Godet on the "diseased imagination" of the Tübingen School

In preparing for yesterday’s sermon on Jesus’ visit with Martha and Mary in Luke 10:38-42, I continued my concurrent reading of Frederick Godet’s Luke commentary (English ed. 1881).  In his summation on the pericope, Godet offers the following negative assessment of the interpretation given the passage by the so-called “Tübingen School” of interpretation, which postulated hidden references to Jewish Christian (Petrine)/Gentile Christian (Pauline) tension, in good Hegelian fashion, lurking underneath every NT rock.  This school, with its rabid skepticism towards the historicity of the NT, would have been at the height of its popularity when the orthodox Swiss exegete wrote.  His final sentence offers an accurate prophecy of the ultimate demise of this approach, as indeed it has largely been abandoned even by the most skeptical contemporary academic scholars:

The Tübingen School has discovered depths in this narrative unknown till it appeared.  In the person of Martha, Luke seeks to stigmatize Judaizing Christianity, that of legal works; in the person of Mary he has exalted the Christianity of Paul, that of justification without works and by faith alone.  What extraordinary prejudice must prevail in a mind which can to such a degree mistake the exquisite simplicity of this story!  Supposing that it really had such an origin, would not this dogmatic importation have infallibly discolored both the matter and form of the narrative?  A time will come when those judgments of modern criticism will appear like the wanderings of a diseased imagination (p. 311).

Godet on the "separate stones scattered" in the Gospels

 

While expositing Luke 9:49-50 and parallels, Frederick Godet describes how the interpreter draws on all four Gospels to reconstruct the life and teachings of Jesus (Commentary on St. Luke’s Gospel, p. 280):

Thus, it very often happens, that by bringing together separate stones scattered about in our three narratives, we succeed in reconstructing large portions of the edifice, and then by joining it to the Gospel of John, the entire building.

 

JTR

Godet on leprosy

Note:  I preached Sunday from  Luke 5:12-26 on the accounts of the healing of the leper (vv. 12-16) and the paralytic (vv. 17-26).  In expositing the account of the leper's healing, I leaned heavily on F. Godet's vivid comments on the depth of the man's illness which, in turn, accentuate the magnitude of Christ's compassionate healing.  Here are some notes:

The subject is introduced with the stark “behold a man” (cf. 4:33:  “there was a man”).  On the heels of the introduction of this man there is also made clear his malady:  he was a man “full of leprosy” (v. 12).  Leprosy is the classic Biblical ailment that is known today as “Hansen’s disease,” a chronic infectious disease affecting the skin and peripheral nerves.  In the ancient world there was no treatment for the disease other than isolation.

Godet notes:  “Leprosy was in every point of view a most frightful malady” (p. 166).  This was true in three aspects:

First, physically:  “In its physical aspects it was a whitish pustule, eating away the flesh, attacking member after member, and at last eating away the very bones; it was attended with burning fever, sleeplessness, and nightmare, without scarcely the slightest hope of cure.”  It was “a living death” (p. 166).

Second, socially:  “the leper was separated from his family, and from intercourse with men, and had no other company than that of others as unhappy as himself” (p. 167).  We have just celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday, but what if you had been barred from being with family and friends due to such a disease?  Lepers lived in bands outside the community.  Food was left for them out of charity.  At the approach of others they had to announce their uncleanness (cf. Leviticus 13:45 says the leper had to tear his clothes, leave his head bare, put a covering over his mouth and cry out “Unclean, unclean.”).

Third, religiously:  “the leper was Levitically unclean, and consequently excommunicate.  His malady was considered a direct chastisement from God” (p. 167).  This disease cut him off from public worship, from both synagogue and temple.

JTR

Godet on the significance of Christ's temptation to power

I shared this quotation last Sunday from F. Godet on Jesus' rejection of the devil's second temptation that he would give to him "all the kingdoms of the world" (Luke 4:5):

 

 

This refusal was a serious matter.  Jesus thereby renounced all power founded upon material means and social institutions.  He broke with the Messianic Jewish ideal under the received form.  He confined Himself, in accomplishing the conquest of the world, to spiritual action exerted upon souls; He condemned himself to gain them one by one, by the labor of conversion and sanctification—a gentle, unostentatious progress, contemptible in the eyes of the flesh, of which the end, the visible reign, was only to appear after the lapse of centuries (p. 139).

 

Godet on Luke 2:19 and speculation on Luke's use of a Marian source

“And Mary kept [syntereo, to protect, to keep safe, to preserve, to keep in good condition, to treasure] all these things, and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19).

