The Hardened Heart and Tragic Finitude

By Dan O. Via

This book has two main theses. First, for the biblical/Christian doctrine of sin the root of the human problem is hardness of heart--the corruption of the core self, of the seat of understanding and will. On the other hand, for an important strand of Greek tragedy the root of human harm-doing is the nonculpable blindness and anxiety of finitude that despite the initial nonculpability lead to evil and suffering. The Hardened Heart shows that these two different interpretations of human existence are amenable to a degree of synthesis that leads to this conclusion: hardness of heart and our ordinary finitude together collude to cause sin in its fullness.The second thesis of this volume is that exegetical studies disclose a deconstructive strand in certain biblical texts that represents the finite world that God created as a source of distress and harm-doing in something like the tragic sense. This subdominant deconstructive position challenges the dominant biblical vision, in which the creation came forth from God's creative word as good without qualification.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Nov 5, 2012
• ISBN: 9781621894827

Dan O. Via

Dan O. Via has taught on the faculties of Wake Forest University, the University of Virginia, and Duke University Divinity School, in which he is now Emeritus Professor of New Testament. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Zimbabwe and Harvard Divinity School. He is the author of forty articles and ten books, including the groundbreaking The Parables, and has edited another sixteen volumes.'

Book preview

Preface

A look at the title will provide a way to preview very concisely the concerns of this book. Many, perhaps most, Christian theologians have taken the tragic vision’s position (that a problematic finite world is the source of harm causing) to be incompatible with the biblical position that the source of harm doing is the corruption of the inner core of the human person: hardness of heart. It is an either/or choice. The biblical affirmation of the goodness of the finite world rules out putting any of the blame for sin on the finite created world. It is all on us, in both our individual and communal dimensions.

Although the tragic and biblical views of the human situation do have significant differences, I will contend that the proper relationship between the biblical and tragic visions is a both/and. I have two governing theses. In terms of constructive theology, certain aspects of both positions can be synthesized to produce an understanding of sin, especially original sin, that is deeper and more circumspect than constructing the doctrine solely on what is generally taken to be the full biblical point of view, namely, that sin arises wholly from the hardened human heart. In terms of biblical theology, I will demonstrate that significant texts in the Bible itself compose a deconstructive strand that treats finitude in something like the tragic sense as having a causal role in generating wrong-doing.

My method reveals the influence of a number of different approaches: the literary and historical criticism of biblical texts, deconstruction, modern reader-response criticism, existential interpretation, and theological and philosophical reflection. All these are useful and need not be in conflict with one another.

A number of friends have read significant parts of the manuscript and have made critically helpful suggestions. I want to express my deep gratitude to Sam Balentine, Larry Bouchard, Guy Hammond, Charlotte McDaniel, Bob Osborn, Jim Stines, and George Telford. K. C. Hanson and Christian Amondson of Cascade Books have also been supportive. Andrew Venton, director of buildings and grounds at our condominium, has all of the computer savvy than I don’t have and has solved multiple problems for me. Matthew Puffer, a doctoral student in religious studies at the University of Virginia, has done a great job of formatting my manuscript. As is always the case, the final responsibility is mine.

chapter 1

Introduction

Topic and Method

The Source of the Challenge

I recently taught a course on the new atheists and in my reading ran across a bitter criticism by French philosopher Michel Onfray leveled against both Judaism and Christianity in reaction to the sanctioning and ordering of violence by the God of the Old Testament. I quote him: Canaanites were of little importance, and God decided on their extermination . . . Clearly scorched earth, fire, and wholesale slaughter of populations are not of recent invention. Yahweh blessed war and those who waged it (Onfray 2005:179). My response to him took me further than I had anticipated. I begin with several biblical themes and draw some conclusions to be tested.

First, God promised Israel the land of Canaan (Gen 12:4–7; 15:7, 16–21; 17:3–5, 8; Deut 4:1–5; 6:23; 7:1–2). Regina Schwartz has pointed out that among the various ways in which Israel accounted for its identity, the primary means by which God created Israel a people was the promise of land. And this myth of collective identity through the divine promise of land has influenced many peoples across wide expanses of time and space (Schwartz 1997:41, 43). Second, God ordered the violent conquest of this land and the annihilation of the population (Deut 7:2–6; 12:2–5; 20:16–18). Third, this conquest was necessary if Israel was to possess the land because it belonged to another people.

