Interpretation and the Claims of the Text: Resourcing New Testament Theology

By Jason A. Whitlark, Bruce W. Longenecker, Lidija Novakovic and Mikeal C. Parsons

Interpretation and the Claims of the Text combines the writings of more than a dozen prominent biblical scholars to elucidate the theological building blocks for the New Testament. Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Mikeal C. Parsons, Jason A. Whitlark, Loveday Alexander, Warren Carter, Sharyn Dowd, Amy-Jill Levine, Bruce W. Longenecker, Frank J. Matera, David P. Moessner, Alicia D. Myers, Lidija Novakovic, Todd D. Still, C. Clifton Black, and R. Alan Culpepper chart the waters of creation and humanity, the problems of sin, Christ's redemptive power, and God's overarching plan for humankind. Students and scholars alike will benefit from their exegetical groundwork, perceptive discussion, and enlightening conclusions. Interpretations and the Claims of the Text illuminates multiple points of departure for further exploration of the depths of New Testament texts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baylor University Press
• Release date: Mar 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781481301961

Book preview

INTERPRETATION AND THE CLAIMS OF THE TEXT

Resourcing New Testament Theology

ESSAYS IN HONOR OF CHARLES H. TALBERT

Jason A. Whitlark

Bruce W. Longenecker

Lidija Novakovic

Mikeal C. Parsons

Editors

BAYLOR UNIVERSITY PRESS

© 2014 by Baylor University Press

Waco, Texas 76798

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of Baylor University Press.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Interpretation and the claims of the text: resourcing New Testament theology : essays in honor of Charles H. Talbert / Jason A. Whitlark, Bruce W.

Longenecker, Lidija Novakovic, and Mikeal C. Parsons, editors.

  327 pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-1-4813-0030-8 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Bible. New Testament—Theology. I. Talbert, Charles H. II. Whitlark, Jason A., editor of compilation.

  BS2397.A1I58 2014

  230—dc23

2013020176

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper with a minimum of 30% post-consumer waste recycled content.

CONTENTS

Preface

1Interpreting the Claims of the New Testament: The Life and Scholarship of Charles H. Talbert

Sharyn Dowd and Alicia D. Myers

Claims about God

2The God Who Raised Jesus from the Dead: Toward a Theology of Resurrection

Lidija Novakovic

3The Glory of God in Paul’s Letter to the Romans

Beverly Roberts Gaventa

Claims about the Human Condition

4The World Was My Oyster but I Used the Wrong Fork (Oscar Wilde): The Parable of the Pearl Reopened

Amy-Jill Levine

5The Problem of Evil in the Gospel of John

R. Alan Culpepper

6Placing Pain in a Pauline Frame: Considering Suffering in Romans 5 and 8

Todd D. Still

Claims about Creation and Human Destiny

7Endzeit als Urzeit: Mark and Creation Theology

C. Clifton Black

8Conformed to the Image of God’s Own Son: The Goal of God’s Redemptive Plan according to the Pauline Epistles

Frank J. Matera

9Cosmology and the Perfection of Humanity in Hebrews

Jason A. Whitlark

Claims about the Christian Community

10Luke and the Heritage of Israel

Mikeal C. Parsons

11The Love of God (Romans 5:5): Expansive Syntax and Theological Polyvalence

Bruce W. Longenecker

12Diakonia, the Ephesian Comma, and the Ministry of All Believers

Loveday Alexander

13The Living Resources of Early Christology: Papias and the Gospel of Mark

David P. Moessner

Claims about Empire

14The Question of the State and the State of the Question: The Roman Empire and New Testament Theologies

Warren Carter

Notes

Bibliography

List of Contributors

Index of Primary Sources

Index of Modern Authors

PREFACE

This volume presents original work by New Testament scholars elucidating the theological claims of New Testament texts. In so doing, this volume strives to provide resources for New Testament theology by engaging in one of the fundamental tasks of any New Testament theology—the descriptive task of identifying the distinctive theological claims of the texts in the New Testament. The essays in this volume are organized around the topics of specific theological claims: claims about God, the human condition, creation and human destiny, the Christian community, and empire.

