Excerpt of "God and the Teaching of Theology"

G O D and TH E TEA CH I N G of TH EO LO G Y Divine Pedagogy in 1 Corinthians 1– 4

E D WA R D H A R R I S 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 Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data to come

∞This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

C O N T E N T S

Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Theologians in God’s Plan 1 ONE. TWO.

God the Teacher of His Wisdom 000

The Divine Pedagogy in History 000

THREE. FOUR. FIVE. SIX.

Wisdom, Divine and Human 000

The Students of the Divine Wisdom 000

The Position and Authority of God’s Teachers 000

The Method and Judgment of God’s Teachers 000

SEVEN.

The End of the Divine Pedagogy 000

Conclusion: Knowing God 000

Appendix: Chronological Table of Commentators 000 List of Abbreviations 000 Notes 000

Bibliography 000

Scriptural Index 000 Name Index 000

I N T R O D U C T I O N

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, 1

2

God and The TeaChInG of TheoLoGY

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

Theologians in God’s Plan

3

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.

Th eM eS I n Th e d o CTRI n e o f d I v I n e P ed a G o G Y

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 questions. Yet other crucial biblical themes, such as Christ as the one teacher (Matt. 23:10), the Spirit of truth (John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13), and the Logos who enlightens every human being (John 1:9), led bishops and other teachers in the early church to understand God’s entire work of revelation and salvation through history as pedagogical, as a form of divine teaching. Thus the divine pedagogy involves much more than the earthly teaching of the incarnate Word; it encompasses all of God’s communicative activity from the beginning, in Israel, in Christ, and in the ongoing life of the church. at the heart of this vision stands Christ the one teacher of all, the center of God’s revelation and salvation. his teaching unfolds in line with God’s “economy,” the divine plan in history. The substance of this teaching is characterized as divine wisdom. People become students of this wisdom

4

God and The TeaChInG of TheoLoGY

by coming to faith in Christ the teacher. Their learning is not simply intellectual, but in the first place moral and spiritual formation. God provides illumination to these students to understand what is taught. after Christ’s earthly ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension, Christ continues to teach mediately, through teachers of theology. Like Christ’s own teaching, teachers of theology practice accommodation, adapting their teaching to the needs of their students. The divinely intended goal of this pedagogy is human salvation. according to Matthew’s gospel, Christ is the one teacher of all (23:10).

In Clement of alexandria (ca. 150 – 215), Christ is ὁ μόνος διδάσκαλος not only in his earthly life but after his resurrection and ascension as well. he continues to teach his church, which functions as his school (διδασκαλεῖον).4 Such a theme predominates in the medieval period, being taken up by Bonaventure (1217 – 74) in his influential university sermon Christus unus omnium magister.5 Yet unlike his earthly pedagogy, this is not a teaching that Christ undertakes visibly and audibly: Christ teaches invisibly through his Spirit and mediately through human teachers.

Christ’s teaching is “economic” in shape: that is, it unfolds in line with the divine οἰκονομία or history of salvation.6 Thus there are different stages in the divine teaching, corresponding to different periods in God’s covenant relationship with his people or different ages of the world. God teaches adam differently than Moses, and differently again than the apostles. In east Syrian tradition, even heaven itself was conceived of as a classroom with the angels God’s students in creation.7 The stages of the divine pedagogy are important for Irenaeus (ca. 130 – 200) in arguing for the unity of the old and new Testaments in the one God: “for it was appropriate for certain things to be announced beforehand by the fathers in a fatherly way, others to be prefigured by the prophets in a legal way, and others to be described in line with the form of Christ by those who had received adoption; yet all things are shown forth in the one God.”8 The center of this history of divine pedagogy is found in the Incarnation, in which God comes to teach us in person.9 according to Thomas aquinas (ca. 1225 – 74), in sending his Word to us, the father acts as a teacher, speaking and leading humanity to his Son.10 God’s teaching here culminates the history of his instruction of his people and is normative for all that follows in the history of the church. all learning from God is a

Theologians in God’s Plan

5

form of learning Christ, his Word, delivered differently in the Law, in the prophets, and now, definitively, in the ministry of the incarnate Christ.

