2015-03-13T22:53:30-04:00

“Paul and the Faithfulness of God”: Wright’s big Opus
by larryhurtado

Late in 2013 I was asked by the journal, Theology, to review N.T. (Tom) Wright’s then-forthcoming book on Paul. As I am committed to preparing an essay on Paul for a conference in Rome in June this year, I agreed. A few days later a huge parcel arrived for me, and upon opening it I found that I had agreed to read/review a work of two volumes comprising over 1600 pages! I’ve sent off the review now, and it’s been accepted for publication in due course. But, even with the special generosity of the editors, I had to confine the review to 1800 words, which required brevity and a selection of things to mention. I have more to say about the work, however, and so in this and subsequent postings will give some further observations and thoughts beyond what I was able to include in the Theology review.

I want to indicate right away that Tom and I are on friendly terms. So, if/when I include critical comments these reflect honest questions, reservations and/or disagreements. But before any of that, I want to register my admiration of the massive labour and learning, the obviously prolonged pondering of texts and issues, Tom’s passion and fervour for the subject, and the accessible (often conversational) writing style demonstrated throughout the massive opus. The work obviously reflects decades of previous publications on Paul and his letters, and incorporates the results of those publications (with references to Wright’s prior publications at numerous points). But Paul and the Faithfulness of God is clearly Wright’s magnum opus on Paul, and should be now the key reference point in engaging his views on Pauline matters.

I found his discussion of a number of particular matters incisive and helpful. As an example, I found stimulating his emphasis that in Paul the “justification” of believers is essentially God’s eschatological judgment, extended now to those who put faith in Jesus’ vindication expressed in God raising him from death and exalting him to heavenly glory. Even in cases where I remain unpersuaded, Tom’s views justify the time to engage them.

But, for this first posting on the work, perhaps the first thing to comment on is its size. It is, to my knowledge, the largest single-author work on Paul in print, likely the largest ever published. When J.D.G. Dunn published his big book, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), which weighed in at some 800 pages, there were comments about its bulk. So what are we to think of Wright’s work coming in at twice that size? I have to say that I found it off-putting. It’s a huge demand on readers, even if Wright’s writing style makes it readable. For writing on Paul, we have a handful of his epistles and Acts of the Apostles from which to work. To produce from these a work of 1600 pages is, shall we say, impressive.

But I wonder if it’s misjudged. For one thing, the sheer bulk of the work runs the risk of taking centre-stage more than its subject, Paul. Wright seems to require so much space in which to lay out his approach and the framing notions that he makes essential to his reading of Paul that all this intellectual “machinery” can get in the way. Was it really not possible to set out relevant matters much more concisely, and foreground more Paul himself? It isn’t till chapters 9-11 (of 16 total) that we really get down to serious and in-depth discussion of Paul’s beliefs, and to extended consideration of Pauline texts. By Wright’s own account, chapters 9-11 form the crux, the fulcrum of the larger work. I found myself impatient to get into them (but I’ve been accused of impatience often). It appears that Tom can’t get enough of pondering Paul and writing about him. But as a busy reader I confess that I found myself restless with the frequent digressions, and the leisurely pace taken, especially in the first few chapters.

In so far as others may share some of my impatience, I suspect that they will read selectively in this massive work. Chapters 9-11 are essential, to be sure, and these chapters alone comprise some 660 pages (roughly the amount of space that I devoted to the first 150 years of Jesus-devotion in my book, Lord Jesus Christ)! But beyond that, I suspect that at least some readers will survey the rest of the work to choose portions that they judge important. Tom will likely find that a shame, and will hope that it doesn’t characterize too many readers. But I fear that the decision to produce such a sprawling work will have this result. More on the contents of the work in subsequent postings.

2015-03-13T22:53:30-04:00

The discussion of Gal. 2-4 which ensues, beginning on p. 966 and here we find Tom making some excellent points about what Galatians is and is not about. For example, it is not primarily about ‘how shall we be saved’ (answer by justification by faith). Paul is addressing those who already are Christians and the question for them is ‘how then shall we now live, and live together as Jew and Gentile in Christ’. Further, Paul’s arguments are meant to demonstrate that Gentiles do not need to ‘judaize’ to be full-fledged Christians, despite the arguments of the agitators. As Tom says as well “the reason Paul talks about faith in Galatians is because it was for him the key answer to the question raised by the Antioch incident on the one hand and the Galatian problem on the other.” In other words we have situation specific arguments here, not generic discourses on salvation and the means of salvation. He goes on to rightly stress that “the primary thing Paul wants to say in Galatians [is] that all those who have this faith belong in the same, single community eating at the same single table.” (p. 968). As Tom stresses, this is not a matter of mere table manners (p. 970), or of something equally trivial. It’s about the very basis of the unity of the community and the necessity of them being able to share worship and fellowship together in the house churches. The arguments are not mainly about sin and how sin is dealt with and the sinner rescued (p. 969). The legacy of Luther in his dealings with Galatians have led us down the garden path in various ways. In fact Galatians doesn’t even use the soteria/sodzo language in Galatians, and the references to sin are thin, compared to in Romans. So Tom rightly says, the letter is about the definition of the community of God’s people and how they are to live together (p. 971).

