Brevard Childs was one of the very great OT scholars of the late twentieth century and into this century, and his last major contribution to Biblical Studies is a book entitled The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture (Eerdmans, 2004). What follows in the next series of blog posts is a detail synopsis of this important book with running commentary and critique. I would urge you to read the book for yourself and see what you think, as it provides actually a short course in the hermeneutics of how the OT has been interpreted by Christians over all of Christian history, and as such is worth the cost of the book just for that, never mind the illumination it provides on Isaiah.
—-
B. Childs last major contribution to the discussion of the book of Isaiah was published in 2004 under the title The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture, (Eerdmans, 2004). He passed away in 2007 not long after this book began to have its impact. It focuses primarily on the ‘reception history’ of Isaiah in the church, and it quite appropriately raises the hermeneutical issues that need to be addressed with that whole approach to Scripture which is au courant these days. It will serve us well then to have a detailed interaction with the book and with that method here, in this Appendix. Let me be clear that it is the NT itself, and authors such as the author of 1 Peter 1.25b that encourage us to ask the question—How can the OT in general, and Isaiah be preached as ‘the Good News about Jesus Christ’, or should we in fact say we cannot follow the example of the NT writers in their handling of the OT and their early Jewish hermeneutical approaches to it?
As Childs readily acknowledges at the beginning of his study, many modern scholars and commentators of various sorts have treated the Christian interpretation of Isaiah (often including the interpretation by the NT writers themselves) as a guide to how one should not interpret the book, as a sort of ‘map of misreading’. Should we just ignore that critique and wrap our ‘canonical approach’ mantles around our shoulders for warmth and protection and just carry on with our ‘traditional’ Christian interpretation of Isaiah? Or should we engage the discussion in another way? It is easy enough to demonstrate various ways the church has misused and misinterpreted the Book of Isaiah. One only needs to do a cursory reading of Sawyer’s, The Fifth Gospel to find all kinds of examples of this practice, some of them truly distorting and distressing. Childs describes one of the raison d’etre for writing this book as “many of Christianity’s greatest scholars, from both the East and the West, have written commentaries or extensive treatises on Isaiah (Justin, Irenaeus, Jerome, Thomas, Luther, Calvin). Then again, most of the difficult exegetical problems surrounding the relation of the Old and New Testaments have found a focus on Isaiah.” Not far behind has been the focus on the Psalms in the Church as well, especially because the Psalter became an every Sunday resource in Christian liturgy from the early days of Christianity to the present in a way that Isaiah has not.

The following is a re-post of something I wrote in 2009 for my Beliefnet blog. It seems even more relevant today what with all sorts of unethical behavior going on in the church, including in conservative Christian churches.

A CENSUS OF THE CONSENUS: NT ETHICS—Preliminary Considerations

Even drama is too static an understanding of theological ethics. Ethics cannot be simply about rehearsing and repeating the same script and story over and over again, albeit on a fresh stage with new players…The Bible is not so much a script that the church learns and performs as it is a training school that shapes the habits and practices of a community.—Samuel Wells

Ethics is theological: Ethics is not about using power, restoring former glory, or fulfilling individual freedom: it is about imitating God, following Christ, being formed by the Spirit to become friends with God. — Samuel Wells

OPENING SALVOS

It is sad but true to say that NT ethics has been the step-child of NT studies throughout the 20th and into the 21st century. There are a variety of reasons for this in the scholarly world. One is the disparaging remarks made about NT ethics by various highly influential NT scholars. When you complain that what we have in large portions of the NT is ‘bourgeois’ ethics (e.g. in the Pastoral Epistles), or an ethical miscellany cobbled together from Greco-Roman and Jewish ethics, or a baptizing of various forms of the status quo, the contempt for what is being urged in the NT is not far beneath the surface of the discourse.
But there is another reason why NT ethics has suffered both abuse and neglect and it is theological. In some forms of Reformed theology, ethics is frankly an after-thought. Reformed theology is all about God’s sovereignty, and grace and divine salvation, and there is an allergic reaction to the notion that the ethics of the NT might have something to do with theology, might have something to do with human salvation, because of course ethics is almost exclusively about human behavior, not God’s behavior. Even when a Reformed scholar emphasizes ethics as an essential act of gratitude in response to grace, he has failed to do justice to the inherent and necessary connection between theology and ethics in the NT. For example, salvation has to do with both theology and ethics in the NT. And there is a crucial epistemological issue to consider—how exactly can you ‘know’ a truth in the Biblical sense without living into and out of that truth? In the Bible, understanding often comes from doing or experiencing. Belief and behavior are not meant to be separated from one another into hermetically sealed off containers. The obedience which flows from faith is also the obedience which reassures, strengths and more fully forms faith.

And there is a third issue as well. Modern Christian scholars are overwhelmingly non-Jewish in background—whether we are talking about Protestants, Catholics, or Orthodox scholars. As such, they do not reflect the orientation and ethos of early Judaism, unlike the way most NT writers do. By this I mean that early Judaism was primarily about orthopraxy, not orthodoxy. It was overwhelmingly about behavior—whether ritualized or simply moral behavior. It was seeking to answer the question—How may we live faithfully and appropriately in response to God? It is of course true that the NT is more theological in character than many other early Jewish documents, but it is not true that ethics is just an after-thought in this NT literature. Indeed, it is often at the heart of what is going on in many if not most of the NT documents.

For example, as theological in character as Galatians is, the function of all the verbage is to prevent a certain kind of behavior the audience is considering— namely getting oneself circumcised and keeping the Mosaic Law. Or to take another example, the sermon called Hebrews has long exhortation sections interspersed between the textual exposition sections of the discourse, the exposition leading to the punch line of exhortation. The author is trying to prevent the audience from going AWOL, or committing apostasy. This is also the agenda of several other NT documents including 1 John and Revelation. Had we been paying more attention to the imperatives in the NT all along we would have realized that ethics is just the logical implication, and real life working out of the theology in a person’s or community’s life.

And this brings us to another crucial preliminary observation. It is not merely that the imperative is built or based on the indicative, though that is true. It is that the imperative presupposes the work of the living God within the very inner being of the community and its individuals, such that God is commanding what he is already enabling by the divine saving action in the audience’s midst.
Ethics is not merely the response of a grateful heart to what God has done for someone or for a community. Ethics is the necessary outworking of what God has worked in the community and its individual members. Ethics is not an optional added extra if one wishes to be saved to the uttermost. Neither is ethics is not an optional added extra if one wishes to please God. Nor is ethics merely the fruit that a good tree bears. Christian Ethics does indeed have to do with human behavior, the chosen behavior of a person saved and empowered by grace to respond to God’s commands and emulate the behavior of exemplars like Christ and his apostles. There is then a middle term between the action of God and the ethical response of God’s child or community, and that is the experience of God’s action within the community and its individuals, an experience wrought by the Holy Spirit. We will say more about this as the chapter develops.

THE ISSUE OF MORAL VISION: ITS META-NARRATIVE AND FACETS

The Bible is replete with reminders that “without vision the people perish”, and this is especially the case when it comes to ethical or moral vision. Believing, in the sense of notional assent to a set of ideas, somehow seems to come much easier than behaving, or understanding how one ought to behave. And just so we are clear about the order of things when it comes to theology and ethics, it is of course true that the NT writers believe that “obedience is a consequence [and gift] of salvation, not its condition. The Holy Spirit is not a theological abstraction but the manifestation of God’s presence in the community, making everything new. Those who respond to the Gospel have entered the sphere of the Spirit’s power, where they find themselves changed and empowered for obedience.” Indeed one can say that the Spirit is characterized as a sort of GPS device, giving guidance and direction on the fly, such that even a figure like James can say “it seemed good to us and the Holy Spirit…” (Acts 15). The Spirit not merely empowers, energized, enables the believer, the Spirit leads the believer into all truth, and into ‘the paths of righteousness for his name sake’.

What is too seldom noted about the shared moral vision of the NT writers (and note that I do not say visions) is t
hat it is grounded in the first instance in story and experience— the story of Christ himself, and the experience of Christ by means of the work of the Spirit. The construction of a Christian ethic is not an abstract intellectual exercise, it is rather a response to the work of God in the midst of God’s people. And what they are most responding to is Christ and his story as it has impacted them. Let’s take an example.

Consider for example what is going on in Romans 12.9-21 and 13.8-10. Scholars have often noted echoes of the Sermon on the Mount in this material, including echoes of the Beatitudes. Paul has imbibed and embodied this teaching and has made it his own, and is prepared to reapply it to a different situation. And we note his stress on how love is the fulfilling of the Law, even of various of the ten commandments. This of course is not an independent reflection on the OT Law but one that reflects a variety of things Jesus said, including about what was the greatest of the commandments. What is especially interesting however is the phrase ‘the other law’ in Rom. 13.8. What other law? This seems likely to be a reference to the Law of Christ, which Paul elsewhere refers to in 1 Cor. 9 and Gal. 6, a law which, as it turns out is composed of three elements: 1) emulating the pattern of Christ’s life; 2) the obedience of faith which includes obeying Christ’s teachings (including his reaffirmation of some OT teachings) as reapplied to the Christian community, and 3) obeying the new apostolic teaching which amplifies and expands upon the example and teaching of Christ. Now all of this presupposes and is grounded in the story of Christ. It presupposes the audience is already well familiar with that story and with the essential teachings of Jesus as well such that even with a new audience which Paul has not addressed before, as is the case with the audience in Rome, Paul does not have to engage in the hard sell even when commanding non-violence and no retaliation, two of the stand out or distinctive planks in the ethical platform of the historical Jesus. This is remarkable and it shows what we have already stressed.

The early Christian community was a small, rather closely knit and socially linked community across the Empire. It shared a considerable amount of common teaching of both an ethical and theological sort. This is part of what made a Christian community in any given locale recognizably different from other faith communities. The unity of the ethics in the NT is not a contrived unity, something modern scholars produce miraculously like pulling a rabbit out of a hat by demonstrating the compatibility and coherence of the NT ethics as a modern exercise. On the contrary, the unity arises out of the coherence of these communities when it comes to the shared ideological and narratological framework in which they did their theologizing and ethicizing.

There was much these communities had in common and indeed took largely for granted, so great was the impact crater of the Christ event (person, works and teachings) on so many of them. We honestly do not absolutely need focal images to unite NT ethics, though they can be helpful to some degree. There is a focal person behind it all as both the exemplar and provider of examples, as both the teacher and the teaching. At the end of the day NT ethics is about the imitation of Christ, in various of the possible meanings of that phrase.

This is why the metaphor of walking is so crucial not just in early Jewish ethics in general but in the NT in particular. Walking presupposes one is going somewhere. Walking presupposes one has a sense of direction, a roadmap, a guide. Walking assumes that there is a plot or plan or a course to follow. And when the Christian begins walking, he is supposed to be following in the footsteps of Christ—taking up his own cross, denying himself, and following Jesus. This is the heart of the matter, and the rest is an amplification and commentary on that journey.
Now a journey of course involves drama, but a journey is no play or play acting. It involves not only following the map and directions provided, it often involves improvisation, upon which more will be said later. The life of Jesus is seen as the map, and the Law of Christ the directions as to how to follow it. There are many things in the day to day walk not shown on the map, and many things not referred to in the directions which a person is given. Life is more detailed and involved than a map or set of directions can show or account for. Unlike a drama which has a climax perhaps and an end, a journey has a goal, and that goal as is clearly stated by both Jesus, Paul and other NT figures is not heaven but the Kingdom of God here on earth.

Inheriting, entering, obtaining that Dominion is the goal. It is what Jesus taught us to pray for, and what we seek to obtain in due course. Indeed, it is said to be the inheritance of Christ’s followers, not surprisingly since they are children of a King who will rule there forever. John Updike put it this way— “This kingdom is the hope and pain of Christianity; it is attained against the grain through the denial of instinct and social wisdom and through faith in the unseen [see Heb. 11]. Using natural metaphors as effortlessly as an author quoting his own works, Jesus disclaims Nature and its rules of survival. Nature’s way, obvious and broad, leads to death; this other way is narrow and difficult: ‘Come in by the narrow gate….’ Christ’s preaching threatens men, the virtuous even more than the wicked, with a radical transformation of values whereby the rich and pious are damned and harlots and tax collectors are rather more acceptable…Two worlds are colliding, amazement prevails.”

Jesus set out a vision of this journey’s end called Kingdom in his beatitudes, a vision expounded on in many ways in the NT, and most beautifully in the end of the book of Revelation where we are told about how the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ, with the vision of the descending heavenly city and the merger of heaven and earth when Christ returns, the dead are raised, justice is done, and everlasting peace and salvation is established upon the earth in the new creation.

The beatitudes are eschatological blessings for believers, which is to say things that will apply when one reaches the kingdom goal and the kingdom of God comes on earth as it is in heaven. And here’s the good news—the Dominion will be theirs, they will inherit the earth, they will be comforted, they will be filled with righteousness, they will be shown mercy, and most of all—they will see God and be called children of God, being like Him (cf. 1 Cor. 13.12; Rev. 21). Their present condition however seems to be the opposite of all this. They are poor in spirit, they are mourning, meek, persecuted, and yet they are in a blessed moral condition because they are pure in heart, merciful, indeed even peacemakers. As Mt 5.12 suggests while the reward will be great in the Kingdom, the travail on the journey may be great. It will be a rough ride into the Kingdom, and not like a roller coaster where the course is pre-ordained and one is strapped into the seat so that reaching the goal is inevitable. Why not? Because the human behavior of the disciples affects the outcome for them of course. Ethics is not just about attitude or gratitude, as it turns out, it is about a necessary walking in the right direction, having heard the clarion call of Jesus to “walk this way”. And of course, the clearer the image we have of Jesus and his character in our mind’s eye, the more clearly we may be able to discern how to emulate his character and behavior.

It is likely that Jesus’ own moral vision of how one must be and behave in order to enter the Dominion is derived from his own call narrative of sorts—the one he exegetes his own ministry in the light of— I
saiah 61.1-4: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. H sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim freedom to the captives and release for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of the vengeance of God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion, to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. …Instead of their shame my people will receive a double portion and instead of disgrace they will rejoice in their inheritance.”

Jesus’ ministry was the inauguration of the Kingdom on earth, the divine saving reign of God upon the earth, where God’s will is at last done for one and all. But as the beatitudes make very clear as for entering, obtaining or inheriting all that is promised, that lies still in the future. So the disciples of Jesus live between the times. They live between the beginning and the consummation of the Dominion of God upon the earth. The journey has begun, but it is nowhere near done.
But there is a further element to Jesus’ recitation of Isaiah 61, and his proclamation that it was being fulfilled in the audience’s hearing, that requires notice and reflection. This text alludes to what will happen in the year of Jubilee, the year that debts are forgiven, the year that land is allowed to go fallow, the year that slaves were set free or allowed to return to their point or family of origin. In other words, it was a season when the usual rules of the road, indeed the very laws of Moses, did not apply in various cases. It is not a surprise that Jesus would use such language to characterize the inbreaking of the divine saving reign or Dominion of God if he wanted to stress the element of newness and discontinuity with the way things had previously been done so far as behavior and praxis was concerned. Jesus’ ministry inaugurates the eschatological ‘year of Jubilee’.

Let us reflect on Lev. 25 for a moment. Basically this is a text proclaiming a sabbatical year for the land and for the people of the land. The land itself is keeping a sort of Sabbath in the Jubilee year, and this was meant as a reminder to God’s people that they did not own the land, but rather it belonged to God whilst they were actually just sojourners and foreigners in the land, however long they may have lived there. The Jubilee year was the fiftieth year after seven cycles of seven years. It was however not just a year of rest for the land, it was a year of redemption or emancipation for slaves as well as for houses (people could get their homes back after they had been sold out from under them), and emancipation for all sorts of people from debts as well. Redemption and pardon characterized this year. This script of Jubilee is in part the source of Jesus’ moral vision, as Luke 4 tells the tale. Among other things it explains: 1) why Jesus thought healing was especially appropriate on the Sabbath—it was the right day to give people ‘rest’ from what ails them; 2) it explains why as well Jesus pronounced the remission of debts and forgiveness of sins; 3) it explains why Jesus went about setting captives free, for example the demon possessed; 4) even more interesting is the close analogy between the celebration of the feast of Pentecost and the Jubilee celebration, because Pentecost was the celebration after seven weeks of harvest.

Suddenly we can see a connection between Jesus’ inaugural sermon and what happened in Acts 2 and the inaugural sermon there by Peter. In Luke 4 Jesus says that the Spirit has fallen on him and empowered and inspired him to proclaim the year of Jubilee and to begin to enact it. In Acts 2, Peter proclaims that the Spirit has now fallen on the whole community of Jesus’ followers and they must now go forth and continue and emulate the ministry of Christ. The pouring out of the Spirit on all flesh is seen as the clearest sign that the eschatological age is now in full swing. And the ethical import of this can hardly be missed. Now the disciples are empowered not only for mission but for obedience to God, for walking in a holy way that is pleasing to the Lord for they are filled with God’s Holy Spirit. The ethics of the Kingdom now becomes a live possibility for them, not just a utopian dream that only Jesus could live out. They are pilgrims empowered to pray, praise, proclaim, and walk as Jesus walked heading for the Kingdom goal.

When Paul wants to talk about what is needed for the journey into the Dominion, having exhorted them about fulfilling the new law by means of loving, he says “And do this understanding the present time…so let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, [not in nighttime behavior] Rather clothe yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not thing about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.” (Rom. 13.11-14). I submit that in order to be able to exhort a congregation you have never visited to “clothe yourself with the Lord” they must already know what that looks like, they must know what that means. The author and the audience must share the same road map and set of directions when it comes to walking in the light and reaching the Kingdom goal and Paul must be counting on the Holy Spirit to illumine and empower such a venture. In short, they must already share the same moral vision.

If we ask who cast this new moral vision focused on a Kingdom goal, the answer is of course Jesus, from the very beginning of his ministry when he spoke about the Kingdom being at hand (Mk. 1.15). The King has come, but his followers still await the consummation of his kingdom. In the meantime they are not on a crusade, but rather on a pilgrimage to the holy city, sharing with those they meet along the way about what is coming and what has already come of the Christ events. Failure to walk in the light, failure to put on one’s protective under armor before traveling can lead to not reaching the goal.

