Martin Hengel on Unity and Diversity in the Early Church

In a forthcoming memorial volume for Martin Hengel, his essay on "Confessions" is reproduced (and wonderfully translated by Daniel Johansson) and it includes this statement about the unity and diversity of the early church:

“Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed” (15:11). This succinct sentence contradicts the assumption so common today that in early Christianity there was not one fundamental confession of the faith which united all, but all kinds of kerygmas, not one Gospel, but many Christologies contradicting each other, and many churches whose teaching and living were quite disjoined, so that one must speak of a chaos at the beginning of the early Church. The Pauline letters in particular show that the opposite is true. In order to justify itself, modern theological pluralism here project itself onto early Christianity against the clear statements of the texts. There were of course – considerable – differences in the preaching of individual apostles and missionaries, even contradictions and conflicts. I just remind of the struggle at the apostolic council, the later incident at Antioch, and, what I believe, the permanent conflict between Peter and Paul. There are also, for example, considerable theological opposition between Romans and Galatians on the one hand and the Letter of James on the other. Nevertheless, all early Christian writings agree that eschatological salvation is effected through Christ, the Kyrios, his death and his resurrection. Only on this foundation, the attachment to the one Kyrios, was an agreement such as the one Paul depicts in Gal 2:1-10 at all possible, and in Gal 2:15ff. he assumes that Peter too acknowledges justification by faith alone and not through works of the law.

Martin Hengel and Theology Students

Along with Jason Maston, I am editing a collection of essays that came out of the 2010 Tyndale Conference held in honour of Prof. Martin Hengel (Earliest Christianity: History, Literature, and Theology) to be published - hopefully mid year - by Mohr/Siebeck. We have a preface by Jörg Frey who colourfully records his first encounter with Prof. Hengel as an undergraduate student in Tübingen. Here's the opening paragraph:

"This scene was unforgettable. During the orientation days for new students of Protestant Theology– beginning winter semester 1983/84 – representatives of the famous Tübingen Faculty in the Evangelischen Stift had to introduce the various theological disciplines. Every one of them tried to feature the importance of their subject for theology as a whole, but they all missed to create that real tingle that could have fascinated the novice. Only one went beyond limits. He did not keep talking about his scholarly field for very long, but instead he put great emphasis on its object, the New Testament. Whilst pulling a little, heavily worn blue booklet – his old “Nestle-Aland” – out of his pocket, swinging it through the air, he urged his audience with great vigour: “Read this book! In Greek! It’s a good book.”

I think I shall make this my new teaching slogan:"Lesen Sie dieses Buch! Auf Griechischen! Es ist ein gutes Buch".

Martin Hengel on on the Christ Hymn

Just reading the conclusion to Martin Hengel's The Son of God and this is what he says about the Christ Hymn of Philippians 2 (p. 76):

"Now if Christ is identical with the heavenly, pre-temporal 'image of God', that also means that he was ' of divine nature', as we hear at the beginning of the Philippians hymn. Thus, although he is clearly subordinate, the Son no longer stood on the side of creation alone, but also on the side of God. Only through the incarnation, which is 'consummated' in his death on the cross, does he receive a share in human destiny and can he be regarded as reconciler and intercessor for men. Jesus was now no longer just the perfect righteous man, chosen by God, who was in complete accord with God's will, a model for discipleship, but in addition the divine mediator who out of the Father's love for lost men obediently gave up his heavenly communion with the Father and took on human form and human destiny, a destiny which led to a shameful death on the cross. Thus incarnation and death became an unsurpassable expression of the divine love."

Wanted Translators

Myself and Jason Maston are editing some papers from the Tyndale Fellowship conference for a volume in honour of the late Prof. Martin Hengel. We will also include an appendix in the volume that will contain several newly translated essays from Hengel's collected writings. As such, I'm looking for three to four chaps who are willing to do a translation of Hengel's essays for inclusion in the book. Criteria for involvement in the project is: (1) Proficiency in German and English; (2) Have a Ph.D in NT or at least be a Ph.D candidate; (3) Can do the translation by the end of the year. Translators will receive due acknowledgment of their work and get a gratis copy of the book.

