The Old Testament and the New Perspective on Paul

I ducked out of New Haven just in time!  Left last Thursday for Tennessee to visit the family.  Today the Northeast has been slammed with a blizzard, apparently they are getting a foot to a foot and half of snow in costal Connecticut.  Which will probably still be on the ground when I make it back up there Friday.  But still… I am rather glad to be where I am right now…  We got snow in the south as well, but when we get snow its like a light dusting that lasts for three hours and still manages to shut down entire states… I'm not looking forward to walking to class or to work in a foot of snow come January or February!

While here in TN for Christmas I have been thinking a bit about a topic I haven't really touched in a while- the New Perspective on Paul.  I was very intrigued by this school of thought in undergrad, but honestly after initially studying it and deciding it seemed to make more sense of Paul than most other interpretations I'd read, I didn't really do much with it.  I am far more interested in studying the Old Testament than Paul, and so after an initial fling I kinda moved on from studying this issue critically and did other things.  But lately I've been thinking about it more again.  I had a conversation with a good friend the other day in which I tried, probably not very clearly, to explain the NPP.  Then I just recently read a bunch of blog posts by some New Testament scholars who were at the ETS conference in which Wright and Schreiner went head to head on this issue.  Apparently (I wish I had been there, I need to go find a recording or a transcript of this) Wright made some comment that they took as a concession to Schreiner on the issue of Justification.  I love (in the most drippingly sarcastic way possible) how so many Evangelical theologians just assume that they have all of theology figured out; many of the posts took the form of smugly congratulating Wright on his seeing the light and correcting prior statements… Then today I heard a sermon that I think perfectly encapsulated some of the difficulties of the "popular"  Reformed position that motivate a lot of my reasons for being interested in the NPP.

So here is a basic argument for why I think the NPP is a preferable interpretation of Paul.  Two disclaimers before we go any farther.  First, I am dealing primarily with what I understand as the "popular" interpretation of Paul in Reformed, Evangelical circles where the NPP is being met with the most hostility.  Many scholars in the Reformed tradition would not face some of the issues I am raising, but I am not nearly ambitious enough right now to take them on in all the nuances of their ivory towers.  So we are keeping this post on the popular level.  Second, I am not making a traditional presentation of the NPP, which centers on interpreting Paul in a first century context in light of what we know of Second Temple Judaism.  Fascinating as all of that is, I don't know enough about it to deal with it in any sort of rigorous way.  But I have spent a good amount of time studying the Old Testament, and so what I am arguing for is a reading of Paul from the perspective of the Old Testament.

The typical "popular" interpretation of Paul in Evangelical circles reflects a particular way of systematizing the Reformers.  Reformers like Luther and Calvin were responding to particular abuses in Catholic theology such as the selling of indulgences and the excessive homage to relics which were really in many ways political ploys by the Medieval Church.  Convince the people that they can only reach heaven by doing certain works that are only available through the Church and you suddenly have quite a bit of political power over the populace.  In contrast, Luther and Calvin want to emphasize the role of Faith over Works- jumping through the hoops laid out by the Catholic Church was not the road to Salvation, the road to Salvation was found in Christ alone, and was accessed through your faith in Christ, not any particular action or ceremony performed by the clergy or yourself.  Now its important to note that none of the major Reformers took this to mean that we should do away with all the ceremonies of the Church.  Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin all still baptized infants. They all offered Mass to their congregations.  They just wanted to do so in a way that emphasized that the action of being baptized or of receiving communion did not itself grant you salvation.  Your faith was what led you to God, the actions you took as part of that faith were just acts if not accompanied by such faith.

