Tim Gombis - The Paul We Think We Know

The Paul We Think We Know

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/july/paulwethink.html

How [Paul's] 21st-century evangelical makeover distorts the New Testament reality.

by Timothy Gombis

posted July 22, 2011

Evangelicals feel a special connection with the apostle Paul. We shape our theology according to his thought, imitate his mission to evangelize, and pursue discipleship after his devotional practices. But our vision of him is loaded with misconceptions. Have we become more Pauline than Paul himself?

Last April in Christianity Today, Scot McKnight profiled "The Jesus We'll Never Know," describing the tendency of New Testament scholars to create a historical Jesus in their own image. We do the same with the great apostle. Like gazing into a mirror, we easily see our own reflections when we look at Paul.

Intense debates in Pauline studies over the past three decades have yielded fresh insights into Paul's thought and corrected some mistaken assumptions. If we want to be truly Pauline, we will have to take stock of these findings. Let us examine two longstanding misconceptions that have not held up under recent scrutiny, and then note one further way in which we tend to impose our evangelical values upon this apostle of Jesus Christ.


Salvation to the Jews

The misconception about Paul with the longest historical pedigree is that he was anti-Jewish. Many imagine that after his Damascus Road experience, Paul immediately rejected Judaism and embraced Christianity. They assume that in the first century these were two clearly distinguishable religions. Before his encounter with Christ, the thinking goes, Paul was wrapped up in a legalistic pursuit of salvation and was teaching others a similar philosophy. So great was his passion that he persecuted the Christians who taught salvation by grace through faith. After his conversion, everything changed. He embraced God's gracious salvation by faith in Christ and rejected the system of dead rituals bound up in Judaism. Paul left Judaism, therefore, and turned to Christianity.

If we encountered Paul today, he would not be the strong and decisive leader we often imagine. In fact, many of our contemporary churches would hardly consider him a viable pastoral candidate.

This account of Paul thrives among evangelicals because it resonates with many who come from legalistic environments. We narrate our testimonies as a movement from guilt to grace, from enslaving oppression to freedom in Christ. We assume, therefore, that Paul's journey mirrors ours. This view also shapes much of our preaching. Eager to let the glorious light of the gospel shine brightly, evangelicals set it against the dark backdrop of Judaism as a religion of works righteousness.

This scenario, while familiar, is deeply mistaken in at least three ways. First, it represents a faulty vision of Judaism in Paul's day. E. P. Sanders's seminal book, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, was the catalyst for much of the intense debate over the past three decades in Pauline studies. Until its publication in 1977, the sharp contrast between Paul and his Jewish heritage dominated scholarship. Sanders's work gave scholars an entirely new appreciation of first-century Judaism, opening up afresh the world of Jesus and his first followers. We now have to realize that Paul's past wasn't ruled by simple legalism.

Because of this "new perspective," scholars now recognize that Paul would not have regarded Judaism as legalistic. They point to Jewish texts that stress the absolute need of divine grace for salvation. The Community Rule, a document from the Dead Sea Scrolls, contains the following:

As for me, I belong to wicked mankind, to the company of ungodly flesh. My iniquities, rebellions, and sins, together with the perversity of my heart, belong to the company of worms and to those who walk in darkness. For mankind has no way, and man is unable to establish his steps since justification is with God and perfection of way is out of his hand.

A Multi-Ethnic Problem

The problem in the early church, therefore, was not the temptation toward legalistic works righteousness. They faced the communal challenge of incorporating non-Jewish converts into the historically Jewish people of God. First-century Judaism didn't have a legalism problem; it had an ethnocentrism problem. The first followers of Jesus were all Jewish, and had difficulty imagining that the God of Israel who sent Jesus Christ as their Savior could possibly save non-Jews without requiring them to convert to Judaism. This is the issue in Acts 15, when Christian Jews from Judea urged the Gentiles in Antioch, "Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved" (Acts 15:1).

While the early church leaders decided in theory that non-Jewish believers in Jesus were not required to become Jews (Acts 15:13-21), many churches struggled with the practical challenges of becoming healthy multiethnic communities. Paul, as pastor and theologian, addresses these challenges by claiming that "no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by the works of the law" (Rom. 3:20). This is not a condemnation of Judaism as inherently legalistic, but an affirmation that God does not justify a person merely because he is ethnically Jewish. Jews and non-Jews approach God on equal terms when it comes to salvation. All have sinned and all stand in need of God's redeeming grace in Christ (Rom. 3:23-24). Therefore all who are in Christ are equal siblings in God's new family (Gal. 3:26-28).

No Difference Between Jew or Greek

A second reason why we cannot envision Paul as anti-Jewish is that even after his conversion, Paul remained a Jew. He did not imagine that he was inventing a new religion, nor did he leave Judaism to join the Christian church. At the end of his third missionary journey, Paul arrived in Jerusalem and, at the suggestion of James, went through purification rituals at the temple (Acts 21:23-26). Paul saw no contradiction at all between his commitment to Christ and his faithful participation in Jewish practices. Explaining his ministry before a variety of audiences, Paul emphasized his Jewish identity and claimed to be acting in faithfulness to the God of Israel. Before the Jewish Council in Jerusalem, he declared, "My brothers, I am a Pharisee, descended from Pharisees. I stand on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead!" (Acts 23:6, emphasis added). And to King Agrippa, he again claims to be a Pharisee whose hope is in the promises of God to Israel (Acts 26:4-6).

A Call to Jews To Accept Jesus and All Gentile Christians

Third, Paul never calls upon Jews to reject Judaism. Instead, he exhorts them to recognize Jesus as their Messiah and welcome his non-Jewish followers as siblings in God's new family. We get a glimpse of his preaching to Jews in Acts 17:1-3: "When Paul and his companions had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue. As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. 'This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah,' he said."

The Paul of the New Testament, therefore, is not anti-Jewish. He was faithful both to the Scriptures and to his Jewish heritage. He preached Jesus as the promised Messiah of Israel, but was insistent that salvation in Christ was not limited to ethnic Jews. According to his gospel, all Jews needed to receive Jesus as Messiah, and all followers of Jesus—Jewish and non-Jewish—needed to embrace one another as siblings in God's global family in Christ.

