Archive: Who Do You Say That I Am?

By David R. Bauer

Within the last several years there has been a heated discussion regarding the influence of feminist theology within the United Methodist Church. That was highlighted last year with the Women’s Division’s involvement in the controversial “Re-Imagining” Conference. This makes a theological book such as Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew: “Who Do You Say That I Am?” all the more important, especially when the discussion focuses in on Christology—the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Who Do You Say That I Am? was prepared for individual and group Bible study for the Women’s Division. Nancy A. Carter, the principal author, is an elder in the UM Church and has served as editor of program resources for the General Board of Global Ministries. Leontine T.C. Kelly, who made contributions to the book, is a retired bishop.

Since the book attempts to lead the reader to “see how you have experienced God’s Presence in the past and have a vision of God’s Continuing Presence in your life and in the lives of all humanity” through the Gospel of Matthew, it must be judged on the basis of its theological congruence with the text of Matthew’s Gospel.

The book is a strange amalgam of helpful insights and misleading and wrongheaded theological assertions. The authors offer helpful insights at those points where they draw upon the work of significant New Testament scholars like Raymond Brown and Jack Dean Kingsbury. Yet the work is fundamentally flawed, because they ultimately refuse to accept the point of view of Matthew regarding the nature of revelation. They opt, instead, for a view of revelation that reflects classic nineteenth-century liberalism (which is very much alive in certain portions of mainline Protestant churches) and even certain post-modem “New Age theology.”

According to Matthew’s perspective, God has perfectly revealed himself (which involves also truth regarding ourselves and our world) in the historical manifestation of Jesus Christ in fulfillment of Old Testament Scripture, as Jesus is presented on the pages of the Gospel. There are several characteristics of God’s revelation, according to Matthew.

  • God’s revelation is Christocentric (i.e., Jesus-centered) to the point that all that Jesus says and does perfectly reveals God and God’s will. In narrative-critical terms, Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel is entirely “reliable.”
  • God’s revelation is historical in that the historical events in the life of Jesus as they are recorded in Matthew’s Gospel form the only true basis for understanding who Jesus is, who God is, who humans are, and what God expects of humans. In other words, all human experience is to be interpreted and judged by the historical manifestation of God in Jesus. Our own experience is not ultimately authoritative, but must be interpreted in light of the Christ-event as Matthew records it.
  • God’s revelation is theocentric (i.e., God-centered) in that it asserts that one’s relationship to God is the most fundamental reality, and that social, political, and all interpersonal relationships must derive from one’s knowledge of and relationship to God, the Father of Jesus Christ.
  • God’s revelation in Jesus Christ is authoritatively interpreted in the Christian tradition, of which Matthew claims to be a part. In other words, Matthew recognizes that there can be, and are, many “Christs,” i.e., interpretations of Jesus, but that the only true, authoritative understanding of Jesus is found in the Gospel tradition. Matthew, therefore, does not present his understanding of Jesus as his own opinion or as one of an infinite number of equally viable perspectives, but as the way Jesus must be understood if he is to be understood rightly. Matthew claims, in fact, that only God can reveal Jesus’ true identity and nature (11:25-27; 16:13-17), and that this Gospel bears testimony to God’s valuation of Jesus.
  • God’s revelation in Jesus is eschatological in that in him God is already ushering in his kingdom and will bring it to consummation on the Day of Judgment. Matthew emphasizes that one must live now constantly in light of the reality of the future eschaton when Jesus will judge all persons, granting to some eternal salvation and to others everlasting condemnation.

Parting company with Matthew

I have included this discussion of the implications of Matthew’s view of revelation in order to indicate that at each of these points the authors of Who Do You Say That I Am? part company with Matthew. The very way they structure their book, and their lesson plans presented at the end of the book, indicates something of their understanding of revelation. They repeatedly alternate between commentary on Matthew’s narrative and accounts of their own personal histories. The point is clear: The narrative of the Gospel becomes an occasion for self-reflection, and the impression is that God has revealed himself as much through our stories as he has in the historical work of Jesus Christ. The text exists to suggest general ideas, which in turn prompt us to reflect upon our own experiences, or the experiences of others who are like us, and in the process learn from these experiences.

An example is the way the writers handle the genealogy (pp. 11-18): The genealogy of Jesus includes four women who were incorporated there because they suffered oppression from a male-dominated society. The authors suggest that readers develop a “genogram” in which they reflect upon the kind of oppression their forebearers endured and the ways in which these forebearers “survived” (pp. 21-22). The experience of our forebearers and their courageous survival, then, become the key to our self-understanding and the model and motivation for us.