The Incident at Antioch and the Making of Paulinism

Here's a segment from the conclusion of my "Antioch" article:

In the incident at Antioch we confront the first public expression of Paulinism understood as the antithesis between Christ and Torah. This paradigmatic shift from Torah to Christ as the locus of God’s saving actions was impregnated in Paul’s Damascus road experience, publicly debuted in Antioch, unleashed with the fury of a scorned woman in Galatia, clinically applied in 2 Corinthians 3, given its mature and prudent form in Romans, and eventually lent itself towards the genesis of two competing theologies of proto-orthodoxy and Marcionism in the second century that both claimed ancestry from Paul. This Paulinism is aptly captured by Martin Hengel:

For him, the encounter with the Resurrected One near Damascus set before him the question of the law or Christ in the form of a soteriological alternative. For Judaism of that time the Torah was in manifold expression the essence of salvation, and could be identified with the fundamental religious metaphor, “life”. Since the opposition between Torah and Jesus of Nazareth had made him into a persecutor, now the relationship between Christ and Torah had to become a fundamental issue, in which the inversion of the opposition immediately because apparent: he, the Resurrected One is zwh& for those who believe (2 Cor 4:11-12; cf. 2:16).[1]

While I demur from Hengel’s treatment of the incident at Antioch for the reasons given above, I remain convinced that Hengel has tapped into the nerve of Paul’s thought and demonstrated the radical stance of Paul and the Torah that made him the controversial figure that he was. Yet this Christ-Torah antithesis needs some qualifications as I suspect that it does not mean what many Protestant commentators think it means. It does not mean that Jewish Christians should cease observing the law, nor does it mean that the Torah has nothing binding on the ethical life of Gentile Christians. Rather, the advent of Christ means that his death and resurrection has effected the end of ages and broken the link between law, sin, and death. Christ turns the condemnation of the law into justification. Christ made the curse of the law into redemption. Faith in Christ is the testimony of the law and yet faith in Christ places believers beyond the jurisdiction of the law. Christ terminates the Mosaic dispensation in order to fulfil the Abrahamic hopes. Christ serves the circumcision by making Gentiles heirs of the Patriarchs.

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[1] Martin Hengel, “The Stance of the Apostle Paul Toward the Law in the Unknown Years Between Damascus and Antioch,” in Justification and Variegated Nomism: Volumes 2 – The Paradoxes of Paul, eds. D.A. Carson, P.T. O’Brien, and M.A. Seifrid (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2004), 84.

Hengel on the Word of Christ

I'm reading a lot of Martin Hengel now as I prepare to write an article interacting with Hengel on Gal. 2.11-14 and I found this charming quote from him:

"Christ's teaching could not be detached from his person. The word of God and the word of the Lord or Christ fundamentally became one and could be understood as both subjective and objective genitives."

Martin Hengel, Paul Between Damascus and Antioch, p. 203.

Martin Hengel on the OT Canon

Here's a thought-provoking throught from Martin Hengel on the OT canon:

"As a New Testament scholar and Christian Theologian, I would like to pose a question in view of the problem emerging here. Does the church still need a clearly demarcated, strictly closed Old Testament canon, since the New Testament is, after all, the 'conclusion', the goal and the fulfilment of the Old? Indeed, does not one face an essential contradiction if one, in an unhistorical biblicism, clings to a limited 'Hebrew', or better pharisaical, 'canon' from Jabneh? Must not the Old Testament remain a degree open to the New? Is not a figure like the eschatological prophet John the Baptist the most important example - in the New Testament itself - of this openness of the Old for the New, the final? ... The origin of Christianity as well as of rabbinic Judaism after 70 CE becomes at all historically interesting and comprehensible only through this literature, which includes in a wider dimension also Josephus, Philo and the Pseudepigrapha. One portion of this literature was preserved, sometimes unwillingly, by Christian tradition; the other comes to light now in the Qumran texts. The great interest that this rich 'post-biblical' Jewish tradition finds among Jews and Christians could perhaps be assessed as a sign of the relative openness of the 'canon' in both directions, given the fact that Jews and Christians parted conclusively only after the destruction of Jerusalem toward the end of the first century CE." (The Septuagint as Christian Scripture, 126).

