R ONALD E. C L E M E N T S
b. 1929
LawandPromise
Theological Synopsis
Brevard S. Childs of Yale identified the problems besetting the task of Old Testament theology in his book, Biblical Theology in Crisis (1970). The de- cade of the 197Os, however, rivaled that of the 1950s for the number of Old Testament theologies published as scholars tried to surmount the shortcomings of their predecessors.
Clements’s Old Testament Theology (1978) was subtitled A Fresh Ap p-ouch. The “fresh approach” was introduced by two questions: Who has most utilized the Old Testament and how? The answer to the first ques- tion was two groups, Jews and Christians, for both of whom the Old Testa- ment is Scripture. The answer to the second was that Jews have understood the Old Testament primarily as torah. The Christians have seen it primarily as promise, but for both groups it has been a book of both law and promise. An Old Testament theology, then, might appropri- ately have for its centerpiece the dual notions of law and promise. Dia- logue between Christians and Jews would then be facilitated.
That conclusion was buttressed by another “fresh approach,” namely an examination of the Hebrew form of the canon with its two basic parts:
Law (torah) and Prophets (promise), with the Writings as modulations on the two themes. Clements declared that one should “be critical of any pre- sentation of an Old Testament theology which fails to show clearly the movements which led to the production of a canon of Old Testament scripture” (1976: 131). With attention to the canon, Clements, like Childs, introduced a fresh factor, a lead which continues to be explored.
Such an approach, while underscoring the unity of the Old Testa- ment, cast that unity in a form quite unlike that of Eichrodt’s unity built around the one theme of covenant. Clements was one among an increas-
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ing number who synthesized the Old Testament around two poles in dia- lectical or elliptical fashion (cf. Georg Fohrer’s “rule of God/
communion, ” and Samuel Terrien’s “ethics/esthetics”).
For Clements the Book of Deuteronomy was a key in the canonization process. Moreover, Deuteronomy described itself as torah (Deut 4:44-45)) a term later attached to the Pentateuch and understood as “the compre- hensive list of instructions and stipulations by which Israel’s covenant with God is controlled” (1978: 110). Highlighting Deuteronomy’s theological message in God 2 Chosen Peo@!e (1969)) Clements explained how the people of God, and also God, became a context for law and promise.
Clements proposed that Judah’s seventh century became the context for promise and hope to come to the fore. It was in the Deuteronomic movement and its ambition to reestablish a united Israel, rather than in the postexilic period, that we first see signs of hope and expectation, ac- cording to Clements. The promise factor was large in the prophets, even though, for reasons which Clements lists, critical scholars have not so in- terpreted them. But they well might, says Clements, if they recognized how the New Testament used the Old Testament as promise, as also did intertestamental literature, including Qumran. One should recognize, too, that the original prophets had an openness to further interpretation (cf. Shear-jashub in Isa 7:3; 10:20-23; 1 1:l 1, 16). Moreover, the prophets’
writings may well have been brought together around a theme. From the standpoint of canon, once the prophets were interpreted as promise, so were the books brought alongside them, such as the Psalms and even the Pentateuch. In short, the promise theme, like the theme of law, is perva- sive. and so both are central to the Old Testament.
Konald E. Clements received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Spur- gcon College in London and Christ College in Cambridge, respectively.
Ilis Ph.D. degree is from the University of Sheffield in 1961. He has been a rninister of Baptist churches in Sheffield and Stratford-on-Avon. His ap- pointments included lecturer at New College, Edinburgh (1960-67)) and at the University of Cambridge (1967-83). He is currently the Samuel Davidson Professor of Old Testament at King’s College, University of Lon- don. He has written commentaries, among others, on Exodus, Isaiah l- 30, and Jeremiah.
E.A.M.
b’r-itings by Clements
1969 God’s Chosen People: A Theological Interpretation of the Book of Deuteronomy.
Valley Forge, Pennsylvania: Judson/London: SCM.
1976
1978 1980
One Hundred Years of Old Testament Interpretation. Philadelphia: West- minster. [British edition: A Century of OU Testament Study (Guildford/
London: Lutterworth) .]
Old Testament Theology: A Fresh ApprOach. New Foundations Theological Library. London: Marshall, Morgan 8c Scott/Atlanta: John Knox.
