J.R. Daniel Kirk: "Does Paul’s Christ Require a Historical Adam?"

http://cms.fuller.edu/TNN/Issues/Spring_2013/Does_Paul_s_Christ_Require_a_Historical_Adam/

by J.R. Daniel Kirk

Spring 2013

 

The Christian tradition has made much of Adam. We in the Western church speak regularly of the Fall of humanity that took place in Adam’s primal disobedience. Theologically, we speak of inherited sin and guilt—an original sin that renders us all complicit. We are guilty of humanity’s first great act of disobedience and enslaved to sin’s power.

 

Such theological claims derive more from our reading of Paul’s reflections on Adam than from the Genesis story itself. For many, the most significant theological reasons for affirming a historical Adam have to do not with what Genesis 1–3 may or may not teach about human origins, but with the theology of Adam that Paul articulates in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15. In short, if there is no historical Adam with whom we are enmeshed in the guilt and power of sin, how can we affirm that in Christ we participate in the justification and freedom of grace?

 

The levels of freedom (or lack thereof) that many of us experience with regard to the question of Adam as a historical person is inseparable from the theology that we see bound up with him. For some, to reject Adam as a historical person is to reject the authority of Scripture and trustworthiness of the very passages within which we learn of justification and resurrection.¹ Others are concerned that to deny a historical Adam is to deny the narrative of a good world gone wrong that serves as the very basis for the good news of Jesus Christ. In short, if there is no Fall, there can be no salvation from it and restoration to what was and/or might have been.² Even more expansively, Douglas Farrow concludes that “there is very little of importance in Christian theology, hence also in doxology and practice, that is not at stake in the question of whether or not we allow a historical dimension to the Fall.”³

 

High stakes, indeed. But I want to suggest that things might not be so dire. Specifically, I want to open up the conversation to the possibility that the gospel does not, in fact, depend on a historical Adam or historical Fall in large part because what Paul says about Adam stems from his prior conviction about the saving work of Christ. The theological points Paul wishes to make concern the saving work of the resurrected Christ and the means by which he makes them is the shared cultural and religious framework of his first-century Jewish context.

 

CHRIST AND ADAM

 

Paul has an important story to tell. It is the story of God’s new creation breaking into the world through the surprising mechanism of a crucified and resurrected Christ. This conviction about the new creation being brought about by Christ provides Paul with the ground to stand on as he draws Adam into the conversation in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15.

 

One crucial dynamic of Paul’s Adam Christology is representation. Christ does, is, and becomes what we need to participate in, be, and become in order to be God’s eternal family. For this reason, Paul takes hold of the “image of God” language with which we are so familiar from Genesis 1, and uses it to describe Jesus as he stands in relation to us: “he decided in advance that they would be conformed to the image of his Son.”⁴ Christ represents who we are, and who we are becoming, as members of God’s new-creation family.

 

This representation is focused on two particular aspects of Christ’s saving work: his death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead. Romans 5 develops Paul’s Adam Christology around Christ’s death. Throughout the latter half of Romans 5, Paul outlines how Christ’s act entails benefits for many: it brings about God’s gracious gift in a manner that more than undoes the work of Adam, even reclaiming humanity’s privilege of ruling the world for God (5:15–17; cf. Genesis 1:26).

 

Similar dynamics unfurl in 1 Corinthians 15, where Adam is viewed as the progenitor of death in contrast to Christ who, as God’s new representative human being, anticipates humanity’s coming resurrection life (15:21–22). A new humanity has been inaugurated by the resurrected Christ.

 

This theological framework positions us to step into Paul’s statements about Adam. Paul is working with the stories of Israel, as told in the Old Testament, but from the perspective of someone who knows, now, that God’s great act of salvation has come in Christ.

 

CHRIST, THE LAW, AND HISTORY

 

This brings us to our central question: To what extent do we need to affirm a historical Adam in order also to affirm the saving dynamics of Paul’s Adam Christology?

 

Romans 5 presents us with what are arguably the most pressing reasons to affirm a historical Adam. There we find these striking words from Paul: 

• Sin entered the world through one person (5:12).
• Many people died through what one person did wrong (5:15).
• The judgment that came through one person’s sin led to punishment (5:16).
• Death ruled because of one person’s failure (5:17).
• Judgment fell on everyone through the failure of one person (5:18).
• Many people were made sinners through the disobedience of one person (5:19).

 

Paul is clearly appealing to both the common experience of enslavement to sin and death and the normative narratives of Israel regarding Adam to explain the reality that Christ overcomes. Moreover, the consistent point of comparison is that one person, Adam, represents the rest of humanity in coming under the guilt, the power, or the condemnation of sin.

 

One of the first questions worth confronting is whether this passage allows for various understandings of how Adam might represent humanity. Thus, for example, might there be room here, not for a physical, natural progenitor of all subsequent human beings, but for a person who was chosen by God from a developing or, at any rate, numerically numerous, human race to play the role of representative in obedience and disobedience?

 

But the question that will clamor for the attention of many is whether such a moment in which sin’s guilt and power are unleashed as the lords of humanity is required at all. There seems to have been death in this world millions of years before human beings came on the scene. Is it possible to affirm the point Paul wishes to make—that God’s grace, righteousness, and life abound to the many because of Christ—without simultaneously affirming the assumptions with which he illustrated these things to be true?

 

Writing to the Romans, Paul wished to argue that God’s people are found in Christ, and thereby cut off other possible ways of construing idealized human identity and what salvation and the people of God might look like. In claiming that Christ is (un)like Adam, Paul was simultaneously taking other options off the table. What difference might it make to our discussions about a historical Adam that Paul was claiming, “Christ, is (un)like Adam, therefore God’s people are not demarcated by Torah”? This latter statement is, in fact, the point of Paul’s argument in Romans 5 (cf. 5:12–14, 20–21). Paul’s Adam theology is an avenue toward affirming that God has one worldwide people; therefore, the specially blessed people are not defined by the story of circumcision. But he does not ask the question of whether an evolutionary account of human origins might stand within the story of God’s new creation work in Christ, and his argument is not aimed at denying such an explanation of where we came from.

 

RETELLING THE STORY OF ORIGINS

 

When the ancients told stories of human origins, it was never simply to tell people “what happened.” Instead, such narratives indicate why their particular people and their particular god played the roles of sovereigns of the world. Genesis 1 is an introduction to the covenant story of Israel, in which God promises to make fruitful Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and also multiply them (17:6; 28:3; 35:11; 47:27; 48:4). The story of Adam in Genesis is written with the latter story of Israel in mind, so that the reader can see that Israel is destined to fulfill God’s primordial promise of not only filling the Earth but also ruling over it (cf. 17:6).

 

Similarly, Paul employs the story of Adam based on his new understanding that Christ is the man through whom God has chosen to rule the world and that the churches are the people who are the fulfillment of the promise of numerous descendants. For neither Paul nor the writer of Genesis does the story of Adam exist as a standalone narrative to which later history must correspond. Instead, the convictions about what God has done at a later point in history determine how the Adam story is read.

 

New Testament scholarship over the past half century has developed the insight that the first data point in Paul’s Christian theologizing was his understanding that the cross and resurrection formed the saving act of God. In the 1960s, Herman Ridderbos argued that this fundamental conviction becomes the great act of God by which all other acts and ideas are understood.⁵ The significance of this focus on Christ is that it ripples out in all directions: not only does Paul rethink the future in light of Jesus’ death and resurrection, but he also reinterprets what came before. Thus, Ridderbos concludes that “Paul’s whole doctrine of the world-and-man in sin . . . is only to be perceived in the light of his insight into the all-important redemptive event in Christ.”⁶ A decade later E. P. Sanders concurred, claiming that Paul reasons “from solution to plight.”⁷ Because Paul knows that God has provided the solution to the problem of human sin in the crucified and risen Christ, he therefore reassesses the place of the Law, in particular, in God’s saving story. Romans 5 is one particular outworking of this.