This volume also celebrates the life and work of a foremost New Testament scholar on his eightieth birthday, Charles H. Talbert. It is fitting, then, that the topic and initial framework of this project was shaped by a writing assignment Charles gave to participants in his graduate seminar on New Testament theology. Charles introduced the assignment with the following statement: "N.T. Wright, The NT and the People of God (SPCK, 1992), 405, says about Paul: ‘Within all his letters, … we discover a larger implicit narrative [than Paul’s explicit discourse articulates]. … Paul presupposes this story even when he does not expound it directly, and it is arguable that we can only understand the more limited narrative worlds of the different letters if we locate them at their appropriate points within this overall story world.’ What Wright claims for Paul is arguably true for other NT writings." Charles proposed that the larger narrative implicit in the New Testament is one that spans from creation to new creation in which God acts to deliver his people through Jesus Christ from sin and corruption for life in the present and hope for the future. All of the topics in this volume align themselves with relation to Charles’ suggested narrative framework for organizing a potential New Testament theology.¹ Charles himself made the theological claims of the New Testament a central concern of his own scholarship, as demonstrated in a biographical essay that heads this collection of essays and in the contribution his scholarship makes to each of the essays in this volume. It is with deep gratitude that we dedicate this volume to him with the hope of aiding and extending his own scholarly contributions in the study of the New Testament.

Finally, this volume was made possible by the support and hard work of several people to whom we express our gratitude: Carey Newman and his staff at Baylor University Press who gave their enthusiastic support of the project from its inception; the contributors who submitted excellent work that truly honors the scholarship of Charles; and especially Peter Rice who meticulously copyedited all the submissions and constructed the bibliography.

CHAPTER 1

INTERPRETING THE CLAIMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

The Life and Scholarship of Charles H. Talbert

Sharyn Dowd and Alicia D. Myers

Introduction

Central to understanding the life and work of Charles Harold Talbert is appreciation of his own understanding of his vocation as a New Testament scholar and a theologian of the church.¹ A critical and innovative scholar of the New Testament, Talbert has always understood his scholarship to be in service to believing communities. Responding to the analysis of his work on Acts in 1992, Talbert highlights his understanding of the New Testament as a religious book meant for religious communities.² Thus, any historical study of this book and the writings it contains should raise theological questions; if it fails to do so, it is, in Talbert’s characteristically concise assessment, deficient.³ According to Talbert, biblical research has practical ends which can only be realized if scholars communicate with as wide an audience as possible.⁴ Talbert’s admonitions for higher biblical criticism to explicate its practical, theological dividends was a common mantra in his classrooms and a clear focus of his own work, which includes a number of works directed toward general Christian readers alongside those meant for the relatively few of us who are members the scholarly guild. As a result of Talbert’s ability to communicate, his voice has become one with far-reaching effects. Acting as a leader of a number of scholarly societies, publishing regularly and widely, and mentoring students at various institutions throughout his career, Talbert has repeatedly called others to engage deeply with the New Testament while also considering the theological implications of such engagement. This present volume, with its interest in the theological dimensions of the New Testament, is fitting tribute from a few those who have heard and heeded his call.

The present essay traces the life and career of Talbert through his formative influences, major scholarly turning points, and recent contributions, as well as his involvement in key denominational discussions leading up to his retirement from Baylor University in 2012.

Formative Influences

Charles Harold Talbert was born on March 19, 1934, in Jackson, Mississippi. His parents, Carl E. Talbert and Audrey Hale Talbert, graduated from Mississippi College and moved with their small son to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. One of Charles’ earliest memories is of the seminary hallway where he sat in a chair waiting for his mother to get out of class.⁵

After his seminary graduation, Carl Talbert pastored Baptist congregations in West Virginia, Virginia, Mississippi, and Alabama. Charles graduated from high school in Bessemer, Alabama, where he played quarterback on a championship football team. He credits his coach with teaching him persistence and self-confidence. From his parents he learned the value of education. Audrey Talbert was a highly respected teacher in the various communities in which the family lived, and Carl Talbert regarded teaching as one of the primary tasks of the pastor. The motto of his ministry was Hosea 4:6, My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge, and he made it his mission to bring the light of knowledge into the Southern Baptist congregations he was called to serve.

It was from his father that Charles learned that because there is one God who both creates and redeems, the life of the mind and the life of faith are complementary, rather than competitive. Pursue the truth wherever it leads, Carl Talbert used to say, because all truth finally comes back to God.

Charles enrolled at Howard College (now Samford University) in Birmingham, Alabama, where he learned the clarity of written expression that has been the hallmark of his work. After graduating from college in 1956, he postponed his intended law career for one year to accept a Lilly Foundation grant for a trial year at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. The law career was soon forgotten.