2015-03-13T22:54:05-04:00

As Tom begins his discussion of election, he freely admits that his view stands more on the salvation history side than on the apocalyptic side when it comes to analyzing how Paul tells the story. Tom is prepared to talk about the fulfillment of the story of Abraham, and indeed of the Abrahamic covenant. He is even prepared to talk about the choosing of Abraham having to do with the undoing of the sin of Adam and its effects, the Fall. On p. 784 he says— “As far as Paul was concerned, the reason the creator God called Abraham in the first place was to undo the sin of Adam and its effects. Paul’s basic contention, in the area of election, was that, through the Messiah and the spirit, this God had done what he promised Abraham he would do.”

To demonstrate this thesis, Tom first sets out the parallels between the mandate to Adam (‘be fruitful and multiply’) and the promises to Abraham. ‘I shall multiply your kindred’, to Isaac, to Jacob, and beyond. The problem is there is a fundamental difference here and two points can be made: 1) with Adam, Adam is commanded to be fruitful and multiply. With Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob God promises that HE will multiply their kindred. There is a difference. 2) if ‘be fruitful and multiply’ does not imply a mission to save the world by pre-Fallen Adam, it is hard to see how the promise that God will bless the patriarchs with offspring unto many generations implies such a mission. Making babies is one thing, saving a fallen world another, and the command to Adam at least can’t have anything to do with saving the world. It didn’t need saving yet. Now Tom recognizes the shift— having children becomes a gift from God, a blessing. Yet it is hard to see the justification for talking about the recapitulation of the Adamic blessing. A mandate is not a blessing, so let the two stories be different in this case, hence, no recapitulation per se.

There is more however to be said for this parallel– Adam is given the garden, sins, and is exiled from it. Abraham and his descendants are given the promised land, sin, and are exiled from it. p. 787 brings out another interesting parallel– Noah, a new Adam, presides over a restored world after the flood, a renewal of creation after the images from Gen. 1.26ff. Following Michael Fishbane, Tom notes that the three blessing promise to Abraham–a promised land (reversing the curse on the earth), promised progeny (reversing the problems and pain and danger in child-bearing), and fruitful labor (reversing the curse of futile and difficult labor). There were 10 generations from Adam to Noah, and another 10 from Noah to Abraham, and apparently these stories are carefully plotted and linked, and bear resemblances to one another. But in what sense is this story a story of redemption in a later Christian sense, if at all?

Tom suggests (p. 788) “God acts to undo the fateful sin in the garden, and he does so not least through the offering of Abraham’s beloved son, Isaac.” The words of the angel to Abraham suggest that just the willingness to offer his son has broken a barrier and and now blessing can flow not just to Abraham but to the wider world. The problem with this is, without the shedding of blood there is no atonement for sin, and as marvelous as the Aqedah story is, it does not provide a basis for the redemption of the world. It simply doesn’t. The blessing of the world, yes perhaps. Its redemption no.

It is also true that we have in the case of the Abraham story various precursors to the later Mosaic stories— Abraham and Sarah go to Egypt due to famine, there are plagues which free them from entangling alliances with Pharaoh. Tom on p.791 also points out how the Aqedah is paralleled with the story of the death of the first born of Pharaoh, and the passing over of the first born of Israel. The blood of the lamb was to be the sign by which redemption was to be wrought. It is one thing however to talk about types and antetypes, another thing to talk about installments of redemption along the way. Strictly speaking the lamb’s blood simply spares the Israelites from the judgment on the first born. Pharaoh still has to let them leave the land. The passover event involves the an atropaic sacrifice– not one that atones but one that averts disaster. The lamb is not the redeemer, the lamb’s blood simply prevents something terrible from happening. I point this out because a precursor is not an installment. At some juncture the discontinuity with the new covenant and the work of Christ needs to be made clear. A near human sacrifice in the story of Abraham is not a true first installment of true or full redemption any more than the smeared lambs blood is in Egypt. A foreshadowing is not the same as a foretaste.

