Redemption, Reductions

by Narkissos 48 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  Perry

  The "economy of suffering" implied in (post-Pauline) Colossians 1:24: "I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church" is rather embarrassing to the Evangelical view

  But not to the fundamentalist view since they do not accept the Wescott/Hort minority text.

  The majority received text reads:

  Colossians 1:24 Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the church:

  This agrees with the teaching that Christ's followers would suffer as he did.... not complete something that he left unfinished. Indeed Jesus' last words were "It is finished".
• 

  Perry

  And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness: - Levet:16:21

  And the Levites shall lay their hands upon the heads of the bullocks: and thou shalt offer the one for a sin offering, and the other for a burnt offering, unto the LORD, to make an atonement for the Levites. - Numbers 8:12

  The laying on of the hands onto the sacrificial animal was to transfer the sin from the morally guilty onto the morally innocent; so that when the sinless (being not a moral creature) animal died, the sin died with it... in the place of the sinner, having suffered the death sentence for that sin.

  This of course had to be repeated because the animal could not impart its sinless nature to the sinner. However, Jesus being God as well as a moral human could thereafter should he choose to, (an He did) impart a sinless nature through the agency of the Holy Spirit, so that no new sacrifice would be needed. This is why those seeking to avoid God's judgment must be born again and have their sins paid for.
• 

  Leolaia

  Perry.....I think the question would better be framed as how husterémata in antanapléró ta husterémata tón thlipseón tou Khristou ought to be understood idiomatically (compare the KJV rendering in 1 Thessalonians 3:10), rather than framing it as a textual issue. AFAIK the Greek in this clause in the (Majority) Textus Receptus and Westcott/Hort is identical.
• 

  Perry

  You may be right. I don't have an online source to compare against minority text.

  Behind

  5303.
  uJstevrhma husterema, hoos-ter'-ay-mah; from 5302; a deficit; specially, poverty:--that which is behind, (that which was) lack(-ing), penury, want.

  Dictionary says both apparently.
• 

  Leolaia

  Well, FWIW, here is a complete listing of early Jewish and Christian passages that use the expression:

  Judges 18:10 LXX, 19:19-20 LXX, Nehemiah 6:9 LXX, Psalm 33:10 LXX, Ecclesiastes 1:15 LXX, Luke 21:4, 1 Thessalonians 3:10, 1 Corinthians 16:17, 2 Corinthians 8:14, 9:12, 11:9, Philippians 2:30, Colossians 1:24, Testament of Benjamin 11:5, 1 Clement 38:2, Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 3.2.2, Parable 9.27.2, Acts of Thomas 149.

  I looked up all of these texts and the metaphorical sense of "lack, want, poverty, shortcoming" is what is found in each case, not the literal "coming late, a lagging behind". Each discusses either need in contrast to wealth or completeness, or shortcomings in contrast to moral purity. This sense is especially foregrounded when husteréma/husterémata/etc. is the object of pléroó or anapléroó "fill up, supply", as it is in most of the non-Septuagintal cases (e.g. 1 Thessalonians 3:10, 1 Corinthians 16:17, 2 Corinthians 8:14, 9:12, 11:9, Philippians 2:30, Colossians 1:24, Testament of Benjamin 11:5, 1 Clement 38:5). In these, anapléroó more naturally relates to the metaphorical sense of husteréma (supplying what is lacking), as these examples show:

  "And when I was with you and needed something, I was not a burden to anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied what I lacked" (2 Corinthians 11:9).

  "He shall supply what is lacking of your tribe" (Testament of Benjamin 11:5).
  
  "Let the poor give thanks to God because he has given them someone through whom his want may be supplied" (1 Clement 38:5).

  I haven't checked the verb hustereó but the Liddell & Scott entry suggests a similar pattern; the literal sense of "to be lagging behind, come late, come too late" is found in the non-Koine classics (e.g. Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, etc.) whereas the metaphorical sense "to be in want, poverty, have shortcomings" is found in Jewish literature (cf. Josephus, Antiquities 15.6.7) and in the NT (cf. Mark 10:21, Luke 15:14, John 2:3, Romans 3:23, 1 Corinthians 8:8, 2 Corinthians 11:5).
• 

