{"id":1171,"date":"2010-08-17T17:27:50","date_gmt":"2010-08-17T17:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2010\/08\/the-indelible-image--an-interview-with-nijay-gupta.html"},"modified":"2010-08-17T17:27:50","modified_gmt":"2010-08-17T17:27:50","slug":"the-indelible-image-an-interview-with-nijay-gupta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/08\/the-indelible-image-an-interview-with-nijay-gupta.html","title":{"rendered":"The Indelible Image— an Interview with Nijay Gupta"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interview with
<\/a><\/h2>\n

Ben Witherington III on THE INDELIBLE IMAGE<\/a> http:\/\/nijaygupta.wordpress.com\/2010\/08\/16\/interview-with-ben-witherington-iii-on-the-indelible-image\/
<\/h2>\n
\n

\"\"
\nBen Witherington III, Amos Professor of NT for Doctoral Studies at
\nAsbury Theological Seminary (KY), is a highly competent interpreter of
\nScripture and a prolific author. We have some interesting similarities.
\nWe both studied at secular undergrads (Ben at UNC and me at Miami Univ),
\nboth did our MDIVs at Gordon-Conwell, and both did our PhD work at Univ
\nof Durham. We both taught at Ashland Theological Seminary and I just
\njoined the adjunct faculty (to teach for the virtual campus) at Asbury.
\nAnother cross-current – I went to high school with his daughter!<\/p>\n

Well, in any case, I was happy to receive a copy last year of his fantastic and cogent book entitled Indelible Image: The Theological and Ethical World of the New Testament<\/a><\/em> <\/a>(vol1 : The Individual Witnesses<\/em>, Vol 2: The Collective Witnesses<\/em>).
\nBen was kind enough to do an interview here with me and I suggest you
\nrecommend that your library order this weighty series. It is an
\nexcellent resource and would make a nice textbook as well.<\/p>\n

NKG: There has been a whole host of NT Theology projects in recent years (Thielman, Marshall, Matera, Dunn,<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Schreiner,
\nSchnelle) – your project seeks to complement the ‘theology’ aspect by
\nattending to the ‘ethical’ aspects as well.  Why has this been neglected
\nby scholars?<\/p>\n

\n

You are of course right that there have been a plethora
\nof NT theology tomes that have come out in the last decade or so. Not so
\nmany systematic surveys on NT ethics however.   Richard Hay’s The Moral Vision of the NT, <\/span>
\nand Wayne Meek’s work are both quite dated by now.   To some degree,
\nthe answer why the latter has been largely neglected while the former
\nhas been the subject of constant scrutiny has to do with the way one
\nviews salvation.  If salvation is purely a theological matter, we are
\nsaved by grace through faith plus nothing, then ethics can be no more
\nthan the grateful response of a person to what God has and is doing. 
\nThe problem with this view of salvation is considerable.  Salvation has
\nthree tenses in the NT– I have been saved (conversion, the new birth) I
\nam being saved, and I shall be saved to the uttermost (involving finally
\nthe resurrection and full conformity to the image of Christ). 
\nAccording to the NT, while the new birth is by grace through faith,  the
\nworking out of salvation, in the form of sanctification is a joint
\nproject– God working within us, and us working it out with fear and
\ntrembling.  In other words, we participate in our own progressive
\nsanctification not merely by what we believe, but by what we do, and
\nwhat we don’t do.  Of course this would not be possible if there were
\nnot the grace of God to draw on each and every day, but in fact our
\nsanctification is affected by our behavior, either positively or
\nnegatively.   And then of course there are the numerous warnings in
\nvarious places in the NT about the possibility of a true believer
\ncommitting apostasy. As John Wesley once said about that famous text in
\nthe Pastoral speaking about converts who had made shipwreck of their
\nfaith,  ‘you can’t make shipwreck of something you don’t have’.  In
\nshort, the neglect of ethics, or the relegating of it to the spot of an
\nafter thought or a mere response of gratitude to God which has no effect
\non one’s everlasting life is ultimately a result of a theology that
\ndoes not adequately understand the divine human encounter, even when it
\ncomes to salvation.  God had chosen to save us by involving us actively
\nin the process.  And our free and willing participation is not
\npredetermined by God.  Doubtless God could have done it otherwise, but
\nhe has chosen not to do so, and part of the reason is because he created
\nus in his image–with a capacity for personal relationship with God,  a
\ncapacity to freely respond in love to God’s love for us. Love, can
\nneither be coerced, nor manipulated nor predetermined, and it is no
\naccident that love is at the heart of the ethic of the NT– love for God,
\nand all others as well.  Like God who is love, we are called to be
\nlovers of all his creation. Freely we have received, and freely we
\nshould give.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

