Where does the etymology of the phrase, "It Is More Blessed to Give than to Receive" come from?

 

 

Recently I heard the phrase "it is more blessed to give than to receive" and got to wondering where its etymology might have come from. Perhaps not from the Jewish Gospels, as in Matthew 10.8b, when Jesus quoted a popular Jewish phrase,

 

^{5 "}These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, ⁶ but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. ⁷ And proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ ⁸ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers,^[c] cast out demons. You received without paying; give without pay. ⁹ Acquire no gold or silver or copper for your belts, ¹⁰ no bag for your journey, or two tunics^[d] or sandals or a staff, for the laborer deserves his food."

 

But more perhaps from Acts 20.35 (context vv.34-36), when Paul said,

 

"³⁴You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. ³⁵In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'³⁶And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all."

 

Earlier, in verse 32, Paul had said,

 

"And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified..."

 

as he spoke about his time of ministry having come to a close amongst his disciples. How he had labored night and day for their edification and sanctification. And that with his very hands he served them, providing the blessings of God's word to their hearts and minds.

 

So I found it curious that Paul would connect the grace of God with the phrase of Jesus of being a blessing to others (v. 32 to v. 35) by translating from its Jewish counterpart which flatly stated "freely give what you freely received" (sic, Matthew 10.8b). From Paul's Jewish heritage he was going through the process of re-evaluating Christ's teachings in light of what he  had previously understood through his Torah upbringing as seen here by his revelatory assessment pertaining to God's grace and blessings. He was in the process of threading the Christian themes of the Gospels backwards into his own Jewish heritage and teachings about God, and beginning to conclude their contemporary relevance and significance to the church of his day. Especially in the light of God's revelation through Jesus, as not only the Son of God come to dwell amongst men. But who was Himself the very God of the Godhead. The Incarnated Triune God. Israel's long-awaited Messiah come to live and minister grace within the temples of His dwelling built within His wondrous creation brought alive by His life, death and resurrection over sin and death.

Jesus' words were important to Paul. And they were important to evaluate against all of God's past revelation to Israel received over many, many centuries, if not millenia, from Abraham unto Paul's current milieu of first century Judaism. It is not hard to visualize Paul working out a basic hermeneutical structure of New Covenant theology as he progressed through the various ministry environments he experienced during his missionary journeys of evangelism and church planting. And when seated within the Roman cells of imprisonment to begin working through the many fractured paths of Judaistic thought-and-theology into a more enlightened view of God's New Testament revelation presented to not only himself, but to his fellow apostles (Christ's disciples) received at the hands of Jesus to by His faithful followers. Out of which we now have Paul's letters written to the churches of Asia Minor and Rome, garnered first by experience, and secondly through the interpretive rumination of prayerful thought and balanced judgment, against Paul's previous background of systematic, rigorous, Jewish training. (Paul once noted that he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, when contesting an interpretation of Scriptural revelation being rejected by fellow would-be revelatories. Interpreting and acting upon God's Word aright was important to him).

And not only did this phrase of blessing mean something in Paul's day, but it has come to mean something to us in our day as well, as we continue to translate, or import, God's revelation through Jesus into the digest of worldly phrases heard in our ears from within today's cultures and societies vying for moral, religious, or philosophical ascendancy. But by filling our ears, our minds, and our hearts, with the illumined richness of God's Word, the Bible, as revealed to us through Jesus, we might then be better able to speak to each other of God's grace and truth. By re-assessing (or re-positioning) such popular phrases as, "It is more blessed to give than to receive" we, as Christians, may communicate it's higher revelatory significance of referring to God's empowerment of His word of grace into our meager lives lived so gracelessly. So self-centered. So anxious and sparse.

 

And by this phrase one might gather that it had become one of those basic tenets of Judaism mostly likely conscripted from its more common, worldly origins, then as it later became by Paul through impassioned speeches to Jewish-Hellenistic congregations scattered amongst the pages of the book of Acts as he hastened to Jerusalem to begin his fourth and final journey for the gospel of Jesus unto Rome itself. Paul's desire to go to Rome saddened the churches of Asia Minor (20.38f) but also stiffened their resolve to provide for their destitute Jewish brethren dwelling in-and-around Jerusalem they had not met but knew to be suffering for faithfully following Jesus. So that in the midst of famine in Israel, the Apostle Paul's congregants wished to provide help through the provisioning of bread, money, and so forth, to the churches of Jerusalem, as he, Paul, travelled amongst the churches of Asia Minor before returning to Jerusalem, and ultimately to his final journey as a Roman prisoner to tell of the good news of Jesus to the emperor of Rome himself.

