Understanding Paul: some brief reflections

In a recent post, Chris Tilling discusses Douglas A. Campbell’s work, The Quest for Paul's Gospel: A Suggested Strategy, and specifically the three models for understanding Paul’s thought which Campbell outlines. Chris lists the three models in the following way:

1. The 'justification by faith' one
   
2. The 'salvation history' model and
   
3. The pneumatological participatory martyrological eschatology model (which in important ways is similar to what others call an 'apocalyptic' model) – Campbell makes a case that this is the best one to adopt.

Three things immediately come to mind. First, I always find it incredibly annoying when scholars provide three options, the first two of which are extremely oversimplified in contrast to the third (and clearly preferable option), which is highly nuanced and complex. This kind of procedure is massively disingenuous. Scholars who commit this academic sin should be disciplined in some way. As Paul himself would say, “you are to hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.” (Maybe it’s Chris’s fault. But for now, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and blame Campbell.)

The problem is that this procedure is blatantly manipulative. By placing the first two positions in quotes, it says to the reader: this is a static, closed, stock option which has already been defined and is thus open to no new interpretations. Similarly, by adding no qualifiers, in contrast to the highly qualified third option, it appears as if there is nothing more to be said about the first two options—as if they are each limited to “justification” and “salvation history,” respectively. The consequence is that the third model appears like a breath of fresh air: it is complex, interesting, new, and exciting all at once. We are psychologically predisposed to accept Campbell’s third option because of the freshness that it brings, when in fact we should be investigating the relative merits of each position with a fair and charitable disposition. But this kind of presentation is anything but charitable. It is thoroughly and unabashedly biased.

Second, it is by no means self-evident that the third option—“the pneumatological participatory martyrological eschatology model”—is really the same as the apocalyptic model which is so much in vogue today, thanks to the work of J. Louis Martyn, Beverly Gaventa, and Douglas Harink, among others. The description of the third option could also, it seems to me, be applied to Schweitzer’s mystical understanding of Paul. Moreover, it could also apply, in a way, to the work of E. P. Sanders and the New Perspective on Paul, though this group is partially represented under the “salvation history” model. In any case, these are three distinct groups (despite the historical connections to each other), and the incredibly broad and encompassing third option provided by Campbell is all the more compelling (and problematic) precisely because it blurs the distinctions between these various groups.

Because of its plethora of sexy adjectives, Campbell’s third option entices us by seeming to engulf all the right ideas within its overly generalized academic maw. The third model looms like a scholarly monstrosity, bullying and intimidating all other models so that it alone remains. And yet, like any bully or monster, when the dust settles, it’s unclear exactly who or what it actually is. The monster has no face. Similarly, the third model has no clear position; it is too general to stake a particular claim. It’s not identifiable with any of the three other options listed above (apocalyptic, mystical, New Perspective), because it is intentionally meant to encompass them all within its pacifying gaze. In other words, Campbell, I assume, intends to get beyond the contemporary debates over the New Perspective by offering a position which is so broad that all of the competing groups are included within it. But this does no one any good. Not only does it avoid addressing the actual differences between these groups (including the differences among those who identify in some sense with the New Perspective, which is itself a kind of academic monstrosity), but it also avoids examining whether the first two models might have anything constructive to offer to this conversation. Campbell’s third option presupposes that “justification” and “salvation history” have nothing new to say to us, and that’s a shame.

Third, in light of what I said above, what seems clearest to me is that Campbell’s list is seriously impoverished. At the very least, we could expand the list in the following way:

1. Justifying address-divine righteousness model
   
2. Covenantal-salvation historical model
3. Cosmic-apocalyptic model
4. Mystical model
5. Judaic-eschatological model
6. Pneumatological-participatory model
7. Christological-typological model
   

This list is by no means exhaustive, nor are the positions meant to be mutually exclusive. The point is to keep each model distinct, not in order to limit a person to just one, but so as to discern how we combine perspectives in our various hermeneutical approaches to Paul. My position would primarily emphasize 1-3, with some of 6 and 7 included. I have tried to affirm each distinct position. As a result, the third model is represented by Martyn, the fourth by Schweitzer, and the fifth by Sanders—though of course none of these scholars is limited to just one position, nor is each position limited to the work of these scholars. Other models could be listed, of course, but these are the basic types.

