Love in Paul (12) was Paul a proto anabaptist?

We’re getting to the end of a series about the apostle Paul’s theology of love. To recap, there are three great strands of love in the OT that also continue, now Christologically framed, into the NT (and Paul in particular).

1) The elective and saving love of Yahweh for his chosen people.

2) The responsive love of Israel (God’s people) to God’s prior redemptive action.

3) Inter-communal love: the love God’s people are to have for one another

This is the third and final post in strand 3. If strands 1 and 2 were ‘vertical love’ (love of God for humanity; human love for God in response), this strand is ‘horizontal love’ – at a human to human level. It is also the strand about which the Apostle Paul has by far the most to say.

In this post we’re focusing on a controversial issue that brings us right into contemporary debates about social justice and cultural transformation. A question raised by study of a Pauline theology of love is this:

Is there a place for loving ‘outsiders’ in a Pauline theology of love?

And linked to this we can add:

How ‘ambitious’ should Christians be about transforming the culture in which according to Christian principles?

Those who believe the church has a God-given mandate to shape society to Christian beliefs belong to a long history that can be traced back to Constantine’s Edict of Milan in AD 313 when Christianity, for the first time, was officially treated benevolently by the Empire, paving the way for it later to become the state religion. It runs through Medieval Catholicism (Aquinas) and into the Reformation. The Reformers disagreed with medieval Catholicism about a lot of things, but the God-given centrality of the church in ordering society was not one of them.

We can call this the cultural transformers corner.

Yet there is a strange paradox to the cultural transformers’ position. Christians follow a Messiah crucified by the state. The first centuries of the church were forged in persecution and martyrdom. Deep down in its DNA, Christianity is a faith formed by suffering at the hands of those in power. And when the church has got into positions of power, let’s just say that it has not tended to end well.

There is still much theological reflecting to do on the relationships between Christianity and colonialism and imperialism – and how both were dependent on a theology of justified violence to advance Western ‘Christian’ values and interests.

All this to say that the cultural transformers’ position sits very uneasily beside the teaching of Jesus. But less recognised is that is also sits very uneasily beside the teaching of Paul. (You may like to read this related post on Paul and non-violence).

Paul and love of ‘Outsiders’

A beginning point: as we have seen in this series it is undeniable that Paul has an overwhelming focus on love within Christian communities.

Some scholars therefore argue that Paul effectively has NOTHING to say about love for outsiders. His focus is on the internal authenticity of the first Christian communities.

So when you read a text like Romans 12:9-21 it is speaking of love restricted within the community of believers. Yes non-believers are to be treated well but there is no command to love them. This is love as an ‘in-group’ ethic. It defines the community of faith and marks them out as distinct from the world.

The implication here is that there is no mandate in Paul for a theology of cultural transformation. Such thinking rests on an expansive understanding of the church’s mission to be an agent by which God transforms the world. Yet Paul has no such agenda. His focus is on the internal integrity of Christian communities that speak of a different story to that of the ‘present evil age’ (Galatians 1:4).

Other scholars do not want to go so far. Not commanding believers to love outsiders is not the same as telling them only to love fellow believers. There are Pauline texts that suggest loving outside the community of faith, and even love of enemies:

1 Corinthians 16:14 “Let all that you do be done in love.”

1 Thessalonians 3:12 “And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you.”

Philippians 4:5 “ Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.”

Galatians 6:10 “So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.”

Romans 12:14 “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.”

Beyond specific texts, there is then Paul’s framing of the Christian life as the imitation of Jesus – which involves self-sacrificial love of the other, including enemies (Romans 5:8).

Other scholars discern in Paul a recognition of the common good. For example live peaceably with others and be known of good reputation (e.g., Phil 4:5 “Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.”)

However, it has to be said that such arguments are a long way short of any theological platform for ‘cultural transformation’. At best they are shaped by Paul’s primary concern for mission – how best to win outsiders for Christ.

So it can be argued – and I do – that Paul’s attitude to the state / wider society is certainly far more consistent with how anabaptists read the New Testament than how cultural transformers do.

In other words, yes, it is possible to argue that Paul was a proto-anabaptist.

His concern for a peaceable, loving, non-violent community willing to suffer for the cause of the gospel is consistent with the teaching of Jesus and is, I believe, hard to reconcile with a Christendom perspective of religiously sanctioned power and violence.

As I’ve said before, all this makes me a very bad Presbyterian!