NKG: In many ways, this is the culmination of your life’s work on the
\nNT, drawing together many of your interests in rhetoric, ethics, the
\nchurch, narrative, Jesus studies, Pauline studies, etc…  Certainly this
\nis the perfect way for a newbie to access your work, but for the rest of
\nus who have read all things Witherington, are there ideas and concepts
\nthat appear in Indelible Image<\/em> that are not found in your other works?<\/p>\n

\n

Yes indeed there is a good deal in the Indelible Image,
\nespecially the second volume that one will not find in my earlier work.
\nThe second volume is the synthetic project, the ex post facto project–
\nwhat would a theology and ethic of the whole NT look like.  I should say
\nfrom the outset, that I have only made the first steps in this
\ndirection in this volume.  I’ve laid the ground work and the methodology
\nout, and done the initial soundings but it is for someone else to pick
\nup the ball and run with it now.  Maybe you Nijay!!    There are two
\nfocal images for conceiving of the unity of NT theology and ethics which
\nI have come up with— one is an image from the arts, the other from the
\nsciences.  In the former I conceive of the NT as like Handel’s landmark
\nwork  ‘Messiah’, a great oratorio with numerous musical parts.  The
\nfocus of the oratorio, indeed its essential subject matter is of course
\nChrist, even though it involves a considerable about of quoting the OT
\n(especially Isaiah, the so-called Fifth Gospel). Now in an oratorio like
\nthis one there are major soloists, and the way I conceive of the NT I
\nwould say the voice of Jesus is the major solo voice, and everyone else
\nin the NT is trying to blend in with, harmonize with, or echo that
\nvoice. There are other major soloists of course– the Gospel writers, 
\nPaul,  Peter, James, the author of Hebrews, John of Patmos, but their
\nwork serves the larger purpose of glorifying Christ and harmonizing with
\nhim.  If you know music, you know that the differing parts of an
\noratorio can sometimes involve dissonance as well as doubling and
\nharmony.  This is how I would conceive of the differences in as well as
\nthe Christological unity of the NT.   The second focal image is that of a
\nVenn diagram (or as my students jokingly call it– the Ben diagram).  
\nIn this image you have a whole series of overlapping circles at the
\ncenter of all of which is Christ.  The circles are arranged according to
\nwhether the witnesses are more focused on telling the story to Jewish
\nChristians in a largely Jewish way, or telling the story to Gentile
\nChristians in various other ways.  Then of course there is the concept
\nof ‘the indelible image’  which I see as the conjunction point that
\nbrings the theology and ethics of the NT together.  As God is holy, so
\nmust we be, as God is love, so must we be, as God is righteous so must
\nwe be. We are to reflect the character of God to the world, not merely
\nproclaim that character verbally. Because we are created in God’s image
\nand renewed in that image in Christ, we have been created for good
\nworks, and indeed for being an indirect reflection of the glory of
\nChrist on earth.  The call to imitate Christ is at the heart of the NT
\nethic, and the writers of the NT believe that by the grace of God, the
\nimage bearer can bear an uncanny resemblance to the one who created him
\nin that image.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

NKG: Who has been the greatest intellectual influence on you in terms
\nof the integration of theology and ethics in the NT?  What other
\nscholars would you consider kindred spirits in this kind of approach and
\norientation?<\/p>\n

\n

It is really impossible to pick out one person who has
\ninfluenced me down this road I have taken, if you mean NT scholars. 
\nCertainly I owe a great debt to folk like Howard Marshall and Gordon Fee
\nand others of my teachers, but to be honest it is the classic Wesleyan
\ntheologians who took seriously the interface of theology and ethics all
\nalong which sparked this sort of reflection– I mean people like John
\nWesley, Francis Asbury, Joseph Fletcher, Richard Watson, Adam Clarke,
\nand more recently folk like Tom Langford and Albert Outler.  None of
\nthese folk were exegetes or NT scholars in the modern sense of term, so
\nit has been left to me to pursue these sorts of matters as an exegete
\nand historian and I have done so.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

