"Paul" in a Fresh Perspective - Chapter Two Summary

Continuing on through N.T. Wright’s “Paul” we reach chapter two where Wright outlines the first two themes governing his central thesis with regards to Paul’s overarching narrative perspective: Creation and Covenant.

For Wright, the entire biblical story, and Paul’s robust understanding of it and his place within it is governed by humanity’s relationship to God who is both creator and law-giver; both powerful and holy; a God who is equally concerned with redemption and justice. He begins by a quick survey of two Psalms that speak of the balanced nature of this creation-covenant duality, Psalm 19 and Psalm 74. Both of these Psalms specifically speak of God in two movements, one as the great creator and sustainer of the cosmos, and the other as the chief justice of creation – the one who will eventually right all the wrongs of the world and bring to fruition the great promises given to his covenant people. Interestingly enough, even though they share a cosmological outlook that resonantes between them, the two psalms extol their truth through dissonant voices – 19 being a psalm of praise made extra famous by the great work’s of Hayden, and psalm 74 speaking the language of lament. (p. 22) According to Wright, and after extoling Isaiah 40-55 as another example of the movement; “Paul constantly goes back to the Old Testament , not least to Genesis, Deuteronomy, the Psalms and Isaiah, not to find proof-texts for abstract ideas but in order to reground the controlling narrative, the historical story, of God, the world, humankind and Israel.” (p. 25)

But this is not a book about the overarching narrative of Scripture it is a book about what Paul saw as the overarching narrative of Scripture and his place within it (For a more thorough examination of Wright’s thoughts on the Scriptures as a whole I’d encourage you to check out his excellent book “Scripture and the Authority of God” which I have reviewed here in the past) so he now turns his attention to he writings of Paul to look for clues as to what Paul believed about creation and covenant. Here Wright looks to three key passages to govern our interpretation of how Paul saw himself, and his flock as actors upon the stage of history and participants in the unfolding drama of creation, covenant and redemption. He begins with the great Christ Hymn of Colossians 1:15-20, moves from there into Paul’s manifesto on Resurrection from 1 Corinthians 15 and then spends the bulk of the chapter on the last passage (which hardly qualifies as a simple passage!), Romans 1-11.

In the section on Colossians, Wright makes the assertion that Paul plays around with the word "beginning" in a way that only someone who had the account of Genesis 1 in mind could do when he talks about the Messiah. He evokes multiple flavours of the phrase "in the beginning" to talk about Messiah as the beginning, the head, the sum total, and the first fruits. He then connects these dots to create a picture being painted by Paul of a Jesus who is the true image of God. Take a step back from this picture and it becomes apparent that the claim being asserted here by Paul is that Jesus is the true fulfilment of Genesis 1:26! (p. 27)

Consequently, "if Jesus is the point at which creation and covenant come together, one of the most striking innovations, completely consistent with all of Paul's thought, is that this coming together has taken the form of an actual event, and event which has already happened, an event which consisted, surprisingly and shockingly, of the shameful and cruel death by crucifixion of the one who has thus fulfilled the double divine purpose." (p. 27)

When looking to 1 Corinthians 15 Wright makes the point that Paul was not advocating for an abandonment of the fallen and failed creation experiment but rather that Paul is explaining how the resurrection of Christ demanded the creation’s renewal through the covenant faithfulness of its creator - the Messiah.