Preaching the Kingdom

Evangelicals typically regard Paul as focusing on believers' private spirituality to the relative neglect of the church's communal character and social dynamics. This is quite different from the preaching of Jesus, who proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom. He announced the arrival of the reign of God, calling for repentance and the renewal of corporate behaviors.

Paul, on the other hand, preached that God is saving individuals, taking up residence in their hearts, and giving them a heavenly destiny. His vision of the Christian life is one in which believers cultivate inner piety and practice private devotion.

This view of Paul is reinforced by our pietistic heritage and our individualistic culture. More recently, however, evangelicals have been awakening to the primacy of the church and its related corporate practices. New Testament scholars have also begun to note a greater continuity between the preaching of Jesus and that of Paul. Far from focusing on privatized piety, the apostle's conception of salvation concerns the arrival of the kingdom of God—a fundamentally communal reality.

According to Luke, God's reign was the dominant subject of Paul's preaching. He ends Acts with these words: "For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. He proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ—with all boldness and without hindrance!" (Acts 28:30-31). Referring to everyone in Christ, Paul says that God has "rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves" (Col. 1:13).

In his highly influential work on Ephesians, God's New Society, John Stott sums up Paul's community-oriented gospel:

One of our chief evangelical blind spots has been to overlook the central importance of the church. We tend to proclaim individual salvation without moving on to the saved COMMUNITY. We emphasize that Christ died for us "to redeem us from all iniquity" rather than "to purify for himself  A PEOPLE of his own." We think of ourselves more as "Christians" than as "churchmen," and our message is more good news of a new life than of a NEW SOCIETY. Nobody can emerge from a careful reading of Paul's letter to the Ephesians with a privatized gospel.

Paul does not, then, view salvation in individualistic terms apart from the arrival of God's kingdom in the church. As individuals, we have been saved for life-giving relationships within kingdom-of-God-communities, not merely for privatized walks with Jesus. We become our true selves only in community, exercising our gifts and learning to receive the gifts of others. Paul's vision for the church includes the renewed social practices of forgiving and being forgiven, reconciling formerly alienated individuals and communities, learning to speak words of grace and kindness, practicing justice, and absorbing loss rather than taking vengeance for wrongs suffered. Social practices such as these suffer from neglect in our culture, especially when we orient ourselves by individualized and internalized conceptions of being [solitary] Christian.

Evangelicals have done well to emphasize personal commitment to Christ, but we must take care to regard discipleship as the practice of transformative habits set within communities of renewal empowered by God's Spirit. Central to Paul's conception of salvation is "the church of God, which he bought with his own blood" (Acts 20:28).

Leading Counter-Culturally

Evangelicals place a high priority on leadership, perhaps because historically our movement has been carried along by strong leaders. The great figures in our heritage have been powerful speakers and compelling visionaries, many of whom have built colleges, seminaries, and, in some cases, entire denominations. These are also the traits we want to see in our pastors.

Thus we intuitively assume that Paul was someone just like this. We think he must have been a compelling figure, a charismatic and decisive leader, and a powerful speaker. From the moment of conversion, he immediately put his great abilities to work for Christ, taking over the leadership of the church and becoming its powerful spokesperson.

When we look at the evidence from the New Testament, however, we find a very different picture. Surprisingly, Paul was not a captivating speaker. He was aware of the Corinthians' criticisms of his preaching: "For some say, 'His letters are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive and his speaking amounts to nothing'" (2 Cor. 10:10). Just like these early believers, we find his letters rhetorically compelling. But we would be wrong to assume his preaching had the same effect.

Even more surprisingly, Paul doesn't apologize for his unimpressive personal presence. On the contrary, he seems to think it makes him even more fit to be a vessel for God's honor. He reveals his theological reasoning in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5:

And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God's power.

Paul knew the Corinthians' commitment would soon flounder if it rested on nothing sturdier than attraction to a winsome personality. Addressing them in frailty and humility, he ensured that the messenger would not overshadow the message of Christ crucified.

Paul saw no contradiction at all between his commitment to Christ and his faithful participation in Jewish practices.

Add to Paul's pedestrian oratory a physical appearance that must have been quite unpleasant. In Acts 14:19-20, we read that Paul's ministry in Lystra came to a terrible end when volatile crowds were incited to stone him and drag him from the city, "thinking he was dead." Let this description work on your imagination for a moment: A bloodthirsty, riotous horde brutalizes Paul so badly that any chance of survival is dismissed. He must have been in horrible shape.

The Book of Galatians offers clues about what Paul looked like. Just after the episode in Lystra, Paul likely visited the Galatian churches, reporting that his physical condition "was a trial" to them (Gal. 4:13-14). He knew he looked repulsive and suspected that the sight of his injuries would turn stomachs. Of his scars and bruises, he says, "I bear on my body the marks of Jesus" (Gal. 6:17), and he writes elsewhere of his tremendous sufferings, including torture and beatings. The Acts of Paul and Thecla, an apocryphal text from the second century, states that Paul was "a man small in size, bald-headed, bow-legged, stocky with eyebrows meeting, rather long-nosed."

If we encountered Paul today, we might be disappointed to find someone quite unlike the strong and decisive leader we often imagine. In fact, many of our contemporary churches would hardly consider him a viable pastoral candidate. In this regard, as in so many others, the New Testament evidence resists efforts to re-create Paul in our own image.

Timothy Gombis is associate professor of New Testament at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary and the author of Paul: A Guide for the Perplexed (TandT Clark).

Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere

Paul: A Guide for the Perplexed (T&T Clark) is available at Barnes & Noble and other book retailers.