In regard to circumcision and the Abrahamic covenant as opposed to the Mosaic covenant, there is a signal difference here as well. In the case of Abraham the covenant is made on the basis of Abraham trusting God and it being credited to him as righteousness. The covenant has already been made when he gets the sign in Gen. 15, and so the sign becomes just a confirmation of a reality that already exists. In the case of the Mosaic covenant, the covenant is cut, inaugurated by the act of circumcision itself. Paul himself will go on to dwell on the differences between these two covenants in various ways— for one thing one is fulfilled, the other annulled. One is linked to an everlasting covenant. The other is pro tempore. And here it seems that a purely salvation historical reading of the Bible, that suggests an ongoing continuous story flowing on like a mighty river, in the end doesn’t entirely work. After all, it is the periodic mighty acts of God that bring about redemption. It does not happen as a normal historical process. Thus while there is something to be said for the salvation historical reading of Paul’s reading of the OT, there is also something to be said for the apocalyptic reading as well. One has to do justice to both elements. And then of course there is a more salient difference than even those just mentioned— the giving of Torah to Moses. This especially makes clear the difference with the essence and the basis of the Abrahamic covenant. Faith is the basis or very essence of the former covenant, ‘works of the law’ of the latter.

2015-03-13T22:54:07-04:00

When it comes to the issue of the origins of evil, as Tom says on pp. 740ff. neither the OT nor early Jews sought to offer a detailed explanation. It appears they were more concerned with a solution to the problem rather than answers to abstract questions. It is interesting that not until the late first century A.D. were there Jews who traced the rot back to Adam and Even themselves, as the origin of at least human evil. One could point to Gen. 6 and say there were evil angels who invaded the human realm and mucked things up, but this of course was after a long period of wickedness already. Entirely lacking is Milton’s explanation in Paradise Lost. We are not told how evil in the person of the snake got in the garden. It was simply there. Furthermore, there is no explanation for what is sometimes called natural evil (earthquakes etc.), though Paul does suggest that God uses these sorts of natural disasters as warnings–1 Cor. 11.30. My own observation on that score would be that natural processes, such as earthquakes etc. are not evil in themselves. They simply have harmful effects on humans when we get in the way. If an earthquake happens on a remote island in the Indian Ocean which has no human population, nobody cares, nor should they. It is not an incursion of evil. On the other hand, when humans mess with and screw up the environment they have no one but themselves to blame for unleashing the whirlwind on themselves.

Tom is right that “the offer of an eschatological solution was not matched by an analysis of why a problem existed in the first place” (p. 740). Yes God promised to provide a solution, first to Abraham, but it was long delayed, even though God’s chosen people knew it would somehow come through them. This is why the cry of how long is repeated over and over again in the OT, and even into the last book of the NT. The matter still has not yet been finally resolved. Evil is resilient. Even preliminary interventions by God, again and again in one form or another didn’t solve the problem. Even the coming of Jesus only began to resolve the problem. It is only in 4 Ezra 6 and 2 Baruch that we begin to get a Jewish explanation as to where evil came from at least among the people of God– it’s Adam’s fault. B.T. Sanhed. 102a traces the problem back to the golden calf of Aaron, and later in the period of Jereboam. This is given as an explanation as to why bad things were still happening to God’s people— the answer is, we have no one but ourselves to blame. God is not rescuing us because we have sinned and fallen short, an answer similar to what Paul says, though he thinks God is rescuing us through Jesus. Much of the discussion, as Tom says, merely articulates the tension between good and evil. Jews do not resort to dualism for an explanation as did Gnosticism and other dualistic ideas (there is a bad god along side the good one etc.). Evil, in the context of creational monotheism, doesn’t make sense. It is an anti-creation, anti-monotheism force which exists, but cannot be reduced to a neat explanation in regard to its origins. Jews also did not go the escapist route either (rescue me from the evil world, for instance by beaming me up). They prayed for rescue in the world, or rescue and salvation of the world, but not for rescue from the world. As Tom says on p.742–“Neither the average ancient pagan nor the average ancient Jew was walking around worried about how their soul might get to a disembodied heaven after they die.”

Tom is right (p. 743) that from a Jewish point of view, idols and their temples are means by which demons get their claws into you. Idolatry is a way of passing the buck, of giving “away the responsibility which humans should be exercising over the world to unpleasant and destructive forces. Within human life itself, idolatry becomes habit forming, character-shaping, progressively more destructive. It enslaves people. Ulitmately, it kills people.”

