N.T. Wright, "Paul and the Faithfulness of God" (Vol 4) - Rome and Its Empire

Rome as Empire and Emperor Worship

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/10/10/rome-as-empire-and-emperor-worship/

by Scot McKnight

Oct 10, 2013

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I have been reading theological books for forty plus years. In that time only one truly great piece of writing stands out as a book deserving reading for the poetry of its prose, and that was Albert Schweitzer’s Quest of the Historical Jesus, a book with a story so good and a conclusion so wrong. Yet, no book stands next to it when it comes to prose. Until N.T. Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God, a book zippered up with eloquence and tightened by potent observations. Read it for the prose.

 

I should perhaps note that when Tom was the good bishop he had many other responsibilities; now freed to be a professor we might long for the day when his big books were only 700 pages or so!

 

In this chp we get to the heart of the new contribution that PFG will make; here is a full display of the imperial cult as a/the context for understanding Paul’s claim that Jesus is Lord. That Tom knows this claim will be given considerable pushback explains the detail and vigorous prose and evidence-based conclusions. There can be no doubt the emperor, from Augustus on, was worshiped or prayed to (and for); the issue will be how much this figured into Paul’s theological claims about Jesus as Lord.

 

So what is, or better yet, was religion in Paul’s world?

When Paul arrived in Ephesus, Philippi or anywhere else with his message about the one God and his crucified and risen son, he was not offering an alternative way of being ‘religious’ in the sense of a private hobby, something to do in a few hours at the weekend. He was offering a heart transplant for an entire community and its culture. If ‘the centrality of Artemis was part of what it meant to be an Ephesian,’43 it is not surprising that Paul’s ministry there caused a riot (255). 

By the same token, even the small beginnings of a ‘thick description’ of greco-roman culture such as we have made here indicate that when Paul arrived in a town and began to speak about the one true God, and about this God raising from the dead a man called Jesus who was now to be invoked, worshipped and hailed as kyrios, there was a whole network of assumptions, vested interests, long-cherished traditions, hopes and fears both personal and civic, which would be aroused. When the antagonists in Philippi declare that Paul and Silas are Jews, throwing the city into an uproar by ‘teaching customs which it’s illegal for us Romans to accept or practise’,122 and when the crowd in Thessalonica yell out that Paul and Silas have been ‘turning the world upside down’ by ‘acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus’,123 we can understand, in view of the evidence so far surveyed in this chapter, that these, though carrying an inescapably political dimension, were fundamentally to do with a strong, deep-rooted culture, and within that culture with something we may as well call ‘religion’. ‘Religion’ may not be ultimately the best category for describing or analyzing what Paul was doing, or what he thought he was doing. But it is certainly a key and basic element in what his contemporaries will have seen him doing and heard him saying. And with ‘religion’, in all of these complex senses, we are dealing with what today we might call ‘the fabric of society’, the things which held people together and gave shape and meaning to their personal and corporate life (273-274).

But a pressing issue in today’s scholarship is Caesar or, to ramp him up one notch, Empire.

The Roman empire was the great new Fact of the world which included the Palestine of Jesus’ boyhood and the Cilicia of Saul’s. It proclaimed itself as a bright new world: new roads with new soldiers to march along them, new taxes and new coins to pay them with, new administrations and law- courts, local officials falling over themselves to erect splendid, presti- gious new temples to the divine royal house. New crosses by the roadside, displaying the bird-pecked remains of rebels. Whole cities were redesigned to give honour to the emperor and his family, portrayed, often enough, in the guise of the ancient pagan divinities. Perhaps, after all, the gods had come down in human form. Rome took the eagle as its symbol; popular legend and iconography suggested a direct link to Jupiter, the highest god of all (279).

Now to Empire:

It was not by military force alone that Augustus consolidated his power, or that his successors maintained it. It has been shown in great detail that from the beginning the empire used every available means in art, architecture, literature and culture in general – everything from tiny coins to the rebuild- ing of entire city centres – to communicate to the Roman people near and far the message that Augustus’s rise to power was the great new moment for which Rome, and indeed the whole world, had been waiting. This is what I mean, in this broad sense and in the present context, by ‘rhetoric’ (294).

Wright provides extensive discussion of the empire narrative, the narrative that says history is coming to a golden moment in the Empire’s Caesars, at work in the Roman world among the Roman historians — from Horace and Ovid and Livy but especially Virgil, about whom Wright makes an important observation, one with which I agree:

There is every reason to suppose that an intelligent boy growing up in Tarsus, or for that matter in Jerusalem, would know at least its [Virgil's Aeneid's] main themes, if not its finer details (307). [And now to the conclusion:] “But his grand narrative stands to the grand narrative of Israel’s scriptures, together with their putative final chapter, at worst as a kind of parody, at best as another altar to an unknown god” (311).

Wright ventures into the Empire as religion, or the imperial cult, with a swirling set of paragraphs loaded up with nuances and claims that in spite of all this variety there remains something we can call the “imperial cult.”

1. There was a long tradition in the East of a divine monarchy.
2. There was a long tradition as well of worshiping the goddess Roma, Dea Roma.
3. Hercules was long associated with someone transcendent, with the divine. Flanking him are intellectual and civic heroes seen as gods.
4. There is the decline of traditional religion and the decision by Augustus to restore the ancient religion/cult, revealing the connection between the new leader and the old gods.
5. Homes and some more localized settings had their own shrines and religious settings(Lares and Penates). By the use of one word — augusti — these got connected to Augustus himself, leading religious customs to be more connected to the emperor.
6. Traditional deities were absorbed and renamed in new cultures, as when the Greek gods got new Latin/Roman names and became Roman gods. Kings got connected to these gods as well.  Augustus was portrayed as Jupiter or Zeus.
7. And Rome’s power was absorbed when local elites, chosen to represent Rome, were unafraid in expressing gratitude to Rome for their gifts and protection.

Now we get to the “divinity of Augustus,” something ambiguously worded but seemingly clear in implication: the man was divine. From a decree in Asia we learn these things:  

Augustus has bestowed great benefits, including ‘salvation’; Asia has held a competition to see who can propose the best way of honouring him, which has been won by the proconsul who suggested this reordering of the calendar. Augustus’s rule has proved a new beginning for the world, and for individuals. He has been raised, as it were, to cosmogonic stature; the Roman imperial system has been equated with the cosmic structures of the world. The events surrounding Augustus’s coming to power are therefore ‘good news’, euangelia, a word virtually always in the plural in such contexts, though, interestingly, always in the singular in the New Testament. This ‘good news’ is not merely a nice piece of information to cheer you up on a bad day, but the public, dramatic announcement that something has happened through which the world has changed for ever and much for the better (327).

