THE OLD TESTAMENT and CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY Theoretical and Practical Essays from a South African Perspective
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International Voices in Biblical Studies THE OLD TESTAMENT AND CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY Theoretical and Practical Essays from a South African Perspective Christo Lombaard THE OLD TESTAMENT AND CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY International Voices in Biblical Studies General Editors Monica J. Melanchthon Louis C. Jonker Editorial Board Eric Bortey Anum ,GD)U|KOLFK -LRQH+DYHD +LVDNR.LQXNDZD 6DP30DWKHZ 1pVWRU0tJXH] 1DQF\1DP+RRQ7DQ Number 2 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY THE OLD TESTAMENT AND CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY Christo Lombaard Society of Biblical Literature Atlanta Copyright © 2012 by the Society of Biblical Literature All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or published in print form except with permission from the publisher. Individuals are free to copy, distribute, and transmit the work in whole or in part by electronic means or by means of any informa- tion or retrieval system under the following conditions: (1) they must include with the work notice of ownership of the copyright by the Society of Biblical Literature; (2) they may not use the work for commercial purposes; and (3) they may not alter, transform, or build upon the work. Requests for permission should be addressed in writing to the Rights and Permissions Office, Society of Biblical Literature, 825 Houston Mill Road, Atlanta, GA 30329, USA. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lombaard, Christo. The Old Testament and Christian spirituality : theoretical and practical essays from a South African perspective / by Christo Lombaard. p. cm. — (Society of Biblical Literature. International voices in biblical studies ; v. 2) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-58983-652-5 (paper binding : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58983-653-2 (electronic format) 1. Spirituality—Biblical teaching. 2. Bible. O.T.—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 3. Theology—South Africa. I. Title. BS1199.S7L66 2012 248—dc23 2012004259 Introduction v The Old Testament in Christian Spirituality: Perspectives on the Undervaluation of the Old Testament in Christian Spirituality Four South African Proposals for a Central Theme to “Scriptural Spirituality” Four Recent Books on Spirituality and the Psalms: Some Contextualising, Analytical, and Evaluative Remarks Genealogies and Spiritualities in Genesis 4:17–22, 4:25–26, 5:1–32 What Is Biblical Spirituality? Perspectives from a Minor Genre of Old Testament Scholarship Table of Contents Betwixt Text and Nature, God and Evolution: Biblical Reception and Creationism at the Creation Museum in Cultural-Anthropological Perspective Exegesis and Spirituality About the Author Introduction This volume is a collection of previously published journal articles and chapters in books. For a number of reasons, none of which are good, the academic wheels in South Africa turn not on books, as is the international convention, but on articles in refereed journals. One of the results of this South African habit is that sustained projects by scholars often do not appear in print together. I am very grateful therefore to the publisher, the Society of Biblical Literature, for assisting with, in this case at least, rectifying that situation. I also thank the editors of the International Voices in Biblical Studies series for taking up this volume in their series. Special mention must be made of Louis Jonker and Leigh Andersen in this respect, for their patience and tireless efforts. The fact that most of the studies collected here have been published in South African journals, has limited the international reach of the scholarship. That some of these studies were first read as congress papers in Europe hardly remedies this situation. With the strong growth currently experienced in the field of Spirituality Studies in general, and Biblical Spirituality in particular, this volume makes these studies more accessible to a wider audience, in the hope of providing some further impetus to the multiple fields of study which combine to form the academic discipline of Biblical Spirituality, or more specifically in this case, Old Testament Spirituality. (What is meant by this terminology is made clear in Chapter 5.) In a way it is not strange that, relatively speaking, Biblical Spirituality should experience such strong growth as it has in South Africa. On the one hand, South African theologians tend to have a very acute critical sense of the way the Bible is employed, because of the country’s socio-political history during particularly the second half of the twentieth century. On the other hand, earlier, while the Western theological world was making sense of historical-critical