This volume is concerned with how our knowledge of the historical development of the study of Greek language and linguistics can help us to reconceptualize our view of the history, development, and especially the future of New Testament theology. In other words, this volume uses a framework from the history of the study of language from the Enlightenment to the present as a template for describing and evaluating the history and major trends of New Testament theology. As a result, I offer comments on, and analysis of, some works of New Testament theology and assess them against a language-developed framework. I also offer comments on some of the present issues within New Testament theology and subject them to a similar language-based critique. And then, finally, I present several approaches to New Testament theology that point to the future of the discipline. Some of these approaches are already upon us, while some are more of a vision of what might occur if more linguistically oriented principles are brought to bear on the discipline. Let me make clear from the outset, however, that I am not attempting to do New Testament theology, at least in the sense of writing a New Testament theology. Nor am I attempting to create a theological synthesis from the available materials. I am offering a critique of the discipline of New Testament theology and attempting to point in some directions as to how we might think of reconceptualizing the field from a linguistic standpoint.
When I was asked to present the lectures that have eventuated in this volume, I was uncertain as to how I might usefully and constructively say something about New Testament theology, as I am much more comfortable thinking about linguistic topics. Before I committed to a particular topic, I instead took some time to think about what I did know about New Testament theology and examine several New Testament theologies and books on the history and methods of New Testament theology. The more I thought about them, the more concerned I became about what I saw happening – or not happening – in New Testament theology. I think that there probably are, at least in relation to what the authors think that they are doing, many acceptable New Testament theologies that have been published, if by that we mean works that provide a variety of theological comments upon the New Testament. However, very few of them, including many recent ones, seem to think much about why they are doing what they are doing – not just how they are organizing their material, but how their theology fits within the history of what we might call “New Testament theology” or, more importantly, the wider field of New Testament studies, or, perhaps most importantly, the widest field of the history of ideas. I did not have the time, and certainly not the expertise, to pursue New Testament theology in relation to the entire scope of the history of ideas – as interesting a topic as that seemed to be. However, I did realize that one major factor that both New Testament theology and modern linguistics have in common is the use of language. New Testament theology is a secondary linguistic discipline, by which I mean that, even though it purports to be primarily concerned with the theology of the New Testament, it does so by means of language and depends upon the results of the linguistic analysis of written texts, and so is a linguistic discipline.
The study of New Testament theology depends upon the utilization of knowledge of language to examine texts and then describe their meanings in ways that can be theologically categorized. As I was examining several New Testament theologies, however, I noticed that the vast majority of them, as will be shown in the subsequent pertinent chapters, pay little to no attention to matters of language. If we have learned anything in the twentieth- and now twenty-first centuries, it is that language and our conceptions of language are inextricably related to how we view and express reality. This is a view that, for the most part and except for a few rare exceptions, distinguishes the postmodern period from previous periods of thought, including especially those who thought about language. Most, but not all, New Testament theologies still seem to accept and probably endorse, even if implicitly, views of human language that, whatever their value when they were first developed and whatever the value of some of their insights, have now been superseded in the field of linguistic study. This leaves those who rely upon the previous approach at a distinct disadvantage in relation to those who approach language linguistically. The result of this is that many, though clearly not all, New Testament theologies, reflect a similar perspective, which all too often results in what at least appears to be a fossilized approach to the subject and how it is presented. Most New Testament theologies arguably treat the field of New Testament theology as if it is a static “thing.” By that, I mean that they believe that New Testament theology is an abstract entity that exists as an idealized form of theological discourse concerned with the New Testament, and of which every instance of a New Testament theology is a partial realization of this ideal. I think that this is a highly questionable assumption, and probably one that helps to account for why New Testament theologies are what they are, whatever that might be.
Over the course of my academic career, one of the most important discoveries and realizations that I have made, and one that has become a major and significant perspective in my own scholarship, is that ideas do not exist in a vacuum, but are embodied by individuals. The notion of a free-floating idea is hard both to conceptualize and, even more problematically, to grasp. This is because ideas are expressions of those who hold them. These ideas, therefore, emerge from the lived experience of individuals, sometimes working in groups and often thinking alone, but virtually always living in some form of intellectual community. So their ideas are always, even if to varying degrees and in different ways, manifestations of what we often like to call their context or their situation in life. The result is that, even if two people are purporting to talk about the same idea or concept, they often may not be speaking about the exact same thing, or they may even in extreme circumstances be speaking at cross-purposes, because they do not realize that their expressions are formulated in a particular way that reflects their particular perspective on the subject at hand.
