Dying for a Good Man

Today I read Timothy G. Gombis, "Paul," in T&T Clark Companion to the Doctrine of Sin, ed. Keith L. Johnson and David Lauber (London: T&T Clark, 2016), 97–109.

It is a helpful overview of sin in Paul, especially (of course) Romans. But this post concerns the interpretation of Romans 5:6–8 proposed by Gombis. I don't know if it's a new interpretation, but it was new to me. He introduces his interpretation by reminding readers that the term "sinners" in Galatians 2:15–21 is associated with Gentiles and not Jews. 

What is evident here is the conviction that while the non-Jews in the Christian churches had a history of being 'sinners', the Jewish Christians were not. They come from among the historic people of God and so did not in habit a group of 'sinners'. This same assumptin underlies Paul's likely sarcastic passage in Romans: 'For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were sinners Christ died for us' (Rom. 5:6–8). There may have been some in the Roman church who regarded themselves as above their non-Jewish sisters and brothers in Christ. They were not 'sinners' from among the gentiles. If this is the case, then Paul indicates that they do not partake of the benefits of Christ's death. Why would anyone die for a righteous person? Perhaps one would die for a 'good' person, but still, what would be the point? But God demonstrates his love in that Christ died for 'the weak', 'the ungodly' and 'sinners'. Everyone in the Roman community must own these identities or they surrender any claim to participation in the group of those for whom Christ died, whom he has also justified and reconciled to God (Rom. 5.9, 10) and whom he will finally save in the end (Rom. 5.10). (108–9)

Hmm, interesting—reading Rom 5:6–8 as a sarcastic comment. I'm not sure about it, but maybe. But it does seem to me that Gombis is underselling the possibility that a good man might inspire people to die on his behalf. Anyway, it's maybe not precisely on point, but when reading Gombis' question—"perhaps one would die for a 'good' person, but still, what would be the point?—I thought of this scene. 

 

Paul's Theology (Wright)

It's been a while since I posted on N.T. Wright's new book on Paul. (Previous posts here and here.) I'll admit that after a thousand pages, the reading is wearing on me. I'm ready for something different. (Larry Hurtado has also complained about the size of the book, and Nijay Gupta has also slowed down on his reading.) But I'm determined to get through it.

I'm especially a little tired of reading about election. I know, it's an important concept, but all of ch. 10 was on election, and that chapter is nearly 300 pages long. I'm now in ch. 11, on eschatology, and it was so very refreshing to change topics. But now I'm about to enter a section of ch. 11 that looks at "The Eschatological Challenge of Redefined Election," a section of 120 pages. So, before I jump back into election, I thought I would post some thoughts.

If you've read my previous post on this book, you'll know this is nothing like an actual review. Just some random thoughts stimulated by a reading of this book.

Chapter 9 is all about Paul's theology (in a strict sense: doctrine of God) and how he accommodated Christ and the Spirit within his monotheism. This is not a theme I really associate with Wright, more with people like Richard Bauckham and Larry Hurtado, and indeed Wright relies on these scholars (esp. Bauckham) and seeks to advance their work. Wright's "major new proposal" (p. 649) is that Jesus was seen as fulfilling the theme of the "return of Yhwh" to his temple. "The long-awaited return of YHWH to Zion is, I suggest, the hidden clue to the origin of christology" (p. 654). I'm not sure exactly how new this is; I'm not saying that Wright didn't come up with it, but I'm pretty sure I've read similar things in some of Wright's previous works, maybe in his previous book on Jesus. But maybe he hasn't emphasized it so much in the context of the development of christology. In any case, for more on Wright's work in this chapter, I suggest you read Gupta's take and especially the posts by Hurtado (here and here).

At the end of ch. 9, Wright deals with "The Dark Side of Revised Monotheism," that is, evil. And it is in this context that Wright addresses the familiar debate about which came first for Paul, plight or solution. I found this section helpful. Saul of Tarsus did recognize a problem in the world: a lot of bad things were happening in the world, God's people were dominated by Gentiles, and someday God would bring justice. After his encounter with Jesus, he recognized that the solution God offered meant that the problem was different and much worse than he had previously imagined.

