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<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cPaul and the Faithfulness of God\u201d: 2nd Posting
\nby larryhurtado<\/p>\n
Yesterday, I posted on Tom Wright\u2019s 2-vol opus on Paul, and in this and a couple of subsequent postings I\u2019ll offer further comments about some features of this work. My first observation in yesterday\u2019s posting was that it\u2019s massive, 2 volumes, over 1600 pages. Wright seems to have taken this opportunity to lay out extensively his views, not only on Paul, but on a wide panoply of other\/related matters as well. For those who haven\u2019t seen the work yet, I\u2019ll sketch its contents.<\/p>\n
In Volume 1, Part 1 (chapters 1-5), \u201cPaul and His World,\u201d in a leisurely fashion Wright discusses Paul\u2019s Jewish context, the Greek cultural\/philosophical setting, the wider religious environment, and the Roman political context. In Part 2 (chapters 6-8), \u201cThe Mindset of the Apostle,\u201d Wright sets forth his approach, which involves his emphasis on the \u201cstoried worldview\u201d that he sees as framing all that Paul did and thought. Parts 1 & 2 comprise some 600 pages. Granted, Wright\u2019s emphasis that we should take a historical approach, respecting Paul\u2019s historical context, is commendable. But I wonder if it really required this much preparatory discussion before we get down to the exposition of Paul\u2019s theology. (One acquaintance, somewhat impatient with how much space is given to these matters, grumpily complained about the several hundred pages of \u201cthroat-clearing\u201d.)<\/p>\n
Volume 2 comprises Part 3 (chapters 9-11, \u201cPaul\u2019s Theology\u201d) and Part 4 (chapters 12-16, \u201cPaul in History\u201d). In Part 4, Wright returns to the Jewish, Greek and Roman contexts proposing how Paul\u2019s thought and work relate to them. But it\u2019s obviously \u201cPart 3\u201d (chapters 9-11) that form (in Wright\u2019s own words) the \u201cfulcrum\u201d and crucial core of the work. And so it\u2019s to these chapters that I\u2019ll direct my own observations and engagement in this and subsequent postings.<\/p>\n
In Chapters 9-11, Wright organizes Paul\u2019s theology under three main topics: \u201cThe One God of Israel,\u201d \u201cThe People of God,\u201d and \u201cGod\u2019s Future for the World.\u201d Wright contends that in each of these three topics, Paul presents a \u201cfreshly reworked\u201d and \u201cfreshly imagined\u201d treatment. So, to start with the first topic, Wright proposes that Paul both affirmed \u201cclassic Jewish monotheism of his day\u201d and also redrew it \u201caround Jesus.\u201d To quote Wright: \u201cThat robust monotheism has been, for Paul, fully rethought around Jesus the Messiah,\u201d producing a \u201cMessiah-shaped monotheism\u201d (687). Indeed, Wright urges, \u201cfor Paul, Jesus is seen as the second self (so to speak) of Israel\u2019s God\u201d (696).<\/p>\n
Wright engages at various points the work of other scholars who have explored what seems to have been a veritable explosion of christological affirmations in the young Jesus-movement in the earliest observable period after Jesus execution. These others include in particular Richard Bauckham, Carey Newman, and myself. Though appreciative of this work, Wright bids to surpass it in offering what he sees as a more adequate account of things.<\/p>\n
So, e.g., citing Bauckham\u2019s proposal that in earliest christological claims Jesus was included within \u201cthe divine identity,\u201d Wright bids to subsume this idea within his own proposal that \u201cthe early Christians believed that Israel\u2019s one God had returned in person. In the person of Jesus\u201d (654). Indeed, Wright contends that in Jewish tradition of the time, this idea of a personal return of YHWH was well-known, and so became the crucial category by which Jesus\u2019 divine status was understood and articulated in earliest Christianity.<\/p>\n
By contrast, Wright doesn\u2019t seem to like quite so much my proposal (originally in my 1988 book, One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism) that earliest (Jewish) believers drew upon (and radically adapted) what I called \u201cchief agent\u201d traditions (in which God is pictured as having this or that figure who serves as God\u2019s vizier) in accommodating the exalted Jesus while also maintaining the uniqueness of the one God. But it seems to me that Wright hasn\u2019t really engaged my argument, for his references to it appear to me more a caricature than a fair description.<\/p>\n
To be sure, as others have noted earlier (including David Capes on Paul\u2019s christological use of YHWH texts; Larry Kreitzer\u2019s Jesus and God in Paul\u2019s Eschatology; Carl Davis, The Name and Way of the Lord; Carey Newman, Paul\u2019s Glory Christology; et alia) there is a remarkably close linkage of Jesus and God in Paul\u2019s letters. But, at the same time, there is an almost equally emphatic affirmation that there are two\u2013 God and Jesus\u2013 and Jesus is consistently described with reference to God, not replacing God but serving as the one sent forth by God and acting as God\u2019s unique agent of redemption. That is, we have what I call a \u201cdyadic\u201d emphasis, two figures posited and a clear relationship between them.<\/p>\n