Wright catalogs the evidence around the Roman Empire. Everywhere cities had altars and centers for Augustus; space was shaped to focus on the emperor. Here is how Wright puts it together for a good reminder:

There was indeed, then, no single thing we can call ‘the emperor cult’ at any time during the reign of Augustus. However, from the hints in Horace and Virgil to the enthusiastic temple-building in Asia and Palestine, to the soldiers’ drinking-cups in Switzerland, Augustus was the name that was found, literally, on everybody’s lips. The cults worked their way into domes- tic and workshop shrines, and onto signet rings, oil lamps and numerous other small artefacts. Libations were offered to the emperor at every feast whether public or private, a ruling from as early as 30 BC in the enthusiastic aftermath of Actium. However varied the cultic phenomena, however piecemeal the development, however ambiguous some of the phraseology, people were doing with Augustus what they had long done with the ancient pantheon: building temples to his honour, invoking him in prayer, offering sacrifice to him (334). 

The cults, in all their variety, and for all their blending of Augustus with other divinities and especially with Roma herself, came down to a focus on Augustus himself as the lynch-pin to the whole symbolic universe. Thus all the lines, east and west and in Rome itself, pointed to one conclusion, which was confirmed shortly after the great man finally died on 19 August in AD 14. Numerius Atticus, a senator, declared on oath that he had seen Augustus ascending, like Romulus, into heaven. Livia, Augustus’s widow, paid him a million sesterces for his trouble. Augustus thus received in death what he had refused to receive in his life. Suddenly, therefore, what was formerly forbidden now became urgent. A shrine for Augustus was at last built in Rome itself, priests were appointed, with Livia herself as priestess and a new college of priests, the sodales Augustales, consisting of leading senators. A golden image of the late emperor was placed in the temple of Mars, the architectural focus of Augustus’s civic building programme. Other rites and ceremonies were voted. Whereas with Julius Caesar it had taken some time for deification to occur, with Augustus it happened very quickly. This was the final, public, dotting of the ‘i’s and crossing of the ‘t’s in the message that the world had been able to read for some time (335).

Augustus then had climbed to top of Olympus; Tiberius, his successor, was immediately “son of god,” or son of the divine Augustus. Tiberius was moody; Gaius Caligula an egomaniac. Claudius kept pace. Nero was unstable but he too was given similar honors.

 

This is the makings of empire ideology and counter-ideology on the part of the apostle Paul. Was Paul, then, using language to counter the imperial cult in its various forms and ideas?

 

You may know that Joe Modica and I were co-editors of a book called Jesus is Lord, Caesar is Not, a book that examined claims made by scholars about anti-empire ideology at work in the NT authors. Our collection of authors routinely argued the evidence was overcooked. Not one of the authors under examination put together as much evidence as is put together here by Tom Wright, meaning we are in need of yet one more evaluation.

 

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Index to the "New(er) Perspective(s) of Paul"

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Paul's New Perspective to a Fresh Perspective of Paul

From New Perspective to Fresh Perspective to … what’s next?
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/10/08/from-new-perspective-to-fresh-perspective-to-whats-next/

by Scot McKnight

Oct 8, 2013

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In N.T. Wright’s earlier work on Paul he advocated a pioneering orientation we now call the New Perspective, in part because Wright himself used that expression but even more because J.D.G. Dunn called the whole movement that. Then less than a decade ago Wright wrote a little book on Paul that added to the new perspective and he himself called it the “fresh” perspective. What Wright added to the NPP was anti-imperial themes: Paul was not only extending Judaism but he was intentionally provoking the idea that confessing Jesus as Lord was consciously saying “Caesar was not.”

 

What happens now in Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God, and I have not worked it all the way through, will yet again advance the new and fresh perspectives. What happens here is a renewal of Paul’s Greek and Roman worlds as more central to the mission and message of Paul. In effect, Paul becomes in part a “philosopher” — of the Greek sort — not your ivory tower university theoretician but an on-the-ground and concerned-with-the-world kind of philosopher. The kind we see in Socrates and Plato perhaps more than in Aristotle, but Wright’s focus here is toward the value of the Stoics — Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. To this mix Wright adds a little bit of the great Roman, Cicero — and a sketch of the Wisdom of Solomon as a Jewish predecessor of just this kind of interactive thinking.

 

So, we get a Paul of two worlds — the Jewish world and the Roman world, now not two worlds but one world, mixed together and not separate as one might have on a library categorization. The days of Hengel’s famous studies of Judaism and Hellenism have come to fruition in a fresh synthesis in this new work by N.T. Wright. The days too of superficial parallelisms are also over: here we find a more robust set of worldview ideas being compared to one another.

 

The Paul of Acts 17; then, the one who could stand on the same dais as the philosophers of Athens, is a thoroughly Jewish and at the same time a Hellenized Jew, a Jew who could do philosophy in the modes of that day, particularly of that day, the Stoics. He was not unlike the Wisdom of Solomon, then. The old-fashioned Jew OR Greek, then, is broken down in this new edition of Tom Wright’s through on Paul. I give now samples of the progress of his chapter on this very topic…and we are just getting started in a book that goes on more than 1500 pages.

So Paul has been studied in ‘departments of religion’, though neither in ancient nor in modern terms do his letters, or the communities which he founded, belong primarily in such a category (203).

Where do we locate Paul’s world, Paul’s audience, and so Paul’s angles? Wright says in Stoicism.

Whereas the default mode of most modern westerners is some kind of Epicureanism, the default mode for many of Paul’s hearers was some kind of Stoicism. Observing the differences between the two, particularly at the level of assumptions, is therefore vital if we are to ‘hear’ Paul as many of his first hearers might have done. If, when someone says the word ‘god’, we think at once of a distant, detached divinity – as most modern westerners, being implicitly Epicureans or at least Deists, are likely to do – we are unlikely to be able imaginatively to inhabit the world of many in Corinth, Philippi, Ephesus and elsewhere for whom the word ‘god’ might reasonably be expected to denote the divinity which indwelt, through its fiery physical presence, all things, all people, the whole cosmos. 

Stoicism, after all, was the classic form of pantheism, the doctrine that sees divinity in everything. Saying this to someone today might appear to suggest that ‘everything’ is therefore in its essence ‘spiritual’, pointing back to some kind of Platonic vision of a ‘real’ world beyond space, time and matter. Stoicism, however, went in the opposite direction: everything, including the divine force or presence indwelling all things and all people, was ‘material’ or ‘corporeal’, not far from what we would normally call ‘physical’ (though all these terms are slippery with age and varied usage) (213).

An example: Paul can sound at times like the Stoic Epictetus.

Epictetus, more than any other whose writings have come down to us, exemplifies the ‘diatribe’ style, which emerges most obviously in the New Testament in some passages in Paul’s letter to the Romans. There are times, indeed, when it sounds as if Epictetus and Paul had grown up in the same street: 

What then? (ti oun) Do I say that man is an animal made for inactivity? Far be it from me! (mē genoito). But how can you say that we philosophers are not active in [public] affairs? For example, to take myself first: as soon as day breaks I call to mind briefly what author I must read over . . . 

What then? Is it we philosophers alone who take things easily and drowse? No, it is you young men far sooner. For, look you, we old men, when we see young men playing, are eager to join in the play ourselves. And much more, if I saw them wide-awake and eager to share in our studies, should I be eager to join, myself, in their serious pursuits. 

The subject-matter is of course different; but nobody who has an ear for Paul’s cadences, especially in letters like Romans and 1 Corinthians, can doubt that he and Epictetus were, to this extent, employing a very similar method of argument, which traced its ancestry back to Socrates and was to be located, within the disciplines of ancient philosophy, as part of ‘logic’. This was a way of ensuring that one was working steadily towards the truth, and not being deceived by faulty impressions or rhetorical trickery (224). 

