Interacting with Justification by N.T. Wright – Chapter Three

Wright’s third chapter in Justification, “First-Century Judaism: Covenant, Law and Lawcourt,” is an attempt to explain that first-century Jews (the main characters and audiences of the New Testament) were more concerned with experiencing deliverance from exile (an exile the Jewish people had been experiencing even after returning to their land, as they were still under Roman occupation) by way of David’s promised son. While first-century Judaism was not ignorant to ideas of transcendence and afterlife, those issues were being overshadowed by more pressing physical, political concerns. In other words, first-century Jews, unlike many Christians today, were not simply trying to find their ticket to heaven. They expected God to move within history, within their world.

Wright notes that first-century literature illumines us to the fact that Judaism was not a monolithic religion before, during, or after the time of Christ. He speaks of Variegated Nomism – the multiplicity of ways in which first-century Jews were interpreting Israel’s law, constructing theologies of grace, resurrection etc. 

I find this much clear: first-century Judaism was far different from the works-not-grace caricature of Judaism that Martin Luther so unfortunately concocted in order to read the biblical text into his own sixteenth-century world. There is a cost when we use the biblical text so liberally as to form the biblical narrative and characters in our own image, so that they are living out our story rather than us living continuing their story faithfully in our day. Disregard for historical context, authorial intent and the like can lead us in directions as dangerous as the Lutheranism-gone-awry that was experienced in the Holocaust in the early-to-mid-twentieth century – a mere sixty years ago.

Within the “Judaisms” of the first century, there were some who aimed to calculate the moment when God would deliver Israel from exile. Wright notes many of them leaned heavily on Daniel 9 – a prophecy of the end of exile in which an angel tells the main character that exile would not be for the simple seventy years he read about in Jeremiah, but seventy weeks of years (70 X 7). (pgs 57-59)

This, Wright says, is the social milieu into which Paul writes – a group of people who felt that they were living a continued biblical narrative, still in exile but hoping for the end of exile as described in Daniel 9. Yes, these Jews were back in their land, out from captivity in Babylon. Jews were “enslaved” to pagan cultures and customs.

Here the Bishop lets out some of his frustration with Piper and his “ordinary folk”:

“. . . for many, perhaps most, contemporary Western readers of the New Testament (John Piper’s ‘ordinary folk,’ perhaps), the effort required to think into a worldview where people were thinking to themselves, When is God going to do what he’s promised? is all too much, and they shake their heads and settle back into the comfort of a non-historical soteriology the long and short of which is ‘my relationship with God’ rather than ‘what God is going to do to sort out his world and his people.’ Or, alternatively, the question, when will God do what he’s promised? splurges back onto the theological scene in the form of lurid speculations about the Rapture: drive eschatology out the front door, and it will break in through the back window. And with all of these strategies we thereby put ourselves in the position of musicians who, finding the score of a Beethoven symphony, reckon that because the only instruments they possess are guitars and mouth-organs, that must be what Beethoven had in mind. Or, if you like, that because the only music they know is a collection of songs none of which last longer than four minutes, that must be what Beethoven actually intended.” (pg 61)

Can you tell he’s had it with Piper and his “ordinary folk,” and their commitment to make ordinary what should be a very inordinate use of Scripture?

One of the ways in which Wright’s view of justification succeeds is in its incorporation of the New Exodus motif woven throughout the entirety of Scripture. In Chapter Three Wright exegetes Daniel 9 (remember, this is a text that first-century Jews were leaning into for a variety of reasons), and two things become very clear: “righteousness” in this passage is interchangeable with covenant faithfulness, and God’s covenant faithfulness allows Him to stand as “right” (faithful) when His covenant people are not (allowing the curse of exile as promised in the covenant) as well as to declare “right” (lawcourt language) an unfaithful people (allowing exodus) – on the basis of God’s own covenant faithfulness, not the people’s.

That doesn’t sound much like Luther’s caricature of works-righteousness, does it? No, this is about a God who is covenantally faithful to the extent that He allows consequences of the covenant (exile) but ultimately restores the covenant on the basis of His own covenant-keeping (allowing exodus). This is the hope of first-century Judaism, and the center of Paul’s writing, that God would declare His people right – an act that, to them, was connected to the political ramification of exodus and the ongoing of narrative of human history.

Wright proceeds to shed light on Piper’s big motif for understanding righteousness and justification, God’s concern for God’s own glory. Here’s one part of Wright’s review of Piper that I found to be particularly funny (and refreshing):

“there is a huge mass of scholarly literature on the meaning of God’s righteousness, and Piper simply ignores it. I am not aware of any other scholar, old perspective, new perspective, Catholic, Reformed, Evangelical, anyone, who thinks that tsedaqah elohim in Hebrew or dikaiosyne theou in Greek actually means ‘God’s concern for God’s own glory. . . . Piper’s attempt to show that there must be a ‘righteousness’ behind God’s ‘covenant faithfulness’ is simply unconvincing. It begins to look as though Piper has simply not understood what covenant faithfulness means, and its enormous significance throughout Scripture.” (pgs 64-65)

Also to my amusement, Wright notes that even J.I. Packer – a notoriously Reformed scholar – slips into the New Perspective when he notes, “The reason why [Isaiah and Psalms] call God’s vindication of his oppressed people his ‘righteousness’ is that it is an act of faithfulness to his covenant promise with them.” (pg 64)

The Bishop proceeds to discuss the role of Israel in God’s plan to put the world to rights. God does not give up on Israel. God does not replace Israel. It is precisely through Israel that God will put the world to rights. Wright notes Piper’s decision to not engage Romans 3 and 4 (chapters centered on Abraham and God’s still-applicable commitment to bless the world through his people). This is consistent with Piper’s evasion of Deuteronomy 27-30, Daniel 9, and the whole of Genesis 15. Piper is not engaging the texts that best clarify that God’s righteousness is His covenant faithfulness.

