Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God– Part Eighteen

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 10:54 pm by Ben Witherington

Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God– Part Eighteen 2015-03-13T22:54:38-04:00 Ben Witherington

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Under the heading of the large plot about God and creation does come the theme which crops up some seven times in Paul’s letter— the Dominion of God, or God retaking back his creation from the powers of darkness. In other words, God is not just interested in saving humans, he’s interested in the renewal of his whole creation (see Rom. 8). Thus Wright stresses that the larger outer story about God and creation is a story about judgment (p. 481). Judgment is to be seen as a positive thing. Passing judgment is seen as a good thing– restoring equilibrium to creation by countering and judging the world, the flesh, and the devil. The term basileia can refer to the current saving reign of God in a person or community’s life, but with a future verb it regularly refers to the realm of God, when he retakes the earth through Jesus, and ‘the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ’. Meanwhile we pray ‘thy kingdom come’ indicating it has not yet fully done so. “Judgment is what happens when the creator says ‘No’ to all that stands out against his good, positive, purposes for his world, in order to say ‘Yes’ to that world itself, in all its fullness” (p. 483).

Within the larger outer plot are several sub-plots— Wright lists 1) humans their vocation, failure, rescue, reinstatement; 2) Israel the people called to be light to the world; 3) Jesus the Jewish Messiah who must succeed where Israel failed in being the light of the world. The human plot is related to the outer plot, because humans were given the task of stewardship of creation in the first place. If humans fail to do this, then God’s plan for creation and its caretaking is thwarted. Enter the story first of Israel, then of Christ (and I would add, and finally of those in Christ— Christians). Just as the creation story involves all of creation (not just humans) so the fall story involves all of creation (see Romans 8), and thus the redemption story also involves all of creation, not just humans.

Tom suggests (p. 487) that humans being in God’s image is “both about reflecting God into the world (purpose) and about receiving and returning divine love (the relationship)”. The book of Revelation speaks of this in terms of the priesthood of all believers. The goal is not for Christ to reign on earth on our behalf, but through him to restore the creational task of those created in his image ruling on earth with and through Christ, hence the references to us judging even angels and the like when Christ returns. Creation is set free when God’s children are glorified, empowered to do their creational task once more (Rom. 8.21). The glory of God’s children refers to the glorious reign of God’s children (see Rom. 5.17). Creation will not share this glory of the saints. When the saints are glorified by resurrection, then the creation will also be set free from disease, decay, and death.

The discussion by Wright of Paul’s anthropological terms on pp. 490ff., though intended to be telegraphic at this point, sounds far too Bultmanian for me, though I am sure Tom would not fully agree with this assessment. It is simply not true that flesh, body, spirit, mind, heart, will are simply different ways of talking about the whole person, and Robert Gundry in an important monograph showed that Bultmann’s famous dictum, ‘man doesn’t have a soma (body) he is a soma’, is essentially wrong. The soma is the outer physical component of the human being, contrasted most basically with the human spirit. This is why Paul in 2 Cor. 5 can talk about being absent from the soma (i.e. our individual bodies) and present with the Lord when we die. Of course we are psychosomatic wholes, all these facets of who we are are intertwined in various ways. Wright on the other hand is right on target when he says that Paul can and does use all these terms, including ‘flesh’ (sarx) in a positive way. Paul is neither a Gnostic nor committed to some sort of cosmic dualism between matter and spirit. Wright is also correct that all these parts or aspects of the human being can be corrupted and need to be redeemed. Sometimes by flesh or flesh and blood Paul refers to the body as subject to corruption and so not to be redeemed. What is redeemed is the person in a new or renewed resurrection body, not made of something which cannot inherit the kingdom (namely corruptible flesh and blood).