 

Both Ridderbos and Sanders have come to the same conclusion: what is a “given” for Paul is the saving event of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The other things he says, especially about sin, the Law, and eschatology, are reinterpretations that grow from the fundamental reality of the Christ event. Recognizing this relieves the pressure that sometimes builds up around a historical Adam. Contrary to the fears expressed by Douglas Farrow, we can now recognize that Adam is not the foundation on which the system of Christian faith and life is built, such that removing him means that the whole edifice comes crashing down. Instead, the Adam of the past is one spire in a large edifice whose foundation is Christ. The gospel need not be compromised if we find ourselves having to part ways with Paul’s [perceived] assumption that there is a historical Adam, because we share Paul’s fundamental conviction that the crucified Messiah is the resurrected Lord over all.

 

Where, then, are we left, if the pressures of scientific inquiry lead us to take down the spire of a literal, historical Adam? What might it look like for us to faithfully receive Paul’s testimony not merely by saying what he said, but by doing what he did? Might it be possible that we could retell the stories of both Adam and evolutionary sciences such that they continued to reflect our conviction that the endpoint of God’s great story is nothing else than new creation in the crucified and risen [historical] Christ? For many, the cognitive dissonance between the sciences and a historical Adam has already become too great to continue holding both.⁸ We therefore have to carefully determine whether the cause of Christ, and of truth, is better served by indicating that a choice must be made between the two, or by retelling the narrative about the origins of humanity as we now understand it in light of the death and resurrection of Christ.

 

The task of reimagining a Christian story of origins for our modern era has already begun.⁹ As it continues, faithful articulation of our story will have to attempt to hold together for our day what Paul’s articulation held together so beautifully for his own: humanity as a whole, not one particular race or ethnicity or nationality of people, is the purview of God’s saving work in Christ; humanity’s final destiny has been determined by the advent of the new creation in Christ’s resurrection; and this solution in Christ indicates that the problem to be solved entails not only personal estrangement from God, but a whole world that fails to live up to the harmony, peace, fruitfulness, life, and eternality of the God who created it. Perhaps most importantly, we must not allow biology or physics or chemistry to have the last word about the destiny of humanity. The reality of our lives as creatures limited by death and decay must stand in subordinate relationship to the eschatological reality of new creation that God has granted us in Christ.

 

To accompany Paul on the task of telling the story of the beginning in light of Christ, while parting ways with his first-century understanding of science and history, is not to abandon the Christian faith in favor of science. Instead, it demands a fresh act of faith in which we continue to hold fast to the truth that has always defined Christianity: the crucified Messiah is the resurrected Lord over all. Belief in Christ’s resurrection was a stumbling block for the ancients, and it is a stumbling block for us moderns as well—and increasingly so as we learn more about our human story and the biological processes entailed in life on this Earth. We do not give up on the central article of Christian faith when we use it to tell a renewed story of where we came from. On the contrary, we thereby give it the honor which is its due.

 

 

ENDNOTES

1. E.g., A. B. Caneday, “The Language of God and Adam’s Genesis and Historicity in Paul’s Gospel,” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 15 (2011): 26–59.
2. E.g., C. John Collins, Did Adam and Eve Really Exist? Who They Were and Why You Should Care (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011), 133–35; John W. Mahoney, “Why an Historical Adam Matters for the Doctrine of Original Sin,” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 15 (2011): 60–78; Stephen J. Wellum, “Editorial: Debating the Historicity of Adam: Does It Matter?” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 15 (2011): 2–3.
3. Douglas Farrow, “Fall,” in The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought (ed. A. Hastings, A. Mason, and H. S. Pyper; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 233–34.
4. All scriptural citations are from the Common English Bible unless otherwise indicated.
5. Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 44–90.
6. Ridderbos, Paul, 137.
7. E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1977), 474–508.
8. See, e.g., John R. Schneider, “Recent Genetic Science and Christian Theology on Human Origins: An ‘Aesthetic Superlapsarianism,’” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 62 (2010): 196–213.
9. E.g., Daniel C. Harlow, “After Adam: Reading Adam in an Age of Evolutionary Science,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 62 (2010): 179–95.

 

A Topical Discussion Between Classic Orthodoxy v. Process Theology: "The Competitive Nature of Divine and Human Agency"

A Dip into the Depths of the Doctrine of God: Discussion of the Non-Competitive View of Divine and Human Agencies

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/08/a-dip-into-the-depths-of-the-doctrine-of-god-discussion-of-the-non-competitive-view-of-divine-and-human-agencies/

 

by Roger E. Olson

with additional comments by R.E. Slater

August 19, 2013

Comments

 

Recently I posted here an imaginary conversation between a Calvinist and an Arminian (see next article below) - about God’s sovereignty. At one point I inserted a common comment made by especially intellectually-minded Calvinists about the non-competitive nature of divine and human agency. But it’s not only Calvinists who bring this up in discussions of God’s agency and creatures’. Some of the Christian thinkers I most admire in terms of their intellectual prowess and insight insist to me that I am risking idolatry when, as an Arminian, I insist that God’s agency and creatures’ are competitive.

 

Now it’s time to explain.

 

The issue can be stated many different ways; this is just one way. When a creature such as a human person makes a decision to act and then acts according to his or her desire and decision, what is God doing? A deist, even one who doesn’t call herself that, says God is observing. At the opposite end of the theistic theological spectrum a process thinker says God is observing. On that one point deists and process panentheists agree. God does not act in and through a creatures’ actions in such a way as to be directly involved. To put it another way, both deists and process thinkers agree that human creatures (and perhaps other creatures as well) have such a degree of autonomy from divine power as to be capable of acting on their own without requiring God’s corresponding action in them....

 

Sidebar: Panentheism asserts that God is dependent upon His creation even as His creation is dependent upon Him - this process was initiated at the moment of creation. As such, Process theology understands God as becoming part of the human experience and not apart from it (austere deism vs. classical orthodoxy's view of God's willing and necessary involvement in our lives and in the world's economy). Now whether God is rigorously involved (Calvinism: meticulous sovereignty) or not (Arminianism: concording sovereignty as here explained) is what divides Orthodox Theists committed to orthodox doctrine from non-orthodox positions of divine separation and sterility (deism).

 

The conundrum has been how to approach a process-driven theology while retaining a classically-driven position of sovereignty (whether Calvinistic or Arminian).... At Relevancy22 we have been promoting a process theology that is theistically-driven as a synthesis between all positions involved. My theological choice for this synthetic reconciliation has been to utilize the position of Relational Theology (or relational theism, or relational thought) - that views God's love and loving relationship with His creation as a way to combine the good from both the classic orthodox positions and the process theological positions. Why? At its heart, process theology has always been understood as a relational-process theology which it later seemed to have dropped when emphasizing God's finiteness in dependent relationship with His creation. But a relational process theology can re-orient Scripture back towards God's "Otherness" without loss to His "Closeness" to creation.

 

At the same time a relational process theology may help elucidate classic orthodoxy's non-biblical, artificial constructs of God's perceived relationship with His creation, as presently understood.... Meaning that, both God-and-His-creation are together evolving in experiential relationship with one another. Where the futures of both God and cosmos are unknown (though not unplanned - especially as God redeems His creation's separation from Himself, even as His creation willingly participates in this redemption).

 

Lastly, as a matter of personal preference, I wish to nuance all relational, Creator-creature discussions through the lens of an Arminian view of Relational Theology. Thus my emphasis upon understanding human free will and divine agency through Dr. Olson's Arminian discussions. I find them as a helpful offset from Reformed Calvinism's more austere views of God, world, church, and self. - res

 

... [Now] I realize some who call themselves process thinkers may disagree; I am talking about the major process philosophers and theologians such as Whitehead, Hartshorne, Cobb, Griffin, et al. There are many theologians now who attempt to modify classical process theology to correct what they see as some of its excesses—especially its tendency to make God finite. However, classical process thought and theology was not embarrassed to talk of God as finite except insofar as God is immediately present to every actual occasion giving it its initial aim and luring it toward that. The same can be said of so-called “Boston Personalism” (Brightman, Bowne, et al.).