And it is at this point that I, as a reader, become frustrated on Wright’s behalf. Piper and others within the old perspective have accused Wright of proposing a “complicated” gospel. The danger of that accusation is the implicit notion that Wright is weaving complexities into the biblical narrative. The reality, it seems, is quite the opposite. Wright is merely guilty of engaging more of the biblical narrative in his exegesis and theology. We would do better to call Wright and his gospel “hard-working”or “supremely literate.”

The chapter proceeds with Wright discussing Piper’s construction of a theology of God’s righteousness for God’s own glory. Wright acknowledges that such theology portrays God as Divine Narcissist. In reality God is not a self-absorbed being concerned with making sure that His creation lauds Him; He is an outward-focused giver of love whose tsedaqah elohim is His generous faithfulness to undeserving people who have not been anywhere near as faithful to Him.

The role of Israel and Torah in God’s saving plan is the final theme of the chapter. Wright notes the similarities between E.P. Sanders’ covenantal nomism and Calvinism’s emphasis on covenant and “being in Christ.” Wright esteems the Reformed view for agreeing with Sanders’ take far more than Lutheran exegetes and their construction of Judaism as a religion of works-righteousness.

While often falling in the Reformed camp on many issues, Piper’s handling of Israel is fairly Lutheran; he and his “ordinary folk” may find it easier to create a caricature of Judaism to fit their purposes rather than to study the variety of beliefs within Second Temple Judaism (it seems that Piper is suspicious as to whether much reliable knowledge can be gained from that wealth of material). 

Here Wright chops away at both the old perspective’s antinomianism with which I am so amused and the replacement theology over which I completely fume:

“According to the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that he had not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. A Calvinist will find that much easier to grasp than a Lutheran – though it would be interesting to hear an old perspective expositor explain how Jesus’ brisk commands in that great sermon are to be obeyed by his followers without any sense of moral effort, synergism and so on.”

This is where the New Exodus motif within the Pauline corpus becomes so important: it is the blood of the Lamb over our doorposts that spares us and declares us “right” (initial justification), yet we still need to follow God on the path of liberation and deliverance, the Way that brings us from a former identity (Egypt, Eden) to a new humanity (Promised Land, New Jerusalem/complete Kingdom of God). This is covenantal nomism! Following the law (whether it be Torah or that which the Spirit writes on our hearts) is not what makes it possible for us to be part of God’s people, but it is the guideline for how to get from Egypt to the Promised Land, from a humanity that lives to propagate systemic sin and death to a humanity that lives to participate in the systemic faithfulness and life. This is synergy! And compared to it, monergy is shown to be nothing more than an inferior half-gospel that leaves everyone standing under a blood-covered doorpost, but never leaving their house for the Promised Land!

As Wright is making abundantly clear, there is no such thing as a soteriology that is divorced from eschatology – God is not rescuing people from the unfolding history of His creation; He is acting within the grand narrative of His creation to save it. Wright says it well when he talks about God’s single plan to save the world through Israel, and when he acknowledges Jesus as the uncompromised “Yes!” to God’s covenant with Israel. Jesus is every bit as much the Son of David as he is the Son of God, and until we come to terms with that Israel and Torah will be a source of confusion in our theology of escapist eschatology. But if we can come to terms with our favorite first-century Jewish carpenter, then we can see what it means that Gentiles join Jewish followers of God in their mission to bless the world.

That mission requires obedience and synergy, covenantal nomism. Jesus paid it all, and now we walk in his Way.

Reviewing Wright’s Justification: Chapter Two

In the second chapter of Justification, “Rules of Engagement,” Wright sets out by saying that if we allow books like Ephesians and Colossians equal place to Romans and Galatians – letting each of these canonical texts inform the others on a basis of full mutuality – we arrive at “nothing short of a (very Jewish) cosmic soteriology.” Within Christ the world finds its summation, and now one family of Jews and Gentiles becomes “Christ’s body for the world.” (pgs 43-44)

Wright isn’t calling readers to prioritize Ephesians and Colossians over Romans and Galatians, but rather to hear Romans and Galatians outside of the old perspective by which our interpretation has been conditioned. Because Ephesians and Colossians have never fit nearly into the old perspective (Wright notes the Lutheran suspicion toward Ephesians, in particular), if we use them as a starting point we find that Romans and Galatians don’t actually fit into the old perspective either.

Immediately following that point regarding canonical conversation, Wright begins this top-notch tangent:

Supposing that had been the vision that gripped the imagination of the Reformers in the sixteenth century; supposing they had had, engraved on their hearts, that close and intimate combination of (a) saving grace accomplishing redemption in the once-and-for-all death of the Messiah and putting it into operation through faith, without works and (b) the proleptic unity of all humankind in Christ as the sign of God’s coming reign over the whole world; and supposing they had then, and only then, gone back to Romans and Galatians – the entire history of the Western church, and with it the world, might have been different. No split between Romans 3:28 and Romans 3:29. No marginalization of Romans 9-11. No scrunching of the subtle and important arguments about Jew-plus-Gentile unity in Galatians 3 onto the Procrustean bed of an abstract antithesis between faith and works. No insisting, in either letter, that ‘the law’ was just a ’system’ that applied to everyone, and that ‘works of the law’ were the moral requirements that encouraged people to earn their own salvation by moral effort. In short, the new perspective might have begun [at the Reformation]. Or perhaps we should say the new perspective did begin – when Ephesians was written. No wonder Lutheran scholars have been so suspicious of it. But why should that apply to conservative readers for whom it is every bit as much Holy Writ as Romans or Galatians?