I preached Sunday morning in our Luke series on Luke 2:8-20.  I was struck by Frederick Godet’s comments on Luke 2:19.  He argues for v. 19 as giving evidence that Luke used an oral recollection of Mary of the birth of Jesus as a source for his narrative of Jesus’ birth  (cf. 1:1-4).  Here are his observations:

The Aramaean coloring of the narrative indicates an ancient source.  The oftener we read the nineteenth verse, the more assured we are that Mary was the first and real author of this whole narrative.  This pure, simple, and private history was composed by her, and preserved for a certain time in an oral form until someone committed it to writing, whose work fell into the hands of Luke, and was reproduced by him in Greek (p. 84).

"The greater happiness is, the calmer it is."

Some expanded notes from last Sunday’s sermon on Luke 1:39-56:

Among the words recorded here are those sometimes referred to as the Magnificat or “Song of Mary” (vv. 46-55).  But note that the text simply records that she “said” these words.  These are her spoken words.

Note also the contrast to Elisabeth’s exuberant words, spoken “with a loud voice” (v. 42).  The old commentators picked up on this distinction:

Godet notes that while Elisabeth’s words are “full of excitement” what he calls “Mary’s hymn” “breathes a sentiment of deep inward repose,” adding, “The greater happiness is, the calmer it is” (Commentary on St. Luke, p. 62).

Calvin makes a similar observation on the text, noting that Mary “teaches us, too, more than a loud clamorous voice is needed to proclaim God’s praises.”  He continues:  “Often people with no real feeling for God appear white-hot in their fervour.  In the papal church there is four-part singing, and the sound of the organ accompanies men’s voices.  God, we might think, must be greatly pleased with those who bawl his praises!  But does it really edify?”  He concludes that Mary “reveals we cannot truly praise God unless our hearts are first warmed by his kindness; only then can our soul praise and reverence him” (Songs of the Nativity, pp. 25-26).

I’ve noted before Terry Johnson’s comments about worship when he says there is one kind of happiness that one might express with wild cheering at a ball game, but there is another kind of happiness one best expresses with quiet reverence, as at a wedding or a graduation ceremony.  And Biblical worship is of the latter variety.  Mary’s words are happy words and calm words.  Indeed, “The greater happiness is, the calmer it is.”

JTR

Godet's "Commentary on St. Luke's Gospel"

Image:  Frederick Louis Godet (1812-1900)

In preparing to preach expositionally through Luke’s Gospel, I began looking for a good commentary to read sequentially through as the series progresses.  I ended up ordering a used copy of Frederick Godet’s A Commentary on the Gospel of St. Luke (1881 ed., trans. By E. W. Shalders and M. D. Cusin), that I found on abebooks.com.

Godet (1812-1900) was a conservative Swiss theologian who taught at Neuchatel and whose native language was French.  John Murray makes frequent favorable references to Godet’s Romans commentary in his own work on that epistle.

Godet’s Luke commentary is one that Spurgeon recommended to ministerial students in his Commenting& Commentaries, giving this sound-bite from Meyer on the work:   "To an immense erudition, to a living piety, Godet unites a profound feeling of reality; there is here a vivifying breath, an ardent love for the Savior, which helps the disciple to comprehend the work, the acts, the words of his Divine Master."

In his New Testament Commentary Survey (I have the 5^th ed. but there is now a 6^th), D. A. Carson observes, “Godet is virtually pre-critical, but can be valuable” (p. 57).  That comment actually was the one that made me want to acquire Godet, but probably not for the reason Carson intended.  I don’t see the pre-critical perspective as limiting its value but enhancing it.  In the preface to the commentary, J. Hall notes that Godet brushes aside “the cobwebs which Rationalist or mythical interpreters heap on the inspired page” (iv).

The problem with most modern commentaries (even, and sometimes especially, from evangelicals) is that they are so intent on demonstrating full immersion in modern historical-critical study that they lack spiritual vitality.

Another related issue is that of text.  Modern commentaries, by and large, assume the validity of the modern-critical text and disregard commentary on the traditional text.  In the preface to the first edition of his commentary, Godet, however, observes:

Since I cannot in any way regard the eighth edition of Tichendorf’s text just published as a standard text, though I gratefully acknowledge its aid as absolutely indispensible, I have adopted the received text as a basis in indicating the various readings; but I would express my earnest desire for an edition of the Byzantine text that could be regarded as the standard authority.

So, Godet’s Luke commentary provides what cannot be discovered today, a conservative and evangelical commentary based on the traditional text of the NT.  I wonder what Godet thought of the TR based on Beza (and harmonized with the AV) edited by Scrivener and originally published by Cambridge University Press in 1894 and 1902 (now reprinted by TBS), which would have come out in his lifetime, or would have thought of recent editions of the Majority text by Farstad, et al. and Robinson.  I will be keeping my radar up as I read through the commentary for Godet’s insight into text, among many other things.

JTR