Thursday, August 23, 2012

Romans study #3


Romans #3                                                                          08/10/12

Campbell gives us a starting point at Romans 1:17 in which Paul quotes scripture for the first time in the letter. “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith, as it is written “the one who is righteous will live by faith”. This is from Habakkuk 2:1-4: 

“I will stand at my watch post, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint. Then the Lord answered me and said: write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay. Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith”.

In the Greek version of the Old Testament the word for faith is “pistis”. It can mean either faith or faithfulness.  In the context of the passage in Habakkuk the translation of faithfulness seems to fit much better. The passage is about waiting, hanging on for the appointed time.

Campbell argues that pistis in Romans 1:17 should be translated as “faithfulness”. This changes its meaning. It no longer has a contractual sense but instead refers to deliverance through Jesus’ faithfulness. Faith needs an object, something we choose to believe in. Faithfulness is a condition, a way of being. Looking at the whole of v. 17 we see "in (the gospel) the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith...” Faith alone, our response or acceptance of something, cannot reveal anything. Only Jesus, his gospel and faithfulness, can reveal something. Even semantically, therefore the translation of pistis as faithfulness makes more sense. It is only faithfulness, and specifically Jesus’ faithfulness as the righteous one, that can reveal God’s action in the world.

Chapter 5, the beginning of Paul’s gospel, is divided into two sections. The first part is vv 1-11. It is written in the Rabbinic style which can make it somewhat hard for modern readers. It begins “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.” (V1-2).  If understood in legal justification terms this reads as though even though we are guilty we got off on a technicality! All we have to do is accept the deal God has worked out for us in Jesus. Campbell argues for a different interpretation. Campbell replaces the words “justified” with “delivered” or “rescued,” and pistis as “faithfulness”. In chapter 4:3 Paul quotes the scriptures: “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness”. Righteousness here means deliverance by God. It is not a legal thing, rather it is relational. The context is asserting the unilateral, gift-character of what God does. Abraham is brought to a completely different place with God through an unconditional relationship of trust. Ultimately this grace is for all, the circumcised and uncircumcised alike, as was promised to Abraham.

By understanding pistis as “faithfulness” the meaning of the Romans text changes from humanity being saved through our personal faith or belief in Jesus into our deliverance through Christ’s faithfulness. This seems to make more sense. Justification through faith would make it dependent on our act – our decision to accept or reject belief. Deliverance through Christ’s faithfulness is an act solely of divine grace for the whole of humanity.

In 5:1 Paul says “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” and later in verse 9 Paul says “Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God”.

According to Campbell these are literary doublets – different ways of saying the same thing. How can we be justified both by the blood of Jesus and our own faith? It does not seem to make sense. Rather Paul refers here to the faithfulness and blood of Jesus. Both terms are in fact metonyms for Christ's cross and passion. For Paul, Jesus was everything and the translation of pistis as Jesus’ “faithfulness” rather than our human faith seems to fit much better. 

The Greek word for wrath (orge) can be translated as “violence” giving it a more contemporary sense. The word appears in a particular way in the first three chapters of Romans much of which Campbell ascribes to the “Teacher”. In these chapters he talks of the wrath of God. From Chapter 4 onwards (in the part of Romans that Campbell ascribes as Paul’s response to the “Teacher”) it is just “the wrath”. Most translations of the New Testament continue to add “of God” even though it is not present in the Greek. (There is no “of God” in 1 Thesalonians 2:16 either – yet most translations add it in.) Paul divorces wrath from God. “The wrath” when disassociated from God becomes the violence of the world, the human systems in which we live. Wrath is understood as a human, historical phenomenon. Chapters 5 -8 are Paul’s Gospel. In them Paul describes God’s unilateral eruptive love in the world that changes how it is to be human. His deliverance is unconditional. This is no wrathful God. Paul is arguing against the Teacher’s message.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Romans Study #2


Here is the next summary in our series on the book of Romans.
We have been using The Deliverance of God. An Apocalyptic Re-reading of Justification in Paul by Douglas Campbell (2009) as a background text in this study.

Romans #2                                                                                          8/3/12
Paul was the first to formulate a systematic Christian theology. It may not be systematically presented but it's clear he is connecting a global set of topics, attempting to articulate the radicalism of the gospel. He was confronting powerful obstacles – the greatest of which was the attempt to keep Christianity as a Jewish sect under Jewish Law. Within 15 years Christianity had become established in the non-Jewish world, all the way to Rome. It had broken from the temple but many Christians were still living under the Jewish Law. The new movement needed to stay connected to the person of Jesus and the community of original disciples in Judea to maintain its authority – however, Paul recognized the need to break free from the constraints of the Law. At times he was a lone voice facing the opposition of the most powerful figures in the movement. 