“In particular, what Scripture actually says must be brought into creative dialogue with tradition. This is standard fare in beginner-level doctrine courses, and ‘conservative’ churches within the Protestant tradition have always insisted that they are ‘biblical,’ whereas other churches down the road are in thrall to human traditions of this or that kind. But here is the problem, which I hinted at in the opening chapter. Again and again, when faced with both new perspective and some of the other features of more recent Pauline scholarship, ‘conservative’ churches have reached not for Scripture but for tradition, as with Piper’s complaint that I am sweeping away fifteen hundred years of the church’s understanding. Of course, Piper himself wants to sweep away most of the same fifteen hundred years, especially anything from medieval Catholicism, and to rely instead on the narrow strand which comes through Calvin and the Westminster Confession. But whichever way you look at it, the objection is odd.” (pgs 44-45)

Wright then has at it with Piper’s selective ignorance of first-century Judaism. Piper claims that study of the first century context can “distort and silence what the New Testament writers intended to say,” an alarming claim he tries to support by saying that first-century extra-biblical literature has not been studied to the same extent as the New Testament, and so we lack the contextual awareness we bring to the Scriptures. (pg 48)

I can feel my mind going numb thinking about that. So the reason we can’t understand the extra-biblical literature is because we haven’t studied it enough – and that’s why we are wasting our time to study and emphasize it? Seriously? Meanwhile we do have a contextual awareness of the Bible – we just can’t muddy that by studying… its context. Piper goes as far to say that, in terms of word studies, we cannot know “how words were used in that world” outside of their biblical use. Wright responds by noting that Piper’s mindset, “seems to me dramatically to overstate the case.” (pg 49)

Conversely, Wright’s response might be an exercise in dramatic understatement. Even someone who disagrees with Piper about some or many things should be able to acknowledge that he’s likely above-average in terms of intelligence (it’s difficult to lead – directly and indirectly – as many people as Piper does without being a sharp person). Still, Piper’s attitude regarding the Bible’s first-century context is intellectually insulting, and comes across as hiding the facts for the sake of posturing an argument. It demonstrates a desperation that one would expect from a person who is trying to defend ground in a losing battle. Which then begs the question: is Piper really ready to die on the hill of his own Calvinism, or is his life and ministry about something bigger and better, the very topic of Paul’s obsession. (A witty person might ask Piper to not waste his life…) To hide or diminish the facts we can glean from first-century context to defend a philosophy of sixteenth-century origin is not the marker of a truth-seeker. If Piper is in the business of truth-seeking, he had better re-examine his mentality and motives toward the contextual setting of Scripture.

Wright devotes several pages of his second full chapter bemoaning Piper’s shirking off of first-century context in favor of a Protestant-originated interpretation of Paul, and Piper’s attitude that his is the “ordinary” interpretation, held by his oft-cited “ordinary folk.” The Bishop demonstrates his concern:

“It is worrying to find Piper encouraging readers to go back, not to the first century, but to ‘the Christian renewal movements of sixteenth-century Europe.’ To describe that period as offering the ‘historic roots’ of evangelicalism is profoundly disturbing. Proper evangelicals are rooted in Scripture, and above all in Jesus Christ to whom Scripture witnesses, and nowhere else.” (pg 51)

Reviewing Wright’s Justification: Introduction and Chapter One

Justification, N.T. Wright’s latest book, is the Bishop’s seemingly irritated response to John Piper, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minn., and a figurehead of the “neo-Reformed” sect of Christianity. Wright clarifies that, already balancing a full schedule of pastoral and academic assignments, writing a rebuttal to Piper (who himself wrote The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright after Wright’s Paul: In Fresh Perspective) is necessary because of the subject matter and its implications. 

This isn’t back-and-forth for the sake of getting petty or something about which Christians should “agree to disagree.” To Wright, there’s simply too much riding on justification.

“. . . the question is about the nature and scope of salvation. Many Christians in the Western world, for many centuries now, have seen ’salvation’ as meaning ‘going to heaven when you die.’. . . In the Bible, salvation is not God’s rescue of people from the world but the rescue of the world itself. . .  Some Christians have used terms like justification and salvation as though they were almost interchangeable, but this is clearly untrue to Scripture itself.” (pgs 10-11)

Wright cites Piper’s theology of justification ignoring Paul is four main areas: the work of Jesus as Israel’s Messiah, its covenant nature (bringing about the end of exile), the lawcourt metaphor (in which God finds Himself “in favor” of those who follow Jesus; not merely allowing Jesus to transpose his moral achievement to his followers), and eschatology (a full narrative understanding of what God is doing in the entire world). (pgs 11-12)

“What’s All This About, and Why Does it Matter?” is the first full chapter of Justification, Wright comes out of the gate with frustration that Piper and similar theologians demonstrate a concern for “God’s glory” while espousing an eisogeted theology of justification that is centered on individuals finding their ticket of escape from the world. Wright does not discount the value of personal salvation but scoffs at a concocted theology that places mankind at the center of the universe (with no regard for a more universal eschatological plan). (pg 23) 

“. . . the real point is, I believe, that the salvation of human beings, though of course extremely important for those human beings, is part of a larger purpose. God is rescuing us from the shipwreck of the world, not so that we can sit back and put our feet up in his company, but so that we can be part of his plan to remake the world.” (pg 24)

This is no petty argument or nit-picking theological tangent. The nature and scope of salvation have been misstated, leading people to a Westernized individualistic construction in which the “sinner’s prayer” is an end-all-be-all ticket to otherworldliness, with little or no place give to participation in God’s great exilic work in the universe. Of the overall aim for Justification, Wright says, “I hope that the next generation, without preexisting reputations to lose and positions to maintain, will get the message.”

Piper, as well as some early reviews of this book, have accused Wright of constructing a “confusing gospel.” Wright responds to such a mentality toward him and the New Perspective:

“Sometimes, faced with a jigsaw puzzle, one is tempted to make it apparently easier by ignoring half the pieces. Put them back into the box! I can’t cope with that many! The result is of course that the puzzle is made harder, not easier. However, one can imagine someone, having made this initial disastrous move, trying to remedy the situation by brute force, joining together pieces that don’t quite fit in order to create some sort of picture anyway.” (pg 31)

The old perspective on Paul tossed out critical “pieces” of Paul’s theology: “Abraham and the promises God made to him, incorporation into Christ, resurrection and new creation, resurrection and new creation, the coming together of Jews and Gentiles, eschatology in the sense of God’s purpose-driven plan through history, and, not least, the Holy Spirit and the formation of Christian character.” (pgs 31-32)