Love in Paul (11) Love for one another as imitation of Jesus

We’re continuing a series about the apostle Paul’s theology of love. To recap, there are three great strands of love in the OT that also continue, now Christologically framed, into the NT (and Paul in particular).

1) The elective and saving love of Yahweh for his chosen people.

2) The responsive love of Israel (God’s people) to God’s prior redemptive action.

3) Inter-communal love: the love God’s people are to have for one another

This is the second post in strand 3. If strands 1 and 2 were ‘vertical love’ (love of God for humanity; human love for God in response), this strand is ‘horizontal love’ – at a human to human level. It is also the strand about which the Apostle Paul has by far the most to say.

In the last post we looked at love as central to Paul’s mission to see communities of believers ‘shining like stars’ within an immoral world as they lived according to the cruciform way of Jesus. Exhortations and encouragement to live such a life worthy of the gospel abound in Paul’s letters.

The Purpose of the Christian Life: being formed into the image of Jesus

In this post we look at how love for Paul the Jewish rabbi is reconfigured Christologically. In other words, the Christ-event leads him to a new understanding of what a life pleasing to God looks like. It is not Torah observance, but a life in whom Christ is formed.

Let’s look at some texts to illustrate that claim:

Galatians 4:19 “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you”

Take a moment to read that verse again. See how it reveals how Paul understands the ultimate purpose of his mission – that Christ is formed in the lives of believers. [How well I wonder do we keep this ultimate goal front and centre of all church life and ministry?]

This isn’t an isolated example – other texts speak similarly of transformation into the image of Christ:

Rom 8:29, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.”

1 Cor 15:49 “And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man.”

2 Cor 3:18 “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

Col 3:9-10 “Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.”

It’s easy after 2000 years of church history to miss just how extraordinary this is. Paul the Jewish monotheist sees his God-given mission as preaching the death and resurrection of the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, Mary’s son so that all who have faith in him are transformed into his likeness.

But what does being formed into the likeness of Jesus mean? Quite simply the answer is love.

Love Reimagined: imitating the way of Jesus

Imitate me as I imitate Jesus

In these days of (justified) scepticism about the integrity of too many high-profile church leaders, I guess many would hesitate to say what Paul sometimes does – namely to ‘imitate me as I imitate Christ’

1 Thes 1:6 “You became imitators of us and of the Lord ..”

1 Cor 4:16; “Therefore I urge you to imitate me.”

2 Thes 3:7, 9; “For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example … We did this … in order to offer ourselves as a model for you to imitate.”

Phil 4:9. “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”

1 Cor 11:1 “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.”

Phil 3:17 “Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do.”

The last text is significant. Paul outlines his own narrative of giving up previous status and identity for the sake of the Philippians (Phil 3:2-16), an example he calls them to imitate (3:17).

Similarly in 1 Corinthians 9:14-15 (giving up of rights) is based on how Paul has given up his own apostolic rights.

Imitate Christ

Other examples of imitating Jesus are peppered through the apostle’s letters.

• Sometimes the imitation is to copy God’s self-giving love as demonstrated by Christ’s sacrificial death (Eph 5:1-2).

• Or of churches to imitate the willingness of Christ to endure suffering (1 Thes 2:14-15).

• In Romans 15:1-3 pleasing one’s neighbour is based on Christ’s refusal to please himself.

• In Romans 15:7 acceptance of one another is grounded in the imitation of Christ’s acceptance of believers

• Within marriage, husbands are to love their wives ‘just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her’ (Eph.5:25; cf Col.3:19).

• Most important of all is Philippians 2:5-11 where Paul’s encouragement to humble other-regard is rooted in the story of Christ’s voluntary self-giving death and giving up his own rights and glory

³ Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, ⁴ not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

⁵ In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Phil 2:3-5

1 Corinthians 13 as the Imitation of Jesus

Paul’s famous description of love does not specifically mention the imitation of Jesus but it describes perfectly the way of Jesus.

• verse 3 – giving all of one self at great cost for the good of others
• the description of love that follows clearly describes a life imitating that of Jesus. He is the one who demonstrates such love in action. The Gospels give story after story of what such a life of love looks like
• such love is unlimited and without end.

_____________________

This is what Christianity is all about

This is God’s ‘end game’. Love is greater than faith and hope because it characterises the new creation to come.

The purpose of justification is to be transformed into the image of Christ.