Reading a moral map, and understanding and following directions carefully of course requires moral discernment. Indeed it requires having the mind of Christ and thinking as he thought, and bearing in mind his own pilgrimage. This is why Paul first says “have this mind in yourself that was also in Christ Jesus” and then proceeds to retell the story of the V pattern of Christ’s career in Phil. 2.5-11. He does this in order to encourage the audience to also take a self-sacrificial approach to life. Always before the audience is held up an image of self-sacrificial love and its rewards and benefits.

Jesus of course insisted on close listening with two good ears to understand his moral teaching, but Paul insists that the renewal of the mind is also necessary “so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Rom. 12.2).

You might well say, but we have a huge quantity of commandments already in God’s Word, why do we need a process of moral discernment? Isn’t it just about obeying the script of the Scripture? Well actually no, NT ethics is not just about that, not least because so many of the decisions a Christian must make along the journey do not have a direct analog in the directions in the New Testament. Indeed, most of life’s mundane decisions are not scripted or ordered in the New Testament. This is why improvisation is necessary, and moral discernment is required in many situations in life, even in the case of the most sheltered of Christian lives.

It needs to be said at this time that one’s assessment of the moral vision of the NT is certainly affected by how one views the relationship of the NT to the OT, or more particularly the relationship of the new covenant to all previous Biblical covenants. Frankly, it is perfectly
clear from a close reading of the Sermon on the Mount and the ethical teachings of Paul that the new covenant is certainly not just a renewal of one or more old covenants, not even the Mosaic one. Indeed, there are various provisions of the NT, such as the call for no oaths, the eschewing of violence altogether, the practice of non-resistance, the loving of enemies, the declaring obsolete of the notion that one can be defiled by some food that enters one’s mouth, and so on, that make impossible the notion that the new covenant is just the new and improved version of an older covenant. When the eschatological kingdom comes, we cease to study war any more, and there are other things which fall into abeyance as well. A Christian approach to war cannot appeal to the various pieces of legislation or moral examples found in the Old Testament, unless one or another of them is found renewed or reaffirmed by some NT writer or Jesus.
Thus NT ethics, on a variety of subjects will overlap with OT ethics, in some cases will dismiss or intensify some provision of OT ethics, and in some cases will simply replace it with a very different ethic an OT ethical principle or practice. Some allowable oaths are replaced by no oaths at all. Some forms of food laws are replaced by no required food laws per se. Some Sabbath requirements are replaced by no Sabbath observance being required of any Christian. Some use of violence is replaced by no use of violence by Christians to resolve their problems. The new covenant is just that—a new covenant, not just the old covenant part deux. And no, it is not just certain ritual practices that are said to be obsolete or replaced, it’s also some of the ethical principles which are replaced and seen as outmoded, now that the Kingdom is coming with observation. Jesus was a moral vision caster, and some of the vision he cast was indeed something new altogether.

LEVELS OF MORAL DISCOURSE

Unfortunately, besides the neglect or disparagement of NT ethics, one of the other negative things that has happened to NT ethical material is the de-contexualizing of the material and the failure to see its usual ad hoc nature. All too often it has been treated rather flatly or uniformly. These things ought not to be. NT ethics is just as much a word on target for certain Christian audiences as the theologizing we find in these same documents. And in fact, when we have material that is repeated in more than one document, for example like the household codes, we begin to discover that there are trajectories of change in some of this material, just as there are levels of discourse. Let me explain what I mean by these two concepts (levels of discourse and trajectories of change) as they are in fact intertwined.
If a person has any sensibility about wanting to make an effective communication with a particular audience and persuade them of something, especially if the issue here is exhortation and application, then that person must: 1) understand the nature of the relationship between the author and the audience; 2) be able to gauge the level and character of his communication so it will be not merely understood but received as persuasive, and 3) speak to the place that the conversation has been able to develop thus far. For example, if we were to compare what Paul says in Colossians, Ephesians, and Philemon about slavery a reasonably clear trajectory of change can be mapped out which not incidentally or accidentally parallels the level of discourse Paul is offering in the given document.

Colossians, not unlike Romans, is what can be called first order discourse, and that effects the ethical remarks in these letters just as much as their theologizing. First order discourse is what one is able and willing to say to an audience the first time one addresses them and begins the dialogue. An effective rhetorician will start with the audience where they are, and in the course of a dialogue and discussion try and move the audience to where the speaker thinks they ought to be. Not everything can be and should be attempted or discussed in one’s opening salvo, and this is particularly the case when one wants an audience to change their long accepted and deeply ingrained behavior patterns.
Paul’s letter to the Colossians was written to a congregation that Paul did not convert, and apparently had not yet even visited. It appears to have been one of Paul’s co-workers who planted the church in Colossae.

Paul addresses his audience knowing that there already exists in Colossae, and amongst the church members there, a patriarchal cultural structure and also a domination system called slavery. His interest is in household management within Christian homes, particularly as it affects Christian congregations, not in general. In his opening salvo, Paul starts with the household structure in which women, slaves and minors are in a decidedly inferior and subordinate position in the household compared to the male head of the household, and he begins to bring to bear Christian ethical concerns to these pre-existing relationships, thus ameliorating already at the outset some of the harsher dimensions of those fallen relationships. Paul is bold, but he is not stupid. He doesn’t try to push the conversation further than the traffic will bear in an opening conversation.

Thus in Col. 3-4 Paul talks about household relationships being lived out in ways that are more pleasing to the Lord or fitting in the Lord. When Paul turns to exhorting the head of the household, which is unusual in ancient discussions of household management, Paul restricts the power and way of relating to the subordinate members of the family—the husband must love the wife and not be harsh with them, he must not embitter his children so that they get discouraged, and most of all he must treat his slaves as persons, giving them what is right and fair (even though in Roman law slaves were ‘living property’, by which I mean they really had no rights). Herein we see only the beginning of the process of putting the leaven of the Gospel into these fallen situations.

The next level of discourse, second order moral discourse, can be seen in Ephesians, a circular homily that went to the church in Ephesus, and probably to the Colossians and other nearby Pauline churches. Here Paul is able to push the envelope a bit further than we find in Colossians. For example, at the introduction to the household code in Ephesians, at Ephes. 5.21 Paul exhorts all Christians to submit to one another out of reverence to Christ.

Suddenly, it is not just the normally subordinate persons in that society who are doing the submitting—wives, children, and slaves. Now even the men are submitting as well to their fellow Christians and serving them. This self-sacrificial and serving ethic is of course something Jesus himself enunciated—he did not come to be served but to serve and give his life a ransom for the many (Mk. 10.44-45). Paul takes up this theme in Phil. 2.5-11 by showing how the very coming of the Son into the world was an example of stripping himself of prerogatives and taking on the very form and approach of a slave—serving others. Instead of domineering and causing others to submit, Jesus stepped down and served others, setting his followers an example of freely chosen submission and service of others.

But it is not just in the introduction to the household code in Ephes. 5-6 that we find that the trajectory of change has moved on further from Colossians. It is also in other remarks. The husband is not merely to love the wife, he is to love her in the same self-sacrificial way Christ loved the church and gave up his very life for her. In regard to the husband’s relationship with his children he is charged with the task of bringing them up in the Christian faith and ethical practices. This task is not left for the wife to do in Ephesians. Most remarkable Paul in Ephes. 6.9 says to the slave owne
r “treat your slaves in the same manner”. In the same manner as what? In the same manner as the slaves are to serve their masters, wholeheartedly, serving as though they were serving the Lord himself. In other words, the master must serve and treat with respect his servants and do it whole-heartedly! And then we also have the warning not to threaten or abuse the slaves backed with the sanction that the masters themselves have a Master in heaven who is all seeing and all knowing. Most remarkably, Paul spends more time exhorting the head of the household than the rest of the household combined, attenuating his power, Christianizing his thinking, restricting his privileges, calling him to love and self-sacrificially serve. This goes well beyond Greco-Roman household management advice.

Finally if we turn to Philemon, here we have what can be called third order moral discourse—the sort of discourse one could and would have with an intimate. Here one no longer needs to hold anything in reserve—one can speak frankly, and Paul does. He calls for Philemon to: 1) manumit his wayward runaway slave rather than punishing him; 2) he insists that he treat Onesimus “no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a brother in Christ”; and 3) he urges he must treat and receive him as he would treat the apostle himself!

And just in case Philemon had not figured out that Paul was as serious as a heart attack about what he was urging, he reminds Philemon that he owes him his very spiritual life, and that he hopes to come to him soon (to make sure he follows through on what Paul is now persuading him to do). Here indeed we see how far the ethical discussion of slavery could and would go in an early Christian Pauline context. Paul is not afraid of implying that treating someone as a brother is incompatible with having someone as a slave. This comports with what Paul says in 1 Cor. 7 where he suggests that if a slave is offered his freedom he should take it. As the levels of moral discourse progress from initial discussion to talking with an intimate you can see the trajectory of change enunciated over time when the same person is treating the same subject with some portion of the same audience (Philemon was part of the church in Colossae it appears). It is unfortunate we do not have more examples of all three levels of discourse offered on the same or a similar subject to the same audience at various points in their relationship.
But what this example tells us is something important—especially with ethical remarks we need to ask not merely about the position taken but also about the direction of the remarks. Where are these remarks heading? Do they stand out from the usual advice of that social world, and if so, in what way? In what way can they be seen as examples, if they can, of attempts to bring about change in the status quo? The same sort of question can be asked when one compares the teaching of Jesus to other early Jewish teachers in a variety of subjects. When you do so, you discover that while Jesus is conventional in some regards, clearly enough in various of his ethical teachings he is moving well beyond and challenging the existing status quo. But one will only see and know this if one does his homework and studies Jesus in his proper social context. These are the sorts of questions we need to ask of the ethical texts found in the NT.

THE ETHICS OF ADIAPHORA AND OTHERNESS

Leaving aside for a moment the obvious direct commandments of the NT which order behavior in both general and specific ways, there are many indications that we also have help in forming the Christian conscience and faculty of moral discernment so that one can make moral judgments for oneself or so that a community can collectively make such judgments, particularly in matters for which there is no specific teaching or commandment in the NT. Let us consider for a moment the discussion in a couple of Pauline texts—Rom. 14.5-6 and 1 Cor. 8-10.

Rom. 14.5-6 is remarkable on any showing as a pronouncement for a former Pharisee. Formerly a strict Sabbitarian and follower of ritual purity codes (see Phil. 3.6), now Paul says “some consider one day more sacred than another; others consider every day alike. Each one should be persuaded in their own minds. Those who regard one day as special do so to the Lord. Those who eat meat do so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and those who abstain do so to the Lord and give thanks to God.” This discussion of course should be compared to the more lengthy one in 1 Cor. 8-10 about eating meat sacrificed to idols and going to Temple feasts. But here the context is about the divisions between Jewish and Gentile Christians in Rome over such issues as the Sabbath and food. Paul says to them all, that about such things “each should be persuaded in their own minds”.

As we might say, it is a matter of individual conscience, and as Paul was to more clearly stress in 1 Cor. 8-10 whatever a person cannot do in good conscience is sin, at least for them—a violation of their faith and conscience. Clearly enough, Paul does not think that keeping the food laws, or keeping the Sabbath is required of the followers of Jesus any more. The eschatological age has broken in, and new occasions teach new duties. What is also remarkable about this discussion in both these Pauline texts is that while Paul largely agrees with the Gentiles that observing such food laws and Sabbatarian practice is no longer required of the followers of Jesus, even the Jewish ones, he nonetheless seeks to protect those whom he calls the weaker (in conscience) brothers and sisters—those who in his view have too many scruples about food and Sabbath and the like.

In 1 Cor. 8-10 Paul is trying to raise the consciousness of the self-centered more elite Gentile Christians in Corinth that they have an obligation not to cause their Jewish brothers and sisters with more scruples to stumble about eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols. The conscience of the other, however overly scrupulous it might be, must not be violated by trying to cajole them into eating something they do not feel comfortable eating. Paul views the overly scrupulous conscience as a weaker conscience, not a stronger one, but out of love he does not want the weaker in faith to be led into sin.

In this circumstance, what is and isn’t Christian ethical behavior, depends on how sensitive one’s own conscience is about such matters. And one gets the sense that there are many such matters Paul would consider ‘things indifferent’ or adiaphora, in themselves—what one wears, eats, when one observes a holy day. They become ethically charged matters when questions like the following are asked: 1) If I do X, will it cause my brother or sister to stumble?; 2) Am I standing on my own rights and conscience without discerning the effects of my actions on those who are not equally convinced about this form of behavior?; 3) What sort of behavior in this matter builds up the body of Christ and what sort rips it asunder? In other words, in these kinds of matters the ethic of love for the other, especially within the body of Christ, and the need to do good to and honor the other becomes the principle guide as to what is and is not ethical behavior in such situations where a difference of opinion and conscience exists over a matter that is actually ‘adiaphora’, now that the Dominion is breaking into the human sphere.

At the very heart of the ethic of Jesus, and of his followers who wrote NT books was of course the ethic of love—whole-hearted love of God, and love of neighbor as self, but also love of enemy as well. Love, according to Rom. 13.8, is the one debt constantly owed by the believer to others. Now what is interesting about all the emphasis on love in so many places in the NT (cf. Mt. 5-7; John 3; Rom. 12-13; 1 John 4-5 etc.) is that love has a concrete face, and it is fleshed out by quite s
pecific enjoinders and commandments of various sorts. Love is not just allowed to be some sort of fuzzy guiding principle that each person is allowed to define on their own terms.

While there is plenty of room for moral discernment in the Christian ethic, there are in fact so many imperatives in the NT that make clear what love ought to look like, even tough love with the recalcitrant (see 1 Cor. 5) that we do not hear the modern refrain in the NT—“what is the loving thing to do?”, as if this question could be asked while ignoring things like the vice list in 1 Cor. 6.9-10 which tells us what sort of behaviors, if persisted in, will keep even Christians out of the Kingdom, or while ignoring the commandments from the Big Ten that are reiterated in Rom. 13.9-10. As Paul says in that context, the essence of the Ten Commandments so far as it involves interpersonal behavior is that “love does no wrong to the neighbor” and the ten commandments show more specifically what sort of things count as wrongs.

What we should discern from all of this is that there are both ethical principles and ethical practices, and forms of behavior that are considered right or wrong in all situations, and then there are other forms of behavior that become right or wrong depending on their effect on the neighbor or the fellow member of the body of Christ. One cannot simply look at the map or re-read the directions in all cases. One needs an indwelling GPS device, a sense of moral direction in the many instances where there is no commandment specified in the new covenant. And this calls for a sense of and a knack for proper and holy ethical improvisation, which requires more explanation at this juncture.

A NIGHT AT THE IMPROV—IS IT AN ETHICAL CHRISTIAN APPROACH?
Mention improvisation and most people will think of something like spontaneous free-form musical experimentation such as one finds in jazz, or the like. This is clearly not what Samuel Wells has in mind in his recent book Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics. As Wells says, ethics presupposes a context and an understanding of context presupposes narrative. Whose story are we supposed to be living out of and into? We have already seen in our last section of this discussion that it is clear enough that Paul is encouraging his converts to do some improvising so that the weaker brother or sister does not have their conscience violated and so that the building up of the community and the love of the other is the goal of all actions.

Wells reasons that the Christian story is drama, and therefore that ethics is a form of performance of the drama. In this he sounds remarkably like Kevin Vanhoozer, only Vanhoozer is speaking about doctrine. The problem I have with both of them, is that drama is the wrong analogy and so performance is not what behaving ethically is all about. It’s all about pilgrimage not performance, odyssey or journey not a drama. It’s more like Pilgrim’s Progress, than Archibald MacLeish’s J.B. The Christian life is not a play, and we are not performing a pre-ordained part or script.

Wells recognizes some of the problems with this model of ethics as performance of a script. He lists the following problems: 1) a script might be assumed to provide a comprehensive version of life in which all questions and eventualities are covered. Clearly enough, this is not what we have in the NT when it comes to ethics, as anyone who has argued about the issue of abortion on the basis of NT principles rather than specific commandments has to admit; 2) the notion of performance of a script gives the impression that the Bible includes or encompasses the whole of the church’s story and how it should be lived out. If it only were true! But in fact as Acts 28 reminds us, we have been plopped down in the city of humankind with no resolution to the story yet in sight. We are all still waiting on Godot, or in this case Jesus to come back and resolve various matters. It is for this very reason that I have used the analogy with the roadmap (or even treasure map) and its directions when thinking of the NT and ethics.

A roadmap even with attendant directions is not like a full script of a drama where every entrance and exit, every speech and action is pre-scripted. Wells also rightly points out that a script suggests that there was a time when God’s people did get it right, a golden age so to speak, and we should simply retrace their steps. This ignores the many tales of failure, sin, loss, tragedy that we have in the Bible, and more to the point often such tales are told about people who in their better moments are ethical paradigms—for example in the case of Peter. Then too a script and performance model of Christian ethics risks the danger of no genuine engagement with the world, no clear response in the present to unexpected twists and turns in life. To this I would add that the drama/script /performance model has a sense of artificiality to it. A play, is after all about acting, not so much about being. But Christian ethics is certainly not about acting or pretending to be something or someone one is not. It is rather about walking, walking as yourself with your own name, in a particular direction, following the map, the directions, and yes the internal GPS device.

And this brings us to Wells’ helpful concept of improvisation. ‘When improvisers are trained to work in the theater, they are schooled in a tradition so thoroughly that they learn to act from habit in ways that are appropriate to the circumstance. This is exactly the goal of theological ethics.” So then we are talking about the ingrained habits of the heart, providing a natural tracking device or guidance system when the road forward is covered with underbrush or it is not clear which turn to take. Wells goes on to ward off misconceptions of his term improvisation. “One misapprehension is that improvisation is about being original.” No– improvisation presumes a detailed knowledge of the situation and the circumstances and an ability to react to the unexpected in an appropriate manner—or to use a drama term, to act in character rather than out of character.

Now it is interesting that the author of Hebrews who uses the pilgrimage model at length when describing the Christian life and provides a long list of examples of folks in the hall of faith in Heb.11 that one should consider and reflect on, nonetheless finishes that hall by telling the audience that Jesus is the pioneer and perfector or trailblazer and finisher of faith, and therefore the Christian is said to be one who must be “looking to Jesus” and following him and the trail he blazed into glory. He is finally the ultimate paradigm of what faith and faithfulness looks like, and he, as the lead runner, is the one we should be trotting along behind, and on the same right track as well.