Wright calls out Piper for completely sidelining passage such as Romans 2.25-29 and Romans 10.6-9 in his treatment of Paul and for picking out Paul’s Genesis 15 reference without consideration for the meaning of the full text toward which Paul was directing his readers. “When Paul quotes Scripture, he regularly intends to refer, not simply to the actual words quoted, but to the whole passage.” (pgs 32-33)

Of the impact of a narrative, covenantal approach to Scripture, the Bishop says:

“God had a single plan all along through which he intended to rescue the world and the human race, and that this single plan was centered upon the call of Israel, a call which Paul saw coming to fruition in Israel’s representative, the Messiah. Read Paul like this, and you can keep all the jigsaw pieces on the table.” (pg 35, italics his)

McKnight’s endorsement of Wright’s Justification

As if I needed any help getting excited about reading Justification, this back-cover endorsement from Scot McKnight pretty much knocked me off my chair:

“Tom Wright has out-Reformed America’s newest religious zealots – the neo-Reformed – by taking them back to Scripture and to its meaning in its historical context. Wright reveals that the neo-Reformed are more committed to tradition than to the sacred text. The irony is palpable on every page of this judicious, hard-hitting, respectful study.”

What I’ve read of Justification so far has not let me down. Julie is also reading the book, and she pointed out to me last night (and I think I agree) that Wright writes far more lucidity when he’s annoyed. Thanks, John Piper, for prodding out what might be the strongest overview of the New Perspective to date.

Re-examining justification

Ben Witherington III has a review of N.T. Wright’s new book that I am absolutely begging you (whether you’re a close friend or a total stranger) to read. In my opinion, BW3’s review sums up Wright’s theology in language that is far easier to understand than Wright’s own voice, but these are theological advances that could help us emerge from a Reformed framework of salvation (while Wright is considered Reformed, by “Reformed framework” I’m referring to the conclusions of American Evangelical Reformed “gatekeepers” like Don Carson and John Piper), back to the justification viewpoint held by the Apostle Paul and many of the Early Church leaders.

To put it ever-bluntly: If Wright is correct – and I wholeheartedly believe his theology of justification is an improvement on the typical Reformed view – then many Christians have been misguided and misrepresenting the gospel when answering the question, “Who are the people of God?” 

Please take time to read the entire review.

The Resurrection, fatalism, and the problem with the Church calendar

Good words from N.T. Wright:

“To preach the Resurrection is to announce the fact that the world is a different place, and that we have to live in that ‘different-ness.’ The Resurrection is not just God doing a wacky miracle at one time. We have to preach it in a way that says this was the turning point in world history.”

Amen and Amen.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the difference between a linear Hebraic approach to history and time over-against the circular mindset that Israel’s pagan neighbors and the Hellenistic philosophers demonstrated toward history, and how these preconceptions influence the way we celebrate holidays – the ways we remember our story. 

Biblical Israel celebrated their feasts with devotion, partly because God commanded them to remember the situation from which they arose (particularly in the case of Passover as remembrance of their emergence out of Egypt). But it was in the context of a people who understood that history is linear, that they weren’t designed to return to that from which they were freed. It is abundantly clear, in the instances when Israel does forget their story and re-enters bondage, that this is not God’s plan for them. The purpose of remembering the story was not to re-live its highs and lows in a circular way, but to remember all the reasons why they should continue going forward in the ways of God.

Remember captivity – don’t re-enter captivity – so that you can walk in freedom. 

Fast-forward to Christianity, which suffers still today from the Early Church’s concessions to Hellenistic philosophy and pagan ideas regarding fatalism and circular history (the gods are going to do what the gods are going to do, and everything comes around…). How does a circular view of history shape the way people remember their story?

Many churches today celebrate a “Church calendar” that includes Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, and Pentecost. By no means is there anything wrong with observing these moments within Christian history. It’s great that people want to be well-versed in each and every phase of their faith history (though they don’t even do that really; most Gentile Christians disregard any and all traditions and celebrations carried over from Judaism, which is a sorry disregard for our rich inheritance as those adopted into Israel). What I really want to call into question is the role a circular, fatalistic view of history plays in our approach to holidays.

When we approach holidays with a fatalistic understanding of history, we don’t merely recognize each season of Christ’s journey or our own history as a point along a line, something out of which we emerge, but rather as an endless cycle in which we are trapped. In this cycle there is no differentiation among the holidays. We aren’t living in Easter or Pentecost any more than we are living in Lent. Our celebrations become continuous dramatizations of the same cycle (a treadmill and not a trajectory). It’s different than to say that we live in a point of tension between two seasons along the linear model of progressive time (the already-but-not-yet of the New Testament and the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God); no, this is truly the antithesis of eschatology – there is no expectation for change within ourselves or within our world.

We just go round and round. Bound to the cycles of history. Pushed around by the gods.

Again, this is in clear contrast with the Hebraic understanding of linear time. Again, there’s a difference between remembering you were set free from captivity in Egypt and trying to simulate that captivity. Going further, there is a danger in simulating that captivity: you could very easily begin to define yourself presently in the images and terms of that captivity. 

This is what happens to the Church calendar when approached from a circular, fatalistic lens. It’s no wonder that a Hellenistic, fatalistic, circular view of history leads to a diminished expectation toward Christ’s impact on humankind (am I making up a term to say “Christoanthropology”?), such as that which was held by Augustine, who was certainly trapped in a circular view of history.

A person’s view of history seems to, by necessity, correlate with his/her thoughts on the potential for humanity (not the necessary trajectory of humanity but the possibilities for humanity’s trajectory).

Let me put it differently: say a person undergoes a three-month period of real darkness in his life – maybe extreme substance abuse or something along those lines – but breaks away from that darkness and is now staying clean. It’s possible that, in stopping his abuse, a lot about his lifestyle changed – the clothes he wears, the music he listens to, his sleep schedule, etc. It might be a good idea for him to set aside a concrete time when he can give recognition to the fact that he came out of hardship (maybe he’d celebrate the yearly anniversary of cutting off the substance abuse and living clean).