A good example of embodied knowledge for those in New Testament studies is “form criticism.” When I was first taught about form criticism – and my experience, I suspect, may be similar to that of others – I was taught that there were several German scholars who were responsible for “inventing” form criticism – Martin Dibelius (1883–1947), Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976), and Karl Ludwig Schmidt (1891–1956) (and we didn’t talk much about Schmidt because, at the time, his works were not translated from German into English, as were the works of the other two) – with a British scholar, Vincent Taylor (1887–1968), responsible for “translating” form criticism into a palatable form for the English-speaking world.Footnote 1 There were different literary forms, such as sayings, parables, miracle stories, and the like. They reflected the influence of the early church on the transmission of the Jesus tradition, that is, on the sayings of Jesus that the early church remembered, so that they were shaped by this process. Fair enough, or at least fair enough to provide a summary for an audience that may know a little something about form criticism.Footnote 2 However, when I went and read some of these form critics, as well as some other scholars, I found a different situation. I found that there were a number of earlier scholars who seemed to be doing very similar things as the form critics before the form critics, not just Hermann Gunkel (1862–1932) in Old Testament studies (interestingly, Gunkel himself started out as a New Testament scholar and wrote a book on the Holy Spirit), and scholars such as William Wrede (1859–1906), Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918), or Eduard Norden (1868–1941) in New Testament studies,Footnote 3 but going back as far as at least the Grimm brothers (Jacob, 1785–1863, and Wilhelm, 1786–1859) and their collection of German fairy tales (first edition, 1812). I also found that the form critics couldn’t agree on the number and names of the forms themselves. Finally, I also came to realize that different form critics believed different things about the reliability of the Jesus tradition, the shaping influence of the church, and when and where this occurred in the transmission process. In other words, I could not find a single form critic who matched any other or who conformed to the idealized picture. More than that, without further knowledge, I had no idea what problem had arisen that demanded form criticism as the answer. I did not know what the intellectual, theological, or ecclesial climate was that demanded that form criticism become a “thing.” As a result, I also noticed that some form critics – in particular Bultmann in his classic work on the synoptic tradition, especially in the final chapterFootnote 4 – had many statements to make that were characteristic of redaction criticism, when that movement was not supposed to emerge for another thirty or so years in the work of three other German scholars.Footnote 5
What I did realize was that if I was going to learn about the history and development of ideas – New Testament theology is no doubt about ideas, among other things – I was going to need to understand much more about the origins of these ideas. I would need to learn who holds to such ideas and why, what questions and problems are raised that require these kinds of solutions, and what the implications are of the kinds of approaches that are being taken. The more I investigated New Testament theology, as part of the wider field of New Testament studies, the more I realized that New Testament theology is not just a packaged “thing” that one finds between two covers – now usually a fairly large and growing package – but an approach to the New Testament that reflects a number of prior thoughts and ideas held by the one who is writing that theology and who conveys that to us in writing. This should not surprise us, because this is the way that all ideas are mediated to us. In fact, more specifically, these ideas are communicated to us as events in time and language, and that is what I realized I wanted to talk about in the lectures that have now been transformed and expanded into this book – New Testament theology as a form of linguistic exercise and hence subject to linguistic investigation and being talked about in linguistic categories.Footnote 6
I must confess that I already knew something about language, how it works, and how we have thought about it through the years. I also realized that New Testament theology is a linguistic exercise that is in many – even if not in all – regards a particular expression of language as used by various scholars through the years to talk about, at the least, a text mediated to us in language, the New Testament. If New Testament studies itself is a linguistic discipline – that is, it is about the understanding of texts (I realize that more and more scholars are treating New Testament studies as a theological discipline) – then New Testament theology, as a sub-field within it, is also a linguistic discipline and must be examined as such as well. It seemed to me that it was worth exploring how these people and their understanding of language influenced what we think of as New Testament theology in three temporal dimensions – the past, the present, and the future.Footnote 7 The past will enable us to see what has already occurred, the present will examine our current status, and the future, the most difficult, will explore where we might or should be headed.
This introduction certainly does not explain all the dimensions of the study to follow. In numerous ways, what follows is only a sketch of what could be expatiated upon in much wider scope and greater detail. However, I do not like to read those volumes that are more concerned with summarizing the content of others’ work in excruciating detail at the expense of missing the larger ideas that are crucial to understanding such work. This is a book concerned with big ideas and broad patterns, but ones that have had a tremendous and abiding influence upon the discipline of New Testament studies, and in particular New Testament theology. As a result, I do not want simply to summarize the content of numerous New Testament theologies, especially as the content of many of them is so similar. More to the point, as their approaches in relation to the wider world of language study are so painfully similar, to do so would run the risk of numbing my readers. I offer longer summaries where I believe that works merit such attention because they in some way depart from the norm. I can say the same thing regarding the information that I present on the history of language study and some of the major principles of contemporary language study. Much more could and has been said in a variety of sources, but in this work, I want to draw upon larger ideas that will give the reader a sense of the contours of the history of language discussion over the last two or so centuries.
