martes, 27 de marzo de 2012

La Biblia y la Semana Santa

Cuando Pablo quiere resumir todos los compromisos, sacrificios y bondades de Jesús dice simplemente “sed imitadores de Cristo”. Esta idea puede sugerir puntos de vista para discutir sobre la relación de Jesús con las fiestas religiosas de su día.
Jesús, según los sinópticos, viajó una sola vez a Jerusalén para estar presente en la fiesta de la pascua (Mt. 26; Mr. 14 y Lc. 22) colocando el énfasis en el significado teológico de su muerte en cumplimiento a las Escrituras del Antiguo Testamento. Lucas 9:51 declara que “Cuando se cumplió el tiempo en que él había de ser recibido arriba, afirmó su rostro para ir a Jerusalén”, con el resultado que los lectores del Evangelio conocemos.

Juan en cambio presenta tres fiestas de la pascua (Jn. 2:13-17; 6:4 y 11:55) las tres tienen relación al argumento del libro si bien Jesús parece ir a Jerusalén solo en la primera y la tercera (bajo la primera pascua se menciona el vino y el templo; hay un discurso del templo y saca a los cambistas; se haya en compañía de los doce; en la segunda pascua se menciona su sangre y su carne; hay un discurso en la sinagoga (6:59) y los discípulos curiosos se alejan mientras él está acompañado de los doce; en la tercera visita no hay eucaristía sino el ofrecimiento literal de su carne y de su sangre, hay un discurso en el aposente alto y Judas le traiciona si bien el está acompañado de los once).
Jesús no recomendó explícitamente la celebración de la pascua o de fiesta judía alguna pero los apóstoles entendieron que sus reuniones eran una jubilosa celebración constante cuyo centro era la cena del Señor como resumen de todo lo acontecido a Jesús (pasión muerte y resurrección) en cumplimiento de las Escrituras (Hch. 2:42; 1 Co. 11:26; 15:3-8).
El calendario religioso de hoy nos presenta oportunidades para pensar de manera más profunda nuestra fe. Algunos aprovechan esta fecha concienzudamente reconociendo su deuda ante Dios. Otros, toman ocasión de ello de forma proporcional a la indiferencia a Dios que tienen en la vida diaria; si la persona no ha alineado su vida (metanoia o conversión) al paradigma de vida de Jesús, se le ocurre más urgente aprovechar la sazón del año para el paroxismo religioso; aun otros simplemente ignoran las fechas lo cual es en todo caso más consecuente.
Esto nos plantea tres actitudes, la del religioso ocasional, la del hombre de fe y la del ateo práctico. Nadie puede señalar a otro y clasificarlo en categoría alguna. Esto es algo que queda para el fuero interno ya que solo Dios puede, por decirlo así “sacar o poner gente en el cielo”.  Los demás debemos estar ocupados por los frutos que mostramos ya que el único signo que Jesús mismo sugirió fue “por sus frutos los conoceréis”, en el contexto del Sermón de Monte, del amor a Dios y al prójimo y del reino de Dios y su justicia (Mt. 5:18 cp. 6:33).
Quienes durante las celebraciones de Semana Santa participan activamente en los servicios religiosos no siempre lo hacen como señal de conversión, de comunión con Dios y de amor a él. Algunos lo hacen, sin articularlo así, con el propósito de vivir según el delicado equilibrio: “el que peca y reza empata”. En este caso no es la informalidad o asimetría de las “travesuras humanas” lo que hace pagana a esta expresión sino su total ignorancia o irreverencia a la persona de Dios, su santidad, sus demandas y su justicia ampliamente explicadas en la revelación.
Por tanto, la mejor forma de vivir los días de la semana santa es “siendo imitadores de Cristo”.  La metanoia o cambio de vida como el paradigma de Jesús para sus discípulos consiste en hacer discípulos que son como él (Mt.  28:18-20), que guardan todas las cosas que él nos ha mandado.