And then Wright turns, in great detail, to the book of Romans where he asserts that the entirety of the first movement of the letter (chapters 1-11) is one long explanation of this movement from creation to covenant to redemption to new creation. For Wright the overarching theme of the entire book of Romans lies in what Paul describes as dikaiosyne theou - The faithful covenant justice of God. (p. 30) The general flow of the argument is as follows:

1:18-4:25 is an exposition of God's goodness and power in creation. "God has called Israel to be the light to the nations, the teacher of the foolish, the guide to the blind" but, "the covenant people have become part of the problem, not the agents of the solution. Israel is no better than the nations, as is proved by biblical texts which speak of exile." (p. 29)

The idea of creation and covenant come together in force in Romans 4, which has the whole of Genesis 15 in mind while Romans 5 "densely, but deftly" speaks to the ideas held in 1 Corinthians 15. Where the obedience of one man (Messiah) has reversed (and then some!) the effects of one man (Adam). Messiah did what the covenant was designed to do. (p. 31)

Romans 7 has Paul expounding on the question of Law and Torah; its limitations and insufficiencies, which are then answered in Romans 8. Romans 8 is Paul's fresh reading of Genesis 1-3 and his great declaration that in Messiah God has done what the covenant and the covenant people were unable to do because of the inherent sinfulness of the covenant people themselves.

Despite the triumphant news of chapter 8 and the finished world of the Messiah extoled with poetic power, Romans 9 begins a turn to lament as it opens the question of Israel and what is their place in this new work. And continuing into chapter 10 Paul makes the argument (according to Wright) that Israel's destiny is no longer a return to the Holy land for ethnic Israel but the word of God going out to all peoples, because according to the creation/covenant dynamic as expressed in chapter 8 - the whole of creation is being made into the holy land! (p. 32) This becomes an echo and fulfilment of Genesis 1-3 with the original humans' mandate to fill and subdue all creation!

This claim is no small statement theologically. Wright, in reading the ‘remnant’ passages of Romans 9-11 in this way has set himself at odds with much of evangelical theology – particularly the dispensationalists. But he doesn’t simply leave it there, he instead leans into his conclusions and pushes more of Paul’s writings through the worldview he sees governing that writing. His conclusions reveal further correlation between his reading of Romans and the rest of Pauline thought. For Wright, God's response to the fall (to create a family and promise them a land) shows that the essence of the human predicament is the fracturing of the relationships between people and between humanity and creation! (p.34-5) Jesus truly is reconciling “all things” to himself and Paul is the man who has been charged to deliver that message to the world.

"When God fulfills the covenant through the death and resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Spirit, thereby revealing his faithful covenant justice and his ultimate purpose of new creation, this has the effect both of fulfilling the original covenant purpose (thus dealing with sin and procuring forgiveness) and of enabling Abraham's family to be the worldwide Jew-plus-Gentile people it was always intended to be." (p. 37)

In the next post we will examine the third chapter where Wright highlights what exactly it means for Jesus to be Messiah and what is an appropriate definition of Apocalyptic when dealing with the Pauline writings.

"Paul" in a Fresh Perspective - Chapter One Summary

Over the next little while I’d like to take a detour from the type of posts that I usually make on this blog to take a closer look at what is turning out to be a very influential book that I’m reading: N.T. Wright’s “Paul.” By way of disclaimer, this is a book that I have been assigned for a masters course that I’m taking in December and I need to read it and write a book review on it before my course begins, but I’ve found it so interesting that I thought rather than just taking copious notes and writing chapter summaries for my own studies, that I might share with all of you what I’ve been learning as well. In this first post we will look at chapter one – “Paul’s World, Paul’s Legacy.”

Wright begins his examination of Paul by setting the tone for the world in which he lived. He begins by explaining to the reader that Paul was a man who straddled many worlds – he was first and foremost a Jew. He lived in the shadow of second temple Judaism and was a product of his upbringing. He saw the world and the events unfolding in his lifetime (including and especially the story of Messiah) through unashamedly Jewish eyes. We need to resist the urge that often emerges in Christianity to recreate Paul in our Gentile image, to make him one who was a Jew but who transcended those ethnic chains to become a proto-Gentile Christian. While Paul was the Apostle to the Gentile world he never stopped at any point in his life identifying with ethnic Israel and all the privileges and burdens that went along with that.