 

And in this way Paul spoke to what his Lord and Savior had provided to him - specifically that through the gospel of Jesus he freely received God's grace as a religiously loyal Jewish Pharisee trained in the Torah - and was to freely give back God's grace to those who knew not Jesus.... And in hearty response, those Christian followers of the Messiah Christ took to their heart to give of themselves - and not only to one another - but to their Christian brothers and sisters suffering in foreign lands for their faith in Christ.

And in this way have I likewise labored here at Relevancy22 with many contemporaries to provide fresh insights into God's living Word through recitation of articles and posts reflecting popular discussions, songs, theologies, or ideas, found in today's mainstreams of thought and rhetoric. To tell of the Scripture's richness once thought lost in the arguments of the church between one interpretive dogma or the other; to enliven today's theologies with a recharged hermeneutic that works past many of Evangelicalism's dead-ends to reclaim a Jesus-nation warm-and-alive with the breath-and-power of the Spirit. To say plainly what many would wish to cover up. And to say it again-and-again-again until it sinks in, using a simple literary nuance here, or a shaded overtone there, that might overcome our Christian differences and religious impasses to discover a more meaningful Bible; a richer theological landscape; and a broader tapestry of ministry and livelihood than once thought possible.

Nor did I think I would become so overwhelmed by so large a burden so late in life. But through God's spirit, and by the grace He has given to me, I have collected and written this past year-and-a-half of God's great goodness as it proceeds unstoppable through this world we live within. Whether through the church itself. Or in spite of itself. Or even at the hands of those burdened souls for human rights and suffrage. Or even through the pursuits of common scientific discoveries and human organizational efforts. God is actively involved in this world of ours and it is only we ourselves who would try to contain the will of our Divine Creator, the Lover of our Souls, our Redeemer and Savior. To unwittingly, or ignorantly, prevent His word of grace from being as relevant today as it ever was in Christ's day. It is but for us to hear. And to hear God's Word aright. And thus, have I chosen to re-orient our message of the Gospel as an emerging Gospel dispelled of the church's many pet dogmas and religious zeals. To dare to enter in upon holy ground and there stand speaking God's Word afresh as it should be spoken unaltered and pure without so many of our words and actions hindering the Spirit's movement.

And with that, I leave with you a follow-up article speaking to the further development of the Christian phrase of blessing written several years ago during one Christmas season from a Canadian perspective. It doesn't complete the Jewish etymology of this phrase, but it may help provide an important "regal" perspective to our response by God's actions to us - both in creative deed and redemptive act. To this may I add a short prayer,

As God gives strength,
Be blessed and be blessings,
Each and every day,
To every man or beast,
In every realm or kingdom,
To the glory of God,
Unto the richness of
His Rule and Reign.

Give without receiving,
Receive with thanksgiving,
In all things give grace,
As is the will of God,
Who Himself is grace.

May God's peace be our inheritance,
May charity be our livelihood,
May the Lord Jesus Christ be uplifted,
Both now and always.

- R.E. Slater

October 11, 2012 

World Vision

Acts 20
English Standard Version (ESV)

Paul in Macedonia and Greece

20 After the uproar ceased, Paul sent for the disciples, and after encouraging them, he said farewell and departed for Macedonia. ² When he had gone through those regions and had given them much encouragement, he came to Greece. ³ There he spent three months, and when a plot was made against him by the Jews^[a] as he was about to set sail for Syria, he decided to return through Macedonia. ⁴ Sopater the Berean, son of Pyrrhus, accompanied him; and of the Thessalonians, Aristarchus and Secundus; and Gaius of Derbe, and Timothy; and the Asians, Tychicus and Trophimus. ⁵ These went on ahead and were waiting for us at Troas, ⁶ but we sailed away from Philippi after the days of Unleavened Bread, and in five days we came to them at Troas, where we stayed for seven days.

 

Eutychus Raised from the Dead

 

⁷ On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight. ⁸ There were many lamps in the upper room where we were gathered. ⁹ And a young man named Eutychus, sitting at the window, sank into a deep sleep as Paul talked still longer. And being overcome by sleep, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead. ¹⁰ But Paul went down and bent over him, and taking him in his arms, said, “Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him.” ¹¹ And when Paul had gone up and had broken bread and eaten, he conversed with them a long while, until daybreak, and so departed. ¹² And they took the youth away alive, and were not a little comforted.

 

¹³ But going ahead to the ship, we set sail for Assos, intending to take Paul aboard there, for so he had arranged, intending himself to go by land. ¹⁴ And when he met us at Assos, we took him on board and went to Mitylene. ¹⁵ And sailing from there we came the following day opposite Chios; the next day we touched at Samos; and^[b] the day after that we went to Miletus. ¹⁶ For Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus, so that he might not have to spend time in Asia, for he was hastening to be at Jerusalem, if possible, on the day of Pentecost.