  Narkissos

  Leolaia,

  I suppose the lexical difference between Luke 22 (anamnèsis) and Acts 10 (mnèmosunon) can be explained by the relatively fixed Hellenistic and/or Pauline wording of the Eucharistic liturgy (cf. 1 Corinthians 11), which of course would not prevent a Lukan slant on the common formula. Looking more into anamnèsis in the LXX I see that besides Leviticus it is also used of the trumpets which remind God of Israel in Numbers 10:10 (which in turn reminds of the opposition of Matthean secrecy to the "trumpet" of public almsgiving, lol); and in the superscriptions of Psalms 37; 69. Another detail that strikes me is the omission (compensation?) of eis mnèmosunon autès (Mark 14:9), which is formally reminiscent of the Eucharistic formula (with the possessive) in the Lukan rewriting of the "anointing" story (Luke 7:36-50) and its substitution with another Lukan (and conspicuously non-Pauline) theme of forgiveness of sins (v. 47ff). Btw, another thread to point is the direct connection of repentance and forgiveness of sins in Luke/Acts, without any sacrificial mediation). A very interesting verbal/conceptual network in any case...
• 

  metatron

  I could never understand the Ransom unless humans were unique in the universe. I realize you guys are quoting scriptures in a sort of historical context - which is not the same as accepting the Ransom idea as objectively real or needed for humans. Anyhow....

  The Ransom rests on a hidden 'extraterrestrial' context. You take a perfect human, completely faithful to God, and run him thru a destructive test track to prove the human design in an engineering sense. This is no different from crashing a car into brick walls to make sure the airbags work and the frame holds up. This is done because Adam and Eve raised questions about whether humans were worth salvaging relative to a planet's history that includes endless numbers of creatures that went extinct. They were all 'Edsels' , Commodore computers and slide rules.

  Now that I believe that the universe is likely full of life including intelligent life I'm not sure the above holds up. The Ransom may just be one of those semiotic things, that looks and sounds profound but is just a reasonable-appearing idea that humans collectively stumbled into.

  metatron
• 

  mindmelda

  I wanted to respond earlier, but I'm kind of handicapped by the post limits! I have many comments on various threads.

  But, this discussion is fascinating and has given me a lot to digest. I always wanted to have discussions like this as an active Witness, but it never came up in the context of any meeting or study article, my questions on such matters always remained unanswered.

  Narkissos, I like your thoughts about Paul. My own "knee jerk" reaction to his complex explanations are just that, a personal reaction to rhetoric, which I tend to find tedious, except of course, when it's MY rhetoric. *G*

  But, Paul definitely has his place in Christian thought as you all demonstrate here.

  I'm not sure that there is a single thought or that the idea of ransom or propitiation is even unique to Christianity. What IS unique is the the level to which the metaphor is raised by Paul here. An idea that in most belief systems, including Judaism, was played out quite literally is embodied in one being for all time.

  Pauls thought that the law is the tutor or teacher that leads to Christ comes to mind here. But, being kind of a Universalist at heart, it seems to me that certain things in many faiths seem to "lead to Christ" as the ultimate and most evolved metaphor for human salvation and reconciliation with God, or the Divine.
• 

  BurnTheShips

  The Ransom rests on a hidden 'extraterrestrial' context. You take a perfect human, completely faithful to God, and run him thru a destructive test track to prove the human design in an engineering sense.

  Not necessarily, if you construe homo sapiens as the local example of a "kind" that exists in other places as well.

  BTS
• 

  Narkissos

  metatron,

  I don't think your illustration applies to the Eden story in Genesis (I don't read it as a "test," and I fail to see any prospect of "salvation" or "redemption" in it either), but it might suit the Pauline parallelism(s) of Adam and Jesus quite nicely if we construe it as a sort of "upgrading" process -- Mankind 1.0 --> Mankind 2.0, or even World 1.0 --> World 2.0: the scope of redemption is cosmical because the kosmos is understood as anthropocentrical (indeed).

  mindmelda,

  The point I have been trying to make is precisely that the working of Christian "redemption" (in the broadest sense: how "Jesus saves") was never a "single thought" in Christianity. As far as we can look back (and we can't see any farther than the NT texts) it has always implied a complex network of ideas and images, interpretations and rationalisations, many of which are mutually exclusive if taken dogmatically rather than metaphorically.

  As to Paul and the Hellenistic churches before him and around him (as we can figure them out from the epistles and some other parts of the NT), they do have much in common with contemporary "mystery cults"; not that they simply "copied pagan stuff" as is often suggested, but they represent a similar development of Jewish religious traditions as that which is observed in other religious traditions (which doesn't rule out a few "borrowings" here and there). Old local, ethnical, agrarian deities being vested with a new "Saviour" role for cosmopolitan, elective communities, with a both individual and cosmical view of "salvation," old rites of life and death becoming salvific initiations (like baptism) and mystical communions (like the Eucharist), and so on. More generally NT Christologies draw a lot on earlier Jewish literature, like the "Son of Man" in the book of Enoch, the heavenly Melchizedeq in Qumran, the Wisdom tradition and its blending with the Hellenistic logos in Philo. There is little material in Christianity that cannot be traced back to pre-Christian sources. But that doesn't make the Christian constructions less "original" and "unique"... at least than any other. :)