Jesus as the ‘one Lord’, is taken from the Shema’ itself. Paul is not adding to the one God of the Shema’ a ‘Lord’ the Shema’ does not mention. He is identifying Jesus as the ‘Lord’ whom the Shema’ affirms to be one. Thus, in Paul’s quite unprecedented reformulation of the Shema’, the unique identity of the one God consists of the one God, the Father, and the one Lord, his Messiah.

Richard Bauckham, God Crucified, 27ff

Day 3: Welcome Exegesis and Dogmatics

Posted on

In the Church’s theological work, the gospel is articulated as the norm of the Church’s praise, confession and action, and the ground of the Church’s understanding of nature and human history. As it seeks to articulate the gospel in the sanctorum communio, theology concentrates on two fundamental tasks, namely exegesis and dogmatics. Exegesis is of supremely critical importance, because the chief instrument through which Christ publishes the gospel is Holy Scripture. Exegesis is the attempt to hear what the Spirit says to the Churches; without it, theology cannot even begin to discharge its office. Dogmatics is complementary but strictly subordinate to the exegetical task.

John Webster, Holiness, 3