But Paul was not only a Jew, but he was also a Hellenized Jew. This is the second world which Wright insists that Paul straddled. He lived in a world had been radically transformed some three hundred years earlier by the conquests of Alexander the Great. Greek had become everyone’s second language, and Hellenistic (Greek) philosophy had permeated the cultural consciousness to the point that the people of Paul’s day (whether they were conscious of it or not) interacted, persuaded, and evaluated each others ideas and claims on the basis of Hellenistic rhetoric. Paul, for his part was not only a product of his culture and familiar with this style, but was quite adept at it. When we read Paul we understand that we read him as one who is communicating in the language, format and style of the classical Hellenised world.

The third world that Paul straddled according to Wright was the Roman world. “Paul, to the surprise of some both then and now, was a Roman citizen, and if we take even a moderate view of the historicity of Acts he seems to have made good occasional use of the privilege.” (p.5) That doesn’t mean that he was an uncritical inhabitant in Caesar’s empire but rather set himself up as the voice of a movement that would challenge the imperial cult and the claims of the Roman idea with a subversive and countercultural world-view that still speaks today in our modern dealings with empire. According to Wright:

“Paul lived, worked, thought and wrote within a complex and multiply integrated world. Though his phrase ‘all things to all people’ often now seems merely to indicate someone prepared to trim their sails to every passing wind, Paul meant it in a more robust sense. He had been entrusted with a Jewish message for the whole world, and part of the way in which the message was to get out was by his embodying in himself (in ways that caused some then, and cause some still, to raise an eyebrow) the outreach of Israel’s one true God to the wider world of the Gentiles.” (p.6)

In addition to the three worlds that Paul straddled in his day and age Wright sees fit to add a fourth. And unlike the previous three that he fell into by virtue of when and where he was born, this fourth world was a choice – or rather a calling that was accepted and proudly carried forth. Paul belonged to the family of Messiah – to the ones he repeatedly referred to as ekklēsia – the called out ones.

"For Paul, to be 'in the Messiah', to belong to the Messiah's body, meant embracing an identity rooted in Judaism, lived out in the Hellenistic world, and placing a counter-claim against Caesar's aspiration to world domination, while being both more and less than a simple combination of elements from within those three. Paul would have insisted that there was something unique about this fourth world [being of the family of Messiah, or the Church], and he would have traced that uniqueness back to the person of Jesus himself and to his incorporative role as Messiah." (p.6)

So Wright’s first main point is that Paul is a man of many worlds and that his worldview is a product of these worlds colliding in the life and times of one man, but that understanding is only the beginning of what Wright wants to communicate about the apostle’s worldview. Wright also wants his readers to see that Paul saw himself not as an observer or even interpreter of divine history or merely a mediator of theological orthodoxy but rather he saw himself, and the family that he chose to identify with as participants in a grand an overarching narrative of creation, fall, election and redemption that reached it’s climax in the person, death and resurrection of Israel’s Messiah who was Jesus of Nazareth. (p.10)

The last thing Wright does in this chapter is lay out and defend his methodology in looking at Paul this way. He begins by identifying the elephant in the room as it were, the myth of purely objective scholarship and the danger of scholarship from unchallenged powers (i.e. Nazi Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, or the USA today). Wright wisely warns against “hitching our wagons to the scholarship, and hence powerful implicit questions and narratives of any particular contemporary culture to the exclusion of others, especially when the culture in question happens to be in a position of unchallenged power.” (p.14) For Wright we need to begin by admitting that scholarship is anything but a neutral exercise and that the first task in getting to the bottom of Paul’s intentions, theology, worldview and such is to acknowledge this fact. But rather than be driven into nihilism by this fact Wright prefers to look at what he (and others) can contribute positively to this ongoing discussion. These values will drive his study and influence his conclusions throughout the remainder of this book.

First, Wright believes that there are such things as texts. “[H]owever much we deconstruct them, they bounce back with a renewed challenge, and Paul’s texts have a particularly strong track record in this respect.” (p.17) That is to say that while we may be blind to it sometimes, objective reality does exist within the words of Paul’s letters. Paul did have intent and there was a purpose beyond what the reader brings with his or her encultured context to the table.