Additional Christianity Today coverage of the life of Paul includes:

Jesus vs. Paul | Many biblical scholars have noted that Jesus preached almost exclusively about the kingdom of heaven, while Paul highlighted justification by faith—and not vice versa. What gives? (December 3, 2010)

The Apostle of the Golden Age | Classics scholar Sarah Ruden says extraordinary things happen when you read Paul alongside other ancient literature. (September 22, 2010)

What Did Paul Really Mean? | 'New Perspective' scholars argue that we need, well, a new perspective on justification by faith. (August 10, 2007)

Paul's Tomb Reportedly Discovered | Vatican archaeologist: Paul really is buried where the church said he is (Apr. 13, 2005)

Apostle Paul's Shipwreck Makes Headlines | Former U.S. ambassador tries to block book on search (May 2003)

The Women in Paul's Life | Two competing Bibles for women highlight the human component of Bible translation and interpretation. (October 27, 1997)

The Apostle Paul and His Times: Did You Know? | Little-known and remarkable facts about Paul and his times. (July 1, 1995)

The Role of Freelance Theologians

The state of theology and the role of freelance theologians

http://www.postost.net/2011/07/state-theology-role-freelance-theologians

by Andrew Perriman

Friday 22 July 2011

• Post-Christendom

James K.A. Smith, who stayed in our house in the Hague with his family a few years back, wrote last week about the state of contemporary theology, complaining in particular about the “balkanization” of professional theology today. He attributes this—in part, at least—to a shift in the way theologians identify themselves. Traditionally theological identity was determined by denominational allegiance: Reformed, Roman Catholic, Lutheran. Now theologians appear to have developed a taste for more abstract and theory-laden labelling: “ecclesio-centric”, “apocalyptic”, “radically orthodox”.

Jamie attributes this development to an “ecumenical” theological education, exacerbated, naturally, by the blogosphere, and he is not happy about it. It’s unhealthy.

I also think this state of the field is a by-product of the fact that many up-and-coming theologians right now are not what we used to call “churchmen” in any strong sense (“churchwomen” included): they are not tied to denominational identities, they are not participants in the specifics of ecclesiastical governance/teaching, they are not subject to ecclesial magisteria of any sort, they are not aspiring to chairs in their denominational seminaries, etc. From where I sit, freelancing does not seem very conducive to healthy theologizing.

So he argues, instead, for an old-fashioned, broad or “thick” confessionalism. It doesn’t have to be true, necessarily, but it has to be “good”, or at least “good enough”. He regards his own Christian Reformed identity not as a “recipe for sectarianism” but as something that frees him up to “engage selectively, critically, and generously”. I can see what he’s getting at, but I’m not entirely convinced by the argument for the following reasons:

• I can see how an “ecumenical” theological education may undermine traditional commitments, but how is the new “balkanization” any worse than the old “balkanization” driven by denominational commitments? Arguably, it’s a lot better.
• The denominational categories keep us firmly within the Christendom paradigm. They reflect the patterns, preoccupations and prejudices of historically determined debates. If theological activity has to be partitioned (I guess it’s unavoidable and probably not a bad thing) I think that it is well worth testing new ways of mapping the landscape—ideally ways that follow the contours of scripture better.
• It ought to be much easier to let go of theoretical identities than denominational identities. If the new partitions are the product of a more ecumenical education, then we might hope that they will preserve something of this spirit of ecumenism. The institutional and cultural containers of our theologizing are much too rigid.
• The sort of abstract theoretical commitments that Jamie is wary of cut across denominational boundaries and must to some extent mitigate the controlling force of denominational allegiances and politics.

But what prompted me, in the first place, to write this piece was Jamie’s dismissal of freelance theologizing, which I take rather personally. Freelance theologizing is what I do. I have an M.Phil and a PhD in theology. I have a loose but invaluable relationship with a non-denominational theological college in the UK and with a cautiously progressive US-based church-planting organization. I have always been strongly committed to diverse evangelical churches wherever we have lived, from Chinese Baptist to francophone African, from Anglican to Reformed Church of America, from restrained seeker-sensitive to romping charismatic. But I would not know what “thick” confessional location to plant myself in. I think of myself currently as a sort of post-Christendom, post-modern evangelical, but what does that mean?

While I understand the appeal of a centred approach to theological study, my view is that there is a real need for decentred theologians to challenge the massive consensuses that still set the agenda for western English-language theology. The blogosphere is an anarchic and promiscuous place, but it provides an important counter-medium for an exploratory, conversational, non-conformist mode of theological thought that may prove critical for the future of the people of God.

That said, Jamie is right to be concerned about a loss of collective responsibility in the shift from denominational to theoretical classification of theological positions. A “radical orthodox” or “apocalyptic” or “New Perspective” theologian has no clear constituency to support or be supported by; there is no underpinning ecclesiology; the danger of narcissism is apparent; and the connection between theology and what is traditionally called “discipleship” is greatly weakened.

But the answer, in my view is not to revert to traditional denominational categories but to seek to forge new collective identities, a new ecclesiology, a new sense of what it means to be in continuity with the biblical narrative in the aftermath of the collapse of the Christendom model. No matter how far outside the traditional boxes we find ourselves in our search for a way forward, we still have to confess. We are still part of the story. We still have to affirm the vocation of a people called originally in Abraham to be new creation. We still have to have do theology for the sake of the future of the people of God.

What is Theology?

Why we do not need theology

http://www.postost.net/2011/07/why-we-do-not-need-theology

by Andrew Perriman

Tuesday 26 July 2011

• Hermeneutics and narrative

 

Is the Bible a collection of historical texts stuck in the past? Is it a sacred text that transcends and overrules its historical origins? Or do we somehow have to hold these two perspectives in tension?

 

By and large, (1) historical-critical approaches to biblical interpretation assume the first perspective; (2) popular faith-motivated approaches assume the second. (3) Modern evangelical scholarship, meanwhile, generally wants to have its cake and eat it, holding out for some version of the third position: first, we establish what the text once meant; then we consider what it now means. But this is a rather unstable and perhaps even spurious compromise, and the Bible remains at the centre of a strenuous tug-of-war between the historians and the theologians.

 

One of those pulling hard for the theologians is Joel Green. In Seized by Truth: Reading the Bible as Scripture he observes that, following the postmodern shift, we have come to regard all knowledge as “historically grounded”, and he asks how this recognition impinges upon biblical studies.