The result of all this – flying in the face of some recent suggestions to the contrary – is that, for Epictetus, the primary task of the would-be philosopher is in fact theology: 

Now the philosophers say that the first thing we must learn is this: That there is a God, and that He provides for the universe, and that it is impossible for a man to conceal from Him, not merely his actions, but even his purposes and his thoughts. Next we must learn what the gods are like, for whatever their character is discovered to be, the man who is going to please and obey them must endeavour as best he can to resemble them. If the deity is faithful, he also must be faithful; if free, he also must be free; if beneficent, he also must be beneficent; if high-minded, he also must be high-minded, and so forth; therefore, in every- thing he says and does, he must act as an imitator (zēlōtēs) of God. 

Here, for Epictetus, is the heart both of ‘physics’ and of ‘ethics’, and all to be argued out strenuously according to his own practice of ‘logic’. Once one has this knowledge, one is ready for the philosopher’s specific active voca- tion: to be dispatched like a scout or a spy in a time of war, to search out what is really going on, and then to come back and explain to people that they are mistaken in their perceptions of good and evil, and to point out the truth of the situation whether people want to hear it or not.121 Philosophers, to return to our opening image, are to be like owls who see in the dark – and then like heralds who announce the message with which they have been entrusted. Paul had a different message, but might well have agreed with the outline of the vocation as Epictetus articulated it (227).

And Cicero, too:

Cicero, in fact, provides us with evidence of two things which are worth bearing strongly in mind when contemplating the philosophical climate of the world in which Saul of Tarsus grew up and in which Paul the apostle travelled about announcing Jesus as Messiah and lord. First, philosophy was a topic of widespread discussion and debate right across the greco-roman world, particularly among the literary and cultured elite but also – as Epictetus reminds us a century or more later – very much at street level. This was already true before the first century BC, but the events of that highly disturbed period, particularly the terrible convulsions through which the Roman world passed in the middle decades of the century, contributed substantially to a fresh opening of ultimate questions: 

These troubled times, which are reflected in the poems of Virgil and Horace, were a significant influence on the Roman turn to philosophy. As long as the main fabric of the Republic was intact, leading Romans had chiefly defined themselves by reference to family tradition and the renown that civic and military service could promote. With the state in complete disarray and no ethical or emotional support to be derived from official religion,we begin to find a more reflective and ascetic mentality, that would become still more prominent in the Empire. 

That was the world of Paul. 

Second, Cicero’s mixture of the ‘Academic’ position with several significant elements of Stoicism is a reminder that, granted there was no creedal or dogmatic structure or policing of the different schools and opinions, the influence of Plato himself remained massive throughout the period. Much of his thought – for instance, on the immortality of the soul – had passed into Stoicism, just as much of the Socratic method which he made famous had opened the door for the questioning which led some to Scepticism. The explicit revival of the study of both Plato and Aristotle, which we noted earlier, combined with the teachings of both Stoic and Academic thinkers (the Epicureans alone maintaining, as they would, a dignified detachment), to form a general climate of opinion, at least as to the spectrum of possibilities. In particular, when we ask what Paul might have supposed his hearers would be thinking when he spoke or wrote about a being he referred to as theos, about a powerful pneuma through which this ‘god’ might perform new deeds in his people, about the creation and recreation of the cosmos, and many other things besides, we must assume, and we must assume that he assumed, that the default mode for their thinking would be somewhere in the region of the Stoic development of Plato’s thought (231-232).

Here is where we have a sketch of all of this in terms of worldview from 10,000 miles high:

Above all, the worldview-questions give us a sharp insight into the world of the philosophers – and into the possibility of a comparison, when we have studied him in his own right, with Paul. Take them first as addressed to more or less the entire ancient philosophical world. Who are we? We are humans, part of the world but trying to understand it and live wisely within it. Where are we? In the world of space, time and matter, but a world which some think teems with divine life as well. What’s wrong? Most people, even most philosophers, do not see clearly enough in the darkness of the world,do not penetrate its secrets, and so do not live in the best possible way. In particular, they lack ‘happiness’ (eudaimonia), both in the normal sense that their circumstances trouble them and in the philosophical sense that, in seeking for normal happiness in outward circumstances, they are ignoring the real happiness that philosophy can help to produce. What’s the solution? Why, study philosophy, of course, and then you will (gradually) accustom your eyes to the darkness of the world so that you can grasp the truth and live in accordance with it. Part of the result will be that you come at least to resemble the divine, and possibly to be transformed into a divine being yourself. Ironically, whereas ‘religion’ in the ancient world meant submit- ting to someone (a god) other than oneself, philosophy meant that one was autonomous; either because, with the Epicureans, the gods are not concerned with what we do, so that we are only responsible to ourselves, or because, with the Stoics, the divinity is within us, so that responsibility to god and responsibility to self seem to be the same thing viewed from two different angles. Death itself will either be a return to absolute nothingness (Epicurus) or a transformation into a better life (Plato); as we have seen, some highly regarded Stoics kept this question open. What time is it? That’s the sort of question, our philosophers might say, that a Jew might ask . . . (The Stoics might have said that it was time for moral effort; the Academics, that it was time for more thought; the Peripatetics, that it was time for more research; the Epicureans, that it was time for a drink . . .)

And now even more narrowly, the reconstructed “worldview” of the Stoics:

A Stoic would, of course, give sharper answers to the questions. Who are we? We are creatures composed, as is the whole world, of a mixture of the elements, with the physical element of fire indwelling us in the form of the human psychē. We are therefore part of the divine, and the divine is part of us. Where are we? Within the Universe, the Cosmos, Nature, to pan – which is itself composed of the four elements, with fire and air acting upon earth and water to produce manifold forms of life. The same logos is at work in the world as within each of us. What’s wrong? Nothing is wrong with the world itself (the Epicureans would have disagreed strongly at this point). However, most people, deceived either by false impressions or by sloppy thinking or both, do not realize the truth of the matter, and so spend their time in futile pursuit of a mirage they think of as happiness. Even philosophers find it difficult to get it right all the time. What’s the solution? No surprises: study philosophy, start off on the path that might make you a sage, and continue to discipline yourself, to examine your own life and to take yourself in hand. All the virtues are within your grasp through the divine life within you, so co-operate with it and nerve yourself for the moral struggle. This will result in the appropriation (oikeiōsis) of what is in fact natural to ourselves. The end result (surprisingly similar, this, right across the philosophical board): a calm, untroubled life, free, self-sufficient, self- controlled. (The Stoics aimed to achieve this by refusing to regard pleasure and pain as important; the Epicureans, by regarding them as guides, but in a sophisticated fashion which looked for the real, calm, pleasure behind the mask of mere hedonism.) What time is it? For the Stoic, we are somewhere on the cycle between conflagrations; the fiery pneuma, which is the very breath of the divine, of Zeus himself, is at work in the world, and will one day transform everything into its own life of total fire before setting it all in motion yet again (233-235).