This experience-oriented approach leads the authors to invite us to replace both Matthean ethics and Matthean Christology with those which are more relevant and acceptable to us. Thus, the authors suggest that the “doctrine of the two ways” reflected in Jesus’ saying regarding the wide and narrow gate (7:13-14) may be too rigid an ethical paradigm. Therefore they urge us to ask: “How is this model helpful and how is it not helpful in understanding your life and the world? Do you have another model you would propose instead?” (pp. 33-34).

Matthew’s Christology is also capable of improvement, according to these authors. After all, they contend, Matthew’s Christology arose out of his own cultural context, and surely we must accept a Christology that reflects our own cultural and personal experiences, whether that be Native American, African-American, feminist, or lesbian (pp. 94-110). Although it is true that Matthew’s Christology must be communicated clearly to persons in all cultures, it is simply not true that Matthew’s is an “inclusive Christology” (p. 98) which invites persons to spin out all sorts of additional categories and images; or to pick and choose in favor of those Christological categories in the Gospel that one finds helpful and against those one finds unhelpful; or to engage in a revisionism that involves giving one’s own content to the Christological images that Matthew employs. If this is the way we deal with the biblical text, then we ultimately prevent that text from ever speaking a new and challenging word to us. We need correction in our valuing and thinking, not mere confirmation. It is, incidentally, not surprising that the examples of various cultural Christologies these authors cite do not simply stand outside the orbit of Matthew’s view of Jesus, but are often in stark contradiction to it; this is the case, for example, with the view of Jesus as a political figure (p. 100).

Related to this emphasis on the hermeneutical value of experience is a tendency to make judgments of right or wrong, not on the basis of the perspective of the text but rather on the basis of contemporary social sensitivities (to use a somewhat amorphous term, “political correctness”). While it is true that Matthew has much to say against all forms of oppression, including racism and sexism, it is extremely doubtful that these concerns are envisaged by him in all the passages where these authors find them. Indeed, it is both interesting and revealing that the authors speak out only against these kinds of sins, and ignore entirely those infractions which were certainly also in Matthew’s mind but have not come under the stem gaze of the purveyors of political correctness. Even more troubling, these authors approach the text with a kind of “hermeneutic of suspicion,” attempting to identify anything in the text that fails to meet their standards of social justice. Thus, they quite wrongly label Jesus’ statement to the Canaanite woman (15:26) a “racist remark.” So much for Matthew’s conviction that Jesus is at all times reliable and always represents the viewpoint of God.

The same perspective lies behind their view of Scripture, as articulated in this passage: “When Christians set aside the passages of the Bible that condone slavery, we are following the way which Jesus taught on the Sermon on the Mount; Scripture that harms is no longer Scripture. In doing so, we are affirming the greatest commandments and the weightier matters of the law” (p. 32). Not only does this statement reflect a simplistic notion of the process of evaluating and applying biblical passages, it also lays down a general principle that can be used to dismiss any biblical commandment deemed by certain contemporary persons to be unworthy of God—especially, of course, the commands against homosexuality. It is, therefore, no surprise that these authors repeatedly allude to “heterosexualism” and “homophobia” alongside racism and sexism, and seem not to be troubled at all by biblical prohibitions against homosexuality that the Bible grounds in creation theology.

The approach of these authors reflects modern secularism in that they tend to see all of life in terms of social and political realities of the present order. This has implications for their view of sin, for according to these authors sin is to be found primarily—if not exclusively—in social structures, especially those dominated by white males; and salvation involves forgiveness for complicity in social injustice, and liberation from societal oppression and its consequences. While these elements are of some concern in Matthew’s Gospel, Matthew identifies the root of sin and oppression not within societal structures but within the hearts of persons (7:17-18; 12:33-37). The oppressed as well as the oppressors need to repent (21:28-32), and the whole of the people are in urgent need of salvation from sin (1:21-23). This emphasis upon social and political categories of the present order has implications also for eschatology, for these authors virtually ignore Matthew’s emphasis upon end-time judgment—and, in fact, declare such an emphasis an example of “religious abuse” (p. 6).

Authors who thus speak and write often view their work as “radical,” calling persons in the church to a new, sanitized, tolerant form of Christianity. They do not realize, however, that their views are not radical at all, but rather they reflect the same anthropocentric perspective that, from the point of view of the biblical tradition, has been the bane of the human race throughout history. In the final analysis, the only really new, radical thing that has ever been spoken is the Word of God that comes to us in Scripture, especially in the person of God’s Son Jesus Christ. It is appropriate and necessary to make that Word relevant for every generation and every culture, but it is dangerous to allow the contemporary culture to determine the meaning of that Word and to judge its legitimacy.

David R. Bauer is Chair of the Biblical Studies Division and  Beeson Professor of English Bible at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. Dr. Bauer is the author of The Gospel of the King: Studies in the Gospel of Matthew, and The Structure of Matthew’s Gospel: A Study in Literary Design.

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