Fourth, Israel was chosen by God to be a blessing to the nations (Gen 12:1–3; 17:3–5). If this mission was to be accomplished, Israel had to exist, and to exist it had to be a viable geopolitical entity, as the Old Testament itself maintains (2 Sam 7:8–11, 16). Thus to carry out God’s redemptive purpose the violent conquest was necessary. According to Scripture, God sanctioned and ordered Israel’s violent conquest. God intended violence for the carrying out of God’s saving purpose.

Fifth, we have a serious conflict if we place the preceding factors—including the affirmation of the canonical status of God’s ordering of violence—within the context of a Christian constructive theology that affirms that God neither orders nor sanctions violence. The nonviolence motif was adumbrated in the Old Testament (Deut 20:19–20; Isa 9:1–7; 11:1–9; 42:1; 49:6; Hos 1:4; Amos 1:3, 6, 13; 2:1; Mic 4:1–4) and greatly strengthened in the New (Matt 5:38–48).

Sixth, the constructive theology that I pursue would contain God’s choice of Israel to be God’s obedient people, but God’s command to Israel to destroy Canaan violently will have to be radically reinterpreted in light of the nonviolence imperatives in the Bible. Both the divine sanction of violence and the divine rejection of violence are in the canon as it stands—that is, before this material is critically reinterpreted. Within this precritical canonical frame of reference God orders Israel to do something—destroy Canaan violently—that God disallows (Matt 5:38–48). There is no way that Israel can carry out God’s redemptive plan that is morally acceptable to God. Israel must do something that requires violence without doing it violently.

It should be recognized that the story of Israel’s conquest of Canaan with its theological entailments is far more violent in all probability than the events themselves actually were. But it is the story, not the events, that has had such a baleful impact on our history.

Seventh, when we keep in view the canon as it stands, prior to critical reflection, and also the real conditions of ancient Israel’s finite historical situation, it seems inevitable that Israel would have to violate God’s prohibition of violence if it carried out God’s order to conquer and possess Canaan, which was necessary if Israel was to accept the call to be God’s redemptive agent. Finally, this seems to be an appropriate point to introduce some consideration of the theme of inevitability, which will be one of my concerns throughout. Both Greek tragedy and the biblical exodus-to-conquest story contain painful inevitability and/or irony, but these elements are differently configured in the two cases. I mention three differences.

First, the pain in tragedy is that the protagonist will inevitably accomplish the opposite of his/her good intentions and cause great suffering because of the limitations of creaturely existence. The pain in the biblical story, however, results from the fact that Israel will inevitably disobey God because God commands conflicting actions. In Israel’s finite historical situation there is no alternative but a guilty one.

Second, a Greek tragedy presumably is the work of one poet, and the painful situation that he depicts and that causes the distress is constructed by him and is inherent in the work. The pain of the biblical story, on the other hand, is primarily that of an audience composed of those who take very seriously the equal canonical authority of all parts of the Bible. It is this audience that experiences the inescapable tension between the command to commit violence and the command to reject it. This problem in principle will not exist for the critical interpreter who is prepared to make distinctions within the cannon and evaluate various claims differently. At the same time the inevitable tension is there in the text.

Descriptively speaking, the Bible is a collection of writings from many different times, places, cultural contexts, and points of view; and there is no presumptive reason why a conflict between different parts should be an existential problem. It is canonization that turns the Bible into one theologically valorized work in which a contradiction may be a problem for those who accept its authority.

Last, at the end of a classical tragedy the protagonist acknowledges that he is guilty of and responsible for the disastrous suffering he has caused as well as having been fated to do it. It is quite different at the end of the exodus-to-conquest story. There is a stinging subtle irony in the unfolding of the biblical narrative that might be regarded as a deconstruction of the positive celebration of Israel’s victory over Canaan.

At the beginning, Israel is the enslaved victim of a cruel overlord and is liberated by a compassionate, redeeming God. At the end, Israel does not confess a wrong committed in taking the land of the Canaanites and slaughtering the people but is rather regarded as the obedient, conquering instrument of the redeeming God who initiated this train of events at the beginning. And yet, Israel has now rather become the counterpart of the tyrant from whom it was liberated.

