Biblical Faith and Natural Theology This Page Intentionally Left Blank Biblical Faith and Natural Theology

Biblical Faith and Natural Theology This page intentionally left blank Biblical Faith and Natural Theology TheGiffordLecturesfor1991 Delivered in the University of Edinburgh James Barr CLARENDON PRESS · OXFORD Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © James Barr 1993 First published in paperback 1994 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographcs rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Biblical faith and natural theology: the Gifford lectures for 1991, delivered in the University of Edinburgh/James Barr. (The Gifford lectures for 1991) Includes bibliographical references. 1. Natural theology. 2. Bible—Theology. 3. Barth, Karl 1886–1968: I. Title. II. Series: Gifford lectures; 1991. BL182.B34 1993 231'.042—dc20 ISBN 0–19–826376–7 For Catherine, Allan, and Stephen This page intentionally left blank Preface It goes without saying that it was a great honour to be invited by the University of Edinburgh to deliver the Gifford Lectures. I am deeply grateful to the University for that honour, and also for the kindness and generous hospitality with which my wife and I were received and entertained. But beyond that my sense is of the intense pleasure that it was for me to be back in Edinburgh for the period of the lectures. I was an Edinburgh boy (though, admittedly, born in Glasgow!) and all my education was in Edinburgh. The year in which I was Gifford Lecturer, 1991, was a significant one for me, for it was exactly fifty years earlier, in 1941, that I entered the University as a student in classics. I left again, after one year, for wartime service, but that was meaningful also, for when I returned in 1945 I was to be in the same second year of classics as Jane, who is my beloved wife. I was never a student elsewhere: I did indeed some studies in other places, but was never a registered student except in Edinburgh. So all that I know I learned there, or else invented it myself later on, out of a native Scottish ingenuity that had been fostered there. One other anniversary: it was in 1961, just thirty years earlier, that my first book, The Semantics of Biblical Language, was published, at the end of my six years as professor in Edinburgh. Our friendships in Edinburgh are so numerous and deep that it is difficult to make adequate acknowledgement. It was a special pleasure, at the first lecture and others, to see Professor Norman Porteous, who had been my first teacher in Hebrew and whose colleague I was later to become. I was delighted by the attendance at the lectures of many from a large variety of academic fields—from medicine, the sciences, social studies, philosophy, and classics, among others—just the situation, of course, that the Gifford Lectures exist to promote. The members of the Gifford Committee of the University were particularly kind. As visitors, we were kindly looked after by Professor and Mrs John O'Neill, and I benefited greatly from contacts and conversations at New College, the Faculty of Divinity. The lectures as published show the valuable influence of discussions with Dr Peter Hayman, Professor J. C. L. viii PREFACE Gibson, and Dr David Mealand, and some of these are acknowledged at particular places. The relation between biblical study and natural theology has always interested me, and I always had vague ideas of working over the ground and perhaps writing something; but very likely nothing would have come of this but for the invitation to deliver the Giffords. Having done it, I feel I owe a great deal to this opportunity. Knowing that the preparation of the Giffords lay before me, I made a variety of soundings, experimental lectures, and researches which gathered information and helped me to form my mind on the questions involved. I approached various portions of the subject in lectures delivered in Oxford, in Norway, Sweden, and Finland, in France, and in South Africa, and gained much from the responses and reactions of colleagues there. The Cole Lectures, a series of three, which I delivered in Vanderbilt University in 1988, when a visiting professor there, were an important stage in the process. Going further back, the studies which I carried out while at the Rockefeller Research Institute at Bellaggio, Italy, in 1984 provided valuable knowledge which I was able to incorporate. And I was greatly assisted by the resources of the Divinity Library in Vanderbilt University, and by the helpfulness of its librarians. The lectures are published more or less as delivered, except that they have been expanded, especially with footnotes: or, more correctly, they had to be reduced in length in order to fit with the lecture format, and then re-expanded afterwards. The bibliography, touching on many very wide areas, makes no attempt at completeness, and I list mainly either books that have been specially helpful to me, or books that are recent or are otherwise likely to offer fresh ideas to the reader. If I had to name the two writers to whom I owe the most, the names would be those of Christof Gestrich and Christian Link. Both of these, however, approach the subject from the side of systematic theology, while my own approach is from the side of the Bible itself. Biblical quotations are from a variety of versions, mostly the Revised Standard, and sometimes the translation is my own. Chapter and verse numbers follow the numbering of the English Bible, with the Hebrew numbers added when they differ. J.B. Nashville November 1991 Contents Abbreviations xi 1. Natural Theology in This Century: Concepts and Approaches 1 2. Paul on the Areopagus 21 3. St Paul and the Hebrew Background 39 4. Natural Theology in the Jewish Tradition 58 5. Within the Old Testament 81 6. A Return to the Modern Discussion 102 7. Religion, Tradition, and Natural Theology 138 8. The Image of God and Natural Theology 156 9. Science; Language; Parable; Scripture 174 10. Natural Theology and the Future of Biblical Theology 199 Bibliography 223 Indexes 237 This page intentionally left blank Abbreviations AV Authorized (King James) Version BDB F. Brown, S. R. Driver, and C. A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907) BJRL Bulletin of the John Rylands Library BJRUL Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library BSOAS Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (London) BWANT Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament BZAW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft CD Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (13 vols., Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956–70) DC Deutsche Christen (German Christians) ET English translation Ev. Th. Evangelische Theologie Exp. T. Expository Times FS Festschrift HBNT Handbuch zum Neuen Testament HTR Harvard Theological Review ICC International Critical Commentary IDB The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible (Nashville: Abingdon, 4 vols., 1962, and Supplementary Volume, 1976) JAAR Journal of the American Academy of Religion JJS Journal of Jewish Studies JSNT Journal for the Study of the New Testament JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament JSS Journal of Semitic Studies JTS Journal of Theological Studies KBRS Kirchenblatt für die reformierte Schweiz KD Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik (14 vols., Zurich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1947–70) xii ABBREVIATIONS K. u. D. Kerygma und Dogma LSJ H. G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek—English Lexicon, new edn. rev. and aug. H. S. Jones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940) MT Masoretic Text NEB New English Bible NTS New Testament Studies NZST Neue Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie REB Revised English Bible RS Religious Studies RSV Revised Standard Version SEÅ Svensk Exegetisk Årsbok SJT Scottish Journal of Theology St. Th. Studia theologica TGUOS Transactions of the Glasgow University Oriental Society Th. Ex. H. Theologische Existenz Heute VTS Vetus Testamentum Supplements ZATW Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Z. d. Z. Zwischen den Zeiten Z. Th. K. Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 1 Natural Theology in This Century: Concepts and Approaches I propose to begin with a fairly wide, doubtless somewhat vague, but at any rate comprehensive, notion of natural theology, and one which, I think, follows much accepted tradition of usage. Traditionally ‘natural theology’ has commonly meant something like this: that ‘by nature’, that is, just by being human beings, men and women have a certain degree of knowledge of God and awareness of him, or at least a capacity for such an awareness; and this knowledge or awareness exists anterior to the special revelation of God made through Jesus Christ, through the Church, through the Bible.

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