I can't speak much for the development of Lutheran thought since the Reformation, but I have spent a good amount of time studying the development of the Reformed tradition that followed from Calvin.  In that tradition a particular emphasis on systematizing doctrine has been present for a long time that has led to a number of splits- for instance, the divide between Calvinists and Arminians and Wesleyans.  Particularly in Evangelical Circles there has developed a theology known as Dispensationalism.  Dispensationalism in many ways pits the New Testament against the Old Testament.  It takes a rhetorical move of Martin Luther and turns it into a systematic understanding of the relationship between the two parts of the Bible.  In this understanding, the Old Testament really does offer the possibility of Salvation to anyone who can keep the whole law.  However, as Paul kindly informs us, this is not possible because we are all sinners.  Therefore, we are in need of a savior who has kept the whole law perfectly and therefore nullified it.  Now our salvation is not dependent on the keeping of the law, it is dependent on our faith in Christ who has kept it for us.  This plays nicely into the substitutionary model of the atonement and an imputed model of grace, both of which are very important to Calvinist doctrines of salvation.  So in Evangelical Reformed theology, even among those that explicitly deny being dispensational, we can see a heavy influence of dispensational thinking on the understanding of how the Old Testament and New interact and relate to one another.  Thus, the ideas of faith and works are radically opposed to one another. 

We can immediately pose a question: where do works fit into this schema? 

The Reformers would, as far as I understand them, all want to say that out of our faith grows a desire to do good works of worship and service to God.  This was a natural result of faith they would say, and its absence pointed to an absence of faith.  Under the influence of dispensational thought in Evangelical circles this becomes a bit more murky.  The Old Testament law and prophets have generally been almost completely disregarded in a way that to me seems dangerously close to the ancient heresy of Marcion.  Sure, Jesus restates the law in the commandments to love God and neighbor.  But far too often in Evangelical circles there has been a tendency to interpret "love" of God and neighbor in a way that rings of the ancient heresy of Gnosticism- the best way to love someone is to convert them so as to save their soul, their body being completely disregarded, and turn them to worshipping God through going to Church, the ultimate expression of love toward God (never mind Jesus' own statements about God desiring service more than ritual).  This very shallow understanding of what love means, this utter disregard for the Old Testament, has been the source of a lot of my frustration growing up in and studying in Evangelical circles (though thankfully I don't think anyone on faculty at the Evangelical college I graduated from would have argued for either of these things).  It also, I think, creates some serious difficulties for the popular understanding of Paul.  If Paul is really pitting faith against works, then where do works fit in at all?  Once we read on from Romans 3 to Romans 6, where Paul says we should not continue in sin, we should not continue to break the law, what do we do?  The tendency has been towards a tedious legalism with the repeated, conflicting emphasis: Christians don't do these certain things.  Likewise, we are sinners who in fact do these things and need grace because we can't not do them on our own.  I remember reading something by John Piper about movies in which he explained why he doesn't watch a good many moves.  His claim was that it was because he was weak and sinful and didn't want to expose himself to temptation.  Yet that same weak sinfulness is why he is dependent on God and not himself for salvation.  This is not a formal contradiction of doctrine.  But practically, I think this results in a feeling of being caught hanging over a precipice with your feet on one ledge and your hands on another and not being sure which ledge to jump for.

In dealing with these issues I think the New Perspective offers a far better understanding of Paul that also reads from the direction of the Old Testament toward the New.  The starting point, which, interestingly, has been clearly argued for by Walt Kaiser, a very respected, Evangelical scholar of the Old Testament who as far as I know would not claim to be a proponent of the NPP, is that there is no hypothetical offer of Salvation in the Old Testament.  Perfectly obeying the law does not result in salvation.  From the perspective of the Old Testament, the law is given to those who already have Salvation!  The rescued people of Israel, formed into a covenant as God's chosen people, are given the law to set them apart from the rest of the world, to maintain their status as God's people.  In contrast with the "popular" Reformed reading, having been influenced by Dispensational theology, which reads the Old Testament as in opposition to the New, the New Perspective maintains this reading of the Old Testament on its own terms and argues that Paul's issue is not with the idea that you earn your Salvation via doing the law but with the idea that the only people who have Salvation are the ones set apart by the law- the Jews.  Instead, through Jesus Christ the path to Justification has been opened to all who participate in Christ by faithfully serving Him through the New Covenant that he has formed.  Following the logic of the Old Testament, the people of God are still a people that are marked as different, but the mark is not participation in the particular rituals of the Old Testament- Sabbath keeping, Circumcision, Kosher food laws, etc- but the faithful continuation of the mission of Christ through the life of the Church. 