Southern Seminary in the late 1950s was the center of Baptist intellectual endeavor in the South. Talbert studied with the likes of Dale Moody, Eric Rust, Wayne Oates, and Theron Price. Soon he began to see his future in terms of scholarship and teaching. He took to heart and later passed on to his students a piece of advice on literary analysis received from Moody: Look for repetition; when in doubt, count.

After his seminary graduation in 1959, he enrolled in the doctoral program at Vanderbilt University, where he joined a small group of Baptist men in whom Leander Keck took a nurturing interest. It was while studying New Testament at Vanderbilt that Charles met Betty O’Neal Weaver, a graduate student in history with an interest in American Christianity. They were married on June 30, 1961.

Charles Talbert completed the Ph.D. at Vanderbilt in 1963, and he and Betty moved immediately to Wake Forest College (now University) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He taught at Wake Forest until moving to Baylor University in 1996. During this period Betty completed her Ph.D. in history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a two-year course in Christian Spirituality at the Shalem Institute in Washington, D.C. Her vocation became focused on spiritual direction, and she was a cofounder of a center for counseling, spiritual formation, and Christian education in Winston-Salem. The couple reared two children in North Carolina: Caroline O’Neal Talbert Beroth and Charles Richard Talbert.

Scholastic Turning Points and Contributions

Throughout Talbert’s publications one detects a keen interest in the development of an interpretive method for reading the New Testament and explicating its theological intricacies.⁶ In pursuit of these goals, Talbert acts as a careful student of context—adamantly maintaining that it is context that determines meaning. Thus one finds Talbert asking questions centering on the various audiences of the New Testament writings in hopes of reconstructing these audiences and hearing, as well as possible, the New Testament through their ears. Convinced that with a better understanding of Mediterranean antiquity interpreters can better understand the writings that this world produced, Talbert’s work repeatedly turns to the literature of the ancient world to shed light on cultural concepts communicated in the New Testament.

Talbert’s focus on interpretive method led him through various methodological approaches before settling on the authorial-audience criticism that characterizes his most recent works. While at Vanderbilt, Talbert studied under the able tutelage of Leander Keck, reflecting his interests in biblical theology and the relationship between the biblical text and history. It was with the goal of discovering the historical roots behind Luke’s writings that drove Talbert’s dissertation on the Third Gospel: a redaction-critical study that was in his first monograph, published by Abingdon in 1966 as Luke and the Gnostics: An Examination of the Lucan Purpose.⁷ In contrast to the consensus based on Hans Conzelmann’s conclusion that the Gospel was written to substitute a scheme of salvation history for the disappointed expectation of the imminent return of Christ, Talbert argued that Luke wrote to counteract nascent docetism. Talbert found support for his interpretation of the Lukan occasion from extrabiblical sources that pointed to docetic Christology in areas around Ephesus. For Talbert, Luke-Acts stands as a defense against these gnostic tendencies that distorted an earlier apostolic age that had emphasized the genuine humanity of Jesus.

Though the idea of anti-Gnosticism as a major theological concern of the Third Evangelist did not persuade many, Talbert’s dissertation topic is instructive because it exemplifies not only his interest in reconstructing contexts, but also an independence of mind that proved characteristic of his subsequent work. Daunted neither by the venerable age of any scholarly consensus nor by the reputations of those who supported it, Talbert published a series of tightly argued iconoclastic studies. No, 2 Peter was not about the delay of the parousia; it was about the question of God’s ability to act in judgment to punish evildoers.⁸ No, the Philippian hymn was not an expression of a Christology of preexistence; it was an expression of Adam/Christ typology and exaltation Christology.⁹ As a result of these publications, Talbert’s national reputation grew as a New Testament scholar with the result that he was invited to present a working paper on Luke at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary’s Festival on the Gospels.¹⁰