It has led to the assumption that the only viable history within which to construe the meaning of biblical texts is the history within which those texts were generated—or the history to which those texts give witness. The results for Christian theology and preaching have often been disastrous, since it is difficult to construe the meaning for contemporary times of a biblical text whose meaning properly belongs to an ancient time. (1)

This is the central problem posed by a historical hermeneutic: if biblical meaning properly belongs to an ancient past, of what use is it for us today? Biblical truth becomes nothing more than an assortment of corroded artefacts—primitive tools, crude items of jewellery, roughly shaped dishes—dug from an ancient site. We might display them in a museum, with explanatory notices for the benefit of visitors. They are remarkable items. But we would not dream of making everyday use of them.

This is rightly intolerable to evangelicals—indeed, to anyone who wants to believe that the Bible is formative for the people of God today.

Green’s solution will be to prioritize theology over history, to construe the historical texts theologically as transcendent scripture—that much can be inferred from the title of the book. The problem with this approach is that inevitably the historical voice will be distorted or suppressed, and the Bible will be made to say things that it does not want to say. The ancient artefacts will be discreetly replaced with cheap shiny replicas which won’t look out of place in the modern household—the sort of stuff that you buy in the gift shop on the way out of the museum.

I think this is a mistake and ultimately a betrayal of the Bible as scripture. My view is that we do not need to wrap the Bible in a modern user-friendly “theology” in order for it to have practical value for the church. What makes the Bible meaningful for us, what makes it scripture, is not that universally applicable moral and religious truths can be extracted from it—though undoubtedly some can—but that it establishes a narrative trajectory. It points in a certain direction.

The New Testament points the early redeemed church in the direction of vindication—first with respect to apostate Judaism, secondly with respect to European paganism. If we step back a bit, I think we then see how the Bible as a whole points the people of God always towards the prospect of new creation, of which it is both a concrete embodiment and a prophetic sign.

But this narrative trajectory—this pointing—can be thoroughly described without introducing a ‘disastrous’ schism between theology and history. In scripture theology is grounded historically; [and] history [can be] interpreted theologically. This is why prophecy is such a critical component in biblical discourse—it is the realistic theological interpretation of historical events, past, present, and future. [prophecy = theology]

(1) Joel B. Green, Seized by Truth: Reading the Bible as Scripture, Abingdon Press, 2007, 14-15.

Recovering Theological Perspective Through Narrative

New Perspective and Reformed theologies at a crossroads

http://www.postost.net/2010/11/new-perspective-reformed-theologies-crossroads

by Andrew Perriman

Tuesday 09 November 2010

• Campbell, Deliverance of God
• Hermeneutics and narrative
• New Perspective

Weighing down God's Word
with our Presuppositions

Jim Hoag has a couple of pertinent questions about my “Postconservative evangelicalism and beyond” post—pertinent, in fact, to the point that he makes me wonder whether the piece had much in the way of substance to it at all. The first question has to do with what we understand by the “New Perspective”, the second with my nifty but perhaps vacuous metaphor of a narrative-historical hermeneutics cutting across the “dominant paradigms of modern theology at ninety degrees”.

The New Perspective—associated principally with writers such as Sanders, Dunn, Hays, and Wright—is a rather loose category that is going to mean different things to different people. It is also a work in progress. It started out largely as an attempt to correct the very negative presentation of Judaism as a religion of legalistic works-righteousness that has held sway over much New Testament interpretation and theology. But since this was essentially a historical correction, it has given a powerful impetus more broadly to research into the historical setting and scope of Paul’s argumentation. In effect, it has done for Paul what successive quests for the historical Jesus have done for Jesus.

I would place recent imperial-critical research (Crossan, Horsley, Lopez) in this trajectory, though it has a habit of going off at a tangent; and my own argument in The Future of the People of God is that Paul’s thought in Romans is governed by a forward-looking narrative about the place of the emerging churches of the nations in a troubled process that effectively culminated in the victory of Christ over the gods and powers of the Greek-Roman world.

Douglas Campbell has some excellent things to say regarding how the “superstructure” of a theological theory (such as Justification theory) may distort or overwhelm the reading of the “base”—the primary texts—on which it was originally constructed. The poor donkey of scripture gets overloaded with a weight of self-substantiating theory that it simply cannot sustain.

We have seen that in the case of a scripturally constructed and authenticated explanation the reading is prior and fundamental; it generates and then supports the explanation as base to superstructure.

The images below are tarted up versions of Campbell’s diagrams (238). In the first one the base of the texts properly supports the superstructure of theory—Campbell is careful not to pretend that we can dispense with “theology”.

But the theory—the superstructure—proceeds to take on a life of its own:

But the resulting theory, once established, possesses its own integrity and coherence…, to the point that it is largely detachable from its underlying texts.

Then, of course, what happens is that for all sorts of complex sociological and historical reasons the theory comes increasingly to “intrude prematurely into the act of reading that supposedly undergirds it” (The Deliverance of God, 237, Campbell’s emphasis)—quite understandable, but “epistemologically disastrous”. Campbell then goes on to describe how “Any illegitimate epistemological causality flowing from the superstructure to the base may be cloaked in a variety ways” (238)—a covert art that we are all remarkably adept at.

So in this second picture the epistemological current has been reversed: the theoretical superstructure, which I have taken the liberty of enlarging to indicate its oppressive function, controls the reading of the base texts, with potentially distorting effect.

So when I suggested that the “New Perspective offers us the best chance of ensuring that in the process we remain loyal to scripture”, what I had in mind was its capacity to swim against the current of an ‘illegitimate epistemological causality”—to resist the distorting effect generated by the sociological success of currently dominant paradigms.

The slightly fuzzy New Perspective topples the bullying theological theory and lets scripture speak with its own voice again (this is purely my contribution to the schematics):

The question will then be whether a constructive and credible tension can be maintained between an appropriate historical-critical methodology and an authentically and potently evangelical commitment. I am confident that it can.