But wouldn’t it be weird as hell for that person to devote a three-month period of his year to commemorating his emergence from his old life by going back to his old clothes, music, sleep schedule, etc.? None of us would think that was a good idea. What if he went around telling people he is, in present time, an addict? What if he actually went back to the drugs? None of us think that’s a healthy way to “remember,” do we? There is a huge risk in self-definition if he goes through with any of these bad ideas, and we’d all agree that it’s overkill.

Where I’m going with this is that we are, as Christians, Easter people. And we’re invited to be Pentecost people. These are things that are true of us and our reality in real time. A lot of things are valuably true about our past, but these things are intended by God to be part of our present-tense lives.

In real time, we aren’t waiting for a Messiah. In real time, he came.

In real time, we’re not merely Incarnation people. In real time, we’re people who incarnate the beginning of realized Easter hope. And we are meant to have the tools of Pentecost at our disposal as we live incarnationally in real time. 

Now I’m all about giving our history due diligence. As a matter of fact, maybe the most widely read thing I’ve ever written is an article about not reading Easter into the Christmas story, but celebrating Incarnation for Incarnation’s sake. So I’m not being a hater here. It’s just that it seems we get into trouble when we can’t celebrate the past without understanding that history (and, by result, our self-definition as Christians) is to be understood in potentially-progressive linear terms.

Otherwise the Church calendar only fuels our spiritual impotence. We become people who neglect the faculties and possibilities of Easter and Pentecost because we are too busy playing fatalist dress-up.

The resurrection stops being central to our story because, in needing to define ourselves in the terms of Advent, we center our story around the hope of a returning Messiah (rather than taking up the invitation of an already-here Messiah to build his Kingdom).

Rather than seeing Lent as a season out of which we’ve emerged, we define our present lives in its language. So when trouble hits, we muster up some motivational speech about finding solidarity in a Suffering Servant while giving no attention to the idea that Pentecost provided us a Helper to overcome at least some types of suffering. I’m not saying that we never suffer, or that solidarity with Christ is entirely unimportant. But thank God we have more than solidarity with a dead, decomposed Suffering Servant. 

But isn’t that where a lot of people are in terms of self-definition? The hope of Easter and the strength of Pentecost are matched, if not outweighed, by a whiny emo gospel in which we have no victory over sin and death, just a heroic martyr to identify with as we celebrate our frailty.

Even within missional-emergent circles there is a reluctance to really live in the real-time events. I’ll prod and maybe make enemies by going ahead and saying that I think the reason for this failure is due, in large part, to low pneumatology and connected fear of looking more ecstatic than hip. It’s as much of a control game as anything we saw in modern (as opposed to post-modern) forms of church.

In a culture that loves self-promotion and dreads embarrassment, maybe emergent Christians don’t want to risk the diminished mystique of fully abandoning themselves to the work of the Spirit. It goes against our culturally-conditioned obsession with all things moderate and mild-mannered. 

There’s safety in going round and round in a cyclical calendar with our fatalistic assumptions. We don’t have to be torn away from that which used to define us (we’re like the passed-over Israelite who decides to return to Egypt, or the recovering addict who goes back to his old habits to give recognition to that chapter of life).

And no one will mistake us for being radicals. Our persona is in-tact.

I’ll come back to my opening quote from Wright:

“To preach the Resurrection is to announce the fact that the world is a different place, and that we have to live in that ‘different-ness.’ The Resurrection is not just God doing a wacky miracle at one time. We have to preach it in a way that says this was the turning point in world history.”

Or, to put it differently, we might consider some words from the Apostle Paul (Romans 6.4-11): 

Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

I affirm what the Apostle Paul and N.T. Wright are saying: the resurrection and its ensuing Pentecost are our defining moments. We have a rich history worth acknowledging – filled with important moments of expectation and suffering. But history is not a circular mechanism, nor are we defined equally by all of these events. 

The possibilities, energy, equipment, faculties, and potential of Easter and Pentecost are readily available to all who want to follow Christ out of unnecessary cycles and into a linear trajectory toward something beautiful.

Tony Jones talks Romans 5

The other day I did a bit of loose exegesis/commentary/interpretation on Romans 6. I summed up the end of 5 in shorthand to qualify/get a running start for 6.1. But the end of chapter 5 (v12 and on, I believe) is very much attached to chapter 6. And I noticed that Tony Jones has started a great conversation about Romans 5 on his blog. 

Take a look at 5.12: “Therefore, as sin came into the world through one man, and death as the result of sin, so death spread to all men, [no one being able to stop it or escape its power] because all men sinned.” (Amplified Bible)

Even though I didn’t spell out 5.12 as I wrote about chapter 6 the other day, I think 5.12 sets the stage for sin and death as a system/trajectory/movement/kingdom/whatever you want to call it. It’s a snowball effect.

To a Jewish mind (through the OT and in Paul’s day), I think the question of Adam as prototype or as the cause of mutation in the human composition is not really the primary question. The question is, “How did death enter the world?” Sin is the answer to that question. And that sin has led to more death, more sin, more death, and so on. These two, sin and death, are one in the same in Judaism, which is why the suffering servant of the book of Isaiah is going to come and eradicate both.

I think Paul is writing in prototypes in all of Romans, so from a literary standpoint it’s blatantly clear that Paul is shining light on Adam as a prototype. If anything, Paul’s making the “we sin like Adam” case of Original Sin for those in Adam. But I think Paul is also explaining Adam’s sin as the beginning of a snowball effect. Maybe we shouldn’t call it Original Sin; we ought to call it Original Death.

Recapping what I just said: to Paul, Adam is a prototype. Even if we don’t inherit Adam’s sin, we inherit a world in which death is present, which predisposes us to also sin and also contribute to the sin-death-sin snowball.

Because this snowball effect is so present in Paul’s theology, I like a term I heard from Rob Wall at Seattle Pacific: “Organic Sin.” It’s a monster that grows, this sin-death-sin mess. It’s systemic.