Paul was like a man who, on the way to collect a prescribed medication, studies the doctor's note and concludes from the recommended remedy that his illness must be far more serious than he had supposed. (p. 751)

On ch. 10, dealing with Election, see Hurtado, here, and on ch. 11, on eschatology, see Hurtado here. In general, I benefited from ch. 10, but I got tired, like I said, and I very much appreciated the turn to eschatology, a discussion from which I learned a great deal.

The following comments, which often point out errors or inconsistencies, should not be interpreted as implying a negative judgment on the value of the book. I have learned a lot from it. These comments are various small matters I found interesting.

(1) There are some oddities, like when Wright, in one of his discussions of the 'righteousness of God', repeatedly gives the Hebrew of this phrase as tsedaqah elohim (pp. 1054, 1071). Of course, the first word should be in the construct state, so it should be tsidqat elohim.

(2) And then there is this footnote:

One theme, important in the second-Temple period, appears absent in the NT, namely the reassembly of the ten lost tribes: see e.g. Ezek. 37.15-28; Hos. 1.10f.; Zech. 10.6-12. Starling 2011 has explored the possibility that Paul does in fact work with this notion in e.g. Rom. 9.25f. where Hos. 1.10 and 2.23 are cited. (p. 1053 n. 44)

I was surprised and confused when I first read this a week or more ago, and I am still surprised and confused by it. How can Wright, of all people, assert that the theme of "the reassembly of the ten lost tribes" is "absent in the NT"? I suppose he sees distinctions in categories that I have not grasped, but I would have thought that the reassembly of the ten lost tribes--especially as worked out in Ezekiel 37 and Hosea 1--was pretty much the same theme as the restoration of "Israel", and that this was all over the NT, in Wright's reading most of all. I give you a statement from Wright's earlier book on Jesus in this same series:

The very existence of the twelve [apostles] speaks, of course, of the reconstitution of Israel; Israel had not had twelve visible tribes since the Assyrian invasion in 734 BC [sic], and for Jesus to give twelve followers a place of prominence, let alone to make comments about them sitting on thrones judging the twelve tribes, indicates pretty clearly that he was thinking in terms of the eschatological restoration of Israel. (p. 300)

That looks to me an awful lot like the theme of "the reassembly of the ten lost tribes." But, again, maybe Wright sees a distinction that is lost on me. 

(3) He says that Akiba was "the last great teacher of the stricter school of rabbinic thought" (p. 620). What does he mean by this, "stricter school of rabbinic thought"? Judging from his discussion on Judaism in ch. 2, I'd guess he means the Shammaites. But does Wright think that Akiba was a Shammaite? That's not the tradition as I remember it. I thought it pretty well-established that Akiba was a Hillelite.

(4) I love it when Wright talks about his lack of space in the present volume to talk about certain issues (e.g., pp. 645, 649). We can all be thankful he saw fit to shorten his discussion.

(5) He's got a note on the appearance of the Tetragrammaton in LXX manuscripts (p. 701 n. 255) that does not present completely accurate information. This is nitpicking, admittedly, but it is simply not correct to say that LXX mss feature the Hebrew Tetragrammaton, or PIPI, or IAO, "as often" as they have kyrios.

(6) I appreciated his attempt to redeem the Nicene Creed, esp. in light of his highlighting the inadequacy of the Creed in How God Became King (and see this video of Richard Hays at the 6:10 mark). In his new book on Paul, Wright says: "The Nicene and other creeds were thus a way, not of capitulating to Greek philosophy, but of resisting it, and reasserting, as best they could in the language available to them, the christological monotheism of the New Testament" (p. 652 n. 124; cf. pp. 709-10).