 

Paul Speaks to the Ephesian Elders

 

¹⁷ Now from Miletus he sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church to come to him. ¹⁸ And when they came to him, he said to them:

 

“You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia, ¹⁹ serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews; ²⁰ how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house, ²¹ testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. ²² And now, behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by^[c] the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, ²³ except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me. ²⁴ But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. ²⁵ And now, behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again. ²⁶ Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, ²⁷ for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. ²⁸ Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God,^[d] which he obtained with his own blood.^{[e] 29} I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; ³⁰ and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them. ³¹ Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish every one with tears. ³² And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. ³³ I coveted no one's silver or gold or apparel. ³⁴ You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. ³⁵ In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

 

³⁶ And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. ³⁷ And there was much weeping on the part of all; they embraced Paul and kissed him, ³⁸ being sorrowful most of all because of the word he had spoken, that they would not see his face again. And they accompanied him to the ship.

 

 

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

 

 

It's more blessed to give than receive

http://www.lucknowsentinel.com/2008/12/17/its-more-blessed-to-give-than-receive

By Pastor Perry Chuipka

Wednesday, December 17, 2008As we approach this advent and Christmas season this verse keeps coming into my mind. Many of us grew up hearing that "It is more blessed to give than to receive." But what does this word "bless" really mean.

 

In the Bible, the origin of the concept of "blessing" is a Hebrew word (baw-rahk'), meaning "to kneel" and was used one way or another, hundreds of times to convey the meaning of respect or adoration. You would kneel before a king in respect or to offer thanks for something. Of course, you would kneel to God in adoration, praise, thanksgiving and supplication. The Septuagint (LXX) translators choose the Greek (eulogeitos) to represent (baw-rahk') (more than 400 times). So, among Greek speaking Jews, this was a common word for praise, thanksgiving, respect, etc. Latin writers used the verb form (benedicere) to translate the Greek, preferring to offer the literal sense of the Greek. I think they wanted a strictly English word so they could get away from the Catholic Latin expressions.

 

The word "bless" was not a literal translation, but it had religious overtones and they used it even though it had come from a heathen source. So, there was a long and varied series of associations - Jewish, heathen, Christian - to blend in the English use of the word "bless". Therefore, "blessing" is a word which has a position in Christian vocabulary by reason of long-standing usage. But it does not directly translate (eulogeitos)! BUT - there is a modern version which does have a direct translation, and it is to this version that I pay honour. The version is the Spanish. In Ephesians 1:3 in the Spanish, the word (bendito) is the part participle of the verb (bendecir). It means, literally, "to say good things or good words."

 

So let me go back to my verse, "It is more blessed to give than receive." It is not that giving is more important than receiving. That is not what this verse means. Instead it points out that blessings start from someone giving good things or good words. I couldn't help but think back to the Genesis stories of creation where God created his blessings for this world by first giving good things or good words.

 

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light "day" and the darkness he called "night". and there was evening, and there was morning-the first day."

 

Now, just think for a moment about Jesus' ministry. He showed us the power of the word [...and I might add, our actions! - res] to bring new life to others through the many good things that he said and did. And so it is with us, as we enter this advent and Christmas season. Our words and our actions are important because they help bring about God's blessing to others. We can give blessings to others this Christmas and it starts with us being thankful for all the good things that God has given us to share with others.

 

My family and I are very thankful for the people here in Lucknow. We arrived in Wingham near the end of April of this year coming from Sudbury in Northern Ontario. Not long after we arrived here, Sara, the reporter from the Sentinel came to our home to interview my wife and I. Not long after that, I attended the regular men's Wednesday morning gathering time at Finlayson's and I was greeted with smiles and a few jokes that I cannot repeat here. The people have been great and very welcoming to us. My family and I do feel blessed. We are blessed with good people who are with us on our common journey of searching for the truth in our lives. My family and I wish you and your loved ones a very blessed Christmas season filled with many good moments with family and friends and a New Year echoing with "good words and good things".

 

 

 

Evangelical Hermeneutics vs. Pauline Hermeneutics

Would Paul Have Made a Good Evangelical?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2012/05/would-paul-have-made-a-good-evangelical/

 

by Peter Enns

May 24, 2012

Comments

 

No.

 

Even when you account for 2000 years of cultural differences between Paul and Evangelicalism, the answer is no.

 

Why? Because Paul didn’t treat the Bible the way mainstream Evangelicalism says you need to.

 

The way Paul handled his Bible–what we call the Old Testament–would keep him off the short list for openings to teach Bible in many Evangelical seminaraies and Christian colleges. Heck, John Piper, John MacArthur, and R. C. Sproul probably wouldn’t let Paul lead a home Bible study, at least not without supervision.

 

Here is the main reason why:

 

• For Evangelicals, the Old Testament leads to the Gospel story. For Paul, the Old Testament is transformed by the Gospel.
 