 

The vast majority of Christian thinkers of all tribes have always insisted that human beings, creatures in general, have no autonomy over against God such that they can decide and act without God’s “concurrence.” The classical, orthodox Christian doctrine of God, whether Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic or Protestant (including Arminianism) has always included “divine concurrence” as part of the doctrine of God’s sovereignty, providence, and agency. (I discussed this in some detail in Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities.)

 

Stepping farther back for a moment: Classical Christian doctrines of God’s sovereignty, usually in the doctrine of divine providence, have traditionally held to three modes of God’s sovereignty in providence (history and individual lives): sustaining, concurring, and governing. Orthodox Christians, whether Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic or Protestant (of all traditional types up until Boston Personalism’s and process theology’s appearances) have held that God:

 

(1) sustains everything that is and without God’s immediate sustaining power the creature and creation as a whole would fall into nothingness;

 

(2) God concurs with creatures’ decisions and actions or else they would be powerless to decide and act (I would qualify this as "positively concurs, or positively acts", so as to hold all humans accountable for their own sin, and not God for their sin and transgression - res); and,

 

(3) God oversees, governs, even directs the course of history and human lives such that nothing can happen without God’s permission or causation (or both). [Again, this classic statement overreaches without discriminating from man's sin and sinful actions. - res]

 

The gist is that God is infinite and self-sufficient while creatures are finite and dependent. Put another way, God is autonomous in being, deciding and acting while creatures are not (as strictly defined under classical orthodoxy - res).

 

This is classical Christian theology. Yes, to be sure, there are variations of it. The devil is in the details, so to speak, of how theologians work out God’s sovereignty. But that God is sovereign in the ways I just described is basic Christian orthodoxy. Otherwise, God would not be infinite and could be regarded as just another creature, even if one without beginning. Creature in the sense of dependent on things outside himself or at least limited by them.

 

So what do theologians (and here I use the term broadly to include all who attempt to think Christianly about God) mean when they say that God’s agency and creatures’ agencies are “non-competitive?” That puzzles me. If they only mean what the doctrine of divine concurrence means—that creatures are not so autonomous as to be capable of deciding or acting completely apart from God’s permission and power—then I am in complete agreement. All orthodox Christians are.

 

However, in many discussions with Christian theologians I have detected they are accusing me of something more when they say I am pitting God’s agency and humans’ agencies against one another and thereby violating a principle of non-competitiveness between God’s agency and ours. This usually occurs when I insist, as I always do, that, when it comes to evil, God is not involved except in terms of permission and agreement. And by “agreement” I mean “concurs”—reluctantly permits and gives power to act. All creaturely power is “on loan,” as it were, from God.

 

I agree with those who insist on a non-competitive view of God’s agency and creatures insofar as we are talking about the good. According to Philippians 2:12-13 every good thing we do must be attributed to God being at work in us. In other words, when we are most active doing good, God is most active. And when God is most active in us we are most active. But that’s only true when we’re talking about the good. God’s agency and ours is strictly non-competitive in the realm of the truly good. Otherwise we could boast of the good that we do.

 

However, my problem with a “non-competitive view” of God’s agency and ours arises when we are talking about evil. Nothing in Scripture points to that! When we (or any creature) do what is truly evil, then God is still involved (sustaining, concurring, governing) but there is also competition—between God’s agency and ours. In other words, there can be no parallel principle along the lines of Philippians 2:12-13 when it comes to doing evil. Paul could not have written truly, under divine inspiration, and we should not believe or say “Work out your own evil inclinations and plans, your corruption and damnation, for God is at work in you to will and to do of his good pleasure.”

 

When theologians, Calvinist or non-Calvinist, tell me I must avoid a competitive view of God’s agency and ours, my mind goes immediately to the problem of evil. Of course, I want to say, that’s true when we are talking about good or neutral decisions and actions (if there are neutral ones) but not when we are talking about evil decisions and actions.

 

But some theologians I have talked with about these matters want to take the non-competitive view all the way—to saying that God’s agency and human agency are never in competition. They are on distinct planes altogether with God’s completely surrounding and underlying, so to speak, creatures’.  (These are spatial metaphors that cannot do justice to what is meant by “noncompetitive agencies” when divine and human agencies are under consideration.)

 

My objection to that is that, while it may protect theology from idolatry and God’s being from finitude, it falters in making theodicy impossible.

 

Unless all is meant is divine concurrence. But that does not seem to be the case in many cases. Both Calvinist and non-Calvinist theologians often insist to me that any talk of creatures acting against God’s will, doing what God does not want done, thwarting God’s perfect, antecedent will introduces an element of creaturely autonomy that ultimately finitizes God. [Here is a case of an artificial theological construct caught-out between classical orthodoxy and its differences with relational theology.... it begins innocently enough by assertion of a logical argument but quickly devolves into additional syllogisms and logical arguments for-and-against-God couched within an infinite variety of biblically-sounding statements. What results is paradox and enigma, mystery and riddle. Though these theological differences cannot be defined without removing oneself further and further into adjudicated argument I find returning to a Postmodern, narrative form of theology often more helpful than the Enlightened era's systematic statements about God, world, church and self as derived from the days of the Reformation. - res]

 

While I do not wish to do that, of course, neither do I wish to imply that evil dispositions, decisions and actions fit within divine agency except concurrence. And with the proviso of divine concurrence I must admit that I view divine and creaturely agencies as somewhat competitive—commensurable in the sense that they can conflict....

 

[Like myself, Dr. Olson wishes to adhere to a defined system of thought (mine is more probably blended than his as my preference leans towards relational-process thought)... herein he has been utilizing classical theological arguments while rejecting classical process thought as he here defines it.... So that by using classic orthodox arguments he has removed the idea of God's finiteness, or limitedness, within sinful mankind's actions... even as process theologians grapple with seeing the same sinfulness within mankind from their own perspective by positing man's limitation of God when man sinfully acts. Each are saying the same thing but from within a different theological structure. As such, Dr. Olson's article today is an even better illustration between classic orthodoxy's perception of an individual theological doctrine against that of  a classical (non-relational) process theology. He begins with his perceptions between Calvinism and Arminianism but quickly devolves into his own qualifying perceptions between classic orthodoxy versus classic process theology. - res]

 

res - ... Without process thought a classical orthodox position must say the following:

 

I do not think that requires me to adopt a deistic or processive view of God as a finite being limited by creatures (a lá William James or Alfred North Whitehead or any of their faithful followers).  Why not? Because I hold to the doctrine of divine concurrence. I can do nothing, not even evil, without God’s agreement and aid [per Dr. Olson's classic orthodox summation - res]. However, an element of competition of agencies enters in the moment I suggest that God only agrees and aids (concurs) in the evil that I do reluctantly and that the evil I do cannot be attributed to God’s agency as its primary, efficient cause. Whatever good I do I attribute to God’s primary, efficient causation (Philippians 2:12-13). Therefore I cannot boast and can only confess “What do I have that I was not given?” However, when I do evil I attribute it to my own causation as efficient and instrumental and to God’s causation only in terms of Aristotle’s (and Aquinas’s) final cause (making it possible and directing it to its ultimate “place” in God’s overall plan).

 

The problems I have with any consistently noncompetitive view of God’s agency and ours is that it problematizes theodicy [("theodicy" is the branch of theology concerned with defending the attributes of God against objections resulting from physical and moral evil - res)] and, while seeming to pay God metaphysical compliments, conflicts with the biblical narrative in which God is portrayed as horrified by evil as that which he does not intend or cause—even indirectly (through secondary causes).