This model of Christian ethics is something rather different than the drama/script/performance model. The improvisation that Wells is rightly talking about does not involve being original, or clever, or witty, necessarily, it involves faithfully reacting to situations and circumstance that while unexpected are actually not uncommon, and calls for improvisation within the parameters of good Christian character. Think for the moment of the analogy of a runner running a long distance race with a crowded field of runners. He is constantly bumped and jostled, knocked off balance or slightly off course by the regular jockeying for position, the attempts to pass slower runners and so on. Thus, the runner must develop coping skills to keep his balance, to avoid stepping on someone else’s foot and so turn an ankle, to avoid falling, or running outside the lines. The Christian ethical journey or race is much the same and fortunately many have gone before showing us the way, particularly the ultimate trailblazer Jesus. Improv in a race is to a great extent watchi
ng others successfully navigate around obstacles and following their examples.

It is not an accident that Paul tells his Corinthian converts that no temptation has overcome them that is not common to humanity, and that with such trials God can provide an adequate means of escape. Their journey is no more arduous than that of the wilderness wandering generation, but also no less perilous (1 Cor. 10). Improvisation is not merely for the elite who are clever, it is for every Christian, if they would but embrace it. When the map and the directions do not specify—what does one do? The answer is faithful and in character improvisation. As cliché as it might sound, it involves asking WWJD–What would Jesus do, for we are indeed living out of and emulating his story, his journey, his pilgrimage from gall to glory, from disgrace to grace, from death to resurrection. I short, NT ethics involves living out of the very heart of the NT thought world—the narrative of and about Jesus, which of course includes his words as well as his deeds.

Wells is also right that the sort of improvisation he is talking about is not the isolated performance of a gifted individual—say a Robin Williams type improvising in spontaneous stream of consciousness. It is more like the ensemble playing of a group of jazz musicians who inwardly know where the boundaries are, when to rise and fall, when to speed up and slow down, when to play sharps and when flats, when to be loud and when soft, and they know this because of years of inter-active playing with other improvisers. One is not creating a response to life de novo, or by oneself, but in community as a fellow traveler with all the other travelers singing the pilgrimage songs, the songs of Zion with one another and in harmony. Harmonizing requires listening intently to the other improvisers and fitting in. It requires restraint of one’s own natural individualistic self expression and creativity. It requires channeling one’s efforts and energies in the same direction the others are going.

What I would add to Wells’ reflections is that what allows one to successfully improvise in unexpected situations such that the improvisation can be called in accord with Christian ethics is that one has first internalized deeply the Scriptures, especially the story of Jesus, such that the almost instinctive reaction will flow right out of and in accord with the story one has internalized and seeks to live by, the map and directions one has memorized and seeks to follow.

But alas, true improvisation becomes difficult and dangerous, and not for beginners if they are Biblically illiterate. If you have not carefully studied the map, learned its contours, looked at the examples of those who have traveled this way before you, including especially Jesus, and read and re-read the directions so that you don’t need to keep looking them up, then you are not ready for prime time, you are not ready for ‘Night at the Improv’. You are not prepared for the unexpected crisis that comes along the way. In short, especially younger Christians need the community of faith to model how to do the improvisation. Let me illustrate what I mean.

9-11-01 caused a lot of people to come unglued, including many Christians, and indeed even many ministers. One minister out on the West Coast really came out with a tirade the following Sunday. He got into the pulpit and said words to the effect of “I am an American first, and a Christian second, bomb them back into the stone age”. When he was called on this by more than one parishioner after the fact, he did not listen, but suggested they were perhaps not patriotic enough. Now what is most interesting about this is: 1) this minister certainly never paused to ask “What would Jesus do in this situation?” My hunch is that he would be right there at Ground Zero running into buildings and rescuing people, binding up the wounds, and helping the healing process, not figuring out the co-ordinates and trajectories involved in a successful retaliation; 2) a crisis will reveal what your real values are, what your real internal GPS tracking device is, what your real default mode is. For this minister it wasn’t Christianity which he had most deeply internalized, it was nationalism; 3) accordingly, his ethical advice that he gave his congregation, besides being a direct violation of texts like Rom. 12.17-20, was in fact unethical. Love had given way to hate, unrighteous anger had fueled his response, and he sounded nothing like Jesus in the pulpit on that day. Indeed, he had simply revealed his own idolatry. His problem in all likelihood was not that he did not know what the NT says about revenge. It is that he had not embodied and internalized it and let it change his natural inclinations. So when he sought to improvise on the spot of a crisis, his improvisation was un-Christian unfortunately. We will have more to say about good and bad improvisation later.

It is time at this juncture to stop the ground clearing exercises and get down to cases. The point I wish to make as we conclude this particular chapter is simply this– NT ethics is not a mundane subject, and the ethics we find in the NT are not a mere rehashing of conventional ethics whether Jewish or Greco-Roman. Borrowing there is, and influences can be detected, but there is no influence more dominating in the NT than that of Jesus and his own ethic, and we can see this in witnesses as diverse as the reflections on suffering love in 1 Peter or the reflections on how to live in community wisely in James or the ethic of love enunciated by Paul or the elder in 1 John at length.

Just as Jesus’ teaching needed to be considered when one discusses NT theology, so too Jesus’ teaching needs to be considered when discussing NT ethics. At least four writers, the four Evangelists, all thought that the ethics of Jesus was relevant to the Christians they addressed. As it turns out, they were not alone—the other NT writers thought so as well to one degree or another. Even a remarkable work like Revelation, which has so much to say about future judgment and Christ’s role in it, uses all its thunder and lightning as a way of reinforcing that his Christian audiences need to be prepared not to retaliate, need to be prepared for martyrdom, need to get back to their first love, need to leave justice and vindication in the hands of the One who can unseal the seals.
———-

Read more at http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/bibleandculture/2009/01/tales-from-frostbite-falls-part-2.html#ms2QGw1XLh7Gg52U.99

Here is a very interesting article which demonstrates the importance of archaeological work for the understanding of the historical Jesus and his ministry. See what you think—-

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/unearthing-world-jesus-180957515/

I hope to have demonstrated the value and necessity of placing Paul’s election language back in its original context, which was a decidedly Jewish one. As we reviewed the Jewish literature, we discovered a view of election that was grounded in God’s promises to the patriarchs. This overwhelmingly emphasized the collective nature of election as a concept that applied to a bounded community. When individuals were in view, their role, their character or their representation of a group was emphasized, never their being chosen for a particular soteriological standing. Likewise, the Jewish literature was decidedly conditional, with the various authors defining who was “in” and who was “out” by different means and markers. This typically meant Gentiles were excluded, along with many or most Jews, from the people of God. We can thus express these tendencies as described below:
1. At times, the description of individuals or a group as “elect” emphasizes primarily their character or piety rather than a particular, predetermined, soteriological standing (Ben Sira, Testaments, Additional Psalms of David, 1 Enoch).
2. When individuals are mentioned as “elect,” the identification either (1) recognizes them as such because they represent or mediate for a corporate group (Jubilees, Testaments, DSS, 1 Enoch), or (2) describes a vocational calling (e.g., king, priest, etc.; see Ben Sira, Psalms of Solomon).
The picture of election is primarily conditional, either implicitly (Tobit, Ben Sira, Baruch, Wisdom of Solomon, Sibylline Oracles, pseudo-Philo) or explicitly (Jubilees, Testaments, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Psalms of Solomon, DSS), in that a number of Jews, whether a majority (Jubilees, Testaments, 1 Maccabees, Psalms of Solomon, DSS, 1 Enoch, Testament of
Moses) or an undefined number (Tobit, Ben Sira, Baruch, 2 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Sibylline Oracles, pseudo-Philo), were presently apostate and outside of the covenant. The concept was thus not nationalistic or ethnic, but primarily remnant-oriented.

1. The conditions of the covenant emphasized vary throughout the literature, and included circumcision, general piety, Sabbath observance, ritual purity, abstinence from sexual immorality, avoidance of intermarriage with Gentiles, proper calendrical and festival observances, resistance of Hellenization and idolatry, support for the Hasmoneans, rejection of the Hasmoneans, honesty, humility, proper interpretation and application of the law, rejection of the corrupt leadership in Jerusalem (e.g., the priests, Pharisees, Sadducees, Sanhedrin, Maccabees or Hasmoneans), and association with/allegiance to a particular community and its understanding of the law or its specially received revelation.
2. In spite of the conditional nature, God’s election of Israel was still primarily presented as a corporate, not an individual, concept. This is clear from the many uses of corporate or national terminology and imagery, such as use of the moniker “Israel” or “Judah” when referring only to the pious, vine and plant imagery, association with a righteous person (e.g., Enoch or Noah) or an explicit invocation of the remnant motif.

Some texts make an allowance for the possible inclusion of Gentiles in the eschatological people of God (Sibylline Oracles, 1 Enoch, pseudo-Philo), though largely Gentiles are considered to be wicked and sinful by nature. God’s mercy and human obedience do not exist in mutually exclusive terms. The recognition of Israel’s sin is widespread throughout the literature. At times, God’s mercy means his decision not to reject Israel completely, though they are deserving of such a fate. This does not create, however, carte blanche for Israel to be licentious, as they needed to remain faithful to the covenant (as variously defined) in order to receive
the covenant blessings.
1. God’s sovereignty and human freedom do not exist in mutually exclusive terms. While certain things, such as the declaration of what is good and what is evil, the final judgment and its rewards or punishments, and the election of Israel/the remnant are described as being predetermined, in no text does this negate human freedom and the responsibility to be faithful to the covenant with God. That God has an overarching plan is clear, but that every nuance within that plan, including the individual actions of humans, is preordained, is not.
2. There is a real possibility, except once the final judgment comes, for the apostates to repent and commit themselves to keeping the covenant as well as for those in the “true Israel” to commit apostasy and reject the covenant and its blessings.

As we looked at Paul’s letters, we did not find a drastically different picture. Paul similarly worked within a collective and conditional framework. Like his contemporaries he viewed the elect as a restricted group. In his most explicit election texts, Paul never concerns himself with God choosing specific individuals to receive eschatological salvation. Rather, in his most explicit election texts (in particular Gal 2–3; Rom 3; 8–11; and Eph 1–2), Paul always concerns himself with what it means for Gentiles to be a part of God’s people. Recognizing this aspect alone should cause us to step back and ask what exactly Paul is doing. When we see these sociological divisions and Paul’s attempt to bring a theological resolution to the problem of Gentile inclusion and majority Jewish exclusion, we recognize that Paul does not explore an abstract theological doctrine of God determining each individual’s eschatological fate, but rather wrestles with how to make sense of God’s actions in light of the covenant with the patriarchs. Paul deals in detail with how to resolve this dilemma, adamant that God has freedom to work how he chooses, has indeed fulfilled his promises to bless the nations through Israel and has renewed the covenant through his faithful and loving act in the Messiah. This public display of Jesus and miraculous vindication through the resurrection act as the sign that God himself has truly intervened.
And through this act, the law took its proper place in the realm of the risen Jesus and the Spirit, where God’s people, those who identify with his Messiah and submit to his Spirit, receive the enablement to fulfill this law and thus receive the promised eschatological life. For Paul, as for his contemporaries, election controversies were more about who God’s people were than how they were God’s people.
Among Jews of the period, the concept of election came to signify the “true Israel” or “remnant,” meaning those Israelites who remained faithful to the covenant. For Paul the terminology takes on quite the same meaning. In referring to those who have trusted in Jesus as “elect” or “chosen” or “called,” Paul claims that it is those who have been united with God’s Messiah who are actually in right-standing with God. Torah-faithfulness apart from obedience to the good news of God expressed through Jesus has become useless. For Paul, obedience to God comes only through identification with Jesus. Thus Jesus’ own faithfulness both grounds the faithfulness of the believer and brings God’s declaration of “rightness” to them.

So What?
Occasionally I am asked something to the effect of “What difference does it make how we think about election?” or “What does this view ‘do’ that others don’t?” It seems to me that this view better fits within the thought-world of Second Temple Judaism. The more we immerse ourselves in that world, the better we will make sense of Paul, a Jewish follower of a Jewish Messiah, and his letters. Several very practical implications also arise from this view. Space does not permit me to articulate these more fully, though we have touched briefly on each at various points in our discussion.
Much of the early Jewish discussion of the “elect” concerned their piety more than whether or not they were, or would be, “saved.” They shared a deep concern, though expressed in different and competing ways, with living faithfully to God’s commands as expressed in his covenant with them. Paul expresses a similar concern in his articulation of the faithfulness required of God’s people in Christ. For Paul, this faithfulness is enabled through the gift of God’s Spirit, but not at the elimination of the responsibility and commitment of the individual. Paul still calls God’s people to obedience to his law, though he expresses this in a more condensed formula based on the emulation of the Savior and the love of God and others.
Paul’s Jewish contemporaries also shared a common concern to distinguish God’s people from the rest of the world. This sometimes resulted in extremes, as we saw at Qumran or in the Maccabees. Each group, however, wrestled with how to remain faithful to God and resist the attractions and temptations of the world. This came, after all, from God’s own declaration for his people to be set apart for service to him. When Paul declares believers, including Gentiles (!), elect, holy, righteous and called, he calls on this rich history of God’s covenantal people. Those in God’s Messiah would likewise need to live in a way that distinguished them from the world, for this was their calling. And again the Messiah himself emulated this lifestyle and God’s Spirit will enable those who belong to him to reflect Jesus. As it was for Israel, this meant living in ways counterintuitive to the larger culture, dying to their own desires that they might live for God, and subsequently, and perhaps ironically from a human perspective, in doing so actually live life as God had intended all along.
The various Jewish sects of the period represented in our literature had deep convictions about how to define the boundaries of God’s people. This likewise fostered an important sense of unity in those communities. Paul too, perhaps more adamantly even, held a deep concern for the unity of God’s people, especially in light of the reconciliation of Gentiles to God. When competing identity markers, such as circumcision or collective cultural wisdom, challenged the centrality of the Messiah and his cross and resurrection, Paul felt compelled to strip those things of their significance. In doing so, he both continued to elevate the primacy of obedient commitment to Jesus as the central marker of identity and sought to promote the unity of God’s people around the primary marker. This unity required people from differing racial and socioeconomic backgrounds to learn to function together as a united, reformed, renewed people of God. In the case of Jews and Gentiles, long held religious beliefs and animosities created tensions and hostilities among God’s people. Paul would not allow these problems to continue to fester but rather dismantled any notion, whether an idea, a practice or a person, that might be exalted to the status which Jesus alone held. Paul would allow God’s people in Christ to be defined by no other means than the Messiah’s life, death and resurrection.
Finally, election from its inception in the biblical text through much of the Second Temple literature, and certainly in Paul, held a central position in the mission of God’s people. God chose Israel for his special possession in order to bring the Abrahamic blessing to the nations. This missional aspect of Israel’s calling is echoed through the prophetic literature of the Old Testament and through many Second Temple texts. For Paul this blessing in one sense had been accomplished since God had brought the Gentiles into his people as full members through Christ.
In another sense, both as it pertains to unbelieving Gentiles, and paradoxically to unbelieving Jews, this missional call of God’s people to bless the nations still endured and had not yet found its final fulfillment since there still existed those “outside the camp.”

What Else?
We have been able only to scratch the surface of this topic in our examinations and reflections of these texts. I hope through this discussion that we might increase our awareness of the Jewish context of the New Testament and the ways in which we can better understand its message within that context. I have attempted to offer an account of the relationship between Paul’s thought and his Jewish background, which is both contextually sensitive and recognizes the connecting points and the divergences between them. In doing so, I have developed a view that attempts to deeply appreciate the continuity between Paul’s thought, the covenantal theology of the Old Testament and his background as a first-century Jew. I have aimed at providing a “thick description” of Paul’s theology of election, accounting for these various contexts as important influences on his theological articulations. These contexts act as spotlights that, when shown on their subject, allow us to appreciate the details of what we view. My study has also aimed at a rich theological description of these beliefs set within the ancient thought world rather than our own. Such a view also, as I have summarized briefly, creates important practical implications for how we understand human responsibility, Christian unity, faithful obedience to God and the core identity of God’s people. Though we face challenges in how we apply these ideas in our own context, which is in some ways very different from Paul’s and in others quite similar, by seeing Paul’s convictions in their historical and cultural contexts we can better allow them to shape our own.
I do not anticipate this to be the final word on this subject. I am grateful for the opportunity to offer a contribution to this area of Christian thought, which has been contentious for millennia. I do believe sincerely that when we aim at a more robust view of Paul’s world we can likewise grasp a more robust view of Paul’s letters. I also believe that what we see in Paul’s letters, specifically in terms of how he thinks about election from a Jewish framework, accords well with what we see in the rest of the New Testament. I have not, of course, developed this here, but I believe further work can illuminate it in a way that effectively accounts for both the world of the New Testament and the place of the New Testament in that world.

THE SECRET

Hidden reality
Like life in the womb
Hidden reality
Like death in the tomb
Hidden away
For the appropriate day

Wrapped in enigma, cloaked in secrecy,
Awaiting a wake up call with urgency.
But how shall such a song be sung?

A tale that’s never told,
A trail that’s long gone cold,
A mystery unrevealed,
A truth that is concealed,
Seems useless on first glance.

Who said there was a secret,
Who told us we must keep it
Who set the search in motion
And stirred up our devotion
If ‘clueless’ was our stance?

Call forth the revelator,
Who hinted something greater
A light that has been hidden
A thought that comes unbidden
And is not mere romance.

Go to the old gate keeper,
And wake the guardian sleeper,
Arouse the story teller
Seek out the boundary dweller
Lulled into tragic trance.

For sometimes revelation
Awaits the new creation
Propitious point in time
When insight is sublime
And we’re prepared to dance.

The time may fully come
The race be fully run,
The truth could then be heard,
And taken at its word,
As happy happenstance.

Thus mystery has a point
When times are out of joint
And no one wants to hear
About the truth they fear
Because of circumstance.

In one sense all of history
Apocalyptic mystery
With secrets kept and told
By prophets young or old
Who speak, suggest, recant.

