Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Paul's Ground-Zero Witness to Resurrection


Here is the first study in the series, Christian Origins, Earliest Christianity in Paul & Acts.  Enjoy! 

The study followed a simple but intriguing trail of evidence in the New Testament about the date of Paul's conversion. It was very early, very close to the time of Jesus. Early enough in fact to make Paul a primary witness to the ground-zero tradition of resurrection appearances!

And here's what's critical about that. Paul was far too steeped in the Old Testament world view--and specifically the hope for national Israel's vindication from her enemies--to think in terms of any purely spiritual or mental resurrection. If the early Christian movement had intended anything ethereal like that, its claims would not have been in the same world as Paul inhabited. Resurrection for him was a divinely orchestrated physical vindication over Israel's earthly enemies, including the dead killed in earlier persecution. (See the book of Daniel.) The fact that primitive Christianity claimed the resurrection had occurred to a crucified Messianic pretender (viz. a failure), and only to him, was certainly a good reason for him to be outraged.

Paul had to have recognized in the primitive Christian movement a real claim to real resurrection to be upset. So, if we trace his conversion back to the earliest years we must hear this claim made at that primitive level.

At Acts 18:1-4 we read that Paul was in Corinth shortly after the Jews had been expelled from Rome under the Emperor Claudius. The expulsion is placed at about the year 49CE by historians, so that places Paul in Corinth in the year 50 to 51. This date is solidly confirmed by information at verses 12-15 of the same chapter. We find out there that Paul was in Corinth while Gallio was governor. From an inscription found at Delphi we know the latter was proconsul in this region from 51-52. Paul stayed in the city for an extended period so it is highly likely he was there in 51, and perhaps 50. It would have taken Paul a good year and a half to walk from Antioch to Corinth (three thousand miles), with stops along the way to evangelize (the "the second missionary journey"). Which gets us back to 50, 49 or even 48.

The second missionary journey begins at Acts 15:36 after the big meeting in Jerusalem described from the beginning of chapter 15 and known as the Council of Jerusalem. There is an indeterminate period for Paul in Antioch subsequent to the meeting ("after some days" at v. 36 probably means at least weeks if not months; see v. 35) so we can be pretty confident of a generally accepted date for this meeting as 48-49, i.e. before the journey. The meeting is absolutely crucial for the early church and Luke places it right at the center of Acts. It's possible Luke idealized the formality of the debate but he shows us James (the brother of the Lord) playing the decisive role, above Peter! And given Luke's clear acknowledgment elsewhere of Peter as leader of the apostles the contradiction has to be historical. In other words James of Jerusalem made a crucial ruling allowing the Gentile mission. And at this point Paul really needed the ruling, to make sure his interpretation of the Christian movement would not be negated from its spiritual base in Jerusalem.

According to Luke Paul was actually present for the ruling, but we don't have to rely just on him. At Galatians 2:1-10 Paul gives us his first hand description of a meeting with James, Cephas (Peter) and John which differs in some details with the description in Acts 15 but in other details is remarkably consistent (especially the core theological motivation; c.f. Acts 15:1, and Galatians 2:4). For our purposes what really grabs the attention is Paul's own note on chronology. At 2:1 he specifies "fourteen years" as the time that passed before this key visit. Passed since when? There is confusion as to whether the fourteen years is after Paul's conversion (1:13-17), or after the Paul's initial visit to Cephas and James three years following his conversion (1:18-19). In any case with these intervening years we have to say at the most conservative Paul was converted fourteen years before 48-49, i.e. 34-35 CE. If we add in the other three years it's also possible he was converted in 31-32

In conclusion therefore we are obliged to say that, depending on when Jesus was crucified (generally agreed to be either 30 or 33CE), Paul was converted between five years or one year after Jesus' death. My own instinct is to add the fourteen and three years together so Paul is converted approximately one to two years after Jesus' death in 30. The NRSV Study Bible in fact adds those two amounts together (p. 2082), probably because the Greek text leans in that direction (it can be read "through fourteen years more").

