The Upper Register Blog

John M. G. Barclay, “Why the Roman Empire Was Insignificant to Paul” (continued)

I continue my notes of John Barclay’s lecture critiquing N. T. Wright and the “Paul and Empire” coalition. Again, these are very close but not exact quotes, except as indicated by the use of block-quotes. The previous post was Barclay’s negative statement in which he showed Paul’s lack of interest in the Roman Empire. Now he turns to a positive statement of the drama of history according to Paul and the place of the Roman Empire within that drama.

Positively: The drama of history according to Paul

The main players in this drama are the Spirit and grace, on the one hand, and sin, flesh, and death, or what Paul calls “the powers,” on the other. The Roman Empire is not itself one of these powers, because they operate across all levels simultaneously – individual, social, political, cosmic. Like any empire, the Roman Empire may be co-opted in whole or in part into the ranks of the sons of darkness, but only as an undifferentiated mass whose identity is determined by its allegiance to the powers. Paul’s most subversive act vis-à-vis the Roman Empire was not to oppose it but to relegate it to the ranks of a dependent and derivative entity and to deny it any significance.

We are at a loss at how to categorize the powers such as sin, flesh, and death:

If we call them “cosmic,” it sounds like they are otherworldly, whereas they operate very much in human lives on the earthly stage. If we call them “anthropological,” we lose the sense that they cover the whole gamut of existence – from the sin of lust, to social disintegration, to the corruption and decay that infests the whole cosmos … We have to reckon with comprehensive features of reality covering all levels and dimensions of existence … Following the Greek term archai [”powers”] I shall label this mode of world-description “archic.” These entities are both the principles behind and the powers over every sphere of life. In this sense, there is nothing in this world that is not archic, lining up on one side of the battle or the other. [Minute 24]

Romans 5:12-21. The reign of grace versus the reign of death. The power that has reconfigured the world in Christ sweeps away old divisions, crosses ethnic, social, and political boundaries and creates new boundaries. Formerly, Paul divided the world between Jews and Gentiles. Now he divides the world between those who are being saved and those who are on the way to destruction. Paul saw no interesting or archic differences between Romans and Greeks, only between this present cosmos and the new creation. The crucifixion is what creates this new distinction. The cross divides the world anew.

Paul’s Christ-shaped communities have a radically new understanding of power – not force but service of the other. They are controlled by the love of Christ. These communities do not return evil for evil. They welcome one another as Christ has welcomed them. They strive for peace not warfare. They provide a socio-political alternative, a sign against and a bridgehead into the realm of sin and death.

Undoubtedly Paul saw many fleshly and sinful aspects of the Roman Empire, indeed of all nations and even of the church itself. The battle-line between flesh and Spirit does not pass neatly between the Roman Empire and the rest, because the archic division is pervasive and affects the whole of humanity.

Paul never names any of the idols, not because he’s never heard of Artemis, Dionysus, Serapis, Jupiter, Caesar, or the deified emperors, but because they all reflect the same thing, deflection of worship from the Creator. The emperors and their cult are simply further items in a general category of “many lords and many gods” [1 Cor 8:5], no more significant than any other. There was no need to single any one out. They are all eidololatria [“idolatry”].

Although the present contest is certainly intense, fought out at every level from inner temptation to social conflict to cosmic warfare, Paul knows that the victory won in the cross and resurrection has sealed the fate of the opponents of Christ. With a striking use of the present tense, he declares that “the form of this world is passing away” (paragei) [1 Cor 7:31], and can assure believers that “the night is far gone, the day is at hand” [Rom 13:12]. The stoicheia tou kosmou [”the elemental forces of the world,” Gal 4:3; Col 2:8, 20], powerful and wealthy as they might seem, are shown to be weak and abjectly impoverished (asthene kai ptocha) [Gal 4:9] in the light of the power of the cross and the resurrection and in comparison to the charis [”grace”] of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the wake of the cross of Christ, the rulers of this age are being nullified or de-activated (katargoumenon) [1 Cor 2:6], as is the whole structure of the present state of affairs.