For too much information
Obscures the revelation
Prevents a clear reception
May even cause deception
Instead of some advance.

So let us treasure mystery
And truths that unveil history
Spoken in due season
Reflecting divine reason,
And never left to chance.

THEOLOGICAL MUSINGS

There is a famous saying attributed to Alfred Lord Tennyson which stresses that there is a tide in the affairs of humankind which if taken at the flood leads on to great things. There can be no doubt that this is a Biblical idea. We see it for example in Gal. 4.4—“But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son…” There is a sense in which there are certain propitious moments in history which, when something happens it really matters. One way people express this concept is when they say “timing is everything”. For example, the invention of the automobile would not have amounted to much if it had not been preceded by several other inventions, such as the internal combustion engine, and various sorts of technology first used with trains.
In this Christmas season, one of the things most worth contemplating is why it was that Jesus came when he did. In what sense had the time fully come? We might even ask— Why wouldn’t God have waited until an era of mass communication if Jesus was to be the savior of the world in all generations? Several things come to mind.
Firstly, it has been widely recognized that Jesus was borne at a time when there was something of a unified culture in the known world, with a language all could use, and roads and government that reach from far east of Israel to the western most part of Spain to Scotland in the north, and to Africa in the south. Thanks to the spread of Hellenism and Greek by Alexander the Great and his successors even Israelites could speak Greek and relate well in the Greco-Roman world. Thanks to Roman engineering there were durable roads in all directions, and thanks to the Roman military might the seas had largely been swept clean of pirates and brigands. Even just a little before the birth of Jesus in the time of Julius Caesar, Rome was just a Republic, and there were many competing forces in the Mediterranean world. Jesus could hardly have come at a time more propitious for starting a new world religion if we were to evaluate the previous 2,000 years before Jesus’ birth. Then too he was borne in the land that was the land bridge between three continents—Asia, Africa, and the regions in the north that led to what we call Europe. Suppose, for example, Jesus had been borne while the Jews were in the Babylonian exile. It would have been far more difficult for a Jewish messianic movement to start then and in such a locale.
Of course our author thinks as well that it isn’t just natural factors we should consider, but also the divine plan, as promised and predicted in the OT. When Paul says the time had fully come, he is thinking of the fulfillment of prophecy, and of the divine time table for things. He believes as well that God has a sense of timing, and that there is such a thing as a timely truth. Many things are kept secret until just the right moment when they need to be revealed. Sometimes God waits until we are prepared to receive a certain truth or message or revelation.
We in our age of ‘freedom of information’ and all access passes to the Internet have difficulty with the concept of information being revealed on a need to know basis, or secrets needing to be kept, until the timing is right for their revelation. We simply assume that all information should be available to us at all times, because “the people have a right to know”. This assumption is of course rather naïve. It assumes a lot about our powers to comprehend most anything if we study it long enough. But in fact it is sometimes the case that “we can’t handle the truth”, and God knows this. God knows our weaknesses, and God also knows when the time is ripe and right to share new revelation. There is another factor as well.
T.S. Eliot famously asked where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge and where is the knowledge we have lost in the sea of information. One of the problems with living in the age of Google and the Internet, is that there is frankly too much information available and much of it unreliable or even untrue. I have this problem all the time with my students who take ideas or articles or information off the Internet assuming that it must be true since someone made it publicly available, but alas much of it is what the Rolling Stones once called “useless information supposed to fire my imagination”. We may live in the information age, but it would surely be better to live in the revelation or even the wisdom age. It is not only possible to get lost in the forest looking for the right tree of knowledge, but it is also the case that we may well mistake pulp fiction for a cedar of Lebanon, so to speak. One needs some criteria, some guidance, some wisdom, some kind of road map to recognize the truth when we see it. And sometimes its not a matter of finding the right wise man or expert. Sometimes its just a matter of being patient and waiting until God chooses to make the truth known, and the light finally dawns on us. Some realities and truths need to be hidden away, like a baby in a womb, “until the time had fully come”. We must come to terms with the fact that some times we must wait until the truth “comes to full term” and then is brought forth into the world. Patience is not a virtue much practiced in the information and Internet age. Sometimes a secret needs to be ‘kept’ until the appropriate time for it to be revealed.
One of my favorite Christmas stories is O’Henry’s famous tale “The Gift of the Magi”. O’ Henry was one of my childhood favorites as he grew up in the town right next to my home town— High Point N.C. The story hangs on two things—the great love a couple has for each other and their willingness to sacrifice much to get the other a precious Christmas gift, but it also hangs on the fact that the truth about the gifts must be kept secret until the appropriate day comes. Thus, unbeknownst to his girl, the young man pawns his precious heirloom pocket watch to buy beautiful combs for his beloved’s beautiful long hair, and unbeknownst to the young man the girl has cut off and sold her hair so she could buy him a beautiful gold chain for the pocket watch. Imagine their surprise when Christmas comes and both unwrap gifts they cannot at the present moment use, but which demonstrate the great love they have for each other. The Christmas story in our Gospels goes this story one better, as it not only reveals God’s sacrificial love, but it offers a timely and timeless truth that is always helpful and useful to anyone from the very minute it is unveiled. Indeed, there is a tide in human affairs, and God has a perfect sense of timing when it comes to revealing and healing, saving and restoring, reconciling and justifying us all.

BEN: In Chapter 5 it becomes clear that early Jews mostly thought that election was conditional, and the condition was faithfulness to the Mosaic covenant and its Law. You quote deSilva approvingly as follows “fidelity to the covenant ensures peace, sin against the covenant brings punishment, and repentance and renewal of obedience leads to restoration.” (p. 150). So only faithful Israelites remain in the covenant relationship and they do so by obedience, by being Torah true, and in that sense righteous. Outside the Pauline corpus is there any evidence that ‘all Israel’ will be saved regardless of their behavior, which is to say, is there any evidence of unconditional election of Israel with the outcome entirely determined by the Almighty, not by the human response? It seems clear that some of these texts even think that the majority of Jews will be lost.

CHAD: It seems to me there is not as it relates to the literature which I reviewed. My focus was specifically on materials from the Second Temple Period which were primarily in and around the Judean area (with some exceptions) which pre-date Paul or roughly date to his time period. So I can’t speak definitively outside of that group of texts in terms of, say Philo or post 100 CE Jewish literature. But within that group of texts, which in my mind is the best representation we have of the nature of Jewish beliefs around the period of the New Testament, it seems to me the answer is a resounding no.

BEN: At one juncture in this chapter you suggest that the Jewish Sibylline Oracles may be an exception to the rule that election is conditional on a certain response. But this seems to me to be an argument from silence, namely that just because the Oracles are silent about the judging of wicked Jews does not necessarily imply that the author or authors think ‘all Israel will be saved’. What do you think about this suggestion?

CHAD: Yes, I would say it is an exception to the extent that it is ambiguous. I don’t think there are any clear indications in the Sibylline Oracles of the unconditional election of all Israel and there are some implicit indications of a conditional view of election. So it is not an exception in that it contradicts that model but rather that it just doesn’t make explicit statements one way or the other.

BEN: Was the Testament of Moses the only example of a text which seemed to clearly exclude Gentiles from God’s salvation of human beings, and limit it only to some Jews?

CHAD: In my research it was the only one which so forcefully seemed to reject any possibility for Gentile salvation. In most texts, it is clear that the Gentiles are predominantly viewed as outsiders, but we do not find other explicit statements that they are destined for damnation. In many texts we find positive remarks about Gentiles (e.g., 2 Maccabees) which I think very much leave open the possibility. In others, like the Animal Apocalypse of 1 Enoch, we find wholesale Gentile inclusion at the eschaton. I think the OT prophetic literature itself, with its expectations of the gathering of the nations around Zion, likely influenced most Jews from being too adamant about the damnation of all Gentiles, but the Testament of Moses seems an exception to that larger pattern.

BEN: Some readers of your book, having already read Sander’s classic study Paul and Palestinian Judaism will be very surprised to hear there are early Jewish texts which reject the notion of unconditional election of ‘all Israel’ and quite to the contrary affirm that a majority of God’s people appear to be under his judgment, with only a righteous remnant being saved (see Psalms of Solomon, Dead Sea Scrolls, pseudo-Philo, Testament of Moses). Unless you want to call ALL of these documents sectarian in character and a-typical, it would seem that many if not most of Paul’s Jewish contemporaries operated with a righteous remnant concept. And some will surely ask you— Is this different from the view or views we find in the OT itself? And why is it, do you think that some of these apparently minimalist texts are prepared to entertain the salvation of some Gentiles, at least at the eschaton, while others are not?

CHAD: Yes, it is interesting to me that Sanders came to the conclusion he did concerning the Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal texts. He primarily examines Ben Sira, 1 Enoch, Jubilees, Psalms of Solomon, and 4 Ezra. In my reading, each of these texts strongly evidences a more conditional understanding of the covenant, with Ben Sira perhaps being the least obvious. I think this raises some problems for Sanders’ interpretation in places. It seems to me by starting with the Rabbinic material, which I would view, following Neusner, as less reliable depictions of Second Temple thought, that Sanders may have then taken that framework and the famous statement in m. Sanh. 10:1 that “all Israel has a share in the world to come” and applied it as the lens through which he read Second Temple Judaism. I think Sanders’ critique against older views of Judaism as “works-righteousness” based rather than grace based is overall very helpful. But this is one area where I think his study does not adequately account for the data. It is interesting as well that in m. Sanh. 10:1-3, it is said that those who deny the resurrection, those who read from heretical books, those who pronounce the tetragrammaton, Jeroboam, Ahab, and Manasseh, the spies, the wilderness generation, and idolaters, all groups which include or are predominantly Jews, do not have a share in the world to come. So even the Mishnah here portrays covenant belonging as conditional. I do think this largely meshes with how the covenant is portrayed in the Old Testament as well, though what distinguishes it, at least in part, is the emphasis in some of these texts on certain aspects of keeping the Law as primary over and against others. Concerning the salvation of the Gentiles, many of the texts which entertain either a possible hope or a clear hope for the salvation of some or many Gentiles (though not all, since those who oppress God’s people in particular are excluded) seem to me to follow the prophetic tradition of the nations being gathered to God to worship and serve him (e.g., Ps 2:8; 22:27; 82:8; 98:2; Isa 2:2-4; 11:10-12; 52:10; 61:11; 62:2; 66:19-20; Jer 3:17; 16:19-21; 33:9; Ezek 36:22-23; 37:28; Dan 7:14; Zeph 3:9, 20; Zech 9:10). This is met, however, within that same literature with proclamations of judgment and destruction against the nations as well. So part of what is displayed in the Second Temple literature is either maintaining that tension between judgment and salvation as the prophetic literature does, or favoring one aspect of it, as the Testament of Moses does, by declaring the condemnation of the Gentiles.

BEN: On p. 172 you say “God displayed his ‘rightness’ through the faithful obedience of Jesus, even to the point of death [on a cross]”. In what sense was it right for God to send his Son to a death on a cross? Do you mean this was a demonstration of God’s righteous character and his judgment of sin, or do you take dikaiosune as Wright tends to do as meaning something like God’s covenant faithfulness?

CHAD: I think Paul is wrestling here, similar to and as a sort of preview of Romans 9-11, with how to understand God as still being faithful to his promises to Israel if there is large-scale Jewish rejection of the Messiah and if Gentiles are brought in, seemingly dissolving any special relationship God had with Israel. So God’s “right” action (his acting “above the bar” in a sense or acting in “redemptive charity” and “uprightness”) for both Jews and Gentiles has been made manifest in the faithful life and death of the Son. I don’t think construing the dikai- language primarily as “justice” here completely fits in the scheme Paul has set up. Being revealed “apart from the Law” I take to indicate, as a segue of sorts, that Paul is beginning to dismantle the notion that Gentile converts must be fully-Torah compliant, as he begins to make more clear in 3:27ff. So I think in a sense it could be construed as faithfulness to the covenant promises, meaning most likely the promises to Abraham, though Paul does not explicitly establish that here. If used in a non-covenantal sense, I think it would simply refer to God’s upright, charitable, “above the bar” character in his dealings with fallen humanity. I would thus take the relational element in the passage as probably more at the forefront of Paul’s mind based upon how he sets up this section in 3:1-8.

BEN: I must say I find Dunn’s discussion of ‘hilasterion’ unsatisfying, and at some points wrong. That word absolutely is used in wider Greek literature to refer to the assuaging of some deity’s wrath, and so to propitiation. It appears to me Dunn wants to reduce the term to mean expiation of sin, and this does not work, because one has to ask— why for example in the OT the blood is applied to the contact point with God within the tabernacle—to the very horns of the altar. Sin is only expiated if a righteous God is propitiated. Say more as to why you seem to agree with Dunn (p. 172 n. 89).

CHAD: Part of the difficulty with hilasterion here is its limited usage in the NT (only here and in Heb 9:5) and in the OT (only a handful of times, primarily in Exodus and Leviticus). In the OT, it is usually translated as “mercy seat” and identified with the ark of the covenant. The mercy seat is associated primarily with God’s presence in these texts (cf. Exod 25:21; Lev 16:2; Num 7:89) with the exception of the day of atonement ritual described in Leviticus 16:13ff. In Leviticus 16:16, it states that blood is placed on the hilasterion to purify the holy place because of the sins of the people. The atonement for the people appears to take place on the altar outside of the tent, not at the mercy seat, which is described in 16:17ff. So the “mercy seat” as the place of the atonement for the sins of the people doesn’t seem to me to be what is described in Leviticus. Rather what happens at the mercy seat is purification, or removal of the effects of sin on the sacred space, and various OT commentators affirm that to be so. I wouldn’t deny that there are frameworks of propitiation elsewhere within the word group, but it seems to me that the hilasterion language from the LXX as it relates to the day of atonement is more closely related to purification than appeasement. Dunn’s point, which is of course debated, is that atonement in the OT acts on sin (i.e., atonement is “for a person” or “for sin”) rather than on God, and suggests that is the background from which Paul is drawing. I think the closest linguistic parallel to what we find in the New Testament usage probably actually comes from 4 Maccabees 17:22, where the seven martyrs are a hilasterion which prompts God to rescue Israel, which Dunn goes on to address in the section which follows. There are certainly in a sense more questions (at least for me!) than answers in this section of Romans where Paul is mixing various metaphors together, using some unclarified language, drawing on a variety of OT themes, and bringing them all together in a very dense formulation, particularly in 3:24-26.

BEN: I agree with your point on p. 173 that ‘works of the law’ probably is not meant by Paul to just refer to the boundary markers of Judaism (circumcision, Sabbath keeping, kosher), but is used more broadly by Paul to refer to any and all works of the Mosaic Law. I also agree that he is not talking in Rom. 3 about the inability to keep the Law perfectly. He is talking about the basis of right-standing with God under the new covenant as opposed to that basis in the old covenant. Right-standing is obtained by grace through faith in the faithfulness of Jesus. Yes?

CHAD: Yes, going back to the “spheres” notion in Galatians 2-3 again I think is helpful. As Paul will come to inquire in Romans, and argues in Galatians, if the Law in and of itself was sufficient to bring eschatological life, then why did Christ need to come? The Law’s purpose was to both mark out God’s people as distinct from their neighbors and to provide a framework for ethical living fitting of the people of God. But it was limited in what it could effect. If the “works of the Law” (variously understood by different Jewish groups in terms of what has prominence) are the realm of justification or the primary marker of God’s people, then Gentiles must, in essence, become Jews to be in God’s people. This is what I take Paul to mean when he says “for we reason a person to be justified by faith apart from works of the Law. Or is God for the Jews only? Or is he also for the Gentiles? Yes, also for the Gentiles!” If the Law is the defining marker, in that “sphere,” so to speak, Gentiles either must become like Jews or be left out. For Paul, Jesus’ faithfulness, and the initial and ongoing response of the believer to it, is the only means of identifying who the people of God actually are.

BEN: Unpack the idea on p. 174 that the reason Paul uses two different prepositions ‘ek pistis’ for Jews, ‘dia pistis’ for Gentiles is because for Jews who were already in a covenant relationship with God, what has happened is covenant renewal, but for Gentiles it’s a genuinely new covenant, since they enter the chosen people from outside. This seems to require you taking ‘ek’ to mean ‘from within’. But is there really a basis for that reading of the preposition?

CHAD: As we also see in Galatians 2, Paul’s prepositions seem to be making some sort of distinction between Jews and Gentiles. If we take these prepositions spatially, there is a “nearness” which I think is indicated by ek, and a “farness” indicated by dia. This is not to say there are two different ways of salvation for Jews and Gentiles, but rather, I think somewhat in a salvation historical sense, it recognizes they come from two different starting points. As Paul began the chapter (and also brings up in Romans 9), the Jews had certain advantages, but those advantages in and of themselves do not constitute them being right with God (which I think most Jews, again, would have agreed with to some extent). The other option to take would be that there is no distinction intended between the prepositions, which many commentators accept. Their presence seems to be more than accidental or stylistic flare to me.

BEN: What does it mean to say that Abraham is in a sense the first Gentile convert, not the first Jew, in the sense that he was declared in right-standing with God on the basis of his trust in God, and not on the basis of keeping the (later)Mosaic covenant and doing its works of the Law? Abraham was ‘justified’ before he was circumcised and so before he kept any such Law. You interestingly suggest that perhaps Abraham becomes the parade example of how God justifies the ungodly (which ironically is also why he can be called the father of many nations not just the forefather of Jews), and therefore there is no basis in the Abraham story for Jewish exclusivity when it comes to who counts as the people of God—right?

CHAD: There is an interesting development in some of the Second Temple literature where Abraham is portrayed as a paradigmatic Law keeper. We see this as anachronistic since the Law wasn’t yet given, but the presence of this theme in various places (e.g., Pseudo-Philo, Ben Sira, Jubilees, etc.) demonstrates the vision of many Jews of the period that Torah observance was what defined God’s people, and Abraham, being the father of Israel that he was, would then necessarily need to likewise be Torah-observant. Paul turns that argument around in Romans 4, demonstrating “from the Law” (i.e., the Pentateuch) that Abraham was considered right with God prior to his circumcision. Abraham then becomes Paul’s paradigm for Gentile inclusion in the people of God apart from full Torah observance (again, circumcision is his primary focus here, but it need not necessarily be limited to that). Paul asks in Rom 4:9 if the divine blessings come only on the circumcised, or also on the uncircumcised. The conundrum he raises is that if the answer is on the circumcised only, than Abraham himself would have been exempt since the covenant was initiated before he was circumcised! To put it another way, if only those in the sphere of the Law are right with God, Abraham himself would be left out. As both uncircumcised and circumcised, Abraham is capable of being the father of both Jews and Gentiles.

