Good Scholarship vs. Good Preaching

The senior pastor at my church is preaching through Philippians this month, and doing a fine job.  He assumes the traditional location and circumstance for the writing Philippians, that is, the Roman imprisonment, sometime between 60 and 62.  Paul is under house arrest while awaiting trial after his appeal to Caesar.  The pastor made several excellent preaching points, great applications which were intended to spur us on to godly living, just as good preaching should do.

However….I am sitting there thinking that it is at least possible that Paul wrote Philippians from Ephesus quite a few years earlier.  In fact, I have become more warm to that idea in this recent round of teaching Pauline Lit in the college classroom.  If Paul is in prison in Ephesus and not Rome, is the fine preaching and application value of the sermon no longer valid?  At the very least they based on some wrong assumptions, and therefore may be improper applications to draw fro this particular text.

This hit me more in my own Sunday School class, since I went to Philippians 4 in order to talk about joy in extreme circumstances.  This is the obvious text to use since Paul is obviously in prison and can still talk about his joy in that rather difficult circumstance.  Which circumstance?  I had to say that he was in prison in Rome since that is what the congregation just heard, and that is the traditional answer that is in all their study Bibles, and I would have to take a half hour to explain the possibility that he was in Ephesus rather than Rome, and by that time people would not care about any “preaching point” I was trying to make.  I simply assumed, for the sake of the congregation, the traditional, and quite possibly wrong background to the letter.

I suppose this was not too great of an academic sin on my part, but it did bother me that I was willing to set aside good scholarship in order to make an equally good point which was for the spiritual benefit of my class.  It was not a lie, but I suppose it was a sin of omission.

This set me to thinking about all of the people every Sunday who preach and teach the word of God and simply set aside good scholarship in favor of making a great point. Usually this involves some abuse of the Greek language and most likely an inadequate understanding of the aorist tense.  Everyone has heard that sermon.  These preachers might very well have good intentions (bringing people to Christ, building people up in their faith), or very bad intentions (increasing their own influence, increasing giving to their ministry).  Either way, it is a sin which must be avoided at all cost.

But if I knowingly and intentionally ignore what I know is true in order to make the sermon “work,” I have sinned because I have not been intellectually honest.  I should never separate preaching from teaching, both must reflect a truthful understanding of the world of God.

Romans and the New Perspective

Polhill has a brief discussion of the New Perspective on Paul which packs a lot of the developments in Pauline theology into just about a page of text (P&HL, 296-97).  Since Romans is such an important book for understanding Paul’s theology, this is a good place to pause in our survey of Paul’s letters and think about what effect the New Perspective has had on our perceptions of Faith and Works, justification and other classic Pauline topics.

The so-called New Perspective on Paul offered a critique of the traditional view of Paul’s doctrine of justification and generated a fierce debate on both sides of the issue.  Most of the writers who have challenged the established view of Pauline reconciliation have emphasized reconciliation as only one of many metaphors which Paul uses in order to describe salvation.  E. P. Sanders, for example, does not want to privilege any one metaphor as the main or controlling idea for Paul’s soteriology, whether that metaphor is justification or not.

The core of Sanders’ argument is that Jews of the Second Temple period believed that they were a part of the covenant because of God’s election, and they remained part of the covenant on the basis of their good works.  But even here it is not complete and totally adherence to every part of the Law, since no one could keep everything perfectly.  Sanders therefore suggests that there was a sub-set of the Law which functioned as “boundary markers,” things which could function as defining who was “in” the covenant and who was “not in.”  Sanders’ conception of Second Temple period Judaism under the rubric of “covenantal nomism” is an application of these last two emphases.  Election is what gets one into the Covenant, if you are Israel then you are “in”; but what is it that maintains that relationship with God?  Can someone find themselves outside of the covenant?

Most of the literature of this period asks this sort of question: What is it that defines “in the covenant.”  In Maccabees it is Sabbath, circumcision and dietary Laws which are clear boundaries; in Jubilees and 1 Enoch, the Qumran literature proper Calendar is included as a boundary marker, in Sirach it is a life of wisdom that marks out the elect.

With this in mind, one could argue that Romans or Galatians does not say that Jesus ended the Law, i.e., no one has to keep the Law anymore at all.  Rather, Jesus ended the “boundary markers” which defined who was in or out of the covenant.  Circumcision no longer was the sign of the covenant; the day of worship was not longer an issue; food taboos were no longer clear signs of right-standing with God.  I am inclined to think that the calendar issues found in much of Second Temple period literature are behind some of Paul’s statements in Col 2:16, for example.  The old boundary markers are done away; the people are God are to be defined as those who are “in Christ.”