Wright is correct to protest about the skipping directly from the story of the Fall to the story of Christ in so much of Protestant theology, by passing most of the OT and its stories. So he says “the vital narrative element, the crucial turn in the road…almost all exegetes miss is [that] the creator’s plan was to call Abraham and his family” which he equates with “the story of Israel” (p. 494). This however is not quite correct either. The story of Abraham and the big three patriarchs precedes the story of Israel being formed as a people, and Moses as their leader, and the Sinai covenant and so on. Indeed, we only begin to get a story of anyone or thing called ‘Israel’ when Jacob gets a name change. This is not the same thing as the story of Abraham, which Paul certainly does refer to, always in a positive manner. This is quite unlike, for example what we hear about ‘Jacob’ and his impiety’ which the Redeemer must come forth from Zion to turn back (end of Rom. 11). In other words, the story of Abraham is one thing, the story and subsequent tale of Israel is related to and dependent on the story of Abraham in various ways, but it is a subsequent story. Abraham, it should be noted, already lived in the promised land, he did not need to be rescued from bondage in Egypt. His story is not a story of Exodus and Sinai frankly. Nor is it the story of the Mosaic covenant, which Paul deliberately contrasts with the Abrahamic covenant in Gal. 4. Here I would say that Wright, for all his insightful analyses of the subplots, has one two few subplots— we need a subplot about Abraham, and we need another subplot about Israel. Put another way, God’s people then and now needed to emulate Abraham’s trust in God and being reckoned in right standing because of it. But God’s people needed to be rescued out from under the effects of the Mosaic law and its covenant, and Paul says that is precisely what Christ came to do– to rescue those under the Law out from under the Law. This makes the story of Israel under the Mosaic covenant a story which gives us a holding pattern, an interim arrangement, a temporary covenant until the Jewish messiah could come. This is the radical reading or re-reading of the story by Paul, and how very different it is from those who wanted to retroject the Mosaic covenant not only back into the Abrahamic one, but even back to the covenant and commandment given to Adam. No says Paul– Hagar, Mt. Sinai, the present Jerusalem, and bondage go together, and by contrast there is Sarah, the heavenly Jerusalem, the covenant of promise, and freedom on the other hand. Thus Paul says ‘we’ (i.e. Jew and Gentile in Christ) are the children of promise like Isaac. Notice, not like either Esau, or those who were later under the paidagwgos– the Mosaic covenant. Followers of Christ, not only don’t have to keep the badges of the Mosaic covenant (circumcision, food laws, sabbath), they aren’t under the Mosaic covenant at all– period!

This of course is not Tom’s view of things, but rather mine (and others), and I would say it is in some ways the most fundamental mistake Tom makes in his otherwise brilliant reading of Paul. Jesus is not Israel, he is Israel’s messiah, and as Paul says—he is ‘the seed of Abraham’ not the Israel of God. The question to be asked is, in what way is the plot advanced between Abraham and Christ? What we see is various preliminary and only partially successful attempts by God to redeem and create a people, before, during and after the exile. Had there been true success, Christ need not have come or died or risen etc. This is why the true eschatological people of God, are Jew and Gentile united in Christ, and not outside that locus. There could be no such people had the radical rescuer not come and effected the rescue, starting with the lost sheep of Israel. It is breathtaking indeed when Paul says things to his largely Gentile converts in Galatia like ‘we are the children of Abraham’ or in Romans when he speaks of Abraham ‘our father’.

A more cogent point comes (p. 496) when Tom stresses that Israel was entrusted with the oracles of God, to share them with the nation. He is absolutely correction that vocation is one thing, salvation another. I would add election to a specific vocation is not the same things as election unto salvation of this or that individual person. Cyrus was ‘anointed’ and chosen to set God’s people free, but that had nothing to do with his individual salvation.

If Jesus is ‘the seed’ of Abraham, the true Israelite who fulfills the destiny of Israel to be a light to the nations, then indeed the whole story from after Abraham until Christ has been mostly ‘a series of unfortunate incidents’ of ups and downs without any full salvation coming to light or any full vocation being accomplished, on the way to the birth of the messiah. Christ is the last Adam, bringing the human story to its climax and fulfillment, he is the seed of Abraham, bringing the covenant of promise to its fulfillment, he is also the true Israelite assuming the vocation that Israel failed at and which he alone completes.

We are now in the home stretch of volume one (p. 500). More in the next post.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

March 7, 2014

Wright's Paul and the Faithfulness of God-- Part Seventeen

Next Post

March 9, 2014 Wright's Paul and the Faithfulness of God-- Part Nineteen

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz