Month: November 2009

Book of Acts at ETS

I am attending the Evangelical Theological Society meeting in New Orleans this week.  I realize the SBL bloggers get all the press, but I enjoy ETS as well.  It is obviously a lot more tame and evangelical, but there is some good scholarship going on which unfortunately gets dismissed since it is coming from conservatives, relatively speaking.

I attended what was billed as the “Luke/Acts Consultation,” although it was only three papers, one of which was a last minute replacement.  Mark Strauss began with a great paper on the purpose of Luke / Acts, surveying the several suggestions found in the literature and concluding that the purpose was to “legitimatize” the Christian / Gentile mission rather than an evangelistic purpose (i.e., to bring people to faith in Jesus Christ).  During the discussion after his paper, several expressed the thought that it is hard separate this from the purpose of evangelism,

While I have always been attracting to the idea that the document as we have it now served some function in Paul’s legal defense, Strauss made the comment that no Roman official would wade through all of the obvious theology of the books in order to get a few items of legal interest.

David Pao read a draft of a paper which is to be published in JBL.  He dealt with the problem of the deacons, who appear to be selected to deal with food distribution but instead are noted preachers and evangelists, never actually “waiting tables.”  Pao’s suggestion is that the food distribution was an extension of Jesus’ own table fellowship and therefore part of the eschatological banquet.  They were not called to “wait tables” but to be leaders who facilitated table fellowship.  As much as I enjoyed his paper, I think that there are a few serious problems with the thesis, not the least of which is that the Apostles themselves made the distinction between waiting tables and preaching when they suggested appointing the seven.  I am a bit more inclined to see the activity of the Seven in terms of Hellenistic / Greek speaking Jewish ministry in the Synagogue of the Freedmen at the same time that the Apostles are in the Temple area doing ministry among Aramaic speaking Jews. I do think that he is correct to see table-fellowship in the context of Jesus’ ministry, especially in Luke / Acts.

Since my dissertation deals with the eschatological banquet in Jesus’ ministry, I will return to Pao’s article in the future – it is a worthy contribution.

David Pao now chairs this consultation and hopes to expand the paper offerings next year.

N. T. Wright – Paul: A Fresh Perspective, More on Election

In the last post I was more concerned with the validity of Wright’s view of Election in the Hebrew Bible.  It is in fact true that Israel believed themselves to be the chosen people, and all the literature of this period struggles to explain why the chosen people are not being blessed as they might expect.  These attempts to define election range from a denial of Israel’s special place (Sirach, perhaps) to a radical condemnation of the status quo in Israel as corrupt and about to be judged by God (Qumran).

Wright places Paul into this discussion of what it means to be the chosen people of God.  Paul redefines the people of God which leads to a redefinition of election. Wright is clear that this is a redefinition, not a repudiation of the definition of election as found in the Hebrew Bible.  Paul remains within Judaism (128).  What is remarkable to me is that Wright states that Paul would have been appalled with scholars who see him as breaking away from Judaism and starting a new religion.  (Recall our discussion earlier about whether Paul was converted or not?)  He specifically denies “supersessionism,” the belief that Christianity has replaced Judaism completely and that the “people of God” are no longer Jewish.  He is thinking specifically here of the fact that Paul describes the church as the true descendants of Abraham in the faith and his discussion centers on Moses and the Law.  I think this opens up some eschatological questions, but he waits on those until the next chapter.

So far so good.  I think Wright is correct in his observations about first century Jewish thinking on their election, and I think that he is correct that Paul re-defines many Jewish ideas and practices for the Church in the light of the death and resurrection of Jesus.  I especially like his discussion Paul re-orienting the people of God around the idea of grace.

What could be potentially troublesome is Wright’s discussion of Gal 2:11-21, a critical text for the New Perspective on Paul, and a text that is at the heart of Pauline theology since it touches on justification and law in the context of practice – how do we behave since se have the belief that Jesus is the messiah?  Wright correctly comments that the discussion in Gal 2 concerns “what does it mean to be a Jew,” then deals extremely briefly with the “faith of Christ.”  This is a huge exegetical issue, but the gist of the problem concerns who “does” this faith, Jesus or us?  Is this the faith which Jesus demonstrated (the “faithfulness of the messiah”) or is this faith which we have “in the messiah?”  Wright says this verse ought to be understood as referring to the messiah’s faithfulness rather than our faith in Jesus which makes us saved?  Most modern translations add “in” to the line to indicate that Jesus is the object of our faith (the KJV does not, but that is simply because it is brutally literal and not aware of this modern exegetical issue.)  Does this phrase mean that the Messiah was faithful and therefore we are justified, or that we are justified because of what Jesus has already done on the cross?  Wright states that Gal 2:15 is not a statement about how one becomes a Christian (112).  This is highly controversial, but this does not mean that Wright denies justification by faith categorically, it only this text in Galatians which is under discussion.