Having outlined what I think is a more helpful typology, let me ask Chris’s question over again, along with some questions of my own:

• What is your preferred model for understanding Paul?
• Do you find my alternative list helpful in any way? If so, how?
• How might you augment or pare down or change my list?
• Do you have other examples of academic manipulation?

Ebeling: the church needs historical criticism

Halden has asked whether the historical critical method has a positive role in the task of theology today. I responded by suggesting that indeed it does have a positive role. While I did not flesh out the full extent of how historical criticism enables the theological enterprise, I referred Halden and others to the great essay by Gerhard Ebeling in Word and Faith on the significance of the critical historical method for Protestant theology. Here is a selection from the end of that essay:

Systematic theology must therefore be required not only to respect the results of critical historical research—even on that point there is still much to be desired—but also to take up fully and completely into its own approach the outlook of the critical historical method. . . . If systematic theology takes up into its own approach the whole outlook of the critical historical method, then the result will be not only that it will achieve the critical destruction of all supposed assurances, but above all that it will be kept strictly to its proper concern—namely, the historic revelation in Jesus Christ—in full awareness of the historicalness of its own systematic theological labours.

And finally, the proclamation of the church . . . must be required to take the work of historical criticism seriously. It is a real question whether the widespread frightful lameness and staleness of the church’s message, her powerlessness to speak to the men of today, and likewise the lack of credibility that attaches to the church as such are not very largely connected with its fear of letting the work of critical historical theology bear fruit in the proper way and its failure to take sufficient account of the nature of the hermeneutic problem, which is acutely concentrated in the act of preaching. For critical historical theology is not identical with liberal theology. It is, however, the indispensable means of reminding the church of the freedom rooted in the iustificatio impii.

—Gerhard Ebeling, Word and Faith, trans. James W. Leitch (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1963), 17-61, here 59-60.

Orthodox Presbyterian Church on justification

If you are really interested in federal or covenant theology or need to read everything on the doctrine of justification or are simply a glutton for punishment, then you are in luck! The Orthodox Presbyterian Church—a product of the fundamentalism/modernism split in the Presbyterian Church in the 1920s—has made its lengthy report on the doctrine of justification available online in .pdf format.

Here is the outline of the OPC document:

PREFACE
I. GENERAL INTRODUCTION

A. The Nature of Justification
B. Perfect Obedience to the Law
C. The Inability of Sinners to be Justified by Works
D. The Perfect Obedience of Christ
E. The Imputation of Christ’s Obedience to Believers
F. By Faith Alone
G. Justification and Sanctification
II. JUSTIFICATION IN THE ECUMENICAL CONTEXT

A. The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ)
B. The Gift of Salvation (GS)
III. THE NEW PERSPECTIVE ON PAUL

A. Introduction
B. Development of the NPP
C. Major Elements of Consideration
D. Critique of the NPP on Matters of Definition
E. Critique of the NPP and Its Doctrine of Justification
F. Conclusion
G. Suggested Reading
IV. FEDERAL VISION

A. Introduction
B. The Rise of the FV
C. The Background to the FV
D. General Positive and Negative Contributions of the FV
E. Prolegomena and Doctrine of Scripture
F. Theology Proper
G. Anthropology
H. Christology and the Accomplishment of Redemption
I. The Holy Spirit and the Application of Redemption
J. Ecclesiology
K. Eschatology
L. Concluding Remarks
M. Suggested Reading
V. SUMMARIES

A. General Summary
B. NPP Summary
C. FV Summary
VI. RECOMMENDATIONS

The Spirit of the Lord, §4.1: Simul iustus et peccator

First, the overly sharp and simplistic separation between the spiritual and the physical dulls us to the fact that sin and guilt are not just internal, psychological dispositions or spiritual symptoms of our spiritual bondage; sin is rather a term that refers to the entirety of our being. As the Calvinist position states (quite rightly), we are “totally depraved”—meaning sin infects every part of our being, not that we are incapable of doing any good. No part of our being—inner or outer—is free from sin’s grasp. Our bondage to sin is total, and likewise our liberation from sin and our corresponding bondage to righteousness is total. When we are made new, it is not as if we are now in bondage to God inwardly but still in bondage to sin outwardly. Our whole being is in bondage, either to God or to sin—or, rather, both to God and to sin. We are not partly new and partly old; we are simultaneously new and old. As Luther rightly put it, we are simul iustus et peccator—simultaneously justified and sinful.