What then does this do to the classic reformation formulation of Justification by Faith? Perhaps nothing, the doctrine may still be a correct inference from scripture. But if justification is simply one metaphor for salvation among many, perhaps the emphasis placed on justification as the central theme of Paul’s theology is over-played.  I am not convinced it is, but the door is now open to other ideas from Paul which have been under-played for the last 400 years.

Romans 1 – The Gospel of Jesus Christ

Paul packs a lot in to the first lines of Romans.  He begins by defining the Gospel: it is the good news of God, in contrast to any other use of the word “good news” in the Roman culture. Secondly, Paul uses a relative clause to “underline the trustworthiness of the Gospel (Cranfield,  56).”  In the Greco-Roman, anything that was “new” was considered with suspicion.  Therefore by grounding the Gospel of God in the promises of the prophets and the holy scriptures Paul is asserting that this Gospel is not something that is new or recently invented.

Paul stresses the fact that the content of the Gospel is the “Lord Jesus Christ.”  Jesus is described as the Messiah, the descendant of David.  As N. T. Wright reminds us in his Paul: A Fresh Perspective, “Christ” is not Jesus’ last name, but rather a title packed with some serious theological assumptions.  While I think that is not too long before the church lost the messianic implication, it is hard for me to imagine that Paul would chose to write “Christ” to a community which is Jewish and would understand the term with its full messianic implications.  The fact that Jesus was descended from David is also a clear Messianic reference.  This is one of only two times that Paul makes reference to Jesus as a son of David.

In contrast to this earthly descent is his spiritual “declaration,” that Jesus is the son of God.  The Greek orgizo is used by Paul only here.  The word means “to come to a definite decision or firm resolve” (Louw & Nida).  This declaration takes place at the resurrection, although that is not to imply that Jesus was a man until he was declared the Son of God.  During Christ’s earthly ministry he was “‘the Son of God in weakness and lowliness’ became by the resurrection the ‘Son of God in power.’” But this too has messianic overtones if read in the light of Psalm 2, a text which was used frequently in the preaching of the apostles.

2 Corinthians and Reconciliation

2 Corinthians 5:20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.

The members of the church are Paul’s co-workers in a “ministry of reconciliation.”  If by “ministry of reconciliation” Paul refers to his missionary efforts, he is therefore including the church in those efforts.

If Paul and the church are not reconciled, then how can they be partners in the ministry of reconciliation? Paul’s appeal in these texts is that he is speaking on behalf of God when he says that the church ought to be reconciled with him.  To some extent reconciliation can occur because the church has dealt with a major problem that was a barrier to the improvement of the relationship between Paul and Corinth (2 Cor 2:6-11).

The issue at Corinth was not a doctrinal problem or a theological dispute, it appears rather than an individual in the church has attacked Paul personally. The double reference in 7:12  “to wrong,” “to treat unjustly,” “to injure”  shows that the issue was a disaffection between fellow Christians.

• The problems stem from a single individual as the primary reason for the disagreement (2:5, 6, 7, 8, 10; 7:12 all speak of a specific person, most clearly in the last 7:12).
• The problem was serious enough that Paul changed his travel plans and instead wrote the “tearful letter” (1:23; 2:1, 3, 4; 7:8).
• The attitude of  this one individual’s opposition to Paul was so serious that it poisoned the life of the entire church (2:5).

Who is this person that opposed Paul so strongly and was put out of the church? The key term here is adikasas in 2 Cor 2, “one who was wrong.”   Most commonly, the man is identified as the incestuous man from 1 Corinthians 5.  In 2:9 and 7:12 Paul refers to the fact that he has already written to the church about the man, and we know from 1 Cor that Paul did in fact recommend that the man be expelled from the congregation.  There is a connection between 1 Cor 5 (hand him over to Satan) and this passage, and it is very appealing to read this as saying that the incestuous man repented and returned to the church a changed man.

A second set of suggestions focus on the situation in chapter 6 of 1 Cor, where people are suing one another in the courts over internal “family” matters.  It may be that an individual has come into the church and disagreed with Paul so strongly that he entered the courts and tried to overturn Paul’s “rulings” that we find in 1 Corinthians.