And what happens when God’s people just deliberately go on sinning, commiting ‘sins with a high hand’? See Num. 15.30f.;Deut. 17.12;Heb. 10.26; and M. Kerioth especially 1.2;3.2. I would also point to Acts 13 where Paul says that only in Christ do we now have atonement for such deliberate intentional sins. As Tom says however, after the fall of the Temple in A.D. 70, Jewish thinkers did realize that the problem of evil was much more deeply routed than previously thought, even deeply routed in the people of God. But it was one thing to trace the problem back to Adam, another thing to come up with an elaborate theology of human falleness in general that suggested human sin was inevitable.

On p. 746 Tom points out that the problem of evil, is only a severe problem if one believes in a good all powerful God who cares about the world. Biblical monotheists had a particular problem because: 1) the world is God’s creation and yet there is evil in it; 2) humans are in God’s image and yet they rebel; and 3) Israel is called to be God’s chosen people and yet is trodden down by the nations. Jews addressed these concerns by 1) varied uses of the Genesis and Exodus narratives; 2) cultic monotheism, especially the sacrificial system, and 3) eschatological monotheism– God is coming back and setting things right. Thus, from Wright’s perspective Paul adopts and adapts this already extant Jewish monotheistic articulation of the problem and the solution, with the adaptation having to do with explaining the role Jesus and the Spirit play in the solution. In other words Paul’s plight and solution articulation is not de novo, nor did the articulation of the plight only arise once Paul recognized and embraced the solution in Christ (contra Sanders and others). Paul intensifies the problem and provides a more radical version of the solution, but he is not theologizing from scratch.

Tom is particularly concerned that we not frame this whole discussion in terms of the Augustinian idea that Paul was suggesting Jews like himself were running around with a load of guilt and saw the Law as imposing an unbearable burden, nor should we agree with Sanders that Jews all had robust consciences and sin had a ready remedy in the sacrificial and repentance systems. Paul must be located not within Medieval and Reformation frameworks about sin and personal salvation but rather within his own early Jewish framework (p. 749). With this I heartily agree. Tom stresses that early Jews saw rescue as a matter of rescue from evil, not as rescue from the created world (which BTW is why Paul has so little to say about dying and going to heaven). The basic cry of Is. 40-55 was for a rescue of the world and God’s people with it, a radical change within the world itself. In short, Paul’s Damascus Road experience and subsequent reflections mostly deepened his already extant early Jewish understanding of both the plight and the solution.

2015-03-13T22:54:08-04:00

Beginning on p. 728, Tom will deal with monotheism and the single united family of God. Here the basic thesis is— “It is after all the unity of the Messiah’s followers that will demonstrate that they are indeed the new humanity, the true people of the one God of Israel.” For Tom this segment, and the focus on the community is crucial not least because mere new ideas are not sufficient to create a new worldview. He puts it this way on that same page— “the symbolic praxis of the worldview, the place where the worldview became visible and tangible–was the concrete reality of the united community for which Paul works in letter after letter,against one danger and another, from one angle after another.” The new Temple is the new humanity and within that is the living presence of the living God, now understood to involve Christ and Spirit as well as the Father, reformulated around Christ and Spirit.

On p. 733, Tom stresses that Paul simply assuming things like the deity or divinity of Christ (he does not argue for them). What he was keen on demonstrating however was “that in and through Jesus and the spirit the one God had established his kingdom in a totally new and unexpected way….incarnational belief is the key in which the music is set, but the tune is the great swelling theme of the inaugurated kingdom of the one God.” Thus for Paul monotheism is not a bare idea, it is an agenda. The idea is that God’s reign has broken into human history relativizing all other reigns and kingdoms. The kingdom is accomplished by the death of the King, paradoxically enough.

As Tom points out on p. 736, this Kingdom of God, as 1 Cor. 15 is meant to be established throughout the earth, not for instance just in human hearts, or even just in the Holy Land. If however Paul believes God’s kingdom is coming and his will being done on earth, as in heaven. If he believes Christ has defeated the principalities and powers on the cross, what exactly does he think people need to be saved from at this juncture?