I realize that I am going to be discussing diverse topics in unusual ways that will be woven together in new and different and even unexpected configurations that may surprise some readers. To facilitate this common understanding, I begin with a wide-angle shot before narrowing my focus, as I want to be explicit and clear in my perspectives on the academic enterprise. As a result, this book is divided into three parts and eight chapters, before a concluding chapter. Part I concerns the past, that is, the origins of New Testament theology and Greek linguistics. The weaving of these two stories together begins almost from the outset. The first story or history, contained in Chapter 1, concerns language and linguistics, and the second history concerns New Testament theology, described in Chapter 2. These two histories are presented as counterparts to each other. I select representative works in the history of language discussion to talk about two earlier periods within the modern era that set the stage for contemporary language study. I likewise do the same for a large number of works in New Testament theology, finding several common patterns that have surprising similarities to and correlations with the study of language. On the one hand, some readers may be surprised at these correlations and find them forced, but if, as I mentioned above, biblical studies and in particular New Testament theology is at least in part a linguistic exercise, then drawing such lines of correlation should prove instructive.
Part II moves to the present state of New Testament theology and Greek linguistics, with two chapters discussing the topic. Chapter 3 is devoted to modern linguistics, New Testament Greek study, and New Testament theology and how they are related to each other within the current scholarly environment, finding that there is a partial but inadequate connection between the two. This chapter outlines a treatment of the rise of modern linguistics, including structuralism and poststructuralism. These are huge topics to which I cannot do full justice, but I attempt to select the major trends and ideas that have had significance in the history and development of linguistic thought, as a means of contrasting these developments with what has occurred in New Testament theology. Chapter 4 discusses some proposals and counterproposals that have been set forth in the twentieth century and even into the twenty-first. These continue to influence the practice of New Testament theology but are inadequate because they have failed to address linguistic topics – and this was realized long before I undertook this study, as I show from the discussions of some earlier critical scholars. These two proposals, which have been thoroughly critiqued before and are examined again, set the stage for Part III.
Part III addresses possible futures of New Testament theology. Chapter 5 turns to some possible futures of New Testament theology, first examining in detail a recent and provocative attempt to address New Testament theology in light of postmodernism. The approach brings to bear some of the issues raised elsewhere in this volume but does not provide a solution to the major issues because of its lack of linguistic clarity and its unconvincing embrace of non-foundationalism. All is not lost, however, as I attempt to show by returning to some of the potential contributions of a modern linguistic approach. In Chapter 6, I first lay the linguistic foundations for a reconceptualizing of New Testament theology. After briefly showing the lack of positive proposals for new ways forward in New Testament theology, I demonstrate how New Testament theologies lack a strong linguistic foundation. I then broadly define what linguistics is and what linguistics is not, so that we are all clear on what is involved in a linguistic reconceptualization. In Chapter 7, I briefly examine the major approaches to linguistics found within contemporary New Testament study, before defining several important concepts for a linguistically sound New Testament theology. I draw upon principles that I have outlined in my discussion of linguistics as a means of rethinking some of the overarching parameters of New Testament theology and I provide numerous suggestive examples. Nevertheless, I do not attempt to write a New Testament theology, or even to prescribe what such a linguistically oriented work should look like in its details, but I explore some important ideas that may prove productive in reconceptualizing the discipline so that it is attentive to developments in linguistics that might play a role in the larger New Testament theological enterprise. In Chapter 8, by way of example following Chapter 7, I take a common and frequently discussed topic within the discipline, the Son of Man. I begin by recounting the ways in which this topic has been studied since the time when New Testament scholars might reasonably have been expected to bring linguistic knowledge to bear on this topic. Then, after having outlined the major contours of this approach, I draw upon some major principles of linguistic study and attempt to rethink the Son of Man question from the bottom up according to these few linguistic categories. I then conclude the volume.
I warn the reader that there are many unusual formulations and juxtapositions found within this volume, and that even the positive proposals may prove to be disturbing to readers unused to challenges to the ways in which past and present New Testament studies, and in particular New Testament theology, are conceptualized and executed. I do not apologize for these efforts, but welcome others to join in the venture of reconceptualizing our discipline in ways that bring informed linguistic ideas to bear on exegetical and theological questions.