My way of dealing with this challenge would be to foreground the narrative structure of New Testament thought, as the locus at which history, literature and theological argumentation converge. A narrative-historical methodology makes us ask different questions; it pushes context into view; it forestalls theological precommitments; it makes the text strange again; it safeguards the contingent dimensions of the texts; it identifies real and urgent rather than remote and speculative concerns; it grounds language in corporate experience; it has an ear for scriptural and cultural resonances; and so on…

The theology that emerges from this hermeneutical realignment ought to retain a narrative shape and momentum. It will have a diachronic structure—theology as an active, critical, prophetic, hopeful engagement with historical realities in the light of earlier moment in the story. That is a very different model to the largely synchronic function of systematic, conceptually organized, modern theologies (Calvinism, Arminianism, modern evangelicalism, etc.) which, as Campbell points out, effectively pre-empt biblical interpretation. The metaphor of narrative-historical interpretation at ninety degrees to the traditional paradigm attempts to capture that realignment, which of course is just another metaphor, maybe just the same metaphor, for this complex hermeneutical shift—and so it goes on.

My own view is that modern theological paradigms cannot in the long run survive the emerging critique—I think the phrase “vindication of an eschatological community through faithfulness” simply gets at the core of Paul’s argument in Romans much more accurately than the Reformation axiom about the justification of lost individuals by faith. But it will certainly be a long run, and there is no reason in principle (practice is always another matter) why the transition should not proceed by way of dialogue rather than conflict and schism.

The Emerging Church and the New Perspective

The Great Convergence:

The Emerging Church and the New Perspective
http://www.postost.net/2011/03/great-convergence-emerging-church-new-perspective

 

by Andrew Perriman

Thursday 03 March 2011

• Emerging church
• New Perspective

Two major developments, very broadly speaking, have impacted modern Western evangelicalism over the last decade. With regard to praxis the emerging church movement has challenged traditional patterns of church life and mission and has set out—in more or less experimental fashion—new, fresh, innovative, down-to-earth, enterprising, risk-taking, controversial, incarnational, and, of course, missional ways of being church. With regard to theory the New Perspective has challenged the traditional rationalized presentation of evangelical beliefs, arguing that New Testament theology is a fast flowing river cutting through the landscape of a particular history, not a vast undifferentiated, universal flood covering the whole plain of human existence. The New Testament is not an allegory of personal salvation. It is the complex account of the crisis of first-century Judaism and the painful struggle to bring about the renewal of the people of God. Theology needs to be recontextualized.

What these two developments signal, in my view, is the demise of a modern evangelicalism for which “church” is merely the slow and pointless accumulation of saved souls, and scripture just a massive, dense and largely impenetrable way of saying that God so loves you (singular) that he gave his only Son.

The New Perspective is a work in progress, but it has the power, I think, over time to generate a new, robust, realistic, and profoundly biblical evangelical identity, in credible continuity with the narrative of the New Testament.

The emerging movement has been a messy and at times incoherent attempt to liberate people from the claustrophobic mindset of the modern church, but it has changed the rules of engagement for many believers and many communities. It has demonstrated that church in the aftermath of the collapse of Christendom must adjust to marginalization, must find ways to develop an authentic sense of community, must develop habits of cultural, moral and intellectual integrity, must discover in itself the power of the creative Spirit, must concretely and practically embody the compassion and justice of God, must learn to tell a publicly significant story, must become an incarnating presence in the world rather than a programmed absence….

These two developments need each other. Despite the endeavours of popularizing scholars such as N.T. Wright and Scot McKnight, the New Perspective remains largely confined to the academic sphere, a matter of difficult abstractions concerning Judaism and justification. We are only slowly beginning to grasp the revolutionary—and re-invigorating—implications of its shift in outlook for teaching and formation in church communities. The emerging movement, on the other hand, has suffered from a lack of theological clarity and direction, and to my mind would benefit greatly from engaging constructively with the New Perspective.

This has all been a great oversimplification, but in my more optimistic moments I imagine that the future of the people of God after Christendom lies not with the reactionary neo-Reformed folks, for all their good intentions, but in the convergence of these two powerfully creative forces. There, I said it.

Is There Still Room for A Thinking Christian?

How to Think As A Christian...
A Slippery Slope … or A Two Way Street?

http://musingsonscience.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/a-slippery-slope-or-a-two-way-street/#more-741

by rjs5

posted July 21, 2011

I am still in the throes of paper writing, proposal writing, and travel … so haven’t had time to get back to Joel Green or C. John Collins. These will come, both Green’s chapter on resurrection and Collins on Adam and Eve. Today though I would like to pose a question – with a link and quote from Roger Olson’s blog. On a recent post Dr. Olson wrote about a letter he received from one who had read his book Reformed and Always Reforming: The Postconservative Approach to Evangelical Theology.

This letter was a note of thanks for the influence the book had on the writer.

In his post about this letter Dr. Olson asks Do people ever go from liberal to evangelical? At one level the answer of course is yes – we all know people who came to faith, and did so from more liberal backgrounds. A better question might be this – can one raised or trained in conservative theology, even fundamentalism, find faith and peace when they begin to ask questions, explore options and look with open eyes? Again the answer is yes … but it isn’t always easy. Different people take different paths. Some find a conservative faith most convincing. Others don’t.

A comment on a recent post I wish I hadn’t said that tells a far too common story.

• I used to be a Christian. First evangelical Baptist, then liberal Mennonite. Now happily atheist / naturalist / humanist (pick a label).

• I remember thinking, very explicitly, when I was 15 (I’d just read something by Josh McDowell or Lee Strobel), that I knew too much not to be a Christian. In retrospect, that thought is very funny to me.

• I also had a pastor who said “follow the evidence wherever it leads.” I did.

I will return to Dr. Olson’s post and the letter he received below, but the question I would like to focus on today is the difference between the experience of the the commenter above and the letter writer.

What can be done to change this kind of story – or make it less frequent?

What can the church do? Where do we fail?

Follow the evidence wherever it leads is dangerous advice, without competent guides and thoughtful community. We are not meant to stand or reason alone. Joel Green in exploring the relationship between the Bible, neuroscience and conversion notes that relationships and community are important in moral formation and transformation. These relationships and interactions shape who we are and help form us a Christians. It isn’t the power of God and of the Spirit OR community but the power of God and the Holy Spirit through and in Christian community.