Around this same time Talbert received several postdoctoral fellowships from Duke University and the University of North Carolina (1968–1969), as well as from the American Academy and the Vatican Library in Rome, Italy (1971–1973). The focus of these fellowships was the study of literary criticism, ancient art, romance, history, and biography. As a result of his time entrenched in the literature of the ancient world, Talbert’s interests moved away from his initial adherence to redaction criticism. Instead, in his pivotal 1974 publication Literary Patterns, Theological Themes and the Genre of Luke-Acts, Talbert focused on the literary structures and comparative literature from the ancient world to shed light on Luke’s writings.¹¹ The publication of this volume established him as a leading interpreter of Luke-Acts, a role that was reinforced by his leadership in the Luke-Acts Group, and eventually the Luke-Acts Seminar, of the Society of Biblical Literature. Talbert’s involvement with the Luke-Acts Group eventually led to his editing two collections of essays generated by the group, entitled Perspectives on Luke-Acts and Luke-Acts: New Perspectives from the Society of Biblical Literature Seminar.¹² As Mikeal Parsons notes, these volumes demonstrate a shift in Lukan studies in the 1970s onward away from a focus on the redaction-critical questions posed by Conzelmann and toward questions posed by Talbert and his colleagues in the seminar—namely questions surrounding genre, literary structures, and style, as well as comparative literature from Luke’s milieu.¹³ Talbert’s own reflections on Luke-Acts eventually culminated in the publication of Reading Luke-Acts in Its Mediterranean Milieu.¹⁴

Talbert’s work in Literary Patterns and with the Luke-Acts Group exposed three foci that would prove key to his future academic pursuits. First, he moved from the atomistic tendency of redaction criticism to studying the literary structures found in the final form of texts. Second, to a degree not seen in the publications before his postdoctoral reading of mountains of primary source material, he was able to locate a New Testament document within the context of ancient literature and Greco-Roman culture. Third, he identified a canonical Gospel as belonging to the genre of ancient biography. It is the third of these foci that was at the center of one of Talbert’s most influential and provocative works: What Is a Gospel?¹⁵

In this brief monograph, Talbert presents a succinct case in favor of reading the Gospels as ancient biographies. The structure of What Is a Gospel? necessarily derived its structure from the objections articulated by Rudolf Bultmann to the notion that Gospels are biographies: (1) The Gospels have a mythological structure; the biographies do not; (2) the Gospels have a cultic function; the biographies do not; and (3) the Gospels participate in the world-denying attitude of apocalyptic; the biographies affirm the world with its history of heroes. In contrast to Bultmann’s conclusions, Talbert demonstrated that ancient Greco-Roman biographies did indeed have mythical components, cultic elements, and could be world-denying. Moreover, Talbert explained that the Gospels were not as world-denying as Bultmann believed. From his analysis, Talbert argued for the existence of five types of ancient biographies and suggested that we find examples of each in the New Testament.

While Talbert’s work raised some notable objections, his view of the Gospels as ancient biographies has been a lasting contribution to New Testament scholarship.¹⁶ Even among those not as willing to assign the Gospels to the genre of ancient biography alone, Talbert’s work has fueled greater exploration of other ancient genres to understand the canonical Gospels. With these studies, scholars have largely abandoned the idea of the Gospels as sui generis. Instead, the Gospels exist as a part of the literature of their time period. The theological implication of such a position is that the kenosis of incarnation extends to God’s entire program of self-revelation. Talbert, like the New Testament writers themselves, has no patience with docetism, whether the doctrine in question is Christology or revelation.¹⁷

Talbert’s departure from redaction criticism and his attention to ancient literature, especially genre, eventually led him to settle on the interpretive method of authorial audience criticism mentioned above. This language is based on the work of nonbiblical literary critics Peter J. Rabinowitz and Hans Robert Jauss, whose publications surfaced around the same time that Talbert himself was gaining prominence in New Testament circles.¹⁸ While Talbert did not initially articulate his approach in terms of an authorial audience, evidence of it surfaces in Talbert’s work produced as a result of his postdoctoral fellowships. Of particular note are his 1975 article The Concept of the Immortals in Mediterranean Antiquity, his 1976 article The Myth of the Descending-Ascending Redeemer in Mediterranean Antiquity, and Reading Luke, published in 1982.¹⁹ In Reading Luke-Acts Talbert summarizes the method of authorial audience criticism, writing:

To read as authorial audience is to attempt to answer the question: If the literary work fell into the hands of an audience that closely matched the author’s target audience in terms of knowledge brought to the text, how would they have understood the work? This type of reading involves trying to adopt the perspectives of the authorial audience so that one may become a member of the author’s original audience’s conceptual community. To do this, modern readers must gain an understanding of the values of the authorial audience and the presuppositions upon which the original text was built. We must reconstruct the conceptual world that was used in the creation and original reception of the text.²⁰

Talbert’s introduction argues that this approach is used throughout his Reading Luke-Acts volume, even in those articles published prior to his explicit interaction with Rabinowitz and Jauss.