As Tom says on p. 737–“the stronger your monotheism, the sharper your problem of evil.” The problem is not just to figure out evil, as if it were an intellectual puzzle. The problem is to do something about the evil mess in this world. As Tom points out, there have been two easy ways out— deny the reality of evil in the world, or deny that God or the gods are involved in the world (the former like Stoicism, the latter like Epicureanism). In short, either evil isn’t there or isn’t evil, or God isn’t there or doesn’t care. “The Stoic coped by persuading himself that things outside of his own control ought not to be the subject of regret. The Epicurean coped by retreating from the painful world and enjoying such quiet pleasure as might be available.” (p. 738).

As Tom goes on to add, Christian thinkers like Paul could avail themselves of neither of these solutions, because in their view God was there, God cared and was actively involved in the world, and dualism or polytheism was no answer either for where evil came from and why it existed. We will continue this discussion in the next post.

2015-03-13T22:54:09-04:00

In order to get clarity on Tom’s argument about various Pauline texts referring to ‘the return of YHWHW’ being associated with the incarnation of Jesus, I have asked Tom to state as clearly as possible which texts in Paul definitely refer to the second coming. His short list, sent to me via email includes the following–“clearly Phil 3.20f., 1 Thess 1.10 and 1 Thess. 4 of course, Col 3.4… and I assume that Jesus’ coming/appearing is the central feature of the ‘big picture’ passages such as Rom 8 and 1 Cor 15…”.

Fair enough. Tom is not collapsing all future references to the return of Christ into references to the first coming of Christ. And yet the discussion in pp. 700-710 leads precisely to that question where again and again Tom associates the incarnation of Jesus with ‘the return of YHWH’ texts (yom Yahweh texts). The problem is, Gal. 4 and other texts suggest that the first coming of Jesus was to redeem Israel out from under the Law, not to judge them for their sins. Notable, Paul has very little to say about the existing Herodian temple, which in itself is rather remarkable. What is even more remarkable is Paul’s use of Is. 59.20-21 in Rom. 11.26-27. Here Paul associates the second coming of Christ with the return of YHWH to Zion to finally turn away the impiety of Jacob, judge their sins and redeem them. Paul says this is when ‘all Israel will be saved’. The parallel of Jacob with Israel here surely rules out the notion that ‘Israel’ in vs. 25 could possibly refer to the church (or even to just Jewish Christians, rather than non-Christian Jews). No Paul’s entire argument is that the full number of Gentiles will first be saved, and then in the same manner, at the second coming ‘all Israel’ will be saved, by which is meant a large number of Jews (as the phrase ‘all Israel’ means both in various places in the OT and in the Mishnah. It is not a claim that every last Israelite will be saved).

Now if this is true, and it is also true that Paul associates the return of YHWH for judgment with Christ’s return to ‘put all his enemies under his feet’ (1 Cor. 15), then it seems to muddy and muddle the waters to suggest that the return of YHWH, (Yom Yahweh) should be associated with Christ’s first coming. If Paul did this as well, then he himself would seem to have created a muddle.

Pp. 705-06 clarify things a bit. Tom is suggesting that in the ‘Messiah’s people (i.e. Jew and Gentile united in Christ) the end has already been inaugurated already. In that context, every knee already bows and already confesses Jesus is Lord. Tom clarifies by putting the matter this way: “That which Zechariah envisioned [Zech. 14.5-9]as the final reality, and that to which Paul himself still looked forward in 1 Thess. 3.13, and in great passages such as 1 Cor. 15.20-28, had already been inaugurated through the Messiah’s death and resurrection.” (p. 706).

It is easy enough for Tom to make clear that when Paul uses Kyrios of Christ he applying one OT name for YHWH to Jesus (in this case ‘adon’ mainly). But he goes on to demonstrate that theos is also used from time to time of Jesus, particularly in Rom. 9.5 (p. 707). It is not difficult to show, as Wright does that the argument that Christ is absent in Rom. 9-11 after Rom. 9.5 simply is wrong, and a rather desperate move to try and deny Paul saw Christ as in some sense God. I have no objection to the basic argument on pp. 708-09. but one point is worth taking up. Tom says that the new covenant is a ‘renewal’ of the covenant with Abraham with the promises given to Abraham. This is not in fact how Paul views the matter— it is a matter of the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant in the new covenant, and in the process the by passing of the temporary covenant— the Mosaic covenant. Covenant renewal is one thing. Covenant fulfillment is quite another. The Mosaic covenant is fulfilled and brought to an end/completion/goal in Christ (Rom. 10.4). This does not mean it has been renewed in the new covenant. Nevertheless, Tom is quite right that Paul takes for granted the high Christology which can even call Christ theos. He does not argue for it, he simply asserts it and assumes his audience will agree. This does indeed suggest that high Christology, even divine Christology existed in the minds and hearts of the earliest Christians even in the 40s, and indeed already in the Jerusalem community (hence the origin of the marana tha prayer or cry).