Secondly, Wright affirms that a fresh and compelling reading of these well-examined texts is still possible. That we have not exhausted all possible readings of Paul and the very fact that something is different than what is considered ‘normal’ or ‘establishment’ does not necessarily invalidate its authenticity.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, Wright declares belief in “the mysterious, unpredictable, and usually hidden work of the Holy Spirit.” (p.17) Perhaps this should be taken for granted in biblical scholarship but too often in the zeal for objectivity we are all subject to the illuminating and revealing work of the ultimate author of Scripture. He has the right, and the desire to reveal to us his will, his truth and his intent in ways that cannot be quantified by scholarship. Understanding this can only be an asset to someone looking to understand Paul with a fresh perspective.

That about sums up chapter one of this book, but there was one addendum that is of particular importance to me and to my church family as we continue to work through our study of Ephesians this fall at The Bridge Church: Wright takes time to weigh in on the controversy regarding the authorship of Ephesians and Colossians  taking on the so-called “dominant” view. He says:

"[O]ur suspicions ought to be aroused by the fact that such consensus as there has ever been on the subject came from the time when the all-dominant power in New Testament scholarship lay with a particular kind of German existentialist Lutheranism for whom and ecclesiology other than a purely functional one, any view of Judaism other than a purely negative one, any view of Jesus Christ other than a fairly low Christology, and view of creation other than a Barthian 'Nein", was deeply suspect." (p. 18)

In short – Wright isn’t buying it, and neither am I. It’s nice to have your views validated from time to time by people much smarter than yourself! Make sure you check back soon for my recap of chapter two where we consider Paul’s worldview in relation to creation and covenant.

The Christian Parent's Dilemma

What is a Christian parent's responsibility to their children, and what is their responsibility to their community? And what happens when these two obligations seem to come into conflict? I've learned (the hard way) that few things in life generate stronger opinions and more controversy than blog posts on how to raise your kids. The mommy (and daddy) bloggers out there have built an entire category of media out of polarizing opinions on all sorts of things from breastfeeding, to attachment parenting, to the perceived disrespect given to SAHMs (Stay at home moms) by society, to the perceived judgement lobbed at working moms for not giving up their careers for motherhood. Then there are the fights over vaccinations, competitive sports, helicopter parents and the list goes on. I have opinions on many of these issues but I'm smart enough to not get into them on my blog because crucifixion looks painful and I'd rather not waste my time getting into internet fights with strangers over my choices as a parent. But this morning I woke up to a fantastic article on Christianity Today that really spoke to an issue that Joanna and I have been struggling with since our kids became school aged and one that has only intensified since we moved to Winnipeg this past summer.

As parents with kids in Grade 2, Kindergarten and diapers Joanna and I have been trying to discern the proper course of action to take with regards to our children's schooling and how to juxtapose our responsibility as parents with our calling as Christians and sometimes I think it's a lot harder than it should be.

At the risk of reducing the complexity of the issue to much I think there are really three options that Christian parents are presented with when it comes to educating their children. 1)Home Schooling, 2)private schooling (including Christian schools), and 3)the public school system. Without passing judgment on any particular choice I think it's fair to say that these three options exist on a spectrum that spans between exodus and engagement. Exodus being a retreat from the dangers of the world to inculcate young and impressionable minds with a Christian world-view while protecting them from some of the unsavoury realities of our degrading societal morality; whereas engagement is a conscious decision to be salt and light to a world that needs exposure to people of faith and conviction even with our children and our families. In general the homeschooling and public schooling options occupy the far ends of the spectrum whereas the private schooling option falls somewhere between the poles depending on the ethos and nature of the school.

Joanna and I have been struggling with what is the appropriate response to a world that doesn't share our values and yet still needs Jesus when it comes to our kids. We have argued, cried, prayed, been exasperated, encouraged and disappointed all along the way as we have tried to forge our unique path along the trajectory of God's will for us and our kids and we have not yet come to a satisfactory decision. This year our boys are in their local public school, more out of necessity than conviction (there wasn't room at the very well-regarded private Christian school in our neighbourhood and neither Jo or I feel like we have the skills to do homeschooling well, perhaps that was God making a decision for us) but we want to be at a place that decisions of this magnitude are intentional, rather than coincidental - which is why I'm so encouraged to see thoughtful and well written articles like the one I stumbled across this morning from people who HAVE wrestled with these issues and have made an intentional decision for one approach or another.

In this article, author Jennifer Slate makes a strong case for why she and her husband send their kids to their local public school rather than anywhere else and why this decision has become an intentional means for them to minister the love of Christ to their community. From the article:

I began to make decisions about my children's lives in a different way. What if I didn't only think about the fabulous life I could make for my three? What if I stood up for not only what was good for mine, but was good for all? What size car would be big enough to carpool other kids? What sports league should we play in so that everyone could participate? Could my husband and I set aside time to coach teams that they could join? Could we pick up extra granola bars every week? Could we make sacrifices for others to have a childhood experience equal to our own?

Slate's experience differs from my own (and possibly yours as well) as her local public school was "the poorest public school in the city" where as I live in a fairly middle-class neighbourhood and our local school reflects that reality the questions that she and her husband had to ask themselves and the issues they had to wrestle with are not qualitatively any different than the questions that Joanna and I are asking ourselves: Where does our responsibility to the community (as the body of Christ) take priority over our responsibility to our own kids? And perhaps the question laying behind that question: What is our responsibility to our children as parents? At what point do we say that entrusting them to the care of a system that is evolving a radically different (and oft-incompatible) worldview puts us at risk of not passing on our values? At what point so we say that the risks of drugs, drinking, sex and violence become great enough that we are forced to retreat into our own cloistered communities to protect them from the pressures of the world? Is there an acceptable level of risk?

Again, I don't have a definitive answer to any of these questions yet. But at least I'm asking them. I think too often we uncritically gravitate toward what feels safe, or what feels easy or what is affordable (something that Slate also touches on in the article) rather than critically engaging with the questions she wrestles with. And frankly, the stakes are too high to let that continue. The fate of our children, and the world hangs in the balance with the decisions that Christian parents make in these areas. The next generation will bear the fruit of the decisions we make. So let's engage in this discussion and make whatever decisions we need to make with great intentionality, consultation within the community of faith, and lots and lots of prayer.

Have a blessed day,

Chris

Pure Joy

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

James 1:2-4 (NIV)

Sometimes it’s hard to think of life’s challenges as pure joy. I remember back in the fall of 2009 I caught H1N1 like a whole bunch of other people and got myself quarantined at home with my wife and (then) two young sons. In those 5 days where we were all stuck in our 600sqft bungalow together I began to understand why Joanna had been complaining since our second son was born that we needed somewhere bigger to live. So we fixed up the remaining unfinished jobs around the house and put it on the market in November.

We prayed a lot during that time that God would grant us an increase in value that was enough to move into somewhere bigger, yet affordable based on our limited income and it seemed as though God answered our prayer. The house sold for a good price on Christmas Eve (Merry Christmas to us!) and we received a large sum of inheritance money from Jo’s family, which empowered us to move up the property ladder a sufficient amount to give our family more space. It seemed as though everything was coming up Smiths and God was on our side.

And then we experienced pure joy.

We had our eyes on a house that had been stagnating on the market without any offers for quite some time and all we needed was to sell ours so that we could make a decent offer and secure what we thought was our dream home. So right after Christmas we went with our realtor to see it again, we still loved it and we made what we thought was a fair and reasonable offer considering how long it had been on the market. Someone else must have had the same idea, because we got outbid and lost the house. Pure joy.