While Talbert’s attention has always lingered on Luke-Acts, he was never one to be limited to only a few New Testament writings or issues. Indeed, Talbert’s forty-nine years of teaching at Wake Forest University and Baylor University kept his attention on the entire New Testament canon, as he regularly taught courses on the Johannine and Pauline literature as well as survey courses. As a result, Talbert employed his method in a number of studies on a range of New Testament writings and concepts, including narratives of Jesus’ miraculous conception; the various purposes of ancient biographies and the Gospels; money management and household structures in the ancient world; and worship practices and their import for the Fourth Gospel, to name a few.²¹ Full employment of his method is also found in his other commentaries as well, which cover the full breadth of New Testament writings, including the Gospels of Luke, John, and Matthew, Acts, and several Pauline letters (1–2 Corinthians, Romans, Ephesians, and Colossians).²² Talbert’s Reading commentaries offered a new approach to the commentary genre—one based on understanding large thought units and the larger Mediterranean context in order to make one feel at home in the biblical text.²³ Not surprisingly, Talbert’s commentaries brought forth several fresh interpretations of these biblical texts. In his commentary on Revelation, for example, Talbert first situates his readers in the context of ancient apocalypses in order to help them make sense of the book’s otherwise bewildering form and content. From this context he argues that Revelation should not be read primarily as persecution literature but as a response to pressure for cultural and religious accommodation in the churches of Asia.²⁴ In Reading John, he joins his voice to others challenging the consensus that synagogue expulsion is at the heart of the conflict in the Johannine writings, arguing instead that the letters and Gospel articulate an antidocetic Christology. Talbert, therefore, understands 2–3 John as predating the Gospel, while 1 John was its contemporary, and he arranges his commentary accordingly.²⁵ In his commentary on Corinthians, Talbert argues that the prohibition against women speaking in the assembly (1 Cor 14:33b-36) was not Paul’s position but a Corinthian slogan that Paul rejected with an indignant, What! Did the word of God originate with you men?²⁶ An interest in the authorial audience, with special attention to the rhetorical expectations present in the ancient world, also features prominently in the Paideia commentary series Talbert recently initiated with Mikeal C. Parsons.²⁷

His interest in the world of the authorial audience, and the expertise in ancient literature that came with it, also gave Talbert a foothold to criticize several significant trends in recent New Testament scholarship. Like his Doctorvater, Talbert has little patience for the findings of the Jesus Seminar not only because he agrees with Keck that their findings only replicated the fallacy noted by Albert Schweitzer in 1906 but also because of their insistence that the historical Jesus be entirely distinct from his milieu.²⁸ According to Talbert, such a move leads to an idiosyncratic Jesus who would not have been understood, let alone able to communicate, in a matter connected to his ancient Jewish roots or the Christian tradition that developed from them.²⁹

Talbert’s exploration of Mediterranean antiquity also led to his rejection of the popular new perspective on Paul put forward by E. P. Sanders and developed by James D. G. Dunn and others.³⁰ Siding with Timo Eskola and Timo Laato instead, Talbert insisted that Paul communicates a new covenantal piety. Although Talbert notes that the covenantal nomism of the new perspective is detectable in various texts from Middle Judaism,³¹ he argues that this is only one of several soteriological perspectives present in these texts. In addition to covenantal nomism are legalistic, syncretistic, and what he calls divine enablement views. It is the latter view that Talbert argues is present in Paul’s theology. According to Talbert, since Paul had a pessimistic view of humanity, he did not believe that people could ever take responsibility for maintaining the covenant on their own. Thus, God takes responsibility for being faithful to the covenant as well as empowering the faithfulness of humans within it.³² The idea of divine enablement soon came to be a feature in Talbert’s interpretation of New Testament soteriological perspectives. The concept is most fully developed in his interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount, but it also appears in Talbert’s interpretations of the soteriologies of Revelation and the Gospel of John and is a feature in a collection of essays recently edited with Jason A. Whitlark entitled Getting Saved.³³

Talbert’s work makes clear that this authorial audience methodology serves several purposes: first, it clarifies expectations and contexts of ancient audiences; second, it enables him to identify and explain the theological implications of New Testament writings for contemporary believers. In this way, Talbert has never strayed from his vocation as a New Testament scholar and theologian. Indeed, Talbert’s career of utilizing this method throughout the New Testament paved the way for him to begin working toward a comprehensive New Testament theology. Talbert’s most recent publications are in service of this long-term goal, including the coedited volume Getting Saved and a collection of essays published by Brill in 2011 The Development of Christology during the First Hundred Years. These publications, much like his Reading Luke-Acts before, bring together a career of contemplation on a particular topic and offer a synthesis of Talbert’s current interpretation on the topic.

