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 cul-ture,
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 inter-national 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
orders (after January 15, 2000):
|