Indeed, as I have observed in my book, God in New Testament Theology (Abingdon Press, 2010), in NT writings throughout we have a \u201ctriadic\u201d shape to the \u201cGod-discourse\u201d involving references to \u201cGod\u201d, Jesus, and the Spirit. So, I agree with Wright\u2019s discussion in Chapter 9 about how in Paul we see both a \u201cchristological\u201d and a \u201cpneumatological\u201d emphasis in the view of God.<\/p>\n
But, to engage critically some specifics, I really don\u2019t see evidence in Paul\u2019s letters of an explicit emphasis that Jesus is the \u201creturn of YHWH\u201d embodied and in person. To be sure, there are statements in some OT passages and subsequently in other Jewish texts that YHWH promised to renew Israel and come to Israel in eschatological redemption. But my question is what evidence there is in Paul\u2019s letters that this specific idea and these specific texts were particularly cited and central. Granted, Paul cites Psalm 24:1 in 1 Cor 10:26 (to make a point about freedom to eat meat sold in the marketplace). And, granted, later in Psalm 24, there is the reference to \u201cthe LORD, strong and mighty\u201d who will come in through the \u201cancient doors\u201d. It may well be that Paul would have read the latter verses as referring to Jesus (as Wright proposes, 670), but such possibilities are one thing, and explicit evidence that for Paul the idea of Jesus as the embodied, personal return of YHWH to Israel is another.<\/p>\n
Granted, in Colossian 1:15-20 we have the statement that in Jesus \u201call the fullness of God was pleased to dwell\u201d (v. 19). If, as Wright presumes (and as I\u2019m ready to accept as well for the purposes of argument) Colossians is taken as composed by Paul, this is surely an important text. But isn\u2019t it also the case that the passage defines Jesus\u2019s significance with reference to God, linking God and Jesus but, at the same time, distinguishing them? Jesus is pictured here as the unique vehicle (so to speak) or agent of God\u2019s purposes and redemptive actions (esp. v. 20). Is that, however, the same thing as Wright\u2019s claim that for Paul Jesus was the \u201cpersonal return of YHWH\u201d to Israel?<\/p>\n
There are other points that one might engage as well, but one further matter will suffice for this posting. I agree that in Paul\u2019s letters we see what I have termed (from as far back as my 1988 book mentioned above) a significant, apparently novel \u201cmutation\u201d in Jewish \u201cmonotheism\u201d and in the typical devotional pattern\/practice of Jewish tradition of his time. As I have proposed (and as Wright, too, urges), in its earliest expressions, this \u201cmutation\u201d appears to be a novel development within Roman-era Jewish tradition (e.g., How on Earth did Jesus Become a God?, pp. 31-55), and Paul certainly reflects this remarkable development. Wright\u2019s treatment seems to me, however, to credit Paul with a lot in the formulation of this \u201cmutation\u201d. But I wonder if this is misjudged.<\/p>\n
To be sure, Paul appears to have been a pretty intelligent and articulate fellow, and was perhaps particularly skilled in scriptural study and interpretation (from his Pharisee background). But, so far as I can see, the only claims that Paul makes about any distinctiveness or originality concern (1) his conviction that he was specially called by God to conduct a mission to gentiles, and (2) his view of the terms on which gentiles were to be received as full co-religionists with Jewish believers (baptism\/faith in Jesus without taking on Jewish observance of Torah). So, was Paul really the creative figure that Wright seems to posit in developing the \u201chigh christology\u201d that we see reflected (really presumed) in Paul\u2019s letters? Or, instead, do we have in his letters essentially the sort of claims about Jesus and the sort of devotion to him that Paul acceded to subsequent to the \u201crevelation of his [God\u2019s] Son\u201d (Gal. 1:15) that changed him from persecutor to proponent of Jesus? Indeed, as I\u2019ve proposed, was it these claims and devotional actions that (at least in part) provoked the zealous Pharisee, Saul, to feel obliged to \u201cdestroy\u201d (his term) the young Jesus movement? (Something certainly got up his nose!)<\/p>\n
Wright\u2019s discussion can be seen as a classic \u201cgreat man\u201d treatment of a historical figure. Now Paul can be thought of as a \u201cgreat man\u201d I guess. But Paul himself seems to have been quite ready to acknowledge that he had predecessors in his faith, and that he shared basic faith with them and others.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cPaul and the Faithfulness of God\u201d: 2nd Posting by larryhurtado Yesterday, I posted on Tom Wright\u2019s 2-vol opus on Paul, and in this and a couple of subsequent postings I\u2019ll offer further comments about some features of this work. My first observation in yesterday\u2019s posting was that it\u2019s massive, 2 volumes, over 1600 pages. Wright […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":8239,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n