 

I would describe my view, as briefly outlined here, as “biblical personalism”—a term I borrow from Emil Brunner. God is a person (or three persons in perfect community of will), not an object or force. While I am reluctant to identify God, or talk about God, in objectifying ways (i.e., as “thingy”), following the biblical narrative and avoiding speculation, as much as possible, I have to talk about God as a “Thou” who encounters me in a genuine, personal “I-Thou” encounter and not as an energy or force or principle or whatever who is impersonal or suprapersonal (whatever that means) or even infinite in the speculative, philosophical sense of “the Absolute” (a lá Hegel or Tillich and, I fear, much negative theology).

 

[By the end of his article Dr. Olson also sees a theology based upon God's relationship with man as a way out of the classic theological box of syllogistic debate. Meaning that, as a well-versed historical theologian he senses classic orthodoxy's need to evolve into a postmodern perception of relationality utilizing time and process, openness and evolution. For myself, Dr. Olson has always been a good barometer in reminding us of our classical theological boundaries while pursuing more blended forms of theology and ministry. It also reminds today's postmodernist of our orthodox birthright even as it propels us forward towards newer systems of discovery and discussion in both their limitations and brighter prospects for the postmodern Christian faith. - res]

 

 

* * * * * * * * * *

 

 

A Conversation between a Calvinist and an Arminian about God’s Sovereignty

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/08/a-conversation-between-a-calvinist-and-an-arminian-about-gods-sovereignty/

 

by Roger Olson

August 7, 2013

Comments

 

Calvinist to Arminian: “You Arminians don’t really believe in God’s sovereignty.”

 

Arminian: “You Calvinists don’t really believe in God’s love.”

 

Calvinist: “Oh, but we do. You’re so wrong! The Bible is clear about God being love.”

 

Arminian: “But you don’t believe God loves all people, so how can you believe, as the Bible says, that God is love?”

 

Calvinist: “God loves all people in some ways but only some people in all ways.”

 

Arminian: “Uh, you seemed to be in a trance as you said that. Are you sure you didn’t just hear that somewhere and are repeating it like a mantra—without really thinking about what you’re saying?”

 

Calvinist: “No, that’s what I really believe!”

 

Arminian: “How does God love those he predestined and foreordained to hell?”

 

Calvinist: “He gives them many temporal blessings.”

 

Arminian: “You mean he gives them a little bit of heaven to go to hell in.”

 

Calvinist: “Well, I wouldn’t put it that way.”

 

Arminian: “That’s what it sounds like to me.”

 

Calvinist: “That’s because you don’t understand God correctly. God is infinite and beyond our comprehension. So God’s love is not the same as our love. [His love] It transcends [our love] it.”

 

Arminian: “How is that different from saying God is ‘supercalifragilisticexpialadocious’?”

 

Calvinist: “Look, you Arminians have a low view of God. That’s your whole problem. You don’t understand the glory of God. Why, you don’t even really believe in the sovereignty of God—as I said.”

 

Arminian: “No, you’re wrong. We do. But God’s ‘sovereignty’ is different than any of our notions of human sovereignty—even the best and highest of them. God is infinite and transcends our categories.”

 

Calvinist: “Wait a minute. ‘Sovereignty’ means absolute, total control.” [sic, meticulous sovereignty, as defined. - res]

 

Arminian: “It might in your vocabulary or even in your dictionary but that doesn’t matter. ‘When we attribute something to God we have to realize it’s totally different in God than in us because of God’s glory.’ At least that’s so if we play the theology game your way. If you can say you believe in God’s love but God’s ‘love’ is different than our highest and best concepts of love and that it’s even compatible with what we know as hate, then surely we can say, without you objecting, that we believe in God’s sovereignty even if our concept of God’s sovereignty is totally different than any concept of sovereignty you think is normal or compatible with human knowledge or experience.”

 

Calvinist: “Okay, I see. You’re trying to turn the tables on me.”

 

Arminian: “I’m just trying to get you to put aside double standards and play fair in your rhetoric about Arminianism. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. You can’t appeal to God’s infinity and incomprehensibility to defend your unusual (to say the least) meaning of ‘God is love’ and then turn around and object when others use words about God in ways beyond what you think is normal understanding.”

 

Calvinist: “Well, we Calvinists are just going by what the Bible says. We have to understand God’s love by what we see clearly revealed in Scripture about God’s actions.”

 

Arminian: “Well, we Arminians are just going by what the Bible says. We have to understand God’s sovereignty by what we see clearly revealed in Scripture about God’s actions.”

 

Calvinist: “Now you’re mocking me.”

 

Arminian: “No, I’m just trying to point out that two can play that game.”

 

Calvinist: “Well, I don’t even know what you mean. God’s sovereignty in Scripture is clearly absolute control [(sic, meticulous sovereignty, again. -res)]. That’s how God acts in Scripture.”

 

Arminian: “And what about all those times when God didn’t get his way and regretted things because of what humans did to thwart his plans and will? And what about Jesus weeping over Jerusalem and saying he wanted to…but they would not? Et cetera?”

 

Calvinist: “Oh, well, that’s easy. Those are anthropomorphisms.”

 

Arminian: “And so could be all those times in Scripture when God controlled circumstances and people.”

 

Calvinist: “No, those must be taken literally.” [based upon an inerrantist position of biblical literalism - res]

 

Arminian: “You are coming to Scripture with a preconceived idea of God and choosing what to take figuratively and what to take literally based on that. Your starting point is a philosophical idea of God drawn from reason and then you use that as a Procrustean bed of hermeneutics.”

 

Calvinist: “Wait. I think you’re trying to turn the tables on me again. That’s what we Calvinists say you Arminians do—with free will.”

 

Arminian: “Oh, really?”

 

 

 

Understanding Christianity's Jewishness

 

Christian Judaism

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/03/20/christian-judaism/

 

by Scot McKnight

Mar 20, 2012

Comments

 

E.P. Sanders famously said the problem with Judaism for contemporaries of Paul was that it was not Christian.

 

Sanders was a lightning rod, and at the same time, a lighthouse, for scholars in the late 1970s and 80s, and his legacy — usually called the “new perspective” (language used by Tom Wright and Jimmy Dunn) — has been that while there is a clear difference between “Judaism” and “Christianity,” that relationship in the 1st Century — and perhaps a lot longer — was not so much two kinds of religion but varieties within one religion, namely Judaism.

 

So the debate is often, Do we call “it” Christian Judaism (a Christian form of Judaism) or Jewish Christianity?

 

[My own opinion is to call it "Messianic Christianity," even as our faith is the same, making both one and the same, and placing the onus on us to understand the Jewishness of Christianity; and on the Jewish Christian on understanding its transnational, transcultural, transtemporal implications. - res]

 

And what are the consequences of seeing Christianity — the 1st Century kind — as a kind of Judaism?

 

Daniel Boyarin, in his new and (for the first time for Boyarin) accessible book, The Jewish Gospels, proposes his way of understanding the relationship of Jesus-following Jews in the context of non-Jesus-following (or is that Jesus-non-following?) Jews. His book deserves a wide reading, even if I think there a chunks of chunks of issues not covered and crying out for some explanation. Boyarin is one of my favorite Jewish scholars who interprets earliest Christianity, though I have to admit that his writing is often very difficult to comprehend. His first work, The Radical Jew (about Paul) and then his Border Lines are important contributions to understanding the original relation of the two groups — Jesus followers and those Jews who did not follow Jesus.

 

I make the following observations from his book:

 

First, for Boyarin the key or secret to comprehending earliest Christology — how Jesus became a “part” of God (his word, an odd one to be sure) — is Daniel 7. Over and over he takes the reader back to Daniel 7 to explain how Jesus understood himself and his mission in his Jewish world.

