Redemptive History and the Markan Scriptures

In my last post, I discussed why Mark's Gospel ends at 16:8 from the perspective of its human authorship. Now I want to turn to the same question from the perspective of its divine authorship. This is the question of the canon, or "Why did God give us the Scriptures he gave us?"

The work which has most profoundly shaped my thinking on the Biblical canon is Herman N. Ribberbos' Redemptive History and the New Testament Scriptures (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1963; 2nd rev. ed., 1988). What I consider his most important contribution to the study of the canon is the observation that the New Testament Scriptures were the apostolic doctrinal foundation on which the Church was to be built (ex. 1 Corinthians 3). Practically speaking, this means we have 1 and 2 Corinthians because those Pauline letters contained apostolic doctrine necessary to the building and maintenance of the Church, and we don't have Paul's other letters to Corinth because they were not necessary to that end.

In other words, when considering the canon of Scripture, we can rest in God's providence. He ensured we have the prophetic and apostolic doctrine we need: we just don't need whatever else the apostles and prophets wrote, no matter how interesting those works might have been.

So let us assume R.T. France (along with some others) is right when he suggests the original, longer ending to Mark's Gospel has been lost to us, just as have been Paul's other Corinthian letters. From the divine perspective of the God who not only superintended the writing, but also the preservation, collection, and canonization of the Scriptures, nothing has truly been lost. The Church has, in the version of Mark's Gospel which she has preserved, the Gospel she needs.

Whatever Mark's own intentions may have been, God himself intended this Gospel to end at 16:8 for the good of the Church.

The tail end of Mark's Gospel

Most English versions of the Bible, if they print it at all, put Mark 16:9-20 in brackets and indicate those verses' origin as fairly dubious. Going back a long, long time, we have plenty of evidence Mark's Gospel ended at 16:8, and equally plenty of evidence 16:9-20 was an addition constructed so the expected record of Christ's resurrection would be in place.

As one might anticipate, a (very minor) minority still argues Mark 16:9-20 is authentic, but the majority does not. However, that majority, at least today, falls into two camps: those who think Mark deliberately ended his Gospel with 16:8, and a smaller group which thinks Mark's original ending was lost quite early on, leaving no traces. In this post, I want to discuss a couple assumptions made by this latter group which, in my opinion, lead to an erroneous conclusion.

To be clear, I by no means think these people are crazy or incompetent: they include R.T. France, who tops my list of "Anglicans Who Are Super Good at Exegesis." France is an interesting example because, in the introduction to his commentary on Mark (in the New International Commentary on the Greek Testament series), he argues the Gospels were each drawn from a wide array of sources and were not necessarily themselves used as sources for the others' composition. This stands against the prevailing view that Mark was written first, then Matthew and Luke used Mark as one of their sources, and who knows what John was up to. If France is right on the Gospels' literary origins, and I think he is (or at least the school of thought which he represents), then it doesn't matter whether Mark was written before Matthew.

At the same time, France does lean toward Mark being the first of the written Gospels, and this leads him to think it extremely unlikely Mark would not include an unambiguous record of Christ's resurrection. In other words, if Mark is the first to get the story out, he wouldn't omit its most important part. But if Mark is not the first (and I lean toward Matthew being first, with a heavy dose of agnosticism on the priority question), he doesn't have to get all the details absolutely clear. He is free to leave things a bit murky, knowing the straight story is readily available elsewhere.

This raises a related point: it seems most, if not all, assume Mark is writing his Gospel in isolation; that is, his Gospel will be the only version of the Gospel his readers will encounter. But maybe he wasn't. Peter makes reference to Paul's letters (2 Peter 3:15-16). If Churches read the letters of several apostles, why, in principle, could they not read several Gospels? In that case, the Evangelists do not present competing views of Christ, but complementary ones. As Big Ideas go, God becoming man in order to redeem mankind from sin and death and recreate the heavens and the earth in the bargain is, well, about as big as they get. Most of the time, I tend to think only four perspectives is passing few.

It's entirely possible Mark's Gospel had a longer ending than that which we currently have; after all, one cannot prove a negative. If it did, however, it was not because Mark's was the first Gospel, or because he wrote it in isolation; these scenarios cannot be proven, and at least the latter strikes me as very unlikely. At this point, I am of the opinion Mark ended his Gospel at 16:8 because that was the best way to present his contribution to inspired Christology.

Dour on the New Calvinism

The Curmudgeon household has a subscription to Time magazine, a fringe benefit to taking The Denver Post (motto: "Denver's newspaper of record, like it or not."). Last week the editors favored us with their list of "Ten Ideas Changing the World Right Now." Number three was "The New Calvinism" (http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1884779_1884782_1884760,00.html).

One might think that, as a Calvinist, I would be pleased to be getting a little recognition in the national media. But then, one would do well to remember I am a curmudgeon, not an evangelical. Presbyterians don't need to be validated by the media; the media needs to be validated by Presbyterians.

