Chapter 1: Heideggers Existential Analytic and Bonhoeffers
Theological Appropriation
Memory and Authority
After making this argument from the text of Scripture, we want
to navigate contemporary philosophical and theological sources in
order to answer more specific questions. First, this part of the
paper will briefly introduce the broad strokes of Martin Heideggers
understanding on human nature as necessarily historical. Second,
Robert Brandoms treatment of historicist rationality will provide
resources for putting stricter contours on Heideggers account.
Third, we will employ this framework gleaned from Heidegger and
Brandom to analyze contemporary theological sources: Nicholas
Wolterstorff, Kevin Vanhoozer, and Daniel Treier. These
philosophers and theologians will not overturn or significantly
alter the conclusions gleaned from Deuteronomy, but rather they
will specify and clarify its claims.Part I: Ancient Authority:
Deuteronomy on MemoryI am the Lord your God, who brought you out of
the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no
other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol,
whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is
on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You
shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God
am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents,
to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me, but
showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who
love me and keep my commandments. You shall not make wrongful use
of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit
anyone who misuses his name. Observe the sabbath day and keep it
holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor
and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord
your God; you shall not do any workyou, or your son or your
daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey,
or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so
that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember
that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God
brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched
arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath
day. Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God
commanded you, so that your days may be long and that it may go
well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You
shall not murder. Neither shall you commit adultery. Neither shall
you steal. Neither shall you bear false witness against your
neighbor. Neither shall you covet your neighbors wife. Neither
shall you desire your neighbors house, or field, or male or female
slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your
neighbor.[footnoteRef:1] [1: Deuteronomy 5:6-21 nrsv (all
translation from nrsv unless otherwise noted). We present these
passages without verse divisions in order to present them in a form
closer to the original. That is, the text should be read as a
continuous whole rather than as a sequence of one-liners to be
cherry-picked; verse divisions have been helpful in easily
referencing passages, but they have been deleterious in
hermeneutics, as they encourage reading verses outside of their
literary context.]
Note that interspersed throughout the commandments are various
commentaries that describe the rationale for the commandments.
First, verses 6 and 7 highlight Gods uniquenessHis holiness.
Second, verses 9, 10, and 16 integrate life and well-being for both
the individual and the generations to follow. Third, in verses 6,
14 and 15 we read the precedence for the entire the Decalogue: God
brought them from Egypt; He claimed them as His people; and He,
therefore, is the lord of their newly formed (national) identity.
In other words, this passage links the commandments to various
other concepts and ideas familiar to Israel: representing Gods
holiness (Genesis 1:26f), the link between obedience and life
(Genesis 3:3), and the tradition of Gods history with, and promise
to, the children of Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3). In other words, the
full importance of the Decalogue cannot be separated from these
related themes.We see that happening here for Israel. Gods
historyas the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as the God who
brought them out of Egyptis here drawing upon ancient Near Eastern
legal language and putting it to work to explicate the meanings of
that divine history. In other words, the manifestation of God here
does not take the form of a timeless, eternal deposit of truths
that take on a cultural incarnation. Rather, the text presents
itself as a history and a tradition and should be understood in
those terms. From this we can see a general warrant for likewise
subsuming contemporary ideas to that tradition, so long as
conceptual coherence is sustained.Recall that three elements of
rationale emerged in the intratextual commentary on the
commandments. Regarding the holiness of Scripture, John Webster
wants to navigate between two extremes, two disorders, as he calls
them. By one disorder, Scripture has been separated from its place
in its reception by the community of faith. The other disorder goes
the other extreme and understands Scripture solely by virtue of its
use.[footnoteRef:2] Accordingly, his account seeks to understand
Scripture as simultaneously a reference to the very human process
of writing, canonization, and interpretation while also referring
to the divine grace by which God sanctifies those processes for His
purposes. This appeal to sanctification may strike some as
exclusive focus on the supernatural but he disallows that reading:
Talk of the biblical texts as Holy Scripture thus indicates a
two-fold conviction. On the one hand, the texts are not simply
natural entities. On the other hand, the texts place in the divine
economy does not entail their withdrawal from the realm of human
processes.[footnoteRef:3] By this understanding of sanctification,
Webster wants to fall between the two extremes; humans truly do
write, canonize, and interpret Scripture, but saying that humans
are active by no means excludes saying that God is also active in
the same processes. [2: John Webster, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic
Sketch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 6.] [3:
Webster, Holy Scripture, 27, italics original.]