Isaiah and the Deliverance of Jerusalem: A Study of the Interpretation of Prophecy in the Old Testament. Journal for the Study of the Old Testa- ment Supplement 13. Sheffield: JSOT Press.
Ronald E. Clements’s
Approach to Old Testament Theology
Excerpted with permission from Ronald E. Clements, Old Testa- ment Theology: A Fresh Approach (Atlanta: John Knox, 1978), pp. 15-19,201.
The Problem of Old Testament Theology
[II151 All of these factors bring us back to a fundamental consideration about the aim and purpose of an Old Testament theology. It should be concerned to provide some degree of theological insight and significance in relation to the Old Testament literature which we have. This canonical form of the literature represents the ‘norm’, if only in the sense that it rep- resents the way in which the Old Testament is read and interpreted in the Jewish and Christian communities. To probe behind this canonical form is important, and should provide a basis for obtaining a better understanding of it, as also is the way in which this canonical form has subsequently been understood and interpreted in Jewish and Christian tradition. The ques- tions of tradition and canon are interrelated, since the canon of the Old Testament represents a kind of ‘freezing’ of the tradition that was central to Israelite-Jewish religion at a critical moment in its history.
The Old Testament as Canon
All of these considerations lead us to recognise the great importance that attaches to the form, function and concept of the Old Testament as canon. It has therefore been a welcome feature of recent approaches to the problem of biblical theology to have rediscovered the notion of canon as a central feature of the Old Testament, which must be allowed to play its part in the presentation of an Old Testament theology.’ At a very basic level we can see that it is because the Old Testament forms a canon, and is not simply a collection of ancient Near Eastern documents, that we can expect to find in it a ‘theology’, and not just a report of ancient religious ideas. There is a real connection between the ideas of ‘canon’ and ‘the- ology’, for it is the status of these writings as a canon of sacred scripture that marks them out as containing a word of God that is still believed to
1. Cf. B. S. Childs, Biblical Theology in Crisis (1970); J. A. Sanders, Tmah and Cbzon
( 1973); and D. A. Knight (ed.), Tradition and Theology in the Old Testament (1977), pp. 259- 326.
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214 Ronald E. Chnents
be authoritative. There are good reasons, therefore, U16] why it matters a great deal that the historical and literary problems relating to the forma- tion and acceptance of the canon should occupy a place in our discussion.
One point becomes immediately clear, and this is that the date of composition of a document, or writing, in the Old Testament does not, of itself, determine its place in the canon. Similarly where, as is supremely the case in the Pentateuch, there is evidence that a great multitude of sources have been used to create the extant whole, then we are in a r’eal way committed to trying to understand this whole, rather than to elucidat- ing the separate parts.
Perhaps most of all, however, the concern with canon forces us to re- alise that the Old Testament has a distinctive, and in many ways unex- pected, shape. This becomes clearest as soon as we follow out the guideline provided by the Hebrew (Jewish) shape of the canon, which must be accorded full authority as the oldest, and most basic, form of it.
The earliest Christian Church took over the Old Testament in its Greek (Alexandrine) form, whereas the separation between Judaism and Chris- tianity led Judaism to revert exclusively to the Hebrew (Palestinian) form.
In spite of many problems and historical obscurities concerning the way in which the formation of the canon developed in the first century B.C. and in the ensuing century, we may confidently recognise that this Pal’es- tinian form of the canon represents the oldest, and most basic, form of the Old Testament. In this it is made up of three separate parts: the Pen- tateuch, or t&r&, the Prophets (later subdivided into the Former and L,at- ter Prophets), and the Writings. These three parts correspond to three ievels of authority, with the Pentateuch standing at the highest level, the Prophets below this and the Writings further down still. When therefore the New Testament characterises the entire Old Testament as a book of
‘Law’ (Greek nomos translating Hebrew t&&h) this reflects the canonical priority accorded to the Pentateuch. In a similar fashion the characteris- ing of the historical narratives from Joshua to 2 Kings as ‘Prophets’ is not without significance when it comes to understanding them as a whole.
From a literary perspective, enlightened by historical criticism, one feature becomes very marked in regard to the structure U1’711 of the canon. This is that each part contains material from very different ages, spread rather broadly over the period from 1000 B.C. to approximately 200
B.C., or a little later. Age is not of itself therefore a determinative factor in explaining why particular books are in the part of the canon where they are now found.
