More on Virtue

I want to add some things to my last post, Stoics on the Unity of Virtue.

1. I presented James (of the New Testament) as a perfectionist who says that we need to be perfect to deserve the label of “virtuous.” That’s only part of the story. In my post from a while back, Why I Dislike I John So Far, I present another side to James, a James who says that God meets imperfect people (all of us) wherever they are.

2. One thing that disturbs me is how I hate people. I continually take people’s moral inventory. “Evangelicals are bad because they do this.” “Liberals are bad because they do this.” I dislike people being smug and judgmental, who act as if they know what makes other people tick and critique them from their high-and-mighty pedestal, who put on airs as if they’re so much better than others.

But aren’t I being the same way when I critique them? Do I critique them out of love, out of a desire for them to change their ways and have a healthier outlook on life (like I have that myself!)? Or do I do so out of pride, a sense of superiority. “Yeah, I’m imperfect, but at least I acknowledge my faults,” I say to myself. Yeah, but does that make me virtuous? We’re all pretty much in the same boat, since we’re flawed creatures!

I want to assume that I’m more virtuous than those I criticize, and I get mad when I don’t get recognition and adulation for my good deeds, or lack of bad deeds. I flinch at being just part of the crowd. But maybe that’s what I am. Can I be content with that, trusting in God’s love to make me feel good about myself? Can I stop fretting about what everyone else is doing and focus on my own love for God and neighbor?

Don’t get me wrong: I will criticize evangelicals, liberals, conservatives, Republicans, Democrats, etc. in future posts. But I hope that I can do so without hating them, and that I can present positive ways to look at situations.

Influence and Intertextuality

The following is part of a paper I wrote on influence, intertextuality, and James 2′s interpretation of the akedah (the binding of Isaac). It may be relevant to my Fishbane paper.
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There are at least two models that are relevant to readers in their attempts to understand James’ interpretation of the akedah: the model of influence and that of intertextuality.1 For the influence model, influence occurs when one unity or tradition is applied to another context, as when an author consciously borrows images from a specific source for her own work.2 The influence model tends to focus on the author (her background, biography, ideas, etc.) and her agency in shaping the borrowed images that she employs.3 According to Michael Baxendall, an author as an agent can use a source in a variety of ways, including quotation of the source, misunderstanding of it, parody, reaction against it, and agreement with it.4 Under the influence model, scholars seeking to grasp James’ reading of the akedah would hunt for possible sources that he used as keys to understanding the intentions of James the author.5 Weaknesses some have identified in the influence model include the difficulty of distinguishing genuine influences from images that are commonplace in the author’s culture and its tendency to exalt authors over readers.6

Unlike the influence model, the model of intertextuality focuses more on the reader, who brings to the text her own questions, experiences, cultural motifs, and knowledge of other texts, all of which affect her reading (and thus transform the text’s meaning).7 Rather than emphasizing texts that could have influenced the author, the intertextuality model allows readers to read texts in light of other texts, regardless of which one has historical priority.8 Jay Clayton and Eric Rothstein treat intertextuality as the continuation of previous literary approaches that undermined the importance of the author: New Criticism, which regarded the work as an autonomous unit independent of the author, and post-structuralism, which viewed authorial intention as a mere link in a chain.9 Intertextuality still seems to address the author, however, in that it asserts that an anonymous cultural text authorizes or produces what writers do, an approach that possibly views the author as an unconscious receptor of anonymous cultural images.10 The problem some have identified in the intertextuality model is that it makes every text the potential intertext for all other texts, since it appears to impose no controls on the associations readers can make.11 The intertextual model can be useful in considering James as a reader of the akedah story, for (as we shall see) the interpretations of his culture play a role in how he reads the story and perhaps transform it into something slightly different.

1 There is some diversity in both approaches, but what follows is some attempt to generalize and clarify the differences between the two.
2 Jay Clayton and Eric Rothstein, “Figures in the Corpus: Theories of Influence and Intertextuality,” Influence and Intertextuality in Literary History, ed. Jay Clayton and Eric Rothstein (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991) 3.
3 Clayton and Rothstein 5-6.
4 Clayton and Rothstein 6.
5 Clayton and Rothstein 9.
6 Clayton and Rothstein 5, 12.
7 Clayton and Rothstein 16-17, 20, 22.
8 Clayton and Rothstein 12.
9 Clayton and Rothstein 7, 9.
10 Clayton and Rothstein 3, 11, 29.
11 Clayton and Rothstein 23.