 

Second, Boyarin belongs in a history of religions school that contends ancient Israel combined El with YHWH, and at least one main version was that El was the older god and YHWH the younger one, though eventually YHWH takes over El. This version of how God developed among Israelites finds a similar version in the relation of the Ancient of Days with the “one like a Son of Man” in Daniel 7, and he makes the thoroughly acceptable suggestion that the Son of Man is “part” of God — sometimes he says a “second God” — because the only one who rides on the clouds of heaven in the Old Testament is God. That makes Son of Man divine.

 

So, when Jesus uses Son of Man, he is referring to Daniel 7 (this is a major issue for many NT scholars), and if he is then “Son of Man” is a divine title while “Son of God” is a kingly, more human, Davidic title. So Boyarin is turning simplistic but quite traditional theology on its head.

[e.g., The traditional understanding is that "Son of Man" refers to Jesus' affinity with humanity - His human-ness; whereas "Son of God" referes to Jesus' affinity to divinity - His God-ness. However, this is simply read by our English eyes and ears ("man," "God") whereas by Boyarin's account, we are to read those titles biblically - in their context with Scripture. One that I much prefer, even though I understanding the practical symantic purpose of relating our English preference for Jesus' hypostatic union - that He is fully, and equally, both God and man, in His spirit and flesh. - res]

 

Third, there is good Jewish evidence supporting this kind of Christology at work in Judaism well before Jesus, so when Jesus called himself Son of Man, and with that meant divinity and messianic vocation, there was nothing offensive or non-Jewish about his claim. Boyarin points to 1 Enoch and 4 Ezra, and he’s right here — if it can be proven that these texts are pre-Jesus [and hence, apolcalytic - res].

 

Fourth, Jesus lived an entirely kosher life. Mark 7: 19′s famous statement is not about making all foods clean — so that he was saying you can eat bacon and eggs with milk and still be kosher — but about saying that foods are not sources of purity but instead morals are. Bodily fluids make one unclean; food doesn’t. Food is kosher but this is not the same as purity. Jesus was contesting the addition to the Torah — making foods purity/impurity — by the Pharisees. (Foods are either permitted or not permitted; foods are not clean/unclean or pure/impure.)

[In my church experiences, many times I have found well-meaning Christians making this same mistake; esp. my Christian Torah brethren, who emphasize the importance of observing diets, dress, calendar dates, and other such Jewish decorums for Christian rigor. Under Jesus and Paul, each say this is not necessary. For myself, I have decided my Christianity is Jewish, but that I am not a Jewish Christian, but a Messianic Christian, freed from all laws except God's law to love. - res]

 

Fifth, suffering was an element of the messianic vision in the Jewish world — and here he sketches stuff in Isaiah 53, how Jews read Isaiah 53, how messianic Jews today are keen on this connection (he says this is a bit embarrassing to some orthodox Jews), how Isaiah 43 was messianic for Jews … etc..

 

The result for Boyarin: it was the 4th Century and 5th Century that split Judaism into two religions, Christianity and Judaism. The heresiologists of those days said one had to believe one version of the Jewish vision of Jesus (Trinitarian version) or they were not Christian; and Jewish scholars then pronounced such views heresy. Thus we have two religions.

 

There are problems in his theory, not the least of which is the relationship of Jews and (non-Jewish) Christians already in the 2d Century — Justin Martyr et al — but the big vision is right: Christianity was part of Judaism and everything about Jesus was within the Jewish story.

 

 

 

The New Perspective Revised - "Paul and Messianic Judaism," Parts 4-1

Messianic Judaism: An Introduction

PART FOUR
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/02/19/messianic-judaism-an-introduction/

 

by Scot McKnight

Feb 19, 2013 @ 0:13

Comment

 

If you want to know what Messianic Judaism was (in the New Testament era) and what it is today, here’s the book: David Rudolph and Joel Willitts, Introduction to Messianic Judaism: Its Ecclesial Context and Biblical Foundations. The book is afloat with excellent studies about all the crucial topics — both today and in the 1st Century.

 

Over the years I’ve read a number of books on Messianic Judaism, including the important study of Daniel Cohn-Sherbok, but this book both “supersedes” (excuse me) that one and introduces us to a critical juncture in Messianic Judaism studies. In five or ten years this book may well need some new legs because MJ has become a serious field in itself and developments are happing rapidly. Decisive in all of this is the “Jewish Turn” in biblical and theological studies — that discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the aftermath of the Holocaust led to renewed scholarship bent on relearning how to examine the Bible in Jewish context, and then from EP Sanders (1977) on New Testament studies experienced a revival of interest in re-framing NT history and theology in light of the Jewish Turn. This book floats well in these waters.

 

A sampling of studies in the book: MJ synagogues, worship and prayer, Scripture, Jewish tradition, ethics, outreach, women, MJ in the Land of Israel, national organizations, MJ and the Jewish World, MJ and the Gentile World, Jewish-Christian dialogue. For the NT stuff: Matthew, Luke-Acts, James, interdependence and mutual blessing, Israel and the church, equality, mission-commitment, and the issue of supersessionism.

 

What then is Messianic Judaism? This statement, from the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations, and found on p. 136 in Rudolph and Willitts, states the issues well in that it defines the Messianic Jewish community as “a distinct part of the Body of Messiah”:

Jewish life is life in a concrete, historical community. Thus, Messianic Jewish groups must be fully part of the Jewish people, sharing its history and its covenantal responsibility as a people chosen by God.

At the same time, faith in Yeshua also has a crucial communal dimension. This faith unites the Messianic Jewish community and the [Gentile] Christian Church, which is the assembly of the faithful from the nations who are joined to Israel through the Messiah.

Together the Messianic Jewish community and the Christian Church constitute the ekklesia, the one Body of Messiah, a community of Jews and Gentiles who in their ongoing distinction and mutual blessing anticipate the shalom of the world to come.

Do you think separable bodies — the Gentile Christian Church and the Messianic Jewish community — fractures the One Body? Do you think it is what Paul had in mind in his mission?

 

 

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Where Christians Got it Wrong with Paul

PART THREE
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/08/20/where-christians-got-it-wrong-with-paul/

 

by Scot McKnight

Aug 20, 2012 @ 5:08

Comments

 

 

Mark Nanos is on a mission to expound for readers of Paul a Paul who never broke from Judaism. His project, and here we are sketching some of what he says in the book edited by Mike Bird called The Apostle Paul, is both about rhetoric and theology. Nanos, who plays golf well and is a Jewish scholar of Paul, has been stumping for his themes for more than a decade.

 

The rhetoric is clear: Christians have explained their faith, in particular the theology of Paul, at the expense of Judaism. They have made Paul a champion of freedom by arguing Judaism was slavery, Paul a champion of universalism by arguing Judaism was exclusive and ethnic, and Paul a champion of a religion of grace, faith and love while Judaism comes off looking like a religion of merit, works and legalism. In a strange irony, Nanos then says “those values that Christians champion… are instead inferior to the values Jews actually uphold” (163). I get his point, but he’s done the same thing he’s accused Christian scholars of doing: comparative descriptions come off as comparative denunciations. But Nanos has the larger end of the stick on this one; he’s right; Christians have failed to comprehend Judaism because they’ve settled for caricatures that they can use to champion their own faith. Though Luke Timothy Johnson, in his response, thinks Nanos has kept a binary opposition by talking about Judaism as if it were “normative Judaism.” Johnson’s contention is that Judaism was more diverse than Nanos suggests. And Campbell thinks this perception of Judaism derives from Melanchthon.

 

Can you point to a text or texts where you think the Jewish apostle, Paul (or Peter), did not observe Torah? Do you think Paul observed Torah completely? Would you say Paul’s gospel is a kind of Judaism, but still Judaism? Or did he crack the door?

 

The theology of Paul, then, needs another explanation. If the traditional view made Jews legalists, the new perspective (Nanos argues) makes Jews ethnocentric. He wants to argue neither of these categories belong on the table.