Well, this promises to set Paul in a Roman context in a way mostly ignored in the new perspective studies. In fact, ignored by most Pauline scholars today. But I do have to say I’m now wondering (aloud) if Paul would have been seen as a philosopher. So I ask a long-ish question:

 

Let us imagine our way into the elite circles of Ephesus or Corinth or Athens when a report circulates among them about a man named Paul. Would the reports of his activities — synagogue attendance, synagogue teaching, Scripture reading and explaining, division creating, debate ensuing, persistence in his point of views… then add to this that he worked with his own hands at tentmaking, whether of leather or cloth doesn’t matter much, that he was using such places to gospel and continue his debates and was gaining adherents… and add to this that his new groups were called “churches” (ekklesia, not schools, clubs, not associations) and that he and others were “appointing” leaders called “elders” and “deacons” and that they, too, were reading and commenting on Scripture… now add the big one: it all about this Jew named Jesus, whom they called Messiah of Israel, which drew all the attention to the Bible to see if it predicted that story … now I ask, Would such a man be called a “philosopher”? or something more Jewish? Like apostle? Pastor? Gospeler? Teacher? Would the elites have seen him as one of themselves, a philosopher schooled in the right books and ideas and methods of communication, or would they have said, “Not one of us?”

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N.T. Wright, "Paul and the Faithfulness of God" (Vol 4) - Paul the Pharisee

Paul the Pharisee

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/10/03/paul-the-pharisee/

 

by Scot McKnight
with commentary by R.E. Slater

Oct 3, 2013

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The apostle Paul emerged into a faith in Jesus as the Messiah out of the Pharisaic way of life. What was that like? This is one of the highlight questions Tom Wright asks in his new Paul and the Faithfulness of God, and to answer that question he prepares us with a lengthy and winding discussion of the “Story” at work in Judaism, and the particular slant that Story was told by the Pharisees. Here is awesome summary, leading to this big question for us:

 

If this is Paul’s “background” and “past,” what do we now see in his letters we did not see before? or, what does this tell us about his theory of “justification by faith”? (More on that below, too.)

 

This begins with major worldview questions for the [faithful] Pharisee:

Who  are we? We are a group of [religious] Jews who found ourselves dissatisfied with the way our country is being run. And with our life as a people, at home and abroad. We are therefore devoting ourselves to the study and practice of Torah, as a kind of elite corps, intending to advance the time when Israel will finally be redeemed, when our God will reveal his faithfulness to our nation. 

Where are we? Mostly, it seems, in the holy land, which is where we might prefer to be; but some of us live and work in the Diaspora [(the scattered 12 tribes throughout the ancient world, primarily from Eqypt to Asia Minor)]. We are, however, mostly living under the rule of the Roman empire (some, perhaps, far out in the east, have other pagan overlords [(such as the gods of Persia)]), and we have struck a deal that we will pray for the emperor, not to him as everyone else is forced to do. 396 

What’s wrong? There are not nearly enough of us who take Torah with proper seriousness, and even among those who do there are schools [of thought] developing which the tough-minded among us regard as dangerously compromised. What counts, after all, is absolute purity. We do not imagine that we never sin, or never incur impurity, but we deal with it at once according to the methods and means of atonement and purification given by God as prescribed in the law. That is what it means to be ‘perfect in the law’. But we cannot compromise or collude with the wickedness we see in the nations all around us, and that goes especially for the rulers of the nations. Ever since the days in Egypt, and then again from the time in Babylon (where some of us still are) to the present, we have known what pagan rulers are like, and what it’s like to live under them. We will not be content until we no longer have to live as, in effect, slaves under these pagans, paying them [horrendous] taxes [from our meager wages]. Behind the problem of Israel’s large-scale failure to obey Torah properly is the much bigger problem [of our grievance with God]: "When will our God reveal his faithfulness to the covenant, by judging the pagans, liberating us from their wicked grasp, and setting up his ultimate kingdom? That’s what’s wrong: it hasn’t happened yet!"

What’s the solution? To the smaller-scale problem: a campaign to persuade more Jews to take upon themselves the yoke of Torah. To the larger-scale problem: to pray (prayer is especially important; the Shema alone is the very foundation of our existence) and to wait in purity, to keep the feasts and the fasts, to study scripture . . . and perhaps, so some of us think, to join up with those who are eager for armed resistance and revolution. We have as our great models of ‘zeal for Torah’ the heroes of old, Phinehas and Elijah especially. They were not afraid to use the sword in the service of God. Nor were our more recent heroes, the Maccabaean freedom-fighters. We venerate, too, the martyrs who died cruel deaths rather than defile themselves with pagan food and practices. We are waiting for a new exodus, and perhaps a new Moses to lead it. Some of us want to hurry that process along. 

What time is it? Well, there is a lot of discussion about that, because nobody is completely sure how to calculate the Great Jubilee of Daniel 9. But it has to be soon. The ‘present age’ will give way to the ‘age to come’;397 the present time is the time of continuing exile and slavery, despite various false dawns; some of us did make it back to our own land, but whether we did or didn’t we are still in the long, dark period [for didn't] Daniel 9 predicted the ‘exile’ of Deuteronomy 28? The coming age, however, will be the time of freedom, and some of us have begun to think that maybe that coming age is being secretly inaugurated as we develop and pass on the oral law and do our best to keep it. Maybe that’s the way God’s faithfulness is being revealed. Meanwhile, we are frustrated that the great biblical laws about jubilee have usually been honoured in the breach rather than [in] the observance. We who keep the sabbath very carefully week-by-week are hoping and praying for the great Sabbath, the time when our God will have completed the work of rescuing Israel, and we can enjoy ‘[a Sabbath's] rest’ like Joshua’s people did once the land was settled. It is time for a ‘messianic time’ - for a new kind of time - for the same thing to happen to our time and history as happens in space and matter when we go to the Temple: an intersection of our world with God’s world, of our time with God’s time. That’s what happens every week, every sabbath. We want all those times of rest to come rushing together as the [one] true Jubilee, the real freedom-moment, not just because we want a new exodus but because we want to share God’s ultimate rest, the joy of work complete. (177-179)

Here is how the Pharisees, according to NT Wright, saw their problem:

We have thus approached, from the theological angle, the topic we discovered at the heart of our study of the narrative world of second-Temple Jews. If Israel is chosen to be the people through whom the Creator will put the world to rights, what happens when Israel itself needs to be put to rights? The answer given by the Pharisees was reasonably clear: Israel needs to learn how to keep Torah, and how to keep it properly this time. If Israel wants the covenant God to be faithful to his promises and bring the restoration they longed for, Israel has to be faithful to this God, to Torah, to the covenant. Plenty of evidence in scripture itself indicated that something like this was the right answer. Since Paul the apostle basically agrees with this answer, though providing a radical and shocking fresh analysis of what ‘keeping Torah properly’ and ‘being faithful to God’ now looks like, we may confidently conclude that this was what Saul of Tarsus, the zealous Pharisee, had believed as well. (183)

Now what about justification by faith in this worldview?