I find myself in a somewhat paradoxical hermeneutical situation in that I affirm the existential truth of the tragic inevitability operating in finite human existence as it is represented in the canon itself as it stands prior to critical attention. I take this motif of problematical finitude to be a truth about the human situation; moreover, a large part of my task is to show that this theme is a deconstructive idea (see the next section) that appears in other significant biblical texts as well.

At the same time, from the standpoint of a constructive theology that rejects violence God’s providential purpose in choosing Israel must be reinterpreted so as to separate that purpose from any sanctioning of the violence. This I sought to do in a recent article (Via 2011:187–88). These issues—especially the inevitability factor—have prompted me to question whether human harm causing can be attributed entirely to universal hardness of heart as the Bible grasps it. Should we not consider some kind of synthesis between the biblical doctrine of sin and certain insights of Greek tragedy? The tragic vision discloses that human finitude itself with its limited vision of the whole of reality is provocatively ambiguous and leads to nonculpable projects that nevertheless cause great suffering. Should the Christian understanding of the human condition not assimilate this insight and recognize in addition that finitude with its inescapable anxiety merges with hardness of heart to incite us to sin?

I have come to believe that taking account of this dual causality makes the Christian doctrine of sin more circumspect and persuasive than it would be otherwise. I’m not at all arguing that biblical sin, on the one hand, and tragic blindness and hubris, on the other, match each other point for point. I am rather contemplating that certain elements from these two points of view—which, as comprehensive visions, conflict with each other in significant ways—can be coherently and fruitfully combined.

While reflecting on these matters, a fortuitous reading of Isaiah 40 confronted me dramatically with the intensified realization that easy-to-miss instances of finitude in a tragic sense are operative in some biblical texts. This chapter presented me surprisingly with a vivid contrast between God and humankind, not based on our unbelief or unrighteousness or unholiness but on our frailty, ignorance, and transitoriness. In this context it is our finitude, not our sin, that is troubling and in need of redemption.

In this present work the biblical view of sin and tragedy’s vision of finitude and blindness will be seen as different ways of accounting for how and why human beings do things to damage other people and themselves and to offend the divine or the cosmos and perhaps also to hurt the divine. We have here two competing theological claims, two contending explanations of why human beings cause harm. I approach this clash from two perspectives.

The overarching perspective is the constructive or systematic suggestion that the biblical understanding of sin should be complemented by, and to some degree synthesized with, the tragic vision, in order to take more account of much of human experience, of some biblical phenomena such as the inevitability of violence in the story of Israel’s occupation of Canaan, and of the perennial testimony of the tragic tradition. The second and equally important perspective is the exegetical effort to show that the Bible itself contains a number of texts and motifs in which finitude in something like the tragic sense is seen as an existential problem and not just as a fact. The exegetical move shows that the constructive move has a biblical basis.

The contending claims of biblical sin and tragic finitude to account for human evil and suffering naturally and fruitfully attract Jacques Derrida’s hermeneutic of reversal and reinscription.

Hermeneutical Approach: Deconstruction and Reader-Response

Derrida’s hermeneutic grows out of his governing philosophy of language. For this scholar a rupture has occurred in our world, caused by language’s invasion of our universal realm of experience and reality. Everything has become discourse; therefore, it is necessary to think through the primary entailment of this, which is that there is no center (1970:249). What then is center and how does the universal invasion of language undo it?

Center is presence, the state of something being fully present in itself. It functions as a fixed, unchanging origin, as a governing principle, as form—all of which restrict the free play of meaning. Center makes something absolutely what it is, self-identical (Derrida 1970:247–49; 1980:12–13; 1979b:108).

Language disassembles the presence or self-identity of center in that language is a system of differences. Derrida plays upon the two senses of the French verb to differ (différer), which he combines by means of the new spelling of the noun différence as différance (a different spelling but same pronunciation in French). To differ means to be distinct or other, but it also suggests to defer or to delay (Derrida 1979b:129). Traditionally, the linguistic sign has been understood as composed of a signifier (a vehicle of meaning, sound, or writing) and a signified (a mental construct). But for Derrida the signified is a signifier because they both express meaning in the same way. The sign as a whole has no meaning in itself but expresses meaning in its difference or otherness from other signs. Thus it means by referring to another, and that other means by referring to another still and so on in an endless chain of references. Therefore, meaning is perpetually deferred and is not present (1979b:139–41; 1980:7, 73).

