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Why no hell fire and brimstone?

In writing Romans, before Paul gets to the good news of the gospel (Romans 3 and following), he lays out the bad news: the wrath of God is breaking in from heaven.  For Paul God’s wrath is a present reality not some distant, future threat. We are living in “the present, evil age” (Gal 1:4), where the proliferation of idolatries, perversions and corruption are the ambient human condition (Romans 1).  It’s just the way things are even as we know things are not the way they are supposed to be.  Evangelicals use “the Roman road” to highlight the threat of hell, but Paul doesn’t do that.  The bad news is not the threat of fire and brimstone in some afterlife; it is the fact that God’s wrath is already evident in the world in what is effectively God’s hands-off policy.  God has stepped back and given us up to idolatry, disillusionment, strife, sexual sins, fractured families, and wicked minds.  For the apostle, sin and depravity may be the cause of God’s fury, but they are also the effect.  The presence and spread of human vices throughout the earth make life miserable and wretched. Perhaps we can say it this way: we are not only punished for our sins, we are punished by our sins.

hell fire and brimstone

If salvation for Paul consists primarily of God’s invading presence, then divine wrath consists ultimately of God’s silence and absence in the midst of a counterfeit world.  God doesn’t step in and smash us with his powerful right arm; he steps back and says, in effect, “if that is what you want, that is what you will get.” That is heaven’s wrath.  Now we are not saying that Paul completely ignores any threat of future judgment (e.g., 2 Thess 1:5-12); what we are saying is that the threat of fire and brimstone is not the only way to frame the human plight.

Fortunately, Paul doesn’t stop with the bad news; he has good news too.

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Morna Hooker on “the Faith of Jesus”

Earlier this year Michael Bird highlighted an article by Morna Hooker in the Scottish Journal of Theology: 

Morna D. Hooker, “Another Look at πίστις Χριστοῦ,” SJT 69 (2016): 46-62.

In that article she joins a chorus of scholars who agree that at key moments in his letters Paul relates that redemption is centered in the faith or faithfulness of Jesus.  This is a position argued decades ago by Richard Hays.  Now, I’m pleased to note, many scholars have begun to read Paul this way.  As Hooker notes, this new reading has deep implications for Paul’s theology.Morna Hooker

To read Bird’s blog post click here.

 

When I was working on The Voice translation of the Bible with Thomas Nelson, I made and won the argument that “faith/faithfulness of Jesus” is how these texts ought to be read on the fact that the King James Version (1611) got it right!  Here are two examples:

Romans 3:22-23:

22 Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:

23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

And Galatians 2:20:

20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

Most modern translations take this as an objective genitive and render it “faith in Jesus” or “faith in the Son of God.”  In The Voice we translated those key passages as subjective genitives: Jesus exercises faith/ trust/ faithfulness (to God).  Hooker is correct that Jesus is clearly an object of faith in Paul; but in these and other key places when Paul is describing the essence of the gospel he is clear that our redemption is due to God’s rightness and Jesus’ faithfulness.

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Dan Wallace on NT Manuscripts

Recently, a friend sent me a link to this video of Dan Wallace speaking at Acadia Divinity College on New Testament manuscripts.  Dan is probably the best connected and most informed scholar on the state of NT manuscripts, in America at least.  His  organization continues to discover  manuscripts (hand-written documents) which scholars did not know existed.  There are over 2.5 million pages altogether of the known number of NT manuscripts, over 5800.  This is a remarkable number of manuscripts still in existence given (a) that pagan emperors and governors did their best (during times of persecution) to discover and burn Gospels and letters and (b) the writing material and inks they used are organic, which means they were subject to decay.  Dan’s organization, Center for Study of New Testament Manuscripts, is working feverishly to create digital images of these manuscripts before they degrade further.  It is a great resource for scholars of Christian history.