 

Paul never left Judaism and the only difference between Paul and other forms of Judaism is that Paul’s Judaism had Jesus as the Messiah. Paul was Torah-observant, never left being Torah-observant [I'd quote Acts 23:6 here, but he doesn't; there Paul says "I am a Pharisee"], and Paul’s mission was to expand the Shema faith of Judaism — One God — to include Gentiles. So, Paul’s mission was including Gentiles into one Judaism. Freedom from the Torah is only for non-Jewish Christians; Jewish Christians remained under the Torah. Schreiner’s response focuses on Paul no longer being Torah observant, and he points to Peter in Galatians 2:11-14 (eating with Gentiles) and Paul saying in Romans 14:20 that all foods were clean.

 

It is big, then, for Nanos to say a major cutting edge between Paul and other forms of Judaism was that Paul permitted Gentile “conversion” without becoming “proselytes” to Judaism. You could convert to Judaism but did not have to become a Jew by undergoing circumcision. Paul opposes proselyte circumcision for Gentile “converts” to Judaism, because circumcision entails Torah observance, and Gentiles don’t have to obey the whole Torah.

 

Nanos, then, has a narrowed meaning for “works of the law”: it’s about circumcision. Works of the law ultimately leads to changed ethnicity or to ethnic Jewishness.

 

Nanos is not alone in thinking Paul didn’t have a “conversion” but instead a “calling” to the Gentiles. I think Nanos’ point can be sustained in some ways but his perception of “conversion” could benefit from conversion theory studies themselves, in which conversion is measured by identity change and not by swapping religions. So, I would argue was converted to a whole new frame of mind but that doesn’t necessarily mean he changed religions, which is the (anachronistic, a la LT Johnson’s response) categories he presses into service. Nanos thinks the term “conversion” muddies the water, and he’s right. So he uses “calling,” which I think muddies the water. Paul’s change is more than simply vocational. He saw everything anew through and in Christ. So convert is a good word, but I would want to respect Nanos’ concern to make sure this does not necessarily mean Paul swapped religions.

 

The issue, for Nanos then, between Paul’s Judaism and others is “chronometrical”: What is appropriate now that the crucifixion and resurrection have occurred? Are we in a new era or not? Paul says Yes, others say No. In other words, it is eschatological. Or, perhaps even more nuanced, hermeneutical. How do we explain where we are in God’s plan? And it revolves around whether or not Jesus is the Messiah.

 

The big issue of this whole discussion can be expressed as questions: Did the apostle Paul think all Jews had to believe Jesus was the Messiah to be saved, or to enter the kingdom of God, or the Age to Come? Did he think non-messianic Jews were just as saved as messianic Jews? Was historic Judaism sufficient or did one have to embrace messianic Judaism? Johnson thinks Nanos doesn’t give sufficient attention to the newness in Paul’s gospel.

 

 

 

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The New Perspective Revised

PART TWO
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/08/14/the-new-perspective-revised/

 

by Scot McKnight

Aug 14, 2012 @ 0:20

Comments
 

 

In my life time the most significant book on Paul has been E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977) because it both shifted interest in Judaism but completely shook up how scholars understood Paul. Since Sanders there have been major articulations of Pauline theology, including those of J.D.G. Dunn and N.T. Wright, but they build on and take further what was said by Sanders.

In Mike Bird’s new book, The Apostle Paul, there are four views of Paul: the Reformed view by Tom Schreiner, the Catholic view by L.T. Johnson, the post New Perspective view by Douglas Campbell, and the Jewish view of Mark Nanos. Today’s post will look at Campbell’s piece.

 

What do you see as the major problems with the traditional reading of Paul? What do you see as the major problems with the New Perspective on Paul? Do you think Campbell’s reading helps us forward?

 

In essence, and Campbell gets this right when many don’t, the core of the New Perspective is a new view of Judaism and a new view of Paul rooted in that new view of Judaism. The “old” perspective on Paul, it is argued, overcooked Judaism into a works-based religion. This led to religion being man’s attempt to justify himself, and the whole gospel of Paul was read as a response to this fundamental anthropological pride. Hence, we read in folks like Tim Keller of two options: performance vs. grace/faith. I see this all over, so Keller’s not alone. The New Perspective calls this into question because it argues that this “performance” stuff emerges from a false view of Judaism and therefore from a Judaism Paul could not have been opposing. Paul’s concerns were elsewhere. Put differently, the old perspective thinks Paul’s concerns were anthropology: the human arrogance of self-justification before God, and that means the essence of gospel preaching is to get humans to perceive their pride. Again, this is not what the New Perspective thinks Paul was on about.

 

Campbell, however, goes beyond anything being said by the New Perspective, though he agrees completely with its view of Judaism. He thinks the New Perspective explanations of Paul — Dunn, Wright, oddly not really dealing with Sanders — are not good enough and so he revises those explanations. I would say he radically revises.

 

1. Campbell thinks Paul’s theology turns on three axes: that it is revealed by God to him, that it is Trinitarian (and here he is thoroughly Nicene and orthodox), and missional (his message arises from his mission).

 

2. Campbells thinks soteriology and gospel are one and the same. [I disagree, but only in emphasis or order.] And he thinks that gospel is found, not in Romans 1:18-3:26, which is classic, but in Romans 5–8. He finds here a God whose work in us cannot be stopped, and he finds an ethic that transforms through the Spirit and transcends the Jewish Torah. [This last point leads to Mark Nanos' strong disagreements.] He is Barthian and Torrancian in his approach.

 

3. Campbell doesn’t really follow the assignment, which was followed by Schreiner and Johnson, which means we get his closer reading of how to read Romans 5–8.

 

4. The three persons of the Trinity are indistinguishable in Romans 5–8. Humans are fundamentally relational beings. Christ determines humans not Adam. Since Christ is the solution, Moses is not. (He calls this “thinking backward,” which is a variant of the “from solution to plight.”) The ecclesial approach of Paul is family and he uses the term “brothers” for the Body of Christ.

Both Johnson and Schreiner criticize Campbell for insufficient attention to the rest of the Pauline corpus.

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Finding the Apostle Paul

PART ONE

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/08/07/finding-the-apostle-paul/

 

by Scot McKnight

Aug 7, 2012 @ 0:03

Comments

 

 

Paul gets bashed a bit these days as more and more Christians realize the anchor of their faith is Jesus. But all orthodox Christian faith is at the same time rooted in the biblical witness and not just historical methods. Biblical faith deals with Paul because Paul’s letters — thirteen of them in traditional counting — not only take up lots of pages in your New Testament but his mission and message shaped 1st Century Christianity at deep levels.

Which of these readings of Paul do you think is most like Paul, or most accurate? Why do you think Paul has “fallen out of favor” with so many today? Why do you think others make Paul so central, even more central than Jesus/Gospels?

Biblical faith, then, deals with Paul. Careful readers of Paul’s letters know that there are some major, major disagreements over how to interpret Paul. So the question is not Jesus have I loved, Paul have I known, but which Paul? Last week we sketched the 1st chp in Michael Bird’s edited volume, The Apostle Paul, another Zondervan Counterpoints book. That chp represents a Reformed, or Calvinist, reading of Paul. Today we look at Luke Timothy Johnson’s study of Paul. Three quick facts: Johnson is Catholic; he is one of the most prolific and significant NT scholars; his sketch of Paul may be Catholic but it shows that when it comes Catholicism, Paul’s letters are not the primary source for creating Catholic distinctives. So, in the end, this is the historian’s Paul, the Paul who emerges from the canonical letters who also thinks — contra many in the academic guild — Paul wrote all thirteen letters.

1. Too many of those who sketch Paul’s theology limit the evidence: he was not a systematic thinker; each letter emerges in context and in contact with issues at hand for his mission; there was a school around Paul; Paul prefers personal relationship and communication.

2. Those who find a “center” in Pauline theology are mistaken, and here he pushes against finding it in Epicureanism, Stoicism, Palestinian Judaism, or apocalyptic — or his struggle with the law or the narrative theology of the new perspective. If we consider all letters, we don’t have a center but themes of a missional apostle.