But what is the context for this entire conversation about Adam’s sin? Paul is talking about how Adam-as-prototype functioned in contrast to Jesus-as-prototype! It is at this point that the Augustine-Luther-Calvin train of understanding Paul falls apart. Their theology of “those in Christ” is nothing like Paul’s theology of Christ – it’s almost entirely like Paul’s theology of “those in Adam.” (It’s also rooted in a few other things; I’m not even going to open that can…)

In a few days, I’ll say more about chapter 7, where Paul impersonates Adam-as-prototype and then moves into talking as one “in Adam.” He then goes on to speak as himself in Romans 8. Paul has located himself (and hopefully the audience of his letter) in chapter 8, not chapter 7.

To Paul, chapter 7 is pre-Messiah language. We grasp this when we read chapter 6, where Paul makes it clear that Organic Sin/Original Death/the sin-death-sin snowball has been replaced with Organic Life/systemic righteousness/a whole new snowball. Paul makes it clear as day to his readers they have no place acting like those in Adam.

So where do we get off acting like those in Adam? Where do we get off speaking theologically as if believers are more like those in Adam than those in Christ?

How is that not heresy? If anything is heresy, how could it not be that? 

Chapter 6 explains that we can further one of two systems/organisms/snowballs/whatever – the sin and death one, or the life and righteousness one. The first was brought about by Adam’s sin and the second was brought about by the faithfulness of Christ. There is no such thing as being in Christ and living to further the old system. You’re living for the new system now. Is there grace to cover mistakes? Sure thing. But you can’t play the Jesus card and then live for the other kingdom. That trajectory leads to death.

I’ll leave it at that for now, but I want to pick up Romans 7 again later this week.

A benediction feels appropriate here: May we lean into Christ’s righteousness, which brings about life. May we get caught up in the whirlwind of living out righteousness so as to create more righteous living. This is God’s desire. This is the Kingdom of God.

Pop-exegesis/commentary on Romans 6

Okay, so I’m talking with my “student” about how Jesus and Adam are founding fathers of very different systems – Adam’s leads to death whereas Christ’s leads to life. I’m also talking about God’s abundant grace, how humanity cannot out-sin the grace of God. Now my “student” asks, (1) “So we might as well have a sin-fest, right? We can do whatever and not worry about sin, and still inherit Christ’s blessings, yes?” You can imagine this really got me going. Here’s my reply to that line of thinking (just in case any of you are thinking like that “student” of mine):

(2) No. No. No! You’re missing the point. Jesus rescued us from the sin-death-sin (and so on) cycle. That cycle is meant to end here and now with us. (3) You can’t have the things Christ Jesus is saving you for and still participate the very cycle Christ Jesus defeated in order to save you. Don’t you get it, that you can’t have it both ways? (If that was how it was meant to be, why would Jesus bother saving you?) (4) The systemic brokenness of sin-death-sin is done, man. It’s about holiness/wholeness-life-holiness/wholeness (and so on) now. This is God’s glory! This is our new life!

(5) We’re connected to Jesus’ eradication of the old system. We’re also connected to the new system he’s put in its place. (6) We are all guilty of perpetuating the old system (sin-death-sin), but we let that part of us be crucified when Christ was crucified. It needed to end – not only around us, but in us as perpetuators. In the furtherance of the old cycle/system, we were predisposed to only perpetuating systemic brokenness, even in a genetic way, the fiber of our being. But Christ’s crucifixion and is more powerful than that predisposition. We don’t have to be trapped in the old system any longer. (7) In the world of the old system/trajectory, we don’t even exist any longer.

( 8 ) So, if we’re not alive in relation to that system/trajectory, is there a system/trajectory to which we’re alive? Absolutely – the holiness/wholeness-life-holiness/wholeness system re-established by Jesus. (9) It’s not like Christ went through all of this only to go back to perpetuating the old system. It’s not like the resurrected Jesus acted like he needed to go back and be crucified a few more times. (10) Listen, there’s finality to what Jesus did. His defeat of the old system was a once-and-for-all defeat. But now he’s got to live for something – be about and for something – right? Right. And it’s a new system/trajectory that leads to life (if the old way was systemic brokenness, this is systemic righteousness); it’s the very thing which God wanted Jesus to inaugurate and perpetuate. (11) And for the rest of us? God wants all of us to perpetuate the new trajectory, systemic righteousness (just like we used to perpetuate the old way). You’ve been delivered out of the broken way. Yet it’s impossible to go about existence without perpetuating a system. What Jesus did for you is not just about breaking the sick chain of sin-death-sin; it is to bring you into the fold of holiness/wholeness-life-holiness/wholeness. This is what God wants from you.

(12) You’re still going to feel reverberations of the curse all around you, and you might even feel predisposed in your flesh to participate in and perpetuate the old system. Overcome that. Trust that God is in the process of eradicating even the predisposition. (13) In your faith, keep building the new system even when you see the old system all around you. Let your perpetuation of the new system become just as automatic as you used to be about the system of brokenness. (14) My student’s line of thinking is off-base. You are not trapped in the old system of sin-death-sin, so don’t live like you are. God has provided what you need to live in and for the new system. This is more than the Law, which helped you to understand and lessen sin (it was your sin accountant, in a way); this is triumph over the old system and all of the predisposition and reverberation associated with it.

(15) Returning to my “student” and his question: Are we now free to sin because the sin-death-sin system has been defeated rather than merely tallied? Absolutely not. (16) Understand this: we are inherently always perpetuating one of the systems. You can’t escape from the reality of that. (Your freedom is not the freedom from participating in a system; it’s freedom to choose which system you’re going to build.) This has everything to do with that participation and perpetuation. If you perpetuate the old system/trajectory, you belong to that system/trajectory and you’re going to land where it takes you. (17) You used to be stuck in the old way. But as I’ve been teaching you about all of this stuff, you’ve been making a sincere effort to live it out. I thank God that you are responding this way. ( 18 ) You’re no longer perpetuating something that harms you, but the new trajectory of systemic righteousness. God loves it!