The young man who wrote to Dr. Olson found his faith fading as he read liberal theology such as “Tillich, Bultmann, Hick”, and the gospels with these new insights and ideas. But people and community made a difference.

It was after this I had a most marvellous evening at my cell group: the curate … introduced me to the work of two people who would go on to change my spiritual life, who I thank God for every day. The first was Rob Bell: in watching the Nooma DVD ‘Sunday’ (go to link: http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/10/rob-bell-nooma-004-sunday.html), I felt a strange sense of life, that there WAS hope for Evangelicalism still.

After talking to the curate about this video, about how impressed I was, he went into his study and brought out a semi-slim book: Reformed and Always Reforming. … Nonetheless, something stirred within me – it was as if I could be an Evangelical AND STILL be an imaginative thinker; I had a brief image of what it may be to truly be theologically Evangelical, and yet not ignore the insights of all the thinkers I was reading.

Many of us can tell stories similar to this. I’ve never really read Tillich, Bultmann or Hick (I don’t even know who the last is) … the threat was never liberal theology, which holds no appeal for me. Rather the threat was a path more like our commenter above, either find a way to be a thinking evangelical in the fold of orthodox faith or become agnostic with presumption of atheism. I have found a breadth of Christian thinkers who have been a continuing influence. N.T. Wright, Larry Hurtado, Robert Weber and more – thinkers who may not fall within the bounds of some definition of conservative theology, but are orthodox, faithful, and intent on following God. Sometimes I find myself on a more conservative side, sometimes a bit more liberal, but always learning and facing the questions.

Scot [McKnight] linked to an article yesterday that described Josh McDowell’s fears about the internet. His fears are not totally unfounded. The internet can provide both information and community – and the community can be relentlessly skeptical. Ridicule is a powerful tool, freely used. Who really wants to be backward, ignorant, described as less intelligent and superstitious?

The solution, though, isn’t to eliminate the internet or the increasing interconnection and information it provides. As though we could. The solution, I think, is to model thinking and conversation in community. As we teach and disciple Christians we need to teach them how to think as Christians, not what to think as Christians. This is uncomfortable though. It takes time and work. Small group Bible studies, integration into service in the social structure of the church, and an attractive worship service with an inspirational sermon won’t do it.

What or who has helped you on your journey? What advice would you give?

How can the church create a community of growth and support?


If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net
If you have comments please visit A Slippery Slope … or A Two Way Street? at Jesus Creed.

What Threatens the Church? Part 2/2

Tribalism Old and New?

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2011/07/25/tribalism-old-and-new/

by J.R. Daniel Kirk

July 25, 2011

A few days back Andrew Perriman’s blog drew my attention to James K. A. Smith’s complaints about the state of theology nowadays.

Here’s the heart of his assessment:

It just seems to me that we have increasing “balkanization,” with everyone carving themselves up into smaller and smaller tribish enclaves, and then proceeding to both rail against straw men and preach to their own little choirs. In some ways, I think this is an effect of the loss of confessional and denominational identity. Instead of training to be Reformed theologians or Roman Catholic theologians or Lutheran theologians we have a generation who are training to become “ecclesiocentric” theologians or “apocalyptic” theologians or “radically orthodox” theologians, etc.

I cannot help but think that Smith’s assessment boils down to this: “People aren’t playing by the rules of the game that I learned when I learned theology, therefore their game is wrong.”

I find more than a little irony in the idea that a Protestant theologian wants people to get out of their “tribish enclaves” and return to their denominations.

News flash! Denominations are tribish enclaves!

Worse, denominations are ghettos. They are places where people become socialized to a certain way of thinking, a certain way of viewing the world, a certain way of articulating their theology, a certain way of paying their dues so as to ascend to positions of influence and power.

One of the ironies of Smith’s post is that he is writing in response to a graduate student who is upset about the ways that theological labels prevent conversation: if you like person x or don’t like person y, you are automatically celebrated or, as often, persona non grata.

News flash! This is exactly what happens in ecclesial worlds defined by a strong denominational identity. That “thick” theology, as Smith calls is, is nothing less than a thick door that enables us to keep out people who disagree with us. All you have to do is say, “Luther” or “Calvin” or “Barth” or whomever, and we know, without ever having touched the book, that they are to be celebrated or, as often, he is persona non grata.

Deep commitment to denominational identity and being a “churchman” does not produce better theology. It produces a more controllable tribe–one that can be policed by church bureaucracies, one that can be guarded by limiting ordination or snubbing theologians for academic posts should they associate too closely with those “others.”

I do understand the pull and strength of denominational identity. I’ve been there.

But the reason there are so many new tribes is at least threefold, it seems to me:

(1) a new generation is recognizing that those old fault lines are bad ways of splitting up the church;

(2) we recognize that people with whom we differ on “traditional” points of doctrine are nonetheless people with whom we share greater affinity about things that are much more important to the life of the church than what we think about church government or predestination; and,

(3) we see the less-than-Christian dynamics that control the power politics of our denominations and we’re over it.

There is nothing lost, and an infinite amount to be gained by the erosion of denominational identity.

What the power brokers and gatekeepers will continue to see as a fracturing and weakening of the church will continue, for new generations, to prove itself as the only strong and viable way forward.

My own field, biblical studies, is so strong in part because we do not divide and discuss based on theological identities that bind the hands of our exegesis and blind the eyes of our hermeneutics.

Allow the old tribes and their hundreds-of-years-old divisions to die.

Then come, open up your Bible and read with me. And take the bread with me. And sing to God with me. And theologize with me while we serve our One Lord together.

Ed. Note: I know that at this point you probably think JRDK has nothing good to say about denominations and that nobody should be in one. Tomorrow we will revisit the issue and work through why denominations have value for the church and even, at times, for the Kingdom of God.

What Threatens the Church? Part 1/2

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2011/07/23/what-threatens-the-chuch/

by J.R. Daniel Kirk

July 23, 2011

In the wake of the Rob Bell controversy, his editor at HarperOne, Mickey Maudlin, wrote a reflection on what transpired.