In addition to this we also discover as a result of source criticism that there are interesting areas of overlap between some of the circles to which we must ascribe authorship of parts of the Pentateuch and Prophets. This
Law and Promise 215
is most evident in regard to the book of Deuteronomy in the Pentateuch and the ‘Deuteronomic’ character of prominent editorial tendencies in the Former and Latter Prophets. Other literary affinities are also to be seen, as for example between some psalms and certain parts of the pro- phetic corpus.
Yet further literary puzzles reveal themselves, for historical-literary criticism shows us that the Pentateuch has in some respects acquired its canonical status in a curious reverse order. There is widespread agree- ment that the book of Deuteronomy, the last book of the Pentateuch, was the first to acquire canonical status, albeit in a somewhat different form from that which it now has. Furthermore it is now widely accepted that it once was joined on to form the first ‘chapter’ of a work which stretched from Deuteronomy to 2 Kings, and thus combined ‘the Law and the Prophets’. The point need not be explored further here, although its con- sequences will be referred to again later. For our immediate concern it is sufficient to note that the canonical shape of the Old Testament cannot be assigned to the result of accident, nor to a simple process of aggrega- tion of documentary material until it formed a massive whole. There is evidently some design and system about the shape that has been accorded to the material.
Our concern at this juncture is to draw attention to the way in which the structure of the canon affects its interpretation. As the canon is prima- rily made up of the Law and the Prophets, so its contents are broadly to be interpreted as either ‘Law’ or ‘Prophecy’. In fact we quickly discover that
‘Law’ is a somewhat inadequate term by which to reproduce the Hebrew t&&h, but a legal connotation is not altogether to be discounted. IT181 So far as interpretation is concerned, we find that the categories of ‘Law’ and
‘Prophecy’ are not rigidly restricted to their separate parts of the canon, but each tends to spill over to affect other parts. Hence we find, for ex- ample, in Matt 11:13 that ‘the Law and the Prophets’ are both said to
‘prophesy’, so that parts of the Pentateuch can be treated as prophecy.
Similarly we find in Mark 223-28, for example, that a narrative from the Former Prophets is made into an affirmation of a ‘law’, or t$rcih. Even more importantly from the point of view of understanding the New Testa- ment use of the Old we find that numerous passages from the Psalms can be treated as prophecy (cf. Acts 2:25-28, etc.). The details of these cate- gories of interpretation need not detain us at this point, since it is sufficient for our purpose to note the way in which the shape which is given to the canon has served to establish an elementary, but significant, basis for interpretation. The literary context inevitably serves to create a basis of ideological context, for the Old Testament was not meant to be read as a collection of independent ‘proof texts’, but as a series of three
216 Ronald E. Ckments Law and Promise 217 great literary wholes. This is in line with the contention we have already
mentioned that scripture should be interpreted by scripture.
Another point also falls to be considered in relation to the canon. If Old Testament theology is intended to be an examination of the theologi- cal significance of the Old Testament as it now exists as a canon, then this supports our view that it should not be a purely historical discipline con- cerned only with the world of ancient Israel and Judaism in which this canon was in process of formation. Rather it must address itself to those religious communities who accept and use this canon as a central feature of their religious life. This points us to both Judaism and Christianity as the religious communities who can be expected to concern themselves with the Old Testament as theology.
In this light we cannot remain altogether indifferent to the liturgical use made of the Old Testament within these communities. This, too, pro- vides part of the context in which the Old Testament is understood. It is inevitable that the situation in worship in which the Old Testament is read, as well as the El911 particular choice and ordering of it, play a part in its being heard as the word of God. The ‘I and Thou’ of scripture be- come readily identifiable with the ‘I and Thou’ of worship in which God addresses man and vice versa, and it is of the utmost importance that the theological justification for this identification should be considered. We cannot tolerate a divorce between theology and liturgy, and we cannot therefore be indifferent to the way in which the Old Testament is used li- turgically. A very clear example of this need for a theological reflection upon liturgical use is provided by the Psalter and its extensive employ- ,ment in Christian worship.