While Luther used the language of “inner” and “outer” in speaking of our present state as simul iustus et peccator, he did not mean a physical dualism between mind and body. That is, he did not mean the words literally—as if the “inner” part of a person is justified but the “outer” part is sinful—but metaphorically. “Inner” refers to that part of the human person which transcends biology, which already even now corresponds to God’s righteousness through faith alone. “Inner” is thus a reference to our invisible analogical relation to God in Jesus Christ—a relation established by grace alone (sola gratia) through faith alone (sola fide) according to the word alone (solo verbo). “Outer” refers to the visible reality of the human person who remains caught between Christ and consummation, between reconciliation and redemption. The outer human person is not merely the body but the state of being-not-yet-perfect, the condition of hope and expectation for the moment when “we will all be changed” (1 Cor. 15:51). The inner person is passively established through faith in the event of Jesus Christ as that event existentially encounters us in the word of grace; the “outer” person is passively perfected through the eschatological event of Jesus Christ as that event redeems and glorifies us by “making all things new” (Rev. 21:5). The reconciled inner person is the product of the triumph of grace in Jesus Christ pro nobis; the redeemed outer person is the product of the triumph of grace in Jesus Christ pro omnibus. The terms “inner” and “outer” are thus different ways of expressing what Barth calls the tension between the “old” and the “new” person.

We might also relate “inner” and “outer” to the words “vertical” and “horizontal,” or to the more specific Latin terms, coram deo and coram mundo—before God and before the world. But here we must be careful, for we might easily be led into the same spiritual-physical dualism to which inner-outer language is prone. To avoid this trap, we must remember that our vertical relation is one that engages our entire being, just as our relation to the world and others involves our whole identity. If we think of “vertical” in terms of worship and “horizontal” in terms of ethics, it should be readily apparent that both terms demand a sense of the whole person in relation to the Other—whether that other be God or the world. To use terms like inner-outer and vertical-horizontal is, therefore, simply a way of speaking about the human person’s relation to what is outside oneself—privileging, of course, the God-human relation—without losing the requisite tension between “already” and “not yet.” Dialectical tensions like the inner-outer distinction is not a tension between equals; the God-human relation is not equal in significance to the human-human relation. Instead, the “inner” precedes and conditions the “outer,” just as worship precedes and conditions ethics. Thus, the “inner” person or the “vertical” relation is central and indispensable to the fulfillment of the “outer” person and the “horizontal” relation. The “inner” correspondence to God makes possible the “outer” correspondence to the “inner” person; that is, who we are in relation to others (coram mundo) must correspond to who we are in relation to God (coram deo). The establishment of new humanity thus moves from “inner” to “outer,” from vertical to horizontal, from invisible to visible, from identity to reality, from Christ to creation, from new creation to new heavens and new earth, from “God with us” to us with God.

Finally, if we are “in Christ,” we are dialectical pilgrims on the way (in via) from inner correspondence to outer correspondence, from completion to consummation. Our being simul iustus et peccator does not mean our being is static; our being is dynamic in accordance with the living, dynamic God who came to us in Jesus of Nazareth, who sustains and sanctifies us by the Holy Spirit, and who will come again to judge the world in grace. We are beings-in-becoming who are being brought into conformity with the being-in-becoming of the triune God. We are creatures in the process of becoming the new creation God definitively established in Jesus Christ. On one hand, we are already new, but still old; already alive, but still dead; already extra nos, but still incurvatus in se. On the other hand, we are old but becoming new; dead but becoming alive; incurvatus in se but becoming creatures who are extra nos in Jesus Christ.

Slavoj Zizek: living in the desert of the real (part 2)

My former professor of political science at Wheaton College, Ashley Woodiwiss, published an excellent essay on the political-religious thought of Slavoj Zizek in Books & Culture late last year. The title of the essay: “Philosophy at the End of the World: The Gospel According to Slavoj Zizek.” Woodiwiss does a fine job of capturing the sheer idiosyncratic brilliance of Zizek by engaging with some of his more pressing publications—i.e., those which address current issues central to our social existence in a world post-9/11.