(7) There are some places where Wright signals that he has changed his mind: p. 901 n. 350; p. 1016 with n. 686. Of course, everyone changes his/her mind on numerous points. I highlight these instances only because Wright can sometimes come across as if he's the only one that sees the most obvious points in Paul's exposition and all other scholars are simply reading him with their eyes shut (which, as I was reminded of last night, is bad for your hat and makes your eyebrows get red hot).

(8) Wright points out (p. 855) that 'salvation' language is absent from Galatians, which speaks only of justification. I didn't realize that. See also p. 927 with n. 431.

(9) On pistis Christou in Gal. 2:16, whether the genitive is subjective or objective: "I do not see that much hinges on this here" (p. 967).

(10) I liked Wright's exposition of those passages where Paul describes believers in terms of a temple. Actually, Wright talks about these passages twice, once in ch. 9 (pp. 711-17) and once in ch. 11 (pp. 1074-75), but the second time he forgets about Eph 2:20-21.

(11) Wright thinks that Eph. 5:5 and Col. 3:5 are talking about "sexual greed" as idolatry (p. 1107 n. 268). Is this a typical view?

(12) He repeatedly talks about Christians fulfilling the law, but "a different sort of law-fulfillment" (p. 922; see pp. 937, 958, 1088-89, 1100, 1109-11, 1125). He's referring to passages like Rom. 2:13-14, 28-29; 3:27; 8:4-7; and 10:6-10. I haven't gotten to his discussion of that last passage yet.

I wonder what Brian Rosner would say about this. I'm slowly reading his new book on Paul and the Law, and he does not seem to think that Rom. 2:14-15 and 2:28-29 is talking about Christians, or, at least, I don't see it in his discussions about how Christians relate to the law. He does say, though, that Christians "fulfill" the law in some sense. Maybe he would be comfortable with the language employed by Wright, but would resist seeing Rom. 2 as describing Christian law-fulfillment. Wright does acknowledge a couple of scholars who don't think Rom 2 has Christians in view (p. 921 n. 409 [Bell, pp. 190-96] and p. 1088 n. 196 [Hultgren, p. 131]), but he dismisses them rather casually.

Since Paul's view of the law was one of the major themes that I was hoping to learn about from reading this book, I might have more to say about Wright's views in a later post. But maybe not. 

Half Way There! (sort of, well, not really, actually)

I just finished "Book I" of N.T. Wright's Paul and the Faithfulness of God. That's 569 pages down, only about 1000 to go. So, it's not really even close to half-way, even though I'm done with 2 of 4 parts.

So, what do I think so far? Well, pretty good. I mentioned previously that the first part (= 350 pages) is all background. The 100-page chapter on Judaism (ch. 2) is really good, though I'm not sure about everything in it. (I can see why Wright wants to relate Shammai to violent resistance against Rome, and then to link Paul to Shammai, but do we actually have any evidence for this?)

I really liked ch. 6, about Paul's 'symbolic praxis', and I sorta liked ch. 7, about the 'story' that formed the basis of Paul's worldview. I only 'sorta' liked it because I only sorta understood it. I guess I can fall back on my tried-and-true excuse that I'm not a NT scholar, so someone more up-to-speed on all the discussion surrounding Paul's theology would probably have an easier time of it. Or maybe Paul is just really difficult to understand sometimes, which makes Wright sorta difficult in explaining him. I don't get the impression that Wright thinks it's all that difficult to understand (though he is the one that needed 1600 pages to explain it!). After several pages of dense discussion of the role of Torah in Paul's theology, he says: "The resolution of the paradox, then, is easy [...]" (p. 514). Oh, thanks. Or later, in the same chapter in his section on Jesus in Paul's 'story': "Once we place this element of the Jesus-story within the Israel-story we studied in the previous section, all becomes clear" (p. 526). Well, it's not exactly clear to me. Anyway, I think this is a good chapter, but I am going to have to re-read it, especially the sections on Torah and Jesus.

