Paul’s Ethics

One of the main areas I’m working on at the moment is Pauline ethics: For many months now I’ve been wrestling with the question: How does Paul think Christians should live - and on what basis does he think this?  So I’ve been going through Paul’s letters, reading up on OT ethics, Greco-Roman ethics, early Jewish ethics, Jesus’ ethics, apocryphal ethics… I’ve been reading books on New Testament ethics (Furnish, Horrell, Hays, Burridge, Rosner, Countryman…), and trying to be as attentive as possible to Paul’s thought.

I haven’t yet finished my current paper (I’m up to 50 pages) but I hope to give it to my supervisor in a week.  One thing that has intrigued me is that Paul often seems to use very similar imagery to deal with very similar issues, in a very similar order.  Here is a little snippet from the paper that I’m currently working on:

It would seem that for Paul, fundamental ethical godlessness or idolatry may be encapsulated both with the attitude of bold self-assertion (in terms of greed or passionate desire) and with the bodily practice of impurity/sexual immorality.  Thus the movement that can be described judicially by Paul as being from boastful works to divine justification; and which can be described relationally by Paul as being from heart-hardened enmity to reconciliation, can also be described ethically by Paul as being from passionate covetous impurity to surrendered loving incorporation.

 

The church comes to the Christ of the bodily resurrection, and, being bound to him by faith, crucifies sexual immorality, impurity and greed.  The members of the personal body are offered to God as risen instruments of righteousness, and each individual finds themself to be a member of Christ’s own body, in which mutual love reigns.

Top Ten Theological Influences

Okay I haven’t done a top ten list before, but given that Nijay and Nick have done it, it’s time for me to join in… but to add to the excitement, I’ll do a countdown from 10 to 1…

10. Irenaeus: He is just fun to read (’Against Heresies’), and I like the way he tries to creatively explain Christian doctrines at a time before those doctrines received standardised terminology: For example, he speaks of God the Father working through his two “hands”, which are the Word and the Spirit.

9. Dan Brown: His work is unsurpassed in Grail scholarship…. hehehe nah not really - just keeping you on your toes to make sure you’re paying attention!!!

8. Larry Hurtado: His book ‘Lord Jesus Christ’ is an excellent exploration of the origins of devotion to Christ in early Christianity.  It’s certainly the best and most thorough book on the way Jesus was treated as God in earliest Christianity.

7. Tie between Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur for their work on hermeneutics: Drawing on Hegel, Heidegger & other philosophers, they’ve really challenged me about limits of ’scientific’ knowledge and the relationship between ’subject’ and ‘object’ in the exercise of interpretation.

6. Tie between Margaret Mitchell, David Garland, and Bruce Winter, all for their work on 1 Corinthians.  In some ways, this represents “influence” in the sense of provocation - for example, Margaret Mitchell’s book ‘Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation’ is essential reading for the study of 1 Corinthians, but I don’t find her application of Rhetorical Criticism ultimately convincing.  Garland’s commentary is good, and Winter’s book ‘After Paul Left Corinth’ is excellent.

5. Tie between John Calvin and the Anabaptists: Often maligned (and sometimes understandably so), I think Calvin is worth giving a chance.  Calvin’s ‘Institutes’ is essential reading: He has a way of clarifying the issues that Luther raised, in a way that is far more careful than many of his followers.  I put the Anabaptists in here too, because I appreciate their corrective to Calvin’s reliance on the magisterium: Estep’s ‘The Great Restoration’ is an interesting introduction.

4. Tie between NT Wright, John Howard Yoder, and Stanley Hauerwas.  I probably haven’t read enough of each of them for them to get a place in their own right…  But they have helped me to consider the role of the church in relation to society.  NT Wright’s big works (eg Resurrection of the Son of God) are worth a read, as well as his little book ‘The Challenge of Jesus’; and Yoder’s ‘Body Politics’ is a good short introduction.  Hauerwas’ essay on why gays are superior to Christians raises a giggle.

3. Tie between Martin Luther and Karl Barth: When they’re bad, they’re bad: annoyingly one-sided and insensitive, but when they’re onto something good, they really push it well: Most importantly, they force us to consider the theological significance of the cross.  My fave Luther is ‘On the Freedom of the Christian’.  I haven’t read heaps of Barth, but his book on 1 Corinthians ‘The Resurrection of the Dead’ is underrated and worth a read.