The invasion of language affects everything. Human consciousness or subjectivity is never identical with itself because it is shaped by language (Derrida 1979b:146–48) in its differences. And we have access to the flesh and bone of real existence outside of language only by means of the text. That is what Derrida means by there is nothing outside the text (1980:158–59). Thus all that we experience is caught up in the referential chain of differences and is not present to itself but is rather deferred.

The character of language and reality as constituted by differences invites deconstruction as a way of interpreting and understanding. If nothing is ever fully present to itself, we are prompted to look for the other that makes something different from itself. Deconstruction affirms that while the dominant conceptual position of a discourse attempts to exclude ideas and themes that would conflict with this dominant position and to relegate them to the outside, this expelled outside nevertheless insists on reinserting itself into the discourse, probably at a subdominant position. We may speak of the dominant position as high in the hierarchy of meanings and the subdominant one as low or forced to the bottom (Derrida 1979a:97; 1982:91–95; Leavey 1982:50–51; Culler 1983:85–86, 124, 166, 198–99, 223, 241).

David Clines makes a distinction between ordinary incoherence and deconstruction. Incoherence entails a conflict between two positions or philosophies that are both explicit, if not also equally weighted. Deconstruction, on the other hand, is a conflict between an explicit dominant position and a latent or hidden position that must be discerned and can be missed. One can read the text without seeing that it undermines itself (Clines 1990:106–7). I accept this distinction but would guess one cannot always easily tell whether a given tension is an incoherence or a deconstruction.

Derrida’s deconstructive hermeneutic contains the two moments of reversal and reinscription. Reversal identifies the subdominant, low, latent meanings and makes them prominent or dominant while consigning the dominant or explicit meanings to the subdominant level. The moment of reinscription gives an unanticipatable new interpretation that could not have been imagined prior to the reversal. Derrida does not completely reject the more traditional methods of critical interpretation, and he does deny that interpretation can legitimately make a text mean almost anything. However, given his contention that there is no center to which an interpretation must be related, he tends to extend the range of different legitimate interpretations to an undetermined point (1970:249, 264; 1980:158; Miller 1979:223–24). (For the seed of my discussion here of deconstruction and reader-response, see Via 2003:519–20.)

For my project the dominant motif is the biblical doctrine of sin—or what is generally thought to be the Bible’s unexceptional position—which sees it as the deformation and corruption of humankind that followed upon God’s creation of the world that came forth perfect and unflawed from God’s efficacious word. The subdominant motif is the tragic theme that sees created finitude as problematic and harm causing—or at least potentially so—in itself. I do not go so far with Derrida’s hermeneutic as to make biblical sin subdominant and tragic finitude and blindness dominant in a reformulated Christian doctrine of sin. I do, however, argue for a revised doctrine of sin in which the voice of tragic finitude is heard. In my reconstruction of this doctrine the problematical nature of finitude—its generative agency in causing suffering and sin—is the difference/other from the dominant biblical view of sin that prevents the latter—as usually understood—from being fully identical with itself. This calls for some questioning of the totally good—unflawed—nature of creation. It inserts a question mark.

The finitude issue requires a bit more attention at this point. When my proposed merger between biblical sin and tragic finitude is made, finitude comes to have a role in the biblical as well as in the tragic scheme. But the way that finitude is represented is different in the two visions. In the plays that I’m using as models of the tragic, the blindness of finitude causes noble and aristocratic characters to pursue genuinely valuable goals in such an inordinate and unmoderated way that they cause great harm and suffering to themselves and to others. They began, however, by initiating vigorous positive action. In the Bible, on the other hand, human finitude is represented by images of frailty and transitoriness—withering grass, fading flowers, grasshoppers—thus portraying human beings who are already passive victims of a threatened finitude. Or we have a character acting minimally out of the victimizing anxiety of an endangered finitude (the one-talent man of Jesus’s Parable of the Talents).

In the merger under discussion finitude, which has a governing role in the tragic scheme, also has a place in the biblical scheme, but the factors that define the biblical position remain constant and dominant. At the systematic level the structure is still: hardness of heart generates arrogance that produces rejection of God and harmful actions. The new thing is that finitude is also seen as generating self-exaltation over against God and harm to other people.