Woodiwiss quotes Zizek from his pop-philosophy book, Welcome to the Desert of the Real!, on politics after Sept. 11:

[T]he USA, which until now perceived itself as an island exempt from this kind of violence, witnessing it only from the safe distance of the TV screen, is now directly involved. So the alternative is: will the Americans decide to fortify their "sphere" further, or risk stepping out of it? Either America will persist in—even strengthen the deeply immoral attitude of "Why should this happen to us. Things like this don't happen here!" … Or America will finally risk stepping through the fantasmatic screen that separates it from the Outside World, accepting its arrival in the Real world, making the long overdue move from "A thing like this shouldn't happen here!" to "A thing like this shouldn't happen anywhere!"

Part of the problem, however, is that the U.S. throughout its history has indeed adopted (a version of) the idea: “A thing like this shouldn't happen anywhere!” There is a sense in which anti-Communist America during the Cold War had this kind of pseudo-altruistic spirit. On a certain level, the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war appears similar to this, but Woodiwiss notes, in light of Zizek’s philosophy:

Caught in the grip of this ideology of excess, the U.S. regime has erected a Fortress America model, justifying unilateralism abroad, surveillance at home. What are such moves seemingly (pre-)determining? With the next big terrorist act always imminent, always already en route but never from a known origin, what arises inevitably is the permanent emergency state.

I don’t have time here to expound much upon Zizek’s political thought, especially since Woodiwiss has already done a fine job of this. I will simply conclude by noting a couple phrases in Zizek’s philosophy which I think hold much potential for theological reflection. The following are two statements quoted by Woodiwiss:

An act does not occur within the given horizon of what appears to be 'possible'—it redefines the very contours of what is possible.

The 'utopian' gesture is the gesture which changes the co-ordinates of the possible.

Based on these two statements, we might speak of a “utopian act”—an act which interrupts the framework of present possibilities and reorders reality towards “the construction of a u-topic space, a social space outside the existing parameters, the parameters of what appears to be 'possible' in the existing social universe.” It seems that there are a lot of fruitful connections to theology, particularly the work of Eberhard Jüngel, who views justification by faith as a divine act which also “redefines the very contours of what is possible”; in fact, justification is not only an act of redefinition, but it is in fact an act of reconstitution. Justification is a divine event in which being is remade ex nihilo, in which the contours of actuality are destroyed on the cross and the new horizon of divine possibilities is established instead.

Thus, in his essay, “The World as Possibility and Actuality” (Theological Essays I, 95-123), Jüngel writes:

The absolutizing of actuality and the distinction between the actual and the non-actual as the measure of the world is subject to fundamental critique from the event of justification, a critique which understands the world . . . out of the resurrection of the dead—as creation out of nothing. Theology must establish that the radical nothingness of Good Friday is the other dimension of the being of this world. This is not in order that we may indulge in some profound ontology of nothingness, but rather that we may think of God as the creator and of his creation as justified. Theology does this by establishing the distinction between the possible and the impossible as incomparably more fundamental than the distinction between the actual and the not-yet-actual. Where the distinction between the possible and the impossible is made, we are concerned with truth (as opposed to actuality). The distinction between the possible and the impossible is incomparably more fundamental because it concerns the distinction between God and the world. And in the distinction between God and the world we are not concerned primarily with actuality, but with truth. (110-11)

God is to be thought of out of the event of justification as the one who in the very act of distinguishing himself from the world relates himself to it. In this way he is, and remains, God He has shown himself to exist in this way in the indissoluble unity of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Because of this, there is no true proclamation of the cross which does not take place in the power of the resurrection, and even less is there true proclamation of the risen one which does not proclaim him to be the crucified. The Easter message, the gospel, is the word of the cross. Out of this word, we have to say that God himself is the one who makes the possible to be possible and the impossible to be impossible, and in this distinction between possibility and impossibility lets the world be actual. Beyond the distinction between possibility and impossibility, God himself is equiprimordially both, or, to say the same thing, God is and his being is in becoming. (112)