2. Augustine: I am always impressed with his ability to combine passion and intellect.  He has such a commitment to the absolute Godness of God, and I think he is sensitive and nuanced, despite being annoyingly misrepresented in stupid booklets about “The Great Philosophers” in The Independent Newspaper.  His letters, his work on the trinity, and of course the ‘City of God’ are such worthwhile reading.

1. Anthony Thiselton: I have never encountered someone who has such expertise in so many areas.  His work on hermeneutics is outstanding, and is yet to be fully recognised for how creative and important it is: Read New Horizons or Thiselton on Hermeneutics or Hermeneutics of Doctrine.  And his commentary on 1 Corinthians is the result of a lifetime of careful, thorough, sensitive exegetical work.  He also happens to be an endearing teacher and a good Christian man.

Glasses befitting of a theologian

Having left my glasses in the Holy Land as a sort of accidental reciprocal relic (I’ll take some pieces of pottery - you can have my glasses), it’s time for me to look for some new ones.  I’ve decided I’d like to wear my theological influences on my face - or at least find some glasses befitting of a theologian who esteems academic pretension.  Currently I’m favouring the early Barth/Bonhoeffer look…

My one hesitancy is that my wife says I’d look like Harry Potter… any other suggestions of glasses that make a theological statement?

Hebrew of Hebrews

Today in church, the sermon was on Philippians 3.  The preacher suggested that when Paul lists “Hebrew of Hebrews” as characterising his former way of life, he was not simply restating his Jewish pedigree (of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin), but saying something about his culture: He was not someone whose primary language and culture were, in his own mind, Hellenistic - but rather, following his parents, his first language and cultural orientation were intentionally Hebrew (/Aramaic).

Of course you can’t divide “Judaism” completely from “Hellenism” in Paul’s time - but I think they were distinguishable - and it seems reasonable that someone who, as a Pharisee, followed a Zealot-like pursuit of Judaism-cleansing would have intentionally maintained those cultural elements that he saw as being Jewish.  I recall reading in a biography of Martyn Lloyd-Jones that at a young age he decided “I’m a Welshman now!” and began using Welsh at home rather than English.  It doesn’t seem like a stretch to view Paul in a similar way: Intentionally Hebrew.

All of this makes me wonder if the current focus in New Testament studies on Greco-Roman rhetorical criticism may be going too far…  I don’t doubt that it bears some fruit: Obviously Paul knew and used the Greek language, and certainly seems to have made use of contemporary rhetorical devices… but as for the macro-structure of his epistles, I wonder if we might find even greater fruit by paying rigorous and creative attention to Paul’s Hebrew background - including rhetorical movements suggested by the Hebrew Scriptures and early Judaism.  I suggested this to a Jewish student of the Hebrew Scriptures at the University of Be’er-Sheva, and their response was very interesting: “The reason New Testament scholarship neglects a nuanced study of Paul’s Hebrew background may be because New Testament students can’t be bothered learning Hebrew!”…. Ouch!!

But of course the study of the Hebrew Scriptures and Judaism isn’t enough to bring us to the heart of Paul’s thought - for that, we need to pay attention to what he claims was his most significant moment: His encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus.  Perhaps when we pay careful attention to Paul’s use of Greco-Roman language and devices, to his determined background in Pharisaic “Hebraism”, and his understanding of his encounter with the risen Christ, we will be more attuned to the rhetorical movement of his letters.

Bribe

Feeling inspired by a post on Mike’s blog, I have decided to shamelessly present a CRAZY offer to anyone who adds me to their blogroll: A free, quality coffee, made on my commercial-quality espresso machine, using coffee beans roasted in my very own kitchen…  How can I make such a bold and costly offer?  Confidence, dear reader, confidence: Confidence that not many people would be willing to come to Nottingham to claim their prize, and confidence that not many people would stoop to adding me to their blogroll.

Pure

One thing that is striking about travelling around archaeological sites in Israel is the number of times you encounter a miqve - which is a ritual-cleansing bath… There are dozens of public miqvaot around the Temple in Jerusalem, there are private miqvaot in Herod’s palaces, in ordinary households… they are everywhere!  In fact, in Jewish public bath-houses, the “cold” section of the standard Roman bath-house was replaced with a miqve, so that ritual purification came first.

The picture above is of a miqve directly in front of the Jerusalem Temple from the time of Jesus: The person entered in one side, immersed themselves in the water at the bottom (the action was called “baptizein”), and came up the other side, ritually pure.