I think it is perfectly valid to recognize that Christian sacred literature was broader than our modern "canon", but does this proposal mean (a) almost de-canonising the Old Testament since it has no limits; (b) making the Old Testament of less canonical weight than the New Testament; and (c) using the Old Testament as background reading rather than as "scripture"?

CT on Martin Hengel

Christianity Today has a piece on Martin Hengel entitled: "The Champion who Debunked Bultmann". It also links to an essay written by Martin Hengel entitled, "Raising the Bar: A daring proposal for the future of evangelical New Testament scholarship," (2001) that includes these quotes:

"Only by mastering these languages can we read and understand the necessary Jewish, Greco-Roman, and early Christian sources, especially the church fathers, who are the earliest exegetes of the whole Bible. To present the faith to the 21st-century world, we need to support young, gifted scholars who have excellent philological-historical training and possess a broad learning base as well as specialized expertise. The evangelical community needs to free up resources for our scholars."

Listen to this proposal:

"Allow me to make a daring proposal: Why not found an IBR-run institute of advanced studies at a traditional, renowned university center in the United States? The university would grant room to IBR on its campus, thus allowing IBR to develop a respectable evangelical presence at the university. Another plus of a renowned university location would be the scholars' access to a world-class library collection. Such a center would house evangelical doctoral students and postdoctoral students who could study alongside more seasoned professors during their sabbatical years. The institute would also attract the best scholars from overseas who are indebted to the truth of the gospel and love the Bible. The center would operate within a free atmosphere of scholarly discussion but with the confident assurance that Christ, "the truth and the way and the life" (John 14:6), will overcome all human misunderstandings and wrong ways."

Hengel concludes in the end:

"John 8:32 promises that "the truth will make you free." This is the ultimate aim of all true biblical scholarship. The search for truth unites us, and it is a task for which we remain always responsible. In a time of astonishing discoveries about the Bible, but also of deep errors and seducing deception, this task is more necessary than ever."

Roland Deines' Tribute to Martin Hengel

Over at SBL there is a very moving tribute to Martin Hengel by his former student and colleague Roland Deines.

I should also mention that the New Testament Group of the Tyndale Fellowship is dedicating its 2010 meeting to interacting with the work of Martin Hengel. This will involve mostly invited speakers and we hope it is a fitting tribute to the importance of Hengel's work from a broadly evangelical perspective.

Interview with Martin Hengel

Thanks to John Dickson and the Centre for Public Christianity is this interview with Martin Hengel on video. Enjoy!

Martin Hengel Passes Away

When I got to work today, I sat down to drink my tea and read my googlereader feed, and I was saddened to hear of the passing away of Martin Hengel.

Hengel was a luminary among the German academy, his command of primary sources was brilliant, he exposed how many of the suppositions of critical scholarship weresimply not critical enough. He destroyed the Bultmannian taxonomy of Hellenistic vs. Palestinian Judaism, he was viscious as he was right when attacked form criticism (note his words: "Therefore nothing has led research into the Gospels so astray as the romantic superstition involving anonymous theologially creative community collectives, which are supposed to have drafted whole writings"), he boldly asserted that Acts might actually have more historical value than what most of his contemporaries would allow, and despite his historical-critical endeavours he sincerely believed that Theology really was a good thing (see my summary here of Hengel). Of course, Hengel was not an "inerrantist" either, not this remark:

"This may seem to us to be quite an extreme case [Osiander on harmonizing the Gospels], but a similar sort of unbiblical, and ultimately rationalistic, apologetics remains the rule in Protestant orthodoxy until the beginning of historical criticism in the eighteenth century, and indeed in some evangelical fundamentalist circles to the present day. Such a “fundamentalistic rationalistic” exegesis which makes the New Testament a law book does little service to the real historical and theological understanding of the Gospels (the two cannot be separated) as the radical ahistorical scepticism which seeks to investigate the text only by a literary approach in terms of its aesthetic value or by a dogmatic approach in terms of its unalterable fixed “truth content” and prohibits any authentic historical investigation, or at least is not interested in it."

