In chapter three Wright outlines another
set of themes that he contends govern Paul’s overarching narrative perspective:
Messiah and Apocalyptic.
For Wright the most important part of the
theme of Messiah is understanding a very simple but profound concept that many
Christians know but few readily acknowledge; that being that the Greek word Christos is not simply a surname or even
a description of the one who is God-Man but is in fact a very significant term
used by Paul to denote that Jesus is the prophesied and long awaited Jewish
Messiah. (p. 42) Paul is not shy in calling him this either, as he frequently
and regularly speaks of Christ Jesus in a way that signals to his readers that
he is intentionally and overtly declaring that this man is Messiah! Moreover
Messiah was not merely a title or a role that appeared out of the vacuum but
rather was a concept dripping with historical Jewish significance. Jesus was
not just a Messiah, or even a Messiah-like figure, he was the one, specific,
promised Messiah of God’s chosen people Israel.
Now that’s not to say that Paul didn’t have
a specific flavour of Jewish Messiah in minds when he spoke of Jesus this way;
even the Jews of Paul’s day lacked a cohesive understanding of exactly what
Messiah would look like, how he would appear and what he would do. Certainly
the Gospel accounts of the Passion Week in particular bear this point out, so
Wright goes further and lists six points that define the parameters of what
constituted Paul's understanding of Messiah. (p. 43)
For support for this description Wright
once again turns to Romans, which he demonstrates is bookended by language that
squarely places Jesus in the messianic role by speaking of his Davidic ancestry
in 1.3-4 and then again in 15:12 (quoting Isaiah's prophecy about the root of
Jesse). And then is punctuated with the possessive description of Jesus as
Israel's Messiah in 9:5-10:4. For Wright, the incorporative usage of Messiah
(IN CHRIST) lends itself to see Paul's meaning of the term as Israel's messiah
as well as it mirrors the incorporative language that Israel used of the king.
(Usually David) We see that we are referred to as a people who are summed up in
the Messiah, or IN CHRIST. (p. 46)
Paul’s consistent use of Iesous Christos (Greek) to refer to
Jesus with these linked titles ties together the two different aspects of who
our Lord was and is in a theological and historical sense. Wight sees that Paul
understands these titles as meaning different things, and not being merely
synonymous with each other. For instance, Paul frequently talks about what was
done through Jesus (i.e. the man Jesus of Nazareth as the agent of God) but
then speaks primarily of being in messiah or in Christ as the way that people
enter into the family of God and belong there. By linking these two titles
together while simultaneously using them in different ways he is showing the
unity of person that constitutes Jesus Christ.
Because of the way Wright see’s Paul using
these titles together but with different intentions he concludes that when Paul
speaks in Romans and Galatians of the pistis
Christou (Faith of the Messiah/Faith in Messiah) he intends to denote the
faithfulness of the messiah to the
purposes of God, rather than the faith by which Jew and Gentile alike believe
the gospel and so are marked out as God's renewed people. (p. 47) For Paul the
Messiah’s work does not represent an abandonment of the covenant - quite to the
contrary he represents God's ongoing covenant faithfulness to redeem the world
through Israel. By sending an Israelite who will be faithful to the call and
purpose of God's covenant people he represents all of Israel in his
faithfulness. He is the representative Messiah (point 5). This is why Jesus in
the Gospels can claim that he did not come to abolish the law but fulfill it. What Wright is saying is that we need to
stop thinking of the law as a series of commands but rather and a covenant with
a purpose and an end goal – this is certainly how Paul viewed it and how he
preached about it.
With regards to Apocalyptic, Wright first
acknowledges that a definition of the term is a little hard to nail down these
days. What he means by apocalyptic though is the idea that God is doing
something sudden, surprising and new through the death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ. Whereas Messiah was a connection to the past, the element of
God’s plan that displays the purposeful unfolding of the covenant across large
stretches of time – apocalyptic (with regards to Paul) is a way of seeing the
world as being invaded, righted, turned upside down by climactic events surrounding
the work of Jesus. (p. 51) But apocalyptic also bears the connotation of the
revelation of mystery. In this sense Wright contends that Paul sees himself in
Romans in particular as “in one sense
like the angel in an apocalypse, looking at the events of Jesus’ death and
resurrection and explaining what it is that is thereby revealed.” (p. 53)
For Paul these two dimensions or themes
(Wright contends) are not contradictory but must be held in tension so that we
understand that Messiah and Apocalyptic are two sides of the same plan that God
has always had for the salvation of humanity and the redemption of creation.
Wright insightfully maintains that:
“We cannot expound Paul’s covenant theology
in such a way as to make it a smooth, steady progress of historical fulfilment;
but nor can we propose a kind of ‘apocalyptic’ view in which nothing that
happened before Jesus is of any value even as preparation. In the messianic
events of Jesus’ death and resurrection Paul believes both that the covenant promises were at last fulfilled and that this constituted a massive and
dramatic irruption into the processes of world history unlike anything before
or since.” (p. 54)
Wright then goes onto tackle some of the
passages that he believes have caused people problems with this idea of
apocalyptic language in Paul. He stands on his usual soapboxes of Parousia (usually translated as ‘coming’
but Wright contends that it should be more properly translated as ‘presence’ as
the opposite of ‘absence’); and makes his usual point about the Parousia of 1
Thessalonians 4 where we are described as meeting Christ in the air having more
to do with a common historical practice of meeting a returning ruler a long way
out and escorting him en masse back into his city. He also makes the usual
points about the passages of destruction and wrath in places like 1
Thessalonians 2, being more likely about the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD
than any climactic end to the space-time continuum. (p. 56) For Paul, the world
was not ending, but the remaking of the world through Christ was just
beginning. Wright calls this view to which he holds, inaugurated eschatology –
that God’s ultimate future has come forward into the middle of human history
but is in another sense still coming. For Wright, (and Paul) “[t]he age to come has already arrived with
Jesus; but it will be consummated in the future. The church must order its life
and witness, its holiness and love, along that axis.” (p. 57)
In the next post we will examine Wright’s
final two Pauline themes as we look at the contrast between Gospel and Empire.
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