Creative and Productive Tensions

Dating the various books of the New Testament, not to ignore dating the events scripted into those books, is a game historians play at times with confidence. As long as most agree on the rules of play the dates can remain relatively fixed. The problem is that the rules are written by the players themselves. Even with that dust tossed into the middle of a circle of players, we can agree that the NT books write about persons and events in the 1^st Century even if an occasional text or two, under cover, slips into the 2^nd Century.

Grant me those basic understandings and we can make this claim: from the days both John the Dipper and Jesus, the one he dipped, to the last date of a NT writing took from one to two generations (depending on dates). Stuff happened between John and Jesus, on the one hand, and the apostles and early churches, on the other. The writings of the NT reflect the stuff that happened and those same writings were shaped for that stuff and that stuff shaped the writings.

Which is why F. Scott Spencer’s new book, Seven Challenges that Shaped the New Testament: Understanding the Inherent Tensions of Early Christian Faith (Baker Academic, 2024), can become a valuable textbook for anyone teaching undergraduates, graduates, or seminary students. Too, it can be valuable for anyone who cares about the “unity and diversity” of earliest Christianity. Both Scott and I (this Scot) were students of Jimmy Dunn, whose Unity and Diversity book impacted each of us in important and career-shaping ways.

Too many systematic theologians, and lots and lots of preachers, simply trot straight through the Bible with a concordance to find what the Bible says about, say, “justice,” add up their propositions based on their largely unblinkered faith in their capacity to know, and --- poof! – there it is, a Biblical idea: “What the Bible says about justice.” But the Bible itself contains deep interactions, conversations, and debates with itself. Deuteronomy and Job each demand time at the rostrum. Their sermons conflict. Don’t you agree? (Of course you do.) What does justice mean in Deuteronomy and what does it mean for Job?

Dunn’s early-career book set the tone for many of us to admit diversity at some serious enough levels that we now call into question even typical conclusions in “NT theologies.” Which is why I like G.B. Caird’s wonderful New Testament Theology over, say, Donald Guthrie’s. It’s not easy to mix Jesus’s kingdom theology with either Paul’s justification theory or Hebrews’ worldview.

Scott Spencer sees no reason to do such things. So he concentrates his efforts on seven tensions: old and new, right and wrong, weak and strong, wheel and woe, one and all, seen and secret, and now and near. Each with a subtitle clarifying the clever titles.

Twenty-seven documents; several decades; multiple authors; different styles and genres. So, his first sentence to his Prologue. “The New Testament testifies to faith on the edge: the cutting edge of new perspectives and directives in light of the complex Christ-event; the jagged edge of defining and refining Christ-centered faith in the face of disputes and disappointments.” Scott Spencer is one of NT scholarship’s finest styles, and his commentary on Luke is goldmine not only of exposition but also of locution. This new book will not disappoint. His approach is not to get back to the historical realities but to explore the texts themselves for how they approach said tensions. That is, to the “realistic grappling with the challenges that dynamic faith in Christ confronted in real-world situations.” How did the dual beatitudes on poverty (poor in spirit vs. poor) come to expression as they did? What settings gave rise to those two presentations?

Spencer explores two macro-themes at work as the NT came into existence: cognitive dissonance and emotional upheaval. He’s an expert on the NT and emotion, so the latter ratchets this book up a notch or two above many similar studies.

On cognitive dissonance: when core convictions (Jesus knows everything) meet contrary situations (he says he doesn’t know the date, or he predicts what looks like a 1^st Century wrapping up) we get cognitive dissonance. And humans do not like the liminality of cognitive dissonance, so we do whatever we can to restore the balance and create equilibrium. This cognitive dissonance, at several junctures in the early church, turned into tensions and so became “productive challenges”  that were met by the writers of the NT with deliberations leading to what they thought could be equilibrium. Anyway, that’s my explanation of his pages on this and it all sets us up for some interesting discussions about the tensions mentioned above.

On emotional upheaval: the fact is that we don’t think and also have emotions. Emotions and thoughts are tied together in our bodies. The early Christians responded as bodies to situations, to those tensions. It is not “I think, therefore I am” but “I am who I am because I think and feel and act in my body.” And I act and feel and think in this body as one who does so in relations with others, who impact my acting, feeling, and thinking.

Summary: “cognitive dissonance thus mixes with affective disturbance -- upsetting thoughts with upheaving emotions – to make meaning out of our complicated lives.” Emotions are motivations are tied together by more than words that look a bit like one another, and emotions are evaluations and appraisals.

“My premise in the present volume is that the Gospel-storytelling evangelists, letter-corresponding apostles, and apocalypse-sketching seers of the New Testament work out cognitive dissonances and emotional upheavals in a tension-filled world through their literary works. They write to the challenges of living out Christ-centered faith in a fractured, perplexing environment.”

Buy the book and join me.