What of Paul’s view of the Holy Spirit? We will turn to this in the next post.

2015-03-13T22:54:11-04:00

The discussion which begins on p. 690ff. about Jesus as risen and enthroned Messiah begins by stating one of Tom’s key theses for this whole project, namely that there were several reasons why Jesus’ first followers cane to think of him as the embodiment of the returning Yahweh, the first having to do with messiahship, the second with their sense of his presence through the work of the Holy Spirit in their hearts. The question of course to be asked about the first of these is— did the earliest Christians really see Jesus ‘at his first coming’ as the return of YHWH to his people (not at his second coming, note, but at his first coming)? There are some flaws in this argument, some flies in this ointment for example— while John the Baptizer seems to have assumed that YHWH was coming after him to judge God’s people, he expressed doubts about whether Jesus could be such a person, especially in view of the character of his ministry. Jesus did not in fact come bringing judgment on God’s people, he came healing and preaching good news, telling parables and aphorisms. Those things do not match up with the OT Yom Yahweh traditions about the coming judge. Furthermore, at the level of Gospel presentation, Mark does not seem to think that God’s presence has left ‘the building’, the Temple, prior to the death of Jesus, never mind returned to the building. The prophetic sign act performed by Jesus is a preview of coming judgment on that temple, but it does not inaugurate it, in Mark’s presentation or in other Gospels presentation.

On the other hand, Tom is right that traditions like Rom. 1.3-4 indicate that early Christians saw the resurrection as the vindication by God of Jesus’ messianic claims. Over against Hurtado, Wright is correct to emphasize that resurrection, not merely exaltation (nor merely visions of the risen Jesus) is crucial to explaining the rise of early high Christology. Fruitfully, Tom suggests that 2 Sam. 7.12 LXX might well have been the backdrop to what we find in texts like Rom. 1.3-4— ‘and I will resurrect your seed after you’ a promise to King David.

Tom stresses not merely that the resurrection demonstrated the truthfulness of Jesus’ pre-Easter messianic claims, but that this joined up with the return of YHWH theme, and the spiritual presence of Jesus amongst his followers post Ascension are the threefold cord that cannot be broken, the three things that produced the high Christology. He thinks that no one of these themes, or even two of them would be sufficient to produce such an outcome, but all three are required. It is hard to see why one needs the return of YHWH theme, again associated with the first coming of Jesus rather than the second, to produce such a product. If Jesus is present by the Holy Spirit post Easter and ascension, whenever and wherever the disciples gathered together, and if the Scriptures were being read messianically as a result of the resurrection and the encounters with the risen Jesus, this surely was enough to produce a divine Christology in itself— only God can be in two places at one time! One doesn’t need to tack on the return of YHWH the judge to get there. And for what it’s worth, Jesus himself in Mk. 14.62 associates the Son of Man coming to judge people with the second coming, not the first.

Tom goes on, based in part on his exegesis of Rom. 8 and Gal.4 to continue to associate Jesus as messiah with Jesus as Israel (messiah summing up God’s people in himself (see p. 696). The sending of the Son in these two passages may suggest that the Messiah comes from God, thus pre-exists, thus is in some sense divine. Tom, to my mind rightly wants to combine this whole line of thought with the texts which speak of God sending divine Wisdom into the world as well. He stresses the point (p. 697) that it makes no sense to say that the Son came and died on the cross as an expression of God’s own love, unless of course the Son is seen as the manifestation or expression of God in the flesh. As Tom points out, Abraham’s offering of his only son Issac is by no means a sufficient parallel since Abraham is asked to give up his love for himself and his offspring, his son, as an expression of his love for God. The Aqedah (binding as that passage is called) does not really surface in Paul’s thoughts about Jesus’ death except possibly at Rom. 8.31-32, says Tom.

Tom, I think is right, to reject the notion that there were pre-Christian Jewish traditions about a divine messiah, and that Paul came to think of Jesus that way because of them (see p. 698). No, says Tom, instead it is because of Jesus himself (his death and resurrection in particular), that Paul came to think of messiah as divine.

p. 699 reveals an interesting translational fact. Tom translates Rom. 1.4 as ‘marked out by the resurrection’ the very same English word he uses to translate pro-oridzo, usually translated pre-destined in Rom. 8. The normal translation is ‘designated to be messiah by the resurrection..’ In any case, Tom is right (p. 700) that what happens at the resurrection is not that res. creates or confers a new status or identity on Jesus, rather, it unveils what was there before. This is exactly right. Resurrection is seen as public validation, vindication, clarification of who Jesus already was. Tom says if there is any new element here it is simply that he is now Son of God with power by means of the resurrection. He was already Son of God at his birth and at his death, as Paul indicates in Gal. 4 and elsewhere.