Which is all a way of placing Paul's narrative at 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 of the resurrection tradition at this extremely early period. What Paul, therefore, is talking about when he says "I passed on to you...what I in turn had received" is a tradition he received some time around 32CE. Some of it would have come from Ananias at Damascus, and the rest from Peter three years later.

The core tradition of a bodily resurrection, therefore, is captured for us by the witness of Paul within a space of one to two years after the date of Jesus' death.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Beatitudes III

The eighth beatitude seems to conclude the list, as it is a doublet of the first in both the use of the present tense and the promise of the kingdom. The present handing over of God's kingdom book-ends the whole sequence, providing a ringing sense of a complete and finished unit. But it is followed directly by another "Blessed", i.e. by exactly the same beatitude formula. And this ninth beatitude is itself doubled with a repetition in verse twelve: its same content and  meaning given in a further statement, but in the imperative rather than indicative. (This is much the same thing as we noted about the sixth and last antithesis in relation to the seventh beatitude.)


It appears that the promise of the eighth beatitude was so crucial that it merited repeating two more times!

The experience of persecution is a startling new element to be added to the list of biblical characteristics of the anawim, to their poverty and nonviolence, to their longing for justice and peace. Biblical figures had certainly been persecuted before. The examples of Job and the Nonviolent Servant spring to mind. There are numerous examples in the psalms, and in the book of Daniel there are hints of a whole group of deeply observant, nonviolent Jews, calling themselves the "wise", who suffered violent persecution. But the eighth beatitude makes it a fixed sociological value in its own right. By raising the experience to the level of a kingdom event, making it not simply an unfortunate side-effect and something to be reversed later on, the eighth beatitude turns persecution into a positive good . People are actually blessed when the world goes after them! In the present tense and authentic fact!

According to Rene Girard the gospels introduce the category and truth of persecution to human history. Because of the gospels the victims of persecution have gained significance and truth in their own right. But the new category depends entirely on nonviolence. To be persecuted you have to be nonresistant to violence; if you retaliate you may be in a state of oppression and pain but you are not persecuted. The root of the word is "to hunt down", "to pursue." In other words you are a creature in the condition of flight, not fight.

Behind the blessing is the living relationship with God-active-in-the-world which Jesus declared and made available. If this were not there, if Jesus had not provided the context for his own words, we could only repeat the violence of the world in response to its violence. That could happen in a variety of ways, from resistance, to despair, to bitterness and resentment. But now the "blessing" of persecution intrudes an entirely different note, one of actual joy which knows the violence inflicted as direct evidence of God's saving action. It is highly paradoxical, but conforms to Jesus' method of speaking a truth into reality and making it stick through his own powerful example. Because of him the world has changed and if his disciples are persecuted when they commit to that change it is further proof the change is real and effective!

The centrality of Jesus is underlined in the ninth beatitude. Now, for the first time the formula changes from the third person to the second, indicating that the statement is addressed to Matthew's actual community. It means that the group of Christians for whom Matthew wrote was experiencing the concrete forms of persecution mentioned: they were being reviled, hunted, and slandered. The final expression is, "Uttering all evil against you." In other words, people were talking trash about them to the extent they had become the sum of all evil in the world, or indeed pure evil itself! In these circumstances it would not be exaggerated to fear for your life.

According to many commentators Matthew (or others) added to the statement the words "falsely, on my account". They believe these qualifications should not need pointing out (they state the obvious, and in fact some of the manuscripts lack the expression "falsely"). But because the qualifications are included they suggest that already people were using the "persecution" motif to excuse bad behavior and its repercussions. It seems the I-am-the-victim excuse was already being abused in the first century! Which, in an upside-down kind of way proves again the reality of the promise. If people had not witnessed the power of the experience of persecution and the way its victims were validated in the community there would have been nothing there to abuse. At the same time the evangelist (or copyist!) understood clearly the difference between the "victim mentality" and the genuine blessing of persecution for righteousness' sake.

