"The direction of Paul's message was confrontation with paganism; he had good news for them, but it was good news which undermined their worldview and replaced it with an essentially Jewish one, reworked around Jesus."
Chapter 5 of What Saint Paul Really Said is a dense chapter, but my time is short and so I'm only going to pick up on one thread indicated by the quote above.
I'm sure I could look it up, but I don't know off the top of my head what Wright's interaction and relationship with Karl Barth was/is. At any rate, overtones of Barth's dialectical theology (with it's emphasis on God's revelation) are present in Wright's presentation of Paul. This is especially brought out later in the chapter when Wright says that the good news is "not the sort of good news that told them (i.e. the pagans) they were more or less all right as they were, but the sort of good news which told them that, though they were at present going about things in a totally wrong way, the God who made them loved them and longed to remake them."
So yes, the gospel or good news demands repentance. Particularly, it demands the kind of repentance where one orients one's life around the person of Jesus and his way of the cross and resurrection, which is God's ultimate revelation to the world.
But as Christians, I don't think we ought to read this chapter as pointing the finger at "those pagans" who are somehow other than us; that it is "those pagans" who must come to see their worldviews undermined by the good news. Rather, if we take seriously Wright's basic premise of the book, that we 21st Century Christians need to in some way, shape, or form hear afresh Paul's message within his 1st century Jewish context, then we need to ask in what ways have "pagan" thought forms infiltrated our understanding of the gospel. The question then becomes, how do we as 21st Century, American Christians find our worldviews being undermined by the narrative proclamation of King Jesus, the crucified and risen messiah?
Informed by my Anabaptist heritage, I would begin my answer to this question by saying that at times the church has in fact marginalized Jesus. The church has worshiped Christ as savior but has neglected to follow Jesus as Lord. At the extreme, the church has simply baptized the pagan ways of Caesar and the Pax Romana rather than heeding the call to pick up one's cross and follow this rabbi from Nazareth.
Wright's scholarship is thus helpful and corrective even (perhaps especially) for Christians. Like Barth, Wright helps us understand the good news that Paul proclaimed as the revelation of God that sets a question mark against all humanity, for it is in Jesus that we hear both God's "yes" and God's "no." Therefore, we all must find that place in which we are first confronted by the good news so that we might be "transformed by the renewing of our minds" (Romans 12:2).
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Thursday, August 7, 2014
Paul and Jesus
"(Paul) has spied new meaning of the word 'God', because the person he has firmly in view is Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified and risen one. Paul has taken the word 'God' itself and has filled it with new content. Or rather, he would say, he has discovered what its true content always was."
"...at the heart of Paul's theology and indeed gospel, is the news that the one true God consists, through and through, of self-giving love."
It seems to me that Chapter 4 in NT Wight's book, What Saint Paul Really Said, brushes the surface of what would have been an critically important conversation among Paul and his first century Jewish counterparts. Particularly, it has to do with the relationship between Jesus and monotheism. Was Jesus divine, and if so how? Wright argues that Paul did think Jesus was divine and that he did so in a way that maintained the integrity of Jewish monotheism.
But I must say that there is a lot left unsaid in this chapter, and I'm not always sure how to fill in the blanks. I'll gladly attribute that to my own ignorance as well as the fact that Wright is only giving very brief treatment to this topic (and I'm sure if you want to read Wright's Paul and the Faithfulness of God you could go deeper). All in all, I think the main thrust of this chapter is to say what the author of the book of Hebrews says in its opening verses; that in these last days God has spoken most clearly and definitively through his Son, and as Wright interprets Paul on this matter, this is more a clarification of the one God of Israel rather than a modification.
Wright points us to three key scriptures in this chapter to help us understand how Paul placed Jesus within Jewish monotheism. I'm just going to mention the main connecting point that Wright makes with each, realizing that a lot more needs to be said.
First, Wright connects Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 8:1-6 with the opening of the shema in Deuteronomy 6:4 to show that Paul's language of the One God, the Father, and One Lord, Jesus Christ, draw upon the same language as the key monotheistic passage from the Hebrew Scriptures. Wright argues that Paul isn't departing from Jewish monotheism but rather has discovered something new about it.
Second, Wright connects Paul's words in Philippians 2:5-11 with Isaiah 40-55. With this connection we see Jesus linked both with Isaiah's suffering servant and with the one to whom every knee shall bow. Therefore, to say that every knee shall bow at the name of Jesus does not mean that God shares God's glory with another person or god but rather that the very definition of 'God' includes Christ and the suffering of cross, which is the expression of self-giving love by which God redeems God's people.
Third, Wright references Colossians 1:15-20. This poem is an example of Jewish monotheistic poetry in which the one true God acts both as the creator of the world and the redeemer of Israel. In this poem from Colossians, the stress remains on the one true God who creates the world and redeem Israel, but adds the claim that this one true God is now seen clearly in Jesus.
