Historian Donald Harmon Akenson writes in God's Peoples. Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel, and Ulster (1992):
Is that a rejection of the old covenant or a recognition of the spirit in which it must be renewed? Only a way of thinking that is enamored of the need to recover our Judeo-Christian traditions for covenanting in ways appropriate to our own times will provide answers. To this end, I recommend two things: 1) the recent post at the GABlog: Victimary Modernity and Covenantal Modernity and 2)joining in some conversation about how we can renew our commitments to sharing in a nation founded in covenants that requires each of us to act as guarantors of each and every other's individual freedom to share in a collective self-rule. If you can join us some Thursday in Vancouver, we can be found at the Downtown Library, 7-9 pm, in the atrium in front of Blenz Coffee (with blue scarves).
As Adam writes:
Just how difficult it is to escape the influence of the ancient scriptural grid is best illustrated by the development of early Christianity. Although we know much less than we would like to know about the historical Jesus, it is generally (if not quite universally) agreed among biblical critics that the most radical parts of the New Testament, the Beatitudes (Matt. 5:3-12; Luke 6:20-46) are for the most part authentically representative of Jesus' views, if not his exact words. It is impossible to read the Beatitudes without recognizing that Jesus was rejecting the covenant. He was truly revolutionary... [But] The church was unable to follow his example in breaking free of the covenantal grid. So, although on the surface they appeared to reject Judaism, Jesus' successors interpreted the life and teachings of Jesus within the context of that grid. His successors transformed him into a covenantal figure... though claiming to have broken free of the Hebrew covenant, the Christian Church did not. Why? Because the Hebrew conceptual grid was not simply a conviction or a belief, but rather something lying so deep within the mind that it ultimately determined the possibilities of conviction and belief. (41)Although Akenson is one of Canada's finest historians (he is one of our American imports) I am not yet convinced, only forty pages into his book, that he fully grasps how a covenant may ever be renewed (does his metaphysics offer him a satisfactory understanding of why and how humans are historical beings?). Is Jesus a "revolutionary" figure in the sense of someone who makes a definite and (at least in intention) complete break with the old covenant, or someone who is recovering the necessarily radical moment, those rare moments in history when (re)new covenants are first proposed to a people desperately in need of them (again) because they have fallen away from the old? What are we to do with the passage from the Gospel of Matthew that immediately follows the passage referred to by Akenson? The beatitudes, Jesus' declarations of the blessedness of the meek, hungry, persecuted, etc., in Matthew 5:3-12 are followed in the now canonical text by
13Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.BibleGateway.com - Passage Lookup: Matthew 5;
14Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.
15Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.
16Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
17Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
18For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
19Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
20For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Is that a rejection of the old covenant or a recognition of the spirit in which it must be renewed? Only a way of thinking that is enamored of the need to recover our Judeo-Christian traditions for covenanting in ways appropriate to our own times will provide answers. To this end, I recommend two things: 1) the recent post at the GABlog: Victimary Modernity and Covenantal Modernity and 2)joining in some conversation about how we can renew our commitments to sharing in a nation founded in covenants that requires each of us to act as guarantors of each and every other's individual freedom to share in a collective self-rule. If you can join us some Thursday in Vancouver, we can be found at the Downtown Library, 7-9 pm, in the atrium in front of Blenz Coffee (with blue scarves).
As Adam writes:
The only answer is freedom–to act as free men and women, engaging in free speech, free inquiry, free creation, free association, because covenants can only be generated amongst the free. Maybe the most basic thing to do now is distinguish these modes of freedom from their victimary doppelgangers: speech, inquiry, creation and association mired in “resistance” to the “hypocrisy” of “domination.”