Chapter 8, the last in "Book 1," is brief (30pp.) and helpful. It addresses the "five worldview questions," or, as Wright likes to call them "Kipling's 'honest serving men." Who are we? Where are we? What's wrong? What's the solution? What time is it? The discussion in this chapter serves as a nice summary of the stuff on Paul so far in the volume.

Now some random interesting bits:

Even there, however, Paul believes that the forces of evil are already in principle defeated. (That phrase 'in principle' is helpful up to a point; yet is also a way of saying, 'We can't easily put into words how the "now" and the "not yet" function in relation to one another.' It is at least better than the arm-waving phrase 'in a very real sense', which, as students, clergy and politicians often need reminding, means 'I very much want to assert this but I haven't yet figured out how.') (p. 547)

I'm sure I've used the phrase "in a very real sense" before, and it's nice to see someone call us (including me) out on it. Now that I think about it, it does seem like a phrase that means just what Wright says, or maybe it even means "in a sense that does not actually correspond to what we normally think of as reality." I suppose "in principle" is better. But "in a very real sense" also sounds like something I could have heard or read from Wright before. Which brings me to this:

We should not imagine, as in Cullmann's famous image of D-Day and V-Day, that Paul supposes the present time to be a matter of a steady advance, with the world gradually getting better and better as God (or even the church) engages in a kind of 'mopping-up operation', eliminating bit by bit pockets of resistance to the restorative justice which God has established and is establishing in the Messiah. Any attempt to read church history that way is manifestly doomed to failure, but, more importantly, there is no sign of such a 'progressive kingdom' in Paul. (p. 548)

I do not want to disagree with Wright's point here, but as I read this--where Wright says that the present time is not a 'mopping-up operation'--I thought for sure that I had read Wright say in another book that the present was indeed a kind of 'mopping-up operation'. A little googling reveals the following:

Paul's vision of the Christian life is thus (as has often been pointed out) of a life lived between D-Day and VE-Day. The decisive battle has been won; the battles we face today are part of the mopping-up operation to implement that victory. (Following Jesus [1994] p. 21)

Well, it's been 20 years, so I guess he's changed the way he presents Paul's idea of the present time. Fine. I guess I might appreciate a note alerting us to the change. Anyway, I've never read Following Jesus, so I'm guessing that Wright used the image of 'mopping-up' in some other of his work also, though Google wouldn't tell me which.

Wright has a rather long section on how the 'messianic time' is equivalent, for Paul, to the Sabbath (555-61).

The great 'now' of the gospel, in other words, is the fresh reality for which the antecedent signpost was the sabbath. (p. 555)

My proposal here is that his emphasis on 'the now time', the time when the Messiah is ruling in heaven over all things in heaven and on earth, implies within the Jewish mindset at least that the new creation has been accomplished, and that the 'Sabbath', not in terms of cessation of work but in terms of God's dwelling in, and ruling within, the new world he has made, has been inaugurated. (p. 559) 

This is a mere hypothesis, because Paul does not actually talk about the Sabbath. This is apparently a new suggestion, and Wright thinks it quite daring: "This rather dramatic proposal--the kind of thing wise friends advise one to publish in a recondite journal rather than a mainline monograph [...]" (p. 560). Wright has put together a nice argument, but it must remain speculative simply because, again, Paul doesn't talk about the Sabbath. Actually, that's part of the reason Wright makes the proposal: he notes that the Sabbath is "omnipresent both in second-Temple Judaism and through to the present day, yet otherwise astonishingly absent in Paul" (p. 555).

Final note. Wright mentions again "Sander's pack animals" (not under that title this time, though), and he now seems more open to the idea:

how we wish we knew what sort of inns Paul stayed in, how he transported the Collection-money, whether he did indeed travel with animals as beasts of burden, what he liked for breakfast ... so much of his own 'culture' is hidden from us, and we can only guess. (p. 564)

A Few Notes on Wright's PFG ch. 6

I am reading through N.T. Wright's Paul and the Faithfulness of God. Nijay Gupta is doing a random series of blog posts on things that strike him as interesting or helpful about Wright's book (here's his third post). This post will be something like it, based on ch. 6.