Being transformed into the image of Christ means living a Jesus-like life.

Living a Jesus-like life means loving others.

Loving others is difficult, costly and will be at times deeply self-sacrificial.

But that is the way of cruciform love.

No-one said being a Christian is easy.

But it is life-affirming and joyful.

For it is in losing our lives that we find them.

Love in Paul (10) love for one another

We’re continuing a series about the apostle Paul’s theology of love. To recap, there are three great strands of love in the OT that also continue, now Christologically framed, into the NT (and Paul in particular).

1) The elective and saving love of Yahweh for his chosen people.

2) The responsive love of Israel (God’s people) to God’s prior redemptive action.

3) Inter-communal love: the love God’s people are to have for one another

This is the first post in strand 3. If strands 1 and 2 were ‘vertical love’ (love of God for humanity; human love for God in response), this strand is ‘horizontal love’ – at a human to human level. It is also the strand about which the Apostle Paul has by far the most to say.

Indeed, he has so much to say about love for one another that I call him the ‘apostle of love’. He’s right up there with John in the frequency and importance of love within the community of God’s people. The love believers are to have for one another is to be THE distingushing mark of these fledging churches, reflecting their new-found identity in Christ and marking them as belonging to a different story and ethic to that of the surrounding nations.

We’ve mentioned earlier how Douglas Campbell calls this ‘agapeism’ – that love captures all that is important about Pauline ethics. And I agree, it does. Let’s take two broad themes in this post, and we’ll continue with others in the next post

The Missional Focus of Pauline Love

Here’s a sweeping generalisation – there is a strange lack of attention paid to the importance of love within Christian mission. There can be much discussion of context, strategy, culture, vision, leadership, apologetics and so on, but, rarely a sustained focus on the most important element of all – the integrity and attractiveness of the Christian community. (happy to be corrected here)

Paul, it seems to me, has a razor sharp awareness that love is essential for the health and witness of his Christian communities. There was nothing like them in the ancient world. No other communities embraced individuals across the profound religious, gender, socio-economic status and ethnic divisions of the ancient world. Believers now have a new primary identity in Christ as brothers and sisters (adelphoi) within God’s household. Previous identity – whether Jew, Gentile, male, female, slave or free – are relativised, not erased they are – radically – now of no spiritual significance.

In this vein, coming from a social-scientific angle, David Horrell (2016) makes the argument that Paul is primarily concerned with the construction of a corporate solidarity that acts to heal inner-communal conflict and draws strength from a vocation to holiness within an immoral world.

So, in Paul, love is not an end in itself. Rather, it is the defining characteristic of the first Christian communities in their new vocation to live lives worthy of the gospel under the Lordship of Jesus Christ within a world that is ‘passing away’ (1 Cor 7:31).

Love is only thing that could possibly hold such ‘households’ together. Love is essential to the life and witness of the church. Without love no church and no family can survive – and that’s as true today as it was then.

Love as following the paradoxical way of Jesus

For Paul, Christian love is cruciform love. God’s love is demonstrated and experienced through the cross of Christ. Cruciform love is costly, it acts for the good of others at the expense of the self.

This is the paradoxical way of Jesus.

Sometimes this can be misunderstood. Christianity does not call believers to be ‘doormats’ – walked over by others at every turn. Nor does it call for self-abnegation or self-hatred. Rather, it proclaims that real flourishing, happiness and purpose is found in loving others. Loving another means acting for their good, even at cost to the self. Christianity is a corporate faith, which is another way of saying it is orientated around living well with others within a network of mutually loving relationships.

This conflicts head on with Western individualism that says fulfilment is found in self-realisation, finding yourself, loving yourself, expressing yourself and so on. This sort of ‘expressive individualism’ is centered on the self rather than on loving others. It has no place for community and its ‘eschatology’ is consumerist – short-term individual pleasure or achievement. There is nothing ‘bigger’ or more significant than the self.