It is important to keep in mind the logic of the Old Testament covenant when considering the Pauline concept of salvation and the law.  Paul is certainly not saying that we earn our salvation by doing the law or by doing any good works.  Paul is addressing those who are recipients of salvation, who through their baptism are already included in the community of Christ.  His argument is that these people do not now need to take on the stipulations of the Jewish law.  They are already part of God's community.  Instead, they need to embody the covenant Jesus had established, to obey in the same way that Israel was instructed to obey at Sinai.  They were already out of Egypt, they were already circumcised members of the covenant community.  Then they received the law which they were instructed to obey, not to merit their position but to mark their position as set apart from those outside the community.  Paul envisions a similar logic for the Church, but centered on the person of Christ and not on the Old Testament covenant.

I think this NPP reading makes better sense of the continuity between the Old Testament and the New.  I also think it makes better sense of the role works play in the life of a Christian.  It is not that they are required to become a Christian.  But they are required to be a faithful Christian fulfilling the calling of Christ.  In that sense I don't think what the NPP is doing is any different from what the Reformers wanted to argue for, but it states it more clearly by distancing itself from a view of the law too influenced by dispensational developments in Reformed theology.  Rather than seeing faith and works in opposition to one another, the NPP wants to see them as in cooperation with one another in the same way as the they were in the logic of the Old Testament:  Faith in God for what God has already done leads to obedience of the commands God gives to us.

Merry Christmas!!

"The people walking in darkness
   have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness
   a light has dawned." 

                                   - Isaiah 9:2 (NIV)

¹⁰ “Hear the word of the LORD, you nations;
   proclaim it in distant coastlands:
‘He who scattered Israel will gather them
   and will watch over his flock like a shepherd.’
¹¹ For the LORD will deliver Jacob
   and redeem them from the hand of those stronger than they.
¹² They will come and shout for joy on the heights of Zion;
   they will rejoice in the bounty of the LORD—
the grain, the new wine and the olive oil,
   the young of the flocks and herds.
They will be like a well-watered garden,
   and they will sorrow no more.
¹³ Then young women will dance and be glad,
   young men and old as well.
I will turn their mourning into gladness;
   I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow.
 

                                  - Jeremiah 31:10-13 (NIV)

Dabbling in Political Philosophy...

Just finished my first semester at Yale Divinity School!  As exhausting as it was, I am apparently a glutton for punishment on three counts:  first, I am signed up for five more semesters.  Second, next semester I am planning to take an incredible looking class called History and Methods of Old Testament Interpretation which will involve reading Hebrew, which I do nominally, meaning over the break I need to do some serious brushing up on said nominal skills…  Third, the other project I have for myself this break is reading through an anthology of Continental Philosophy, a subject that has interested me for a long time but that I have not taken the time to really intently study before now.  That last point is tangentially related to this post…  In reading a short little essay by Friedrich Holderlin I came upon a passage that I think helps work through some musings I have had lately on political philosophy.

So right up front I need to say here that I am not a political philosopher. Which is not to say that I am totally ignorant of political philosophy, I have read a decent amount of Locke and Mill and Rousseau and a smattering of other documents.  I have spent a lot of time studying the related field of economic philosophy and a decent amount of time looking at actual government structures around the world.  But all that gives me is a limited knowledge of the classical political liberalism which got the US started and a somewhat cynical view of how that has played out since then.  So I am admitting now that I am almost completely ignorant of developments in political philosophy proper since the framing of the Constitution.  So take these comments for what they are worth, which may not be much at all.