BEN: One of the interesting dances back and forth in Ephesians is the distinction between Jews and Gentiles, with the reminder that Gentiles came into the people of God as the Johnny come latelys, and at the same time the stress that in Christ whatever the person’s background, all are equal. Would you take Ephesians as a sort of object lesson to Gentiles to appreciate their fellow Jewish Christians and the heritage they have shared with them, while at the same time maintaining their equality in Christ, with the ‘middle wall of partition’ that has been torn down being the Mosaic law covenant?

CHAD: Yes, I think Ephesians 1-3 is largely about calling the Gentiles to remember their dependence upon Israel for the inheritance which they have received. Paul does not lay out explicitly what the issue was with this church (or churches), but I think that is a fair conclusion to draw from what he explains in those chapters. So Gentiles need to recognize the historical primacy of Israel for their own salvation, while also recognizing that now they are joint heirs and not just second class citizens in the people of God. There would be no inclusion of the Gentiles in God’s people if there first was not a covenant people. As he demonstrates in Romans and Galatians, Paul (who I take to be the “mind” behind the letter even if it is not penned from his hand) does not expect Gentiles to become Jewish. Those markers which separated Jews and Gentiles in the realm of the Law (Paul mentions only circumcision in the immediate context, but certainly there were other barriers created by the Law as well) no longer separate them in Christ. Gentiles stay Gentiles, and Jews stay Jews, just as males stay males and females stay females, but both are formed into one, unified, cooperating, equal people through the reconciliation accomplished in Christ’s death.

BEN: One of the least convincing parts of Wright’s argument in Paul and the Faithfulness of God is the attempt to say that Jesus=Israel=the church of Jew and Gentile incorporated into Jesus. Ephesians certainly does not support such a notion of Israel, where ‘Israelites’ are clearly distinguished from Gentiles. Gentiles are indeed incorporated into the body of Christ and so into Christ, and thereby are heirs to the promises and connected to the Abrahamic covenant as in Gal. 4, but they are not integrated into the Mosaic covenant and that covenant community of non-Christian Jews. Say a bit about your vision of both the problems and the promise of Wright’s aforementioned big book.

CHAD: I don’t think it’s easy to tie the Israel and Church language together in Paul’s letters to be referring to the same thing. There is a sense in which the national identity takes a back burner and the Church identity comes to the fore. The way I describe it is that there is one people of God who, in the new covenant, is made up of Jews and Gentiles together in Christ. Gentiles do not become Israelites. Israel does not become the Church or vice versa. Paul never makes statements which give us indications that all of these identities are completely collapsed. In terms of Wright’s big Paul book, I certainly overall agree with his starting point and approach in terms of framing Paul’s thought in communication with the Jewish and Greco-Roman world. The biggest problem with Wright’s big book is how big it is! I do appreciate Wright’s attempt to draw together a cohesive narrative from the Old Testament to the New as a means of making sense of Paul and some of the larger contours of what he develops I think are helpful. Wright also focuses on Jesus as the locus of election and works with something of a participationist soteriological model, which I find overall helpful. I think in some way the symbolic representation of Jesus=Israel makes sense in certain places, but in some, if not perhaps most, places I think he tries to make the narrative a bit too smooth where it isn’t obviously present at all. It seems in some places he denies a replacement perspective is what he is articulating, while in others (such as p.831), it seems like that is precisely what he is articulating. This happens also with his narrative approach overall which, again, I think is helpful in some places and feels strained in others. I found, for instance, his description of sin being located and isolated in Israel as God’s purpose of the Torah in order to deal with sin through Israel’s Messiah as confusing (895ff.). Where Wright also sees the Torah as having a majorly negative role (cf. 862), I would articulate things a bit differently. I also felt his discussion of the role of the Spirit in regeneration was a bit unclear (952ff.). In some places he uses stronger causal language to describe the Spirit’s role in creating faith, and in others “inspirational” language. The lack of precision felt a little bit like he was hedging his bets on the matter.

BEN: You finish this lengthy chapter by saying that God’s people are defined around the crucified and risen Jesus and faith in him is the only boundary one has to cross to get into the people of God. You suggest that God’s promise to Abraham to be a blessing to the nations could not be fulfilled any other way, in Paul’s view. Say more about this Christology redefining of the boundaries between insiders and outsiders, between God’s people and even other non-Christian Jews.

CHAD: I think in a sense, Paul came to understand that this redefinition of the boundaries of God’s people was essential in order for a meaningful ingathering of the Gentiles to occur. The corollary of it was also, as he discusses in Romans 9-11, a temporary Jewish rejection, which I think Paul views to ultimately be eschatologically resolved. So as it relates to the Jew/Gentile relationship, the redefinition of boundaries (“in Christ” v. “works of the Law”) was fundamentally necessary. Beyond this, Jesus’ death and resurrection accomplishes what the Law could not in that the Law did not have a mechanism to overcome the problem of sin and death. It could not impart eschatological life even if it could lead God’s people into “the good life,” in the sense of their personal flourishing for the remnant who were faithful. So Jesus’ death unbinds the powers of sin and death and his resurrection and the subsequent impartation of the Spirit results in the giving of eschatological life to his people as well as their empowering to walk faithfully in covenantal relationship with God.

BEN: One of the things that surprised me about your response about the covenants is that it does not reflect the work of various OT scholars, like Meredith Kline, who made quite clear how similar the OT covenants, in particular the Mosaic one, were like ANE king/subject or lord/vassal treaties. By this I mean, that when a covenant was broken, and especially when it was flagrantly broken, and repeatedly broken, then the lord, in this case Yahweh, simply enacts the curse sanctions that are part of the covenant, and that covenant is over. The ruler may or may not choose to have a new covenant with the subjects, but if he does it is emphatically not a renewal of the previous covenant. Rather, it is a new covenant entirely, a new contract, which nevertheless the ruler may choose to have some of the stipulations in it as in the previous one. So, I am dubious about the notion of ‘one covenant in several administrations’ even if just applied to the Abrahamic, Mosaic, and new covenants. There is little doubt in my mind that the Israelite broke the Mosaic covenant to pieces, and repeatedly, and God sent them off to exile, both the northern and southern tribes, which was the implementation of the curse sanctions. Thus, while I agree with your point about God’s unconditional commitment to a people, this does not imply a commitment that involves relating to them on the basis of one covenant in various administrations. Indeed, it shows the graciousness of God that he is willing to start over with a new contract in Jesus. I thus find the suggestion of Block unappealing as it ignores the ANE analogies. How would you respond?

CHAD: I suppose I would begin by recognizing that we find throughout the Old Testament a remnant, however small, of those who are faithful to the covenant. Even if the prophets themselves are the only faithful ones remaining, there still remains a portion of the people who continue in the covenant. It is still possible, of course, to view the covenant with the nation as broken based upon the majority having utterly disobeyed the stipulations. The covenant curses also certainly play a part in how we understand what is going on with Israel at various points in the Old Testament, and N. T. Wright, in particular, has taken up consideration of this and placed it in his larger interpretive narrative for what the New Testament authors think is going on with Jesus’ ministry and death and resurrection. The new covenant, even in Jeremiah 31, is envisioned as a “new” thing and it is clear in the context that the prophet understands that Israel has broken the covenant. There is, and I think this was part of Block’s point and where I would push back, still continuity however, in that the Law of God will be put in the people’s hearts. This is not, in Jeremiah, anticipated as a new Law with new stipulations, so in that sense, though there is a qualitative difference between the Mosaic covenant and the new covenant in Jeremiah, there remains continuity with Israel being God’s people and following God’s Law. The question, of course, then becomes how the New Testament writers appropriate that material. It seems to me that the discontinuity tends to be overemphasized, so I would be inclined to say that the NT writers understood the new covenant as still bearing a good deal of continuity with what Jeremiah envisioned, though obviously with some new angles as well. So while I would recognize the discontinuity (i.e., there is something “new” about it) and certainly the failure of Israel to faithfully follow God on the whole, I think we should also recognize the way in which the new covenant is framed as being in some sense a continuation of God’s previous relationship with Israel which has been now expanded to the Gentiles.

BEN: In your second chapter you say that in early Jewish literature, elect status is linked to the character and quality of the individual and their faithfulness, rather than to some soteriological status (i.e. of being saved). Could you unpack this notion a bit more for us.

CHAD: In the second chapter I focus primarily upon examining the various ways in which individuals, usually named and usually prominent figures in Israel’s history, are described in some of these election-focused passages. What I find remarkable is that never is there an indication that what the Jewish authors mean by “elect” when talking about these individuals is “chosen by God for eschatological salvation.” Rather, the clear emphasis is either upon God’s choice of an individual for a particular task or role (e.g., Aaron as priest or David as king) or upon the character of the individual, or sometimes both. In the case of the latter, election language seems to primarily take on the meaning of “excellent” (which is in the range of meaning for the word-group) and is used in some cases as largely synonymous with terms like “holy” or “faithful” as sort of a means of piling on the character description.

BEN: You begin your discussion with Sirach, and show, that when the author in fact comments on the basis of election for Moses, it is described as happening in connection with his character—his meekness and faithfulness. This seems quite similar to what we hear elsewhere in Jewish literature about Abraham being credited with righteousness because he faithfully was prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac (reading the Abraham story backwards from the Akedah to his call). So you cite S. Grindheim (on p.30) approvingly when he says ‘divine election [is] based on the ethical and religious quality of the elect.” I would see this as exceedingly important because I’ve presented in Jesus the Sage, considerable data to show the influence of Sirach not only on Jesus but also on James, his brother as well. What is even more important is that Jesus ben Sira while reflecting clearly a theology of election, reveals no noticeable theology of the afterlife! In other words, he does not connect election with individual salvation in the hereafter whether by life in heaven or resurrection. Say more about your reading of this data, and the relevance you see it having in helping us interpret the NT data.

CHAD: Sirach has always been one of my favorite Second Temple texts for so many of the interesting developments which it creates as well as for ways it appears to influence the New Testament writers, and as you suggest, possibly Jesus himself. There are a few relevant passages from ben Sira relevant to the topic, but the highlight is probably 44-50 and the hymn of the fathers. Here God’s choosing of Moses, for example, is preceded by the author’s description of Moses’ character. The movement then is from character to choice rather than vice versa. This pattern is reflected in numerous other places as well. Again, it seems the key significance lies in the fact that there is no soteriological linking with this terminology and the character traits precede God’s “choice.” For these individuals to be “elect” is to be of excellent character and/or selected for a particular role. In terms of the New Testament, I think it is important that first we resist the temptation to see this as some sort of Pelagian arrangement in the minds of these Jewish authors since service, not soteriology, is what is in view. Likewise, when we find this kind of language applied to individuals in similar contexts as what we find here, we must also resist the temptation to read some sort of predetermined soteriological arrangement into the terminology when that is clearly not what these Jewish authors meant in their writings as it related to God choosing particular individuals.

BEN: In your discussion of the non-canonical ‘Davidic’ psalms you point out how the phrase ‘chosen one’ parallels the phrase ‘holy one’ and this status becomes the basis for a plea for salvation, or in this case rescue. This suggests to me that the author or authors saw election as one thing, and salvation as another. Am I right? And indeed, as you say, it appears that one sees one’s self as chosen on the basis that one is upright, or holy. It is because David is pious and pure of heart that he is viewed as ‘a man after my own heart’. Yes? David is chosen not because of some inscrutable predetermined will of God, but because God viewed him as the right man for the job? Right?

CHAD: In the “Additional Psalms of David,” I think the psalmist is largely following the pattern we find in the Old Testament where salvation is primarily from physical danger rather than from sin or eschatological judgment. David’s plea in these psalms for deliverance seems to rest on the office which he held, and thus if God did not deliver his “elect one,” that is his chosen ruler over Israel, the success of the Davidic kingdom will be hindered or derailed. Since David’s role is divinely sanctioned, for David to be destroyed means for God’s purposes to be thwarted. It seems clear, as you note, in these psalms that David is the “right man” based upon his character, which is the impetus for God’s choice of him for the job. Again the election language applied to David here individually is clearly character- and role-oriented.

BEN: The material in 1 Enoch seems to further associate being chosen with being righteous, and obeying God’s law. It involves corporate election, and the term ‘chosen’ as Nickelsburg stresses, is particularly applied to the righteous remnant who keep the covenant. In other words, Sanders, at points, in straining to show that ‘being chosen’ is purely a matter of God’s gracious favor, and not a matter of God knowing something about the chosen, has ‘over-egged’ the pudding as the British would say. In fact texts like 1 Enoch say both things. God’s choice is gracious, but the chosen are the righteous, the obedient, in the end. Comment?

CHAD: In 1 Enoch we move into a slightly different situation since there is eschatological salvation envisioned in the book. There is a sense, then, in which we could say the “elect” are the “saved,” if we want to use those terms, but there is no indication in the book that election means a pre-temporal choice by God for these individuals to be delivered. The combination of the election terminology in the book with terms like “righteous” and “holy” seems to again, as Nickelsburg notes, emphasize the quality of the community. Sanders tilts the equation too far in the divine agency side of the equation for most of the Jewish literature he interacts with, ignoring, I think, often the counter-indications in those texts which suggest that obedience and some conditional situation is in view. I focus more on the specifics of that in later chapters, but I do find there to be quite a bit of odd and unnecessary tension between the divine/human situation in terms of how Sanders understand what is going on in these texts.

BEN: As you point out, both in the OT, and in early Jewish sources the focus of the election language is on being chosen for a particular task or function, like ‘my servant Cyrus’, which has nothing to do with that particular individual’s salvation (in the Christian sense of the term). With this sort of Jewish precedent, why do you think it is that Christian readers of Paul have often simply assumed that election necessarily has to do with salvation, rather than function, purpose, or task?

CHAD: As I discuss later, I think there is a sense in which election is connected to soteriology, but it cannot be reduced to it and should not be seen as operating on the individual level as a soteriological activity. There are simply no examples of language used in Second Temple sources which understand God to be choosing individuals for eschatological salvation. There are lots of examples of individuals being chosen for particular roles or tasks. So I think part of the interpretive confusion is that the terminology itself has been filled with concepts which arise in later interpretation and the historical context and original implications of the language has been largely overlooked. There are, of course, passages which lend themselves to being read as reinforcing that kind of interpretation (e.g., Rom 8-11), and I deal with those in later chapters. Where election language and eschatological salvation intersect always has the collective in view.

BEN: I would imagine that one sort of pushback against your presentation in this book would be to say, rather dismissively, ‘well that may well be true of the use of election language in those early Jewish sources, but Paul is different’. I like to say a text without a context is just a pretext for whatever you want it to mean. It appears to me that if one ignores the bearing of the early Jewish context of Paul’s discourse, then one is very likely to read the text anachronistically, reading into Paul later Christian (and in this case Reformation) ideas into Paul. How do you respond to that kind of pushback and problematic reading of Paul?

CHAD: I have this conversation from time to time with my students when I suggest the necessity of approaching interpretation in conversation with the ancient thought world(s), and in particular with Jewish sources. I think this partly results from accepting too hard of a break between Judaism and Christianity within the pages of the New Testament. While that break certainly came more definitively later, within at least most of the New Testament period, and certainly for Paul, I think the evidence indicates that Christianity was understood as a Jewish sect rather than as a separate religion. The history of interpretation certainly also has something to do with this bent toward reading Paul’s election language. The greater distancing between Christians and Jews which followed in the centuries after the New Testament and the controversy between Augustine and Pelagius both significantly shifted how Christian interpreters approached these questions. Augustine, of course, was greatly influential on the Reformers as well, and with Protestantism taking its theological queues primarily from the Reformers, we thus have distanced ourselves both theologically as well as culturally and historically from the New Testament. I think my response would be simply that if we are not situating Paul’s thought in the first century as a first century Jewish follower of Jesus, than where are we situating his thought? As you suggest, to fail to contextualize his theology in the first century matrix means that we contextualize Paul wherever we want, whether with the Reformers or within postmodern thought, etc. In my view, the only way to truly anchor the New Testament’s teaching and avoid eisegetical understandings is to read it within the thought world of its point of origin.

BEN: Jubilees is a very interesting early Jewish text. Explain if you will the difference between what you call corporate representation (sometimes called federal headship— e.g. ‘as in Adam all die…’) as opposed to the notion of corporate or group election. It would appear you have both such concepts in Jubilees, and election involves both the grace of God, and final salvation involves necessary obedience to the covenant (God will save the faithful). Expand on these concepts for us.

CHAD: Corporate representations involves when a particular figure (such as Abraham, Jacob, Isaac, etc.) stands as a representative of a certain group to the extent that the activities or characteristics of that individual are expected of and/or projected upon the group. In the book of Jubilees, it is most prominently Jacob who functions in this manner as a sort of microcosm of the group which the author identifies as the people of God. Jacob is thus portrayed as a paradigmatic law keeper in that he is properly circumcised, honors his parents, does not intermarry with Gentiles, etc. Jacob’s covenant status is contrasted with that of Esau who likely represents for the author either Gentiles or apostate Jews. God’s choice of Jacob and “some of his descendants” (i.e., it is not progeny alone which counts one among the elect) is based upon his foreknowledge of Esau’s covenant-breaking behavior. The message of the book is thus that those who identify with Jacob (i.e., properly observe the Law as outlined by the author, particularly obeying commands which were Jewish distinctives) are God’s people and all others, or perhaps primarily apostate Jews, stand in the line of Esau as those under God’s judgment. The other implicit message in the book is for the faithful to remain so and for the apostates to change their ways, and thus be reconciled to God and his people. This indicates that the author does not view this as a pre-determined arrangement which cannot be affected by the behavior of the individual. So in a sense, this is a collective view of election, though it focuses on the collective by means of the representative. There are other ways that Jubilees indicates a corporate election scenario, such as the remark that only “some of the sons” of Jacob will be included in God’s behavior. Salvation in Jubilees is not simply a matter of God’s grace through election, though the covenantal arrangement is indeed graciously given. Faithful obedience (though not perfection, since atonement is possible for a majority of sins) is required for God’s people.

