Jude In Recent Study
JUDE IN RECENT STUDY
Jude is not the kind of book to be at the center of major theological discussions. It is very short, and its subject matter is not such as to grip the attention of those who lead the way in such discussions. Indeed, so little has it featured in modern debate that Rowston calls it the most neglected book in the New Testament, 6 and Bauckham can say, "No NT books have been more neglected by scholars than Jude and 2 Peter. Most of the conventional scholarly opinions about them derive from a past era of NT scholarship. This commentary is therefore an attempt to drag the study of these two books into the 1980s.” 7 We are not confronted with a plethora of profound writings when we look for the modern treatment of these two books. Occasionally scholars treat the obvious relationship between Jude and 2 Peter (see the discussion in chap. 20).
Those who discuss Jude are not usually impressed. They tend to see him as unduly concerned to maintain a conservative attitude to the deposit of Christian truth, as one who vigorously opposes those he sees as heretics. The writer emerges as a dogmatic supporter of the old way and a bigoted opponent of those who differ from him. But this is scarcely fair. There is more than dogmatism to Jude.
In modern discussions of New Testament topics, there is a widespread interest in what is called "early catholicism,” and Jude is often taken as an example of this. There are often derogatory associations with the term, for what is "early catholic” is not seen as authentic, primitive Christianity. But "early catholicism” is an expression of uncertain meaning (each interpreter seems to have his or her own understanding of what it signifies). We may, however, not be too far wide of the general consensus if we speak of it as including at least these three features: the fading of the hope of the parousia, an
interest in the church as an institution, and the use of credal forms to summarize the faith. But none of these is to be found in Jude. Indeed, the hope of the parousia burns brightly, as we see from Jude 6, 14, 21, 24; it cannot be said that there is any diminution of the lively expectation of the first Christians. As for the institution of the church, neither the church nor its officials rate a mention in Jude. When dealing with the false teachers, Jude might well have drawn attention to the sound doctrine of the official teachers who carried on the apostolic teaching and were accredited among believers. He is of course concerned for "the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (3), but this is surely not so much a reference to an official body of teaching such that those who differed from it were to be rejected, as a way of drawing attention to the "given” that is bound up with the gospel. The writer is referring to the importance of being faithful to the earliest Christian teaching, not to a body of doctrine under the control of ecclesiastical officials. Moreover, as Childs reminds us, "One cannot even talk of a common salvation without setting it in the context of a fundamental repudiation of this hope.” 8 Jude does not write as though the church were the custodian of lawful teaching in distinction from the heretics with their invalid forms. Rather, he insists on the truth of the gospel that leads people into godly lives, so different from the evil he discerns in his opponents.
Scholars who hold that Jude is later than apostolic times usually hold also that the writer is opposing some form of Gnosticism. Thus Rowston cites R. M. Grant’s view that "prophecy led to apocalyptic after the Maccabean war and apocalyptic led to gnosticism after the Jewish war” and sees in Jude "a revival of apocalyptic” that "could well be an attempt to reinstate a genuine Paulinism in place of a post-apocalyptic antinomian gnosticism.” 9 We must always be suspicious of an assertion that Gnosticism lies behind any New Testament writing, for full-blown Gnosticism as we know from its own sources is a series of systems that appeared well on into the second century. Gnosticism encompassed teachings from many sources, and some of those individual teachings existed in the New Testament period. But it is too much to call any of these pre-Gnostic teachings simply "Gnosticism.” 10 There is nothing about Jude that proves it was written at a time when Gnosticism flourished. That there is apocalyptic in Jude does not justify us in calling it "a revival of apocalyptic”; there is apocalyptic in Paul and in Revelation, and Jude’s apocalyptic may well be simply the normal early Christian apocalyptic.