Old Testament Theology:
Ronald
E Clements
Submitted by: Vinod
Shemron Submitted to: The Rev. Dr.
Jones Muthunayagom
About the
theologian
Ronald
E. Clements is the well known Baptist scholar of the Old Testament in Europe. He
was the Davidson Professor of Old Testament at King's College in the University
of London; he earned his degrees at Spurgeon's College in London; Christ's
College, Cambridge; and the University of Sheffield, where he received his
Ph.D. in 1961. After lecturing seven years at the University of Edinburgh, he
spent 1967-83 as a lecturer at Cambridge University. An ordained Baptist
minister in England since 1956, he has written many works on the Old Testament.[1] This paper is presented on
the basis of his work, Old Testament theology, a fresh approach.
Introduction
For the past two
hundred years Old Testament Scholars have developed a distinctive presentation
of the theological significance of this literature on the basis of a
penetrating historical criticism. Increasingly, however, the form and structure
of this discipline has moved away from other areas of theological
investigation. The result is that today Old Testament Theology bears little
relationship to the historic ways in which Christians and Jews have actually
found theological meaning in the Bible.
The extent to which use has been made of the Old Testament by the great
theological giants of Christendom has varied considerably, but it has seldom
been entirely absent. Certainly within the Reformed tradition the impact of
Luther's and Calvin's handling of the Old Testament, with their own great
differences, have tended to mould the approach to the Old Testament in
preaching, liturgy and hymnology for a vast number of Christians. Yet it is
unusual to find any consistent concern to study this impact as a facet of
understanding the Old Testament and its theological meaning.
Rather, the tendency has been to consider it appropriate almost
exclusively within the general area of research of the particular theologian in
question. Hence Luther's use and understanding of the Old Testament has been
thought to reflect upon Luther, but scarcely upon the Old Testament. This is
plainly wrong, and has undoubtedly contributed to the general impression that
Old Testament theology is unrelated to any other branch of theology and is free
to develop its own methods and to pursue its own goals.[2]
This is not the case, and the way in which this literature has been used
and interpreted by theologians must be held to provide a significant datum of
what Old Testament theology is about. As it is, the general tendency to leave
aside such questions, as outside the orbit of Old Testament studies, has meant
that the serious academic study of this literature has become isolated from the
questions of what we are to do with it once we have studied it.
Methodology
There is a great deal of relevance for the appreciation of the Old
Testament as a collection of theological writings in a critical examination of
the way in which major theologians have dealt with it. At the outset it is
suggested that this concern has come increasingly to dominate the discussion
about Old Testament theology. Basic questions of methodology and ordering of
the material have come to provide the more essential theological dimension of
enquiry about the religion of the Old Testament.
Since this is so, it would appear highly desirable that the way in which
the Old Testament has been understood and interpreted by one or two of the
greatest thinkers of Christendom should normally have a place in the study of
it as a theological work. Such would not simply reflect upon the theologian
himself, but upon the material he handles. For the modern Protestant, it is
evident that such figures as Luther and Calvin would have to be considered as
major candidates for such a task.
R. E. Clements in his work Old Testament theology, a fresh approach has
taken the topical method in elucidating his theological approach. It is
distinguished from the dynamic-didactic method. In his approach he seeks to
identify the Old Testament as a whole and does not take the New Testament into
much consideration. The major topic that Clements talks about are, the
dimensions of faith in the old testament, the God of Israel, the people of God,
the Old Testament as law, and the Old Testament as Promise.
Dimensions
of Faith in the Old Testament
It
is at once apparent to the student of Old Testament theology that the Old
Testament does not present its faith in the form of a creed, or a set of
theological treatises. Rather it is an ancient literature, stemming from a
remarkably early age in the scale of world literary history, and it covers a
great variety of types of writing and composition. The purposes for which these
compositions were first made, the situation of their authors, and the identity
and circumstances of those for whom they were written are largely matters which
have to be inferred from the contents of each of them. Careful scrutiny shows
that the reality is even more complex than this, however, for it is seldom that
we are faced with a complete, and separately identifiable, book in anything
like the modern sense. The books into which this literature is now split tip is
in large measure an artificial creation of later ages, in which very long
collections of material, such as the Pentateuch, have been divided up into
shorter, more manageable, books, or chapters.
