Between Heaven And Earth

The starting point of this paper is how to view the ambiguity of the Bible,the research object is Marxist criticism of the New Testament,and the way to study is to understand the factors of heaven and earth from the view of Dialogism.The introduction firstly defines and discloses the terms,problems and innovation value of the dissertation.The author makes it clear that the investigation to the ambiguity of the Bible should focus on the relationship between different meanings in the text.The author also reviews the research method of Christian tradition,sociology biblical criticism on the Bible’s ambiguity,which is designed to provide the background knowledge and the impact of foreign Marxist criticism of the Bible.In addition,the contemporary interaction between Marxism and Christian tradition is also explored in this part.On the above basis,the author puts forward the research methods and research ideas of this dissertation,it is the integration between theology and sociology,text and context,so as to understand the New Testament text by polyphonic thinking.Following the logical order of what,why and how,the author divides the main body of this dissertation into four chapters and tries to explain three questions: what is Marxist criticism of the New Testament(its logical starting point and the future direction: from dialectics to dialogue)? Why is it reasonable(the reasonable grounds: the infiltration of ideological factors in the New Testament text generation)? How to evaluate it(two core issues: Jesus and Paul research)? The author thinks that Marxist critics of the Bible inherit the dialectical critical thinking toward religion from Marx,and they sort the multiple meanings of the Bible from two dimensions: the kingdom of heaven and earth,which is exactly the logical starting point of their criticism.After thoroughly analyzing the dialectical mechanism of the two dimensions,we can find that the logical starting point of Marxist biblical criticism is Marx’s religious critical concept,that is,dialectics,whose theoretical emphasis causes Marxist biblical critical practice to be widely questioned as politicized and excessive interpretation.In the writer’s opinion,the breakthrough of this criticism should be the dialogue between the two elements of heaven and earth.Subsequently,from the angle of text production,this dissertation makes an argument for the rationality of Marxist biblical criticism as critical paradigm,that is,why this criticism can be carried out.The writer realizes that the New Testament was never a ready-made text,but rather a text with a very complex process of dynamic production.By exploring into the production mechanism of the New Testament texts(manual copying and mechanical copy),the writer believes that a variety of ideological factors are artificially mixed into the process of text production,which provides a solid basis to the Marxist criticism of the New Testament.In addition,the author also elucidates the text production theory of Marxism whose value lies in its theory of semantic proliferation,and the key word “charisma”—chronologically sorting the word’s production process.What’s more,the exploration into the specific application of “charisma” in contemporary research upon Jesus Movement echoes the viewpoint of this dissertation.Next,the author focuses upon the two core issues of Marxist criticism of the New Testament: Jesus and Paul research,relying on the point of view of Richard A.Horsley—the representative foreign scholars of contemporary Marxist biblical criticism,and then makes further elaboration upon the view.As for Jesus research,the author thinks that the key to understand the image of Jesus is not only the historical Jesus’ s identity which is a perennial topic,but also the relationship between the multiple roles assigned to him.Based upon Horsley’ s basic idea on Jesus,the author believes that the “renaissance of Israel” and “realization of the kingdom of God” judgement represents the dualistic political thought of Jesus’ s saying,“render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s”.The core of Jesus’ s thought is not to separate,but to check and balance.The author also reveals and digs the spiritual and system source of Jesus’ dualistic political thought,and in between utilizes the ideological criticism to interpret “King Saul” text,so as to reveal the ideological conflict between kingship and theocracy behind the text.As for Paul research,on the basis of Horsley’s research,the author holds that his opinion of “Paul’s community is ‘in but not of’ the Roman empire” corresponds to the point of view of this dissertation.Horsley’s opinion reflects Paul’ s community exists between heaven and earth by way of sojourning temporarily and adds tension to Paul’s thought and organizational strategy.Finally,taking Horsley’ s Jesus and Paul research as a relatively complete and independent research section,the author makes a concise and brief review upon it,so as to point out the due academic value of Marxist criticism of the New Testament.The above argumentation process always takes the form of dialogistic thinking to examine the Marxist criticism of the New Testament and its representative views.The author believes that the Marxist biblical criticism tries to trace the historical truth with the empirical research of historical materialism,so as to refute the theological myth of Christian tradition.However,the re-enchantment theme of the present era and the dissolving of the grand narrative in the postmodern social context make the efforts of tracing the historical truth inappropriate.The real meaning of history lies in the present and the future.Due to its peaceful and comprehensive modern value,the dialogistic thinking is most likely to make the scale of heaven and earth keep a dynamic balance,which are beneficial to the modern society in the long run.