At the exegetical level, tragic finitude and anxiety are recognized when they occur in the Bible and are allowed to affect the interpretation of the texts involved. At both of these levels the tragic voice is heard in the Christian doctrine of sin in a new way so as to produce a reformulated understanding of sin.

In sum, I consider biblical texts that make hardness of heart and self-elevating pride the cause of harm doing, texts in which finitude is the provocation, and texts in which both are operative. But in the end what emerges at the level of constructive theology is that the source of sin is the interwoven collusion of both hardness of heart and finitude.

Returning now to the question of method, I also find convincing and useful the reader-response position of Wolfgang Iser, who holds that authors create texts, which include fixed points that constrain the reader’s interpretations and direct him or her to a position from which to interpret. The reader, on the other hand, turns texts into works, for the text contains gaps, disconnections, and conflicting perspectives. This emptiness creates openings for the reader to step in and develop a consistent configuration (the work) by discerning a nonexplicit semantic element that underlies the disconnections. Readers do this out of their differing individual understandings of the world as well as under the influence of their disparate social situations. Thus again a multiplicity of legitimate interpretations is possible and inescapable (Iser 1980a:9, 24, 35–36, 38, 47–50, 119, 121, 168, 182–89; 1980b:50, 54–57).

It would appear that for Iser the meaning of the text is more a dynamic process than a definable entity. The text elicits from the reader a standpoint that enables a consistent convergence of opposing perspectives, which is necessary for comprehending the unfamiliar world of the text. There must be these tentative moments of stability in order for understanding to occur. But the reader will always encounter new elements in the text that have not yet been integrated into the pattern of the work at any particular moment of stability. Thus the meaning of the text is perpetually open to revision—and so the process goes (1980b:58–60, 65; 1980a:22).

To give a bit more concreteness to my program here at the beginning, let me compare two brief biblical texts that demonstrate that the dominant (characteristically biblical) and subdominant (characteristically tragic) motifs do both appear in the Bible. Both texts use the same image to display the human condition, but they have reached very different conclusions about what constitutes that condition.

In Psalm 51 to be born of a woman is to be guilty of sin that stems from the moment of one’s very conception (51:5) and corrupts one’s innermost core—the secret, hidden depths of the heart (51:6, 10). This does not mean that the sexual act of conception is a sin, but that sin is the condition into which one is born before one has committed any particular sin. In Job 14:1–2 birth from a woman confers on us a finitude that constitutes us as transitory and as feeble as a withering flower or fleeting shadow. Finitude, not sin, is the problem.

To the biblical material critically understood as I have just indicated we can pose the existential questions.

Life: The Cost of Sin

I conclude the introduction to a discussion of sin with the reminder that sin exists as the corruption of the positive, namely, life with all that that entails. The relinquishment of life is the cost of being a sinner. All—or most—that has gone wrong with humankind must be seen in light of the essential biblical claim that the primary and primordial work of God is to create, promote, and sustain life and well-being (Genesis 1; John 1:1–5; 3:16; 17:3). Human life is the gift that God wills into being in a world that God regards as very good (Gen 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31), and living this life in a certain way is also a responsibility and task. In Genesis 1 human beings are created in the image of God, something that distinguishes them from all other beings, and enjoined to subdue the earth and live in it victoriously. In the second creation story of Genesis 2 the garden of Eden is a place of abundance, and the tree of life is set in the midst of it. The Joseph story presents God as active in the events of the narrative to preserve human life (Gen 45:5; 50:20).

We have already observed the crucial importance for Israel of having its own land. It was also an important outgrowth of this that each family should have its own piece of land, which was not to be sold out of the family in perpetuity. Both law and prophet sought to protect this family right and to prevent the rich from dispossessing the poor (Lev 25:23; Deut 19:14; Isa 3:14–15; Jer 17:11; Mic 2:1–2). The Old Testament concern with land goes beyond its most literal sense: land provided a specific place to live; it was the physical and emotional foundation for life and the means of production and security. These values are not confined to an agricultural setting (Janzen 1994:177–78, 206).