 

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The Divine Name . . . before Nicea

 

Charles Gieschen, professor and dean at Concordia Theological Seminary (Indiana), has written what I regard to be a significant article.  I’d like for people to know about it.  It is in a refereed journal entitled Vigiliae Christianae 57 (2003): 115-158.   The title of the article is “The Divine Name in Ante-Nicene Christology.” His thesis is this: many references or allusions to the “name” of Jesus in early Christianity should be understood as signifying that Jesus possesses the Divine Name, the holy, unspeakable name of Israel’s God (YHWH), often called the Tetragrammaton.  The “name” of Jesus in these contexts does not refer to the name given to him on the eighth day by his parents.  Gieschen spends a good deal of time in the New Testament but he also considers such extra-canonical texts as 1 Clement, the Ascension of Isaiah, the Odes of Solomon, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Gospel of Thomas, the Acts of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, among others. gieschen

Clearly, I think Charles is onto something.  He cites favorably my own book Old Testament Yahweh Texts in Paul’s Christology, WUNT (Tubingen, 1992), that showed how Paul, the earliest Christian theologian, took Scriptural texts containing the Divine Name and applied them to Jesus.  The name “Jesus” was a common name in its day, even if it is unusual in English-speaking circles.  It is a transliteration through Greek, into Latin, into English of the Hebrew name “Joshua.”  I’ve been to many a baseball game where players from Latin American countries were named “Jesus” (pronounced Hay-soos).

When Paul says that “at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus the Messiah is Lord . . .” (Phil 2:9-11), it seems clear that the Greek genitive should be rendered possessively “the name that belongs to Jesus.”  And what name belongs to Jesus?  Gieschen argues, and I think he is correct, the covenant name of God revealed to Moses at Sinai (YHWH).

Gieschen concludes his study asking why a Divine Name Christology fades in the next Christian centuries.  He gives two reasons.  First, as the Jesus movement became more and more Gentile, knowledge of the Divine Name is no longer determinative for how Christ followers assess his significance.  This begins to happen even among Greek-speaking Christians who read Kyrios as the standard translation/ rendering of the Divine Name in Hebrew biblical texts. Knowledge of the Divine Name traditions began to fade. Second, it seems that heretical groups in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD are those who utilize and keep the Divine Name Christology in tact. The “orthodox,” in responding negatively to the “heretics,” set aside their teaching which associated Jesus so clearly with the Divine Name.

To cite one example:

“One single name is not uttered in the world, the name that the Father gave the Son, the name above all things: the name of the Father.” (Gospel of Philip II.54.5-8)

If Gieschen is correct, the heretics kept alive a neglected aspect of early Christology.

 

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Is there a “center” in Paul’s theology?

An earlier generation of scholars were fond of questing for the “center” of Paul’s theology.  Even in the midst of occasional, contingent situations, they believe there was an inner logic, a coherence to Paul’s thinking.  Today, scholars are less prone to talk about “center” though they do use adjectives like “central,” “integral,” and the like.  I’m wondering are we beyond trying to locate a theological center for Paul, a conceptual place from which he theologizes?  St. Paul

In an earlier book (Rediscovering Jesus, IVP [2007], with E. R. Richards and Rodney Reeves)I went in quest for the center of Paul’s theology and decided on the following criteria.

How can the center of Paul’s theology be determined? Put another way, what criteria will lead us to the center? The center will be that/those aspect/s of Paul’s theology that best satisfies the following criteria:

The center must be

1.. integral: it finds expression in all parts of all his letters.

2.. generative: it participates in—and to some degree generates—all his theologizing. It can help to explain everything else.[1]

3.. experiential: it results from encounters he has with the risen Jesus.

4.. traditional: it is consistent with the traditions he inherits and uses.

5.. scriptural: it serves as the interpretive key to new readings of Scripture.

6.. theological: given Paul’s commitment to monotheism, the theological center is ultimately a word about God, explaining and revealing him.

7.. presuppositional: at times it sits beneath the surface of Paul’s letters, supporting and limiting the argument.

The aspect or aspects of Paul’s theology that fit these criteria are likely candidates for the center of Paul’s theology.

[1]E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadephia: Fortress, 1977), p. 441, states it negatively: “a theme cannot be central which does not explain anything else.”

I’m wondering if the quest for a “center” or what is central/ integral is still relevant.  What do you think?