(19) I’m deliberately going to great lengths to explain all of this to you because I know you’re still learning and growing in this radical message. This is a big-time shift in living we’re talking about. You used to obey the predisposition you experienced toward brokenness and corruption. Now you’re to overcome that predisposition so that you are participating in the new system, becoming completely enveloped in God.

(20) Sure, life used to be less complicated for you. You could go out and do whatever, and none of it really mattered. The idea of serving God wasn’t a pressure on your life. (21) But how did it feel to live that way? What were the results of living life that way? You felt shame. You were on a trajectory toward death – now and forever. (22) Now you don’t have to further the broken system any longer. You belong to God as you join Him in the furtherance of holiness/wholeness-life-holiness/wholeness in this world (systemic righteousness). Now you feel holiness and wholeness (rather than guilt and shame).

(23) The old system/trajectory was sin-death-sin (and so on). But God, by grace, through Christ, has given us an invaluable gift: a system/trajectory that leads to life.

Inspecting the Church’s Jewish roots: several quotes

Rather than share too many of my own thoughts today, I want to point in the direction of people with much more substance to offer, and some of the things they have to say about the relationship and history between Christianity and Judaism.

I’m going to just quote from a couple of sources, Marvin Wilson’s Our Father Abraham and Jacques Doukhan’s Israel and the Church. There are many other good sources from which to quote, yet blogging is time-consuming; there will be other days.

The only thing I want to mention is an explanation for why I bother to share these quotes, or even talk about Jewish roots at all. My rationale is deep and multi-faceted, but I’ll try to list a few reasons:

1. We’ve turned the Apostle Paul’s writing into its antithesis. Paul was very much about preserving the Jewishness of the gospel, yet we, for 1900 years, have made his writing into a polemic against those roots. (Which connects to my next point.)

2. We’ve less than 100 years removed from the Holocaust. That tragic event was not random or spontaneous; it was the pinnacle of a long line of Christian theology prime for such (mis)application. For some theologians this was worlds apart from their intentions for the Jewish people; for other theologians that much cannot be said.

3. With the development of the New Perspective on Paul (NT Wright, EP Sanders, James DG Dunn), more and more Christian leaders are coming to their senses. I interpret this as more than academic growth – I see this as an attempt by God to redirect what Rob Bell rightly calls a Church in exile. Speaking of Bell, he and Doug Pagitt have each released books in recent years that have discussed Jewish roots and how selling that rootedness for a Platonic version of the gospel got us where we are today – in exile.

These guys are great, but there’s no way they can write enough to adequately supply the Church on this topic (especially when this focus is secondary and indirect to other points they make in their works). We need multiple, solid sources as we learn all over again what it means to be Christian, grafted into to the people of God.

I have no intention of being an academic source on the matter, but I want to be pastoral in pointing people toward good information.

4. History is important. It’s not that we need to consider history for the sake of preserving our trajectory (as is the case with most traditionalists), but by knowing our history we can learn who we are (corporate narrative), the decisions that brought us here, and whether we want to adopt them all over again or move forward into decisions, mentalities, and theologies that are more historic still.

5. We serve a God who keeps promises. To quote (though very loose paraphrase) something I heard Dr. Wilson say in a lecture: Be careful what you say regarding God’s covenant to Israel. If he can [as some of you think] break His promises to them, then what’s to say He won’t do it to you.

Quotes to consider

Doukhan on Jesus and the Law

Although Jesus, Paul and all early Christians were Jewish, their theology is sometimes treated as if they were not Jews… The teaching of Jesus is clear on the matter. To the multitudes and his disciples he affirmed and recommended faithfulness to Jewish traditions; he even acknowledged the authority of the rabbis of his time: “The scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it” (Matthew 23.2-3). When Jesus explained that he came not “to abolish the law or the prophets… but to fulfill it” (Matthew 5.17), he did not mean to weaken the value of the law, that is, to say that the law was no longer valid. The Greek word pleroo translated here by “fulfill” means “to make complete.” As attested in the Greek Septuagint, behind this Greek word is the Hebrew word ml’, which means “to fill, to make full, to bring to plentitude.”

- Jacques Doukhan, Israel and the Church

Doukhan on how Jesus was received by his fellow Jews

Yet, Jesus was sentenced to death, traditionally pictured by Christians as a big crowd of Jews shouting, “Crucify him!” How can we explain this sudden shift from love to hatred? How can we reconcile the great popularity of Jesus for so many years and the admiration of the majority of the Jews with this one-day change and this demand for the death sentence? Political opportunism or fickle human changeableness could be a part of the answer. But even if we take these factors into consideration, we still stumble on the testimony of the New Testament, which clearly and unambiguously repeats that only a minority of Jews were involved. And these few men were in fact worried precisely because they were observing that a growing majority of Jewish people was responding positively to Jesus. Each gospel reports the minority viewpoint.

- Doukhan, Israel and the Church

Wilson on the gradual split

But in the second, third, and fourth centuries a new spirit of arrogance and supersessionism had arisen. Paul never anticipated that things would develop this far. He insisted that God did not reject his people, for “God’s gifts and call are irrevocable” (Rom 11.29). Yet Gentiles claimed to have replaced Israel. As the “new” Israel, the gentile church spiritually expropriated what had belonged to Israel.

- Marvin Wilson, Our Father Abraham

Stark on the timeline for the fallout

Jewish Christianity played a central role until much later in the rise of Christianity – that not only was it the Jews of the diaspora who provided the initial basis for church growth during the first and early second centuries, but that Jews continued as a significant source of Christian converts until at least as late as the fourth century.

- Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History

Doukhan on mis-perceptions about the timeline and the actual timeline (separate quotes)

According to some scholars, [good Jewish-Christian relations] changed, however, with the Jewish wars when Christians failed to support the nationalist movement against Rome and, instead of fighting along with their Jewish compatriots, chose to flee to Pella in Perea, which triggered the Jewish rejection. Christians were now seen as traitors and were no longer considered part of the family. This classic interpretation of the consequences of the Jewish revolts overlooks an important consideration: Christians were not the only Jews who did not participate in the wars against the Romans.

