Seven Challenges That Shaped the New Testament: Understanding the Inherent Tensions of Early Christian Faith

by F Scott Spencer

The New Testament writings reflect a sense of wrestling to understand what the world-shattering events of Jesus's life, death, resurrection, and ascension mean in the rough-and-tumble of daily life in a conflicted world. In this book, a senior New Testament scholar investigates seven critical areas of tension--historical, moral, political, material, social, perceptual, and temporal--that shape the "big ideas" discussed and debated in the New Testament.

This lively investigation explores the challenges that influenced the New Testament writings and how the writers responded to those tensions. The author shows that out of this upheaval came a remarkable set of creative, dynamic writings that have shaped and challenged millions of lives as sacred Scripture.

This accessibly written book offers a fresh way to learn about the world and content of the New Testament writings. It will help readers appreciate the rich diversity of New Testament thought cohering around commitment to the one Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

240 pages, Paperback

Published July 30, 2024

Reviews

[Kristjan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting look at how tensions between the “basic tenets and apparent countervailing realities” help to determine the evolution of Christian doctrine. I was especially interesting in this topic since I have frequently been exposed to the idea that interpreting the Jewish Torah often requires a both/and approach where western thought more frequently sees an either/or interpretation. While related, this work does not use the same framework; rather, it focuses on the struggle to adapt the former to the latter in a way that more or less represents a compromise position rather than a contextual continuum. In that respect, it was a bit of a disappointment while still providing a solid understanding of context when much of the doctrine of the Church was determined … and so is very helpful in approaching and understanding the Christian New Testament.

As indicated by the title, the focus is on seven (7) areas of theological tension: the apparent differences between the “old testament” of the Jews and the “new testament” of a more Gentile community; the differences in determining what was righteous and what was not for each community (eg circumcision requirements and kosher laws) and the apparent dissonance of finding they still had to deal with a fallen world even while anticipating the paradise of God’s Kingdom (changing expectations) … that last being the principle concern of the book (for five of the seven chapters) … dealing with difficult questions such as why do we still die if Christ has “conquered” death … or why has Christ not returned yet … or while does evil and division still exist in the world. Chapter six takes a side trip into the gnostic heresy and its appeal that was interesting from the aspect of how the Church responded to this perennial threat to orthodoxy. Over all it was a solid addition for anyone interested in Christian religious study.

The chapters and sections in this work are …

Prologue: Creative Tension of Mind and Heart

1. Old and New: The Historical Challenge of Innovation and Evolution
2. Right and Wrong: The Moral Challenge of Hypocrisy and Apostasy
3. Weak and Strong: The Political Challenge of Authority and Tyranny
4. Weal and Woe: The Material Challenge of Infirmity and Poverty
5. One and All: The Social Challenge of Particularity and Partisanship
6. Seen and Secret: The Perceptual Challenge of Skepticism and Gnosticism
7. Now and Near: The Temporal Challenge of Delay and Deferment

Epilogue: Streaming the Good News

Some of the other points that really got my attention (regardless of whether or not I agreed with them) are:

Accordingly, I read the New Testament less as a strict evolution and resolution of doctrines than an ongoing negotiation of tensions between basic tenets and apparent countervailing realities.

Jesus’s most famous “sermon” appears in two forms: Matthew’s “Sermon on the Mount” (Matt. 5‒7) and Luke’s “Sermon on the Plain” (Luke 6:17‒49). These are not transcripts of synagogue sermons but rather collections of Jesus’s public teachings.

Festinger posits three common ways people try to ease the dissonance of challenged cherish beliefs or practices: (1) change their convictions and actions, opinions and habits; (2) gather new data bolstering their original position and debunking counter-information; (3) push the problem out of mind through denial, delay, diversion, or delusion—whatever it takes to restore equilibrium.

Significantly, anxious dissonance over issues such as persisting poverty and postponed parousia served as productive challenges, as creative tensions for the New Testament writers, spurring them to refine, reformulate, stretch, and strengthen the fabric of faith in Christ and faithfulness to Christ.

The truth is, not all Pharisees agreed among themselves. Distinct rabbinic “schools” or “houses” advanced different interpretations of Torah and routinely cited multiple opinions in their written commentaries, known as the Mishnah and Talmud.

The Old Testament offers select glimpses of afterlife: direct ascensions to heaven of two figures, Enoch (Gen. 5:24; Sir. 44:16; cf. Heb. 11:5) and Elijah (2 Kings 2:11‒12; Sir. 48:9); resuscitation of two deceased sons (1 Kings 17:17‒24; 2 Kings 4:32‒37; Sir. 48:4‒5); restoration of Israel, pictured as reassembling and reviving bones from a mass graveyard (Ezek. 37:1‒14); and a general end-time resurrection (Dan. 12:1‒4).

Today “righteous” and “righteousness” are rarely used in everyday conversation. They are mostly limited to religious speech, and not always in a positive way. The biblical scholar Marcus Borg reports, “When I have asked Christian audiences about their associations when they heard the word righteous, some terms they used were holier-than-thou, judgmental, condemnatory, hypocritical, priggish, legalistic, moralistic, full of themselves, pompous, and arrogant.”99 That’s quite an ugly, “unrighteous” list!

But in reality no one follows Christ perfectly, and whatever righteousness emerges owes to continuing immersion in divine grace, love, and power. No room for self-glorification: “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Cor. 1:31; cf. Jer. 9:24).

The Torah is less concerned with punishing the individual malefactor than with restoring communal and terrestrial wholeness.

Overall, Jesus’s saving mission seeks to realize God’s kingdom on earth as a commonwealth promoting the common good (weal) of God’s creation, especially in therapeutic (wellness) and economic (wealth) dimensions of life. Forgiveness and freedom from sin are integral to this mission.

Ekklēsia designated any group “called together.” It was “the standard term for the political assembly in a Greek city” and applied to various religious groups. Synagōgē (“synagogue” or “gathering/meeting place”) is a close synonym.

The biblical Greek term ethnos, commonly rendered “nation,” more accurately denotes a particular ethnic people sharing social, cultural, and religious histories, values, and practices.

The plural “nations” (ethnē) often designates all non-Israelite/Judean peoples—the Gentiles—distinguished from the covenant ethnos and laos (“people”) of Israel.

Walls segregating Jews and Gentiles evoke Torah and temple boundaries. God’s “law with its commandments and ordinances” (Eph. 2:15) was given to Israel to delineate God’s blessed way of life, set apart from others’ adverse ways. But Jewish law also advocated considerate treatment of aliens/immigrants on a par with neighbors:

The Greek word for “son” (huios) is embedded in the term for “adoption” (huiothesia). This linguistic link fits the Greco-Roman cultural pattern of male family heads adopting adult sons to carry on the family line in the absence or incompetence of natural sons. The paterfamilias adopted his successor to secure his political and economic legacy, not out of charity toward an orphan-adoptee.

Some commentators distinguish between two terms—hypomonē (“endurance”) and makrothymia (“patience”)—James uses for perseverance: the former connotes a more passive resignation by mistreated underlings (hypo [under] + monē [stay]); the latter a more active resistance of harmful people and situations for an extended time (“long [makro]-suffering”).

I was given this free advance reader copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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