However, the issue does not end there, but affects the whole use of the Old Testament, as is most strikingly exemplified by the use of ‘messi- anic’ prophecies in Christian Advent services. A wide range of theological questions are raised, which relate to the canonical form and use of the Old Testament. We cannot in consequence leave the question of the canon out of reckoning in an Old Testament theology. On the contrary, it is precisely the concept of canon that raises questions about the authority of the Old Testament, and its ability to present us with a theology which can still be meaningful in the twentieth century. If we restrict oursellves solely to reading the Old Testament as an ancient text, and endeavour to hear in it nothing that the ancient author could not have intended, then we should be denying something of the tradition which asserts that God has continued to speak to his people through it. In reality we do not need to insist on such a rigidly historicising approach, if we believe that the Old Testament does present us with a revelation of the eternal God.
Synopsis of Clements’s Old Testament Theology: A Fresh Approach (1978)
The problem of Old Testament Theology l-25
Dimensions of faith in the Old Testament 26-52
The God of Israel 53-78
The people of God 79-103
The Old Testament as law 104-130
The Old Testament as promise 131-154
The Old Testament and the history of religion 155-178 The Old Testament and the study of theology 179-200
Law and Promise 219
Ronald E. Clements on Law and Promise
Excerpted with permission from Ronald E. Clements, Old Testu- m.ent Theology: A Fresh Approach (Atlanta: John Knox, 1978), pp. 104-10, 140-50, 153-54,203,205.
The Old Testament as Law
El041 We remarked in considering the problems of method associated with the writing of an Old Testament theology that it is of great impor- tance to the subject that it should take fully into account the nature of the Old Testament as literature. 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 struc- ture 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 inter- preters of the Old Testament have set about their task, with the indica- tions 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 that of ‘law’, or more precisely t&-& since the question of how far ‘law’ is a very satisfactory translation of the Hebrew t&-kh remains to be considered. Cer- tainly it raises the question of what kind of law, and what legal authority and sanctions it may be thought to possess.’
In the New Testament a quotation from Ps 82:6 is said to be written
‘in your law’ (John 10:34). Thus even the third part of the Old Testament canon, the Writings, could, by a kind of extension, be regarded as falling within ‘the Law’. Evidently the priority and importance of the first part of the canon was felt to be such that it carried over to affect other parts also.
11051 Certainly we readily discover other indications that this was so for the Prophets. In Mark 2:25-26 we find the citation of an incident regard-
1. For the understanding of the Old Testament as law, see P. Grelot, I,e .senzs chritien de I’Ancien Testament (Bibliotheque de Th6okgie Vol. 3) (Tournai, 1962)) pp. 167-208.
ing David and the eating of the Bread of the Presence which is recorded in 1 Sam 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 t6nih-law. Nor is this approach a uniquely Christian one, or we find very strikingly that it pervades almost completely the mainstream of Jewish interpretation of the Old Testament. The Mish- nah, and later the Talmud, are full of citation and interpretative comment upon the Old Testament which regard it as t&cih.
Certainly we cannot put aside this fundamental category by which post-Old Testament Jewish and Christian interpreters of this literature have set about understanding it as though it were imposed upon it en- tirely from outside. We have already noted that the literary structure of the Old Testament supports such a pattern of interpretation by its three- tier ordering of the canon. From a literary point. of view the Old Testa- ment is tc%h, and the fact that it contains a great deal else in addition to this, has to be understood in some kind of relationship to this t6nih struc- ture.2 What has evidently happened is that the concept of a t&&h litera- ture has been used to provide some element of co-ordination and unity to a very varied collection of writings. It offers a unifying guideline, or motif, which has served to impose some degree of order upon what would other- wise be a rather strange miscellany of writings.
As we move further away in time from the editorial and redactional ac- tivity which has shaped the Old Testament into its present form, so we tend to find that the assumption that it is all t6nih has tended to become more and more dominating in its effect upon the way in which the material is Lmderstood. [106] More diverse elements tend to become submerged un- der the weight of conviction that all the literature is t&rtih. At least this is so in respect of Jewish interpretation, since we find that in the mainstream of (Christian exegesis a rather different category came to predominate. This is that of ‘promise’, which we must discuss later. In considering the structure of the Old Testament, therefore, we find ourselves facing a number of questions about its role as t6dz. How far is this category endemic to the lit- erature itself, and how far is it simply a structural framework, lightly built around writings of a more diverse character? Secondly, if we find that the
2. Cf. J. A. Sanders, Torah and Canon (1973).
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