• For Evangelicals, the Old Testament, read pretty much at face value [(literally)], anticipates Jesus. For Paul, the Old Testament is reshaped in order to conform to Jesus.
 
• For Evangelicals, the Bible is God’s final authority. For Paul, Jesus is the final authority to which the Bible must bend.

 

You see, Paul had a monumental theological and hermeneutical task before him. The Old Testament is centered on Israel’s need for obedience to the law of Moses in order to stay in God’s favor–what the Old Testament often calls “life.” God’s favor is most clearly demonstrated by Israel’s remaining in the Promised Land–if they obey, they stay; if they disobey, the are cast out (which is what the exile to Babylon was all about). And, as an added benefit, when Israel is faithful to God, the other nations will take notice and also bend the knee to Yahweh, Israel’s God.

 

1. Obedience to law;
2. Holding onto the land (and along with it worship in the temple);
3. Conversion of the Gentiles. All central elements of being an Israelite.

 

The Gospel of Christ that Paul preached said:

 

1. Law was a parenthesis, a temporary measure;
2. Holding on to land is now a non-issue;
3. Gentiles can claim Israel’s God as their own as Gentiles.

 

Clearly something has to give. For Paul, it was the Old Testament.

 

Paul cites the Old Testament 106 times; 59 times in Romans. For example, look at the string of quotations in Romans 9:25-29. Paul is arguing for Gentile inclusion in the plan of God–Gentiles do not need to be circumcised, thus following Jewish law. They are included as Gentiles simply by faith in Jesus the messiah.

 

Paul could have simply said, “Jesus is here and we are turning a new page. From now on we welcome Gentiles with open arms without them becoming Jewish first.”

 

That would have been a pretty radical message all by itself, but Paul gets even more radical. He argues that in the Old Testament itself teaches that Gentiles are to be included among Israel solely on the basis of faith–not obeying the law. Paul claims that Gentile inclusion without circumcision was God’s plan all along.

 

If you’re familiar with the Old Testament, you would be right to wonder how Paul is going to pull that off, since the Old Testament is so adamant about maintaining the distinction between Jew and Gentile.

 

In this string of quotations in Romans 9, Paul cites two passages from Hosea and two from Isaiah to support his claim that Gentile inclusion is part of God’s plan. The problem, though, is that all four of these passages have nothing to do with Gentile inclusion. They are all aimed at God’s mercy at restoring Israel.

 

This is not a minor point. Paul is not getting a little creative with some passages, tweaking them a bit, teasing some fresh angle out of them. He is saying that these passages support his Gentile agenda, even though a plain reading shows unequivocally that they are about Israel.

 

Flip over to Romans 10:5-8. Paul places two passages from the law of Moses side by side–and he pits them against each other.

 

The first is Leviticus 18:5, where Yahweh tells Moses that the Israelites are to “Keep my decrees, for the man who obeys them will live by them.” Note that keeping the law is assumed to be attainable and a benefit to those who do so.

 

But in very next verse Paul brings in another passage from the Law, Deuteronomy 30:13-14. In Deuteronomy, these verses have a very clear meaning. The commands that God is giving to the Israelites are doable. They are not out of anyone’s reach. They are not up in the heavens or somewhere acoross the ocean. They are right here–”in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.”

 

The Israelites were expected to keep these laws, and keeping them brings life, which is sort of what Leviticus 18:5 says. The two passages are in complete harmony.

 

But Paul contrasts these two verses to pit law against faith.

 

For Paul, Leviticus 18:5 is correct insofar as it goes, but Paul clearly does not present obedience to the law as a benefit to anyone–which contradicts the point of the passage.

 

Paul’s handling of Deuteronomy 30:13-14 should, by all standards, drive mainstream Evangelicals crazy. In Deuteronomy, God tells the Israelites to keep these doable-written-on-your-heart commands. Paul says it is not about commands at all but about having faith in Christ, apart from the law of Moses.

 

Either Paul can’t read or something else is up.

 

Something else is up.

 

Paul handles his Bible the way he does for two reasons:

 

(1) Judaism has a long history of manipulating scripture in the interest of supporting theological arguments. Paul, in case you need reminding, was a Jew trained in this way of using scripture.

 

(2) Paul’s grand goal in Romans is to make the case that Jews and Gentiles are on equal footing before God; Paul’s angle is to show how the law itself made that same point all along–which requires Paul to take get very creative with the Old Testament.

 

If anyone else were doing this–me, you, the Pope, Jehovah’s Witnesses, an emergent pastor, a liberal theologian, a first year seminary student–Evangelicals would call it “distorting the inerrant Word of God.” Paul, however, either (1) gets a free pass because Paul is an apostle (and apparently it’s OK for apostles to do this), or (2) Paul’s reading of the Old Testament is defended as being consistent with the Old Testament meaning (which leads to overly subtle and back-breaking arguments).