I shall remember him for his work on the Gospels (esp. the origins of the superscriptions and his work on the Fourth Gospel), his writings on Paul's early years, and his SNTS lecture on the tasks of New Testament studies. My recent book, Are You the One Who is to Come? was partly inspired by his own essay "Jesus, the Messiah of Israel" and I was sincerely hoping to send him a personal copy thanking him for his own work.

Note also my post about Larry Hurtado's tribute to Hengel in ExpTim a while ago. Roland Deines will be providing the Tyndale Fellowship NT lecturer next week on God and History and it includes a section on Martin Hengel. I look forward to hearing that from one of Hengel's former students.

Several people have blogged on this too and I sharen't add much more other than concur with Sea Winter: "Tübingen has lost a great Neutestamentler. If God writes footnotes, then at least Hengel will be on hand to add a judicious classical reference or two, probably from memory. Requiescat in pacem".

Martin Hengel on the NT Text in the Second Century

Over at ETC, I've posted on Martin Hengel's comments about the NT text in the second century.

Larry Hurtado on Martin Hengel

Larry Hurtado, ‘Martin Hengel’s Impact on English-Speaking Scholarship,’ ExpT 120.2 (2008): 70-76.

“First, Hengel has set a high standard of thoroughness of research that continues to instruct and inspire. Second, his frank acknowledgement of his Christian stance and theological concerns is commendable, both in its honesty and in his demonstration (contrary to the anxieties of some) such a commitment can actually inspire dedicated and critical historical analysis that wins the praise of scholars of various faith-stances. Third, over and against both anti-critical conservatism of a creedalistic or fundamentalistic nature, and over and against the now-fashionable disdain of the validity of critical historical investigation in some so-called ‘post-modernist’ circles, and also over and against the tendency by some other NT scholars to play off critical historical study and hermeneutical concerns, Hengel’s body of work stands as a monumental refutation and inspiration.” (p. 75).

The areas where I have found Hengel to be helpful and even inspirational are: 1. He is a first class exponent of primary sources. 2. He combines historical acumen with theological sensitivity. 3. The breadth of his research and learning is immense. 4. He has shown that views often touted as conservative (e.g. history in Acts, Jesus as a messianic claimant, critical of form criticism) are not based on theological prejudices but on sound historical evidence.

Martin Hengel on 1 John

‘The first letter of John, which takes the intentions of the Gospel further, defines this precisely: “Whoever does not love does not know God; for God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only-begotten Son into the world, that we might love through him" (4.8ff). This means that in the Son who has become human, God’s love, his very nature, has become manifest for humankind; God himself comes to them. The incarnation of the love of God, not the deification of Christ, is the main theme of Johannine theology.’

Martin Hengel, ‘Christological Titles in Early Christianity,’ in The Messiah, ed. James H. Charlesworth (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), p. 432.

New Book by Martin Hengel

Eisenbrauns reports that Martin Hengel and Anna Maria Schwemer are co-authoring a new book called: Geschichte des fruhen Christentums: Band I: Jesus und das Judentum. Three other books in the series are planned. The blurb reads:

Der erste Band dieser auf vier Bände geplanten Geschichte des frühen Christentums umfaßt den Weg und das Wirken Jesu vor dem Hintergrund des zeitgenössischen Judentums in Palästina. Daß die Darstellung Jesu selbst bereits Teil einer solchen Geschichte sein muß, sollte heute nicht mehr bestritten werden. Jesu Wirken und Leiden muß in engem Zusammenhang mit dem palästinischen Judentum und seinen religiös-politischen Gruppen gesehen werden. Bei der Überfülle der Jesusbilder kommt den Vorfragen nach den Quellen und den Kriterien einer historischen Untersuchung besondere Bedeutung zu. Hier ist wesentlich, daß aufgrund der Quellenlage nur "Annäherungen" möglich sind und die historische Gestalt Jesu von sehr verschiedenen Aspekten aus gesehen werden kann. Martin Hengel und Anna Maria Schwemer untersuchen zunächst die galiläische Herkunft Jesu, und behandeln dann weiter das Verhältnis zu Johannes dem Täufer und den historischen Rahmen seines Wirkens. Es folgen die Form seiner Verkündigung sowie deren Inhalt, der von der anbrechenden Gottesherrschaft, dem göttlichen Willen und der Liebe des Vaters bestimmt ist. Weitere Schwerpunkte bilden Jesus als Wundertäter und das umstrittene Problem seines messianischen Anspruchs, der nicht auf die Titelfrage beschränkt werden darf. Am Ende stehen der letzte Kampf in Jerusalem, seine Passion und die Erscheinungen des Auferstandenen.