However, in my limited knowledge, I am deeply suspicious of the social contract theory behind classical political liberalism.  The idea of the nation as a collection of individuals who voluntarily form themselves into a political entity seems to me inescapably destined toward political instability. The voluntary creation of a social contract assumes the existence of common interests between the members who form this contract.  The persistence of that contract seems dependent on the continued existence of those interests, a situation that cannot be guaranteed when the contract is formed.  Thus, inherent in the idea of this contract is the logic of the Declaration of Independence- that when this condition- the promotion of shared interests- is no longer met the contract can be dissolved and a new one formed.  This idea seems incredibly problematic- first, what government will willingly be dissolved to form other governments?  This can only happen through some sort of revolution, and revolutions are usually bloody, horrifying affairs.  Second, there is a persistent question at least in my reading of any social contract theory: what constitutes an interest that warrants separation?  For the American colonies it was decidedly economic.  For many states it has been ethnic or religious.  For some it has just been the principle of self-determination, a conspicuously Western, Liberal principle.  At any rate, that decision likewise seems to be one that is bound to change with time, and then what?  Another revolution?  We are quickly here creating a world where more and more revolutions produce more and more small states that can barely stand on their own.  To me it seems that social contract theory pushes us farther and farther and farther in the direction of anarchy.

 More or less this is what seemed to happen in American history under the Articles of Confederation.  The resulting instability was nearly paralyzing for the young nation, and so a new Constitution was formed that actually gave the state some teeth.  In doing so, it began a necessary shift away from the idea of a social contract.  That move was complete the second that President Lincoln declared the Southern States in rebellion and in need of being put down.  The logic of the Declaration of Independence had, at that point, been effectively discarded.

Now, I am inclined to say that Lincoln was right to discard this logic.  If the voluntary union can be dissolved whenever members feel as though their interests are not being met then the Union was a hoax that would soon be uncovered, and my counter-factual suggestion is that there would be no United States today.  Some might argue that would be for the better.  I am inclined to think that at least for those living in the present day United States it is far, far better to have a strong, effective central government in place than whatever alternative might exist.    But the question that exists for those in the Modern, Liberal West is how a state can function, or even come into existence, without this idea of a social contract?

My suggestion is based on the Greek word from which we get the term "monarchy."  In Greek, this is a combination of "mono"- meaning "one"- and "arche"- meaning "source."  In theological terms, this was used in earlier Trinitarian debates to refer to the Monarchy of the Father- the Father as the "one source" of the Godhead, the idea being there is not in the Trinity some "fourth thing" called "divine essence" which the three persons participate in, but the divine essence has its source in the person of the Father and the other two persons are generated from this source.  I think this idea can carry over into political philosophy- a state is not brought into existence by a social contract that might meet the needs of its members at the time of its conception but be worthless ten years later (a situation France seems to regularly grapple with…).  A state exists because of a sense of shared identity between people- it stems from a common or single source of identity which unites them.  That identity is then attached to some institution or document which "defines" the nation and its continued existence.  In Britain, this takes the literal form of a monarchy.  In America, I would content, this has taken the form of the Constitution.  It is around the Constitution that the people of America form their identity and it is to the Constitution that all the various sides appeal whenever a major dispute arises in American political discourse. 

Now, the liberal, Western criticism of this model of national identity as I have sketched it is that there is no need for the highly valued freedoms of a Western Democracy.  We can share in a common identity without having freedom of religion or of the press or even the right to vote.  For most of history this was likely the case, in fact.  Yet we inherently want to say that these freedoms are good.  In my own writings I have struggled with a bit of tension on this point.  In an earlier post I have said that true freedom is not freedom to choose whatever we want to do but responsibility for the kind of person that we are and the kind of society we create, a freedom that cannot be denied by any political or economic system.  Yet, I say in that same post that many of the freedoms of choice we enjoy in the West are good things.  How do I make sense of this?  Here is where Holderlin comes in.  Holderlin is exploring the idea of consciousness, and as he draws to his conclusion, he makes a very interesting statement: 

"how is self-consciousness possible? In opposing myself to myself, separating myself from myself, yet in recognizing myself as the same in the opposed regardless of this separation."

We recognize ourselves by separating ourselves from ourselves, as it were, to critically examine ourselves.  To move beyond what Holderlin says, though he may not have any disagreement with the direction we are going, we could say that this self-examination, this separation from ourselves to examine ourselves, is how we approach moral improvement.  And it is in that idea that I think we find a role for the freedoms we are concerned with in the West.  Freedom of speech or of the press or the freedom to vote in a free election is not so much an outgrowth of a social contract as it is of the people who identify themselves as a nation separating themselves from that identity to critically evaluate it and by so doing push it toward moral improvement.  A nation who lacks these freedoms is not lacking a basis for its state-hood so much as it is denying itself a mechanism for self-improvement.