Romans, Paul’s key text, has inspired numerous commentaries and is used by theologians to underpin their understanding of the meaning of Christ’s death and to develop their theology of justification. One of these is Douglas Campbell, whose recent book interpreting Paul’s theology around the topic of justification, we are using in this study. Another example of note is Ernst Kasemann who was a disciple of Rudolph Bultmann. Bultmann had a huge impact on the 20th century, and was himself a disciple of Heidegger. Bultmann demythologized the New Testament. He removed what he identified as the mythological or miraculous elements of the Gospels. Following in his footsteps the Jesus Seminar  determined that about over 80% of the Gospel words attributed to Jesus were generated by the early Church. They were stories written to help address Church needs.
Kasemann was a German theologian in the 1960s who took a differnet approach to that of his teacher. He was trying to make sense of the failure of the Church (with a few exceptions) to stand up to Hitler. Kasemann believed that the evangelical theology of his day, Luther’s contractual,  individualist understanding of justification by faith, was inadequate. Something  more incisive was needed. Kasemann turned to an apocalyptic theology of God's power – that God is taking a hand in things, making a move to change history. In a world of conflict, in which evil powers and principalities dominate, God chooses not to leave the world untouched. Other theologians have carried the argument about Romans in other areas. For example, Krister Stendahl argued against the strict contractual, substitutionary interpretation of Romans and the rampant individualism on which it was based .

Campbell says that there is something deeply implausible about justification theory. That is, because it depends upon a decision that I make, a contract I accept, it becomes something that I do – another form of works. It is contingent, i.e. continuous with the world in which we already exist and think. Campbell does not think that this was Paul’s meaning. That in fact Romans has been misread and misunderstood. Paul had an apocalyptic not a contractual understanding of Christ’s death. Something radically new is in the world.
Campbell  argues that chapters 1-4 of Romans – the chapters that focus on the judgment/wrath of God – are not really presenting Paul’s theology. Instead Paul is quoting somebody else. This person is an anonymous figure, a leader in the Roman Church,  whom Campbell names "The Teacher”. This Teacher says that God is coming to judge us all punitively, a God of wrath. He advocates the need for Christians to live under the Jewish Law. Campbell says that these chapters of Romans  are written in a technical form common at that time called a “diatribe”. In this style of writing one argument is presented and then the counter-argument follows. It is a method by which a particular individual’s thought is first presented--often by speech-in-person--then crushed.  Chapters 1-4 are the diatribe. Chapters 5-8 are Paul’s authentic theology, without this kind of back-and-forth. These chapters describe a breaking in, a revelation of God’s loving move in history. This is Paul’s apocalyptic, redemptive gospel. The person carrying the letter from Paul would have been expected to read it aloud, probably with "stage directions" in mind. People at that time would have been familiar with this style of writing. Over time the text has been misinterpreted – understood as a single voice.

Campbell  renders the word “justification” as “deliverance”. The word “flesh” (sarx)  can be understood as the human worldly systems of generative violence rather than the way it has often been understood in the past as “body” (and often sexuality). For Paul the human body is important and will be transformed. In fact, Galatians 5:16-21 lists the works of the flesh, and these are mostly forms of violence. This generative violence is revealed to us by Christ – that we are enslaved and unable to free ourselves from our state. We think that this is normal but only by becoming free of it can we see it. Any knowledge of the problem is grounded in the revelation of the solution. The crucifixion is a revelation of love and the means of our deliverance. The old Adam, the old way of being human, is terminated – Jesus is the template of a new humanity. Incredible divine love from outside our human system, breaks in, terminates the old order, and we are reconstituted through love. This is fundamentally a transformational not a legal action. An apocalyptic intervention that shakes the foundation. Baptism is a sign of this new thing. Contractual justification does not work – we need deliverance or rescue. And this deliverance is pure grace.

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Romans #1


This is the first summary of a new study on the Letter of Paul to the Romans - Linda

Romans #1                                                                                      07/27/12

Romans is a key book of the New Testament and considered Paul’s most important letter. Luther’s re-reading of Romans led to the Protestant reformation. Luther was an Augustinian friar, who had a crisis of faith. He was particularly sensitive to the dominant belief in Christendom of a wrathful God, and then the associated trade in indulgences put him over the edge. Indulgences arose out of the violence of the crusades – a way for knights to get out of their vow to go to Jerusalem and fight. Their vow with its associated indulgence (remission of sins) was exchanged for a monetary payment. Quickly the practice spread to all levels of the church and even to the dead. It became a system in which a wrathful God was paid off and the Church made money. Luther ran in horror from the altar at his first mass. He turned to the Greek translation of the New Testament that had just been made available by Erasmus. He was able to read for the first time the New Testament in its original language. Different words stood out with a resonance not found in the Latin text.