Like the previous collections, the bulk of his most recent book consists of a number of previously published essays on christological themes. The opening essay, however, sets forth what Talbert calls a modest proposal outlining the development of Christology among Jesus-believers in the first one hundred years. Talbert argues that culture supplied these early believers with categories for theological reflection, which they used to articulate their understanding of Jesus Christ in the midst of their soteriological experiences and expectations. Although termed as a modest proposal, Talbert’s reconstruction dismantles the usual argument that early Christians progressed from a low to high Christology over time and dismisses the charge of syncretism against those finding similarities between early Christologies and mythologies outside the Old Testament. As Talbert explains,

The reflection of non-Jewish as well as Jewish myths in christological reflection does not mean that early Christianity was a syncretistic religion made up of pieces from hither and yon all stirred together. No, rather the earliest followers of Jesus had a distinct constitutive core, experientially grounded, that gave them the ability to sift and sort through language and concepts from their surroundings to express what the Christ-event meant to them in terms of their past, present, and future.³⁴

In his preface, Talbert makes clear that this volume makes no claim to finality in the debate over New Testament Christologies. Nevertheless, he certainly achieves his goal of pushing the discussion forward with his culminating reflection on the importance of both culture and experiences for theological development.

The Development of Christology brings Talbert’s scholarship full circle. Having started his career steeped in research concerning the christological arguments of Luke-Acts, Talbert returns to these concerns again and again in his analysis of New Testament writings.³⁵ Thus, with this most recent contribution, he returns to his roots with a synthesis that profits from years immersed in ancient Mediterranean literature and the resulting progression of his methodology to that of authorial audience criticism. Yet, more than that, this volume is also a fitting reminder of the importance of Talbert’s own faith experience for his life and interpretation of the New Testament. That Talbert takes seriously the experiences of early believers in the development of their christological understandings illustrates the significance Talbert places on communities of faith and his regular involvement among them, regardless of denominational affiliation. His critical reflection on the New Testament and its surrounding culture highlights the great value he finds in the biblical text: namely, that it is worth such time and effort in an attempt to articulate the theological expressions found within it for believers past, present, and future. In this way, Talbert stays true to the perception of his vocation outlined above. He acts as an emblematic New Testament scholar and theologian of the church.

Church Involvement

Always an active church member, Talbert has enjoyed communicating the results of biblical scholarship with laypeople in congregations through Bible studies, pulpit supply, and interim pastorates, the last often co-pastorates with Dr. Betty Talbert, who is also a gifted teacher, preacher, and counselor. Talbert regards all of his scholarship as ultimately for the sake of the church. This fact is clearly seen in his Reading commentaries, which he explains aim to present cutting-edge research in popular form so that it is accessible to upper-level undergraduates, seminarians, seminary educated pastors, and educated laypeople, as well as to graduate students and professors.³⁶ Talbert also took the time to produce several homiletical aids for pastors, including articles on James and Matthew and preaching guides on Acts.³⁷ In addition, Talbert published a number of articles that served as nonspecialist renditions of his more academic publications and gave specific attention to church settings.³⁸ Stepping into the pastoral role, Talbert even tackled the issue of suffering, lending the perspective of the ancient world to this perennial struggle to understand the nature of suffering.³⁹

Through the years, however, Talbert has also addressed some major ecclesial issues directly. Never one to shy away from major debates in New Testament scholarship, Talbert brought his characteristically straightforward prose to conflicts at the center of his own denominational tradition—the Southern Baptist Convention—at the height of its turmoil leading up to its split at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In the 1960s the issue was race. In an article for The Baptist Student, Talbert critiqued the racial prejudice of segregationists,⁴⁰ and when his essay was changed beyond recognition by an editor, he used the resulting text as a teaching exercise for a student:

Since we had been talking recently about the problem of interpolations in various literatures, I thought I would issue a challenge to her and see if she could spot the interpolations in the revised manuscript. It took her less than ten minutes.⁴¹