 

Here is the great irony. Without question, as a first century Jew, Paul believed his scripture was God’s Word. He had what Evangelicals like to call a “high view” of scripture.

 

That is correct. It’s just that Paul’s high view and an Evangelical high view are clearly not the same. I’m just glad Evangelicals weren’t around at the time to try to stifle Paul, to keep him from landing his gig as apostle to the Gentiles. We would have missed out on a lot.


 

Review: Matt Chandler's "Explicit Gospel" misses on many fronts...

The Gospel from the Air

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/05/03/the-gospel-from-the-air/

by Scot mcKnight

May 3, 2012

Comments

 

Matt Chandler, in his new book, The Explicit Gospel, makes a case for two dimensions of gospel — one on the ground, which is basically individual salvation, and one from the air, which he calls the meta-narrative of the Bible. The former focuses on God, man, Christ, response; the gospel from the air focuses on Creation, Fall, Reconciliation, and Consummation. The former is expounded through Romans 11:23-26, which permits Chandler to focus on the gospel as about God’s glory; the latter permits him to focus on Romans 8:18-24. He brings in other biblical passages but these two texts set the central themes for him.

 

Does Chandler’s “gospel from the air” contextualize his “gospel from the ground”? Or are they more or less the same thing? Why do these studies on the gospel ignore Israel’s Story so much? Is christology central enough in Chandler’s view of the gospel?

 

A few words about each of the chapters in this second part of his book:

 

1. On creation: he has a lengthy diatribe against science because it is unstable, and he sees instability in that people change their minds — he calls it a “constant state of subjectivity and do-overs” (95). Well, what he’s getting at here is that his view of the Bible and theology and creation don’t mesh with evolution (he takes a shot at BioLogos) … and says theistic evolutionists “have to believe that [evolution] in order to stay in science’s good graces” (98-99), which is both uncharitable and uninformed. This game of “I know their motive” goes both ways: one could counter and say that his crowd sustains its view in order to keep specific watchdogs happy. I’ll stop with this except to make the observation that the same kind of changes occur in theology and hermeneutics over time and if he applied his logic to them he’d be in a heap of trouble. This whole section harms the book as amateurish, and the book would have got along fine without it. The rest of his stuff here on creation is unexceptional but sound: creation leads us to worship God and that things went haywire.

 

2. On the Fall: this chp did not do what I thought it would but instead has a rather innovative, and at times witty, sketch of Solomon and Ecclesiastes as indicative of the fall.

 

3. On Reconciliation: here he sketches the view that ultimate reconciliation is cosmic. He somehow managed to avoid discussing universalism and how theology from Barth and Torrance onward has pondered this very question. His focus here is that the work of Christ is not just individual salvation but epic — “national redemption, covenantal restoration, and ‘real world’ reconciliation” (137). The one observation that I have to make is that he has not developed this theme in his own head, or at least in this chp, because there are all sorts of issues that arise when one begins to discuss this idea of cosmic reconciliation. It’s about individual salvation “and more” — and the reader wants him to clarify in details what this “and more” entails. And he sees reconciliation as generating a reconciling mission on our part — so he gets into missional (attractional and incarnational). For Chandler it is very clear that on the ground gospel sets in motion a systemic reconciliation.

 

4. On Consummation: this seems to be the heart of his concern about the gospel from the air. Chandler confesses he’s not a fan of much of Christian (zany) eschatology, so he focuses on the larger themes: new creation, kingdom, etc. He has a long, long quote from Tom Wright. Most who are attracted to new creation themes immediately work them into social justice and peace and political actions, but Chandler appears to me to be decidedly a-political.

 

Some observations:

 

1. His gospel from the air is really a larger version of his gospel on the ground with a cosmic eschatology. Which means…

 

2. His explicit gospel proposal is a thoroughgoing soterian gospel that ignores the Bible’s plotline and instead finds a salvation story line, and I have previously described this approach as “covenant soterian” gospel. His gospel more or less skips from Genesis 3 to Romans 3 and lacks any interest in the Story of Israel, the Story of Jesus (his references to the Gospels simply do not have shaping influence), that Jesus is Messiah/King is of little concern … and this means…

 

3. His proposal needs more attention to Israel and Church as the locus of God’s work in this world. Even when he brings in the cosmic stuff in part two of this book I kept wondering what role Israel and the church play in his gospel from the air. It seems to me that his church is individuals who are saved. Trevin Wax is but one who has pushed hard to incorporate ecclesiology into our understanding of the gospel; Chandler seems to me to be avoiding that theme.