The point can be summarized thus. First, God will soon bring the whole world into judgment, at which point some people will be ‘reckoned in the right’, as Abraham and Phinehas were. Second, there are particular things, even in the present time, which will function as signs of that coming verdict. Third, those particular things are naturally enough the things that mark out loyal Israelites from disloyal ones; in other words (remember Mattathias!) strong, zealous adherence to Torah and covenant. Fourth, as a result, those who perform these things in the present time can thus be assured that the verdict to be issued in the future, when the age to come is finally launched, can already be known, can be anticipated, in the present. This, I believe, is what a first-century Pharisee would have meant by ‘justification by the works of the law’. (184)

So here’s Paul’s basic worldview coming into view on justification:

We may therefore suppose (supposition is all we have, in the absence of direct evidence, but this is where all the lines of evidence converge) that a first-century Pharisee like Saul of Tarsus would have seen the picture like this: 

a. In the ‘age to come’, the creator God will judge the wicked (pagans, and renegade Jews), and will vindicate (= declare ‘righteous’) his people (i.e. will declare that they are part of his ‘all Israel’). 

b. The present marks of this vindicated/justified people will be the things which show their loyalty to their God and their zeal for his covenant. 

c. These things are, more precisely, the true keeping of Torah: (a) keeping the ‘works’ which mark out Jews from their pagan neighbours, and (b) keeping the ‘works’ which mark out good, observant Jews from non-observant [Jews] – in [more] extreme cases, [from] the skeptics, and the wicked, though there might be other more fine-tuned categories as well.426 

d. You can therefore tell in the present who will be ‘vindicated’ in the future, because they are those who keep ‘the works of Torah’ in this way in the present time. 187

 Paul as a converted Pharisee to a Christ-follower:

That is why, if we are to understand Paul the apostle, we must see him within this rich, many-sided world. To move through the different concentric circles: the Pharisaic worldview was about the whole business of being human; of being a Jewish human; of living in a Jewish community; of living in a threatened Jewish community; of living with wisdom, integrity and hope in a threatened Jewish community; of living with zeal for Torah, the covenant and above all Israel’s faithful God within a threatened Jewish community (196). 

* * * * * * * * *

 

Addendum

Thus there is a Pharisaical emphasis on 1) divine judgment, 2) believer faithfulness, 3) strict adherence to Scriptural obedience/duty/honor, and 4) a future that vindicates God's faithful. Which becomes easily translated into today's evangelical beliefs with its own corresponding emphasis upon Jesus, in place of Torah. From which have come Christian doctrines emphasizing: 1) God's judgment over His divine grace, 2) God's austerity over His divine forgiveness, 3) blind obedience to the Scriptures without consideration for their tone and import, and an 4) emphasis upon future judgment: such as apostasy, tribulation, and apocalypse; and future reward: heaven v. hell.

 

When each "faith" is tallied up we then find a faith that is works-oriented, ungracious, unduly harsh, and ill-forgiving - as compared to Jesus' works of grace and compassion, which are largely met in Spirit-faith and Spirit-empowerment. A faith that emphasizes God's grace over His Torah Law (sic, Jesus' many debates with the Pharisees). That presents a compassionate covenant of inclusion over those of exclusion and hate (NT examples abound of Jesus curing the lame, the sick, helping the poor, defending the whore, and ministering the despised). Of a more hopeful future than one dipped in fear, dread and blood (where God's great salvation will be proclaimed by all His Church). And of a future that is here, now, as present in Christ's atonement and His Holy Spirit's ministry to this world of humanity - and not to a select few of God's supposed "chosen" (the mustard seed, the lost coins, new wineskins - each telling of a Kingdom that will grow disproportionately to our unbelieving thoughts and incredulity supposing it to be stingy, miserly, or ungenerous). One that envisions this present world as a heaven on earth which can become more fully a place of God's divine rule and habitation when recreated in Jesus' resurrected fullness (the idea of an upside-down Kingdom in holy tension with man's stubborn sin, and judgment to man's evil and wickedness). Which does not discount the future coming of Christ, but envisions Christ's presence now through His Church on this earth in works of compassion and justice, and ecological care and restoration.

 

R.E. Slater
October 10, 2013
 

 

Continue to Index -

 

Index to the "New(er) Perspective(s) of Paul"

 

 

 

N.T. Wright, "Paul and the Faithfulness of God" (Vol 4) - Introduction to NPP

Scot McKnight begins a month-long discussion of N.T. Wright's newest Volume 4 on Paul from his summary series of an intended 5-volume set, Christian Origins and the Question of God, begun back in 1992 (Vol. 1 - The Church, Vol's. 2&3 - Jesus and His Resurrection, Vol. 4 - Paul, Vol 5. - untitled). Wright's latest volume deals with how Paul's theology should be viewed within in his own first-century Jewish context and away from the church's more popular Westernized, Medieval, Augustinian context of "salvation by justification.". This latter understanding is readily seen through popular Reformed and Calvinistic systematic doctrines such as eternal security, predestination, election, heaven, hell, salvation, and faith (as mixed or separated from with its opposite polarity within Evangelicalism's Wesleyan, Baptist, and Charismatic churches known as Arminianism re prevenient grace, human choice and freedom, works of faith, holiness, obedience, the divine-human cooperative, and so on). This newer perspective which encompasses all the theological views above is known as the "New Perspective of Paul" (and more accurately might be called the "Newer Perspectives of Paul") which we'll shortly explain.

 

Accordingly, NT Wright has struck a nerve within contemporary Christianity by redirecting the Church's efforts backwards towards its antecedent roots in Jewish Theology and what that meant to the Christianized Jews of Jesus' and Paul's day. And especially after the Apostle Paul's profound Damascus Road experience of Christ where the NT's over-zealous Jewish Rabbi is confronted with the Christ he persecuted, to be profoundly overthrown in his life and thoughts, once blinding him to the deep sublimity of Christ's personage, passion, death, and resurrection. Immediately we see Paul begin a lifetime's discussion to re-interpret (or re-measure) his past Jewish theological training and heritage in the aftermath of the Christ-event that he experienced: both historically, in the context of Israel's Redemptive history; and, personally, within his own religious life context as a priest and Jew.

 

Soon thereafter Paul begins down a very long, and arduous, theological road describing how he has become a Messianic Christian selected to proclaim Jesus to the Gentiles as distinguished from being a Jewish Christian to his Jewish brethren worshipping and ministering in the churches of Jerusalem. To be a Jewish Christian was indicative of the Jerusalem Christian's preference to retain as much of their Jewish heritage as possible (sic., Peter's remedial conciliation to do as they wish while no longer preaching the necessity for circumcision, while avoiding idol meat and sexual immorality, against his own profound discovery of the Gospel's proclaim to all non-Jews and heathen Gentiles: Acts 11 and Acts 15). As a Messianic Christian, Paul - who once was a former Jewish Rabbi but now a Jesus convert, and servant to The Name, respects his Jewish heritage while radically uplifting its OT flavor into, and around, the newer paradigms presented through Jesus of Nazareth as man's Messiah-Savior-Redeemer. This theological understanding of Jesus would quickly revolutionize the reading of the OT through Jesus, and soon necessitated the construction of a New Testament as a series of apostolic books bearing both continuity, and discontinuity, to that of the Jewish/Hebrew Canon (itself solidified several hundred years earlier under the Council of Jamnia during the second Temple period) and to the Christian religion centered upon Jesus, God's Son and Savior.

