discussion questions for better understanding Dr. Tipton's ETS lecture

Well, I’m going to step out on a limb here and post some of my own reflections on the papers given last week at ETS by Westminster’s own Drs. Pete Enns and Lane Tipton. Before I incriminate myself, however, I do wish to echo the sentiments of my brother, Tony Stiff, in saying that both of these men are very dear to me. Studying under both of these men has been a joy and a privilege and I respect both of them as Christians. Initially I typed up these comments as a critique of Dr. Tipton’s proposal. But, having corresponded with Dr. Tipton, whom I consider a friend, it seems that I may have misunderstood his thesis. Nevertheless, I am aware that my (mis?)understanding of Dr. Tipton’s thesis is one shared pretty widely by those whose current area of study is Biblical studies and who have heard the lecture he delivered at ETS. This fact raises the question of whether the Biblical scholars and the systematicians have been largely talking past each other as of late? So I want to offer some questions, the sorts of questions that make up the meat and potatoes of Biblical scholarship, for which it would be helpful to see how Dr. Tipton’s proposal would specifically apply. If we can begin to try to work out how Dr. Tipton’s proposal bears on some of these specific questions, we may be able to begin to clear up some of the thick smog of miscommunication that has been choking our campus in recent days.

I had understood Dr. Tipton to be arguing that if we would appropriately employ the incarnation as an analogue for inspiration, we cannot stop with the assertion that, like Christ, the Bible is fully human and fully divine and leave it at that. Rather we must recognize also that the divine aspect of Scripture precedes, conditions, subordinates the human aspect of Scripture at every point. As with the incarnate Son of God, with the inscripturated Word of God, the divinity has priority over the humanity. So far, so good.

I also (mis?)understood him to be arguing that pneumatology and not anthropology (and, by “anthropology”, I presumed that he meant historical, philological, archaeological, paleographical, literary, and sociological study and the like of that) provides the ultimate context for navigating all hermeneutical questions. Specifically, he claims that this is the case with respect to questions concerning the New Testament’s use of the Old.

Now, I found this claim to be puzzling because it is really hard to see how the bare recognition that the humanity of Scripture is subordinate to the divinity of Scripture helps me to understand why it is that the author of Matthew does what he does with Hosea 11:1 (Matt. 2:15). Matthew is pretty clearly not doing grammatical-historical exegesis here. Why does he use Hosea in this way? While it is very helpful to recognize that this sort of employment of texts was common in the Second Temple period and that, therefore, Matthew’s practice was in accord with the standard hermeneutical practices of the day, it is unclear how recognition of the priority of the divinity of Scripture contributes to my understanding of why Matthew does what he does. In other words, it’s hard to see how that recognition helps me to read and understand Matthew better. What would be helpful for many of us is a clear delineation of exactly how the recognition of the priority of Scripture’s divinity sheds light on the way the New Testament uses the Old and a few examples (perhaps the one I suggested in Matthew 2:15).

Another puzzling piece of Tipton’s thesis is (what I understood to be) his claim that God’s writing of the Ten Commandments with His own finger and without a human mediator should serve as a paradigm for understanding Biblical revelation as a whole. I say that this is puzzling because to acknowledge that God wrote the Ten Commandments without a human mediator is not to remove all hermeneutical problems surrounding the Ten Commandments. For one thing, the Commandments were presumably written, as all writing is, in a language. What language might that have been? Was it the post-10th century-ish Jerusalemite dialect of our MT Pentateuchs? Or an earlier Semitic language that Moses and his contemporaries would actually have been able to understand? Or were the Commandments written in the King’s English? Regardless, the Commandments were not written, per impossible, in some sort of context-less, divine meta-language. To read the Commandments, whether written by the very finger of God or not, requires us to delve into the studies of linguistics, lexicography, grammatology, paleography and so forth. The very employment of human language by God, even without the use of a human mediator, is an incarnational action in that it necessitates our engagement with all of the messy historical questions that the recognition of divine priority was supposed to render superfluous.

What would the phrase, “kabbed et-abbika we’et-immika” have communicated, if anything, to an Israelite in Moses’ time? The only way to find out is to delve into the history of the Hebrew language. In fact, the evidence seems to point towards the Ten Commandments, if they come from the days of Moses, being a translation from an earlier Semitic dialect into the later Hebrew dialect of our BHSs. In other words, if we would read our Bibles, some historical work is inevitable. We often forget that this necessary historical work underlies our BHSs, UBSs, lexicons, Weingreen grammars, parsing guides and our English translations. Without that historical, linguistic, paleographical and lexicographical work, no amount of pneumatology is going to make "ha-asarah debarim" readable for you. So the question becomes, Does Tipton mean for his Sinaitic-paradigm for revelation to be a paradigm for hermeneutics? If so, what does that hermeneutic look like? If not, then what does Tipton understand the giving of priority to the divinity of Scripture over Scripture’s humanity to mean practically in the discipline of Biblical scholarship?

It should also be noticed that the sorts of research mentioned above must be applied beyond simple translation of words and phrases if we would understand how larger units of discourse functioned in their contexts. The meaning of discourse units does not lie simply at the level of the units’ words and phrases but extends also to figures of speech, semiotic systems that inform a culture’s figurative language, genres, literary standards and so on. This fact is the reason why comparative literature is another discipline vital for reading the Ten Commandments in their original context. Meredith Kline’s reading of Deuteronomy, and the place of the Ten Words therein, depends upon a knowledge of the structures of Hittite suzerainty treaties and a recognition of affinities between those structures and those of Deuteronomy. The identification of Deuteronomy’s genre as a suzerainty treaty requires, not a stronger awareness of the divinity of Scripture, but paleographic research and studies in comparative literature. Indeed, without such research, the genre and function of Deuteronomy would be significantly obscured. If it is legitimate to associate the Pentateuch with the legal writings of the Ancient Near East, is it also legitimate to associate the OT historical writings with the historiographical practices of the ANE, or the OT creation narratives with the creation narratives of the ANE, or the composition histories of our Scriptures with the compositional practices common to the ANE? Do such associations, per se, amount to prioritizing the humanity of Scripture? Many have (mis?)understood Dr. Tipton’s proposal to be attempting to tacitly demarcate the limits of legitimate literary comparison in Biblical scholarship. Is this perception an instance of miscommunication?

What remains to be done is the fleshing out of specifically what it means for hermeneutics and biblical scholarship to give priority to the divinity of Scripture over the humanity of Scripture. I think that this point was what some were trying to get at in the Q&As. As it stands, it is hard for some of us to see what the hermeneutical payoff of Dr. Tipton’s proposal is or if he meant for his proposal to be one for hermeneutics. I think these are the sorts of questions Biblical scholars would like to see Theologians squarely address and I’m sure there are also questions that Theologians would like to the Biblical scholars squarely address as well. Perhaps what would be helpful for communication at this juncture would be the direct addressing of each others concerns.
I will probably be posting more reflections on these issues out of my conviction that this is a conversation that is long overdue. These are the issues that we, as a church, must wrestle with and my prayer is that this blog may play some small part in our resolving them. I am especially thankful for Dr. Tipton’s taking time out of his holiday to correspond with me on these issues.