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Building on the seminal work of Richard Bauckham, Tom makes his case for adding to the picture by talking more specifically about the sort of eschatological fulfillment of the creational monotheism he sees as central to the way Paul reworked early Jewish monotheism. His essential premise is that far from taking intermediary figures and symbols using them as a basis to promote Jesus into the divine sphere, to the contrary, Paul takes images of God himself and applies them to Christ. Specifically he takes the Jewish question– What will it look like when God returns to Zion (and is once more king on the hill) and frees his people, and applies this to his analysis of the Incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Jesus. In Wright’s view all of that was the inauguration of the Kingdom of God on earth. He puts the matter succinctly: “Early christology did not begin…as a strange new belief based on memories of earlier Jewish language for mediator-figures, or even on the strong sense of Jesus’ personal presence during worship and prayer… The former was not… relevant,and the latter was…important but secondary. The most important thing was that in his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus had accomplished the new exodus, had done in person what Israel’s God said he would do in person. He had inaugurated God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven. Scholars have spent too long looking for pre-Christian Jewish ideas about human figures, angels, or other intermediaries. What matters is the pre-Christian Jewish ideas about Israel’s God. Jesus’ first followers found themselves not only…permitted to use God-language for Jesus, but compelled to use Jesus language for the one God. (pp. 654-55).

This analysis I think is essentially correct, though there is a bit of a problem of seeing the first coming of Jesus as the fulfillment of the Yom Yahweh traditions, since Jesus does not in fact take on the task of judging the world of human beings during his first coming. Indeed Mk. 14.62 suggests he associates it with a later event.

Tom then proceeds to walk through a demonstration of how the material in Sir. 24 and Wisdom of Solomon are used by Paul in his portrayal of the person and work of God’s Son, God’s Wisdom come in the flesh (pp. 655ff.). I am in agreement with him about the influence of these traditions being used by Paul, and as Tom says, they have to do with God himself, not with some lesser intermediaries. Wisdom personified is the Wisdom of the one God personified. It is not a reference to a second figure in heaven alongside the one God.

Less convincing is the argument on p. 658 which suggests that even with Ps. 2.7-8, “The phrase ‘son of God’ was not used in the pre-Christian Jewish world for anyone thought to be a human embodiment of Israel’s God.” (p. 658). While perhaps ‘human embodiment of Israel’s God’ is saying too much, nonetheless Ps. 2 seems to originally be part of a coronation ode for David the King, and we know for a fact that in the ANE anointed Kings were called the Son of some particular deity in a special sense, sometimes even suggesting some sort of quasi-divine status and power.

On pp. 658-61 Tom does a better job than heretofore in showing that the exodus and liberation from slavery theme undergirds key passages in Paul– Gal. 4.1-11, Rom. 8.1-4, 1 Cor. 8-10. This furthers his case for seeing the coming of Jesus as the return of God to his people, but what it does not further is his case that Jesus is seen as Israel herself as well. If Jesus is Wisdom, the rock, referred to in the Sinai wandering period (by which, Wright takes Paul to mean, God’s presence was with them), he is not the people themselves wandering in the wilderness. If Jesus is the creator and redeemer God, he is not also God’s people who were created and needed to be redeemed. In other words, the strong the case for the high christological reading of Paul’s Christ talk, the weaker the case for an ecclesiological reading of Jesus.

On p. 666 it is appropriate that Tom stresses that Jesus is not seen by Paul as a second God, “that would abrogate monotheism.” Paul says ‘For us there is One’. “To have said or implied, ‘For us there are Two’ would have meant ‘We are simply a new curiously restricted form of paganism, whereas throughout the letter [1 Corinthians is in view] is claiming to be standing on the ground of Jewish-style monotheism over against the pagan world.”