This seems to fall in line with a new genre of multi-volume Christian Origins projects as already undertaken by N.T. Wright (Christian Origins and the Question of God) and James D. G. Dunn (Christianity in the Making). I hope SCM picks up this volume and gets a English translation out soon.

HT: Matthijs den Dulk

Martin Hengel on Biblical Theology

"From this [Jesus as Messiah] flow consequences for theological reflection as well; for, as the messianic bringer of salvation, he is the fundamental of our faith, who fulfilled the Old Covenant, and breathed the breath of life into the New. His person and work charge us with the task of a 'whole' biblical theology that above all fully realizes its Jewish heritage, a biblical theology that does not eradicate the lines between the Old and New, but properly defines them. I could also express this in the words of Paul with which I began: the Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, became the Messiah of Israel in order to fulfil the promises made to the fathers, and he became for us, who have come afterwrad from all nations of the earth, 'the author of our salvation', because we experience in him what the love of God is, that we might, for the sake of such grace, praise as our Father, the God of Israel and Father of Jesus Christ."

- Martin Hengel, "Jesus, the Messiah of Israel", Studies in Early Christology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), p. 72.

Martin Hengel on Jesus as Messiah

Martin Hengel writes:

"If Jesus never possessed a messianic claim of divine mission, rather sternly rejected every third-hand question in this regard, if he neither spoke of the coming, or present, ‘Son of Man’, nor was executed as a messianic pretender and alleged king of the Jews – as is maintained with astonishing certainty by radical criticism unencumbered by historical arguments – then the emergence of christology, indeed, the entire history of primitive Christianity, is completely baffling, nay, incomprehensible. But this is not all – all four gospels, and above all the Passion narrative as their most ancient, component, would be a curious product of the imagination very difficult to explain, for the Messiah question is at the centre of them all. If Mark 1–10 stands under the rubric of the ‘messianic secret’, the remainder of the gospel, following the Entry into Jerusalem (Mark 11:1-11), dissolves this step by step. Is this no more than a construct than a novelistic art and christological imagination of the Evangelist? With regard to christology, are not the gospels also a part of the Religionsgeschichte derived from the Jewish heritage?" (‘Jesus the Messiah of Israel,’’ in Studies in Early Christology [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995], p. 14.)

What is more, for an excellent overview of the breadth and depth of Hengel's work do read Roland Deines, 'Martin Hengel: A Life in Service of Christology,' TynBul 58.1 (2007): 25-42.

An "Orthodox" Approach to the Extra-Canonicals

How are Christian interpreters to relate to the extra-canonical Gospels? A good example of how to do so, in Martin Hengel's opinion, is Clement of Alexandria. Although Clement holds to the four-fold Gospel that was handed down, he also takes the extra-canonical Gospels seriously in discussion with his opponents, e.g. Julius Cassian (a Valentinian Gnostic).

Martin Hengel, The Four Gospels and the One gospel of Jesus Christ, 17-19.

"In contrast to Irenaeus, however, he [Clement] does not reject a Gospel in principle; rather, he has quoted this saying of Jesus to Salome twice before, and on the first mention he emphasizes that it must be expounded to the Encratites in the correct way so that they are confused and refuted by it. In other words, although it does not come from a recognized Gospel it must be taken seriously because of the discussion with the opponents."