First off, ch. 6 is where we really get to some meat. The first 350 pages have little to do with Paul and almost nothing to do with the faithfulness of God, except insomuch as anything in the first century concerns these topics. But finally at about p. 350, Wright turns his attention to the apostle. It's a good chapter, long (100pp., not nearly the longest in this book), about the 'symbolic praxis' of early Christianity as practiced by Paul and his churches. Especially his section on how Paul adapted traditional Jewish symbols (temple, Torah, prayer, land, family, battle, scripture) is very strong, as is his section on 'ecclesial unity' as the major new element of Paul's symbolic world. The section on baptism (419-27) was excellent, the section on the Lord's Supper (427-29) less so.

Now, a few random notes.

Wright seems to have a problem with Ed Sanders' idea that Paul carried his tent "presumably on pack animals" (PFG p. 353, citing Sanders p. 347). He immediately follows up his quotation of Sanders with this parenthetical comment:

I am not sure about the pack animals; perhaps the reason Paul and his friends couldn't get into Bithynia was that one of the donkeys, like Balaam's ass, saw an angel in the way. (p. 354)

At first I took this to be just one of Wright's little jokes, but later he says this, again in parenthesis:

those other shipwrecks, for instance; what happened to Sanders's pack-animals in those circumstances, and to the tools of Paul's trade? (p. 413)

So, does Wright think it just silly that Paul may have used pack animals? (They are "Sanders's pack-animals," after all, and in the earlier comment he is "not sure about the pack animals".) Or am I reading too much into this?

Another little note: Gupta had pointed to p. 168 n. 367 in which Wright really burns Troels Engberg-Pedersen with the comment that he "clearly has little idea of what Judaism was or how it worked [...]." But Wright says about Engberg-Pedersen on p. 385 that he is "one of the most original voices in contemporary Pauline studies."

Finally, I appreciated the comment on p. 447 where Wright speaks of

the abysmal failure of ekklēsia to live up to its calling. That, to my mind, is the really major objection to Paul's proposal, compared with which the home-made modernist 'objection' of the so-called 'delay of the parousia' pales into insignificance.

Why Don't We Have Any Letters to Paul?

Several ancient collections of letters published in antiquity contain both letters to and letters from a particular individual. For instance, Cicero's collections of letters contain not only letters written by him but also letters written to him. Same for Pliny the Younger, Jerome, Augustine. But not for Paul.

We don't know where the Pauline letter collection came from. That is, we don't know who collected these letters and why, and how they first started circulating as a collection in antiquity. There have been several theories. Stanley Porter has helpfully summarized the major proposals and advanced his own proposal, most recently in his opening contribution to this edited volume.

The idea that make most sense to me is the one advocated by Porter and several other scholars (e.g., E.R. Richards in this article and this book), that Paul or his secretary saved copies of the letters he wrote (surely this is true) and issued an anthology himself, or left this task to one of his followers. This makes a great deal of sense and accords perfectly with ancient practice (again, Cicero, Pliny, etc.).

But, again, if this hypothesis is correct, why did he not include in his collection any of the letters sent to him? Such an omission would have to be intentional. What reasons could be supposed? The only thing that makes sense to me is that they were not considered authoritative, and the Pauline collection was supposed to contain only 'authoritative' statements from the apostle. Still, in light of the 'occasional' nature of the collection, it would make sense to me to include in the collection some of the letters written to Paul.

I haven't read everything on the topic, so maybe someone has addressed this issue. I see that Porter wonders, if the collection was made from Paul's personal copies, why we don't have the entire Corinthian correspondence or the Letter to the Laodiceans (mentioned at Col. 4:16). 

It is not certain why these letters are missing, unless they simply were not copied originally (Richards [pp. 220-21] suggests that Paul's "severe letter" was sent off in anger and haste) or were themselves lost in the course of Paul's travels, including his shipwrecks. (here, p. 197)

 I don't see anything particularly on my question. Doesn't mean it's not out there. 

