Foreword
Peace and
Justice Shall Embrace
Millard Lind: A
Faithful Teacher in the Church
by PAUL KEIM
In the eighty-first year
of his life, the following essays are offered by students
of Millard Lind as an expression of our affection and
regard for his teaching. We hope what we learned from him
will be clear through these studies-be it Hebrew language
and culture, Old Testament book studies, prophetic
theology and ethics, or expositions of Old Testament and
ancient Near Eastern law.
We understand ourselves not merely as
imitators of Millard's ideas and insights, but as those
who have been liberated and equip-ped to apply his
insights on our own. Millard's style was not one of
revealing the truth to us, but of inspiring us to
recognize the texts of the Old Testament as more than an
object to be studied. Millard inspired us to listen to
these texts as dynamic conversation partners around which
we gathered, with him as our guide.
In his classes, Millard helped us
understand that continui-ties of the human experience
bind us to the dilemmas of biblical stories and wisdom.
Above all, he helped us to see political aspects of these
texts within their own contexts. This aspect of Scripture
had remained largely unappreciated in our tradition,
despite the traditional Mennonite emphasis on peacemaking
and the radicalization that emphasis represented for our
relationship with state authori-ties in the various
places Mennonites have settled over the years.
Millard helped us learn to appreciate
the political, economic, and social aspects of these
texts without undermining the religious and meditative
features of Scripture and of Bible study. Indeed for many
of us, the dynamics of discovering this political aspect
of biblical texts deepened our appreciation for its
religious aspects and led to a deeper understanding of
what faith means in living communities.
Millard's style was humble and inviting
rather than heavy-handed or draconian. Without exhibiting
much outward emotional engagement, he would
dispassionately present texts in such a way that we
became animated and were enabled to understand the
implications of what he was saying for our own
situations. Millard's exposition of Scripture convinced
us that the Bible continues to speak meaningfully. He
helped us to understand that our own lives and
communities must continue to be brought under the
scrutiny of Scripture's teachings—not only in terms
of piety, but even more in terms of justice and
righteousness.
Millard spoke with authority against a
kind of antinomianism to which Mennonites, like other
Christians, have been particularly susceptible. He spoke
out against any facile equation of a Chris-tian
"grace" set over against a Jewish
"law." He recognized that such an attitude was
theologically suspect: it not only deprecates the Hebrew
Bible as an organic whole, but it also undermines the
power of the two-testament Christian Bible as an organic
whole by robbing the messianic gospel of its interpretive
frame.
Though Millard's work was more directly
exegetical than theological, he nonetheless taught us
much about the theology of the Hebrew Bible and of the
Christian Bible. He showed how the economic implications
of the Jubilee had real political force in the faith and
life of ancient Israel, regardless of historical
judgments about its actual implementation in Israel in
the period of the monarchy. It becomes part of the
messianic vision of late-biblical religion and thus
informs the development of Christian theology.
Millard helped us understand Israel's
law as part of God's healing mercy, with revolutionary
implications for the ordering of human
societies—both in the ancient Near East and for the
people of faith today. The message of the Old Testament
prophets, beginning with Moses, coheres closely with the
message of Jesus—and continues to provide normative
guidance for modern Christians.
The essays in this volume exhibit many
of the themes implicit and explicit in Millard Lind's
work. At the heart of Millard's program was a recognition
of and appreciation for the dynamics of international and
domestic politics in the texts of the Hebrew Bible.
This recognition provides a background
against which the politics of Jesus can more fully be
recognized and understood. These understandings
contribute in turn to a fuller appreciation of
intertextual and intertestamental unity. Like other
sectarian/perfectionist/utopian groups with histories of
political quietism, conservatism, and naïveté in
matters of policy and politics, contemporary North
American Mennonites have especially needed to hear this
message.
Millard Lind's teaching opened doors
for his students—points of entry into a portion of
the tradition that had remained closed for a long time,
or had been visible only through the lens of a narrow
hermeneutical grid. This was possible in part because he
had been trained in the languages and cultures of the
ancient Near East himself. He came to understand the
importance of that cul-tural background for an adequate
understanding of the biblical traditions. His pedagogical
strategy was to illuminate familiar and unfamiliar
biblical texts with texts from the ancient Near East that
were relevant and germane.
Millard also played a pioneering role
in introducing the so-called "higher-critical"
methods of biblical interpretation to Mennonite students.
His commitment to pursue truth zealously certainly caused
some tensions for Millard. However, his commitment to the
text and to the church has never been questioned. The
critical methods were never destructive tools in his
hands, nor were they an excuse for abstraction. Rather,
they were always used to probe more deeply into the texts
themselves. In many respects, Millard used
historical-critical tools as an extension of the
inductive method of Bible study he had learned. One must
read and understand the text first of all. One must
understand the text in its own context as much as
possible. And one was then free to apply the text to the
life of the church.