3. Johnson thinks we have to find the matrix of personal religious experience, the religious experience of his readers, and the compex of traditions and practices already in play at the time of Paul.

4. Christology: an exceptional sketch of Paul’s christology, focusing not so much on Christ as on Lord but it all begins with the resurrection. Holy Spirit is prominent in this sketch. Jesus’ resurrection was an eschatological event. Jesus has representative significance.

5. Cross: a scandal for the Jews; supreme sign that God did not spare his Son, was a sacrifice for sin; an expression as well of Jesus’ faith in God and love for others. It is about his faithful obedience. And the cross is a pattern for human behavior: cruciformity.

6. Salvation: it is accomplished by God and it is not about the accidents of life but basic existential existence; his death was not primarily liberation from systemic powers but from sin and sinfulness. Nanos’ response pokes Johnson for inconsistency here since the remaining portions of this chp seem to move in a more social, if not political, direction. He’s not a proponent of the empire theorists today. Salvation does not just rescue but transforms. The language of salvation explores five different metaphors, none of which is sufficient but each of which is adequate and pointing us to the fuller realities of salvation: diplomatic, economic, forensic, cultic, kinship. He sees an inaugurated salvation: here and not fully complete yet. But salvation is social in that it ushers people into the new community. Schreiner’s response calls out Johnson for a lack of attention to the grace of God and to the importance of faith for justification and to Johnson’s emphasis on corporate (not individual) election.

7. Church: the local assembly; mostly Gentile churches; sketches leadership in elders and superintendents and servants… more than a voluntary association but derives from the call of God. Paul dealt with boundaries over against both Gentile/Roman world and Jewish world. Jewish believers follow Torah; Gentiles believers need not. Paul had egalitarian ideas that crashed at times against social realities, and Douglas Campbell thinks Johnson needs to work more on this element of his chp as Campbell thinks the social tensions arise in the non-Pauline letters.

Surprisingly, hardly a thing on eucharist or baptism.


 

A Jesus Theology: "To Love God and Neighbor"

A Jesus Theology is one that continually seeks to "love God" and "love your neighbor". It was Jesus' very broad re-interpretation of the Torah that set the Pharisees and Sadducees on a direct path of conflict with Him. Why? The latter group read the Torah as a set of decrees from God that must be practiced in order to maintain holiness and receive God's blessing. Whereas Jesus said, this is impossible (as was reiterated time-and-again in Paul's letters). We cannot find holiness through obeying God's decrees because those same decrees will show our inability to maintain them. Though commendable, true holiness could only be found in Jesus' Himself... (yet another heresy to Pharisaical ears!).

 

Incredulously, it was the radical Jewish sect, the Essenes (John the Baptist was one), that heard Jesus' interpretation of the Torah and found relief from the law of God in Jesus, who become God's atoning sacrifice for our sin. And it is to Jesus that a Christian looks to today for empowerment and witness, mission and a semblance to all that life brings. Knowing that with Jesus comes God's Kingdom built upon love, sacrifice, and service. Not upon rules and regulations that are unattainable to keep.

 

Thus, to subscribe to a Jesus Theology is to subscribe to Jesus' sublime phrase, "Love God, love your neighbour." Which any good theology should hold at its heart, and commit itself through prayer and practice . And it is this theology that forms the heart and mission of today's postmodern Emergent Theology. A theology that preaches the love of God with the responsibility of man to love one another. This is the baseline definition of an Emergent Christian (and for that matter, any Christian knowing Christ as Savior and Lord).

 

May it then be so observed by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit granted all of God's children through Christ.

 

R.E. Slater

February 6, 2013

 

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Pharisees: Revisiting an Old Problem

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/02/04/pharisees/

 

by Scot McKnight

Feb 4, 2013

Comments

 

Introduction

 

It’s time to revisit the Pharisees, in part because their story needs to be told so we don’t forget. And in part because some like to use the [term] “Pharisee” in ways that concern me. It is a standard procedure to say “Pharisee” and mean “legalist, bigot, hypocrite, or picayune meddler into other people’s religious business.” Look at any dictionary. But this is in and of itself a caricature and stereotype, for no one (I hope) would think that all Pharisees have always been religious bigots. Such language spells danger down the road in ways that might surprise us. Even more, we have tended to download anger or extreme disagreement with others onto this term “Pharisee.” So, when I call someone a Pharisee I do not mean anything nice or even charitable. Which, in and of itself is dangerous because no group (well, there are exceptions) is always wrong and always bad.

 

Martin Luther — and this was all charted out in 1977 in EP Sanders’ Paul and Palestinian Judaism – tended to equate the Roman Catholic establishment with the Pharisees of the Gospels. Everyone should read this book, regardless of all the scuttlebutt about his ideas ever since. The invective of Luther against the Roman Catholics in the 16th Century then was downloaded onto the Pharisees of the New Testament.

 

Here’s the problem: the impact of our use of Pharisee is that we have learned to call all Jews and anyone we think is too conservative a “Pharisee.” This can get very close and often actually is anti-Semitism.

 

Now another point: this kind of rhetoric is what is called “labeling.” To label someone is to put them in a category, or a box, or a corner, and then slap a sticker on their head so we know what to think and how to think about such a person. Labeling is inherently unChristian, and it is what Jesus fought against constantly — and this means we have to see what Jesus meant by “Pharisee” and what he didn’t mean by “Pharisee.”

 

So, I am asking for the many who are still using “Pharisee” in the old-fashioned “religious bigot” sense to be much more careful. I won’t give names, but I’m seeing it on blogs and in books in a way that 15 years ago would have not been the case.

 

A brief look at what Josephus, a 1st Century AD Jewish chronicler, has to say about the Pharisees. Josephus takes two pictures of the Pharisees, one in Bellum Judaicum (=BJ) book 2 (162-4) and one in Jewish Antiquities (=Ant), book 18 (12-15). I’ll limit my comments here, and the goal is for us (1) to have a more accurate view of the Pharisees so we can (2) speak more intelligently and respectfully of this ancient, revered, and respectable form of Judaism.

 

“Jewish philosophy,” he says, “takes three forms… the first school are called Pharisees, of the second Sadducees, of the third Essenes” (BJ 2.119).

 

1. They are considered the “most accurate interpreters of the laws” (BJ 2.162).

 

2. They are the leading sect of the Jews (BJ 2.162) and “extremely influential among the townsfolk” (Ant 18.15).

 

3. They attribute everything to Fate and to God (BJ 2.163; Ant 18.13).

 

4. Proper behavior is mostly human responsibility but partly Fate (BJ 2.163).

 

5. Every soul is imperishable but the soul of the good alone passes into another body while the soul of the wicked suffer eternal punishment, and that there will be rewards or punishments in the afterlife on the basis of behavior (BJ 2.163; Ant 18.14).

 

6. They live simply (Ant 18.12)

 

7. They live according to the commandments that their doctrines teach (Ant 18.12). [No doubt a reference to their concern with teaching and unfolding what the Bible says.]

 

8. They are respectful of elders (Ant 18.12).

 

9. Their influence is great enough that prayers and rites of worship are according to their teachings (Ant 18.15).

 

Now, let’s put this together. According to Josephus, the Pharisees are the most influential sect of the Jews and their first characteristic is that they are devoted to the Torah (Law), to its interpretation, and to living life as closely as possible according to the Torah. They believe in a cooperation between Fate (his Greek-sounding category for God’s sovereignty) and human will, but clearly lay emphasis on human will.

 

 

A few more ideas from Josephus:

 

At various points in history they had more power than at others, but that they wanted to be in charge. (Neusner said they moved from “politics to piety.”) Neusner’s theory is less persuasive today, and most adhere to a more moderate position: the Pharisees had power at times, but wanted it most of the time, but never significantly withdrew from society to form table fellowship groups. Which means their “influence” is probably overrated by Josephus: sometimes, yes; othertimes, not so much.