The historical fact that Jewish-Christians were still considered full members of the Jewish community until at least the fourth century, and the absence of any substantial evidence of Jewish rejection of Christians, suggests that the decisive factor that separated Jews and Christians is to be found rather in the Christian church. The synagogue did not expel Christians; instead, the church rejected the Jews.

- Doukhan, Israel and the Church

Wilson on early Church Fathers and the incorporation of dualism

Justin Martyr had been influenced by Platonic thought before his conversion. After he became a Christian, Justin brought many of Plato’s ideas into his teaching. As the Hebrew Scriptures were used to bring Jews to Christ, Justin used Platonic thought to reach Greeks. In the following century, Clement and others from Alexandria would place even greater emphasis upon reading the Bible through Platonic eyes. One of the results was that the third-century Christians began to view the physical world of flesh and matter as evil. The perpetuation of this view throughout the centuries would have dire consequences for the Church, especially in the understanding of such areas as salvation, spirituality, marriage, and the family.

- Wilson, OFA

Two quotes from Wilson regarding Marcion and Neo-Marcionism today

For nearly two thousand years Christianity has been debtor to the Jewish people for sharing this rich legacy. But it is tragic to realize that many Christians have avoided the Old Testament as a matter of “benign neglect”… This kind of warped thinking may be traced, at least in part, to the curricula of Christian colleges and theological seminaries. Many of these schools require more New Testament courses than Old Testament ones, and they often require study of Greek but make Hebrew optional. In actuality, however, the strains of a deeper dynamic are at work, an historical cancer that may be traced to Marcion in the second century.

Neo-Marcionism also tends to be advanced when a church communicates to a nearby synagogue the impression, “We don’t have anything to learn from you and your dead, legalistic religion, but you’ve got everything to learn from us.” Such an attitude smacks of an exclusivism and elitism that can only further fortify the barrier which has divided Synagogue and Church since the first century.

- Wilson, OFA

Doukhan on Marcion as agitator

However, at the time of the Marcionite heresy, in the second century, Christian reaction to the identification with Jewish customs became important. Thus Marcion ordered fasting on Saturday: “Because it is the rest of the God of the Jews, who has created the world and has rested on the seventh day, we fast on that day in order not to accomplish what was ordained by the God of the Jews.”

-Doukhan, Israel and the Church

Doukhan on Marcion, Augustine, and dualism

The suspect nature of replacement theology is already betrayed in the language itself that expresses it. Indeed, the contrast between Israel of the flesh and spiritual Israel not only pertains to the dualistic thinking inherited from gnostics and Marcion, but it also contributes to the traditional anti-Semitic portrayal of the Jew as a carnal figure. Augustine spoke of the Jews as an “ungodly race of carnal Jews.” Chrysostom went further along the same line and described Jews as “obstinate animals… fit for slaughter.” This dehumanization of the Jew “without soul” was one of the most prevailing themes in the church fathers’ polemics.

- Doukhan, Israel and the Church

Samuel Sandmel on fate and predestination

The view that the destiny of each man is predetermined by God is only superficially similar to the Greek view of fate. Fate was a blind force which directed what was to happen to men and gods alike, and what was fated could not be altered. It is different too from the view known as predestination, which, in a sense, is kindred to fate except that it is God who fixes the unalterable fate. The Jewish view – we might call it providence – never concluded that a totally unalterable future lay ahead, for such a view contradicted God’s omnipotence and mercy.

- Samuel Sandmel, as quoted in Wilson’s OFA

Wilson on a narrative understanding of faith – a God who is “down and in” and a people who walk in the Way

Some would define religion as a system of ethics, a code of conduct, an ideology, or a creed. To a Hebrew it is none of these; such definitions are misleading, deficient, or inaccurate. Rather, a Hebrew understood his daily life of faith in terms of a journey or pilgrimage. His religion was tantamount to the way in which he chose to walk. Even before the Flood, people such as Enoch and Noah “walked with God” (Gen. 5:24; 6:9). If a person knows God, he is daily at God’s disposal and walks in close fellowship with him, along the road of life… Everyone who walks through this life chooses a road or way for his journey. There is the “way of the wicked” (Prov. 15.9) and the “way of the righteous” (Ps. 1.6), and God knows the way a person takes (Job 23.10). God enjoins us “to walk in all his ways” (Deut. 11.22), so that we may say before him, “My steps have held to your paths; my feet have not slipped” (Ps. 17.5)… The concept of “the way” is also found in other religious literature outside the Bible. For example, the Dead Sea Scrolls indicate that the Qumran community called itself and its life “the Way.” In addition, the Didache, a short anonymous book of Christian instruction from the second century, discusses extensively the “Two Ways,” the Way of Life and the Way of Death.

- Wilson, OFA

Wilson on 1900 years of forgetting Paul’s letter to the Romans

A study of the last nineteen hundred years reveals how the Church left its original Jewish nest and considerably distanced itself from the Semitic culture that gave it birth. The Church paid little heed to the exhortation of Paul to continue in what it had learned and believed in the context of its Hebrew beginnings. Rather, as it became more and more Hellenized by moving westward through the Mediterranean world, it began to be led away into strange teachings (cf. Heb. 13.9)… The Church became vulnerable to [heresy] by cutting itself off from the very root that nourished its beginnings. John Spong has pointedly and succinctly explained the effect: “When Christianity severed itself from Judaism the Christian faith itself became distorted.”

- Wilson, OFA

Wilson explaining what we’re supposed to do with all this information

A profound and abiding Christian appreciation for Jewish culture and the Jewish people comes from sensing inwardly that one’s deepest spiritual identity is with a Jewish Lord, and that “salvation is from the Jews” (John 4.22)… It is the existential realization that spiritually one is “grafted into Israel,” a Jewish people.

- Wilson, OFA

Hellenism or true faith: a great quote from Abraham Heschel

“The vital issue for the Church is to decide whether to look for roots in Judaism and consider itself an extension of Judaism, or to look for roots in pagan Hellenism and consider itself an antithesis to Judaism.”

- Abraham Heschel, The Insecurity of Freedom