BEN: Certainly one of the major agendas of E.P. Sanders in his landmark books, including Paul and Palestinian Judaism, was to make clear that early Judaism was not a religion of works righteousness, as opposed to Christianity which was a religion of grace. He seeks to demonstrate that grace is the basis of salvation in Jewish literature, to which God’s people respond with covenantal nomism. It seems to me that again and again, Sanders reads Judaism in light of the later Christian theology of salvation by grace through faith, often neglecting the evidence that while Judaism was certainly not a graceless religion, nevertheless, there are numerous texts which suggests that God chooses and rewards the righteous, by which is meant those who keep the covenant, whereas the damned are the wicked like Esau, or those who keep breaking the covenant. Say more about where you see Sanders getting the variety of views in early Judaism wrong. For example, in Jubilees election seems to be: 1) corporate (happening within Jacob/Israel and 2) it is tied not to physical descent as the deciding factor but is contingent on righteousness or religious purity.

CHAD: Yes, Judaism certainly does sound very Protestant in many of Sanders’ descriptions. I think it is clear that Jubilees views election as corporate and conditional. I argue in the book that I think this is by and large the way most Jews as represented in the extant literature understood election. The few exceptions do not move away from this framework, but rather are ambiguous in their descriptions. With Jubilees in particular, Sanders puts quite a bit of weight upon 1:17-29, which he sees as envisioning a national future restoration of Israel, and thus the salvation of all (or at least nearly all) Jews. In my view, this ignores or misconstrues the major thrust of the book which warns the Jewish people against the judgment which will result from their disobedience. I think the more likely scenario, as Mark Adam Elliott has argued, is most Jewish writers, and here in particular the author of Jubilees, understood the faithful to be in the minority of Jews, and thus judgment to be in the present upon most of the Jewish people. Thus all the warnings and exhortations to obedience which occur throughout the literature are seeking to point the unfaithful back toward obedience to the covenant stipulations. So this does not mean we should view Judaism as a works-salvation religion any more than we should view Christianity as a works-salvation religion. In both cases, the offer of salvation is graciously extended by God alone, not earned meritoriously through “good works,” but committing oneself to the salvific arrangement (i.e., the covenant) entails obligations on the part of God’s people. Christianity has its own “do’s and don’ts,” and to ignore how that is framed in the New Testament, just as to ignore the situation in Judaism, is to import a theology foreign to it.

BEN: It has always surprised me how NT scholars have frequently neglected the insights one can gain from a work like the Parables of Enoch where we see the messianic figure called the Righteous One=the Elect One=the Son of Man, and his people likewise are the elect ones preciously because they are the righteous ones. Talk to us about the insights for understanding the NT theology of election, and equally importantly NT Christology, from a work such as this or even a work like The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs. How is this material relevant to understanding both Jesus and Paul in the NT?

CHAD: 1 Enoch is another fascinating piece of Jewish literature. In particular the Son of Man figure, which occurs in a portion of the work most scholars date prior to the NT, has some interesting parallels with Jesus’ Son of Man language in the Gospels. This is due in part, of course, to both of these traditions drawing upon the Daniel 7 Son of Man material. The Son of Man figure in Daniel 7 is given authority to rule and is served by the nations, and thus is presented as somewhat of an exalted figure. In 1 Enoch, there is a very close identification between this “Son of Man” figure (who is also called “the Righteous One,” “the Elect One,” and the “Before Time”) and the elect (i.e., the people of God). The judgment in this portion of 1 Enoch is focused upon the unrighteous rulers who are oppressing the people. The “Son of Man” secures the victory of God for his people and vindicates them before these rulers and the world. The Son of Man also acts as a light to the nations and is somehow a catalyst for repentance for the unrighteous before the final judgment, when the wicked are destroyed. The conditional nature is thus reinforced in Enoch’s vision, and the fate of the elect ones is closely associated with this Son of Man figure. The Testaments also provide some important insights to Jewish Messianic scenarios. As is sometimes thought of the Qumran materials, the Testaments at times seem to indicate the presence of two Messianic figures, Levi and Judah (i.e., a priestly Messiah and a ruler Messiah). Sometimes the priestly Messiah is prominent in the Testaments, and at other times it is the ruler Messiah who takes center stage. As it relates to election, there is a possibility that Levi and Judah also act as sort of corporate representatives of the elect people in the Testaments who are to be emulated, though this is not as clear as what we find in Jubilees. The emphasis on the righteous character of the elect, though not reinforcing specific legal requirements as Jubilees does, also points to the conditional nature of election for the author of the Testaments.

BEN: You see Gal. 1.15-16 as being about God’s choosing Paul for a specific task, namely being the apostle to the Gentiles, noting the echoes of the calling of prophets (Jerm. 1.4-5; Is. 49.1,5-6) in earlier Jewish literature. The language, in other words is not, or at least not primarily about a soteriological matter. You then stress that Rom. 16.13 connects being chosen with the character of the one chosen, in this case Rufus (perhaps the son of Simon of Cyrene), not as Tom Schreiner suggests, namely that election here is connected with the eternal salvation of Rufus. How would you see the relationship between election and salvation if salvation is a gratuitous gift of God’s grace?

CHAD: In both of these instances, election language is applied to individuals and is not in a context which is soteriologically charged. The only way we would end up interpreting these texts as indicated individual predestination to salvation is if we preload that in the terminology. On the collective level, speaking broadly, I would say that God has chosen to form a people who reflect the image of His son to the world. This people are “the saved,” but election and salvation should not be equated. I wouldn’t see election as a part of an ordo as much as it is a facet of soteriology which has soteriology in broad terms (eschatological salvation but also transformation and mission) in view. I think some of that framework will develop more clearly in the chapters to come.

BEN: Would it be fair to say that Paul, in commenting in 1 Cor. 15 about both Christ and Adam being representative heads of a group of people, may be suggesting that if one is in Adam, one is bequeathed his legacy of sin and death, but if one is in Christ, that one derives salvation and everlasting life? My point would be that election can refer to either of these federal heads, and salvation is to be found only in connection with Christ— those who are in him are the latter fruits, who will rise to a good resurrection when he returns. In other words, there is no salvation if one is not in Christ, the Elect One, but we can certainly distinguish these two concepts. For example, Christ is the Elect One, but he is not ‘the saved one’. He has no need of salvation in the Christian sense.

CHAD: Yes, I think it is safe to say that Paul sees Christ, however we view the Adamic condition, as the only place in which that plight can be resolved. It seems to me there is not case to be made, or at least no plausible one, from the New Testament that any other arrangement was in mind. I’ve tried to read the “Radical New Perspective” with openness to their position, and while I think they can help clarify aspects of Paul’s identity and thought, to suggest some sort of a two-ways scenario, where Jews continue keeping Torah and Christ is for Gentiles exclusively, runs too roughshod over Paul’s theological framework, and especially Romans 9-11. On the other side of the equation, a universalistic understanding of Paul likewise doesn’t obtain, based on how he understands salvation as conditioned (it is only “in Christ”) and in light of his Jewish backgrounds, which always anticipates some sort of final judgment of the wicked. Christ as the “Elect One” certainly could not have the implication of Jesus as one God has predetermined to save, and this again would confirm what we see in the OT and Jewish literature as it relates to election language applied to individuals always being character- or role-oriented.

BEN: Share briefly your understanding of 2 Cor. 5.14-21 and its relevance for your thesis about election in Paul.

CHAD: I would see 2 Cor 5:14-21 as another example of how Paul piggybacks upon the corporate representation framework found in Jewish literature and applies it to Christ. There is representation in the death of Christ in which it both affects believers on a soteriological level while also leading them to their own death. This death to self which Paul sees as a part of the Christian soteriological process I think also reflects Jesus’ own understanding of discipleship as presented in Mark 8-9. There is both, then, as Dunn suggests, a representative and a participatory sense to Christ’s death in which he both takes on and dies the death of humanity while also calling humans to participate in his death for their salvation/transformation. As the end of the passage indicates, this reconciliation to God which they experience then becomes a part of their identity as the reconciled who bring reconciliation. While we often make distinctions between salvation, transformation, and mission, I think the case can be made that Paul sees these as one thing. To be saved is to be transformed. To be transformed is to bring transformation to others. These are not categories which should be wedged apart but which must be seen as mutually informing. Thus, in light of this, Wright suggests that we find the essence of election theology here in this passage since through the faithfulness of Israel’s Messiah, the people of God are transformed to be agents of the kingdom and representatives of the work of God in Christ. In a sense, then, to not see election in this passage is to think of it only as a part of a soteriological ordo and not how it functions in its OT and Jewish context, which, though having soteriological implications, is primarily about the kind of people God’s people should be.

[The following are the verbatim conclusions from John’s book,reprinted here by kind permission of Eerdmans]

Chapter 18: Conclusions

This book has offered a new approach to the concept of “grace,” a new analysis of Second Temple theologies of divine beneficence, and a new reading of Galatians and Romans through the lens of Paul’s theology of grace. We may summarize its distinctive contribution under five heads.

1. Grace as Gift: Since both Paul and his contemporaries used the normal vocabulary of gift, favor, and benefaction in speaking of (what we call) “grace,” we have located their discourse on this topic within the social domain that anthropologists label “gift.” This conceptual frame has provided no templates, but it has alerted us to features of ancient gift-giving which modern Western eyes are apt to miss or to misconstrue. It has also afforded some analytical distance from the special connotations that have become attached to the term “grace.” Several significant themes emerged from our study of the Greco-Roman (including the Jewish) practices and ideologies of “gift.” Against modern notions of “altruism,” we found that benefits were generally intended to foster mutuality, by creating or maintaining social bonds. This expectation of reciprocity, with its (non-legal) obligations, created cyclical patterns of gift-and-return, even where there were large differentials in power between givers and recipients. Thus throughout this book we have been suspicious of the modern (Western) ideal of the “pure” gift, which is supposedly given without strings attached. We have thus been able to make sense of the fact that a gift can be unconditioned (that is, free of prior conditions regarding the recipient) without also being unconditional (that is, free of expectations that the recipient will offer some “return”). Paul has provided a parade example of this phenomenon, since he simultaneously emphasizes the incongruity of grace and the expectation that those who are “under grace” (and wholly refashioned by it) will be reoriented in the “obedience of faith.” What has seemed in the modern world a paradoxical phenomenon – that a “free” gift can also be obliging – was entirely comprehensible in ancient terms.

But the study of “gift” threw up another important issue. We noted that benefits, because they expected a return, were normally given discriminately (even if lavishly) to people considered on some grounds fitting or worthy recipients of the gift. The adequacy or fit of the recipient might be variously judged, according to the value-system of the benefactor, but it was normal that gifts – especially rare or significant gifts – should be distributed with discrimination, and were good gifts only if so disbursed. Under these conditions, “gift” could be closely associated with “reward”: although gifts could be distinguished from calculable pay or actionable loans, there was no inherent conflict between gift and recompense, between the language of “grace” and the language of worth. It was certainly possible for some gifts to be construed as “unmerited” (as we have found both in Paul and in some other Jewish literature), but this was not a normal, and certainly not a necessary, connotation of the terms we generally translate as “grace.” In fact, an unmerited gift was theologically problematic, and could threaten the justice and the rationality of the universe. Although Christian theologians (and modern dictionaries) regard it as self-evident that “grace” means a benefit to the unworthy, in ancient terms this was a striking and theologically dangerous construal of the concept.

2. Distinct Perfections of Grace: Crucial to the analytical work of this book has been the notion of “perfection” (the drawing out of a concept to an end-of-line extreme) and the distinction between different perfections of grace. Grace, we have found, is no simple or single-faceted idea: the various aspects of gift-giving can each be perfected in separable forms. In chapter 2 we identified six possible perfections of grace, which we labelled superabundance, singularity, priority, incongruity, efficacy, and non-circularity. Each of these configure gift in some maximal form, but none are necessary features of the concept, and, crucially, none requires or even implies another. They are distinguishable perfections and do not constitute a “package deal.”

This theoretical analysis has proved useful in understanding the different ways in which our texts, both Jewish and Christian, discuss this common concept, using identical vocabulary with very different connotations. It has suggested a new way to understand disputes about grace: what was for some the very definition of grace was for others an unnecessary or even unwelcome assumption. In analyzing the configurations of grace in the history of reception of Paul (chapter 3), we traced the differing perfections of this motif in the varied historical and theological contexts of key interpreters. This clarified the differences among our interpreters (e.g., between Marcion and Augustine, between Luther and Calvin, between Martyn and Dunn) who all variously emphasized grace. It also revealed the tendency to add one perfection to another, and the temptation to attribute to Paul our own perfections of this motif.

Thus equipped and rendered self-aware, we could ask afresh what was meant by “grace” (in its varied lexical expressions) in Second Temple Jewish texts, including the letters of Paul. An immediate gain was the capacity to clarify a confusion arising from the work of Sanders on Second Temple Judaism. Sanders’ model of “covenantal nomism” laid stress on the priority of grace, while implying that grace is also incongruous with the worth of its recipients (chapter 3.6.1). He thus found Paul’s theology of grace indistinguishable from a uniform Jewish view, a thesis that continues to be disputed among interpreters who spotlight different perfections of grace (see 3.6.1 and 3.7.2). By disaggregating perfections, we insisted that priority does not imply incongruity: a common Jewish commitment to the priority of grace in election did not imply uniformity on a separable matter, whether God distributes grace without regard to worth. Thus, the aspect of Sanders’ “covenantal nomism” that has proved most theologically potent was found to be conceptually confused. By clarifying this matter, we have been able to understand both how Sanders unwittingly created a spurious uniformity within Judaism, and why interpreters have been variously satisfied or dissatisfied with his conclusions.
The analytical distinction between various perfections has, in fact, opened new ways of construing the theologies of grace in Second Temple Judaism. Each of the texts analyzed in Part Two made divine grace (God’s goodness, mercy, or beneficence) a central theme, but in notably diverse ways. Alongside differences in frame, horizon, and historical circumstance, we identified different perfections of this motif. In particular, we highlighted the difference between texts that emphasized the congruity between God’s beneficence and the worth of its recipients (e.g., Wisdom of Solomon and Philo), and those that represented God’s grace as given without regard for worth (e.g., the Qumran Hodayot and LAB; see summary in chapter 10.2)

This disaggregation of perfections made it possible to ask afresh what Paul meant by “grace” and whether or in what ways he perfected this motif. Against the tendency to trace in Paul a traditional set of perfections, or as many perfections as possible, we have approached Paul with as few pre-formed assumptions as possible, open to the possibility that he may perfect this motif in certain respects, and not at all in others. What this means for our reading of Paul, and for its relation to the history of interpretation, will be clarified below.

3. Paul among Jewish Theologians of Grace: Our theme has long been significant in attempts to place Paul among, or against, his fellow Jews. A theological reading of Paul’s antithetical expressions has produced an image of Judaism as a religion of “works-righteousness,” with the conviction that Paul, and Paul alone, grasped the meaning of “grace.” On this reading, fostered by Reformation interpretations of “works” (chapter 3.3; 3.4; 3.5), other contemporary Jewish configurations of grace were judged self-contradictory, mixing grace with soteriologies of recompense or achievement. In reaction, Sanders’ “covenantal nomism” represented Second Temple Judaism as a uniform “religion of grace,” with Paul on this point indistinguishable from all his fellow Jews (chapter 3.6.1). Our analysis of selected texts has suggested a different conclusion: grace is everywhere in the theology of Second Temple Judaism, but not everywhere the same. On the critical question of the congruity of grace, we have found not unanimity but diversity. Some of our texts correlate God’s mercy with his justice, such that God’s beneficence is generally, or at least finally, accorded as a reward to fitting recipients (e.g., Wisdom of Solomon; Uriel in 4 Ezra). Others perfect the incongruity of grace, tracing the mismatch between the goodness of God and the worthlessness of the human (1QHa) or the sinfulness of Israel (LAB). The dialogues of 4 Ezra suggest that this subject was a matter of debate in Second Temple Judaism. It would be a mistake to regard the incongruity of grace as ubiquitous in Judaism, but equally wrong to consider this notion uniquely Pauline. Paul’s is one Jewish voice in a chorus of divergent opinions, distinctive in certain respects, but not qualitatively or quantitatively more distinct than the voices of other Jews. Paul stands among fellow Jews in his discussion of divine grace, not apart from them in a unique or antithetical position. At the same time he stands in the midst of a debate, and none of our Jewish authors can be taken as spokesmen for a single, simple, or uncontested notion of grace.

Paul’s letters (notably, Rom 9-11) indicate Paul’s engagement with common themes in the Jewish discussion of our topic, but they also displays the distinctive configuration of his thought. Paul, we have found, explores the incongruity of grace, which he relates to the Christ-event, as the definitive enactment of God’s love for the unlovely, and to the Gentile mission, where the gifts of God ignore ethnic differentials of worth and Torah-based definitions of value (“righteousness”). In fact, this theology of grace, Christologically defined and articulated both for and from the Gentile mission, reshaped Paul’s understanding of the identity of Israel. Paul’s distinctive retelling of the Abrahamic and patriarchal origins of Israel (Rom 4 and 9) is patterned by the incongruous gift, which he finds integral to Israel’s existence and destiny. Paul’s theology is not directed against Judaism; neither does he consider assemblies of Jewish and Gentile believers as the replacement of Israel. On his reading, Israel is most truly itself when it is solely dependent on the root of the God’s unconditioned mercy; and that is fully and definitively the case when it draws on the “wealth” poured out to Jew and Gentile in Christ.

The way Paul radicalizes the incongruity of grace, and the distinctive way he connects that grace to the Christ-event and practises it in his Gentile mission, relativizes the authority of the Torah in a fashion unparalleled among his Jewish peers. His claim to have “died to the law in order to live to God” (Gal 2.19) signals a shocking devaluation of Jewish symbolic capital (cf. Phil 3.2-11) just when he embraces the Jewish ideal of “living to God.” Paul is neither anti-Jewish nor post-Jewish, but his configuration of the grace of God in Christ alters his Jewish identity and questions his former allegiance to the Torah. Our reading of Paul has provided a new angle of vision on this perennially fascinating and controversial phenomenon.