Perhaps there is a public attack on Paul’s ministry and authority in the background here, so severe that Paul must break off travel plans to the church.  There is some speculation that the attack took place in front of Timothy or Titus, or even that Titus was the object of the attack. Whatever the attack was, it is interpreted by Paul as “an act of flagrant disobedience and revolt.” (C. K. Barrett) This could include the party within the church that supported the incestuous man, or simply an attack on Paul’s authority as an apostle.

Because the church has dealt with the problem, Paul feels that at least one hindrance to reconciliation is out of the way, he can return to Corinth now that the insult to him has been removed from the congregation.

Acts 18 – Why Corinth?

Paul’s ministry in Corinth is his biggest success up to this point in Paul’s missionary career.  The Romans founded a colony on the site of ancient Corinth in 44 B.C.  The new city of Corinth was populated by freed slaves ( Strabo (8.136) cf., Appian (Hist 8.136)).  Socially this means that the new population has been given freedom, a fresh start, and the opportunity to advance far beyond what they might have hoped for as slaves.

The town was laid out in the Roman style, completely ignoring the layout of the old city, although the forum follows the outline of the old agora.  The cardo (main street)  cut through the old city.  All of the architecture and design reflected the Roman style, not Greek.  Even the Greek temples were “modernized” after the fashion of the Romans, including an imperial cult temple overlooking the forum.   The foundations of the temple were higher than the other temples, even that of Apollo.  Clearly the settlers were making it clear that Corinth was to be a Roman city, loyal to the Empire rather than the memory of the Greek city of Corinth.

The buildings for the Isthmia Games were done in a Roman style and Roman games were added to the Greek contests. The first Isthmian Games of New Corinth were held sometime between 7 B.C. and A.D. 3. in honor of L. Castricius Regulus, who had re-built the athletic facilities of Corinth.  Regulus offered a banquet to all the inhabitants of city to honor the games.  These games are important to an understanding of the problems of the Corinthian letters since the games were not simply athletic events.  They were dedicated to the gods, the chief of which was the Roman Emperor Nero himself. It was in the A.D. 50’s that the city of Corinth was honored with an Imperial Cult center.  This is a major factor in Paul’s arrest and hearing before Gallio.

It is the combination of the games and imperial cult that put enormous pressure on the Corinthian church.  The whole city would have participated in the banquets honoring the Roman Emperor, the elite of the city would be invited to the most important banquet honoring the Emperor as a god.  There are both political and spiritual aspects to consider in refusing to attend this meal or social events like it.

The city of Corinth was an important cosmopolitan city in the middle part of the first century.  It was economically stable, attracting a wide range of businesses from all over the Empire. Paul established the church in this city for this very reason.  Once Christianity takes hold in Corinth, the local churches themselves can continue the mission of spreading the gospel throughout the region.  Yet of all of Paul’s churches, this one seems to have had the most difficulties assimilating Christianity and their culture.  For this reason Corinth is probably the church of the New Testament that is most like the modern church.

In choosing as one of his main missionary centers a city in which only the tough were reputed to survive, Paul demonstrated a confidence oddly at variance with his protestations of weakness. Corinth, however, offered advantages that outweighed its dangers. In addition to excellent communications, the extraordinary number of visitors (Dio Chrysostom, Or. 37.8; Aelius Aristides, Or. 46.24) created the possibility of converts who would carry the gospel back to their homelands. In contrast to the closed complacency of Athens, Corinth was open and questioning, eager for new ideas but neither docile nor passive, as Paul’s relationship with the Christian community there amply documents (Murphy-O’Connor, ABD 1:1138)

What are the potential implications for modern mission strategy?  Paul targeted one of the most modern of the urban centers in the world at the time.  Should this speak to where we plant churches?  How we plant churches?

Corinth as Sin City?

Since I am spending time in Corinth this week (in class, not it real life, sadly enough), I thought I would dispense right away with the classic Pastor’s point that Corinth was a “San Francisco of the ancient world.”  I think Chuck Swindoll said that, so most pastors have picked it up and try to illustrate how bad Paul’s church was by comparing it to Haight-Ashbury circa 1969.

