The reason everyone reads Wright is because Wright writes to be read by everyone. This Chestertonian imitation of mine is something that I find true everytime I read Tom Wright: he\u2019s delightful to read. Today Allan and I continue our posts about his new book, Paul in Fresh Perspective<\/em>. Here is Allan\u2019s summary and my response follows below: The reason everyone reads Wright is because Wright writes to be read by everyone. This Chestertonian imitation of mine is something that I find true everytime I read Tom Wright: he\u2019s delightful to read. Today Allan and I continue our posts about his new book, Paul in Fresh Perspective. Here is Allan\u2019s summary and my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nToday as we continue our discussion of Tom Wrigh\u2019s Paul in Fresh Perspective, I will offer the summary of chapter two, \u201cCreation and Covenant,\u201d to be followed by a response from Scot McKnight.
\n1. Creation and Covenant in the Old Testament
\nUsing Psalm 19 and 74 as prime examples, Wright connects the themes of creation and covenant in the Old Testament. These themes are at the heart of the Old Testament, and as Wright will show, they were always vital for Paul. Israel, guided by the Torah was God\u2019s unique people in covenant with the creator God. \u201cCreation and covenant sit together\u201d (p. 22). Torah is the covenant charter celebrated within the celebration of creation. The promises to Abraham echo the commands given to Adam. Abraham and his family are called to undo Adam\u2019s sin, but the family of Abraham is part of the problem as well. They bear the solution, but they also participate in the plight.
\n\u201cThe creator God is the covenant God\u201d (p. 24) Covenant is brought forth to solve the problems within creation, and creation is invoked to solve the problems within the covenant. Paul continually refers back to the Old Testament, in particular to Genesis, Deuteronomy, the Psalms, and Isaiah. Wright makes the important point that Paul is not proof-texting here looking for abstract notions, but he is regrounding\u201d the controlling narrative, the historical story, of God, the world, humankind and Israel\u201d (p. 25).
\nThe Hebrew phrase, tsedaqah elohim<\/em>, with its Greek equivalent, dikaiosyne theou<\/em>, typically translated \u201cthe righteousness of God,\u201d is at the heart of Paul\u2019s theology. The phrase refers to \u201cthe fact that the creator and covenant God can be relied upon to act in accordance with his creating power and his covenantal fidelity, to put the world to rights\u201d (p. 25). Wright makes it clear that the phrase does not refer to imputation, but will save his elaboration on this claim until later. The point is that God as the creator is obligated to \u201cput the world to rights.\u201d It is from the covenant that God will make good on his obligation.
\n2. Paul: Three Central Passages
\nIn order to demonstrate the centrality of these themes in Paul\u2019s narrative, Wright looks briefly at three passages: Colossians 1:15-20, 1 Corinthians 15, and Romans 1-11. From his analysis Wright concludes that Paul should be read in \u201cterms of that theology of creation and redemption we find in the Old Testament\u201d (p. 33), except that for Paul the story of Israel is now \u00e2\u20ac\u0153reshaped around Jesus the Messiah\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (p. 33). In Jesus, God has acted decisively to fulfill the promises of the covenant, which will renew both creation, and covenant. There are fractional parallels here with the kind of inaugurated eschatology found at Qumran, though Paul goes beyond it. \u201cThe new age has begun, though the old age continues alongside it\u201d (p. 34).
\n3. Evil and Grace, Plight and Solution
\nFrom this angle of creation and covenant, justification and soteriology make better sense, than when seen from the more traditional Reformational categories. The implicit narrative of covenant assumes that something has gone dreadfully wrong with creation, and that God puts forward a solution that begins with Abraham and his family, promising them land. The problem is that human beings fail to trust God and to give him the worship he deserves. It is this failure of humanity to bear the image of God in the world that results in corruption and death. Thus the basic sin in the Jewish tradition and carried over into the New Testament is idolatry. Wright notes that Paul\u2019s usage here expands one more level, to include the moral behaviour which, consequent upon idolatry, is already a sign of, and an invitation to, that progressive corruption: hence the \u201cworks of the flesh\u201d (p. 35).
\nWright thus suggests three propositions which Paul assumes in his theology: First, God covenanted with Abraham as a way to deal with evil, in particular with the evil in human beings who are God\u2019s image-bearers. Second, Abraham\u2019s family, Israel, treated their vocation as God\u2019s image-bearers in the world as an exclusive privilege. Third, \u201cGod fulfils the covenant through the death and resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Spirit\u201d (p. 37). Jesus is able to do what Adam, and later Israel, cannot. In so doing he reveals his justice and his ultimate purpose for the created order. Thus Paul \u201cis not simply assuming an implicit narrative about how individual sinners find a right relationship with a holy God\u201d (p. 37).
\n4. Conclusion: Jesus within Creation and Covenant
\nWright has spoken of two worlds in Paul, but has failed to mention the other two. These will be dealt with in due course, but as \u201ca theologian of creation and covenant\u201d (p. 38) Paul\u2019s message is essentially Jewish. It is a message he preached to a pagan world. The questions raised by Psalms 19 and 74 have now been answered through the death and resurrection of Jesus. In Jesus God has done what Torah was unable to accomplish. Once this framework of creation and covenant are held together, not only do sin and redemption come into a different focus, but Christology itself.
\nResponse by McKnight<\/strong>:
\nThe significance of these themes for understanding Paul is one thing; their significance for how such themes work into modern theology is yet another and it is exciting to come into contact with them here in Tom\u2019s new book.
\nI have a couple of issues with this chapter.
\nFirst, the \u201ccreation and covenant\u201d reading is theological construct and we need to recognize this. Tom knows this; he admits as much for he knows \u201ccovenant\u201d is rarely used. That is, we Christians have learned to read the Bible as the story of the \u201ccovenant.\u201d Rightly so, I think. But, not so rightly, we need to learn the other rhetorics of the Bible. We have Torah and Israel and Kingdom and David and Exile \u2014 and each time we settle into one or the other we are tempted to force evidence through their grid.
\nAnd this leads me to a point: I don\u2019t think Paul thought with the term \u201ccovenant.\u201d I fully sympathize with the construct \u201ccreation and covenant,\u201d and frankly have made much of this type of thing in my Embracing Grace,<\/em> but I\u2019m also keenly aware that Paul was not using \u201ccovenant\u201d as the word through which he thought very often. Other terms were closer to hand: like church and salvation and the like. This is not a disagreement, but an overall warning about what Tom is himself fully aware of.
\nSecond, Wright\u2019s use of creation is magnificent and his tying together of Abraham to creation as Abraham\u2019s family resolves the creation-fall problem is spot-on. This creates a major fault-line with Reformational thinkers: instead of seeing the problem to be individual sinners and sin, the problem is creational chaos for which God\u2019s solution was the creation of a new people by a covenant (Israel); and then Jesus sums up that history with Israel and creates the New Creation by the New Covenant.
\nThird, it seems to me that creation and covenant needs an ecclesial focus: Israel\/Church. It is not just the covenant that resolves creation\/fall; it is Israel that does. What does God do? God doesn\u2019t just make a covenant, he creates a people (Israel) by covenanting with them to be their God. In other words, and Tom will clearly move into this topic, I don\u2019t think we have enough with \u201ccreation and covenant.\u201d That is, for me, still too Reformational. We need a \u201ccreation and community by covenant.\u201d
\nWell, there, I\u2019ve disagreed a bit with Wright while all the time saying I think he\u2019s spot-on in seeing righteousness of God as God\u2019s saving action to make the whole world right!<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"