Similarly, books
such as Psalms or Proverbs are collections of much smaller units in which only
a relatively minor amount of editorial shaping can be discerned. In the case of
the Psalms, in particular, little convincing explanation is available to show
why particular psalms appear in the order in which they now do. The Old
Testament, in fact, is a vast collection of material, which can loosely be
called 'tradition', but which has been assembled into quite consciously
arranged 'collections'. Only in a few cases does any separate part of these
collections resemble a book in anything like the modern sense, with a carefully
thought-out theme, or plot.[3]
If
we are to make use of these great collections it is necessary to learn
something about their literary, cultural and religious setting in order to
fathom within them that particular quality of faith which they present to us.
Nor is this quest for a rediscovery of the faith of the Old Testament
necessarily made easier because there exists an immense edifice of
interpretative tradition which has been built upon it. This also is so vast as
to require careful sifting and categorising, and it must in any case remain one
of the aims of an Old Testament theology to appeal back directly to the faith
of the Old Testament in testing, and if necessary correcting, the doctrines and
ideas which have been drawn from it. It is important therefore that we should
first consider the nature .of the Old Testament and note some salient features
about its background before attempting to elicit from it a particular theology.
God of Israel
The literature
of the Old Testament is fundamentally religious in its character, assuming the
reality and activity of God even where it does not explicitly mention him. This
is so most notably in the otherwise exceptional book of Esther, which is the
only one of the Old Testament writings which does not overtly mention God. More
often he is mentioned very frequently in these writings, referred to either by
the generic title 'God' (Hebrew .elohim) or by his distinctive name
'Yahweh' (Hebrew yhwh).
A number of
other names and titles also appear, and these all have value in enabling us to
see something of the complex religious history through which tells Old:
Testament concept of God has passed. In many cases they undoubtedly
reflect distinctive local, and sometimes international, traditions about gods
which were current in the ancient West Asia. However, in its preserved canonical
form the Old Testament certainly intends to present God as one unique
supernatural being who had revealed himself to Abraham, Moses and other of the great
figures of Israel's life, and who is the Lord and sole Creator of the universe.[4]
There is a very
distinctive identity given to God in the Old Testament, which is on the one
hand remarkably broadly based, because of its undoubted universalist elements,
but which on the other hand is sufficiently circumscribed to assert again and
again that particular rites, cultic traditions, and even sanctuaries, do not
belong to him and have no place in a true knowledge of his being and will. A
very careful line is drawn between a broad syncretism which could claim almost
any and every religious tradition as in some sense attributable to 'God', and a
narrow exclusivism, which owned allegiance to only one local, or community,
tradition.[5]
The emergence of
torah –instruction was a way of establishing this line of demarcation
which became all the more important to grasp once a large number, and
ultimately the majority, of Jews came to be living among gentiles in the
Diaspora. Yet the nascent Old Testament was not the only means of drawing this
line, since we find earlier that an important element of cultic uniformity was
established by restricting the legitimate cult of Yahweh to the sanctuary in
Jerusalem. Paradoxically, however, this restriction came at a time when other
pressures were forcing the faith of Israel to become more and more conscious of
the universal and supra-national power and sovereignty of its God. The very
tensions inherent in this meeting of the Universalist and exclusivist
tendencies in the religious tradition of Israel may be seen to have borne a
distinctive fruit in the Jewish and Christian religions.
The distinctive
identity of God in the pages of the Old Testament: 'I am the Lord (Yahweh) your
God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage'
(Exod. 20.2). The words 'your God' identify him as the God of Israel, for there
can be no doubt that the situation in worship in which this formula grew up
ensured that these words were spoken by a duly authorised priest to the
worshipping community of Israel. The second element, however, also has a
bearing on this, for the words 'who brought you out of the land of Egypt' tie
this knowledge of God to an
event in the national past of Israel, which we find elsewhere was understood to
be the foundation event by which Israel was given birth as a nation. The third
element in this formula of God's identity is also interesting for the way in
which it modifies the second. The words 'out of the house of bondage' identify
Egypt with the conditions of slavery which Israel's ancestors had experienced
there, and give to the fact of escape from thence a moral, as distinct from a
more narrowly political character. Certainly the whole political side of
Israel's existence, with its territorial and governmental claims, was regarded
as dependent on the gracious will and actions of God.[6]
The people of God
According to
Clements, if the primary point of reference in the understanding of who God is
in the Old Testament is that he is 'the God of Israel', and then the natural
correlate of this is that Israel is to be understood as 'the people of Yahweh'.
