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Roman Faith and Christian Faith

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2018

Francis Watson
Francis Watson*
Affiliation:
Durham University
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

These three short papers were delivered at the 72nd General Meeting of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, held in Pretoria, South Africa, on 8–11 August 2017. The ‘Quaestiones disputatae’ session was chaired by the President of the Society, Professor Michael Wolter. The first two papers engage with Teresa Morgan's book, Roman Faith and Christian Faith, and Professor Morgan responds to them in the third.

Type
Quaestiones Disputatae
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 64 , Issue 2 , April 2018 , pp. 243 - 247
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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References

1 Morgan, T., Roman Faith and Christian Faith: Pistis and Fides in the Early Roman Empire and Early Churches (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Roman Faith, 261.

3 Morgan's approach to her entire topic focuses not on ‘the propositional content of a proclamation’ but on ‘the unique shape of trust … as it operates in a community and discourses about that community’ (Roman Faith, 23; emphasis original). By contrast, it is said that theology and other disciplines ‘typically focus on propositional belief rather than on relationships involving both belief and trust’ (24).

4 A ‘proposition’ is the (true or false) assertion that X is the case, without reference to the speaker's self-involvement in the speech-act of asserting. To describe the credal affirmation that ‘Christ is risen’ as a ‘proposition’ is to put it on a level with ‘dogs are quadrupeds’ or ‘cats have nine lives’.

5 The priority of believing might also be demonstrated from the Gospel of John, where πιστεύειν occurs ninety-eight times and πίστις not at all. Pace Morgan (Roman Faith, 394–6), this need not be viewed as an anomaly requiring elaborate explanation.

6 In the TDNT article on πίστευω κτλ., R. Bultmann rightly views ‘πίστις as acceptance of the Kerygma’ as the specifically Christian understanding of πίστις, in contrast to the primary sense of ‘trust’ conveyed by both Greek and Jewish usage. See Kittel, G. and Friedrich, G., ed., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (10 vols.; Eng. trans. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964–76) vi.174–228, at 208Google Scholar. The emphasis here on a distinctive Christian usage contrasts with Morgan's emphasis on convergence, and should not be too quickly dismissed as reflecting ‘theological bias’.

7 Loss of this correlation of faith and preaching is one of a number of problems with the subjective genitive reading of Paul's prepositional πίστις Χριστοῦ clauses, according to which the πίστις in question is that of Christ himself. Commenting on the Pauline ἑκ πίστεως, Morgan combines this reading with others: ‘By leaving pistis unqualified, Paul allows it to refer equally and simultaneously to the pistis of God towards Christ and humanity and that of Christ towards God and humanity which make dikaiosynē possible, and that of the human being towards God and Christ’ (Roman Faith, 276).

8 In his 39th ‘Festal Letter’ from 367. Text in S. Athanase, Lettres festale et pastorales en copte (ed. Lefort, L.-Th.; CSCO; Louvain: L. Durbecq, 1955) 150 Google Scholar (Coptic, 16–22, 58–62) and 151 (French translation and Greek fragment, 31–40); Coquin, R.-G., ‘Les lettres festales d'Athanase (CPG 2102). Un nouveau complement: le manuscrit IFAO, copte 25’, OLP 15 (1984) 133–58Google Scholar. See Brakke, D., ‘Canon Formation and Social Conflict in Fourth-Century Egypt: Athanasius of Alexandria's Thirty-Ninth “Festal Letter”’, HTR 87 (1994) 394–419 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘A New Fragment of Athanasius's Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter: Heresy, Apocrypha, and the Canon’, HTR 103 (2010) 47–66 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (including a full English translation and the Coptic text of a new fragment). The listing of the 27-book New Testament occurs at 39.18 (using Brakke's paragraph enumeration); Greek text, CSCO 151, 35.

9 On the close relationship between 1 Clement and 1 Corinthians, see Gregory, A. F., ‘ 1 Clement and the Writings that Later Formed the New Testament’, The Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers (ed. Gregory, A. and Tuckett, C.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) 129–57, at 144–51Google Scholar; Rothschild, C. K., New Essays on the Apostolic Fathers (WUNT 375; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017) 35–60 Google Scholar. Rothschild's argument for regarding 1 Clement as a pseudepigraphon should also be noted (61–68).

10 In the later and better-known version of the phoenix legend, the phoenix immolates itself and its successor arises from the ashes. On the two versions, see van den Broek, R., The Myth of the Phoenix according to Classical and Early Christian Traditions (Leiden: Brill, 1971) 146–61Google Scholar. Van den Broek rightly notes that the Coptic translation of 1 Clement conflates both versions of the legend (156); text in Schmidt, C., Der erste Clemensbrief in altkoptischer Übersetzung (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1908) 74 Google Scholar. For a collection of ancient passages on the phoenix, see Lindemann, A., Die Clemensbriefe (HNT 17; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992) 263–77Google Scholar; for a careful recent analysis of 1 Clement 25, Rothschild, New Essays, 97–110.

11 In an informative and engaging article on the reception of 1 Clement and its phoenix on their arrival (through Codex Alexandrinus) in seventeenth-century England, M. Himuro questions unnecessarily whether ‘Clement’ himself believed the phoenix legend (‘The Phoenix in The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians ’, Renaissance Studies 12 (1998) 523–44, at 531)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Himuro's article also includes valuable discussion of patristic interest in the phoenix, initiated by 1 Clement.