As I reflect on this chapter, I have two lingering thoughts. First, I'm not greatly concerned about the topic. Starting with Paul, the early church fathers, and throughout the history of the church, the church has articulated both the truth and the mystery of the doctrine of the trinity. I don't find the need to say any more about this. Sorting out the doctrine of the trinity was the number one issue for the early church, but it just isn't today. So while I affirm the doctrine of the trinity, it has already been worked out so the question is now, what do we do with it? Second, I can certainly understand why it was such and important topic for Paul. And I can certainly admit that, because the issue doesn't have the same urgency for me and my context today as it would have for Paul and his back then, I easily gloss over the very important connections that Paul is making in how he quotes and alludes to the Hebrew scriptures.
So good on you, Paul. You tackled a critically important issue by embedding Jesus within the framework of monotheism. The early church was indebted to your work and carried it on to where it needed to go. But the question that I am interested in, and the question that presents itself to the church today is, given that Jesus is divine and that Jesus is Lord and that the one true God of Israel and savior of the world is revealed in Jesus, so what? It certainly can't stop at an idea or an ideology to be enforced, but must move out into a way of life defined by the self-giving love of the cross by those who confess this to be true. And I believe the other chapters in the book will address some of these more pressing issues.
So yes, an important, but brief, chapter in terms of the study of Paul. But not may favorite.
"...at the heart of Paul's theology and indeed gospel, is the news that the one true God consists, through and through, of self-giving love."
It seems to me that Chapter 4 in NT Wight's book, What Saint Paul Really Said, brushes the surface of what would have been an critically important conversation among Paul and his first century Jewish counterparts. Particularly, it has to do with the relationship between Jesus and monotheism. Was Jesus divine, and if so how? Wright argues that Paul did think Jesus was divine and that he did so in a way that maintained the integrity of Jewish monotheism.
But I must say that there is a lot left unsaid in this chapter, and I'm not always sure how to fill in the blanks. I'll gladly attribute that to my own ignorance as well as the fact that Wright is only giving very brief treatment to this topic (and I'm sure if you want to read Wright's Paul and the Faithfulness of God you could go deeper). All in all, I think the main thrust of this chapter is to say what the author of the book of Hebrews says in its opening verses; that in these last days God has spoken most clearly and definitively through his Son, and as Wright interprets Paul on this matter, this is more a clarification of the one God of Israel rather than a modification.
Wright points us to three key scriptures in this chapter to help us understand how Paul placed Jesus within Jewish monotheism. I'm just going to mention the main connecting point that Wright makes with each, realizing that a lot more needs to be said.
First, Wright connects Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 8:1-6 with the opening of the shema in Deuteronomy 6:4 to show that Paul's language of the One God, the Father, and One Lord, Jesus Christ, draw upon the same language as the key monotheistic passage from the Hebrew Scriptures. Wright argues that Paul isn't departing from Jewish monotheism but rather has discovered something new about it.
Second, Wright connects Paul's words in Philippians 2:5-11 with Isaiah 40-55. With this connection we see Jesus linked both with Isaiah's suffering servant and with the one to whom every knee shall bow. Therefore, to say that every knee shall bow at the name of Jesus does not mean that God shares God's glory with another person or god but rather that the very definition of 'God' includes Christ and the suffering of cross, which is the expression of self-giving love by which God redeems God's people.
Third, Wright references Colossians 1:15-20. This poem is an example of Jewish monotheistic poetry in which the one true God acts both as the creator of the world and the redeemer of Israel. In this poem from Colossians, the stress remains on the one true God who creates the world and redeem Israel, but adds the claim that this one true God is now seen clearly in Jesus.
As I reflect on this chapter, I have two lingering thoughts. First, I'm not greatly concerned about the topic. Starting with Paul, the early church fathers, and throughout the history of the church, the church has articulated both the truth and the mystery of the doctrine of the trinity. I don't find the need to say any more about this. Sorting out the doctrine of the trinity was the number one issue for the early church, but it just isn't today. So while I affirm the doctrine of the trinity, it has already been worked out so the question is now, what do we do with it? Second, I can certainly understand why it was such and important topic for Paul. And I can certainly admit that, because the issue doesn't have the same urgency for me and my context today as it would have for Paul and his back then, I easily gloss over the very important connections that Paul is making in how he quotes and alludes to the Hebrew scriptures.
So good on you, Paul. You tackled a critically important issue by embedding Jesus within the framework of monotheism. The early church was indebted to your work and carried it on to where it needed to go. But the question that I am interested in, and the question that presents itself to the church today is, given that Jesus is divine and that Jesus is Lord and that the one true God of Israel and savior of the world is revealed in Jesus, so what? It certainly can't stop at an idea or an ideology to be enforced, but must move out into a way of life defined by the self-giving love of the cross by those who confess this to be true. And I believe the other chapters in the book will address some of these more pressing issues.
So yes, an important, but brief, chapter in terms of the study of Paul. But not may favorite.
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