This clearly involves some understanding of the identity, scope and purpose of
the people called 'Israel'. From the point of view of the Old Testament the
answer to this question of identity is resolved very simply by the portrait of
Israel as the patriarchal ancestor of the nation, whose twelve sons produce
offspring which become twelve tribes, who themselves ultimately grow and
prosper until they become a nation (Gen. 35.22-6).[7]
He
would go further to say that the claim, that the people of Yahweh have all been
descended from one man asserts, by its nature, a 'racial' theory of identity
and membership within this community. Yet we find that, precisely because it is
understood as a religious community, the racial criterion alone has seldom
sufficed to resolve all questions about the nature and role of Israel in
relation to Yahweh. Other factors of a moral, spiritual and political kind have
all played their part. Indeed the importance of the concept of Israel's
nationhood in the Old Testament witnesses to a measure of overstepping of the
straight forward 'racial' theory of accounting participation in this community.[8]
However,
the situation becomes more complex once the Old Testament evidence is examined
in critical detail. First of all we find that the picture of the origins of
Israel from the twelve sons of one ancestral figure is a kind of image or
structure imposed upon a tradition which was historically very much less clear.
Furthermore, how and why the 'image' of the descendants of the twelve sons as
twelve tribes arose in the way it did has been, a matter of considerable
debate. Even the time of origin of such a portrayal has been strongly
contested. Whether it does accord with some kind of pro-national social and
institutional structure, or represents a later idealised picture of a past are
views which have each gained adherents.
Clements
elucidates that the concept of race, territory and government are not in
themselves, necessarily religious in their nature, so that a more directly
religious quality of faith, or allegiance to torah, also came to play
its part and how this occurred and how differing emphases came to be placed
upon each of them, is a feature of the unfolding of the tradition in the Old
Testament. The ability to interpret the history of this tradition by reference
to the actual course of Israel's political and social history enables us to see
it in a fuller light. It does not of itself, however, enable us to resolve the
tensions that are apparent between the different factors. Even more important from
the theological point of view, it does not enable us to single out anyone
feature of the Israelite tradition so as to make it possible for us to
establish this as the 'norm or the ideal of what constitutes Israel.[9]
It is not true
that universalism eventually predominates over nationalism, or that 'religious
community' naturally displaces the 'territorial state'. Nor is it clear that
the Old Testament maintains any single interpretation of what constitutes the
ultimate 'goal' of Israel's election. The images that are used to describe the
future eschatological Israel is not of a kind that can be easily recast into
explicit theological categories.
The Old Testament as Law
This
must necessarily include some attention to the literary form and structure of
its constituent books, but also it should look at those broad categories by
which the Old Testament as a whole has been understood. The importance of doing
this is all the greater on account of the far-reaching consequences that
develop from the way in which the unity of the canon is understood.
Two
factors can assist us in finding this basis of unity. One is the structure of
the canon itself with its division into three literary collections of Law,
Prophets, and Writings, in a three-tier level of authority. The second factor
is provided by the way in which the early Jewish and Christian interpreters of
the Old Testament have set about their task, with the indications which they
give of the particular assumptions and presuppositions which they bring to the
literature. Here immediately we encounter the most widespread and basic
category which has been employed to describe the nature of the material which
the Old Testament contains. This is the law or more precisely the torah
since the question of how far 'law' is a very satisfactory translation of the
Hebrew torah remains to be considered. Certainly it raises the question
of what kind of law, and what legal authority and sanctions it may be thought
to possess.
In
Mark 2.25-6 we find the citation of an incident regarding David and the eating
of· the Bread of the Presence which is recorded in 1Samuel 21.1-6. This
incident from the Former Prophets is interpreted as an example of the
fundamental principle, applied to Old Testament laws and regulations that the
humanitarian demand for preserving life is of greater importance than the more
specifically cultic demand of respect for holiness. The background and
assumptions of this interpretation need not detain us. It is simply a clear
illustration of the way in which the record of narrative incidents, which were
originally preserved for specific purposes of quite another kind, could later
be interpreted out of the basic presupposition that they are torah law.
Nor is this approach a uniquely Christian one, for we find very strikingly that
it pervades almost· completely the mainstream of Jewish interpretation of the
Old Testament. The Mishnah, and later the Talmud are full of citation and
interpretative comment upon the Old Testament which regard it as torah.[10]
As
we move further away in time from the editorial and redactional activity which
has shaped the Old Testament into its present form, so we tend to find that the
assumption that it is all torah has tended to become more and more
dominating in its effect upon the way in which the material is understood.