If Wright reads Galatians correctly (and his other comments applying this understanding to Romans are correct), then there are some problems for the standard reformation view of justification – but I am not convinced they are as foundation-shattering as the more dramatic articles and books have claimed.

N. T. Wright – Paul: A Fresh Perspective (6)

Yet out of the whole human race He chose as of special merit and judged worthy of pre-eminence over all, those who are in a true sense men, and called them to the service of Himself, the perennial fountain of things excellent.  (Phil, Spec. Laws 1.303)

I will give my light to the world and illume their dwelling places and establish my covenant with the sons of men and glorify my people above all the nations (Pseudo-Philo, Bibl. Antiq. 11.1f).

The two quotes at the head of this blog are typical of statements in the Second Temple period concerning the election of the Jewish people.  As Wright correctly observes, the idea of Israel’s election is “everywhere apparent in the Old Testament” (109), and I would add, almost every present in the literature of the  Second Temple period.  Israel was specially called by God out of all of the nations of the world.  They are given the privilege of receiving God’s Law and the responsibility of being God’s light to the entire world.  It is little wonder many other nations thought Israel was exclusivist.  They were, to some extent, separate from the nations because they alone were the elect of God.  Monotheism alone requires exclusivism.  But his exclusivism was not snobbery (or at least ought not be snobbery).  Election ought to have been a solemn honor which produces humility rather than

Wright is developing ideas which first found expression in W. D. Davis Sanders (Paul and Rabbinic Judaism) and E. P. Sanders (Paul and Palestinian Judaism).  Sanders’ work was so influential that the position he created quickly became known as the “new perspective” on Paul.  Sanders’ major point is that scholarship has misunderstood the Judaism of the first century.  It was not a “works for salvation” religion as is often stated, but rather the works of the law are a proper response to God’s election to salvation.  Like Wright, Sanders is adamant that the proto-Pelagianism that is often associated with the Pharisees of the first century is a mis-reading of the data because of the imposed Lutheran / Augustinian “justification by faith” grid.  By actually reading the data from the first century, one finds that there were no Jews who thought the earned their salvation by keeping the Torah.

The important elements of first century Judaism were what “got you in” and what “kept you in” (this catch-phrase has almost become a mantra in Pauline studies.)  For Sanders, Jews believed that election of God “got them into” the covenant (i.e. salvation) and that good works were required to keep you in the covenant – but they were not saved by works of the law at all.   For this reason Sanders describes the Jews of the first century as believing in “covenantal nomism.” Both the election of God into the Covenant and the keeping of the  Law are important. Paul the Jewish rabbi found salvation outside of Judaism, and because of this he was forced to re-think his religion.

Why is this re-thinking of election so controversial?  For many post-reformation theological systems, “salvation by faith” in Pauline theology requires that the Jew, the Pharisee, is the mirror opposite of Paul, and therefore a “salvation by works” theology.  Paul’s argument only works if the Jews are trying to earn their salvation like Pelagius or the medieval church attacked by Luther.  Sanders (and Dunn, Wright and others) challenge that assumption and shake the foundations of justification by faith.  If this “new perspective” is correct, does that necessarily that the classic reformation faith is based upon a fiction?  Possibly, but it may not be as bad as some of Wright’s detractors make it out to be.

 

Good Scholarship vs. Good Preaching

The senior pastor at my church is preaching through Philippians this month, and doing a fine job.  He assumes the traditional location and circumstance for the writing Philippians, that is, the Roman imprisonment, sometime between 60 and 62.  Paul is under house arrest while awaiting trial after his appeal to Caesar.  The pastor made several excellent preaching points, great applications which were intended to spur us on to godly living, just as good preaching should do.

However….I am sitting there thinking that it is at least possible that Paul wrote Philippians from Ephesus quite a few years earlier.  In fact, I have become more warm to that idea in this recent round of teaching Pauline Lit in the college classroom.  If Paul is in prison in Ephesus and not Rome, is the fine preaching and application value of the sermon no longer valid?  At the very least they based on some wrong assumptions, and therefore may be improper applications to draw fro this particular text.