 

N.T. Wright's 4 volume series (5, overall) is meant to be a legacy-capstone project to his professional theological studies in summary discussion to the following ideas. That Christianity's conflicted legacies were struggling with identification and spiritual meaning even as Jewish doctrine was doing the same. Because of Israel's history of warfare and exile, much of its heritage had been lost and incomplete (we call this period of Talmudic transition late Judaism). With Israel's return to the land from Babylonian exile under Nehemiah (technically, Judah's return, as the southern kingdom of Israel's split kingdom) a massive effort was undertaken by Ezra and the scribes to recapture Israel's ancient heritage and beliefs. From their efforts came the Old Testament, which was a collection of their oral history, prophetic writings, and so forth, during this second temple period of restoration. And from that began a  several hundred year effort to re-teach God's Word to the Jewish people creating many splintering groups of Jewish beliefs (such as John the Baptist's much later Essene group in Jesus' day) which debated the particulars of God's Word.

 

From these efforts arose a Jewish priesthood of scribes to transcribe the OT Scriptures from the classic Hebrew language into the modified Aramaic of their day (thus preserving its records), and the Pharisees, who handled the observances of those records through priestly duties and teachings. By the first century, Rabbinism was beginning to form to disseminate first-century beliefs, practices and precepts of the old Talmudic tradition. It was clearly unformed and not yet solidified because of Jesus' many conflicts with Rabbinic teachings and traditions. And to this turmoil came the Christian church's own conflicts and disagreements with Rabbinic doctrine as each body of believers formed and reformed, consolidated, splintered, and re-consolidated again, until a general body politic arose from each mediating group in the centuries preceding.

 

Each tradition - one old (Judaism), one new (Christianity) - were in the incipient (early or unformed) stages of development. Even as the church's doctrine was forming through the ages of the Church Fathers (Christianity's first six centuries), so too was Rabbinism under its own efforts. And quite often, as is normal with any movement, they each played off the other, reacting to one thing or another. And as each religious group moved towards consolidation, so did the church rapidly move towards codifying its own New Testament Scriptures centered around Jesus' teachings and life story, along with His disciple's apostolic observations and writings. This was generally completed around 150 AD but it wasn't until c.692 that the NT was fully instated at the Council of Trullan:

 

"For the Orthodox, the recognition of these writings as authoritative was formalized in the Second Council of Trullan of 692, although it was nearly universally accepted in the mid 300's.^[2] The Biblical canon was the result of debate and research, reaching its final term for Catholics at the dogmatic definition of the Council of Trent in the 16th Century, when the Old Testament Canon was finalized in the Catholic Church as well.^[3]" - Wikipedia

 

Proceeding apace were reciprocal theological efforts to comport NT Christian beliefs with the OT Jewish Scriptures showing the continuities and discontinuities between historical era and redemptive activity. Thus the Church Father's worked towards developing an Apostolic theology from within their own cultural settings of Greek Hellenism and from the Syrian-Coptic-African Christian attitudes of the early church (remember, Alexandria still held the great libraries of the learned at that time). What resulted were years and years and years of developing dogmas, doctrines, church traditions and beliefs, as regionally demarcated geographically even as they were temporally demarcated culturally. Formative church doctrines such as the Trinity of God or, the nature of Jesus' divine and human nature (known as hypostasis), slathered back and forth creating doctrinal ideas reflective of a church's own culturally-based ideologies as seen in the separation between Roman/Western Orthodoxy as versus the Greek/Eastern Orthodox branches of the church. And later in the Medieval ages between Reformed bodies politic as versus a Catholic understanding. Or even in today's modernistic Bible-believing churches as versus the older mainline denominational churches. Added to these doctrinal differences has come philosophic and cultural ingression into the theologies of the church. From the Greek Hellenism within first century Judaism; to Medieval doctrine's founded in late Hellenism; to today's philosophies of enlightenment - both modern and postmodern, with all the residual affects that each bring to the other.

 

Thus Sanders, Dunn, and Wright's propositions to attempt a return, if possible, from the church's Westernized, systematic theologies steeped in a plethora of late Medieval philosophies, Reformed-Enlightenment, and Evangelic-Modernism to a first century Jewish understanding of Jesus and Paul's teachings. Of course time and culture cannot be avoided, and thus the transfer vehicle in this case is postmodernism to help us redact earlier philosophic eras with its engrained prejudices and beliefs. So when describing this rich tradition of doctrinal turmoil and philosophical rebuttal we find ourselves within the larger philosophical ideas of how one can know God, oneself, one's senses, this world, and all that is within it - as set apart from one's heritage and traditions, and socio-cultural upbringing. As such, Christianity has always been embroiled within the ideas of  a larger philosophical setting. In fact, the disciplines of theology and philosophy find themselves as inseparable twins to the idea of "how one knows what one thinks s/he knows." Which has been the great, good benefit of postmodernism to today's church theologies. The early churches were no less embroiled within these discussions when dealing with the Greek philosophies of Aristotelianism and Platonism; its many perambulations as found in Augustine, Aquinas (Scholasticism and Thomism); and the later arising Reformational ideas found within Catholic v. Eastern, Lutheran v. Reformed doctrines. No foreigner to these debates is today's contemporary church working through its own ideas of a literalistic bible enmeshed within a culture of in anti-intellectualism and anti-science to that of postmodernism's meta-scientific, existential-phenomenological debates. Certainly, theology and philosophy go hand-in-hand even as faith works both within-and-without of religious beliefs.

 

Consequently, Tom Wright will occasionally work through some of these ideas (as he did in Vol. 1) but mostly, one may expect biblical discourses on New Testament doctrine while struggling through the development of a more up-to-date hermeneutical reading of the Word of God known as critical realism that is basically a blended reading of the Bible with a science-orientated view to it. Which by this means that a critical-realistic reading of the Bible is a less naïve reading of God's Word than the standard interpretation used by many pew members today as instructed by their pastors from the pulpit; or exampled by Sunday School teachers in class; or the many inspirational Christian books and devotional tracts that one reads today.

 

And thus, falling across the rich traditions of E.P. Sanders and J.D.G. Dunn, N.T. Wright works through the ideas of the New Perspective of Paul  and away from the heavily influenced Lutheran and Reformed views of Paul (known as the older perspectives of the church. That of Calvin, Luther, Law and Grace, Faith and Law, covenantal nomism, etc). And towards a more Jewish-Pauline perspective of Jesus:

 

"It is often noted that the singular title "the new perspective" gives an unjustified impression of unity. It is a field of study in which many scholars are actively pursuing research and continuously revising their own theories in light of new evidence, and who do not necessarily agree with each other on any given issue. It has been suggested by many that the plural title "the newer perspectives" may therefore be more accurate. In 2003, N. T. Wright, distancing himself from both Sanders and Dunn, commented that "there are probably almost as many ‘new perspective’ positions as there are writers espousing it – and I disagree with most of them".^[5] There are certain trends and commonalities within the movement, but what is held in common is the belief that the "old perspective" (the Lutheran and Reformed interpretations of Paul the Apostle and Judaism) is fundamentally incorrect.

