What Are You Reading and Why?

Soelle (1929-2003) was a prolific theological writer (25 books in English translation), rethinking Christian convictions in light of WWII and the Holocaust.  She organized ‘evening prayers’ from 1968-1972 as discussion groups held in the Cologne’s St.  Anthony’s Church, fostering critical thinking.  The over 1000 participants found that ‘dealing with theological issues necessarily leads into political engagement’ (p 57); issues such as the Vietnam War, the arms race and especially the rearmament of Germany, third world development, and women’s roles were central to discussion.  Her doctorate centred on the relation of theology and poetry and made her a popular speaker; her outspoken opinions resulted in both state and church refusing to grant academic employment.  (Some of her statements:  ‘Every theological statement must be a political statement as well.’ ‘The Third World is a permanent Auschwitz.’)  1975 – l987 saw her engaged six months out of the year as successor to Paul Tillich at Union Theological Seminary, New York (the other six months were spent with her husband in Germany).

Wind’s book is a moving overview of Soelle’s life and writing, carefully augments and illustrated by Soelle’s poetry.

Vern Ratzlaff is a pastor and professor of historical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

The concept of oral culture hit Sample at university when he realized the contrast between everyday oral culture and philosophic analysis of the world around us, the difference between the worlds of discussion of Will Rogers and Socrates.  Oral culture, of the everyday living, was ‘not one of discourse, systematic coherence, the consistent use of clear definitions and the writing of discursive prose that could withstand the whipsaws of academic critique’ (p 3).  An oral culture makes use of proverbs, sayings; lives by storytelling (the family traditions); thinking in relationships ( an issue that comes up will be considered in terms of the family and communal ties; religious beliefs will be understood much more in relational than discursive ways’ (p 5).

Sample writes compellingly that ‘literate clergy and laity may become far more appreciative of and adept at working with people who face life and death, morality and faith, and G-d and the world with a traditional morality’ (p 6).  This means that a significant part of the ministry and mission of our churches needs to be done in an apprenticeship way….  The teaching occurs through hands-on mission’ (p 19).  Churches need to be both literate and oral, utilizing the strengths of each:  forming small communal groups telling their stories to each other, to work (in ethical formation) on a morality that is concrete, operational and contextual, eg the AA model.  A study I did with palliative care level patients identified the most useful and helpful of those they were involved with as being not medical or religious (chaplain) people, but the cleaning staff!

A wonderful book to understand better the church’s mission.

Another cultural eye opener by Horsley, with the focus and emphasis on the social relationships reflected in the infancy narratives.  Horsley does not deal with the theological issue of the incarnation in the infancy narratives, but explores the ‘salvation embodied in Jesus in its historical context of concrete political, economic and religious relationships’ (p xii).  Horsley’s treatment emphasizes that Luke 1 & 2 reflect a Palestinian Jewish milieu (p 15).  He then claims that ‘our usual hearing of the Christmas story misses or avoids the politico-economic as well as the religio-cultural conflict (p 22). In his chapter on ‘Caesar and Census’ he quotes Roman poets whose language about Caesar is remarkably similar to the words found in Luke (‘saviour’, ‘lord’, ‘euaggelion’).  Another chapter explores the interaction with Herod, the Roman client king, and another section deals with the role of peasants in Palestine under Roman control. 

Horsley’s most fascinating treatment is in the chapter, ‘A Modern Analogy’, where he explores the significance of the infancy narrative to a church that is in league with Herod, not with a peasant couple, a church whose government is a recapitulation of the Roman empire working through client regimes and political repression.  The infancy narratives find their story retold in the repressive history of Central America that the new Roman emperor supports (or at least did).  The historical tradition of the infancy narrative is a reflection of today’s empire.

Vern Ratzlaff is a pastor and professor of historical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

One of the books I have found most helpful for background in biblical study is Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Malina & Rohrbaugh).  Now Malina has done the same kind of commentary on the letters of Paul, with the seven generally accepted authentic epistles (1 Thessalonians; 1 & 2 Corinthians; Galatians; Romans; Philippians; Philemon).  Malina reminds us that as modern readers we must enter the world of Paul. ‘Modern Christianity in all its forms has little to do with the ancestral expressions in the Jesus groups of Paul’s day’ (p 3).  Malina points out that when we read the Pauline claim that ‘in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek’, we do so from our modern experience of Jews and non-Jews.  But this is inadequate; in Paul’s day there were no Greeks, since there was no Greek nation, but there were people who accepted Hellenistic values.  Similarly, for a 1st century farmer to say ‘I farmed this plot this year, he is really saying he is a tenant farmer in debt to a patron for seed, using a shallow plow, planting right before rainy season’ (p 5).

A few examples.  When Paul starts his letter to the Thessalonians with ‘to the church of the Thessalonians’ (1:1), ‘church’ translates the Greek ’ekklesia’; it is a Greek word referring to a gathering of the entitled residents of a ‘polis’, Greek for ‘city’.  This is why ‘church’, referring today to institutional christianity, lacks the social identity and calling aspect of ‘ekklesia’, and is better rendered by ‘gathering’—‘church’ as the gathering of those called by G-d. Malina and Pilch identify the cultural and historical details of Paul’s writing to a 1st century ‘gathering’; by the 21st century we have filled the biblical terms with so much theology we find it difficult to see what those terms would have meant to Paul’s readers (eg ‘slavery’, ‘Son of G-d’, patron-client).  A wonderfully illuminating book.

Vern Ratzlaff is a pastor and professor of historical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

This is a powerful book analyzing church growth patterns of the early church, using contemporary social-scientific theories suggested why people form new religious movements. It is a challenging account of the rise of Christianity.