We see other-focused Jesus-type love applied by Paul to a multiplicity of situations and contexts. Here are some examples and we could keep going at length here:

• Other-focused love is seen in his repeated appeals to maintain unity (Rom 12:16; 14:1-15:7; 1 Cor 1:10; 12:21-27; 14:12; Gal 6:10; Eph 4:1-3; Phil 2:1-2; Col 3:12-13; 1 Thes 5:12-15; Titus 3:1-2, 8)
• In his many warnings against divisive attitudes or behaviour (1 Cor 3:1-4, 16-17; 6:1-11; 8:9-13; 10:24, 31-33; 11:17-34; 2 Cor 12:19-20; Gal 5:15; 6:3-4; Eph 4:25-32; Phil 2:3, 14-15; Col 3:5-9; 1 Thes 4:3-6; 1 Tim 6:2b-10; 2 Tim 2:23, 3:1-5; Titus 3:9-11).
• Converts to Christ are to act in love for each other (1 Thes 4:9; Rom 12:9-10; 14:15; 1 Cor.8:1; Eph 4:2, 15-16; Phil 2:1-2; Col 2:2).
• Famously, in 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, all Christian life and ministry is of no value at all if it is not done in love.
• The Colossians are encouraged to clothe themselves with love on top of a list of other virtues (Col.3:14)
• In 1 Thessalonians 5:8 all believers are to put on the breastplate of faith and love.
• Paul prays that believers’ love would grow as they await the coming of the Lord (1 Thes 3:12; Phil 1:9) and is glad to hear of a church’s love (e.g., 1 Thes 3:6; 2 Thes 1:3).
• In Philippians he is thankful when Christ is preached ‘out of love’ (Phil 1:16) – regardless of who the preachers are.
• He rejoices when he hears of believers’ love for God’s people (Col 1:4, Philem 1:5, 7)
• He encourages the Corinthians to show the ‘genuineness’’ of their love by giving financial help for brothers and sisters in need (2 Cor 8:8, 24).
• Rather than use apostolic authority, he prefers to appeal to Philemon about Onesimus ‘on the basis of love’ (Philem.1.9).
• And, as a pastor, it is significant how often Paul expresses his deep love for the communities to whom he ministers (e.g., 1 Thes 2:8; 3:12; 1 Cor 4:21; 16:24; 2 Cor 2:4; 8:7; 11:11; Phil.4:1).

That’s a pretty strong case for ‘agapeism’ right there. More to come in the next post.

Advent Reflection: Jesus versus Covid-19

Romans 5:15-17

¹⁵ But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. ¹⁶ And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. ¹⁷ If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

‘The gift is not like the trespass’ is a profoundly important phrase within Paul’s comparison of Jesus and Adam in Romans 5.

We see what Adam and Jesus share in common: both are men (vs 15); both are representatives of humanity.

It is from an emphasis on shared humanity that Paul develops an argument ‘from the lesser to the greater’. Both are human, but Jesus is a far superior human figure to that of Adam.

Adam’s trespass results in sin, death, judgment and condemnation.

God’s gift in Jesus Christ brings justification, grace, righteousness and life.

In other words, what Adam did, Jesus un-does to excess. Jesus confronts and overcomes the destructive effects of Adam’s sin due to the surpassing provision of God’s grace.

This is why that little phrase – ‘the gift is not like the trespass’ – is actually a wonderful way of describing the limitless, self-giving love of God in Jesus Christ.

So, as we celebrate Christmas 2020, we are reminded of the astonishing fact of the incarnation. Jesus is a truly human saviour. There is an indissolvable bond between Christ and humanity – he is one of us.

The Nicene Creed (381AD) puts it this way:

“Who for us and our salvation, came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary and was made man.’

But these verses remind us that Jesus is in crucial respects, a human unlike any other.

All of humanity is ‘in Adam’ – we are under the reign of death (vs 17). Death is a ‘dark lord’ of destruction from whom we have no ability to escape.

This Christmas 2020 death crowds in on us, compounding memories of absent loved ones. Daily coronavirus fatalities flash across our news screens. Death, usually kept in the background in rich Western nations, has rudely taken centre stage.

BBC News – candles lit in Bern for those who have died of Covid-19

Images of death colonise our imaginations. Who could have imagined at the beginning of this year that the success or failure of governments globally now revolves around the management of death?

We grasp on to hopes of a vaccine, literally as a life-saver. We long for life to go back to the way it was – with death pushed back into the shadows – for as long as possible.

And this is right and good. Life is a gift to be lived well. We are made to live in relationship, not locked up staring at screens.

But vaccine or not, the rule of death unleashed by Adam still reigns.

And so the gospel is powerful good news.

But through the ‘one man, Jesus Christ’ (vs 17), all in him are freed from the reign of death and are ushered into a new realm – the reign of life.