 

4. His method is to use favored soteriological texts (Romans 11, Romans 8 ) that are filled in with other texts, and he does use a number of biblical texts but they fit within categories established in these two important texts. He needs to spend more time expounding 1 Cor 15, the sermons in Acts, and to examine why the Gospels are called “gospel.”

 

At the core of my King Jesus Gospel proposal is methodology: where do we go to define the gospel? Do we go to “gospel-defining” texts (which I attempted to do) or do we go to “salvation-defining” texts, which Chandler does. I suggest the former approach is sounder.

 

 

 

 

A Reformed View of the New Perspective (of Paul)

(A) Reformed View of the New Perspective

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/04/18/reformed-view-of-the-new-perspective/

by Scot McKnight

April 18, 2012

Comments

The clash was inevitable, but the clash has too often taken place under terms and categories that unfairly describe the other side. The traditionally Reformed have a stake in framing Paul’s gospel as justification by faith, and behind that they traditionally understand the problem to be humans who strive to establish themselves before God. A good proponent of this view, always framed in pastorally sensitive ways, is Tim Keller. But the New Perspective says "No" to this way of framing Paul’s gospel.

Why do you think the Reformed view of justification clashes so much with the new perspective on Paul, especially its view(s) of justification? What’s the essence of the clash?

First, that view assumes a view of Judaism that has clearly been undermined: Judaism was not full of self-righteous people seeking to establish themselves on the basis of the Law before God. Instead, one good way of describing Judaism is what E.P. Sanders called “covenantal nomism.” Covenant - and that means grace and election - have the first word and the Law (the nomism bit) is not how to become a Jew but how to maintain ones Jewishness, or sustain one’s relationship to the God of Israel. In effect, this knocks the former problem out from under one traditional view and sends people back to the NT and Judaism to see “what the problem was.”

In steps Alan J. Spence, in his book Justification: A Guide for the Perplexed, to say the New Perspective (1) gets it all wrong and (2) is designed to create a gospel shaped apart from what I’m calling Spence’s “justification worldview,” a worldview in which God is judge, humans are sinners, and Christ establishes as relationally right with God.

Spence got off for me on the wrong foot in five ways:

First, he misspelled E.P. Sanders’ name wrong every time, spelling it “Saunders.” He also called him “E.T.” Saunders, and this makes me wonder if he has even read Sanders. One should avoid speculating on such things, so I won’t. (Maybe I already have.)

Second, he kept seeing Sanders in terms of comparative religion and, well, yes, Sanders does talk about comparing the pattern of religion, but to say he’s into comparative religion pulls Sanders from the historian to the modern religions expert. Just not so.

Third, he failed to sketch that the fundamental insight of Sanders and of the whole New Perspective is a fresh re-examination of Judaism and that means, inevitably, what Paul was saying in the context of a sharper profile of Judaism. I see absolutely no interest in Spence in this historical question.

Fourth, Spence shows no awareness of the nuances of variation among New Perspective scholars — from Sanders to Wright to Dunn to Hays and others. For Spence, this is all about Tom Wright’s denial of his justification worldview, and this chp is dramatically different in tone from his chps on Augustine, Aquinas, Luther and Calvin and is more like — but stronger — than the chps on Schleiermacher and Barth. He blames the latter two for deconstructing a justification worldview, and thinks Wright is floating on that deconstruction.

Fifth, he says he will root his sketch of Tom’s view of justification in his What Saint Paul Really Said, in spite of the 2009 book called Justification, which ought to have been the place to base one’s observations, but I’ll forgive him for not living up to what he said: it’s just as much based on the 2009 book as the earlier one, though I don’t think he sees the nuances of the latter vs. the former.

Spence sketches Wright’s narrative, which is the narrative of Israel’s Story coming to fulfillment in Jesus, the true Israelite; he argues Wright’s view of justification is not about salvation but about ecclesiology (this is an overstatement); he doesn’t think there’s enough about forensics, in spite of Tom’s clear statements to the contrary though Wright doesn’t have Spence’s justification worldview; and he thinks Wright doesn’t have enough on faith as instrumental in salvation. Well, here’s a good summary of Spence’s criticisms:

I suggest the controlling motif of Wright’s soteriology is ‘the reinstatement of good governance through the kingship of Jesus’ or, in the evocative jargon of the comparative study of religions, ‘messianic nomism’. [Who uses this expression?] If one removed from his exposition of justification the few passing references to relational concepts such as grace, mercy, pardon and reconciliation [did he read Justification?], the structure would stand intact. None of these concepts serve as load-bearing terms. They are, however, integral features of Paul’s soteriology.