Why We Need Both Liberals and Conservatives in the Church

Lately, I've been reflecting a bit on a kinda ironic turning of the tables.  When I was at Southeastern, I found that generally I was one of the more liberal-minded students.  Now that I am at Yale, I am discovering that I am among the more conservative students here, which is a bit of an odd role for me.  What I am realizing, however, is that the Church needs people from both sides of that divide.  Here are two reasons, I think:

1. For the sake of maintaining an effective Christian witness, we need "progressives."  I think it is very true that the Church has to change as the times change.  We have to deal with the changing, fluid reality of the society in which we live.  To do that we need people who are raising the problems our society faces within the walls of the Church, forcing the Church to rethink its stances and reengage the world.  For the Church to maintain a "prophetic witness" this has to occur.

2. For the sake of maintaining Christian identity, we need conservatives.  As significant as the progressive agenda is for the life of the Church in a changing society, progressives have a tendency, I think, to loose sight of where they have been for the vision of where they want to go.  That can be dangerous.  We need to address the problems of our day.  But we need to address them as Christians, not invent a new "church" that doubles as a solution for the political issues we face.  There is a particular identity that we take part in as Christians, and to loose that identity to any agenda is not something to be taken lightly.  Conservatives are more focused on maintaining that identity (sometimes too focused on that), and so they can act as an anchor to more progressive minded individuals to prevent that identity being lost to whatever cause is being championed.

Essentially what I'm saying amounts to a claim that Christian thinking about any issue should come from a dialogue, a holding in tension of various viewpoints, in order to arrive at some sort of consensus.  Historically I think this is how the Church has thought about a variety of issues, and generally it has been the case that extremes at both ends of the spectrum have been rejected in exchange for a more moderate (and often more open ended) conclusion.  I'm also claiming that to maintain this sort of dialogue, unity is an extremely important goal (and I realize, writing that as a Protestant, that we have some serious work to do on that front).  What bothers me more and more in the "progressive" circles in which I now find myself is that dialogue is often seen as worthless and irrelevant.  "It's our way or the highway" seems to be the order of the day, and then ironically any claim to disagree is seen as bigotry and narrow-mindedness.  My contention is that dialogue is important for our own self-understanding as well as for progress to be made in the Church.  Thinking about our society as a whole, it wasn't until segregation was ended and the two sides were forced to mingle with one another that real progress was made on the issue of racism in this country.  I think analogously, if an agenda is pressed to the point that it forces a division, there will be no progress made.  The arguments for each side will become more entrenched and without any counterbalance the rhetoric more politically charged and the hope of a solution less and less realistic.  Unity is something that we as Christians need to strive for, unity in spite of disagreement, so that we can sharpen and encourage one another to be more and more effective in our distinctively Christian witness to the world.

Freedom vs. Autonomy

Coming back to a well worn topic.  But just recently read a discussion by Rahner on this issue and so have been thinking about it a bit more.  Also, paper that I wrote for a conference last year on free-will is about to be published in a journal put out by Yale!  So musing again on the issue of free-will:

Freedom needs to be contrasted from brute autonomy.  Typically, especially when the idea of free-will is being critiqued, this distinction is collapsed, which I think is an illegitimate, straw-man argument.  Brute autonomy is the supposed "ability to do otherwise," the claim that at any particular junction, any point where we have to make a decision, we can actually choose either option that seems to be available to us.  The critic of free-will argues that such an ability, such a "contra-causal freedom," results in the denial of all influences and collapses into a kind of nihilism in which the world is a fantasy of our own making.  The critique is, I think, a good one.  But I don't think it addresses true freedom.