The comparison obviously fails on some levels, but the main
point shows that Klemick can write speaking for me, and I can write
speaking for him. The tradition of human response to divine grace
often works in a similar form, especially in the cases of prophetic
authorization. The initial giving of the Decalogue exemplifies this
well. God spoke to Moses and Aaron so that they would in turn speak
on Gods behalf to Israel. Often, this would come in the form of God
giving Moses specific messages to take to Israel; other times, the
sermons of Deuteronomy for example, Moses would speak of his own
choice of words but led by what God had explicitly said.The
structure of the Decalogue exemplifies this scope of obedience,
first and foremost to God and then by repercussions to all of
familial, social, and personal life. Verses 6-11 all pertain to
Israels relationship to God; verses 12-16 thematically segue
between relationship toward God and natural relationships; and
verses 18-21 begin with the waw-conjunction, showing that 17-21
textually belong together as a unity, briefly stating norms for a
functional faithful society, with 21 cutting past externally
visible actions and even commanding against specific intentions.
You shall not make for yourself an idol. Where the first
commandment tells Israel to remember that the Lord, rather than
other national gods, rescued them, this one warns them not to
forget that the Lord, rather than their own innovated deities,
rescued them. They are to keep themselves from other nations gods
and from those they might invent. Rather, they are to consistently
represent God as His priestly kingdom.But the seventh day is a
sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any workyou, or your
son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or
your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in
your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as
you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt. Here the
faithful representation of God links up with the tradition of
divine grace. God redeemed them from Egypt so that they might rest
and flourish. Thus, they are to also treat their own slaves,
livestock, and children with the grace shown to them; as they are
now in a position of power, they are to remember that they had been
overpowered and oppressed. Thus, they are to emulate the grace of
God rather than the powers from which He saved them.You shall not
murder. Neither shall you commit adultery. Neither shall you steal.
Neither shall you bear false witness against your neighbor. Neither
shall you covet your neighbors wife. Neither shall you desire your
neighbors house, or field, or male or female slave, or ox, or
donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. This grace
learned and fostered in the family unity then extends to other
social and judicial relationships. Relating to God and representing
Him require consistent fidelity in word and deed, not only in the
temple or in the family but also in the full scope in interpersonal
relationships. As an exegetical point, not that these verses all
appear with conjunctions to link them; they are to be read, heard,
and understood as a united network of commands. However, note that
the final commandment presses obedience past external performance.
Ending on this note rings the chord by which they are to understand
the depth of true obedience. Let no mistake be made: Gods
commandments extend not only to word and deed but even to thought
and desire. Jesus Sermon on the Mount famously accentuated this
dynamic of the Torah. He did not, as some read it, radicalize the
commandments regarding murder, adultery, and so on. Rather, he
reminded them of an inchoate motif undergirding the entire
Decalogue and prophetic movement: obedience cannot merely be
performed. To put it in contemporary terms, obedience has an
existential meaning rather than a behaviorist one.This explicates
in tandem the motifs of holiness and life by way of appealing to
the tradition of Gods grace to Israel. But this explication so far
does not yet say how Israel is expected to norm itself to that
tradition. For this, we keep reading.Deuteronomy 6: Holy History
and Traditioned Thought
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with
all your soul, and with all your might. As if the final line of the
Decalogue were not clear enough about the depth of what obedience
means, this reinforces the point. Following that track of
Augustinian psychology, some have read heart, soul, and might here
as evidence for a tripartite structure to the human person. While
it could be read as implying that, such a reading loses sight of
the rhetorical force of the three terms. First, heart (lev) refers
first and foremost to the deepest corners of the human person, her
desires, drives, and fundamental orientation toward life. Or,
allowing for a philosophers idiosyncrasies, this could be read to
mean with all your being. Second, soul (nephesh) means the life of
the creature,[footnoteRef:11] so this clause most likely means to
love God with all ones life.[footnoteRef:12] Another angle on the
term is that nephashim are often described in terms of needy
creatures.[footnoteRef:13] We cannot derive from the text that
Moses had this connotation in mind, but allowing ourselves to see
it as within the network of the terms meaning, this clause can be
read to say with all your passions, needs, and desires. Therefore,
we could justifiable read this as meaning with all you seek. Third,
might (meod) leaves translators scratching their heads. The word is
only once elsewhere[footnoteRef:14] used as a noun but is elsewhere
always used as an adjective or adverb, denoting fullness or
abundance.[footnoteRef:15] Accordingly, Daniel I. Block opts for
translating meod as resources.[footnoteRef:16] Bringing these
translation choices together, we might see the full force of Moses
meaning by interpreting the verse as You are to love ywhw with your
full existence: all you seek and all you posses. [11: Animals are
often likewise described as nephesh. See Genesis 1:20, 21, and 24.]