 

When it comes to Torah obedience, the Pharisees were “democratizers” in the sense that they tried to make the Torah practicable for all (by interpreting and applying it). The Sadducees focused more the priestly obligations to the Torah. The Essenes were more rigorous and sectarian in their interpretation and practice of the Torah. Which means, in pretty stereotypical and simplistic terms, the Pharisees were the “liberals,” the Sadducees the “conservatives,” and the Essenes the “radicals.”

 

The Pharisees passed on their teachings from generation to generation through an oral tradition. (Everyone did this; there was no other way; they didn’t codify and write these traditions down until the 3-4th Century AD, in the Mishnah and the Tosefta, and then a century or two later, in the Talmuds.) See Ant 13.297.

 

They followed the food laws and purity laws in the Torah, but it is unlikely they were as strict as the priests in the Temple. They washed their hands ceremoniously before they ate. They weren’t that far from the Zealots in essential beliefs and practices. (Many have suggested that the Zealots are an extreme form of Pharisaism.) They conflicted with the Sadducees sometimes over Temple regulations. It is likely that they formed associations with one another; that they ate with another and followed their customs when they did; that they frowned upon eating with those who flaunted the normal eating customs of the Jews.

 

 

Now to Jesus, and some highlights of what Jesus says about the Pharisees.

 

Gospel evidence, tilted as it is toward [the Pharisee's] their conflict with Jesus, and that “tilt” means we tend to lean with the tilt so we see all Pharisees as they are presented in the Gospels, which as I say, has some clear (negative, labeling) tilt.

 

1. Pharisees, with others, opposed John and Jesus for their kingdom ministry (Matt 3:7).

 

2. Pharisees had a “righteousness” that Jesus said was inadequate (Matt 5:20).

 

3. Pharisees opposed Jesus and his followers for eating with the wrong sorts (Matt 9:11).

 

4. Pharisees had a different fasting routine (Matt 9:14).

 

5. Pharisees accused Jesus of exorcising demons in allegiance with Satan (Matt 9:34).

 

6. Pharisees opposed Jesus and his followers for their sabbath practices (Matt 12:2).

 

7. Pharisees wanted Jesus to attest to his vocation with a sign (Matt 12:38).

 

8. Pharisees opposed Jesus and his followers for their lack of handwashing before meals (Mt 15:1-20).

 

9. Pharisees taught things Jesus thought were contrary to God’s will (Matt 16:6, 12).

 

10. Pharisees tested Jesus’ “theology”/”practice” on divorce (Matt 19:3).

 

11. Pharisees wanted Jesus put away (Matt 22:15) and Jesus knew it (Matt 21:33-45).

 

12. Pharisees were accused of hypocrisy by Jesus (Matt 23).

 

13. Pharisees are nearly absent in the trial scenes of Jesus. [They did not have the power to put him to death.]

 

 

Here are some global observations:

 

1. Pharisees were focused on the whole Bible (Torah), its interpretation and practice. This is why Paul says in Phil 3:5: “as to the law, a Pharisee.” To say one was a Pharisee was to make a claim on a certain kind of interpretation of the Torah.

 

2. Pharisees opposed different interpretations and practices of the Torah, and this led them into conflict with John, with Jesus, with Jesus’ followers, and with others who differed from them (like the Sadducees).

 

3. Pharisees were specific and careful in their interpretive practices, and they apparently passed on their interpretations to one another (and anyone who cared to listen and know) by word of mouth and argumentation.

 

4. Pharisees thought they were right in their interpretations.

 

So, here is a thumbnail definition of the Pharisees: “a Torah movement (group) deeply devoted to knowing, interpreting, and applying the whole Torah to the life of Israel in order to restore the fortunes of Israel.”

 

(Now this last part, “in order to…”, I have added because I’m sure they had some sort of purpose in wanting everyone to live according to the Torah. This is not my view; it is standard, even if not held by all scholars.)

 

Jesus and the Pharisees got into it with one another at a deep, deep level because: (1) both were committed to the revelation of God in the Torah, but (2) they differed radically on how to interpret that Torah.

 

Let this be clear, though: they did not differ that it was the Word of God, they did not differ on the importance of Abraham, Moses, David or the Prophets. They differed, and you will know this if you know about The Jesus Creed, because Jesus thought the Torah should be interpreted in light of Deut 6:4-9 and Leviticus 19:18 (Love God, Love others). It is simplistic to talk like this, but it is essentially on target to say that Jesus thought the Torah was about loving God and loving others, and the Pharisees saw the Torah more as a comprehensive listing of God’s will.

 

(Let me back down a bit: the Pharisees did dispute about what was the most important commandment and the like, but when it comes down to it — and you can see this in Josephus, in the Gospels, and in the Mishnah/rabbinic traditions — they saw the Torah as a comprehensive treasure trove of God’s will, while Jesus thought that treasure trove was to be approached through the Jesus Creed itself.)

So, what they of the charge of hypocrisy?

 

Five observations, leading to a summary definition of what Matthew (Jesus) meant by “hypocrisy.”

 

 

Hypocrisy is…

 

1. Inconsistency between what one teaches and what one does (23:3-4)

 

2. Desire for prestige and power and congratulation (23:5-12)

 

3. Abuse of teaching authority through both false teachings and false practices (23:13, 15, 16-22, 23-24, 25-26, 27-28).

 

4. Overconcern with minutiae and lack of focus on the major issues (23:23-24, 25-26, 27-28): that is, moral myopia [("limited sight, a narrow vision of field, nearly to blindness") - res].

 

5. Inconsistency between appearance and practice (23:27-28).

 

Put together, Jesus accuses the Pharisees for “hypocrisy” because they had abused their teaching authority by teaching false things, not living according to what they taught, and for the desire for power. In addition, their teaching was a focus on minor issues to the neglect of major issues.

 

To be “hypocrite” is to be a false teacher who leads both self and others astray from the will of God. The term should not be limited to “contradiction between appearance and reality.”

 

Should we call anyone “Pharisee”? Be careful, that’s my rule. Think historically, my second rule. If some insist on finding contemporary counterparts to the 1st Century Pharisees, here are more suggestions:

 

First, use it only for those who are committed to the Torah as a comprehensive explanation for the will of God. (In this sense, it is pretty hard to use for any Christian.)

 

Second, use it only for those who through the abuse of their teaching authority are leading people astray. (In this sense, it is fit most for heretics.)

 

Third, never use it as a synonym for “Jews,” “Judaism,” or any other generic Jewish group. It refers only to one group of Jews, and that group eventually morphed into the rabbis but that morphing involved major shifts and moves. [Overall, consider it a highly offensive term - esp. to a Jew. - res]

 

In 1907, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, said, “We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.” There you have a quintessentially view of a Pharisee, someone who both believes in the Torah and who believes its meaning is determined by its interpretive tradition.

 

On the other hand, a Sadducee would simply say, to use Chief Hughes’ terms, “We are under a Constitution.” We don’t need an interpretive tradition for we need only to seek out the original intent.

 

Pharisees were judicial activists; Sadducees were judicial conservationists. Now stick this in your pipe for a puff: Jesus was more critical of the liberals than the conservatives! And I’m willing to bet money that most think Jesus was opposing the conservatives when he took a swat at the Pharisees. Or did Jesus think they weren’t liberal enough or for those who didn’t get their liberalism right? Precisely.

 

Consequently, the Pharisees built up a body of interpretive tradition, which today is called the Mishnah and the Tosefta, with an even larger body of anecdotal reflection in the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud.

 

At the time of Jesus, this interpretive tradition was merely oral tradition, but it carried the day. So, this permits us to see the Pharisees as those who both believed in the Torah but who knew it needed interpretation, applications, and it needed to do so along careful lines of thought and procedure.