God is a God of life, not death. His agenda for humanity is freedom from death. The Spirit is the life-giver. Jesus is the human Lord of life who has been raised from the dead.

This is why Christians celebrate the incarnation at Christmas.

Love in Paul (4): Continuity and Discontinuity with the OT. Election Reworked.

In the previous post in this series we traced how Paul probably chose agapē as a relatively ‘unknown’ word that he could fill with meaning – a specific kind of meaning, shaped by the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of God’s Messiah in whom the extraordinary love of God has been revealed.

But how ‘new’ is the apostle’s theology of love? It does not spring from ‘nowhere’. Paul is a Jew, schooled in the Scriptures.

Within the OT, there are three major strands of love that run through the story of Israel.

1) The elective and saving love of Yahweh for his chosen people

This is the first and greatest theme. Everything else depends on, and flows from, God’s initiatory, patient and immeasurable love.

2) The responsive love of Israel to God’s prior redemptive action.

3) Inter-communal love: the love God’s people are to have for one another

When we come to Paul, these same three strands are all present (continuity). But they are reshaped in light of Jesus (discontinuity).

Just how much discontinuity there is between Paul and the OT takes us right into Old and New Perspectives on Paul, and more recent apocalyptic Paul debates. All we need to say here is that Paul’s understanding of love is comprehensively ‘reworked’ in light of the radical impact of Jesus. The result is still a recognisably Jewish theology of love, but one that is now Christologically shaped.

Strand 1) ELECTION

We can see this ‘reworking’ of love in Paul’s new understanding of election. It now includes all in Christ – both Jews and Gentiles. That’s quite a reworking right there.

In 2 Thessalonians 2:13 believers are chosen by God for salvation, are loved by the Lord (Jesus) and sanctified through the Spirit (a very Trinitarian verse)

¹³ But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters loved by the Lord, because God chose you as firstfruits to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth.

In Romans the ‘called’ or ‘chosen’ are also loved (Rom. 1:7; 8:28).

⁷ To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be his holy people

²⁸ And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Paul frequently uses the adjective agapētos in an elective sense of being ‘chosen’. In Romans 11:28-29 it is the Gentiles who are elected and loved

²⁸ As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies for your sake; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, ²⁹ for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable.

In Ephesians 1:4-5 believers are chosen and predestined to adoption in love through Christ  

⁴ For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love ⁵ he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will

So often discussion about election get caught up in the perceived ‘unfairness’ of God choosing some and not others. But for Paul the focus is very much on election as an act of love – that reaches its fulfilment in the grace of God in Christ.

In the next post we’ll consider how Paul’s understanding of election is profoundly reimagined in light of the love of God demonstrated at the cross.

Making whiteness strange

Wikipedia

Raging protests across America (and many other nations), raging debates, and sheer outrage (see the close of this John Oliver Last Week Tonight show) – the lid has been blown off the pressure cooker of systemic racial inequality going back centuries.

There are multiple factors at play – not least colonialism, slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, massive economic and social inequality, a reckless sociopath as President, and the militarisation of policing to a point where moderate white American professors of theology in their late 60s have concluded that America has become a police state.

In the last post I finished with a series of self-critical questions for predominantly white churches / Christians. In this post I’d like to push a bit further.

The questions in the last post focused on the church being an alternative community of justice to the world, not mirroring the world but being a unique place of equality for all in Christ – regardless of ethnicity, race or any other marker of difference. They also called for listening hard and well to black brothers and sisters.

But there is more to engaging with the realities of systemic racism and inequality than asking – and acting on – hard questions about our own attitudes and behaviour.

They should also provoke us to consider the issue of ‘whiteness’ itself.

I mean by this what’s been called the ‘invisibility of whiteness’. In other words, those who are white tend to think little about what it means to be white. I’ll put my hand up here and say I’m in my 50s and have rarely, if ever, thought seriously about the colour of my skin.

By ‘seriously’ I mean in thinking about how my racial identity shapes what I do, think, see, ask, and do not ask.

Yes, of course, in certain circumstances you are very aware of being white. Two examples stick in my mind. One in the south-west USA travelling through Navajo territory. The other in the Australian outback and camping in a predominantly Aboriginal town. The parallel in both was of a native population decimated and demoralised by Western appropriation of land, culture and identity.

[While America is (rightly) in the news, the Australian story of race is beyond terrible in its brutal history of extermination and and everyday contemporary racism].

