The Trinitarianism of Ephesians 4:4-6, a Chiastic Creed

A few daring theologians in our day are carefully teasing out some of the “Trinitarian metaphysics” from especially certain creedal and doxological New Testament passage, not least Tom Wright and Peter Leithart.  This is not new, though.

St. Irenaeus, in Demonstration of Apostolic Preaching, quotes in part Ephesians 4:4—6, which reads:

There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

From this text, he concludes, “...because ‘above all’ is the Father, and ‘through all’ is the Word—since through Him everything was made by the Father—while ‘in us all’ is the Spirit, who cries ‘Abba, Father,’ and forms man to the likeness of God” (I:5). 

Granted, within this creedal remark of St. Paul, Irenaeus picks up on the unmistakable Trinitarian formula, “One Spirit...one Lord (Jesus)...one God and Father.”  What is interesting, and certainly out of sorts with much of the rationalistic exegesis common this side of the Enlightenment, is that Irenaeus continues his Trinitarian reasoning throughout the following three prepositional phrases of verse six.  Before we dismiss Irenaeus’ exegesis as a byproduct of the old quadriga, the four-folded methodology, or some other highly subjective approach, judged through our modernistic rationalism, we should revisit St. Paul.

When we return to the text, we find an interesting chiasmus, which would point to the same conclusion that Irenaeus so naturally draws.  Look at the structure of this creed.

4:4       A. One Spirit

4:5              B. One Lord (Jesus)

4:6a                   C. One...Father

4:6b                   C. Over all

                   B. Through all

            A. In all

Granting that this text is likely a creedal formula, and that it is naturally structured in terms of a chiasm, I for one tend to think that Irenaeus’ Trinitarian conclusion is spot one.  It is further supported by the patristics’ hermeneutical key, the regulae fidei, the creedal Rule of Faith, which Irenaeus stresses in the early sections of the same work. 

Our ancient fathers in the faith did not pretend or deceive themselves into believing that they came to the text without any pre-drawn conclusions, much less without having a deep, deep precommitment.  Neither did they strive to recognize their precommitments so as to avoid them during exegesis, which all our hermeneutical textbooks caution us to do.  Rather the singular precommitment that ruled exegesis—sometimes for better or worse—was the regulae fidei, which matured into what we know today as the Apostle’s Creed.  For them, a robust Trinitarianism was the presupposition of all exegesis (and all of life), not merely its conclusion.  Perhaps we should put our fathers’ landmark back where we found it (Prov. 22:28).  Thankfully, some are.

Peter Leithart on the Consequences of the Evangelical Marginalizing of the Lord’s Supper

I was recently asked to identify the biggest cultural challenge facing American Evangelicals. In my judgment, the biggest cultural challenge is not “out there” in “the culture” but internal–I almost said, “inherent”–to Evangelicalism: the persistent marginalization of the Eucharist in Evangelical church life, piety, and political engagement. Evangelicals will be incapable of responding to the specific challenges of our time with any steadiness or effect until the Eucharist becomes the criterion of all Christian cultural thinking and the source from which all genuinely Christian cultural engagement springs...continue reading

New Exodus Typological Observations on Acts 12:1—24: Peter’s exodus and the judgment of Herod Agrippa I

1. Hints from the gospels (Matt and Lk). A Herod representing an antitypal Pharaoh has precedents in the early gospel traditions. Matt 2:13—18 provides a clear example of Herod serving as an antitypal Pharaoh, who tries to kill God’s firstborn Son, Jesus, True Israel.[1] Also, with great peculiarity, Luke, the author of our considered text, uses the term ἔξοδον "exodus" (Lk 9:31) to refer to Jesus’ death, resurrection, and exaltation he was about to “fulfill in Jerusalem” (πληροῦν ἐν ᾿Ιερουσαλήμ) (rightly so, NEB).