methodologies of exegesis and trying to digest the implications thereof, South Africans were involved in the vii viii Introduction various colonialisms—on the receiving end, that is. By the time the full implications of historical criticism reached the highly active broader theological community of scholars on the southern-most tip of Africa, much of the modernist assumptions that had initially underpinned it implicitly had been appreciated and pointed out. Bible scholars who cared to do so could thus fully employ such exegetical approaches without losing the faith, which is ever the great fear in church and some academic circles in South Africa. It is thus not all that surprising that, to my knowledge, the first professorial chair in Biblical Spirituality has been established at a South African university, namely at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein. The incumbent, Pieter de Villiers, and my recently retired colleague for Christian Spirituality at the University of South Africa, Celia Kourie, both initially New Testament scholars, have been instrumental in establishing the broader discipline of Christian Spirituality and the narrower discipline of Biblical Spirituality within the country and outside its borders. In acknowledgement of their giant efforts in this regard, I dedicate this volume to them. These South African initiatives found much international nourishment from the Titus Brandsma Institute for Spirituality at Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands, in particular from Kees Waaijman, Jos Huls and Huub Welzen there, and from such eminent figures in the field as David Perrin in Canada (and through him the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality) and Sandra Schneiders in the United States of America. At different times and in different ways, words of interest and encouragement on their part have meant—in a somewhat more literal way than is the customary use of this phrase—the world to us, as we develop these disciplines in South Africa. To colleague Petra Dijkhuizen, my thanks and admiration for her work on the technical aspects of this text. My thanks too to Introduction ix Reichard Taljaard for designing the graphic presentation on page eighteen of this volume. I would also like to express my thanks to the publications concerned for giving permission for the re-publication of the studies here. Those involved with the often thankless and always tiring work of editing academic journals and volumes may not realise the appreciation for what they in fact mean for our pursuits of scholarly understanding. The publications I refer to here, in alphabetical order, are Acta Theologica, Ekklesiastikos Pharos, Hervormde Teologiese Studies and from 2001 HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies, Tydskrif vir Semitistiek/Journal for Semitics, the Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, Scriptura, Verbum et Ecclesia, and then: H. Blommestijn, C. Caspers, R. Hofman, F. Mertens, P. Nissen and H. Welzen, eds., Seeing the Seeker. Explorations in the Discipline of Spirituality (Festschrift for Kees Waaijman; Studies in Spirituality, Supplement 19; Louvain, Belgium: Peeters, 2008). Again, I express my sincere thanks to the respective editors for granting their blessing to have my work from their publications used in this collection. The essays from these volumes have, apart from the technical presentation here and minor changes in formulation and bibliographical updates, been left largely unchanged, to the point that cross references between the different essays have been left in their original form and have not been altered to refer to this text also. Christo Lombaard Pretoria, South Africa 24 April 2012 The Old Testament in Christian Spirituality: Perspectives on the Undervaluation of the Old Testament in Christian Spirituality* ABSTRACT Christian spirituality draws strongly on the Bible. Yet it is the New Testament that almost without exception features most prominently. Ten possible reasons are offered why the Old Testament takes on such a disproportionally diminutive role in the practice and study of spirituality: (1) textual complexity/critical scholarship/theological education; (2) modern popular pieties; (3) the cultural gaps between the Old Testament worlds and our worlds; (4) theological difficulties/Christian sensibilities; (5) fear of “boundary-less” interpretations; (6) the reference to Scripture by writers on spirituality; (7) the notion of progressive revelation; (8) theological diversity within the Old Testament; (9) OT : NT = law : grace; (10) the long and the short of textual units. 1. Faith as Life and the Book of Life Spirituality is like dancing; play; sex and pleasure;1 taste and touch and the other senses;2 beauty;3 breath and the wind;4 in this sense: it is better experienced than described. Words do not succeed, here * This essay was initially presented as a paper at the congress of the Southern African Society