 

"Since the Protestant Reformation (c. 1517), studies of Paul's writings have been heavily influenced by Lutheran and Reformed views that are said to ascribe the negative attributes that they associated with sixteenth-century Roman Catholicism to first-century Judaism. These Lutheran and Reformed views on Paul's Writings are called the "old perspective" by adherents of the "New Perspective on Paul". Thus, the "new perspective" is an attempt to lift Paul's letters out of the Lutheran/Reformed framework and interpret them based on what is said to be an understanding of first-century Judaism, taken on its own terms. (Within this article, "the old perspective" refers specifically to Reformed and Lutheran traditions, especially the views descended from John Calvin and Martin Luther, see also Law and Gospel.)

 

"Paul, especially in his Epistle to the Romans, advocates justification through faith in Jesus Christ over justification through works of the Law. In the old perspective, Paul was understood to be arguing that Christians' good works would not factor into their salvation, only their faith. According to the new perspective, Paul was questioning only [practices and] observances such as circumcision and dietary laws, not good works in general." - Wikipedia

 

R.E. Slater

October 1, 2013

edited October 8, 2013

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

We Will Call it “PFG”

 http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/10/01/we-will-call-it-pfg/

 

by Scot McKnight

Oct 1, 2013

Comments 

What will we call “PFG”? N.T. Wright’s magisterial, academic 2-volume study of Paul called Paul and the Faithfulness of God, volume 4 in his series called Christian Origins and the Question of God. I’ve got a PDF of Tom’s ground-breaking work and we’ll be discussing it until at least SBL in late November. So join along.

 

I begin with this: In my lifetime only a few books have been like this one (set). I consider EP Sanders’ Paul and Palestinian Judaism, Martin Hengel’s Judaism and Hellenism to be two rivals, with Jimmy Dunn’s Paul the Apostle a close third. This book rivals and may excel the others, so I want you to understand that we will be examining a book that will undoubtedly shape conversations for at least a decade and will influence discussions for decades.

 

Which of NT Wright’s book is most influential? your favorite?

 

Where will we be going? Beyond what most have called Paul’s theology or New Testament (NT) theology or NT history, and behind much of what is called both. Here’s how Tom puts it:

Here we may note one particular result of this proposal. Most works on ‘Pauline theology’ have made soteriology, including justification, central. So, in a sense, does this one. But in the Jewish context ‘soteriology’ is firmly located within the understanding of the people of God. God calls Abraham’s family, and rescues them from Egypt. That is how the story works, and that is the story Paul sees being reworked around Jesus and the spirit. This explains why chapter 10, on ‘election’, is what it is, and why it is the longest in the book. I hasten to add, as readers of that chapter will discover, that this does not (as some have suggested) collapse soteriology into ecclesiology. Rather, it pays attention to the Jewish belief which Paul himself firmly endorses, that God’s solution to the plight of the world begins with the call of Abraham. Nor does this mean that ‘the people of God’ are defined, smugly as it were, simply as the beneficiaries of salvation. The point of the Jewish vocation as Paul understood it was that they were to be the bearers of salvation to the rest of the world. That, in turn, lies at the heart of his own vocation, issuing in his own characteristic praxis.

Tom sent some of this manuscript about four years ago when he was on sabbatical at Princeton and at the time there was not yet an introduction. So the manuscript began right where it begins now (without that Intro), in a most surprising place, with [the Pualine letter to] Philemon. That little letter [has been] often ignored. But Wright opens up with a letter from Pliny the Younger writing to a friend about a runaway freedman and then Wright compares that letter with Paul’s letter to a friend, Philemon, about his “wandering” (not quite runaway) slave who had become a Christian while [ironically] Paul, of all places, was in [the] prison in Ephesus [for being a slave to Christ] … all to show that instead of [(the Roman view of)] hierarchy, and power, and benevolence, we [have in its place the view of] brotherhood, and family, and love, and forgiveness. In other words, a “world apart” (6).

 

Instead of a [being considered a] fugitive, Onesimus is [to be regarded as] a brother and Paul’s own [adopted] son. In those terms we see the heart of the Pauline experiment of grace flowing in all directions. Paul’s word is “fellowship”: he is creating a new family, or God is creating a new family, that includes people from all tribes and nationalities and statuses. Gone, then, is the power hierarchy so typical of Rome.

 

Wright has a wrinkle on [the word] “for-ever,” where he sees a possible looking back to the [books of the] Pentateuch in which a slave could choose to be a slave forever by refusing manumission [(release from slavery)]. Wright then suggests Onesimus will say "Please let me back and I will serve you forever." And then v. 21 might suggest manumission as the far reach of what Philemon can do.

A classic paragraph from Tom Wright:

These discussions about the actual situation and the request Paul made have tended, as I said, to make exegetes overlook the point which is just as important in its way as the question of what Paul was asking for, namely the argument he uses to back up this central appeal. In order to make his triple (and increasingly cautious) request, Paul adopts a strategy so striking in its social and cultural implications, so powerful in its rhetorical appeal, and so obviously theologically grounded, that despite the chorus of dismissive voices ancient, and modern, the letter can hold up its head, like Reepi- cheep the Mouse beside the talking bears and elephants, alongside its senior but not theologically superior cousins, Romans, Galatians and the rest (16). 

What we have then is a radical revisioning of monotheism and [divine] power on the basis of the cross [(where rule and power is given up)], and resurrection’s power to create one new body in Christ [between all men and tribes and nations]. It’s all about learning to think through this thing called “worldview”, as Tom says it:

In particular, this way of approaching the matter explains why the tendency since at least medieval times in the western church to organize Paul’s concepts around his vision of ‘salvation’ in particular has distorted the larger picture, has marginalized elements which were central and vital to him, and – because this ‘salvation’ has often been understood in a dualistic, even Platonic, fashion – has encouraged a mode of study in which Paul and his soteriology is seen in splendid isolation from his historical context. Paul experienced ‘salvation’ on the road to Damascus, people suppose; his whole system of thought grew from that [(isolating)] viewpoint; so we do not need to consider how he relates to the worlds of Israel, Greece or Rome! How very convenient. And how very untrue. If we take that route, a supposed ‘Pauline soteriology’ will swell to a distended size and, like an oversized airline traveller, end up sitting not only in its own seat but in those on either side as well. In particular, it will become dangerously self-referential: the way to be saved is by believing, but the main theological point Paul taught was soteriology, so the way to be saved is by believing in Pauline soteriology (‘justification by faith’). For Paul, that would be a reductio ad absurdum. The way to be saved is not by believing that one is saved. In Paul’s view, the way to be saved is by believing in Jesus as the crucified and risen lord.*

[*however, most evangelics that I know are always careful to connect the two thoughts of faith in Christ and not to separate them so foolishly as faith in one's faith. - re slater]

The hypothesis I offer in this book is that we can find just such a vantage-point when we begin by assuming that Paul remained a deeply Jewish theologian who had rethought and reworked every aspect of his native Jewish theology in the light of the Messiah and the spirit, resulting in his own vocational self-understanding as the apostle to the pagans.