2. There is a broad framing of this pericope (Acts 12:1—24) that also serves to hint toward the original exodus. First, according to historical criticism, the story is a somewhat questionable, perhaps non-chronological interpolation couched between Paul and Barnabas commissioning and departure from the church in Antioch Syria (11:19—30) and their return from the famine relief mission to the Judean church(es) in 12:25. (There are dating questions with respect to the famine in Palestine [A.D. 41?] and the death of Agrippa I [A.D. 44?] that raise questions about the chronological ‘fit’ of the story of Peter’s imprisonment within the broader flow of the book.) Second, there is the conceptual inclusio that frames the pericope proper. This inclusio begins with Herod stretching out his hands in violence against the church; he killed James of Zebedee, and imprisoned Peter (vv. 1—3). The end cap of the story presents the angel of the Lord stretching out his hands and strikes Herod dead in poetic justice (think lex talionis, of course). A strikingly similar framework surrounds the first exodus story. Exodus 1 – 2 tell of Pharaoh’s tireless efforts to kill all the firstborn of Israel. This section of the book closes with Israel’s Mighty Warrior, YHWH, striking dead the firstborn of Pharaoh and all of Egypt (Ex 12:29—32). Luke, like Moses, frames his pericope with ironic judicial inclusio.

3. Another stirring feature of the narrative that evokes the exodus motif in the reader’s mind is the parenthetical clause of 12:3b, which disrupts the flow of the report. “…[Herod] proceeded to arrest Peter / This was during the days of Unleavened Bread / And when he had seized him…” (vv. 3, 4a, italics added). By the time of writing, the festival of Unleavened Bread and the Passover had nearly become the same event (compare with v 4c). This feature conjures all the cultic imagery of Ex 12:43—13:16. The feast of Unleavened Bread was to be perpetually kept by Israel so as to recapitulate the event when “By strength of hand the LORD brought us out from Egypt, from the house of bondage” (Ex 13:14b KJV, italics added). One can hardly imagine a more appropriate paradigm for the telling of Peter’s deliverance or exodus.

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[1]See Peter Leithart’s Jesus as Israel: The Typological Structure of Matthew’s Gospel here, http://www.leithart.com/pdf/jesus-as-israel-the-typological-structure-of-matthew-s-gospel.pdf

A bit of Deep Exegesis, reading Leithart's newest book

I’m currently working through a great book! Peter Leithart, in his excitingly insightful new book, Deep Exegesis: The Mystery of Reading Scripture, makes a strong case for a typological interpretation of Scripture. He wants us to allow the Bible to not only interpret itself, but also teach us how to read in general. More than that, he believes that this approach reflects how Jesus, Paul and the rest of the OT readers/NT writers read and understood the Scriptures. The book is good medicine for a generation of students that have been steeped in a literalistic hermeneutic. On page 111, Leithart includes a spectacular citation from Dale Allison’s The New Moses: A Matthean Typology (pp. 221—22).

“The interpretation of this line can be nothing other than the unfolding of what is not stated,” says Allison. As a case in point, Matt 1:1 is taken up, and Leithart asks, “What is not there?” Answering, “Lots.” He then includes this block quote from Allison’s book.

“[A]ll the words in 1:1 derive from tradition, and to understand them aright we must know their itinerary. Biblos geneseos occurs in LXX Gen 2:4 and 5:1 while “Genesis” came to be, in the Greek-speaking world, the title for the first book of Moses. As for Christos, it was firmly associated with Jewish eschatological expectation. So too huios David. And huios Abraam, likewise a fixed expression, also had its own special connotations. Now all this, which was undoubtedly known to Matthew’s Jewish-Christian audience, is fundamental for interpretation. But Matt. 1:1 directly conveys none of this information. Rather it assumes that the requisite sensibility will pass from the explicit to the implicit, that it will go beyond what the words directly denote to what they connote—which is why the more Matt. 1:1 is engaged, the more it evokes. Words and phrases...are not simple things; nor is language ever born anew: it is always old. A combination of words is like a moving trawler, whose dragnet, below the surface and out of sight, has taken catch and now pulls along so much more. Just as it would be erroneous to equate the function of the fishing vessel with what goes on in plain sight, so similarly can focus on what is explicit in a literary text lead one right past much meaning—above all in a book such as Matthew, beneath whose literary surface is the Jewish Bible, which is alluded to far more that expressly cited...The truth is, our evangelist had no need to trumpet the manifest, and allusions to Moses were...manifest enough to those who lived and moved and had their being in the Jewish tradition.”