In Romans he read about “justification by faith”. For Luther justification meant not going to hell when you die and not having to fear a God who would send you there because now, in this life, God already counted you righteous. Justification came directly from God and was received by the individual. It offered liberation from the oppressive series of exchanges, the spiritual currency, mediated by the Catholic Church to protect you from damnation. Luther’s theology doesn’t do away with retribution or a violent, wrathful God, because Jesus pays the penalty in our stead. God’s justice has not been abandoned – but it is all loaded on Jesus. He takes the whole hellish rap for all of us. Justification by faith remains contractual thinking. The Protestant reformation replaces a contract between God and the spiritual banks of the Catholic Church with a contract between God and the individual. Any sin, however small, remains an infinite offense. The punishment that should have fallen on us is unleashed upon Christ, so that we are now in the clear. God wants this end – but the means is terrifying!

Backing up, we can understand Romans as the letter Paul wrote to address the biggest crisis of his time. It remains a paradigm of how to respond to the theological crisis of any time – the meaning of Christ in our world. Romans will always be at the center of the argument. It shows someone grappling with a problem and finding expression to work through it. Today a new major work on the theology of justification and faith found on Romans has emerged, Douglas Campbell’s The Deliverance of God, An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul.

In general terms Paul’s problem was his struggle to lift emerging Christianity out of the realm of the Jewish law, and in Romans, according to Campbell, to combat the influence of a dominant teacher in the Christian community in Rome. Christianity had emerged as a splinter group of Judaism. The Jews had had the Law for a thousand years and many influential Christians at that time seemed to want to hang on to it. When the Christian message reached the Gentile world these Jewish Christians wanted the Gentile believers to be circumcised. The Law was a guarantee of God’s faithfulness. Paul, in Galatians, says that Christians have no need to keep circumcision and, by implication, the kosher dietary laws. At times he was a lonely voice. It was only because he held out for his belief that Christianity emerged as it did.

The basic premise of Campbell’s reinterpretation of Paul is that in the book of Romans Paul is not talking about a contract – not even a choice made within our heart. It is not a decision or an entity to be bargained for. Rather it is a single apocalyptic event that breaks into human history. Something dramatically new. It is a God given event that has taken place and that we are invited to enter into and which transforms you. Christ changes all the terms – everything. Romans is all about an apocalyptic redemption. You relate to it through faith. Not “I’m saved” but instead “I’m radically different”. It is an event of grace, God’s unilateral, exclusively loving movement into the world. The teacher in Rome had not seen this radically new thing; instead he insisted on God's wrath coming upon sin. Christ's action was an additional atonement for sin but it did not change the basic equation of law, sin and punishment. In other words, nothing has fundamentally changed. Justification theory has labored under this misreading of Paul, and in consequence the later argument of Romans chapters 5 to 8 makes no sense.

There was a large Jewish community in Rome and Christianity had been established there within at least 15 years of Jesus’ death. This is backed up by external evidence. Around 49 AD Aquila and Priscilla were among Jews expelled from Rome by Claudius and met Paul in Corinth (Acts 18:2). A contemporary Roman historian, Suetonius, speaks of riots among the Jews inspired by a character called “Chrestos” and this being the reason for the expulsion. The Romans had very little previous experience of the word “Christos” which means “the anointed/oiled one,” and it is thought the controversial factor could be Christianity, which provoked the disturbance. And that would imply a sizeable community presence. Later, in 63-64 AD, the Christians had become a significant minority – large enough to catch the attention of Nero - who blamed then persecuted them.

It seems very likely that the Roman Church had links with the Jerusalem Church. They were a traditional community with Jewish roots. Paul wanted to go there. He was afraid that they were on the wrong track and he wanted to make sure his version prevailed. His opening remarks in the letter to Romans are polite. This contrasts with his earlier letter to the Galatians which is often seen as the prelude to Romans. Galatians seeks to address the same problem of the Law – but his approach there is more direct and forceful. In Gal 2:11-14 Paul describes meeting with Peter in Antioch. Paul “opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned” (v. 11). He says that until representatives from James (the brother of Jesus and the leader of the Jerusalem Church) intervened, Peter used to eat with the Gentiles. After pressure from the James group he withdrew and kept himself separate. Peter follows the crowd and Paul calls him a hypocrite. If Peter has lived like a Gentile then how can he insist that Gentiles live like Jews (that is, having to be circumcised and obey the dietary laws)?

Galatians 2: 15-21 is almost the argument of Romans in a nutshell. It is Christ, living within us, that justifies us. It is the faith of Christ that makes me faithful. For Paul, the Law is too hard for anyone to keep. If you fail in one instance, you fail completely. The very prohibition of desire in the Law (10th commandment) makes it as Law impossible – you cannot prohibit desire you can only transform it. In Chapter 3 Paul uses the example of Abraham. Abraham is a model of faithfulness. Abraham’s faithfulness heralded God’s solution to the human problem, for all the tribes of the earth.. Jesus fulfills the promise given to Abraham – blessing all of his descendants – both Jew and Gentile.

Paul stood up to the chief of the apostles and to the brother of the Lord. He had established the Church in Galatia, and therefore he had some measure of authority there. The Church in Rome was different. He had much less power – advancing his argument from a huge distance to a community unknown to him and one with an established “teacher”. This “teacher”, a leader of the Roman church, was promoting adherence to the Jewish Law.