4. Paul’s Theology of Grace in its Original Social Context: Paul’s notion of the incongruous Christ-gift was originally part of his missionary theology, developed for and from the Gentile mission at the pioneering stage of community formation. Since God’s incongruous grace dissolves former criteria of worth, it forms the basis for innovative groups of converts, loosening their ties to pre-constituted norms and uniting them in their common faith in Christ. The starting-point is the framing of the Christ-event as gift. Christ’s death “for our sins” (e.g., 1 Cor 15.3-4) is interpreted by Paul in the language of gift (God’s gift of his Son, or Christ’s gift of himself). The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus are thus, for Paul, the focal point of divine beneficence: the witness of Scripture and the history and identity of Israel are interpreted in this light. Grace is discovered in an event, not in the general benevolence of God, and its focal expression lies not in creation or in any other divine gift, but in the gift of Christ, which constitutes for Paul the Gift.

This gift is experienced and interpreted as an incongruous gift. The Gentile mission is formative: non-Jews, wholly unqualified for divine beneficence, are found to be “called in grace” when they receive the good news of Christ, and gifted with the Spirit. Paul’s own experience matches this disregard of worth, since he too was “called in grace” irrespective of his Jewish privileges and despite his persecution of the church. Paul thus identifies a divine initiative in the Christ-event that disregards taken-for-granted criteria of ethnicity, status, knowledge, virtue, or gender. In a dialectical fashion, Paul’s theology justifies the formation of norm-violating communities, while his missionary practice clarifies and radicalizes the incongruity of the gift of Christ.

Paul understands the single event of Christ to bring into question every pre-existent classification of worth. In figuring believers as “dead to the world” and as expressions of a “new creation” (Gal 6.14-15), he articulates the birth of dissident communities which are capable of disregarding distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female (Gal 3.28). Such social identities continue to exist, but they are declared insignificant as markers of worth in a community that is beholden to Christ and operates “at a diagonal” to the normal taxonomies of value (Gal 1.10-11). Ancestry, education, and social power are subordinated to a common “calling” that disregards previous assumptions of worth (1 Cor 1.26-31). Novel communities are encouraged to relativize their differences in culture, welcoming one another on the unconditioned terms by which each was welcomed in Christ (Rom 14-15).

Paul’s discussion of “justification” and his antithesis between “works of the Law” and “faith in Christ” are formulated in and for the Gentile mission. Paul declares that the ethnic distinction between Jew and Gentile, which was foundational to his “ancestral traditions,” has been dissolved by the incongruous gift of Christ. His mission experience, his controversies with other Jewish believers, and his own calling as apostle to the Gentiles make these themes central to Galatians and Romans. Here “works of the Law” mean Jewish practices; the “Law” in question is the Torah. In declaring that God counts worth (“righteousness”) by reference not to Torah-observance but to faith in Christ, Paul subverts the normative authority of the Torah, which is no longer to shape (“enslave”) the common life of believers. Jewish believers are by no means prohibited from observing the Torah, but even for them its authority is subordinate to “the truth of the good news.” They are required to acknowledge that it is not the common cultural framework of believers, and thus not to be imposed on Gentile converts. Although aspects of the Torah are “fulfilled” in Spirit-led conduct, it is not the believers’ ultimate norm; to accept it as such would be to deny the grace of God in Christ. Believers are united by faith in Christ – the mark of their orientation to the event of Christ, which is the source of their “newness of life.” Paul opposes those who think Torah-observance is the essential expression of faith not because “law” or “works” are problematic principles of soteriology, but because the Torah – like every other pre-constituted norm – has been dethroned as a criterion of worth by the unconditioned gift of Christ.

Two intersecting features of Pauline theology place this gift in a wider theological context – his theology of calling (his version of covenant-theology or “salvation-history”) and his theology of sin (his anthropology). The Christ-gift is interpreted as the fulfilment of the promises to Abraham, but at the same time clearly distinguished from the Torah-covenant. In accord with this peculiar disjunction, Paul re-interprets the whole of Scripture, which grounds his theology where it resonates with echoes of the good news. In Galatians Israel’s history is accorded no positive significance; the emphasis in that letter on curse and enslavement underlines, rather, the incongruity of grace. Romans does recount elements of Israel’s story, but only where they bear the distinctively Pauline marks of disjunction: right from the start, and up the present (and projected into the future), Paul traces the pattern of life from the dead, the justification of the ungodly, and mercy without regard to worth. The scope of this narrative is significant to Paul, since the new assemblies of believers have come into existence only by being grafted onto the root that has created and sustained Israel from its beginning. Paul is not citing scriptural episodes to illustrate abstract principles of soteriology. But the story he tells is not a common Second Temple narrative with a Christological conclusion: it has a new plot-line, shaped by the incongruity of grace.

The other context for the gift is Paul’s theology of sin. Paul’s pessimism regarding “the present evil age” (Gal 1.4) is radicalized by the conviction that the Christ-gift is given in the absence of worth, to the “ungodly” and the “weak.” There are no exceptions: all (Jew and Gentile) are under the rule of Sin, which holds the cosmos in subjection. Even the Torah is frustrated by this enslaving power (Rom 7), a further reason why there can be no justification within its terms. This grim anthropology forms the foil to Paul’s news of freedom and reconciliation in Christ; his contrasts between before and after, outside and inside, reflect the experience of his converts. The drama of their movement from death to life, from flesh to Spirit, and from sin to righteousness is encapsulated in baptism, whose “newness of life,” derived from Christ, is experienced in new social relations and in the reconstitution of each individual self (Gal 2.19-20).

The Christ-gift thus provides the basic soteriological shape for Paul’s theology of calling and of sin – his configuration of the story of Israel and his representation of the plight of humanity. The integration of these theological matrices is Paul’s distinctive achievement. Together they contextualize the Christ-gift, identifying its significance on a map that encompasses all of history and the whole of the cosmos. But because their focal-point is the gift of Christ, each bears the mark of the incongruity of grace.

The goal of Paul’s mission is the formation of communities whose distinct patterns of life bear witness to an event that has broken with normal criteria of worth. Paul expects baptism to create new life-orientations, including forms of bodily habitus that express the reality of the life of the resurrection in the midst of human mortality. The gift requires to be realized in unconventional practice or it ceases to have meaning as an incongruous gift. It creates new modes of obedience to God, which arise from the gift as “return” to God, but without instrumental purpose in eliciting further gifts. The transformative power of grace thus creates a fit between believers and God, which will be evident at the eschaton. Judgment “according to works” does not entail a new and incompatible principle of soteriology; it indicates that the incongruous gift has had its intended effect in embedding new standards of worth in the practice of those it transforms.

The incongruity of grace does not imply, for Paul, its singularity (since God’s act of grace in Christ is predicated on his judgment of sin) or its non-circularity (since the gift carries expectations of obedience). Because it is incongruous, the priority of the gift is everywhere presupposed, but Paul rarely draws out predestinarian conclusions, as in the Hodayot and in the theologies of Augustine and Calvin. The superabundance of grace is also presupposed and sometimes explicit, but its efficacy is given less attention than the Augustinian tradition might suggest. While some Pauline texts suggest the efficacy of grace in the will and work of believers (1 Cor 15.9-10; Phil 2.12-13), this perfection receives no special profile in Galatians and Romans. Everything that may be said about the believer is predicated on the resurrection life of Christ, as the source of new life in the Spirit: no-one can “walk in line with the Spirit” unless they “live by the Spirit” (Gal 5.25). But the efficacy of grace (the prior and present agency of God within the agency of believers) is not of central concern in either Galatians or Romans, and is not a necessary entailment of their primary perfection, the incongruity of the gift of Christ.

5. New Contexts and New Meanings of Grace: Paul’s theology of grace has been influential only because it has proved fertile in historical and social conditions beyond its original context. Its meaning has necessarily been altered in the process. Originally, as we have seen, it was integral to Paul’s mission at the start of the Christian movement: it served to disjoin converts from their previous criteria of worth, scoring a line between their past and their present, between insiders and outsiders. After this initial generation, in a post-missional context and within Christian communities whose boundaries were already established, this same theology played a different role and acquired a different focus. Even where the incongruity of grace was re-emphasized, it served not to establish but to refine the Christian tradition, drawing lines of demarcation not around the Christian community but within it, and even within the subjectivity of believers.

This change of focus is related to the fact that the originating context of Paul’s theology – the Gentile mission that dissolved the distinction between Jews and non-Jews and relativized the Torah – became a matter of merely historical interest to later theologians, who sought more contemporary relevance in the Pauline language of “works” and “law.” But a more fundamental shift was at play: the language of grace that had once served to detach new communities from their previous cultural attachments was now applied to believers with little or no consciousness of a break with their past (since their primary socialization was as Christians), and to communities whose external boundaries were either non-existent (in a solidly Christian culture) or already obvious. Their criteria of worth (what counted as honorable or righteous) were already strongly “Christianized.” In such contexts Paul’s theology of grace became a tool for the inner reform of the Christian tradition, its critical edge turned against believers, undermining not their pre-Christian criteria of worth but their pride or purpose in gaining Christian worth. Grace remained the means of access to the community, but the critical dissolution of pre-constituted norms (“what accords with human values”, Gal 1.11) became an attack on the believer’s confidence or independence in adhering to Christian norms. In a context where “the law,” once passed through Christian filters, was granted full authority as divine law, it was impossible to imagine that the believer should challenge its authority as Paul had challenged the normative role of the Torah. Paul had placed “grace” and faith in contrast with righteousness in the Law, but it was inconceivable that he should have questioned the Law’s normative criteria, and more likely that he intended to criticize a deficiency in the believer, either in measuring up to the Law or in construing its intention. The shift that takes place here is not from the particular to the universal (Paul himself covers both, working from the particularity of the Christ-event to its universal implications), nor from the specific to the abstract (like Paul, his interpreters have specific targets for their theology), nor from the social to the individual (Paul’s own theology of grace has both social and individual dimensions). What changes, rather, is the social context. The critical theology of a new social movement, by which it formulated its identity and clarified its boundaries, becomes the self-critical theology of an established tradition: its missionary theology is turned inwards.

The first signs of this contextual shift may be traced in the deutero-Pauline letters where “works” are refocused as moral achievements (Eph 2.8-10; 2 Tim 1.9; Tit 3.5) and “boasting” indicates not the cultural confidence of the Jew in the Torah (or of the Greek in wisdom), but pride in achievement (Eph 1.9). Grace is a marker of the divine source of worth (“not from you, but the gift of God,” Eph 2.8). Augustine, as we saw (chapter 3.2), interpreted “boasting” as the pride of believers, who attribute merit to themselves, and not to God. He took Paul’s theology of grace to subvert not the standard human criteria of worth, but the human tendency to self-congratulation in the attainment of worth. The critical edge of Paul’s theology is directed against Christian construals of virtue-acquisition. The incongruity of grace, which Augustine perfected together with its priority and efficacy, is taken to represent the axiomatic principle that God’s healing aid is the necessary and effective source of all moral or spiritual achievement. The distinction between life “in the flesh” and new life “in the Spirit” (Rom 7-8) – a contrast for Paul between the former and the present life of a convert – is taken to represent the inner duality of the believer. To speak of grace is to speak of the believer’s dependence on the agency of God.

The achievement of Luther (see chapter 3.3) was to translate Paul’s missionary theology of grace into an urgent inward mission, directed to the church, but especially to the heart of each believer. Luther recaptured both the incongruity of grace in Paul and its origin in the event of Jesus Christ; the challenge was to make this significant in communities of believers long socialized in the Christian tradition. The subversive dynamic of Paul’s theology is directed against a different target – not the old normative systems which believers are struggling to shed, but a faulty understanding of their own good works as necessary to gain God’s favor. Paul’s theology of gift is re-preached to effect the perpetual conversion of believers, who need to learn over and again to receive the gift of God and to banish the false opinion that their works will merit salvation. The gospel constitutes a mission to the self and a daily return to baptism, since the old nature persists in its tendency to arrogant self-sufficiency and must be countered by reminders that Christ has already given all. Thus grace here scores a line through the life of the Christian, who is simul justus et peccator, both a believer and a human being, and a believer only as he/she becomes one repeatedly in faith. Paul’s polemics against “works of the law” are taken to be directed not against an external (and no longer valid) definition of worth (Torah-practice) but against the subjective evaluation of one’s own good works as effective for salvation. This change in focus fostered a regrettable tendency to figure “Jews” as examplars of human self-righteousness, but it constituted a brilliant re-contextualization of Pauline theology in the conditions of the sixteenth century church.

As we have seen, the twentieth century saw several notable developments in the reading of grace as a rebuke to the church or a judgment on the self-understanding of every individual (chapter 3.5). For all their differences, these have generally continued the tradition in which “works” are the target of Paul’s polemic against “works of the law.” In this tradition, Paul’s theology is taken to expose the human incapacity to fulfil the law’s demands (Augustine; Calvin), or the “religious” movement towards God that is no more than a “human enterprise” (Barth; Martyn), or the false and subtly idolatrous opinion that one can rely upon oneself for salvation (Luther; Bultmann; Käsemann). In all cases, the object of Paul’s critique is not the content of the works but the “doing” of them, not the criteria by which worth is measured, but the purported achievement of worth.
Viewed from this angle, the “new perspective” constitutes a break in the mainstream history of reception. Locating Paul’s letters within first-generation conflicts over the Mosaic Torah, it construes the issue to lie not in the believers’ performance of good works, but in the differentiation of the community of believers from (some of) the Jewish rules of Torah-observance (see chapter 3.6). In agreement with the “new perspective,” we have found the context for Paul’s theology of justification to be the Gentile mission and the construction of communities that crossed ethnic (as well as social) boundaries. Moreover, these social effects are not just the context of Paul’s theology, mere illustrations of soteriological principles, but its goal, since the calling of Jew and Gentile in Christ is the fulfilment of Israel’s calling in mercy, and thus at the centre of God’s purposes in history. However, I depart from the “new perspective” in the identification of the theological root of this Pauline mission. Shaping Paul’s appeals to the Abrahamic promises, to the experience of the Spirit, or to the oneness of God, is his theology of the Christ-gift. This is certainly not to return to theologically pernicious contrasts between Pauline grace and Jewish works-righteousness; by contrast, we have demonstrated the significance of divine beneficence in a wide range of Jewish texts. Grace is everywhere in Second Temple Judaism. But the incongruous grace that Paul traces in the Christ-event and experiences in the Gentile mission is the explosive force that demolishes old criteria of worth and clears space for innovative communities that inaugurate new patterns of social existence. It is because grace belongs to no-one that it goes to everyone – and not because of a political or philosophical preference for the broad over the narrow, or the universal over the particular. Paul’s ecclesiology has its roots in his soteriology of grace, which also shapes his understanding of the human plight at both a cosmic and an individual level and has theological significance and social implications quite beyond its original context.

Thus, the reading of Paul offered in this book may be interpreted either as a re-contextualization of the Augustinian-Lutheran tradition, returning the theme of the incongruity of grace to its original mission environment where it accompanied the formation of new communities, or as a reconfiguration of the “new perspective,” placing its best historical and exegetical insights within the frame of Paul’s theology of grace. I have disagreed in significant ways with interpreters on both sides of this divide and the reading offered here does not harmonize the two interpretative traditions but reshapes them both. But it opens a path beyond current dichotomies, placing their respective strengths within a frame that is responsible both to Paul’s historical conditions and to the theological structures of his thought.

This reading of Paul may also create resonances today. Because the Christological event of grace is both highly particular and impacts on any criteria of worth that are not derived from the good news itself, Paul’s theology does not remain encased within its first-century context. One does not have to find “timeless principles” by extracting general truths from particular historical debates: Paul himself saw the general relevance of a theology of grace that reconfigured the map of reality. As we have seen, that theology fitted its original context of an inaugural mission, and is necessarily re-focused when used in the reform of an established Christian tradition. Today, however, the Christian tradition is anything but stable and established. In fact, one might be struck by the similarities between Paul’s missional context and the social context of many churches today. Not only in pioneer mission, but even (in fact, especially) in a pluralist or secularizing context, churches now find themselves needing to rediscover their social, political, and cultural identity. Taken-for-granted criteria of value regarding age, ethnicity, social status, education, gender, or wealth become in such circumstances the object of critical re-evaluation, and churches identify anew what it is about the good news that makes them socially and ideologically distinctive. This new missional context makes Paul’s theology of grace most relevant not in the re-contextualized forms in which it has become familiar (as an individualized theology of “amazing grace”), but in its original dynamic accompanying the creation of innovative, counter-cultural communities of faith. By starting from the Christ-event, and by clarifying with radical sharpness the unconditioned grace that was given in Christ, Paul provides resources for the dissolution of pre-formed assumptions and for the construction of boundary-erasing communities. Those resources could prove vital for churches as they renegotiate their identities in cultures where what it means to be “church” has become radically uncertain.

We have focused here on the divine gift of grace, the gift in its theological sense. As we have noted, this has its necessary embodiment in the life of transformed communities, but we have not had space to explore in its wider dimensions the significance of gift in Paul’s configuration of human relations. The construction of community through the reciprocity of gift, the extension of gift-relations beyond the normal range of social relationships, the renegotiations of power and obligation that accompany the giving and receiving of gifts in Christ – all these remain Pauline topics barely touched upon here. Other Pauline letters beyond those addressed here (e.g., 1 and 2 Corinthians; Philippians) would need to be added to the discussion. It may be that in these matters also Paul’s thought and practice, once contextualized in the economic conditions of the first century, have significant implications for a contemporary social and political ethic. But that will be the agenda for another book!

panion to this one… if we are not both exhausted and if we are still game then.

Blessings to you and yours, and we at Asbury hope you will come back sometime,

Ben
—–

BEN: You decided to go out with a bang dealing with the most complicated material in all of Paul’s letters in Rom. 9-11 in your final chapter. This particular segment of Romans has been said to be the exegetes graveyard, where they go to die or at least die trying to figure it out. Let’s start with some of your observations on pp. 527-28, where, not surprisingly, you are going to argue that God’s incongruous grace and mercy are what helps one untie the Gordian knots in this passage and make sense of the whole. You say, rightly in my view, that Paul’s view of the election of Israel involves the group as a whole, and Paul is not arguing that God’s selection within the elect is enough to satisfy Paul when it comes to God’s promises to Israel. As you say, this hardly makes sense of Paul’s prayer in Rom. 10.1-2 for the salvation of his supposedly non-elect Jewish kin, nor does it make any sense of what Paul says about all Israel being saved at the end of Rom. 11.25ff. The language of call, elect, love is applied to the whole group in Rom. 11. You say “It seems better to read Rom. 9.6b and the following verses as intended not to justify God’s selection within Israel but to clarify the grounds on which Israel as a nation was created and selected” (p. 528). Help us to understand the logic of this conclusion better. Does the statement on p. 529 “the crucial issue in 9.6-18 is not whom God has chosen (and whom he has left out) nor simply that he has exercised his choice. The emphasis lies on HOW God has chosen Israel” clarify things, and if so how?

