Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God— Part Sixty Seven

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 10:52 pm by Ben Witherington

Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God— Part Sixty Seven 2015-03-13T22:52:11-04:00 Ben Witherington

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Tom does not tarry long over the controversial text in 1 Thess. 2.14-16. I have treated it at length in my Thessalonians commentary, and will not rehearse that here. Tom, I think, is right to conclude: 1) this is not a later interpolation; 2) it is not an anti-Semitic swipe at any and all Jews; 3) probably the term ‘Judaea’ in this case provides the clue that Judaioi here has a more restricted and geographical sense, namely Judeans, and not just any Judeans but rather those who opposed Jesus and had a hand in handing him over to Pilate, and those who currently oppose the Gentile mission of folk like Paul. Whether the prophets mentioned are OT prophets or as Gordon Fee thinks, NT prophets is not clear, and it really doesn’t matter to our discussion here. The point is some Jews opposing other Jews, and even killing some of them (see the story of Stephen) because of their beliefs and praxis.

Tom is right as well that Paul is simply drawing an analogy with the situation in Thessalonike, where Christians had undergone persecution, though presumably not from Jews. Paul’s point is that God the just judge will deal with them and the Thessalonians don’t have to try and exact revenge. Part of his reassurance of this is the fact that those Judeans previously mentioned were experiencing something of the fury of God at or just before the time 1 Thess. was written in the early 50s. Tom speculates this might be a reference to the disaster referred to by Josephus in Ant. 20.105-112, where lots of Jews were killed during Passover after a riot. I’m doubtful this is what Paul has in mind, especially since, it was not Jewish rulers who were dealt with that way by the Romans on that occasion. In any case, Paul is not talking about final judgment, but preliminary judgment on sin. As Tom says, nothing is said in this text about the future of Jews in general, and it should not be taken as a proof text to show that Paul thought Jews in general, whether in Christ or outside Christ had no such future in God’s plan.

In other words, this text doesn’t really help us further along in the discussion of what election and eschatology look like for Paul. Hence, Tom moves on to a very long discussion of Romans 9-11, over 100 pages. We will deal with the preliminary remarks here. Obviously, unpacking this whole final section of the eschatology chapter will require several more blog posts.

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It is hard to miss the angst and anguish at the beginning of Rom. 9, where Paul quite clearly wrestles with the fact that most Jews had not embraced Jesus as messiah. And as Tom says rightly, it is likely the case that “Nobody before Paul had faced the question of how second-Temple eschatology would be affected if the Messiah arrived and most of his people failed to recognize him. Paul is out on his own at this point, thinking through a fresh model of Jewish eschatology in light of Messiah and Spirit” (p. 1157— although the reference to the Spirit is notable for its absence from Rom. 9-11, as Tom admits).

Tom begins by pointing out the ‘theocentricity’ of Rom. 9-11 (which in my view is not a surprise considering the subject of these chapters is Israel, not the church, for the most part). He points out how many times from Rom. 9.6-25 the term God comes up in reference to the one Christians came to call Abba. Tom is further right that having talked about God so much in Rom. 9 then we hear in Rom. 10 all about God’s righteousness (including of course his justice), which certainly dramatically connects these chapters to the thesis statement in Rom. 1.16-17. Then again God the Father is the dominant subject in Rom. 11 where Paul provides some answers as to his thinking about the future of Israel, and not just more rhetorical questions. Along the way, on p. 1158 Tom suggests when we deal with these chapters we are on holy ground, and should tread lightly, I suppose. He adds “If we came upon it [i.e. this section of Romans] in the desert smoldering with latent Presence, we might find ourselves impelled to take off our shoes. Removing shoes is not something exegetes often do (we like our footnotes the way they are).” !!!

Tom then argues that Rom. 9-11 should be seen as a retelling of Israel’s story (ala Jubilees, Pseudo-Philo, Acts 7, and Heb. 11). I think he has a point here in a way that he does not earlier in Romans where he tries to read the story of Israel into texts like Romans 5-7, where it amounts to special pleading. The story of Israel in 9, leads to the mention of Messiah in 10, and then to a discussion of the future of Israel in 10-11. Both the term Israel and the metaphor olive tree are used, and in both cases it refers to Jews. Paul is not, for example, arguing that some Jewish Christians have been broken off from the people of God, though he may well be suggesting that Jewish Christians such as himself are the link, the true Jews, linking OT Israel and Paul’s audience. Yes indeed, the story of Israel comes into play in these chapters to a degree, and with more OT citations, than anywhere else in Paul.

