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.
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