[12: See Genesis 19:17 for this use.] [13: Brown-Driver-Briggs
offers seat of the appetites (46 times) as a possible translation,
with appetites here meaning needs (especially, hunger) as well as
desires. Seat of emotions and passions also appears (151) times.]
[14: 2 Kings 23:25, which mimics the language here.] [15: For
example, Genesis 1:31: . . . it was very good.] [16: Daniel I.
Block, The Gospel according to Moses: Theological and Ethical
Reflections on the Book of Deuteronomy (Eugene: Cascade Books,
2012), 92.]
The childrens question presumes knowledge of the Torah, but when
they ask the second-order question of why; they are asking the
rationale of normative force of these commandments. As Moses
accordingly articulates the answer to this question of authority,
the meaning and content thereof are fully expressed in terms of
what God has done and so what they do in response. The particular
acts of God and the particular responses of His people establish a
chain of normative beliefs, which the Torah succinctly states in a
pedagogical form so that the cultural memory can be passed on and
normative for future generations.Part II: Recent MemoryIn the
preceding two sections, we argued from Deuteronomy 5 and 6 that
Moses treats the history of Gods dealings with the ancestors as
definitive of Israels existence and thus the meaning of the Torahs
authority. To conclude this chapter, we want to take this basic
impulse as our guide for the conceptual architecture we build
around the theological matter of authority for contemporary use.
But as is, the text is not terribly specific as to how we are to
carry out that sense of authority. To thus clarify our use of this
authority in this sense, we will turn to Heidegger and Brandom to
explicate deeper elements of the logic behind the account we have
been simultaneously developing and employing. To conclude, we will
revisit Vanhoozers and Treiers writings. Vanhoozers account with
the adaptations suggested above will provide the larger basic
framework, and Treier (in conversation with Heidegger and Brandom)
will provide us more specific detail and an example of this model
at work. Heritage and Historical RationalityThese themes become
sharpened in Being and Time with his understanding of
heritage:[footnoteRef:22] [22: We will footnote definitions of
technical terms here to shortcut to the main points of the
claim.]
Now it would be inappropriate to read authenticity
anachronistically into Moses sermon, but the parallels between
Heideggers heritage and the catechesis in Deuteronomy deserves
comment. For Heideggers authenticity, one does not emulate a role
model in the sense of living according to a literal rote repetition
of all that role model says and does. Rather, one models ones life
on the basic drives and rationale that governed that role models
life. That is, one critically appropriates not the role models life
but the norms by which the role model lived. In a similar fashion,
Moses exhorts parents to teach their children the Torah and the
meaning of the Torahwhy they should live according to those
testimonies and statutes. But, one may ask, what warrants a proper
appropriation of a role model, or in Israels case the Torah and its
tacit logic of priestly existence? What are the guides by which
this process keeps from devolving into cherry picking from
historical precedence and adapting it at whim?Again, without
reading inferentialism back into Moses sermon on the Decalogue, we
see sufficient similarity between Brandom and the logic of 6:20-23
that Brandoms descriptions illuminate the rationale employed in
Deuteronomys catechesis. The past expressions of Gods commitment
to, and redemption of, Israel elicit particular responses and
judgments that then set the norms for future theological judgments.
Without appeal to eternal, (i.e. ahistorical) truth, Moses directs
attention to Gods particular promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
as manifested in the particular act of release from slavery. These
past particulars in turn set no explicit rules for future judgment.