Bell wrote a book many disagreed with, and the disagreement immediately was charged with words like “Heresy,” and was roundly condemned in many circles.

Maudlin points out how blithely the notion of heresy was invoked:

Why would leaders attack as a threat and an enemy someone who shares their views of Scripture, Jesus, and the Trinity? What prevented leaders from saying, “Thanks, Rob, interesting views, but here is where we disagree”?

What list of theological beliefs must be fully checked off before someone can be embraced as brother or sister even if we disagree about other important issues?

Maudlin sees in this reaction itself the true threat to evangelicalism. The threat to the evangelical church’s life is not creeping liberalism. The true threat is tribalism.

But now I think the biggest threat is Christian tribalism, where God’s interests are reduced to and measured by those sharing your history, tradition, and beliefs, and where one needs an “enemy” in order for you to feel “right with God.” Such is the challenge facing the church today and what the reaction to Love Wins reveals.

Or, in the words of Paul, “If you bit and devour one another, take care or you might just consume one another.”

I think Maudlin is on to something. At some basic level we have gotten our story wrong. We have begun to act as though the way that we know we’re faithful to Jesus is if we condemn anyone who seems to be tearing down the walls of the theological circle that inscribes the faithful.

But there is no such wall.

Falling within a theological border is not, has never been, can can never be, the means by which the faithful followers of Jesus are demarcated.

The first-century church had to painfully wrestle through the reality that Jesus came to break down the dividing wall of hostility that was Israel’s Law. It seems that we must come to terms with a Jesus who breaks down the dividing wall of hostility that is Christian Theology.

If we don’t, we may find ourselves in the very position of Paul’s opponents in Galatia, compelling others to become like us if they would be marked as part of the people of God–and thus as agents of nothing less than anti-gospel.

The Fourfold Franciscan Blessing

May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart.

May God bless you with holy anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may tirelessly work for justice, freedom, and peace among all people.

May God bless you with the gift of tears to shed with those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of all that they cherish, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and transform their pain into joy.

May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you really can make a difference in this world, so that you are able, with God's grace, to do what others claim cannot be done.

http://sacredpauses.com/2008/05/closing-prayer-the-fourfold-franciscan-blessing/

Jesus Was Not a “Biblical Christian”

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/tonyjones/2011/07/19/jesus-was-not-a-biblical-christian/

by Tony Jones

on July 19, 2011

Today on Twitter, Chris Blackstone went out on a limb and said that persons who practice polyamory (participation in multiple and simultaneous loving or sexual relationships) are not Christians. When I pressed him about what he meant, he said that they may be “self-identified Xians (Christians), but def not Biblical Xians.”

Well, that got me thinking. Of course, the phrase “biblical Christian” does not occur in the Bible. Indeed, the word “biblical” does not occur therein.

Then I searched the database at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, which is the largest treasury of Christian documents that I know. I searched the phrase “biblical Christian,” and guess when the first use of that phrase took place:

Augustine?

No!

Aquinas?

No!

Luther?

No!

Adolf Wuttke?

Ding, ding, ding, ding!

That’s right, in Adolf Wuttke’s 1874 volume, Christian Ethics, he writes,

Although the scientific treatment of the subject-matter of ethics in the earlier and (in the main) Biblical moralists of the nineteenth century, may be regarded as relatively feeble, yet they have this not to be despised significancy, that in an age almost entirely estranged from Biblical Christianity they kept alive the consciousness of this estrangement, and faithfully held fast to the indestructible bases of Christian Ethics.

A couple decades later, Adolf von Harnack’s 1896 book, The History of Dogma, Volume III is the second CCEL use of the phrase “biblical Christianity,” in this sentence:

Not to speak of its uncultured adherents, the earliest literary defenders of Modalism were markedly monotheistic, and had a real interest in Biblical Christianity.

A Google Books search shows that there are other, earlier uses, like in the the Baptist Record and Biblical Respository, which exhorts, “A true Biblical Christian must be a true Biblical student.” “Biblical Christians,” the Record goes on to despair, “are scarce.” Indeed.

But, as the CCEL search attests, using the word “biblical” as a qualifier of “Christian” or “Christianity” was unknown prior to the 19th century. As I’ve argued elsewhere, it was only in the modern era, after the Enlightenment, that words like “truth” began taking qualifiers. Same goes for “Christian.”

And, of course, it’s well known that Jesus was not a Christian, and certainly not a biblical one. In fact, I’m pretty sure that if we were to ask Jesus’ opponents, one of their main criticisms of him would have been, “He’s not a biblical Jew!” For Jesus, as we know, fulfilled the Law — and in a way that was most unexpected to his peers. They didn’t read the Torah and the Prophets the same way that he did — or Paul did, for that matter. Questions of interpretation divided Jesus and the Jews, and they sadly divide us today.

But I submit to Chris Blackstone, there’s no difference between a Christian and a biblical Christian. Saying that someone is a “biblical Christian” is tantamount to saying that they believe in “true truth.”

142 Days Homeless with God

The End.
http://makeitmad.com/2011/07/20/the-end/

by Max Andrew Dubinsky

July 20, 2011

142 days ago I hit the road. I was homeless. I was an orphan. I left Los Angeles in search of faith in America. In search of God in the streets instead of the church on a Sunday morning.

“Why do you think we are reluctant to fear God?” Dave asked two weeks before I was scheduled to leave. I sat back in my chair, a room full of young faces engaged in a Bible study looking back and forth at each other for the answer.

I responded. “I’m reluctant to fear God because I do not know God.” This was not so much a statement as it was a world-wrecking fact. Suddenly it was all so clear. Oh shit. Maybe I’m no going to Heaven after all…I grew up in the church. I’ve been saved three times. I serve at my local church. I give money to the homeless when I have a spare dollar. I attend Bible studies. I lift my hands in the air during worship. How do I not know God?

142 days ago the only God I knew resided inside the four walls of the sanctuary. The God I knew was safe, kind, and only present on Sundays.