And key to that is obviously "on my account." Jesus is absolutely the principle and source of all the beatitudes, and especially this one. It is only by identification with him that persecution is blessed. Here it is of considerable interest that no reference is made to Jesus' own experience of persecution, his passion and death. What we have, therefore, is an echo of his original authority as a teacher and prophet communicating his personal vigor of nonviolence to the audience. Verse twelve with its invocation of the prophets puts the teaching squarely in this frame. The qualifications "falsely, on my account" establish, therefore, the criterion of sincere identification with the nonviolent historical Jesus as condition of the blessing.

Finally the imperatives "Rejoice and be glad" in verse twelve put us in "liturgical" contact with the experience of Jesus' teaching and Matthew's community which remembered it. We are invited to enter in the present moment into the enormous upwelling joy of Jesus reaching through history announcing God's life-giving nonviolence into the world.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Beatitudes II


Beatitudes 4 through 7

In the fourth beatitude we encounter a word of almost fabled status in the Christian lexicon, "righteousness"! Paul's use of it, especially in Romans, provides a bottomless well for interpretation and is at the heart of all Reform theology. The beatitude on righteousness is the last in the first set of four, and because the theme of righteousness is repeated in the eighth it suggests a division into two halves, each concluded with the same theme. In which case "righteousness" appears crucial to the whole scheme.

The Hebrew Old Testament term behind the Greek is sedekah. This is frequently paired with another word mishpatim meaning justice. In other words righteousness and justice overlap and belong to the same range of covenant virtue and behavior required by God. At this level there is no rigid formal distinction between the two. At Isaiah 1:21-27 we can see how the two are intimately intertwined. But in late biblical Judaism there was a move away from the "moral" sense of the practice of justice to a feeling that this had become virtually impossible for God's people. There had been so many failures experienced in the practice of covenant righteousness it was now something only God could provide. This is the beginning of the apocalyptic attitude, the idea that God must take direct action in order to break through the impasse of human wickedness. See Daniel 9:1-19, for example v. 7: "Righteousness is on your side, O Lord, but open shame...falls on us..."

So "hungering and thirsting for righteousness" is again an attitude of poverty, of lack, and therefore a longing for the in-breaking of the kingdom. Jesus in his preaching claims this breakthrough has now taken place (cf. 6:33). At the same time this new righteousness is no "imputed" justification (if indeed Paul ever thought that). For Matthew it remains a practical and concrete "ethic". See 5:13-20, where Christians are to be as visible and public as the Pharisees!

"Blessed are the merciful" is the first beatitude in the second quartet, where there is a shift from more passive or receptive states to more active responses or relationships engaged with the world. This first one is also perhaps the best example of the Wisdom thinking that runs throughout the Sermon on the Mount. Deed-consequence reasoning in Proverbs, for example, is perfectly instanced here: you reap what you sow, if you put in mercy you will get it back!

The O.T. word behind mercy is hesed. It has a much wider range of meaning than "mercy" as we would understand it, and as such is impossible to translate consistently. (In the LXX Greek it is normally rendered with the root eleos, i.e. mercy.) At Genesis 40:14 the NRSV has it as "kindness," at 2 Sam. 3: 8 it is "loyalty". When it is applied to God it is often represented in modern English translation as "steadfast love." It is also twinned with a word more regularly associated with mercy, from the word rehem meaning a woman's womb, and accurately translated in English as "compassion." At Exodus 34:6 you can see both terms used in the classic confession of Israel's God. At Psalm 103:4 hesed and r'hamim are together and rendered in the NRSV as "steadfast love and mercy." At Zechariah 7:9 these twinned terms are proposed to Israelites as the attitude they should have for one another.

In other words the "merciful"of the fifth beatitude has a range of inflections behind it, suggesting a rich relationship of commitment and favorable action. John McKenzie defines it as "a broad and embracing benevolence, a will to do good to another rather than evil." A contemporary word for it perhaps is "human solidarity." So...blessed are those who show solidarity, for they will receive solidarity!

The sixth beatitude seems to break from the scheme of active response or relationship in the world. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God..." But the only thing that takes this out of the world is the Greek tradition. In a Greek mindset it is impossible "to see God" except via the immortal intellectual soul transported to the heavenly otherworld. At every point this is not the sense of Jesus' beatitude.