I am in total agreement with Tom that the crucifixion is at the very heart of the revelation of the character of the one true God (p. 667) “and that reflection must shine through the life of the community” for example in the commitment to self-sacrificial behavior by the strong in relationship to the weak. It is worth adding that if self-sacrifice, and more specifically self-sacrificial love is the epitome of the revelation God’s character, this presents a very different picture than the image of a narcissistic deity jealously guarding his glory, and being at his core self-referential in character.

p. 668 n. 157 provides ample references to show that ‘rock’ is a metaphor applied to God in the OT (and we might add to Wisdom in Wis. Sol. and similarly to Jesus in 1 Cor. 10). The treatment of the Christ hymn in Col. 1 on pp. 670-73 is very helpful, especially with the translation of prototokos as ‘and he is ahead’… coupled later with the phrase ‘He is the start of it all’, leaving out the confusing concept of birth, which has misled some to think Christ is seen as the first creature, rather than on the Creator side of the ledger. Interestingly, on p. 673, Tom relies on the older work of C.F. Burney on this material, helpfully showing the echoes of monotheistic language from the Shema in 1 Cor. 8.6 and elsewhere.

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There have of course been many books written on monotheism (see e.g the book by Rodney Stark show above). Monotheism itself is a modern post-Enlightenment term, but this doesn’t much matter. The idea and belief is clearly present throughout the Bible. At the level of thought, it was the most fundamental difference between pagans on the one hand, and Jews and Christians on the other in the first century world, and it is still the most fundamental difference between those who affirm the Biblical religion, and polytheists, for example Hindus, or other believers in multiple deities.

Those who wish to argue that Christianity is not a monotheistic religion will have to come to grips with Tom Wright’s recent massive tome entitled Paul and the Faithfulness of God particularly the first major section in Part Two where he discusses early Jewish and early Christian monotheism at great length (over 150 pages worth). Here, I intend to underline a couple of key points he makes, but there are many tell tale signs along the way.

First, however let’s deal with a caricature of Jewish religion that suggests ‘the earliest Israelites were henotheists, not monotheists, simply believing their God was the most high God’. Whatever may have been affirmed by individual Israelites along the way, what the OT says was their ‘official’ position was that YHWH was ‘one’ (see the Shema). This was not a statement over against the possibility that there might be other supernatural beings (e.g. angels or demons), but that there was only one real or true deity in the whole universe– YHWH.

What both Wright, and before him Bauckham have correctly stressed is that this statement that God is one has an external reference, not an internal one. By this is meant that it is not an attempt to define the inner workings of the divine nature (for example how many ways or personal representations the only God could reveal himself in) it is an attempt to make clear that there is only one God over against the claims that there are many, in other words over against any and all forms of polytheism.

In Jewish belief there is one God who created everything in the universe, and is the one ruler over all, and furthermore, all that he created is intrinsically good. In other words, it is a strong statement against any and all forms of dualism, material or moral dualism (for example Gnostic dualism which suggests there is a good and an evil deity, or that spirit is good and matter is evil). No, there is one God, one creation that God made, and one people of God that he has focused his attention and salvific purposes through. Wright calls this creational monotheism.

Wright puts it this way: “The key thing about second-Temple monotheism was not, therefore,a particular proposal about the inner nature of the one God….The main focus of Jewish monotheism in our period, then looked not as it were inward, towards an analysis of the one God, but decidedly outward to the relation of the one God to the world” (pp. 626-27) [and to claims in the world of multiple deities].

For the early Jew, and the original Jewish and also Gentile followers of Jesus, the Creator/creature distinction was fundamental. Creation, and creatures are things that the one Creator God made. They were not part of the creator, and they had no hope of becoming God either. There was, in early Christian thought only one figure who mediated or bridged the gap between God and humankind…. the divine Son of God who took on flesh in the womb of Mary and became a human being, while remaining the divine Son of God.

The earliest Jewish Christians, including James, Peter, Paul, and others insisted this was not a breach or violation of Jewish monotheism, but a further explication of the inner nature of the one God. Tom quite rightly points to the argument in Rom. 3.29-30 where Paul says “Or does God belong only to the Jews? Doesn’t he belong to the nations as well since God is one?” The obvious answer to the first rhetorical question is no, and the second one is yes. There is only one God who is over all peoples, all of creation, and that God made it all.

I agree with Wright as well that Jesus was never seen as a second deity alongside of God the Father, or a human or an angel promoted to divine glory by means of the resurrection. He was on the Creator side of the ledger when the universe was made says John 1, and he made the universe with God the Father. At no point does Paul ever talk about ‘gods’ plural when he refers to the God he or early Christians believed in and worshipped, nor does he use expressions like ‘ekklesia of gods’, no it is always ‘the assembly/church of God’ singular in some place or in general. Of course not, since he so whole-heartedly is able to say ‘since God is One’.

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