The Curse of Death

A new(-ish) book by Rodrigo Morales, The Spirit and the Restoration of Israel: New Exodus and New Creation Motifs in Galatians (WUNT 2/282; Mohr Siebeck, 2010), has recently been reviewed in RBL by Sigurd Grindheim. It looks like an interesting book, and I especially took notice when Grindheim summarized Morales' argument such that it parallels an interpretation of a passage unmentioned by Grindheim in his review (and Morales in his book?) that I offered on this blog recently.

I was talking about Acts 13:39--which says that Jesus has rescued you from something the Torah could not rescue you from--and I suggested that even more than sin, the verse referred to death as that from which Jews needed a rescue. Now I see that Morales says something similar, though I'm not sure that he brings Acts 13:39 to bear on the issue. I quote from the second page of the review by Grindheim:

The most detailed discussion in the book is devoted to the notorious crux in Gal 3:10–14. Morales argues that Paul did not speak in hypotheticals when he quoted the curse from Deut 27:26. Rather, this curse was already a fact that affected all Israel due to their disobedient heart. Relying on an article by Joel Willitts, Morales shows that Ezekiel and Nehemiah also understood this curse to be in effect. In contrast to James Scott and N.T. Wright, Morales observes that Paul understood the curse not as exile but as death. Israel’s predicament, as it is reflected in Galatians, is not that they continue to be in a state of exile but that they cannot be free from death.

UPDATE: Morales' book is searchable on Google Books and I can confirm that Morales does not cite Acts 13:39 in his book.

What Could the Torah Not Justify You From?

In Pisidian Antioch, Paul preached a sermon on the Sabbath in the synagogue (Acts 13). The sermon quickly reviews Israel history, leading up to Jesus (13:16-25), and then he talks about how Jesus was killed and raised from the dead (13:26-37). The very end of his sermon offers a warning that the audience, relying on a quotation from Habakkuk 1:5 (13:40-41). But it is the part between the focus on the resurrection and the concluding warning that interests me now.

γνωστὸν οὖν ἔστω ὑμῖν, ἄνδρες ἀδελφοί, ὅτι διὰ τούτου ὑμῖν ἄφεσις ἁμαρτιῶν καταγγέλλεται [καὶ] ἀπὸ πάντων ὧν οὐκ ἠδυνήθητε ἐν νόμῳ Μωϋσέως δικαιωθῆναι, ἐν τούτῳ πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων δικαιοῦται.

I have neither the time nor the expertise (in NT studies or the debates about justification) to enter into a full treatment of this passage, but I did want to offer a thought. I have looked at a few commentaries (Fitzmyer, L.T. Johnson, Bock), none of which related this statement at all to the preceding emphasis on the resurrection.

But it seems to me that the context of the sermon, the context of Acts as a whole (which emphasizes the resurrection quite a lot--see 2:24-35; 4:2; 17:32; 23:6; 25:23, just to name some references off the top of my head), and the situation in which the sermon was delivered, in a synagogue among Jews who knew that Leviticus promised forgiveness of sins through sacrifices--all of this indicates that while Paul here certainly related this 'justification' to forgiveness of sins, perhaps more specifically he relates it to forgiveness of sins that liberates from the curse of sin = death.

To be brief and simplistic, in his letters Paul speaks of Adam's sin as ushering in death (Rom. 5:12-14; 1Cor. 15:21-22), so that death is the consequence of sin. Now, Paul in Acts could be saying to the Jews in Antioch: "The Torah promised forgiveness of sins through slaughtering a goat, but it never promised justification that you would not suffer the effects of sin, that is, death. No matter how many goats you slaughter, you will die. The Torah cannot set you free from death. But Jesus can. What the Torah could not justify you from (= the effects of sin = death), Jesus does justify you from. He has inaugurated the resurrection, he did not see corruption, and everyone who believes can join him in that."