The point though is that my whiteness only becomes ‘visible’ to me in exceptional circumstances – when faced with an experience of suffering and deprivation caused by white colonialism (i.e., invasion, massacre and discrimination in the case of the Navajo and Aboriginal populations.) In normal circumstances here in Ireland it’s the default – and you don’t think about the default, you take it for granted as the norm.

And Ireland does pretty well thank you on racism as well.

But of course if you are African-American or Aboriginal or one of multiple other non-white identities, you don’t have that luxury: you are forced to think about your skin colour relentlessly – everytime you experience different treatment because of your ethnicity. This from Tobi Lawal, speaking to white people in Ireland:

“Show that you can understand the struggle and understand your privilege, in the sense that you get up every day and go out; you don’t have to think about whether you’re going to get refused from somewhere, whether when you go to work you’re going to have to fight to get a new position; you don’t have to think about whether you go to a nightclub and someone is going to say something to you about your hair or your colour.”

Tobi Lawal

Since this is a theology / biblical blog let’s look at this dynamic in biblical studies. David Horrell from Exeter University, and who comes to NT studies via a social-scientific angle, is one of the very few white NT scholars to broach this subject.

He did so via a plenary paper called ‘Paul, Inclusion, and Whiteness: Particularlising Interpretation’ at the British NT Conference in 2017 which happened to be held in Maynooth, the town where I live in Ireland. So I heard him give the paper. It was published in JSNT and a book will soon be published by Eerdmans called Ethnicity and Inclusion Religion, Race, and Whiteness in Constructions of Jewish and Christian Identities.

To cut to the chase, he argues that how you read the Bible is deeply influenced not only by your culture and personality, but by your whiteness.

And in biblical studies there has generally been a failure by scholars to recognise how their interpretation of the Bible has been shaped by their context of the white Christian West.

This isn’t to say that such white readings are without merit. It is to say that they, like any other readings, need to be understood as a particular reading, not as the obviously correct and normal reading.

He looks at the example of Galatians 3:28

“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

He covers a lot of ground (and you can download the full paper here) and I hope to return to his arguments in other blog posts. Here is his conclusion, shaped in the form of a question – one well worth reflecting on.

“Can we possibly imagine that our own reconstructions of the earliest Christian communities and exegesis of the Pauline letters are not shaped, inflected, by our contemporary social, political, religious and racial location? And though it may be uncomfortable to acknowledge it, is not our racialised identity one significant part of that complex intersection of facets of identity to which we should – indeed must – pay attention? Part of the force of whiteness studies is to insist that if we find it reasonable to think that, say, African-American interpreters, or other interpreters raced as nonwhite, might find their identity and experience relevant in shaping their reading of the New Testament, so too those of us raced as white should equally expect that our ethnic or racial identity constitutes part of the package of factors that shapes our reading. I may well be wrong in the way I have tried to identify some of the respects in which interpretation of Paul – and of Gal 3.28 in particular – remains enmeshed in the ideological particularity of the white, Christian West. But I would challenge those who think so to propose their own critical analysis of how this particularity becomes visible in our exegesis. Assuming that our interpretation is uncontextualised – unmarked, unlocated, unraced– is, I would suggest, no longer a feasible option.” (my emphasis)

And if this is the case, the point of ‘making whiteness strange’ is to become far more aware of the limitations and provisionality of our own perspective.

Once we get to that point, then we are at least open to the necessity of listening to voices other than our own in order to more accurately hear what the Bible is saying to us all today.

And if that is all rather technical and academic, here’s a picture that says it all:

It was painted by Chicago-based Warner Sallman in 1940 and became one of the most influential images of Jesus in American Protestantism, selling over 500 million copies. This was one of the first times that ‘Jesus went commercial’. Mass production and clever marketing made this image synonymous with who Jesus was in popular imagination.

How do you ‘read’ this image? For me it is white, polite, Western and non-Jewish. Very much like the Jesus of 19th century liberalism and not at all like the Jesus of the Gospels.

Comments, as ever, welcome.