The "heart" in Hebrew anthropology is not the same thing as "mind." The heart is the seat of the will and thus action in the world. At Jeremiah 31:33 God famously promises "I will write my law on their heart..." In other words, the fount of choice and action will be inscribed with God's law of justice.

"Pure" of course refers to readiness or fitness to come before God or in relation to holy things. Psalm 24:3-6 gives us a clear pattern and uses the term found in the beatitude. " Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully..." Purity here is truth and honesty in relationships, including avoiding relationship with idols. Approaching God "in his holy place," therefore, is a result of concrete relationships in this world, not intellectual sight.

One of the great texts on seeing God is in the Book of Job, the place where he cries out for a redeemer. It tells us the place where his prayer will be answered is on earth: "I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth...then in my flesh I shall see God" (Job 19: 25-26). This is the kind of seeing envisaged by the beatitude, one that flows directly from concrete relationships on this earth. The goal is fulfilled in the Book of Revelation in the New Jerusalem come down to earth. Then it will be relationship with God and with the Lamb which gives sight to the city, not sight itself (Rev. 21:22-23). We could say, therefore, that the heart has its own way of seeing, that it is the only organ than can see God, and that the whole range of the beatitudes and the relationships they offer result in this seeing.

The seventh beatitude has two notable effects. On the one hand it is the statement which most forcefully ties the beatitudes, and the whole Sermon on the Mount, to the world. On the other it is the statement which most forcefully ties the character of God to the beatitudes' overall program of nonviolence. Being a "peacemaker" is something associated with rulers and emperors after their successful use of force has brought order and tranquility to the earth. In the year 13BC the Roman Senate commissioned an altar to be erected and named "Ara Pacis Augustae" (Altar of Augustan Peace) to celebrate the peace and prosperity created by the emperor Augustus who had taken power in Rome in 27BC. It survives today and is considered a masterpiece, testifying to the military, political, ideological and religious triumph of Augustus Caesar, a man who ruled for forty one years and initiated a period of 200 years of generally unbroken peace throughout the Roman Empire. When Augustus first proclaimed himself emperor before the Senate he named himself "Son of the divine Caesar" (Julius Caesar). Jesus lived all his early life under Augustus' supreme authority (he was about twenty when Augustus died), and when he names "peacemakers" as "children of God" he is saying that it is his disciples who are the true authors and children of divine peace on earth, not Roman Emperors.

In Israel peace came from the Lord and resulted in fruitfulness and life (see Micah 4:1-4, Psalms 122 & 128). Its crucial character as the righteousness that comes with God's kingdom is illustrated in the "six antitheses" that follow very soon after the beatitudes. Here Jesus explicitly contrasts his teaching with the torah that came before, and in each instance the difference turns on peacemaking as opposed to violence. Particularly the first ("do not be angry") and the fifth and sixth ("do not resist the evil" and "love your enemy") show the absolute centrality of peacemaking to Jesus' preaching of kingdom justice. The last antithesis repeats the beatitude itself, in imperative rather than indicative form: "I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven" (5:44-45).

The consequence in the nature of God cannot be exaggerated. You cannot be a peacemaking child of a violent God. And the God of Israel would not have the right to claim any difference from the gods of the Romans if s/he were in fact violent. In this teaching of the beatitudes God has been shown conclusively as nonviolent. And that nonviolence in fact underpins the whole of Jesus' abolition of purity distinctions, and then, after his death, the outreach of the Christian movement to the Gentile world. A nonviolent God has no enemies, draws no distinction between Jew and Gentile. By the same token Paul's description of righteousness communicated by faith (not race) cannot have a hidden remainder of violence in it, whereby God simply decides not to inflict violence on those who are saved all the while maintaining the attitude of divine violence toward the world. The sixth beatitude radically critiques all attempts to make Paul's theology a legal change in the mind of God and a nonchange in the (supposed) violence of God's relationship to the world. The kingdom of the heavens is a radical breakthrough of divine nonviolence into a human history of violence.