Tom will be using the story of Philemon throughout PFG so it might be good to read it again, at least the core parts in Philemon 8-22

Philemon 8   For this reason, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty,  9 yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love—and I, Paul, do this as an old man, and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus.  10 I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment.  11 Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful both to you and to me.  12 I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you.  13 I wanted to keep him with me, so that he might be of service to me in your place during my imprisonment for the gospel;  14 but I preferred to do nothing without your consent, in order that your good deed might be voluntary and not something forced.  15 Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back forever,  16 no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother—especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. 

Philemon 17   So if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me.  18 If he has wronged you in any way, or owes you anything, charge that to my account.  19 I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand: I will repay it. I say nothing about your owing me even your own self.  20 Yes, brother, let me have this benefit from you in the Lord! Refresh my heart in Christ.  21 Confident of your obedience, I am writing to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say. 

Philemon 22   One thing more—prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping through your prayers to be restored to you.

Here is the outline to PFG, and those numbers are page numbers (so, Yes, this is a big double volume).

 

 

BOOK I

 

Contents: Parts I and II xi Preface xv

 

Part I - PAUL AND HIS WORLD

1. Return of the Runaway? 3
2. Like Birds Hovering Overhead: the Faithfulness of the God of Israel 75
3. Athene and Her Owl: the Wisdom of the Greeks 197
4. A Cock for Asclepius: ‘Religion’ and ‘Culture’ in Paul’s World 246
5. The Eagle Has Landed: Rome and the Challenge of Empire 279

Part II - THE MINDSET OF THE APOSTLE

6. A Bird in the Hand? The Symbolic Praxis of Paul’s World 351
7. The Plot, the Plan and the Storied Worldview 456
8. Five Signposts to the Apostolic Mindset 538

Bibliography for Parts I and II 572

BOOK II

Contents: Parts III and IV ix

Part III - PAUL’S THEOLOGY

Introduction to Part III 609

9. The One God of Israel, Freshly Revealed 619
10. The People of God, Freshly Reworked 774
11. God’s Future for the World, Freshly Imagined 1043

Part IV - PAUL IN HISTORY

Introduction to Part IV 1269

12. The Lion and the Eagle: Paul in Caesar’s Empire 1271
13. A Different Sacrifice: Paul and ‘Religion’ 1320
14. The Foolishness of God: Paul among the Philosophers 1354
15. To Know the Place for the First Time: Paul and His Jewish Context 1408
16. Signs of the New Creation: Paul’s Aims and Achievements 1473

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

NT Wright Series - Christian Origins and

the Question of God, 5 Volumes (4 completed)

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

 

The New Testament and the People of God/ Christian Origins and the Question of God, Vol.1 by N.T. Wright and N.T. Wright (Sep 1992)

 

Part of a five-volume project on the theological questions surrounding the origins of Christianity, this book offers a reappraisal of literary, historical and theological readings of the New Testament, arguing for a form of "critical realism" that facilitates different readings of the text.

Paperback: 535 pages

Publisher: Fortress Press; 1st North American edition (September 1992)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0800626818

ISBN-13: 978-0800626815 

Jesus and the Victory of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, Volume 2) by N. T. Wright (Aug 1, 1997)

In this highly anticipated volume, N. T. Wright focuses directly on the historical Jesus: Who was he? What did he say? And what did he mean by it?

 

Wright begins by showing how the questions posed by Albert Schweitzer a century ago remain central today. Then he sketches a profile of Jesus in terms of his prophetic praxis, his subversive stories, the symbols by which he reordered his world, and the answers he gave to the key questions that any world view must address. The examination of Jesus' aims and beliefs, argued on the basis of Jesus' actions and their accompanying riddles, is sure to stimulate heated response. Wright offers a provocative portrait of Jesus as Israel's Messiah who would share and bear the fate of the nation and would embody the long-promised return of Israel's God to Zion. 

 

Paperback: 741 pages

Publisher: Fortress Press (August 1, 1997)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0800626826

ISBN-13: 978-0800626822 

 

 

The Resurrection of the Son of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, Vol. 3) by N. T. Wright (Mar 1, 2003)

 

Why did Christianity begin, and why did it take the shape it did? To answer this question – which any historian must face – renowned New Testament scholar N.T. Wright focuses on the key points: what precisely happened at Easter? What did the early Christians mean when they said that Jesus of Nazareth had been raised from the dead? What can be said today about his belief?

 

This book, third is Wright’s series Christian Origins and the Question of God, sketches a map of ancient beliefs about life after death, in both the Greco-Roman and Jewish worlds. It then highlights the fact that the early Christians’ belief about the afterlife belonged firmly on the Jewish spectrum, while introducing several new mutations and sharper definitions. This, together with other features of early Christianity, forces the historian to read the Easter narratives in the gospels, not simply as late rationalizations of early Christian spirituality, but as accounts of two actual events: the empty tomb of Jesus and his "appearances."

 

How do we explain these phenomena? The early Christians’ answer was that Jesus had indeed been bodily raised from the dead; that was why they hailed him as the messianic "son of God." No modern historian has come up with a more convincing explanation. Facing this question, we are confronted to this day with the most central issues of the Christian worldview and theology.

• Paperback: 740 pages
• Publisher: Fortress Press (March 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0800626796
• ISBN-13: 978-0800626792

 

Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God) by N. T. Wright (Nov 1, 2013)

 

This highly anticipated two-book fourth volume in N. T. Wright's magisterial series, Christian Origins and the Question of God, is destined to become the standard reference point on the subject for all serious students of the Bible and theology. The mature summation of a lifetime's study, this landmark book pays a rich tribute to the breadth and depth of the apostle's vision, and offers an unparalleled wealth of detailed insights into his life, times, and enduring impact.

 

Wright carefully explores the whole context of Paul's thought and activity— Jewish, Greek and Roman, cultural, philosophical, religious, and imperial— and shows how the apostle's worldview and theology enabled him to engage with the many-sided complexities of first-century life that his churches were facing. Wright also provides close and illuminating readings of the letters and other primary sources, along with critical insights into the major twists and turns of exegetical and theological debate in the vast secondary literature. The result is a rounded and profoundly compelling account of the man who became the world's first, and greatest, Christian theologian.

Paperback: 1700 pages

Publisher: Fortress Press (November 1, 2013)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0800626834

ISBN-13: 978-0800626839

 

Biography

 

N.T. Wright is Bishop of Durham and was formerly Canon Theologian of Westminster Abbey and dean of Lichfield Cathedral. He taught New Testament studies for twenty years at Cambridge, McGill and Oxford Universities. Wright's full-scale works The New Testament and the People of God, Jesus and the Victory of God, and The Resurrection of the Son of God are part of a projected six-volume series entitled Christian Origins and the Question of God. Among his many other published works are The Original Jesus, What Saint Paul Really Said and The Climax of the Covenant. He is also coauthor with Marcus Borg of The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions and the volume on Colossians and Philemon in The Tyndale New Testament Commentary series.

 

 

 

 

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Index to the "New(er) Perspective(s) of Paul"