Book Review: Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, The Life and Teaching of Jesus, Vol. 1:The Beginning of the Gospel

 

I have posted audio versions of my book review of Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, The Life and Teaching of Jesus, Vol. 1: The Beginning of the Gospel (SVP, 2018).

My written review appeared in the Midwestern Journal of Theology, Vol. 20, No. 1 (2021): 121-124. I have posted the pdf to my academia.edu page. You can read it here.

For more on Alfeyev you can visit his personal website where you can find this recent account of his meeting with some Russian Baptist leaders. We pray that Alfeyev and other leaders in the Russian Orthodox church will not restrict the religious freedom of Protestants (including Baptists) in that great nation. You can also listen to a portion of his St. Mathew's Passion here in English.

JTR 

Hilarion Alfeyev on Pauline Authorship of Hebrews

Image: Dunes, Topsail Island, North Carolina, June 2020

I'm continuing to work my way through Volume 1 of Hilarion Alfeyev's Jesus Christ: His Life and Teaching. In an overall discussion of how the prologue of John and Hebrews serve as "manifestos of the faith of the ancient church" in Jesus as not a mere prophet but as the Son of God (369-370), Alfeyev adds this footnote on the authorship of Hebrews:

Here and later in the present book, as well as in other books in the series Jesus Christ: His Life and Teaching, we will refer to the epistle of the Hebrews as one of the general epistles of the apostle Paul, in accordance with the attribution accepted in the tradition of the Church. An analysis of the polemics surrounding the authorship of this epistle is outside the scope of our investigation (369, n. 8).

It is interesting that though conversant with the findings of modern historical-critical methodology on this subject (the authorship of Hebrews), as on other topics, Alfeyev's orientation is to adopt the traditional perspective.

JTR

Hilarion Alfeyev on Q: It simply never existed

I returned this week to my reading of Hilarion Alfeyev’s Jesus Christ: His Life and Teaching (SVS Press, 2018) and was struck by his evaluation of the so-called Q hypothesis:

“What happened to Q? Why did it disappear?”…. We must answer directly: nothing happened to it; it has not disappeared—it simply never existed. There never was a “discovery” of Q. There have only been more or less clumsy attempts to invent it on the basis of the fragments remaining after the deconstruction of the Gospel text. It is plausible that the evangelists used some sources; it cannot be excluded that the collections of the sayings of Jesus existed not only in an oral, but also in written tradition; but in the form in which the Q source has been “reconstructed,” “discovered,” and “excavated” throughout the twentieth century, it is a typical scholarly myth raised to the status of dogma (80-81).

He later adds:

The pressing task of contemporary biblical studies is to be librerated from these types of myths and dogmas (81).

Such skepticism of “the assured results of modern scholarship” should not perhaps come as a surprise from one who comes from an Eastern Orthodox perspective, as does Alfeyev, given that the Enlightenment did not affect the East to the degree it did the West. Oddly enough, many evangelicals happily embrace modern Gospel source criticism, with its theories for resolving the Synoptic Problem, Markan Priority, and Q, without seeming to recognize the inherent dangers to the integrity and authority of the Gospels or drawing the clear minded conclusions taken by Alfeyev.

JTR

Hilarion Alfeyev: Supposed Contradictions in the Gospels as Proofs for their Historicity

Image: The Four Evangelists, St. Nocholai of Zicha and South Canaan Seminary Chapel, St. Tikhon's Orthodox Theological Seminary, South Canaan, Pennsylvania.

Another passage from Hilarion Alfeyev’s study of the Gospels in which he suggests that supposed contradictions among the Gospels are actually proofs for their historicity:

We ought to consider as convincing proof of the historicity of Jesus the presence of supposed contradictions or variances between the evangelists who, it would appear, are describing one and the same event but vary in the details. Thus, for example, the Gospel of Matthew (20.30-34) speaks of Jesus’ healing of two blind men, while the parallel excerpt in Mark (10.46-52) speaks of only one blind man. In Matthew (8.28-34) Jesus heals two demoniacs, while in Mark (5:1-16) and Luke (8.26-36) he heals only one.

The presence of discrepancies in details between the evangelists in light of the essential similarity of the accounts speaks not against but, on the contrary, for the reality of the events described. If we were dealing with a hoax, then the authors would certainly have made sure to check their information with each other. The differences bear witness to the fact that there was no collusion between the evangelists (Jesus Christ: His Life and Teachings, Vol. 1: The Beginning of the Gospel: 13).

JTR

To understand Christ: Two keys are required

I just started reading Hilarion Alfeyev’s Jesus Christ: His Life and Teaching; Volume 1 The Beginning of the Gospel (St. Vladimir’s Press, 2018; translated from the Russian original). In the forward the author writes:

The Gospel story of Jesus Christ from the perspective of interpretation may be compared to a collection of treasures amassed over two thousand years in a safe with two locks. In order to touch this treasure, we have first of all to open the safe, and in order to open it, two keys are required. One key is the belief that Jesus was fully man with all the attributes of a flesh-and-blood person. However, we need a second key also—belief that Jesus was God incarnate. Without this key the safe will not open, and the treasures will not glisten with their original brilliance: the Gospel image of Christ will not come to the reader in all its resplendent beauty (xiii).

JTR