However, traditioned thought can study the history in such a way as
to uncover the tacit norms for future uses and adaptations of the
prior judgments.Second, Moses switches the commandments about
coveting. In Exodus 20 You shall not covet your neighbors house
precedes You shall not covet your neighbors wife, but in
Deuteronomy the latter appears first. We can only speculate as to
the reason, but the following seems likely: the Exodus version
misled Israelites to thinking that the house was to prioritized
over the house, so Moses switched the order later so that the
underlying norm that persons take priority over possession
manifests more clearly.What concerns us now is whether we can
cohere post-biblical theological development under this rubric. For
this, we return to topics usually not discussed in studies of
method but rather reserved for historical theology.Divine
Discourse, Drama, and the Regula FideiThe tension in Wolterstorffs
account pertains to his theory of meaning. As his basis, he adopts
J. L. Austins speech act theory, which makes distinctions between
the locution (the utterance), the illocution (what is done by the
utterance), and the perlocution (what effect the illocution has on
ones audience),[footnoteRef:33] to argue that speaking is doing
something. As per the tension in his account, on the one hand,
early on he makes the distinction between revelation and discourse:
Speaking consists . . . in taking up a normative
stance,[footnoteRef:34] and on the other hand, he claims that
sentences of a language have meaningthat they come with
meanings.[footnoteRef:35] So, as per meaning, it is unclear on
Wolterstorffs account whether the normative stance or sentential
meaning carries the meaning of a given utterance. Later, he writes
that literality and metaphoricity are a matter of use rather than
of meaning,[footnoteRef:36] but never does he clarify this
separation of use and meaning. In other words, he makes the
relationship between an agents normative stance toward a sentence
and its consequent effect of meaning rather ambiguous. On the one
hand, he acknowledges that utterances take place within speech
acts, so that we are to understand what the person is doing with
what they say, which would seem to imply that meaning is
constituted at least partly by use. On the other hand, the two
citations above separate the two. [33: J. L. Austin, How to Do
Things with Words, ed. J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbis (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1975), 94-101.] [34: Nicholas
Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the
Claim that God Speaks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995), 35, italics original.] [35: Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse,
140, italics original.] [36: Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse, 193,
italics original.]
We can clarify this relationship by making the following move.
We can understand meaning, not as an entity whether metaphysical or
ideal, but as a process of understanding or more specifically as
the conclusion of that process. That is, we want to understand
meaning not as a property of texts but as a function of the
linguistically adept reader as she reads the text. This pushes
meaning into the locus of interaction between reader and text, so
that neither authors nor readers need to die.[footnoteRef:44] With
such a minor modification, to which we presume both would assent,
we can navigate their respective commitments and concerns. On one
hand, Derrida would reject a reader-takes-all
hermeneutic.[footnoteRef:45] On the other hand, Wolterstorff
concedes that a sentence or text can have multiple
meanings.[footnoteRef:46] Wolterstorff wants to preserve some
objectivity for meaning against what he sees as a dangerously
constructivist treatment of the text, a violence against
authors.[footnoteRef:47] As located between reader and
author,[footnoteRef:48] we can say that both must achieve specific
statuses in order for meaning to arise. As per the reader, this
requires a specific form of rationality such that she can see
markings or hear sounds and understand them to be part of another
rational agents attempts to communicate. Accordingly, so also must
the writer construct those markings in such as way that she might
reasonably expect a literate person to understand them as attempts
at communication. For example, I can say nice weather, right? with
variant possible meanings; said during a storm the utterance is a
joke, but said during blue skies its an adoration of beauty.
However, sejskdidsj cannot be taken to mean anything, because no
one could be expected to recognize those markings as a pattern of
agential-intellectual content. [44: An allusion to Roland Barthes
oft-quoted and oft-misread [T]he birth of the reader must be at the
cost of the death of the Author. (Roland Barthes, Image Music Text,
ed. and trans. Stephen Heath [London: HarperCollins, 1977], 148).]
[45: See Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press,
1976), 158-164.] [46: Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse, 173.] [47:
Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse, 169.] [48: Wolterstorff would grant
this move of meanings locus: Interpretation occurs in the space
between a scores specifications and its realizations (Divine
Discourse, 176).]
Moreover, this modification to Wolterstorffs account bring us
closer to Vanhoozers description of Christian doctrine in terms of
a divine drama, which perhaps carries the text-score metaphor
farther but by way of a drama metaphor instead. According to his
Drama-of-Redemption approach, we should interpret Scripture not
propositionally but primarily in terms of the story God scripts in
Scripture: we live and breath in Act 4: after creation (Act 1), law
(Act 2), and incarnation (Act 3) but before consummation (Act
5).[footnoteRef:50] So for Vanhoozer, he takes what God is doing
with his divine perloctionsScripturemore consistently than
Wolterstorff does by situating those speech acts within the larger
trajectory of the canonical story that God is writing. We agree
with Vanhoozer in his theological impulse to prioritize the story
over the proposition, but we take speech act theory to employ
unnecessary distinctions, thereby making a robust account of how
discourse functions problematic. (We gather that, on a tacit level,
the distinction between locution and perlocution facilitated the
use and meaning separation that led to a tension in Wolterstorffs
account.) Now, one should know that Vanhoozer generally develops
his position with reference to speech act theory[footnoteRef:51]
but does not require it: Look Ma: no speech acts![footnoteRef:52]
Thus, we will not treat it as essential to Vanhoozers core theory.