To learn Christ is often characterized as becoming wise, learning the divine wisdom. augustine’s presentation of this theme was particularly influential. for augustine, the two natures of Christ, his humanity and divinity, represent knowledge and wisdom respectively. Yet we attain the wisdom he is only through his humanity, since in our sinful state we cannot perceive his divinity. We “follow the Son by living wisely” and thus are purified to contemplate the eternal Wisdom of God.11 In sending his Son or Wisdom to become human, the father thus teaches humanity his wisdom.

Yet learning the divine wisdom is possible only for those who are spiritually transformed, since it takes the foolish form of the crucified Christ.

To become a student of the divine pedagogy is thus to come to faith.

To become a disciple of Christ is to trust in him, and love him, for one cannot learn anything from a teacher one does not first trust to be truthful.12 Thus a student of God must first trust Christ, who is himself the Truth and Wisdom. In learning from him, a student of God grows not only intellectually but also morally and spiritually. Clement of alexandria considers moral and spiritual formation integral to, and even a necessary preparation before, instruction in Christian doctrine, which is reserved for more advanced students. Christ acts first as a παιδαγωγός, he says, training persons toward moral perfection, and then as a διδάσκαλος who explains matters of doctrine.13 This can take quite an elaborate form. origen of alexandria (ca. 186 – 255), for instance, understands the forty-two stages of Israel’s desert wanderings in numbers 33 in terms of Christ’s descent through forty-two generations into the world and the Christian’s ascent through forty-two stages of moral and spiritual growth.14 But more generally, it shares in the developing virtue and vice tradition from the new Testament onward, in which particular vices (e.g., pride, envy, presumption, lust) are seen as inhibiting spiritual knowledge and particular virtues (e.g., faith, love, tranquility, humility, teachableness) are seen as encouraging it. These are the moral-spiritual dispositions that either hinder or aid learning from Christ.

Students, even those who are morally and spiritually advanced, require ongoing divine help in order to understand divine things. This is usually described as divine illumination, God’s enlightening the eyes of a person’s heart to understand (cf. eph. 1:18), and is associated with the present,

6

God and The TeaChInG of TheoLoGY

invisible work of Christ and/or the Spirit. It appears in augustine’s De magistro and onwards as a general theory of knowledge,15 but most usually in the theological tradition it is related specifically to God’s teaching of humanity about divine things, that is, about theology. In theological education, illumination is the inward work of the holy Spirit in students while they listen to teaching or preaching outwardly.16 This is further embedded within the totality of the divine economy: illumination is not enough, in and of itself, to secure a theological account of knowledge.17 God’s teaching is not simply invisible and inward; it is mediated outwardly by human teachers of theology. This is a particular concern of this book. Because the divine pedagogy is “economic” in shape, God also makes use of οἰκονόμοι, administrators who act under his guidance and intentions toward his ends. The apostle Paul had already described his commission from the Lord in these terms (1 Cor. 4:1; cf. 1 Cor. 9:17; eph. 3:2).18 While all the people of God are called to share the gospel in varying degrees and circumstances (vatican II, Lumen Gentium §35), there are those whom Christ gives more particularly as teachers to the church (Rom. 12:7; 1 Cor. 12:28; eph. 4:11).

Teachers of theology become, through God’s working, mediate causes in God’s own economy of teaching: he calls, gifts, and empowers certain people to teach others in line with definite methods, structure, and purposes.

God, in other words, does not make use of theologians in an “occasional and punctiliar” fashion, assisting them only in the moment of teaching, but in a much more basic and thoroughgoing way.19 This is because God, so to speak, “makes” theologians: certain people are caused to take up a form of life and activity appropriate to the teaching of theology.20 Both Clement and origen saw teachers of theology as participants in the divine οἰκονομία, as in some way sharing the role of God the teacher.21 Clement says the Christian teacher is “a living image of the Lord, . . . because he symbolizes the Lord’s power and because of the similarity of his preaching.”22 a human teacher thus shares in the divine οἰκονομία, the execution of God’s plan to bring human beings to salvation.