Usually the evidence for this sexual freedom is that the city was built around two ports and attracted sailors.  Maybe there were hippies sailors there too.  In addition, there is usually some reference to the temple of Aphrodite with 2000 prostitutes.  While the reputation is deserved, it has little to do with the city that Paul visited – all of these sorts of things were true of Greek Corinth, almost 400 years prior to the time of Paul!  I cite Jerome Murphy-O’Connor:

Such success inevitably provoked the envy of those less fortunate in their location and less industrious in their habits, and so in the 5th–4th centuries b.c., Athenian writers made Corinth the symbol of commercialized love. Aristophanes coined the verb korinthiazesthai, “to fornicate” (Fr. 354).  Philetaerus and Poliochus wrote plays entitled Korinthiastes, “The Whoremonger” (Athenaeus 313c, 559a). Plato used korinthia kore, “a Corinthian girl,” to mean a prostitute (Rest. 404d). These neologisms, however, left no permanent mark on the language, because in reality Corinth was neither better nor worse than its contemporaries. (Murphy-O’Connor, ABD 1:1135).

In fact, the whole Roman empire at the time Paul visited the Corinth had sexual morals that were significantly different than those of the Jews and the early Christians. Corinth was no less moral that Ephesus or Thessalonica.  Even if describing Corinth as “Sin City” makes a great preaching point, it is not historically accurate.

N.T. Wright Quote

“Wherever St. Paul went, there was a riot. Wherever I go, they serve tea.”

This was posted on Phil Dobby’s blog.  I have seen it around before.

N. T. Wright, Paul A Fresh Perspective (3): Messiah and Apocalyptic

Wright suggests in this chapter that we ought to be reading Paul’s use of “Christ” a bit more apocalyptically.  Essentially, when Paul says “Christ,” he means “Messiah.”  That Jesus is the Messiah is not a major issue in the circles I travel in, but in New Testament Scholarship, a return to Jesus as Messiah is something which is in fact controversial.

Wright wants to get away from a false dichotomy that the Messiah was either a political idea or a religious idea (49).  This is excellent, since there is no separate of church and state in the first century or in the Hebrew Bible.  In addition, Wright states that Paul’s used of Messiah was not “religious” over against “political.”

A second idea which Wright argues strenuously against is that apocalyptic in the Second Temple period and in Paul does not mean “end of the space time universe” (50-51).   If one thinks that when Jesus returns is the “end of the world as we know it” they are wrong – that sort of an idea does not exist in the first century, in the Bible or in most Second Temple period apocalypses.  Again, Wright is more or less correct.  In this literature, when Messiah comes he vindicates  Israel and restores them to their inheritance.  Zion becomes the center of the world and all people, whether Jew or Gentile, will worship in Zion.

It is significant to me that Wright talks about the coming of the Messiah as God accomplishing his “many-staged plan of salvation” (53).  Even a text like Eph 3:8-11 is apocalyptic: God has called Paul to make know “the plan that through the church the many-splendoured wisdom of God might be made known to the rulers and authorities in heavenly places” (52).   That God has a plan administered in several stages to bring about the redemption of the world is a very familiar idea to me and it warms my dispensational heart.

However, clearly Wright is not a dispensationalist, and many people have noticed that Wright has become increasingly agitated at dispensationalist finding comfort in his books.  There are really two reasons for this, as I see it.  First, Wright sees the American “Left Behind” version of dispensationalism as an aberration.  In The Last Word and Surprised by Hope he seems to go out of his way to distance himself from this sort of thinking.  Secondly, Wright is an Anglican and does not make a distinction between church and Israel the way a dispensational does.  Israel has been replaced by the Church and there is not “future” for Israel separate from the church.

If I have read Wright correctly, two reactions immediately come to mind.  I hope that no one judges dispensational thinking by Left Behind (or Hal Lindsey, etc.)  Those books are not theological mature thinking, nor are they theological in the least.  There are at least a half-dozen well-written and scholarly explanations of dispensational thinking that are better representatives than pop-culture phenomenons.  I am thinking here of Bock, Blaising, Saucy, and of course Dale DeWitt.

Secondly, Wright is incorrect if he thinks that dispensationalism (even in the hokiest forms) believes that the return of Jesus is the “end of the world as we know it.”  In dispensationalism, the present age gives way to the kingdom, which goes on forever.  The re-creation of the heavens and the earth, drawn from texts in the Hebrew Bible and Revelation, is in fact a re-creation of the heavens and the earth.  I suppose this is a radical change, but it is the same “space-time universe.”  Apocalyptic that looks for the complete destruction of the world is wrong-headed (Wright is correct here.  Although it makes a great Bruce Willis movie, “Armageddon” as the end of the world is not good theology!)

I find much in Paul: A Fresh Perspective which is conducive to a contemporary, even progressive dispensationalism even if Wright would protest.  Your mileage may vary.

Was Thessalonica a “Gentile” Church?