Why I Dislike I John So Far

For my daily quiet time, I’m in John’s first epistle to…Christians, I guess. The book doesn’t specify the exact location of its audience.

I still have other write-ups to do for my daily quiet times. There are Luke topics that I want to write about, but I haven’t gotten to them yet.

Yesterday, I read I John 1. Today, I read I John 2-3. I’m somewhat of a Paul-man myself, or a “Paul as Martin Luther interprets him” man. I need to believe in God’s free grace and unconditional love, since I have a lot of sins, plus my deeds are not good enough to please God.

But the Epistle of James looks good next to I John! And, to be honest, I actually like the Epistle of James (Martin Luther’s opinion notwithstanding), and it’s not only because its author shares my name. I like it because James seems to meet people where they are. Consider the following verses:

James 1:5: “If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you” (NRSV).

James 3:3, 8: “For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle…but no one can tame the tongue– a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”

James 3:14: “But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth.”

James 4:7-10: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.”

James 5:13: “Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise.”

What’s the common theme in these verses? To me, it’s that we shouldn’t lose hope if we find spiritual flaws within us. If we lack wisdom, we should ask God for it, and he’s eager to help us! We should come clean if we have bitter envy and selfish ambition, rather than patting ourselves on the back. We all make mistakes with our tongues, and only God can tame them. We should draw near to God if we find ourselves in a spiritual ditch. And we should pray when we are suffering. James meets people where they are.

Granted, James still has his perfectionist tendencies. In James 1:6-7, he states: “But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind; for the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord.” My problem with this passage is that I will always have some doubt when I pray to God. I’m not perfect! James would encourage me a lot more if he said that God is faithful in spite of my doubts.

James also affirms that faith without works cannot save a person (John 2:14). My question here is, “How many good works must I do before I can finally be assured of salvation?” It’s not that I fail to see James’ overall point. James says, for example, that belief in one God is not sufficient to save (James 2:19), and that makes sense. If I believe in one God, yet I don’t have any desire to live a holy life, then what’s so meritorious about my faith?

But, overall, James presents the reader with a place to go, or more accurately, someone to go to. He offers hope, even though he includes works in the salvation process.

I John, however, is more like: “Look, these are the characteristics of a true Christian, and, if you don’t have them, then you’re not really saved.”

There are a variety of texts that indicate this (I John 2:3-4; 3:14, et. al.). But what really disturbed me was I John 1. In vv 6-10, we read the following:

“If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”

My problem is this: in order to be assured that I am saved, I need to be walking in the light. But if I say that I have no sin, then I’m a liar. So I just can’t win! I must convince myself that I’m a righteous person in order to have any assurance of salvation, but I also have to see myself as a sinner.

Also, I John presents things as so automatic. If we have a relationship with God, then we’re walking in the light. If we’re walking in the light, then we have fellowship with other believers. But are things that automatic? Does having a relationship with God necessarily mean that I will click with other believers, or fit into their nice little Christian cliques? For me, “fellowship” means Christians socializing. But if one struggles with social skills, then that shuts him out of fellowship!

But maybe I John offers some hope. He calls his readers “forgiven” (I John 2:11-14), so he seems to assume that they’re saved. But not all of them are carrying out the implications of their salvation. On the other hand, he appears to manifest a Calvinist sort of approach, the “there are true believers and false professors” school of thought. He says in I John 2:19: “They went out from us, but they did not belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. But by going out they made it plain that none of them belongs to us.”

Another possible verse of hope is I John 2:8: “Yet I am writing you a new commandment that is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.” Is this saying that the people in John’s audience are on the path to holiness, as God sweeps away the darkness within them that there might be light?

Overall, however, I John’s message seems to be that we need to be righteous before we can have assurance of salvation. But how righteous do I have to be?