[50: Kevin Vanhoozer, The Drama-of-Redemption Model in Four Views
on Moving Beyond the Bible to Theology, ed. Stanley M. Gundry and
Gary T. Meadors (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), 174.] [51: See his
Is There Meaning in this Text?: The Bible, The Reader, and the
Morality of Literary Knowledge (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), 10;
First Theology: God, Scripture and Hermeneutics (Downers Grove:
IVP, 2002), 8; and The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic
Approach to Christian Theology (Lousvill: Westminster John Knox
Press, 2005), 44, n. 31.] [52: Vanhoozer, The Drama-of-Redemption,
184, n. 75. See also Is There Meaning in this Text?, 6.]
The question before us now is whether Vanhoozers account can be
brought under the basic impulses of the picture developed from
Heidegger and Brandom and if so how that would amend the
theological use of their analyses. First of all, we should note
that despite the dominance of the drama metaphor, Vanhoozer
explicitly shows that history and participation in that history are
in fact the operative drives of his work: What the church seeks to
understand is a true story: the history of Gods dealings with his
creatures. . . . Going beyond the Bible biblically is ultimately a
matter of participating in the great drama of
redemption.[footnoteRef:53] Notice how he unpacks the metaphor; as
noted above the drama is already underway before we enter into it.
Accordingly, this is not a play or performance that we initiate and
direct. Rather, God has already begun directing history and invited
His people to participate in the work. Such is a meaning of being a
priestly kingdom and a holy nation. Israel was to embody and
exemplify yhwh to the neighboring peoples and thereby take part in
the history God directs. Likewise, New Testament Christians
continue that same trajectory and history of participating in the
history as priests to the nations. Put otherwise, God created a
world and invites us to be His image in its midst as participants
in His redemption of it: The world of the text . . . is in fact a
description of the way the world really is and is
becoming.[footnoteRef:54] Or, to adapt language from Heidegger
cited above, the world has been undone and, like the selves who
navigate it, receives its unity through what it ought to become.
[53: Vanhoozer, A Drama-of-Redemption model, 155f, italics added.]
[54: Vanhoozer, A Drama-of-Redemption model, 168.]
For Treier, the Rule opens various readings yet also constrains
them: [R]eading with the Rule of Faith elicits creative
interpretationswithin limits.[footnoteRef:58] To provide an example
of this, he draws from David Yeagos treatment of homoousion [of one
being] as neither deduced from nor imposed on the text but
describing a pattern of judgments present in the
text.[footnoteRef:59] What he means by that is that when the early
church theologians were navigating between the high Christology of
Philippians 2:6-11[footnoteRef:60] and the traditional monotheism
of Judaism as crystallized in Deuteronomy 6:4,[footnoteRef:61] they
appealed to Isaiah 45:22-23.[footnoteRef:62] By linking Philippians
2:6-11 to Isaiah 45:22-23, the Nicene theologians concluded that
the line to the glory of God the Father demonstrated that Jesus and
God were not in conflict for supremacy as competing deities but
rather that God the Father is most glorified precisely through the
confession of Jesus Christ as Lord. From this they concluded a
pattern within Judaic faith that warranted a bond between the Risen
Jesus and the God of Israel. Accordingly the judgment to declare
Jesus as homoousion with the Father fits within the pattern of
judgments warranted by the text. [58: Daniel J. Treier, Introducing
Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Recovering a Christian
Practice (Grand Rapids: Baker Aademic, 2008), 60.] [59: David S.
Yeago, The New Testament and the Nicene Dogma: A Contribution to
the Recovery of Theological Exegesis, in The Theological
Interpretation of Scripture: Classic and Contemporary Readings, ed.
Stephen E. Fowl (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 88, quoted in Treier,
Theological Interpretation of Scripture, 60.] [60: [Jesus Christ],
though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form
of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human
form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of
deatheven death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name
of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under
the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is
Lord, to the glory of God the Father.] [61: Hear, O Israel: The
Lord is our God, the Lord alone.] [62: Turn to me and be saved, all
the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other. By
myself I have sworn, from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness
a word that shall not return: To me every knee shall bow, every
tongue shall swear. ]
In this way, the Nicene theologians subordinated not only
personal life but even the traditions that in part defined their
lives. They, therefore, demonstrated traditioned thought in a way
that lived out the authority of Scripture over their lives, even
unto dominating and regulating traditions beyond the text of
Scripture and its post-biblical heritage, to which they
subordinated extra-biblical traditions. That is, they saw the
particular judgments of past saints as they responded to particular
acts of grace. They then deciphered the norm at work in that and
related judgments, appropriating that as the standardthe Rule of
Faithaccording to which they determined the propriety of their own
judgments, a hermeneutical practice that dates back to Moses
Deuteronomy sermons.
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