One could at this point stop for a long day discussing how Wright expounds grace and these other terms, and to ask if the proper approach is “The Western Tradition’s” view vs. recent NT scholarship’s view, and how one determines such things — surely by exegesis and history not by appealing to Augustine and Luther and Calvin – but I find this summary critique both hitting on the sensitive areas but grossly misrepresenting Wright’s stuff. But I’m sketching Spence, who says Tom’s use of those terms was only done in deference to others, the way Spence himself crossed himself in a Catholic school as a boy though he was Reformed.

In essence, Spence thinks the best Story of the Old Testament must be only the personal salvation story because the governance Story of Wright, by which he means Jesus as King as the true Israelite through whom God will put the world to rights …. and, well, we’ve got an exaggeration: Tom Wright believes in personal salvation; he thinks the NT teaches that; but personally is caught up in the larger Story. What Spence has is a theory of justification that no one in the Old Testament taught (unless one thinks Gen 15:6 is Abraham’s personal salvation), for which there would have been no back story in the New Testament and which is then assumed to be the true gospel of the apostle Paul.

The New Perspective’s view of justification deserves some good strong pushback; there have been some early overstatements and many take backs, including some by Dunn and Wright. I wonder if Spence might spend some time reading Jimmy Dunn’s big pumpkin book, his book on Paul’s theology, and read the chp on justification, and then ask if he has really sketched the New Perspective’s view of justification. He hasn’t.

This Guide for the Perplexed will make some folks happy; it leaves me perplexed.

Paul, whom I have loved

A Map of the Travels and Voyages of the Apostle Paul

The novel idea in contemporary Christian theology is to bash Paul, or more accurately, bash our own ideas of Paul. But I will admit right upfront that I am a lover of Paul - but so am I of Jesus - and have found great help in the study of Hebrews that reclaims the OT through Jesus and the Gospels. However, since my early days in seminary Paul and Jesus have found a growing gap of misunderstanding between them through no fault of their own - for the onus is on us. We have been the ones that have allowed this gap and distance to grow. And it is also on us to reconcile the theologies, narratives, and ministries of Paul and Jesus back together again. Not seamlessly. But holistically. By recognising all the differences of character and location that comes through the marvelous synergies between meta-narrative and cultural import.

Paul in thought, by Rembrandt

Paul was the Pharisee's Pharisee if you will... the guy that knew Torah better than anyone else. And he's also the guy who was struck down in his great knowledge and zeal for his wayward faith upon the Emmaeus Road. To then spend a lifetime thereafter sorting out the Torah through the words and ideas of Jesus - who was no less a Rabbi except in name only - by Judaism's ruling clerics at war with a growing band of emerging Jewish faithful calling themselves Christ-followers (later to be named Christians). But Jesus had the upper hand didn't he? In that he was actually the God who had spoken Torah to his people Israel... to all the Paul's and would-be followers of OT faithful seeking obedience to God's words of self-proclamation and image-making activities. For over the centuries God's words became more-and-more confused through sin and distractions, judgments and exiles. What started out as a powerful journey of faith by their father Abraham had turned into a miserable mess of disillusionment, fear and confusion. A living faith had become distilled into a faith-killing religion of dogmas and rituals. Grace and Law were unnaturally separated and each had lost their way in the idea of what God and worship should be (properly described as covenantal nomism, sic. EP Sanders et al).

Paul writing, by Rembrandt

Consequently I find this newer focus of NPP (the New Perspective of Paul) refreshing in that it re-rights the distortions that have grown up through the church these past 2000 years. The question is not "Do I follow Jesus or do I follow Paul?" But the real question is, can we, like Paul, learn to re-learn our faith as exampled and taught by Jesus - that it might live and breathe as it should be? Apart from our many disillusionments, fears and confusions that we have placed upon our own selves, in our relationships with others, in our understanding of God and worship, within our faith communities, and the many work-a-day ministries of life, family, work and existence? And like Paul, we'll spend a lifetime trying to figure it out because of the many false distortions of the world that comes to us creating disillusionment, fear and confusion.

But I am a firm believer that our God is a "self-knowing Knower" (to use Barth's description of God) who will make Himself firmly known to us... perhaps not through our heads, or doctrines, or beliefs... but most definitely through our hearts, our faith, and our worship. Though I try my best in this website to lead and shepherd our thoughts and insights about God doctrinally I find our best apprehension seems to come when the Divine meets us in our hearts in worshipful moments of salvation, redemption, renewal, restoration, reclamation, resurrection, recommittal, restitution, reconfiguration, and release. And most usually during our times of deflation, defeat, disappointment, destruction, failure, death, sorrow and woe. Unhappily we will always be in the process of being destroyed in this sinful world. But happily, during this destruction, God is there, and will continually reclaim us as His own children who will never be loosed from His all powerful grip of grace, mercy and hope, in a never-ending process of rebirth.