A Dialogue with Ben Witherington on The Message of Love (22)

This is a repost of a dialogue on Professor Ben Witherington’s blog about my book The Message of Love

336 pages $12.49 paperback on Amazon or £12.99 paperback IVP UK  or £9.99 ebook 

BEN: On pp. 192-95 you broach the issue of philos. It is interesting how seldom the actual Greek language for friendship really comes up in the NT, whereas the familial language of brother and sister is ubiquitous. But we do have it briefly in John 15. You are certainly right that in an age of arranged marriages, friendship was often the most intimate of bonds, like with David and Jonathan. Jesus considers us his friends, but there is a condition— you have to do what he commands. This seems quite different from some modern laissez faire friendships which think it rude to demand something from a friend. How should we view friendship as Christians today do you think?

PATRICK: This links pretty closely to the last question. In our Facebook era the word ‘friend’ doesn’t have much weight, you can have hundreds of ‘friends’ many of whom you may never have met face-to-face. But in the ancient world much attention was given to philos in both Greek thought (Aristotle for example) and Roman culture (hierarchical frameworks of friendship between patrons and clients). Also, in the OT, Abraham and Moses are both called friends of God. It’s impossible to know exactly what lay in the background of John’s use of friendship, but it’s clear that believers’ friendship with Jesus is unparalleled for at least four reasons that should lead Christians today to worship.

1) It was unheard of for ‘God in the flesh’ to give up his own life for his friends. I say in the book at “If depth of love is somehow proportionate to that which is given up for the good of others, then the cross represents the greatest act of love in all of history.”

2) Believers’ status changes from slaves to friends: “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends.” This is a welcome into a new status and relationship. Again, this is astonishing.

3) Unlike Greek or Roman notions of friendship, such a change of status does not depend on being virtuous enough or worthy enough to qualify, rather it is a gift of grace: “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you” (15:16a). This is very good news.

4) As we said in the last question, there is no contradiction between called Jesus’ friends and faithful obedience. Disciples are chosen so that they might “go and bear fruit – fruit that will last” (15:16). Love is transformative.

A Dialogue with Ben Witherington on The Message of Love (21)

This is a repost of a dialogue on Professor Ben Witherington’s blog about my book The Message of Love

336 pages $12.49 paperback on Amazon or £12.99 paperback IVP UK  or £9.99 ebook 

BEN: Let’s reflect a bit on John 15— vine and branches and remaining/abiding. I heard a good sermon about how branches are not called to be sucking the nutrients out of the vine. Rather the way the viticulture actually works is the vine forces its good sap into the branches. All the branches have to do is hang in there!!! That’s an interesting take on ‘abiding’ The title of the sermon (typically American!) was ‘We Are Not Called to be Sap Suckers!!’ Does this fit with your understanding of ‘abiding’? I note that love is a condition for abiding in Christ.

PATRICK: A memorable title for a sermon for sure. And it’s a good image which captures how the vine is the life force, it’s only by remaining connected to it that the disciples will bear fruit (John 15:2, 4–5, 8).

But I think there is more to it than passive ‘hanging in there’. To remain (abide) includes active obedience. John is crystal clear – “If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love” (15:10a). And those commands involve loving each other (15:12, 17). The foot-washing story in John 13 leads up to a new command “love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (13:34).

That love can be commanded feels odd to us Westerners – doesn’t love have to be freely chosen between equals if it is to be authentic? But John has no problem at all linking love with faithful submission to authoritative commands. There is mystery and wonder here. John’s exalted Christology means that the only appropriate response for disciples to Jesus, the Logos and Son of God, is obedience to his commands. This isn’t obedience out of fear, but out of love for the Messiah who gives his life for his friends.

A Dialogue with Ben Witherington on The Message of Love (20)

This is a repost of a dialogue on Professor Ben Witherington’s blog about my book The Message of Love

336 pages $12.49 paperback on Amazon or £12.99 paperback IVP UK  or £9.99 ebook 

BEN: As a Christian pacifist myself, I really resonated with what you say on pp. 172-73, affirming my fellow Methodist Stan Hauerwas’s repeated teachings on such things.

I agree that this is the clear thrust of much of the Sermon on the Mount, and the clear witness of the life of Paul who was converted from violence against the church, to the Gospel of non-violence for the sake of Christ. When Jesus said love your enemies he didn’t mean love them to death by killing them!

Interestingly, Martin Luther King Jr. was finally convinced of this Gospel by reading E. Stanley Jones’ biography of Gandhi when he was in seminary. Jones was a Methodist missionary to India, and a graduate of Asbury college. Recently there was an excellent movie entitled Hacksaw Ridge, which told the story of a pacifist Seventh Day Adventist who served as a medic in the Pacific WWII, who was the first soldier to be allowed to serve in the U.S. Army without carrying or firing a gun. And he rescued many people in battle at Hacksaw Ridge, both friend and foe.