lunes, 19 de marzo de 2012

The Failure of Form Critical Studies

A Text Needs a Context.--The background of biblical criticism, in general, developed on what can be considered a category mistake on the part of seventeen and eighteen century Bible apprentices. They did not have the theological expertise to process biblical contexts or concepts so they engaged in the task of interpretation based merely on their ability as intelligent Bible readers. For them, contradictions were easy to spot following the thought that any general idea in one passage (love, justice, peace, victory) could find its opposite in another passage (vengeance, destruction, war, or defeat). For many, that naïve operation was enough to disregard what they read, besides rendering a decisive service to mankind by unmasking Christianity and its faulty Bible. In those days, it was not clear what is clear today among Bible interpreters “who know that their exegesis will find appreciation only if it follows the axiom that a particular phrase will be understood starting with its context”.[1] 

Professor Claus Westermann (1909-2002), noted Old Testament scholar at Hidelberg University, expands: “This way of looking and understanding the Old Testament, by contexts and in the course of history, had as a result that it was no longer possible to confront the Old Testament, with the New Testament reduced to a single concept: for example,  the Old Testament speaks of the God of anger and the New of the God of kindness; the Old is the Law and the New is the Gospel; the Old Testament’s salvation is earthly, while in the New Testament’s is about spiritual things. For this reason, neither can generalizations be made using a definition—in itself correct—of the content of both Testaments as ‘promise’ and ‘fulfillment’, respectively, considering that all the Old Testament consists of promise and all the New Testament consists of fulfillment”.[2]

The approaches by which biblical contexts and history have been considered are the battleground of biblical studies. There is a rejection of both biblical affirmations and their history when general categories are contrasted without due attention to their literary context. By the same token, the same is true when “pericopes”, “sayings” or “words”, are selected and atomized without any regard for the historical or literary context, looking not for a message but for a speculative situation of their composition. This sort of operative action overtook practitioners of form criticism. Fortunately, biblical studies have evolved indeed, but the assessment of the epoch’s contributions to theology has been in itself “socially slow”. Professor William R. Farmer, an expert on sources in the Gospels has expressed: “The fact that an idea which is highly questionable is nevertheless widely believed or assented to is not new. What may be new to some is the demonstrable fact that ideas which could be grossly false can gain acceptance and credence in the highest intellectual circles and councils of the modern west under the guise of being the assured result of criticism”.[3]  I am convinced that this is the case of form criticism and its extension, historical criticism.


[1] Claus Westerman, El Antiguo Testamento y Jesucristo, 66
[2] Ibid., 67
[3] William R. Farmer, The Synoptic Problem: A Critical Analysis, vii

lunes, 12 de marzo de 2012

Another one Bites the Dust: The Jesus Seminar

Professor Rudolph Bultmann died thirty-five years ago on the 30th of July of 1976. He died believing he had rendered a good service to the faith. After all, his approach to New Testament Christianity was far more personal and less humanistic than Harnack’s universal brotherhood of man and paternity of God. Bultmann was closer to Karl Barth, the great twentieth century reformer of old German liberalism. He proposed demythologizing as an approach to settle all questions about the place of Jesus in modern understanding of faith. 

His proposal was made at a time when his mentors did not leave him any other alternative. John’s Gospel had been rejected by D. Strauss as a source to know Jesus; the Gospels of Matthew and Luke had been rejected by Weisse and Wilke; the Gospel of Mark, also, had been rejected by Wrede and Schmidt. ¿So what was left? In a world full of uncertainty, there is no other way but to renounce the Historical Jesus and embrace the Christ of faith, “produced by the early church” as the only thing left that matters.

But the preference for the church’s kerygma over Jesus’ history has been more lethal than is commonly understood. For one thing, it has bluntly amputated the Jesus kerygma by adopting a “later version” of it, held as a natural development of New Testament studies and, therefore, as something that should be discussed but cannot be modify. As a result, Bultmannian formgeschigte or form criticism enjoys the status of a final scientific method, as a prevalent hypothesis, to glean whatever historicity, if any, may be found in the Gospels. Thus, it has granted authority to doubt and its right to be expressed not as a result of the history of modern thought but as if it were, first and foremost, an outcome of the study of the New Testament sources. Let it be said clearly, it is not a philological endeavor but a philosophical one, and this should be clear from the outset. 

What is needed is the courage to put in brackets this part of the history of New Testament research and deal with it not as its historical and rational development suggests, but as its cross section analysis demands. Unfortunately, the Jesus Seminar instead of revising the presuppositions of Bultmannism has fallen prey of its methodology.