“Do you realize what you are doing here?” Mel asked. I was on my way out. Church was over. I needed to catch the bus. But Mel had heard what I was doing. That I was going in search of faith in America. Believing God was calling me across the country on March 1st even though I had no computer, no money, and no car. “You’re being the very faith that you’re going in search of.” She reached out, touched my arm, and smiled.

“I don’t think God is going to give you a car until March 1st,” Christina said. I was sweating this whole thing because I was leaving in less than a week, and I’ve never been great at distinguishing between God’s voice and my own raging inner monologue. I still had no wheels. “God doesn’t give us anything before we actually need it. If He said you were supposed to leave March 1st, then who is to say someone won’t slam on their brakes when you step outside that morning, get out of their car, and hand you the keys?”

I got the car the night before I left. I failed my smog test, couldn’t get it registered, and two hours later the battery died. The next day on the road, my car broke down in the middle of the desert four hours into the trip.

Without missing a beat, I got out and started walking.

It wasn’t until later that night when I finally arrived at my campsite at the Grand Canyon, and saw it was buried 9 feet deep in snow that I realized God was letting these attacks happen not because I wasn’t supposed to go, but because He just wanted to see how far I was willing to take this thing with Him.

Over the last 142 days I have traveled 12,560 miles.

That’s 426 cups of coffee.

279 fast food meals.

36 tanks of gas.

35 different cities.

24 different beds.

8 different couches.

6 motel rooms.

4 air mattresses.

3 breakdowns: 1 car, 2 mental.

2 life-changing God encounters.

And 1 love story.

I spent my first few weeks on the road aimless and without purpose. I desperately wanted to work for God. What exactly was I searching for again? Was I supposed to give a dollar to every homeless man? Preach the Gospel to everyone I meet? Or just look good in my boots and new jacket?

I looked in the mirror. I began to hate what I saw.

Until a woman named Amanda in Florida told me, “I speak to myself the way God would speak to me. When I look in the mirror and don’t like what I see, would God tell me that I’m ugly or fat? No, he’d tell me that I’m beautiful. Because I am. I am beautiful.”

Until Nick in Spokane said to me, “Max, maybe this trip isn’t about you. What if God sent you across the country to change the life of one man? One individual who might never know God if you didn’t cross paths with him. Or to simply bring someone back to Him? I like to think the God we serve is just big enough to orchestrate that.”

It was time to stop working for God, and to start working with Him.

A few weeks later I paced out front of Barnes and Noble, and called a close friend and mentor of mine back in LA. I’d met someone. And I’d fallen in love. This might slow the trip down. She was beautiful. Smart. Hilarious. She spoke to my potential, and was crazy in love with Jesus. I wanted her to come with me. “Lauren is coming with me on the road,” I said to Steven. “We are getting a lot of heat for being two single Christians traveling together. What am I supposed to do?”

“What are you trying to do?” Steven asked. “Are you trying to gain readers and please everyone? Or are you trying to lead a charge?”

Are you leading a charge today? Or trying to make everyone around you feel comfortable?

This world needs shaken. It’s time to turn this place upside down.

In Tampa, sitting outside in the thick, Florida air, Amanda took a final drag on her cigarette. She had finished telling me stories of addiction and sacrifice. Stories about a woman who has died twice and is still here to talk about it. “I finally fear God,” she said. “So now I am finally getting to know Him.”

142 days later.

I’m 7 days away from my return to LA.

“It’s time to give the people the ending they deserve.”

I’ve driven though the ghettos of Chicago. The canyons in Utah. The mountains of Denver. I’ve hung out with the homeless in Savannah. I’ve seen tornado damage, and spoken to cancer victims and survivors.

And I’ve been questioned about the God I serve. I’ve been asked if there is a Hell and if Heaven is a real place. And how can a God who loves us let such tragedies befall us.

God never promised to reveal why there is so much suffering in the world. He never promised to reveal why things happen. So stop looking for answers and satisfaction. The world is so eager to say, “See! You’re wrong! God doesn’t care. Otherwise He would have prevented this!”

Yet by saying there is evil in the world, we claim there is a moral giver.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” I asked. “Spirits? Demons?”

“We’ve had to perform exorcisms before,” Alexa said sitting on the steps of the State Capital building in South Carolina. “Cast out demons. Whatever”

“If there’s evil in this world, that means there’s got to be some good lurking around here somewhere, right? Otherwise, what’s the point of evil?”

And there is also life. There is so much life out here.

But we get so consumed with ourselves that the moment we believe God has failed us individually, we believe he has failed us all.

If God doesn’t exist for me, He doesn’t exist for you either.

You lose your faith because you are only looking for it in your life.

Today I can tell you this: Even when I feel as though God has failed me, I know He has not failed the world.

We would never lose our faith again if we took the time to see it in everyone else’s life.

Alexa looked at me and smiled. “It’s time to go home, Max. I saw it the moment you walked in that you were done and tired. You could have gone home the first week you were on the road. What you said changed my life all the way over here on the edge of the east coast. Go be with Lauren. She’s been patient enough. Go home. Get some rest. It’s time for the next adventure.”

I pulled the car over on the side of the road. I opened the passenger door and got down on my knee. I kissed Lauren and told her, “3/4 of our relationship has been in this car. We’ve laughed and cried in here. We’ve fought in here, and rejoiced in here. We’ve shared secrets and retold stories. We’ve fallen in love in here.” I pulled out a ring. “So it seems only appropriate that I ask you to marry me in here too.”

The next adventure…

It’s hard sometimes. Living on the road. Some days feel more like running than living. It’s hard to wake up and it’s hard to go to sleep. I desperately want my own four walls. To sleep in a bed that belongs to me. I want to step into a familiar shower. Some days I feel so lost because I don’t have a home.

“But look around you,” the father of the family I was having dinner with in Texas said. “You say that you’re homeless. Look at how you have spent the last 6 months. You have created a home everywhere you have been. You now live in a community that stretches all across America. You have so many people who are for you. And a God who has never left you.”

The father looked at us from his end of the table and smiled. “No. You’re not an orphan. Not anymore.”

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