I used to think when I was younger that there’s no way I could serve in the military… but perhaps I could do that, and still serve my country without violating my conscience or the ethic of the Sermon on the Mount. Would you see this as plausible, or as an unhelpful compromise? After all, you could be said to be patching up soldiers so they can go back out and kill some more.

PATRICK: I really wanted to get over how enemy love is not confined to interpreting a line or two from the Sermon on the Mount. What tends to happen then is Jesus’ teaching is reinterpreted as hyperbolic or idealistic. Richard Hays has an excellent discussion in his classic book The Moral Vision of the New Testament of all the attempts made to soften Jesus’ teaching to love our enemies. None of them are convincing.

Jesus’ teaching shapes that of the first Christians – Paul, Peter and the early church. The overwhelming historical evidence is how the pre-Constantinian early Christian movement repudiated killing in all forms – abortion, war and capital punishment. The shift after Constantine (Augustine especially) to legitimize ‘just’ violence in order to suppress heresy or expand Christendom was, in my opinion, a disaster to the witness of the church. Similarly in the 20th century for Reinhold Niebuhr’s theory of ‘just war’.

It isn’t a question of whether Christians are to be violent in certain situations, Jesus calls disciples to be non-violent full stop. Of course this seems crazy, but that’s the point – enemy love is the good itself. It’s the window to life in the upside-down kingdom. I saw Hacksaw Ridge in Dublin a couple of years ago and read up on the story of Desmond Doss on which it was based. While I don’t think I could sign up for the military, his was an inspiring example of how Christian non-violence requires considerable bravery.

A Dialogue with Ben Witherington on The Message of Love (17)

This is a repost of a dialogue on Professor Ben Witherington’s blog about my book The Message of Love

336 pages $12.49 paperback on Amazon or £12.99 paperback IVP UK  or £9.99 ebook 

BEN: On p. 153 you say that discipleship is in the end about who or what we love most dearly? I thought it was about taking up our cross and following Jesus, which I don’t imagine most of us think of that as something we love most dearly. Bonhoeffer famously said when Jesus calls us, he calls us to come and die. Again, that doesn’t sound like something we would be enraptured about. Even Jesus said, if it be possible let this cup pass. Perhaps what you meant was that the one we love most dearly is the one we are the disciple or follower of? Explain.

PATRICK: I’m zoning in on Jesus’ words demanding that disciples love him before any other commitment, even family. This echoes God’s command to Israel to love him with heart, soul and strength (which has Christological implications but that’s another story). Love in this sense is wholehearted allegiance. This is costly love – it’s going to mean self-sacrifice, serving others, being willing to endure persecution. No other ‘gods’ are to get in the way. This is why I argue that discipleship is first and foremost a matter of the heart – which is why I’m sometimes dismayed by ‘cookie cutter’ discipleship programs that seem to be mostly about about information and techniques but assume that our hearts are already rightly orientated. That’s a big assumption, especially in a Western consumer culture.

BEN: There seems to be a clear tension in Jesus’ teaching between the physical or birth family and the family of faith, with the latter getting priority in Jesus’ teaching. Honestly, I don’t know of many churches who really teach or practice life that way. Instead, the church is all about nurturing the nuclear family rather than BEING a family. Where have we gone wrong, and what’s the remedy, do you think?

PATRICK: Jesus is deliberately shocking to his listeners:

“Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matt 10:37).

Contrary to Messianic expectations his ‘sword’ will divide families. Disciples are to love Jesus first, before even our deepest other loves.

This is perhaps one of his hardest sayings, especially in a Western culture that tends to idolize the family as the source of fulfillment and happiness. We invest immense significance in finding the ‘right’ person, and children are a source of ultimate significance to parents. I know I’m generalizing, but I agree with you that the church has bought pretty uncritically into this narrative. The family is seen as the goal, those who don’t fit in are marginalized in a hundred different ways.

A remedy first requires a diagnosis. Once the issue is recognized (and it’s often not) then it’s a question of leadership to teach and model a different narrative within the church family. One that celebrates singleness as much as marriage. One that teaches about marriage NOT as a private relationship between autonomous individuals ‘in love’ who construct their private nuclear family, but a porous relationship that is orientated outwards for the good of others in hospitality, service and friendship.