Karl Rahner makes a very helpful distinction between the transcendent essence of our being and the categorical accidents of history in which our being is situated.  Rahner is operating within a Kantian framework- there is a difference between the world as it is and the world as we perceive it.  The real realm of reality is transcendent to us because we are perpetually subjective beings- we always see things from our own first person perspective which means that we have no way of objectively knowing how things actually are beyond ourselves.  Our essential being falls into this category, Rahner argues.  Our lives as we perceive them are categorical- they exist in a particular historical situation and are mediated through particular actions which we perceive from our subjective,  first person, perspective.  But this perspective is not who we actually are.  Who we actually are, what makes up our essential being, is transcendent.

The ins-and-outs of the metaphysics of that claim are not particularly important to the point that I want to make.  Rahner may or may not be right about his metaphysical musings, I'm not going to hazard a guess on that right now.  However, what I think he does accomplish is a very interesting distinction in terms of how we can view freedom.  Freedom, Rahner wants to argue, and I want to agree, is the ability to mold who we are in our essence and thus to be responsible for who we are in the deepest part of our being.  This has, actually, very little to do with the individual actions that make up our life.  Many of those actions are not "free" in the sense of autonomy.  In fact, what Rahner is arguing is very similar to Robert Kane's model of Libertarian freedom in which our freedom comes out in a few "self-forming actions" in which the course of our lives hits a significant cross road and we must make a decision that will shape many future decisions, in effect a decision about the kind of person we will be or the kind of life we will live.  This is, more or less, what I think Rahner is getting at (and it is a distinction that I think can stand apart from his metaphysical claims about the person).  It is not that we are completely without influence in the decisions that we make, it is not that our actions are marked by a kind of "contra-causal freedom" but that our essence, what makes us who we are, is something that we are ultimately responsible for.  Freedom, then, is most basically equated with responsibility for one's self.

Two implications from what we have said thus far:

First, a clever compatibalist will try to come back at this point and say "that is exactly what we think!"  They would argue that responsibility for ourselves, the freedom that I am describing, does not require any "alternative possibilities" to ever exist- that we can maintain this kind of freedom while also maintaining that God has ordained (or determined) every event that will ever happen.  Two responses have to be made.  One is that I don't think compatibalism works on a strictly philosophical level.  That will have to be saved for another post, but essentially I think compatibalism faces a dilemma of either ultimately denying personal responsibility (because God will determine our essential selves, not us) or with reducing our essential selves to a meaningless, epiphenomenal existence.  The second response is what the main thrust of my paper is about, which is that I do not believe we can be rational without alternative possibilities.  Most people, I think, would agree that rationality is a pretty essential part of how we determine who we are and in how we understand the world in general.  Eliminating rationality, I think, results in an absurdity that makes any sort of determinism invalid.

Second, and the real point that I want to make in this post, is that this freedom is not a "goal" to be obtained but an essential fact of our being.  We are responsible for the kinds of persons we are.  This cannot be denied by any political or economic system.  No external force can eradicate this essential freedom.  The Modern, Western project of establishing "free" political or economic systems, then, is not so much based on establishing freedom, which already exists, as in establishing brute autonomy which I would argue is in many senses neither possible nor necessary.  The history of "free" and "Modern" Western societies is marred by a great many tragedies- racism and genocide stand out prominently among them- which act as explicit denials of the brute autonomy on which these societies are supposedly founded.  The impact of making these societies "free" is to say that the responsibility for the character of these societies lies explicitly on all the members of the society and not merely on a few.  Yet I would argue that this description exists inherently in the society because the people who make it up already posses that freedom regardless of how oppressive or "coercive" their political environment is (and, ironically,  whenever the character of the society changes for the good, it is usually the result of a few people taking responsibility for changing their society and not a society wide change in attitude).  Now am I attempting to justify a communist/authoritarian dictatorship through this comment?  Certainly not.  What I am saying, however, is that what makes a healthy society is not the explicit creation of freedom in the sense of brute autonomy.  What makes a healthy society is when the inherent freedom that people already posses is used constructively to build a better society for others.  Freedom is not the goal, it is the presupposition which enables other goals to be set and accomplished.  And that presupposition exists in any and every situation around the world- it is inherent in being a person.  This also means that inherent in being a person is responsibility for what kind of person we become and what kind of society we create.