This mediation receives a particular inflection in the writings of pseudodionysius the areopagite (6th cent.). In his neo-Platonic vision, the light of divine knowledge flows down from God himself, through the various ranks of angels, to the ecclesial priesthood and the simple believer. each rank reflects God’s light to those further down the hierarchy.23 The Christian’s goal is to rise through the symbols of the scriptures and sacraments

Theologians in God’s Plan

7

to the vision of Light itself.24 Such a vision was influential in the Middle ages and can be found in aquinas’s inaugural sermon Rigans montes.25 In this text, knowledge of God flows down from the mountains (i.e., theologians in contemplation) to water the earth below (i.e., their students). differing levels of students and differing stages of divine revelation require accommodation and progression. augustine writes of Jesus’s conversation with the Samaritan woman in John 4, how Jesus “speaks to the woman guardedly, and enters into her heart by degrees.”26 Clement sees the human teacher mirroring these features of the divine Logos’s teaching. according to him, the Logos taught the law and philosophy before becoming incarnate, sharing knowledge of himself in a way the Jews and Greeks could understand. Similarly, a human teacher first gives instruction in the literal sense of scripture before more advanced training in its symbolic interpretation.27 attention is often given in this connection to issues of style, rhetoric, and differing grades of study material appropriate for different levels of students. Certain accounts have made this the predominant theme in a theology of divine pedagogy.28 But they sometimes do so in a way that overlooks the realism in this description of divine activity: it can become a “root metaphor” or “imagery” rather than a realistic account of the divine economy of revelation.29 finally, the end of the divine pedagogy, the reason it was undertaken, is human salvation. In short, Christ teaches humanity what they need to know in order to be saved: how to escape from sin and come to know God. Thus the center of Christ’s teaching is found in his cross, by which he provides salvation for the whole world. The cross provides forgiveness of the sin that prevents knowledge of God. So aquinas can write, following augustine, that “Christ hung from the cross the way a teacher sits in his chair [sicut magister in cathedra].”30 These themes in the doctrine of divine pedagogy, one will note, cover a range of elements usually taken to be part of separate doctrines: the person and work of Christ; the history of salvation; revelation and its mediation or transmission; sanctification and soteriology. The tendency toward abstraction in modern theology has isolated one or another of these elements as decisive (illumination or accommodation, in particular), extracting it from the broader divine economy from which it takes its shape. This could be ameliorated by the recovery of a more organic understanding of the doctrine of divine pedagogy, such as it was presented in the premodern period.

8

God and The TeaChInG of TheoLoGY

a particularly apt and beautiful summation of this patristic and medieval tradition, which can serve as a conclusion to this survey, comes from Julian of norwich (ca. 1342 – ca. 1416). She writes: “God shewde fulle gret plesance that he hath in alle men and women that mightly and mekely and wisely take the preching and the teching of holy church. for he it is, holy church. he is the grounde, he is the substance, he is the teching, he is the techer, he is the ende, and he is the mede wherfore every kinde soule traveleth.”31 God’s teaching is an encompassing economy, in which God himself is present and active, mediated by the preaching and teaching of the church. Those who “mightly and mekely and wisely” attend to the teaching of theology will find that God is present there as both teacher and teaching, means and end.

The divine pedagogy is thus a doctrine that encompasses a wide range of realities and activities. In the modern period, the work done by this doctrine has tended to fall upon revelation and scripture and/or tradition. By this displacement, the discussion usually devolves upon a divine work of revelation that finished in the past (whether in the inspiration of scripture or the death of the last apostle) and is now received through the preaching of the Word and/or the authoritative handing on of ecclesial tradition, which may or may not be understood as empowered by present divine agency.

This need not be the case, however.32 More recently, concerted efforts have been made by theologians, both Protestant and Catholic, to recover an account of the divine economy of revelation within which theologians find their rightful place vis-à-vis scripture and tradition. We thus begin with important Protestant developments in relation to scripture, before moving to Catholic theologies of tradition and the magisterium in and around the Second vatican Council, when they experienced a great renewal. These theological labors, as we shall see, are converging toward an ecumenical consensus that this work seeks to encourage.