Tom is right I think that Paul, when he gets past Rom. 9, is well and truly on his own. He is in a whole new realm with a crucified and risen Messiah, and on top of that, an apocalyptic reversal of expectations such that while Jews had long expected the full number of Jews to be saved, and return to Zion and then the Gentiles would stream in on their coat tails, Paul reckons God has now reversed the process– with the full number of Gentiles coming in first. There were no proper Jewish texts in our out of the OT that could much guide him for the rejection by most Jews of their messiah, and then large scale conversion to that messiah of Gentiles. Paul is in uncharted and, I would say choppy waters, as he addresses Christians in Rome, most of whom he had not met, nor converted. How do you counter the willingness of some Gentiles to assume God has rejected the Jews, and replaced them with Romans as the rulers of the world, the bringers of peace and kingdom? How to get the Gentile Christians to embrace the Jewish Christians, including the newly returned ones after Claudius’s death in A.D. 54? This was a huge quandary and Paul had no good road map to negotiate this terrain. And I agree with Tom’s point that Messiah is indeed mentioned from 9.5-10.17 and so in the middle of this whole discussion, so it can’t really be said he is mentioned only in passing. (see p. 1160 n. 473). Krister Stendahl, who taught me much about Romans at Harvard in the mid-70s, was just wrong at this point.
Again Tom is right that it is the unbelief of most Jews first in Jesus and then in the Gospel message about Jesus, that is a major factor in prompting this discussion in Rom. 9-11 and in dictating its character. As 11.23 puts it— they have persisted in unbelief, and as such have been temporarily broken off from the people of God. They have tripped up, they have stumbled, they have disobeyed, says Paul at various points in Rom. 9-11 (see p. 1161).

Tom sees Rom. 9-11 as one of Paul’s rhetorical masterpieces, carefully structured and composed– “The structure is clear, the balance is remarkable, the rhetorical effects are intended, the theology is reflected in the way the parts fit into the whole” (p. 1162). Tom envisions Paul having worked out these arguments in the fires of many debates in synagogues, etc. along the way. This is not something Paul just dreamed up and dashed off as this letter was being written. I suspect Tom is write about this. Like J. Aletti, and not surprisingly, Tom finds a chiastic structure here with 9.30-10.21 being the crucial middle. At the outermost edge we have blessings (9.1-5 and 11.33-36), then next the long arguments in 9.6-29 and 11.1-32 balance each other each seen by Tom as having three movements, and then the crucial middle section as mentioned. The absolute centre, on this schema is 10.9– “if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved”. In addition, Tom thinks the middle section has its own chiastic structure—- A,B,C,B,A. While I agree that this way of looking at the passage makes clear that Christology is at the heart of the argument and of the matter in general, (Jesus is mentioned seven times in 10.5-13), I do not think this structure works, overall. And this is because of three reasons: 1) the audience in Rome could never have discerned such a structure by just hearing these complex chapters. No way. If such an elaborate structure was a key to understanding this, then Paul was a very ineffective rhetorician who ignored that most of his audience probably couldn’t read! Chiasms, are visible structures, not auditory ones.Listening is linear, and arguments needed to be so in the Greco-Roman world. Someone who visually ponders a text again and again can find patterns and structures, some of which may be latent in the text, but they cannot provide the basic clues to how this text would be heard in Rome; 2) instead the chapter have a progressive structure, and the climax comes at the end of Romans. 11 with the pronouncement of all Israel being saved in like manner to the Gentiles, by grace and through faith in Jesus, when he returns. This, and this alone is the joyful climax after all the mourning and moaning about the disbelief of Jews in Romans 9-10 and the beginning of 11. The chapters have a rhetorical structure not a chiastic one (see my Romans commentary), and the listener could be carried along to the end knowing that the punch line, the solution, the way the obstacle could be overcome would come at the end of this particular argument, not in the middle. Jesus was coming back, and he would turn away the current impiety of Jacob (which can be none other than non-Christian Israel under its former name!).

Before we turn the page to p. 1166, it will be well to remind that how you view the structure of a text often determines where you think the emphasis is, and ultimately what you think the meaning is of that text. If you put the em-PHASIS on the wrong sy-LLABLE you end up at a minimum not quite grasping the thrust of the text and at a maximum, positively distorting. Sentences, only have meaning in paragraphs, which in this case take shape as part of arguments leading to conclusions. Conclusions which do not arise fully until Romans 11, not Romans 10. Thus, while a good deal of the exegesis of this section of Romans by Tom is good and helpful, in the end he seizes on a passing allusion to Deut. 30 to once again focus on the exodus, curse, exile, etc. story of Deut. 27-30 as one of the keys to unlocking this portion of Paul’s thought world. It is however not the main key, and it leads to a misreading of Paul’s eschatology vis a vis the future of non-Christian Israel, sadly. Faith in Jesus, yes indeed, is the key to the salvation of Jews and Gentiles, but the story of Jews has no more come to an end at the birth of Jesus than the story of Gentiles began there…..

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