All of this drives home just how aware people in Jesus’ time would have been of ritual impurity… and it makes it all the more amazing to think of Jesus taking six stone jars of water used for ritual cleansing, and turning them into wine: Imagine if that happened at your house: Someone replaced the ritual water - which was essential for your purity before God - with wine…

“This is my blood of the new covenant, poured out for many, for the forgiveness of sins”

In the embrace of the crucified

“For worshippers of a crucified Lord, embracing God requires embracing innocent suffering: the child dying on Peed Onk, the Alzheimer patient abandoned by his adult children, the Sudanese mother unable to feed her family. A visible reminder of this Christian reality can be found in the cathedral in Wurzburg, Germany, where a large crucifix stands in a recessed arch to the side of the nave. The battered body of Christ has gaunt, Gothic features, his eyes fixed upon the viewer, his hands, pulled from the arms of the cross, extended outward in a gesture of embrace, inviting the viewer to enter. In pulling his arms from the arms of the cross, however, this carved Jesus still carries the spikes that nailed him there, embedded in his hands. There is no way to enter that embrace without feeling the iron instruments of Jesus’ torture. The loving embrace of God in the flesh necessarily involves entering the pain of that flesh. for Christians, this is how we become what God intends us to be.” Shuman & Volck, “Reclaiming the Body”, p45.

A Question of Politics… and Greek

When Paul was writing his letters, including instructions for those who were under the thumb of the government, he was writing as one who knew government persecution. Considering himself a slave of Christ, he wrote instructions to slaves; considering himself a Roman prisoner, he wrote instructions to those under Roman rule; considering himself condemned to death, he wrote instructions to those who suffered.

If Christians should continue to always be a voice of the political outsider challenging the mainstream (so Yoder, Hauerwas), what should they do if they happen to find themselves in a position of political power? This question was driven home for me by something interesting I saw in Caesarea: The inscriptions above have been excavated in ancient tax collection centres from the Byzantine (ie Constantinian) period: Here, adorning the floor, are quotations from the apostle Paul (Romans 13), warning those who enter that if they want to live without fear, they should “do good” in relation to the authorities! The voice of the Roman prisoner has been co-opted by the Roman government as a means of enforcement… I’ll let you do the translation, dear reader* - it’s quite easy Greek.

*note use of the singular

Fat Jesus

Imagine if we encountered the risen Jesus, and found him to be fat. He was picked on, after all, by being labeled a glutton and a drunkard. I’m not claiming he was fat - just wondering what issues it would raise for us.

I just read a review of a book called “The Fat Jesus” by Lisa Isherwood. It explores body issues from a feminist theological perspective. I found this so intriguing that I have ordered a book by Isherwood - but not the “fat Jesus” one… I’ve ordered her book “Introducing body theology” - because I think that “the body” is a topic surprisingly under-explored in Christian theology, and especially in my own area of Pauline studies. This is becoming more and more surprising to me, given that the body has such a prominent place in Romans, 1 Corinthians, Philippians, etc - the body of Jesus, the bodies of believers, the ecclesial body of Christ.

Have a look through the book of Romans, and you’ll notice that sin, judgement, atonement, sanctification and future glory are all described using bodily terms…

- God gave them up… to the degrading of their bodies (ch 1)
- Their throats… tongues… lips… mouths… feet… eyes (ch3)
- Do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies (ch6)
- You have died to the law through the body of Christ (ch7)
- If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you. (ch
- We groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies (ch
- I appeal to you… to present your bodies as a living sacrifice (ch12)
- We who are many are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another (ch12)
etc…

…and don’t get me started on 1 Corinthians!!

Israel in Pictures

I’m back from Israel. It’s a place of great contrasts. I’ll try to capture them with a few pictures I took along the way…

Old and New
In the foreground of the first picture is Herod’s Palace in Caesarea, complete with his own private swimming pool - which now melts into the sea. The second picture, of course, shows Herod’s Temple wall.

Promise and Menace
It’s a place where the best and worst elements of humanity are on display - hopes and visions, alongside prejudice and fear. The first picture is from coastal Caesarea, the second from the Palestinian side of the wall that emphatically divides Israeli territory from Palestinian territory.

Achievement and Failure
The first picture includes part of Herod’s Temple foundation - an astonishing achievement, being easily the size of a couple of football fields side by side. The second picture was taken in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Glory and Hiddenness
The Dome of the Rock is surely the most impressive building in Jerusalem, with its famous gold-topped roof. The second picture shows a little-known room hiding in the back of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre - a dark, tiny, largely empty room in which a couple of empty tombs dating from the Second Temple period can be found, just metres away from the location which is widely agreed to be Golgotha…

“We have seen his glory…” John 1:14