But of course, the article in question didn't mention presbyterians, other than a single reference to the Presbyterian Church U.S.A (motto: "For those who like synods, but not confessions."). In fact, there was no hint whatsoever that Calvinism might be anything other than five soteriological points; certainly, there was no indication Calvin's Institutes set forth an extremely robust ecclesiology.

Which is why I'm not sure why this "Calvinism" is "new." Southern Baptist Al Mohler is quoted as observing Calvinism is a natural consequence of thinking about God Biblically; the inevitable consequence is that those who take their Bibles seriously will end up thinking Calvinistically. True enough, and that's why back when I was in college and majorly immersed in evangelicalism, I discovered pretty much everyone (other than the committed Anabaptists) leaned toward the five points of Calvinism. Missing, however, was any kind of ecclesiology: after all, I was an evangelical by virtue of participation in parachurch ministries, not membership in the Church. I soon learned that theology without the ordinary means of grace (Word, sacrament, prayer, mediated through and in corporate worship) makes for pretty thin spiritual sustenance. Disembodied predestinarian doctrine isn't really Calvinism; it's a gnosticism which can kill the soul.

One way of reading recent American conservative presbyterian history (which just happens to be my way) is to see it as the story of "New Calvinists" coming into confessional presbyterian Churches, often as ministers, without any grounding in confessional presbyterianism itself. Not surprisingly, the result has been detrimental for presbyterianism: a diet of doctrine proves unsatisfying, and hungry congregants start devouring one another. Thus, try as I might, I just can't get excited about Time magazine getting excited about this so-called "New Calvinism."

Of course, if John Piper becomes a presbyterian, I just might renew my subscription.

Doing iconolatry right

An iconoclast is, properly speaking, a destroyer of idols. Growing up in Europe, I still remember some tsk-tsking over the tendency of early Christian preachers and missionaries to smash statues of pagan gods into little bits; as though it would be more sensible to honor the false gods who had wickedly enslaved our fathers to the evil one.

Presbyterians, historically, do iconoclasm better than just about anybody else. Nonetheless, Peter Leithart offers an interesting and attractive counterpoint: http://www.leithart.com/2009/03/18/incarnation-and-icon/#more-5306.

Legal risk

Mrs. Curmudgeon and I are certified foster parents in Adams County, Colorado (where we reside). This is because we hope to adopt a baby girl through social services. The system has labeled us "foster-to-adopt;" this is because while, Lord willing, a baby whom we will eventually adopt will be placed in our home as soon as she enters the social services system, we will officially be her foster parents unless and, should it please God, until the parental rights of the birth parents are terminated by the courts.

At a meeting last week, a county attorney observed that people like us used to be labeled "legal risk" parents to help judges understand that children placed in our homes were not guaranteed to be taken away from their birth parents and be adopted. "Legal risk" means that, by law, we take the chance of welcoming a baby into our home only, after some period of time, to have her returned to birth parents who have proven their competency to the courts.

For obvious reasons, "foster-to-adopt" sounds much better for recruiting purposes than "legal risk." And yet, there's something profoundly right about the latter term. Parenting is risky business. It is the constant, and often realized, risk of loving a person far more than that person will ever love you in return. It is the risk of a life of sacrifice without any real reward. To be the kind of parent whose children will not be removed by social services is to risk the loss of one's self, of one's identity, for the sake of one's children.

To be a parent is to be willing to lay down your life for your children, and, in the infinite sacrifices and concessions by which we surrender our individual identities to be forever labeled in their eyes, and in the eyes of society, as, finally and ultimately, their parent, is to in a very real way lose that life. To be a parent, to be a parent properly speaking, is to take up your Cross and in imitation of your Savior to crucify self, and to have that choice overlooked and ignored. As, indeed, only Joseph of Arimathea seemed to have the wherewithal to realize a burial was necessary.

To be a parent, that is, to be a disciple of Christ, is to be at risk. As it should be.

Resurrection & the Church

The wise of this present age find the notion of resurrection impossible to believe. They therefore explain the accounts of Christ's resurrection in the Gospels as an existential attempt by the community of the early Church to make sense of what they had experienced. That is, it was a myth generated by those committed to Jesus' ministry which was meant to symbolically, not literally, vindicate the validity of his preaching in the light of his shameful death.

But as Luke Timothy Johnson notes on page 390 of his commentary on Luke's Gospel, this account gets things precisely backward. The Gospels do not show us a cohesive community immediately after Jesus' death, but an assortment of discouraged followers on the brink of scattering to the four winds. Memories of Jesus' earthly ministry did not keep them together. Rather, they were brought together into the community which would become the Church by the coming of the resurrected Christ to them.

The Church did not invent Christ's resurrection; rather, Christ's resurrection created the Church.