What was the ‘social setting” of the church at Thessalonica?  Pollhill has a good summary of the usual arguments for the church being primarily Gentile (P&HL, 185).  But this is problematic because Acts tells us that the congregation was formed after a period of time teaching in the Synagogue. In addition, Jews stirred up trouble for Paul out of jealousy – presumably because of his success in their synagogue.

The argument that the recipients of the letters are Gentiles rests on three observations.  First, they are said to have turned “to God from idols.”  Paul would not describe a Jewish convert as “turning from an idol.”   Secondly, 1 Thess 4:1-8 describes some sexual ethics problems in the church.  This would be more typical of a Gentile congregation than Jewish. Thirdly, 1 Thessalonians does not quote from the Old Testament,  although 2 Thess seems to allude to the Hebrew Bible.  If the church were written to a gentile audience with very little synagogue training and knowledge, we would expect few biblical quotations.

So where to these Gentiles come from? If the Gentile converts were God-fearers from the synagogue, then it is also unlikely that they would have “turned from idols” since they were worship God in the synagogue.  In addition, a Gentile God-fearer might be expected to know as much of the Hebrew Bible as a Jewish person.  The fact that the second letter is laced with allusions to the Hebrew Bible makes me think that there are other reasons for the lack in 1 Thessalonians.  Paul was only in the city for a short time and there is no reference to evangelism in the marketplace, but he may have made contacts there which Luke chose not to report.

I think that the answer goes back to the persecution faced by the church.  If they are persecuted for “rejecting Rome,” perhaps some of the “prominent people” Luke mentions in Acts 17:4 left the Christian church and returned to the synagogue, or to secular life.  Those who remained “turned from idols,” specifically the national Roman cult.  Someone like Jason was able to use wealth and power to deal with the court system in the city, so there is at lesat an implication that he was wealthy and connected politically.  Perhaps Jason or other wealthy persons had left  the church by the time Paul writes (suggested by Adolf Deissmann, c.f., Malherbe, 65).

The letter itself seems to praise the church for their strength in persecution, so maybe it is not wise to make too much of this alleged defection of some prominent converts, but it might explain the last of Jewish allusions in the letter.

Acts 17 and the Persecutors in Thessalonica

The Thessalonican church appears to have suffered after Paul left the city (1:6, 2:14, 3:3-4, 2 Thess 1:4-6), although we are not told the nature of this persecution. Looking back at Acts 17, we see that the charges against Paul are significant – he defies the decrees of Caesar and advocating another king, Jesus.  Given the recent history of Thessalonica, these are dangerous charges indeed.

First, Paul and his companions are troublemakers. This is probably just standard court-room rhetoric, although it does seem that wherever Paul goes there is trouble.

Second, they subvert the decrees of Caesar. Since 1 Thess 1:9 says that the congregation has “turned form idols,” this may imply a “defection” from the imperial cult.  If this is the case, then turning from the Roman cult could be understood as an act of disloyalty.  It is possible then that Gentile God-fearers still participated in some form of official cult, despite worshiping in the synagogue.

Third, they advocate another king, Jesus. In 1 Thess 4 and 5 Paul clearly teaches that Jesus is coming back in power and he will establish his own glorious kingdom (1 Thess 2:19, for example).  This could easily be understood in terms of a change of emperors, that the empire of Rome was about to be supplanted with the empire of Jesus.   Paul also says that when Jesus returns, it will be at a time when people are saying “peace and safety,” but they will in fact be destroyed.  Peace and security is exactly what was promised by the Empire, pax Romana meant that the empire was a safe and peaceful place to live.  Paul seems to say in 1 Thess 5:3 that this peace is an illusion.

In A. D. 16 Tiberius issued a decree banning predictions concerning change of rulers (such as, the Emperor is ill and going to die, etc.)  For details on this decree, see Witherington, Acts, 508, citing Sherwin-White, Roman Law and Roman Society, 103; K. Donfried, “The Cults of Thessalonica,” NTS 31 (1985): 336-356; 343-344.  For the application of these decrees under Augustus and Tiberius, see Dio Cassius, History, 56.25.5f, 57.15.8.  If Paul’s message of a new king was taken as a prediction of the death / judgment of the Roman emperor, then this sort of speech would be deeply troubling to the poliarchs.

Whatever Paul initially preached in Thessalonica, it was heard by the civil authorities as a challenge to Rome and the status of the city of Thessalonica.  It is remarkable that Paul’s preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ had a significant impact on the culture of the city.  It is for this reason that Paul is so worried about the congregation in his first letter to the church.