The Church and the Nations

ISAIAH'S HERMENEUTIC Isa. 49:1-6 This passage gives us the second of Isaiah's Servant Songs. We hear the Servant speaking with God. The passage is picked up by Simeon at the appearance of the baby Jesus in the Temple (Luke 2:35) and later by Paul in Psidian Antioch (Acts 13:45). These two New Testament references indicate the significance of the text. A close examination of it help us see the Old Testament hermeneutic and its application in the New Testament. Then we can see the implications for us today. A book I read over and over is Yes, God of the Gentiles, too, by David Filbeck. In it Filbeck uses the word hermeneutic in this way, "A hermeneutic is an interpretation that provides a "mapping" of the biblical record to the reader, teacher, or interpreter can organize biblical material in order to arrive at an overall understanding of the Scriptures." Arguing from this text and several others, Filbeck concludes that "every aspect of the Old Testament should be analyzed to show how it relates and more crucially contributes to the task of evangelizing non-Christian populations of the world today." That Simeon and Paul quoted this from Isaiah reflected their insight on this text expressing the Old Testament hermeneutic. They saw how Isaiah anticipated the Messianic age when the Gentiles would be brought into the Kingdom. He envisioned this occurring not before the arrival of the Messiah. He saw it, (45:22) but only as in the future. Simeon, Luke tells us, knew he would see the Lord's Messiah before he died. When he held Jesus in his arms, he then declared that Isaiah's anticipated age had arrived. "Mine eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared for all peoples, a light for revelation to the nations and glory for your people, Israel." The inauguration of the Messianic age had arrived. When Paul was challenged in Psidian Antioch by Jews not to preach to Gentiles who had heard him the previous week, he drew on the same verse. "We are turning to the Gentiles, for so the Lord has commanded us. 'I have made you a light to the Gentiles.' "To Paul it meant that, since the Messiah had come, the church was commanded to go to the Gentiles with the revelation of God's salvation. Each could reach these conclusions because they understood the larger context, the hermeneutic, of the Old Testament Scriptures as expressed by Isaiah's Servant Song. And that is the intention of God for all, even Gentiles, to have the opportunity to enter His Kingdom. The lesson for us is the same. The task is the joining of the texts with the hermeneutic. That removes the possibility of missions as a department of the church, and it retains the presence of the least evangelized before us. THE LEAST EVANGELIZED .... THROUGH THE EYES OF ST. PAUL, APOSTLE TO THE NATIONS An Appreciation of Luther's Commentary on Galatians In the weeks ahead I will take up issues relating to the hermeneutic described above - its background, foundations, challenges, interpretations, and more. But before that, I wish to give an appreciation of Martin Luther and his second commentary on Galatians. In the future I may move slightly away from his interpretation, but ever so respectfully. And so before those thoughts come out, an appreciation. In my late teens and early 20's I was on a deliberate spiritual quest. I wanted to know God, all about Him, how to know Him, how He communicates, everything. Soon into the quest I despaired of hearing, seeing, knowing, relating to God, and I went deeply into Eastern philosophy, especially into Hindu mysticism. That path renounced this world and opened up on the world-soul, its substitute for a personal God. Then one night I met up with Peter Doyle. Peter had been a Th.D. student under Karl Barth with John Rodgers, who was later also to become a close friend. Peter spoke to me of God's Incarnation, of the holy God and His love and power, of forgiveness and reconciliation offered through meeting God at the cross of His Son Jesus Christ. Sensing where I was spiritually, Peter led me to Luther's commentary on Galatians, the one from 1535. I was working for a committee of the Senate and had hours at night when I could study. This was just before entering Seminary and while courting Constance - to whom Peter and Sally Anne introduced me! There in those pages I found kindred spirits, two of them. First, there was the apostle Paul, struggling with the burden of the Law, striving to find God's peace and approval by his rigorous obedience of the Law. Finally Paul saw the Light, found the righteousness of God in Christ, received imputed righteousness by through faith, and knew that the bonds of his sins had been nailed to the cross. In that justification he had peace. And there was Luther, in a similar struggle. He was under the burden of the works of righteousness prescribed by the Catholic teaching of the day. His confessors dreaded Luther's confessions, for he knew his every sin and thought only by confessing each and every one would he satisfy the justice of the God he served. Then he too found the righteousness of God in Christ offered to sinners. Over and over I read Luther's coming into the Light in his comments on the last verses of Paul's illumined heart at the end of chapter 2. For I was seeing the Light through what Luther held as reflected from Paul's liberation. The hope I saw was that God knew me as a sinner but nevertheless offered me the sanction of the blood of the cross, and forgiveness and a personal relationship as redeemed child of heaven. No longer did I sit in front of a wall seeking transcendence (the wall of a rectory where I was dog-sitting!), no longer the chants and meditation, no longer looking of the key in my dreams. The "alien righteousness" not my own had come from heaven to me. That is what Luther gave me, through Peter Doyle, through the apostle Paul.