In the essays that follow, we can see a
bit of the fruit of Millard's influence on several
generations of Mennonite biblical scholars, theologians,
ethicists, and pastors. These essays share in common the
"Lindian" passion for the integration of faith
and practice, drawing on the church's Scripture as the
model and inspiration for that integration.
In "What Kind of Political Power?
The Upside-Down Kingdom in Millard Lind's Reading of the
Hebrew Bible," Daniel Liechty traces the impact of
one of his formative professors on his worldview.
Liechty, as theologian, historian, social worker,
therapist, and professor, credits Lind for opening up to
him an explicitly political reading of the literature of
the ancient Near East that provides the framework for the
sorts of ethical commitments that subvert power politics.
Theologian J. Denny Weaver salutes Lind
in "Making Yahweh's Rule Visible" for his help
in crystallizing for Weaver the conviction that
peacemaking and biblical interpretation must be mutually
reinforcing practices. Weaver reflects on this connection
in light of his experience of nonviolent resistance to
oppression in Haiti.
James E. Brenneman's essay,
"Prophets in Conflict: Negotiating Truth in
Scripture," seeks to extend Lind's prophetic
hermeneutic by applying it to questions of tensions
within the biblical text. Brenneman, a pastor and
biblical scholar, argues for a trajectory within the Old
Testament that points to the way of peace by critiquing
earlier perspectives within the canon
In "Healing Justice: The Prophet
Amos and a 'New' Theology of Justice," theologian
and ethicist Ted Grimsrud draws on the book of Amos in
reflecting further on biblical understandings of justice.
Inspired and guided by Lind's pioneering work toward
constructing a consistently pacifist understanding of
justice, Grimsrud argues that the biblical perspective
offers a clear alternative to modern, Western, coercive,
and impersonal notions of justice.
Pastor Arthur Paul Boers honors the
enormous impact Lind has had on several generations of
Mennonite preachers in "Denouncing Lies, Modeling
Truth: Lent and Easter Reflections on Jeremiah and
Jesus." In this essay, Boers offers a set of
meditations emphasizing prophetic justice and its
application for our contemporary setting. Boers insists
that biblical faith has major political consequences.
In "Ezekiel on Fanon's Couch: A
Postcolonialist Dialogue with David Halperin's Seeking
Ezekiel," biblical scholar Daniel L.
Smith-Christopher fulfills well Lind's strong desire that
his students model his creativity in thinking new
thoughts and questioning old assumptions. In a highly
original interdisciplinary discussion, Smith-Christopher
suggests that the writing of the prophet Ezekiel reflects
a context similar to what we today call post-traumatic
stress. Understanding Ezekiel's text in light of the
post-traumatic stress suffered in the Exile enables the
modern reader to appreciate his message in a new way,
without resorting to dehistoricized theories about
Ezekiel's psychological pathologies.
In "Power in Wisdom: The Suffering
Servant of Ecclesiastes 4," biblical scholar Douglas
B. Miller provides insightful reflec-tions on the
relationship between power and justice, drawing on a
biblical text not traditionally associated with such
themes. In so doing, Miller follows in the tradition of
his teacher, who time after time enlightened students to
the ethical implications of texts rarely mined for such
material.
Like Miller, biblical scholar Tom
Yoder-Neufeld also draws upon wisdom writings as a
helpful source for ethical reflection in "Power,
Love, and Creation: The Mercy of the Divine Warrior in
the Wisdom of Solomon." Yoder-Neufeld extends Lind's
concerns with the figure of the divine warrior to
literature from a later period.
The final essay is by theologian and
ethicist Ray Gingerich: "Reimag-ing Power: Toward a
Theology of Nonviolence." In this essay, Gingerich
draws inspiration from Lind's work in challenging
scholars interested in doing peace theology to take up
the task of thoroughly rethinking the meaning of power.
Gingerich proposes a sketch for such rethinking, arguing
that genuine power is not power as expressed in the
violence of kings and warriors, but as expressed in the
active nonviolence of prophets.
To complete the volume, biblical
scholar Sarah Lind, Millard's daughter, has provided a
comprehensive bibliography of her father's writings.
Millard was not, so far as I am aware,
familiar with Parker Palmer's terminology regarding the
"heart" of our disciplines. Nevertheless, when
I read Palmer's book, The Courage to Teach,
years after being in Millard's classroom, I immediately
thought of him. In those classes, Old Testament law, the
worlds of the ancient Near East, the politics of
prophetic texts, and the radicalness of biblical teaching
became the "great things" that informed and
invigorated us.
Along with his other students, I
continue to be grateful to Millard for this gift. I am
delighted to be able to commend these essays to those
interested in understanding and following our peaceable
and just God.
Paul Keim
Goshen, Indiana
Peace and Justice Shall Embrace
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