The Old Testament as Promise
If
we regard the way in which Christians have in the past found theological
meaning and significance in the Old Testament, then one feature stands out
above all others. This is the conviction that the Old Testament is a book of
prophetic promise, which foretold an age of salvation that was to come. For the
early Christians this age had come with the events concerning Jesus of
Nazareth, so that the age of the New Testament and the early Church could be
regarded as one of fulfilment.
In spite of the
strength and firmness with which this 'argument from prophecy' has appeared in
the Christian tradition, we find, somewhat surprisingly, that the main lines of
a more modern critical evaluation of Old Testament prophecy have proceeded
rather differently. The great strength of the prophets has been seen in the
clarity and forthrightness with which they denounced the social and religious
wrongs of their society, so that it was by this means that they became the
heralds of a truly moral understanding of the kingdom of God. Where they have
been seen as the forerunners of Jesus, it has usually been as a consequence of
their sense of righteousness and social justice as essential to any true
service of God. The historical-critical
attempt to present a theological assessment of prophecy has departed from the
major lines of interpretation which had previously prevailed almost totally in
Christian thinking. Whereas the latter has seen the prophets as the foretellers
of salvation, the more critical approach has highlighted their role as the
heralds of doom and judgment.[11]
A number of
factors have played a part, but foremost among them is the concern which has
prevailed in a modern critical approach to prophecy to get back to the
authentic words of the original prophet. It is particularly when we examine the
earlier prophets who flourished in the eighth century that we find that the
main weight of their preaching was concerned with denouncing the sins of Judah
and Israel. However, it is not until the latter half of the sixth century, with
the prophecies of Isaiah 40-55, that a clear and unbroken announcement of
Israel's impending deliverance and restoration is made. In other words, it was
only when the exile was almost over and the judgment could be seen to have
passed that the prophets begun to sound forth the hope of restoration which
tradition has most closely associated with them.[12]
We see that, fundamental questions about the
actual course of development and whether it is the literary coming together
which has occasioned the attempts at an overall pattern of interpretation. To
some extent this is no doubt true, but it seems probable that an underlying
conviction that the prophets did all proclaim a message which showed features
of a common theme and expectation· has helped to fashion the literary
collection into its present form. A deeper level of theological connection can
be seen to be present, as is shown by the marked repetition of a number of
basic themes.[13]
We may argue,
therefore, that a theological study of the theme of 'promise' in the Old
Testament must seek to elucidate the way in which this theme arose as the
central one in the understanding of the preaching of the prophets. Before this
can be achieved, however, it is necessary that we should obtain a clearer grasp
of the earliest preaching of the canonical prophets of the Old Testament.
Conclusion
If
we are to find in the Old Testament a theology - a word about God which still
holds good for us today - then we are in some measure committed to asking how
the picture of God that the Old Testament gives to us can be properly regarded
as true of the One whom we still call 'God'. In other words we must expect to
find in the Old Testament truths about God which are more than historical
truths, tied to the beliefs and events of a world that has long since passed.
To do this we should not expect to find arguments and theories about his
existence, of which we may still approve, but rather a general picture, often in
the form of analogies and images, which provide us with a worthy and
recognisable portrayal of the God whom we worship.
Bibliography
Clements,
E. Ronald. Old Testament Theology (England: Marshall Morgan & Scott,
1978)
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/452587.Ronald_E_Clements
[1]
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/452587.Ronald_E_Clements
[2]
R. E. Clements, Old Testament Theology (England: Marshall Morgan &
Scott,1978) 187
[3]
R. E. Clements, Old Testament Theology (England: Marshall Morgan &
Scott,1978) 26
[4]
R. E. Clements, Old Testament Theology (England: Marshall Morgan &
Scott,1978) 53
[5]
R. E. Clements, Old Testament Theology (England: Marshall Morgan &
Scott,1978) 55
[6]
R. E. Clements, Old Testament Theology (England: Marshall Morgan &
Scott,1978) 56-57
[7]
R. E. Clements, Old Testament Theology (England: Marshall Morgan &
Scott,1978) 79
[8]
R. E. Clements, Old Testament Theology (England: Marshall Morgan &
Scott,1978) 81
[9]
R. E. Clements, Old Testament Theology (England: Marshall Morgan &
Scott,1978) 81
[10]
R. E. Clements, Old Testament Theology (England: Marshall Morgan &
Scott,1978) 104
[11]
R. E. Clements, Old Testament Theology (England: Marshall Morgan &
Scott,1978) 131-132
[12]
R. E. Clements, Old Testament Theology (England: Marshall Morgan &
Scott,1978) 134
[13]
R. E. Clements, Old Testament Theology (England: Marshall Morgan &
Scott,1978) 136
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