S C RI P Tu R e, TR a d ITIo n , M a G IS TeR Iu M , a n d Th eo Lo G Y

There is a recognition in contemporary Protestant theology that in the modern period accounts of the Bible’s nature and properties have become too abstract and too detached from their relation to God and God’s economy. Protestant accounts of theological education have suffered from a

Theologians in God’s Plan

9

similar lack of theological density.33 efforts to undo this abstraction have been quite fruitful. Stanley Grenz, for instance, formally overcomes this shift in his relocation of the doctrine of scripture from prolegomena to a subsection of pneumatology, placing it more organically within the field of the Spirit’s work.34 More material proposals, particularly in what is called the theological interpretation of scripture, have attempted to resituate the reading of scripture within the wider sphere of the church, Christian interpretive tradition, and the moral and spiritual formation of readers.

The most fruitful body of work in this area comes from the late British theologian John Webster (1955 – 2016). Beginning with a call to attend to divine agency in theological study, Webster progressively developed a strong account of the economy of divine pedagogy within which scripture and its reading find their origin, nature, and end. nevertheless, he for the most part focused on the individual theologian being instructed by God through scripture, or an undifferentiated community of hearers and readers of the Word. only in his later essays did Webster argue that the divine work of instruction is a mediate work, making use of creaturely “assistants” through whom the missions of Son and Spirit “reach their human goal” in a social economy of human teachers and students.35 In his inaugural lectures at Wycliffe College, Toronto (1995), and at oxford (1997), John Webster emphasized the need to speak of God and God’s actions to describe what a theologian properly does.36 In his oxford lecture, “Theological Theology,” Webster states, “The distinctiveness of Christian theology lies . . . in its invocation of God as agent in the intellectual practice of theology. In order to give account of its own operations, that is, Christian theology will talk of God and God’s actions. Talk of God not only describes the matter into which theology enquires, but also, crucially, informs its portrayal of its own processes of enquiry.”37 Thus the individual, as she sets out to speak of God, is also accompanied and aided by God, whose active presence has an effect on the intellectual “operations” of the theologian. This crucial recovery of God as the primary agent in theology drives the rest of her development.38 In the following years, Webster would give expression to the place of scripture in relation to God and God’s present work but with greater descriptive density. It is now no longer characterized barely as “agency” but as God’s “saving economy.”39 The practice of theology here becomes “an aspect of the sanctification of reason,” taking place within God’s “revelatory,

10

God and The TeaChInG of TheoLoGY

communicative presence.”40 Scripture is one of God’s “creaturely instruments” through which God reveals himself in the present.41 Thus he begins to give a much greater specificity to the nature of scripture and its relationship to divine agency, as the latter is itself specified in both the Trinitarian missions and the history of salvation.

Scripture comes to be what it is, and is what it is, within “the formative economy of the Word and Spirit of God,” that is, in light of the particular missions of the Son and holy Spirit.42 Important essays would thus be given over to describing the place of scripture in relation to the work of the active, risen Christ and the Spirit’s past inspiration and present illumination.43 Webster’s most developed account comes in his opening essay to his collection of the same name, “The domain of the Word.” It commences as follows: holy Scripture and its interpretation are elements in the domain of the Word of God. That domain is constituted by the communicative presence of the risen and ascended Son of God who governs all things. his governance includes his rule over creaturely intelligence: he is Lord and therefore teacher. In fulfilment of the eternal purpose of God the father (eph. 1.9, 11), and by sending the Spirit of wisdom and revelation (eph.

1.17), the Son sheds abroad the knowledge of himself and of all things in himself. he completes his saving mercies by making known to lost creatures their true end in the knowledge, love and enjoyment of God. In the domain of Christ’s rule and revelation, holy Scripture is the embassy of the prophets and apostles. Through their service, and quickened to intelligent and obedient learning by the holy Spirit, the communion of saints is instructed by the living Christ. and so it is in terms of their occupancy of and function in this domain — in the economy of grace and revelation — that we are to consider the nature of Scripture and what may fittingly be expected of those who hear it in faith.44

It is within this sphere of divine activity and works that the theologian takes up her task. Yet an exposition of the theologian’s task of teaching is only hinted toward in Webster’s final essays.

In his account of scripture, as receiving its determinate being and character from the missions of Son and Spirit, Webster has developed the resources needed to describe the work of theologians as teachers mediating