 

Then over the next few weeks we looked at what I’m sure was every single house in Estevan that was even remotely close to our criteria and price range and found nothing.

Nothing.

Near the end of January, with a February 15 date set for losing possession of our home we were nowhere close to finding a new place to live and I was leaving for 10 days in Guatemala on a short-term missions trip! Why my wife is still with me after pulling that stunt is a testimony to God’s grace in itself. But as the clock wound down we still had nowhere to go and things seemed even more desperate.

It’s at times like this that I begin to wonder if we made a huge mistake. Had we misheard God’s will for our family? Had we overreached, been greedy, selfish or overly ambitious in what we tried to accomplish? Had we screwed up and were we facing the wrath of a disappointed God? After all we had originally downsized to that house because we were financially foolish and needed to get our house in order (literally and metaphorically). Were we running from God’s plan or to God’s plan? These are the sorts of questions that pop into my head when pure joy happens.

So we endured. We cried. We reached out wits’ end and then went a few miles past. And then, when all seemed lost God spoke. I remember it like it was yesterday.

I was sitting in the third row on the right side of the Rio de Vida Church in Tactic Guatemala during their Sunday service when I heard God say to me, almost audibly:

“I’ve got this.”

And that was it. The sermon that day was on James 1, and the preaching spoke to my situation in an eerie sort of way, but it was that one short word from God that sealed it for me. He’s got this. All of the sudden pure joy – if only for a moment became pure joy. But Joanna wasn’t so lucky. She didn’t’ have the luxury of getting away from it all and spending concentrated and focused time with God on the mission field – she had to deal with the pure joy of raising two kids, keeping the household running, working at the church and at home, all while trying to find us a new home – which she couldn’t. I can only wince in retrospect how hurtful my glib optimism and assurance must have been upon returning from Guatemala with only a fortnight until homelessness – again, why she stays married to me is a mystery of biblical proportions. But within three days God’s word was vindicated and we had seen, purchased and were taking possession of a new house before our deadline.

And it was the right house; what God had promised us all along. It was perfect for what we needed and although we had to pay through the nose for it, it was (barely) in our price range, we never had to be homeless.

So what is the moral of the story? That everything works out? That if you wait long enough God’s blessings will always come through in the end?

Nope. That season was horrible. And even after the elation of God coming through on the house the road beyond that was anything but rosy. We almost lost the house because that inheritance money from the UK got held up in international transfer limbo. Shortly after spending nearly all our money on this house our boss resigned and our future was thrown into turmoil and uncertainty. Joanna had a botched wisdom tooth removal that left her with a hole in her sinuses. We got pregnant, and Joanna developed a massive ovarian cyst that put her in hospital required her to miss Christmas with her family after we had traveled across the ocean to be with them. Considering things pure joy is one of the hardest commands of the scriptures.

There is no moral to this story. It’s simply a reminder. A reminder to me that amidst the pure joy that we get to experience every day that God is still with us. What that looks like, or what that means is anyone’s guess but I know that what I’ve been through – good and bad – has made me who I am today; and what I’m going through – again, good and bad – is making me into who I’m supposed to become. Some days I wish I wasn’t lacking so much perseverance and maturity that I need to experience so much pure joy but God knows what he is doing, and he allows it in my life because he loves me and he wants to make me better.

If it sounds like I’m trying to convince myself of my own words – it’s because I am. This might just be the most selfish blog post I’ve ever written – I need to be reminded of God’s plan and presence. All of those questions that we asked ourselves when we moved houses back then have been resurfacing now. All of the doubts about missing out on God's will come back in waves from time to time. On one hand things are going great - but on the other things seem really, really hard and it's hard to find joy in the mess of life and I need to be reminded again and again that He's got this. So this blog is for me, but perhaps you need some convincing too. My prayer for you today is that the pure joy of the trials that you are facing may give way over time, and through endurance, to the pure joy of being made more and more into the person that God wants you to be. Because after all: there has to be a reason for all of this.

Right?

…Right?