‘Attachments lie at the heart of conversion, which means that conversion tends to proceed along social networks formed by interpersonal attachments’ (p 18).  ‘Successful founders of new faiths typically turn first to those with whom they already have strong attachments’ (p 18), and people who are deeply committed to any particular faith do not go out and join some other faith’ (p 19).

The early church linked highly social ethical code with religion.  According to Stark, Christianity served as a revitalization movement that arose in response to the misery, chaos, fear and brutality of life in the urban-Grecian world.  Christianity revitalized life.

Called and trained as an academic (New Testament), Senior was invited to the administrative position of president of the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, a graduate school of theology; he came ‘to see both biblical scholarship and the work of administration as expression of (his) vocation as a Christian.  Both (are) deeply rooted in the nature of the gospel and the mission entrusted to the church by the risen Christ’ (x-xi).

This book does not describe how ’to do’ administration but to see the intersection of the people of G-d with their exercise of administration.  Administration, like preaching, teaching or healing, is also an expression of the gospel’ (xxi).  The Gift of Administration is not a ‘how to’ book but a ‘why’ book, the Christian rationale for the work of administration (xxvii).

Senior’s giftedness in New Testament thinking provides powerful biblical insight into the area of administration (whether this would be the large scale, ie president or dean roles, or the pastoral calling.  (One chapter deals with the myth of the church’s change from that of an original, purely spiritual charismatic and non-institutional church degrading into an institutional  church essentially alien in form and spirit from the church Jesus intended’ (p 222).

She was a social activist, totally non-religious. Worked in Mexico and El Salvador, then taught in a Baltimore ‘free school’, worked in New York restaurants and got a job with a left wing magazine’ in San Francisco.  One morning she walked into St Gregory’s, an Episcopalian congregation.

‘I had no earthly reason to be there,’ she writes (p 57).  ‘We sat down and stood up and sat down, waited and listened.  ‘Jesus invites everyone to his table,’ a woman announced.  And then we gathered around that table … and someone was putting a piece of fresh, crumbly bread in my hands, and handing me the goblet of sweet wine, saying ‘The blood of Christ’, and then something outrageous and terrifying happened.  Jesus happened to me’ (p 58); the heart of Christianity:  communion (p 74).

‘These people opened the door to grace—not because they had good taste, not because they were rich or intelligent or even always likable.  They had let G-d in and now they were committed to letting in clueless and unprepared strangers like me because they believed in the absolute religious value of welcoming people who didn’t belong’ (p 81).

Theissen defines religion as a cultural sign language which corresponds to an ultimate reality and promise of a gain in life (p 324), a definition he expands on (pp 2-7). It is a semiotic, an objective sign system, making the world a habitable home that is then interpreted.

This interpretation of the world around us utilizes myth (explain what fundamentally determines history; in the Bible it’s the myth, the narrative, of the fundamental acts of G-d, rites (patterns of behaviour in order to depict what is happening in the myths; the first Christians developed a religious sign system without temple, without sacrifice, without priests), ethics (examine how the emphasis on Torah (law) continues in the Christian story).

Religion, a sign language, also has a systematic character, giving expression, eg to the denominational emphases (whether there is an altar, what is ‘on’ the altar).  When the religion gives way to another how do these changing signs reflect faithfulness to the original story (eg eating meat sacrificed to idols)?  And religious signs are a cultural phenomenon, produced by human beings, eg the theory of Christianity will be influenced by change.  Intriguingly, such changes are brought about by charismatics, independently of pre-existing authority roles and traditions.

It’s an old book, first published in 1992, but a treasure I found once more illuminating and insightful. Theissen attempts ‘a history of the synoptic tradition from its oral prehistory to the time when it was written down in the gospels’ (p 2) to identify where and when the sources originated, both small units and text segments ,with attention to cultural context.

Three foci are identified.  (1) An oral Jesus tradition (eg Luke 1:1-4), John 21, talking about the many stories circulating about Jesus; Papias’ collection of oral traditions about Jesus, Paul’s references (1 Cor 7:10,11; 9:14).  (2)  Small individual units (p 4), eg where the author of Matthew’s gospel placed the ‘Our Father’ within a series of associated rules for religious devotional practice. (3)  The oral prehistory of texts, eg the political dimensions of the texts, where ‘events in the political world intrude into the text world of the New Testament (p 7), eg the Jewish War of 70 CE.

The general history of Jesus’ period and the synoptic texts have few clear points of contact, eg the opposition to the emperor Caligula when he proposed erecting his own statue in the Jerusalem temple, or the major political upheavals of 8-70 CE with the climax in the Jewish war (localizable data).

One of the groups identified in the synoptic gospels is the scribes, ‘who work in tandem with the chief priests in command of the Temple, and in turn collaborate with the Roman governors’ (p 9).  Ben Sira, writer of Ecclesiasticus (a deuterocanonical writing), ‘represents scribes as serving the priestly aristocracy yet also as caught in the middle between those  heads of the temple state and the Judean people’ (p 9).

The scribes ‘devoted themselves to intense learning of the spectrum of Judean cultural tradition, including Torah, prophets and wisdom of various kinds (p 11). The temple and the high priesthood were imperial instruments to maintain order and collect revenue in Judea.

‘The subordination of the Judean temple state to imperial rulers (Hellenistic and Roman) set up several major conflicts that involved Judean scribes:  the idea of G-d as the ruler of the Judean people and the reality of imperial role; subjection of the temple-state to imperial rules set up potential conflicts between rival factions (p 14).