NKG: When you conceived of this project, had you always centered it
\non the indelible image [of God]?  What inspired this thematic choice?<\/p>\n

\n

It was during the course of the descriptive task of
\nwriting the first volume, and simply reviewing and displaying the
\nvarious and sundry theologies and ethics of the NT writers and Jesus
\nhimself that I came to the conclusion that the imago dei would be a good
\nfocal point, binding theology and ethics together.  It is an
\ninteresting fact that there was no NT in the NT era.  It is an after the
\nfact compilation and thus the attempt to do a theology and ethic of the
\nwhole NT must be seen as an ex post facto project as well, in this case
\nby me.  It is one thing to simply describe the NT evidence, quite
\nanother to try and see what unites it.  Of course the underlying
\nassumption is that there is a unity of theology and ethics in the NT
\nbecause God inspired these writers to tell the truth about Jesus and
\nrelated matters.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

NKG: You explain that too often the theology (and ethic) of the NT is
\nfocused solely on Pauline and Johannine portions, and that you sought
\nout to examine the entire witness of the NT.  In what other parts of the
\nNT did you end up finding fecund ideas and paradigms for theology and
\nethics?  Were you ever surprised to find deeper reflection in a book you
\nwould not have guessed to contain such thinking?<\/p>\n

\n

My friend Richard Bauckham has long been plowing the
\nfurrow of the theme that the Jewish Christian voice of various NT
\nwriters (Jude and James for instance) has been muffled, ignored, or even
\ncriticized.  He’s right of course and I have sought to remedy this
\nproblem by giving due attention to every single NT book in all their
\nvariety.  As it happens it is precisely the so-called General Epistles
\nthat most play the ethics card in ways that demonstrate my thesis about
\nthe interface of NT theology and ethics.  James was absolutely right
\nthat faith without works is dead, and so is belief without behavior.  As
\nJohn Wesley once famously said ‘You can be as orthodox as the Devil,
\nand still not be saved, because the truth has not transformed your
\ncharacter and behavior’.   As Wesley, the Devil knows the truth about
\nJesus, he can recite the theological canon verbatim correctly,  but it
\ndoes him no good.  Why not?  It’s one thing to know the truth, another
\nthing for the truth to set you free, to transform you through vital
\nexperience.  Orthodoxy without character reformation availeth not. It is
\ndead orthodoxy.  This is not to denigrate right belief.  It’s simply to
\nsay that orthodoxy and orthopraxy go together hand and glove, and they
\naffect each other. You become what you admire and imitate, so to speak.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

NKG: Can you share with us what writing projects you are currently working on and that we can get excited about?<\/p>\n

\n

I am enjoying doing a variety of small projects now for
\nEerdmans, several Kingdom books.  The most recent one to come out was on
\na Kingdom or eschatological view of worship  We Have Seen his Glory.
\nNext in line is a book on work, and more specifically the interface of
\nwork, rest, play, and worship tentatively called Labor Pains.  And I am
\nespecially enjoying working with my wife on a series of archaeological
\nthrillers for Pickwick Press. I have seven envisioned in all.  Three are
\nout— The Lazarus Effect, Roman Numerals, and Papias and the Mysterious
\nMenorah just came out.  One is in the pipeline– Corinthian Leather.  It
\nwill be followed by Roma Aeterna (The Eternal City) and two more.  I
\nwas an English lit major at Carolina and it is fun to use all that
\nlearning now writing novels.  I discovered that lay people are far more
\nlikely to read novels than heavy theological tomes, and so I am trying
\nto squeeze some good history, theology etc. into them sideways while
\nthey are busily reading a thriller.  I felt like I could do a much
\nbetter job at this than was done with the Left Behind series (which is
\naptly titled since it should be left behind) and for that matter a
\nbetter job than the hysterical rather than historical fiction of Dan
\nBrown.  Its nice that some very positive reviews have started coming in
\nfor these novels— one from Anne Rice in fact.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n
\n

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