In the 1980s, during the conservative takeover of the SBC, the issues were biblical inerrancy and the related dispute over the ordination of women. Talbert participated in the attempts of Baptist scholars to clarify the dangers of inerrancy for the Baptist laity and to present alternatives more in keeping with historic Baptist piety and theology. In his presidential address to the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion in 1985, Talbert described his understanding of the Bible as a spiritual friend, who is a dialogue partner and recognized specialist in Christian life and faith.⁴² This friend offers authoritative teaching on matters of soteriology—not history or science. Indeed, Talbert warns, biblical inerrancy is Apollinarian at worst, Monophysite at best because it circumvents the doctrine of Christ’s full humanity alongside his full divinity.⁴³

Talbert also argued strongly for the legitimacy of the call of women to positions of leadership in churches. As early as his commentary Reading Luke, Talbert surveys the New Testament passages often used to forbid women from positions of ministerial leadership and systematically dismantles such arguments. Luke, for example, understands women to be guarantors of the facts of the Christ event alongside men by including stories of women in parallel to the men.⁴⁴ The controversial text of 1 Timothy 2:11-12 is understood as an epistle responding to false teaching to which women were particularly susceptible rather than a universal prohibition against female teachers.⁴⁵ Talbert outlined his interpretation of Paul in similarly lucid style in his Reading Corinthians commentary and several denominational publications. Indeed, Talbert uses his clarification of 1 Corinthians 14:34-36 as a rebuke against the restrictive views of the Corinthian church to demonstrate the importance of higher biblical criticism for the church; such studies are edifying rather than threatening for believers.⁴⁶

Yet, that Talbert challenged the most conservative members of his tradition should not lead one to believe that he understood himself as a liberal Baptist. Instead, Talbert sees his role as a voice for the moderate Baptist position. Thus, in his response to the push to use inclusive language for God, Talbert argues for a more conservative position than some of his Baptist counterparts. According to Talbert, Christians should retain masculine pronouns for discussing the divine in order to (1) avoid confusion between the Creator and the created; and (2) preserve the reality of Jesus’ identity as God Incarnate who speaks as such when discussing matters of religion and morals, including when he addresses God as Father (and never as Mother).⁴⁷ Despite his views on inclusive language for God, from the paragraph above it is not surprising that Talbert remains adamant that the biblical tradition, properly understood, supports full equality for women and that the Apostolic Tradition is not opposed to inclusive language for humans.⁴⁸

Lasting Influence

With such a far reach, Talbert’s ideas have and will continue to have a lasting influence. His attention to matters of narrative style and structure, alongside his careful incorporation of comparative literature from the ancient world, helped shaped the study of Luke-Acts since the publication of his Literary Patterns. Moreover, his interpretation of the Gospels as ancient biographies continues to dominate understandings of Gospel genre, even as it has also encouraged more recent scholars to discover connections between the Gospels and other ancient genres by pushing them to read more primary sources. The breadth of Talbert’s study, the careful analysis that his work contains, and the lucid style of his writing has rightfully earned him a place among the best New Testament scholars.

Talbert’s constant attention to the theological implications of his scholarship, however, places him in a cloud of New Testament theologians as well. Always remaining involved in church settings and ecclesial debates, Talbert has never lost sight of what he sees as the ultimate goal for believers who are also New Testament scholars: the use of their gifts for the benefit of the church. As Talbert explains, as integral members of the body of Christ, such scholars need to be heard, if for no other reason than to prevent those who are religiously zealous from expressing their devotion to the Lord in ways that run counter to what the Bible meant and means.⁴⁹

Before concluding, mention must also be made of Talbert’s pedagogical accomplishments. After spending over thirty years instructing undergraduate students at Wake Forest University, Talbert taught at Baylor University from 1996 until his retirement in 2012. During his tenure at Baylor, he helped to shape the New Testament Ph.D. program, teaching a number of seminars, shaping preliminary examinations, and working with the faculty to create a colloquy in which New Testament students follow Talbert’s longstanding practice of reading extrabiblical primary sources to gain a greater understanding of the New Testament milieu. Raising the profile of Baylor’s New Testament program, Talbert also successfully directed eleven doctoral dissertations, ten of which have subsequently been published or are in the process of publication.⁵⁰ The commitment to students from both Charles Talbert and his wife Betty is further demonstrated by the donation of their libraries to Campbell University Divinity School.

Talbert’s career has been one of careful reflection, close analysis, and clear articulation of his astute and, at times, provocative interpretations