This hit me more in my own Sunday School class, since I went to Philippians 4 in order to talk about joy in extreme circumstances.  This is the obvious text to use since Paul is obviously in prison and can still talk about his joy in that rather difficult circumstance.  Which circumstance?  I had to say that he was in prison in Rome since that is what the congregation just heard, and that is the traditional answer that is in all their study Bibles, and I would have to take a half hour to explain the possibility that he was in Ephesus rather than Rome, and by that time people would not care about any “preaching point” I was trying to make.  I simply assumed, for the sake of the congregation, the traditional, and quite possibly wrong background to the letter.

I suppose this was not too great of an academic sin on my part, but it did bother me that I was willing to set aside good scholarship in order to make an equally good point which was for the spiritual benefit of my class.  It was not a lie, but I suppose it was a sin of omission.

This set me to thinking about all of the people every Sunday who preach and teach the word of God and simply set aside good scholarship in favor of making a great point. Usually this involves some abuse of the Greek language and most likely an inadequate understanding of the aorist tense.  Everyone has heard that sermon.  These preachers might very well have good intentions (bringing people to Christ, building people up in their faith), or very bad intentions (increasing their own influence, increasing giving to their ministry).  Either way, it is a sin which must be avoided at all cost.

But if I knowingly and intentionally ignore what I know is true in order to make the sermon “work,” I have sinned because I have not been intellectually honest.  I should never separate preaching from teaching, both must reflect a truthful understanding of the world of God.

Romans and the New Perspective

Polhill has a brief discussion of the New Perspective on Paul which packs a lot of the developments in Pauline theology into just about a page of text (P&HL, 296-97).  Since Romans is such an important book for understanding Paul’s theology, this is a good place to pause in our survey of Paul’s letters and think about what effect the New Perspective has had on our perceptions of Faith and Works, justification and other classic Pauline topics.

The so-called New Perspective on Paul offered a critique of the traditional view of Paul’s doctrine of justification and generated a fierce debate on both sides of the issue.  Most of the writers who have challenged the established view of Pauline reconciliation have emphasized reconciliation as only one of many metaphors which Paul uses in order to describe salvation.  E. P. Sanders, for example, does not want to privilege any one metaphor as the main or controlling idea for Paul’s soteriology, whether that metaphor is justification or not.

The core of Sanders’ argument is that Jews of the Second Temple period believed that they were a part of the covenant because of God’s election, and they remained part of the covenant on the basis of their good works.  But even here it is not complete and totally adherence to every part of the Law, since no one could keep everything perfectly.  Sanders therefore suggests that there was a sub-set of the Law which functioned as “boundary markers,” things which could function as defining who was “in” the covenant and who was “not in.”  Sanders’ conception of Second Temple period Judaism under the rubric of “covenantal nomism” is an application of these last two emphases.  Election is what gets one into the Covenant, if you are Israel then you are “in”; but what is it that maintains that relationship with God?  Can someone find themselves outside of the covenant?

Most of the literature of this period asks this sort of question: What is it that defines “in the covenant.”  In Maccabees it is Sabbath, circumcision and dietary Laws which are clear boundaries; in Jubilees and 1 Enoch, the Qumran literature proper Calendar is included as a boundary marker, in Sirach it is a life of wisdom that marks out the elect.

With this in mind, one could argue that Romans or Galatians does not say that Jesus ended the Law, i.e., no one has to keep the Law anymore at all.  Rather, Jesus ended the “boundary markers” which defined who was in or out of the covenant.  Circumcision no longer was the sign of the covenant; the day of worship was not longer an issue; food taboos were no longer clear signs of right-standing with God.  I am inclined to think that the calendar issues found in much of Second Temple period literature are behind some of Paul’s statements in Col 2:16, for example.  The old boundary markers are done away; the people are God are to be defined as those who are “in Christ.”

What then does this do to the classic reformation formulation of Justification by Faith? Perhaps nothing, the doctrine may still be a correct inference from scripture. But if justification is simply one metaphor for salvation among many, perhaps the emphasis placed on justification as the central theme of Paul’s theology is over-played.  I am not convinced it is, but the door is now open to other ideas from Paul which have been under-played for the last 400 years.