In Deuteronomy the ideal goal of this kind of provision and protection is that no one should be in need, but there is recognition that this would depend on obedience (15:4). Thus there is a concession to the reality that there will be poor in the land (15:7, 11–12). It is also recognized in the Decalogue that continuing secure life on the land is contingent upon faithfulness (Exod 20:12). The persistent lack thereof meant that the ideal was pushed forward into the coming kingdom of God, when peace would reign and all people would dwell on their own fruitful land and be free of fear (Mic 4:1–4).

Turning now to two New Testament writers, the gospel for Paul brings the assurance of eternal life and also a new and eternal or eschatological quality to this life (Rom 4:17), and as in the Old Testament, life is both a gift (Rom 3:24) and a task (Rom 6:11, 23; 8:13). Life entails peace with God (Rom 5:1–2, 10–11), a new kind of human community (1 Cor 12:12–13, 24–26), and freedom to be engaged in the affairs of the world without being absorbed by the world (1 Cor 3:21–23; 7:29–31).

The gift quality of life is seen in that the faith in which life resides (Rom 4:3, 13, 16–22) is the gift of God’s grace (Phil 1:29). The task aspect may be seen in the relationship of faith to the law. For Paul the purpose of the law is to evoke faith. The law confronts us with a limit and, therefore, should prompt us to look beyond ourselves to God and God’s grace (Rom 9:30–32). The law then promises life (Rom 7:10). The operative point here is that it is the law—which expresses command—that should turn us to faith with its openness to grace.

While for Paul the result of the law’s confrontation with sinful humankind, intent on securing its own well-being, is to drive us to sin and transgression (Rom 3:20; 4:15; 7:5–10), the purpose of the law is to engender faith and life.

In the Gospel of John the theme of life is of primary importance, for the very purpose of Jesus’s coming into the world is to bring life, and John uses the terms life and eternal life interchangeably (John 1:4; 3:16; 5:24–26, 40; 6:27, 33, 40, 51–54; 17:3; 20:31). Life is conferred by faith in Jesus and knowledge of God, which put people in touch with truth, with the reality of God (1:14; 14:6, 9; 17:17).

For John eternal life, the hoped-for life of the world to come, has already become a reality now in this world through the mission of Jesus (3:36; 5:24; 6:47, 54; 11:25–26). That is, Jesus wants everyone to have abundant (perissos) life (10:10)—uncommon, remarkable, extraordinary, beyond what can be expected. Abundant life, precisely because of its nonspecificity, has a scope that cannot be restricted. Nothing good can be excluded from its all-encompassing range.

Sin offends God and often harms the neighbor, but I began this discussion of sin with a brief description of the Bible’s understanding of life in order to bring into relief what the possibilities for life are that the sinner diminishes for himself or herself.

chapter 2

The Biblical Understanding of Sin

I select for discussion certain of the many pertinent biblical texts but enough, I believe, to justify speaking of a biblical point of view, a point of view capable of providing a systematic ordering of the material. The terms sin and original sin will be used synonymously throughout the book to refer to the human condition, while context will indicate when sin or sins refers to actions stemming from the condition.

Despite the problems that original sin has raised across the centuries and the challenges that it has provoked from science, philosophy, and critical historiography, I continue to use the term because the Christian tradition has given it a currency that it still possesses. However, the connotation that I give it refers not so much to the origin of sin at a chronological point in mythological time—Adam and Eve—as to origin as the generative impulse to sin located at the center of the essential self of every human being. That is to say, my study will focus largely, but not entirely, on the central role of the human heart. And this is the real concern of the Adam and Eve story.

The doctrine of original sin first arose as an answer to the question: What does Christ do for humankind? The answer was that he takes away original sin (Wiley 2002:4). Augustine made a distinction between peccatum originale originans (original sin as originating or the event of original sin—traditionally Adam and Eve) and peccatum originale originatum (original sin as the condition of humankind caused by the originating factor); and this distinction still shapes the discussion (ibid.: 5, 56). In my construction the hardening of the human heart is both the originating event and the resulting condition.

Tatha Wiley’s insightful book (2002:8–9) makes a useful distinction between the concept of original sin and the reality to which the concept refers. The reality is the way and resulting condition of human beings’ alienating themselves from God with all that this entails, and the reality is still as much with us as it has always been. The concepts for articulating the intellectual meaning of that reality have changed greatly over the centuries, and the task of trying to find better ways to do this remains.

Hardness of Heart as the Origin