JOHN: Well, yes, this is probably the most challenging segment of Romans, and one which interpreters either avoid, or get very bogged down in. The standard current reading is that Paul’s argument is inconsistent: he starts off on one track and then somewhere in chapter 11 (at 11.1 or 11.11 or 11.25) he veers off in a totally different direction, one which undermines and contradicts all he had said before. It is normally explained that he reverts to his ethnic prejudices, or changes his mind along the way, or just pulls a rabbit out of a hat. The problem comes if we read 9.6ff. as saying: God is not committed to Israel as a whole, only to some of them (the remnant), and the remnant of Jews who believe in Christ is all that is necessary for God to be true to his word. The rest, who do not believe in Christ, are like Ishmael/Esau/Pharaoh. Thus when Paul says that the remnant is not God’s final word, in 11.11ff., this is said to be a change of mind, or else (like Wright) Paul does not mean ‘all Israel’ in his normal sense of Israel when he writes 11.25-26. I think if we go back to 9.6ff and read it afresh we find this: 1) Paul says that not all desended from Israel (Greek ex Israel) are Israel: i.e. he is drawing attention to the fact that who counts as ‘Israel’ has never been a matter of descent; 2) he shows this in 9.7ff by reference to the three patriarchal generations (Abraham-Isaac-Jacob) – i.e. this is about how Israel was formed, not in the first instance about its subsequent history or the present. 3) The point is that God has always created and defined Israel in his own way, from the very beginning. To be Israel is to be not physically descended, but chosen. 4) This means that God has the perfect right, in line with the very character of Israel, to choose from within the people of Israel (which has sometimes been reduced to a remnant), but also has the perfect right to redeem all Israel (despite their disobedience). He has mercy on whom he has mercy: that is what it means to be Israel. So, instead of looking for who in Paul’s present is represented by what biblical figures in 9.6ff, we should be attending to Paul’s depiction of how God elects, chooses and orders Israel’s story, because it is that how which explains how Gentiles can now be grafted into the tree, and how all Israel can be redeemed in the future, despite present unbelief/disobedience. God can reduce to a remnant, he can graft in, and he can regraft – all in consistent accord with his way of acting from the start, which is by a mercy or grace that pays no regard to the worth of the recipients.

BEN: Paul makes an interesting contrast between the children of the flesh and the children of promise, in the former case ruling out the idea that Israel is constituted on the basis of lineal descent, and later he rules out status, works etc. as the basis of God’s choice. What exactly does ‘children of promise’ mean, and if God’s choice is purely on the basis of his incongruous grace, then at the end of the day there would seem to be no rationale, no way that we can figure out why he chose this group of people. Does incongruous grace leading to election make the whole thing inscrutable and imponderable, and therefore we should stop trying to logically figure this out?

JOHN: Children of promise is a phrase used both in Romans (9.8) and in Galatians (4.28) and reflects the fact that Paul is fascinated by the way that God not only promises certain things, but brings them about because he has promised them. In other words, the promises of God create the reality they promise. So the important thing about Isaac (and not only him) is that he was a human impossibility (Ishmael was a human possibility, a child according to the flesh) and thus can only be created by God’s own promise. And if God is the agent here, and if, as you say, God works without regard to human possibilities, expectations or worth, then indeed we cannot predict or limit what God can do. I think that is why Romans 9-11 finishes with its crucial final step: not ‘all Israel will be saved’ but ‘oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God …’ (11.33-36). At the end, Paul’s theology is apophatic (it tails off into silence): he knows enough to know what he does not know. And God’s grace/mercy always leads us there, as the mysterious ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy’ should have told us already (9.15). One cannot figure out the ‘why’ of God’s mercy: one can only throw oneself upon it.

BEN: On pp. 534-35 you explain that “the purpose of God is shaped by its telos” and you add “it is the Gentile mission that gives clarity and impetus to Paul’s theology of incongruous grace. If Paul’s theology legitimizes his mission, it is also the case that his mission sharpens defines his theology, and here confirms that God’s call is both creative and unconditioned…it is precisely the ‘wealth’ of mercy that Paul experiences in the Gentile mission that gives him reason to look beyond the present distinction between the remnant and the rest (11.1-10), and to imagine a future in which even the excluded can be integrated again.” Can you tease this out for us a bit more. What one might take this to mean is that because it is the property of God to always have mercy, that in fact God can ignore any sort of pre-determined plan based on foresight or knowing something in advance when it comes to salvation and simply dole out his incongruous grace, or perhaps better said— the only plan God really had all along was to have mercy on sinful humankind both Jew and Gentile, and he chose Israel to spread the news about this and a particular Jew, Jesus, to be the Messiah and implement the plan.

JOHN: Yes, I think the ‘double predestination’ passages of Romans 9 have led us (since Augustine and Calvin) to think that there is a pre-determined plan of doubleness, that some are destined to be in, and others out. But the incompleteness of chapter 9 (as I read 9.22-24) and the fact that the discourse moves on to 11.36 indicates that we should not get stuck in chapter 9: the doubleness, or hardening and calling, is a step along the way to God’s will to have mercy (as 11.11 indicates). Paul’s theology is anchored not in a determined creational past, but in an eschatological future: if the past is important it is only for what it foreshadows and points forward to in the future. As Paul reads it, the purposes of God run towards mercy (11.32), though what that looks like in practice he is unable to say (hence 11.33-36!). Thus the plan is, as you say, oriented to the worldwide spread of grace. If that is not finally and fully effective, it will be not because God did not want it to be so, but because his grace will have been rejected by some in unbelief.

BEN: p. 537 is intriguing. You foreground the race metaphor as key to understanding what is happening at the beginning of Romans 10– Israel has stumbled in the race to the ‘telos’ i.e. goal, that goal being the Messiah, Jesus, and ironically those who were not even trying to enter the race, who were not disciplining themselves to pursue the right end, have reached the goal i.e. Jesus. Is that what you are saying? This would then make the translation ‘Christ is the goal of the Law’ preferable but what goal would mean is something like we call the finish line, or what in a Greco-Roman race amounts to a pole or marker at the finish line. Of course even if this is the metaphor in play, if Christ is the goal line of the Law, then he is also its finish, its end. That’s rather different than saying Christ is the fulfillment of the Law. Say more about what you mean.

JOHN: I think there are elements of a race metaphor in 9.30ff, or if not a race at least a sense of pursuing something and trying to reach it. If that carries on into 10.1-4 (the paragraphs seem closely linked) then a translation like ‘the goal of the law is Christ’ works well: this is what Israel was trying to reach in ‘pursuing the law of righteousness’ (9.31), and what has been reached by those who have faith. Paul has another word for fulfilment (pleroma) and he can use the cognate verb in relation to the law in 8.4 and 13.8 in a different context. In this context, what we are talking about is not fulfilling the commands of the law but the attainment of the its goal and intent. As you say, the goal can also mean its job is done, and its role is finished (as 7.6 suggests). I do not see Paul advocating a ‘third use of the law’ in the sense that the Torah remains in place, but now as an authority for believers. What matters now is walking in line with the Spirit – which will end up also doing what the law fundamentally required morally, but without being under its final authority (cf. 14.17 on food and drink, regulations in the Torah).

BEN: In some respects, the further I go in this last major chapter, the more you begin to sound like Ed Sanders, namely what’s wrong with the Jewish approach to righteousness is that it’s not the Christian one— namely that one is reckoned righteous by faith in Christ. Put another way, Paul’s experience of the Gentile mission with many coming to Christ through preaching the Good News convinced him that Jews were pursuing righteousness and right-standing with God the wrong way. Now this is interesting because it suggests that it was not just Paul’s conversion that convinced him about incongruous grace and mercy, offered as good news to all, but that his further experiences in mission solidified or clarified this. Does this make sense?

JOHN: Well, I think Paul is not accusing Jews of having the wrong kind of religion (works-righteousness) but of looking for the grace and righteousness of God within the frame of Torah-defined righteousness, while the ultimate gift of God in Christ, being incongruous, has broken out of that cultural frame. The problem identified in 10.3 is not zeal or works-righteousness, but ignorance: not ignorance of the Torah, of course, but ignorance (non-recognition) of what God has done in Christ. Unlike Sanders, I don’t think this is a bare a posteriori along the lines of ‘because it is by X, it is not by Y’. Rather, the whole being of Israel depends on the grace/mercy of God, and because God’s grace is finally and definitively effected in the gift of Christ, what it means for Israel to believe in Christ is not to cease to be itself and to change to being something else, but to be more like itself, to be Israel is its fullest state. So, to alter Sanders’ famous phrase: ‘this is what is wrong with unbelieving Judaism: it is not most truly itself in believing in Christ’.

BEN: In recalibrating what the focus and thrust of Rom. 9-11 really is you suggest that “works represent not human initiative but the display of human worth as defined by criteria other than God’s. Thus the central question is not ‘do we trust God or in our own efforts?’ but ‘is God’s saving action given to those we define as worthy, or without regard to worth?’ …the object of critique is… Israel’s assumption that Torah observers are the fitting recipients of the beneficence of God” (p. 541 n. 46). Is then salvation given not only without regard to worth but also without regard to the collective election of Israel? I agree with you that Paul’s point in reviewing Israel’s history is to make the point that people were not chosen on the basis of performance or worth. One could argue it is also about God being faithful to his promises regardless of the performance of Israel. Help us understand these interwoven ideas better.

JOHN: Paul demonstrates in Romans 9 that Israel is elected and selected without regard to her intrinsic worth; it is only by God’s decision of mercy. Paul does not think Israel has no zeal for God (on the contrary, 10.2), but that its zeal is predicated on the assumption that God’s goodness is channelled to fitting recipients, defined as those who practise the Torah (‘as from works’, 9.33). But because the Christ-event has no regard to any form of worth, it has application to all without exception, including Gentiles. This is, Paul insists, not a new kind of grace, but the very grace that has been the root of Israel from the beginning. So God is not now disregarding the election of Israel, but precisely fulfilling it by the very means by which is has operated from the start: without regard to works or any other kind of worth (including works of the Torah). Thus, as I put it, Israel is and remains special, but now no longer unique (‘to the Jew – first – and also to the Greek’). And God’s mercy, being unconditioned, can embrace Israel, despite unbelief and disobedience.

BEN: It appears on your showing that there are in fact three events which have caused the Copernican revolution in Paul’s thinking: 1) the Christ event itself; 2) the Damascus Road experience by Paul; 3) the Gentile mission, plus Paul’s Christological re-reading of the OT in light of these three events. Each of these or all of these has led to a rethinking of almost everything, including his concept of God and mercy and God’s people, on the part of Paul. Yes?

JOHN: Yes, I think that is right. There is a dialectical relationship (working in both directions) between the turth of the Christ-event and Paul’s experience (of his own calling/conversion and of the calling/conversion of Gentile believers): each cements and clarifies the meaning of the other. On that basis he goes back to the Scriptures and finds as a red thread running throughout the theme of the unconditioned mercy of God – which is what he traces in Romans 9-11. So what he has discovered is not a new God, but the God who worked in incongruous mercy in calling Israel, and who has now fulfilled that calling and purpose in Christ.

BEN: Your take on Paul’s metaphor of the root, and the branches is intriguing. You argue that the root is not Israel or Jesus or the patriarchs (thought I sense you think that is more likely than some other readings) but rather the root of fatness is in fact the calling/election/incongruous grace of God itself! I must say I didn’t see this reading coming. Will it not be objected that since the branches are people, then it is natural to see the root as people or a person as well? I grant that Paul mixes his metaphors, but is the root really an abstract concept? You even suggest that the Gentile branches are grafted into the ‘root’ not into the tree called Israel. So….. both Israel and Gentiles are grafted into an entity created purely by the grace of God, not into an pre-existing elect people? (p. 551 n. 75).

JOHN: The question is, what has nourishment (‘fatness’) enough to sustain and support the tree of God’s people (11.17-18)? Since the branches that are cut off (and can be grafted back in) are Israelites, it is hard to see how Israel can be both the root and the branches. 11.28 indicates that Israel are beloved because of the patriarchs, so that takes us back to Romans 4.1-8 and Romans 9.6-9 to ask: what is it about them that makes them so significant. Well, actually – and this is Paul’s whole point – there is nothing significant about them as such; they are significant only because they were created and elected by God in his mercy/grace. 11.16b suggests a clear distinction between the root and the branches, and I don’t think all parts of this metaphor have to refer to people (in the Galatians 4.31 – 5.1 allegory, the children of the promise are people but their mother is the Jerusalem above, God’s eschatological plan). So Israel has been from the start (9.6ff.) dependent on this root, which is why it is ‘natural’ for Israelites: but it is an elect people only in the sense that it lives out of election. Now Gentiles have been objects of mercy and so are grafted into the richness of the same root. They are not grafted into Israel (I don’t think Paul ever calls Gentile believers ‘Israel’), but grafted into mercy.

BEN: As you will know, in early Judaism Zechariah and other texts were taken to mean that in the end all Israel will be saved (see e.g. the Mishnah statement to this effect) by the bringing in of the Diaspora Jews streaming back to Zion, and on their coattails Gentiles going in with them. Paul simply reverses the polarity of this, says he got this from a special revelation a ‘musterion’ saying now that the full number of the Gentiles will come in first, and then afterwards when the ‘Redeemer comes forth from Zion and turns away the impiety of Jacob, then all Israel will be saved. In short, Paul is talking about an eschatological miracle at the parousia and resurrection, which once again is proof positive of incongruous grace. Why do you think there has been so much resistance to this reading of the end of the argument in Rom. 9-11, especially by Wright and some of the New Perspective folks? I would suppose in Wright’s case it’s because it spoils his narrative that Israel=church, or that Jesus=Israel=Jew and Gentile united in Christ.

JOHN: I do not think Paul is fully clear on when all Israel will be saved, or even precisely what ‘all’ means (there is the same ambiguity in other Jewish texts of this period), but I do argue, in agreement with you here, that Israel in 11.26 means (as in 11.25!) the people we have been talking about since 9.1 (‘my brothers according to the flesh’; ‘they are Israelites and to them belong …’, 9.4). Tom Wright is nowadays virtually alone among scholars in reading it otherwise (I was at a conference on Romans 9-11 with him in Germany a few years back, and everyone disagreed with his reading of 11.26); and I don’t find his long defence of his reading in The Faithfulness of God persuasive. Because he puts things in a linear history, from Adam to Abraham, through exile, to Christ, and because in his view Christ, as Messiah, represents and sums up all Israel, there cannot be a continuing place for Israel post-Christ. But if you read the whole of Scripture, as Paul does, as a working-out of God’s grace, first in Abraham and his offspring and now definitively in Christ, there is every reason to think that the promises of God, which cannot be recalled (11.28), can and will be fulfilled in the back-flow of Christ’s grace to Israel as a whole.

BEN: On p. 559 you say “If Paul cannot make sense of the Christ event without reference to Israel’s creation and sustenance by God’s elective call, neither can he make sense of Israel without reference to Christ.” I agree but could you unpack this a bit. I would say that Paul is even prepared to insert the pre-existent Christ into the picture of the earlier history of Israel as the sustainer of Israel (in 1 Cor. 10— the rock was Christ).

JOHN: Romans 9-11 shows (as Galatians already suggests) that the Christ-gift is not an out-of-the-blue event, but is the definitive clue to the total story of God’s people, from Abraham onwards. Israel is not just an illustration of a Christian theological point, but the narrative frame for everything that can said about the Christ event. But the same is true in reverse: Paul cannot now make sense of everything he reads in Scripture about Israel without reference to Christ who is the definitive, the final, and the complete enactment of the grace that has borne Israel from the start. But then the possibility arises of reading all that is said about Israel as referring in some sense to the Christ-event – and as you say 1 Cor 10 is a fascinating sign of Paul beginning to do that. And if Christ is then the frame in which to read everything about Israel, and about Adam and creation, we have just a short journey to make to Colossians 1.15ff, (already hinted at in 1 Cor 8.6) which frames all creation and all time within the story of Christ.

BEN John your last chapter is especially a tour de force argument, and it has set in motion all kinds of thoughts on election, so the following is just musing on possibilities but I wonder, in conclusion, what you would say to this—- If the election of Israel doesn’t impose on God an obligation to save a particular people (whether or not they measure up to God’s standards by the Law) or at least particular individual Israelites, then election must be about something other than salvation, for salvation even in the case of Jews is incongruous grace and God’s pure mercy. God owes sinners nothing, whether Jewish or Gentile sinners. God owes covenant breakers nothing. Election then, it seems to me, must be primarily about mission, about being chosen to be a light to the nations, not about individual salvation of Jacob instead of Esau etc. I agree election and salvation seem intertwined at points, but this seems to be because Paul has a corporate notion of election (it’s in Israel, and then it’s in Christ) which does not guarantee the salvation of some particular Israelite or Christian. What do you think?

JOHN: Thanks, Ben. I think you are right in this sense: election is not about being something special, or having something special. It is about being a sign of something beyond yourself, a signpost to a event and a person who is something, although (or because) you are nothing. And thus election can have no pre-determined limits: it is about mission in the sense that it always points to a reality of an incongruous grace that by definition has nobody outside its remit, and is thus always wanting to sweep up into its grasp the other equally unworthy people beyond yourself and outside your community. To confine God’s grace to ‘us and such as us’ is to contradict and to deny it. Election constitutes an open-bordered people who embody God’s grace in patterns of communal life that demonstrate and pass on that grace. It is communal because all life and all relationships are socially formed (I become who I am in social relations) and the notion of an isolated self-generated individual is a modern Western fiction. God’s grace reaches me through others and moves out from me to others: it is in communities of gift and receipt that we become all that we are meant to be. But more on that in the next book …!