‘A Dangerous Doctrine’

Beginning in the middle of things: following James McClendon’s Systematic Theology

“…And the whole force of Scripture's truth rests upon just such a vision, just such a sense that this is that: You, now, in the Deuteronomist's own generation-you are the generation of slaves freed by the Unnameable One … You were in Egypt." 34 In like manner the future is not some far off country that lies completely beyond the horizon. McClendon speaks in this regard of the foreshortened sense of future time in the Bible.…”

“…We must indicate something of what it means to tell this story rightly-a tale of one Jewish man who was executed in the first part of the first century CE in Roman-occupied Palestine-to the diverse sorts of people who live in our time and place. 36 Doctrine thus has a vital role to play in articulating what Nicholas Lash calls the "crucial difference … between telling a story differently and telling a different story". 37 According to McClendon, there is a striking parallel between the classical atonement theories, each of which exhibits either an implicit or explicit narrative form, and Jewish strategies for unpacking the continuing import of the biblical story.…”

“…Together these interpretations formed the midrashim, a principal purpose of which was to enlarge the biblical story, and in particular to show the contemporary relevance of the Scriptures. 38 Those who crafted the atonement theories, like the rabbis before them, did so against the backdrop of particular historical settings: "Irenaeus … worked in awareness of powerful Rome. Anselm defended a divine honor greater than the feudal honor of the Song of Roland.…”

“…The hope is that their witness to the one Christ will at least be acknowledged alongside the others, but "they cannot expect this to happen until their own witness is theologically clear". 19 McClendon unpacks the idea of the baptist vision in a series of interpretive moves. In the first chapter of Ethics he describes it "as a hermeneutical motto, which is shared awareness of the present Christian community as the primitive community and the eschatological community.…”

“…That presence, moreover, "is not evenly distributed (like a coat of paint on a wall) but appears precisely in connection with the pattern of salvific events, from the exodus to the last coming, that have as their focal center Jesus of Nazareth, his cross, and his resurrection". 29 From the standpoint of the baptist vision, history is never a capricious succession of events that unfolds sequentially in empty time but involves patterns of repetition and recapitulation. It is in this sense that McClendon says that the Sabbath "is the divine rest-day of Genesis 2:2f.…”