So then, do not give up on yourself nor on others. It is all of God. And only of God. It is He who is our Faith. The Lover of our Souls. The only real Father that will form and fashion His sons and daughters through this sin-cursed world until we are redeemed fully, freely, completely by His Son Jesus' life, death and resurrection. When together we rise, and together arrive, to a final resting place of newness-of-hope and life eternal. But it begins in this life.... So then, be patient with yourselves. With others. Be steady in your faith and hope. In the devastation of your failures know that God's Spirit rests more powerfully on you than can be thought or believed during those times of abadonment and loss. For you are not abandoned nor lost. God is there especially at those times. And will ever be your inheritance. Your trust. Your Rock and Living Water. The High-Priest of your souls. The Cloud of Fire that abides in the tabernacle of your souls. The Lamb slain for your provisioning. The First Fruits of your Feast. The Slayer of death and sin and devil. God is boundless and is boundlessly-bound to you ever and always. And like Paul, rest ye and be at peace with the Jesus we have come to trust and worship. Who is the self-knowing Knower reclaiming all that you are through Himself.

R.E. Slater

February 7, 2012

God's Everlasting Love (Romans 8.31-39)

³¹ What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be^[i] against us? ³² gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? ³³ Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴ Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.^{[j] 35} Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? ³⁶ As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Voyages and Travels of the Apostle Paul

Learning to Love Paul

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/02/02/learning-to-love-paul/

by Scot McKnight

February 2, 2012

J.R. Daniel Kirk‘s new book, Jesus Have I Loved, But Paul? A Narrative Approach to the Problem of Pauline Christianity (BakerAcademic, 2011) may very well be a touchstone for the next generation of Christians who can’t accept (i) the traditional Paul (on historical grounds) and yet who want to explore what Paul looks like if we begin with a more accurate understanding of Jesus, of Judaism, of the Bible’s Story… and of Paul himself [sic, the (ii) New Perspective of Paul - res].

What role does Paul play in your faith and in your theology? Have you struggled with him?

We begin with this: lots of Christians today are struggling with Paul. (For some that is just incomprehensible, while for many this speaks volumes.) Some are bothered that Paul doesn’t talk kingdom enough; others that Paul doesn’t even talk about Jesus’ teachings; others that Jesus was so activist and justice-oriented and Paul, well, those aren’t his gigs. Some find him “distasteful, offensive, oppressive, exclusive, confusing, arrogant, or just plain wrong” (3). Others wonder why he gets so much attention and why his theology is the lens through which the whole Bible is read [sic, Calvinism as expressed through Reformed Theology. - res]. Others think Paul was not so important until Augustine (c.354-430) and after him not until Luther (c.1483-1546) and Calvin (c.1509-1564). Kirk gives us more: Paul the angry Reformed theologian, the promoter of internalized Christians, the Neoplatonist, the exclusivist, the oppressor, the judge, the chauvinist, and the imposer of order.

Daniel Kirk thinks Paul’s been given a misreading. He thinks we need to get to the narrative shape of Paul’s thinking, to the Story at work in Paul’s letters.

But Daniel also thinks that many (post?) evangelicals no longer operate with the assumptions of the previous generation, including concern with inerrancy as the foundation. “For this generation (in which I include myself), a network of relationships and experiences fills the primary role of confirmation of our beliefs that earlier evangelicals would have located primarily in ‘objective’ truths such as the inerrancy of Scripture or, to take another example, proofs of the resurrection” (7).

Kirks strategy is to show that Jesus and Paul inherited the same story of God at work in Israel, and that Mark’s Story of Jesus and Paul’s Story of Jesus are very similar — that is, Jesus and Paul are at one on the Story. This leads, he argues, to a revolutionary reinterpretation of Paul (for some). That one Story is this:

The God of Israel acted decisively in the person of Jesus to restore God’s rule and reconcile the whole world to himself (9).

That Story is about God (and this God is known through the Story God is in, not through such terms as immutable, etc). This is a Story about Israel as God’s chosen way of blessing the world. No Story in the Bible without Israel. Israel has a future: new king, pour out Spirit, live in Land, free from overlords, the temple.

Big one: The Gospels are Israel’s future. The future tense becomes present tense. This Story comes to its “pointed realization” in the crucifixion and resurrection. Paul’s churches have been “scripted into Israel’s story” so that the whole Gentile theme in Paul is about realizing the promise to Abraham to be a blessing to the nations. They get to be part of Israel’s Story.

The center of this Story, of course, is Jesus. He is the King and brings the kingdom. The Gospels tell the Story of God ruling through Jesus, and the oddity of this Story is that God reigns through Jesus’ death and resurrection. He becomes King, as it were, via those acts. Resurrection is about new creation and about ruling creation.

Mark’s crucified King — first half about king, second half about how he rules as king — and Paul’s christology are very similar: it is about Jesus ruling as the one who was crucified and raised.