These rulers, we note, are nameless and undifferentiated, because what matters about them is not whether it was this king or that governor who crucified the Lord of glory, but that they belong to this age whose obsolescence and inadequacy is defined by the work of God in Christ. Their defining characteristic is not that they are Roman or Hellenistic or Jewish or whatever. When we hear that they are rulers of this age, that’s all we need to know, because we then know that and how they are on the wrong side, and that and how they are being de-activated by Christ.

In the midst of this crumbling present age, believers can live to their Lord in every sphere of life, since he is the Lord of the cosmos in every dimension, the only Lord who will last. With the hos me [“as if not”] policy of involved detachment [”those who are married should live as if they were not,” etc., 1 Cor 7:29-31], they know that only the work of the Spirit will survive the collapse of the present evil age.  What is of the flesh even in their own lives will be burned up, but they will sow to the Spirit in every dimension of their existence – personal, social, and political – as the imminent harvest will be rich. In their worship they anticipate their eschaton, celebrating the grace that has already begun to reconquer and reconstitute the world. [Minutes 30-32]

Stay tuned for the last installment of Barclay’s lecture.

I was present but my memory was fading, so I began listening to the MP3 of the debate between John M. G. Barclay and N. T. Wright on “Paul and Empire” held at SBL in San Diego on Monday afternoon, November 19, 2007. Here are my notes, at times verbatim, from the first 20 minutes of Barclay’s lecture. When I do quote verbatim, I use the block-quote format.

John M. G. Barclay:  “Why the Roman Empire Was Insignificant to Paul”

This is the second round of a fight that started in March earlier this year. Tom and I are old friends. We go back some 28 years. I regard Tom’s work as the most balanced, measured, comprehensive, and theologically developed in the “Paul and Empire” coalition. Yet I regard his thesis as fundamentally wrong.

Areas of agreement with N. T. Wright:

Shared deep suspicion of imperial power, whether Roman, British, or American. Paul does not recognize the boundary between religion and politics. Agreement that we should not consider Paul an apolitical figure with a privatized piety. Paul is very interested in power, but does not line up on either right or left of political spectrum. Agreement that Paul’s gospel is deeply confrontational, the reign of Christ versus his enemies. The cross creates a distinction between this age and the new creation. Endorse Tom’s attempt to integrate Paul’s political thought with the rest of his theology. Agreement that we should learn from Classical scholars that the imperial cult was extremely important for most of Paul’s contemporaries in the form of festivals, games, statues, coins, temples, etc. Even agree that some of Paul’s language (euangelion, soter, kyrios, parousia, ereine, etc.) could have been heard as analogous to the language used in Imperial propaganda. But the question is not how it could have been heard, but how Paul meant it, how he framed and focused it.

Tom reads Paul’s theology as intended to counter the propaganda claims of the Roman Empire, to parody and upstage Caesar, and to undermine the Imperial cult … Tom finds this assault on Rome sometimes explicit, often implicit in Paul’s language and narrative, and occasionally – as in Philippians 3 — in code. I think, to the contrary, that Tom is simply hallucinating [laughter], that there is no evidence that Paul had the Roman Empire or the Imperial cult particularly in view, and that better understood, Paul’s theology is deeply political, but in a way that makes Rome, not a central player in the history of the world, but a bit-part, a member of a largely undifferentiated crowd in a drama governed by much greater and much more pervasive powers. [Minutes 6-7]

Negatively:

There is no evidence that Paul accords special role to Roman emperor. He never refers to any Roman governors or emperors by name, although he does mention King Aratus, thus showing he’s not averse to naming rulers. Paul never refers to Roman deities. He never refers to his Roman citizenship positively or negatively. He never identifies the cross as a Roman punishment. It is the Jews (1 Thess 2:14) or the nameless ”rulers of this age” (1 Cor 2:6-8) who killed Christ. The offence of the cross is drawn out in relation to the Jews and the Greeks, never in relation to the Romans in particular. Paul attributes his punishments and persecutions to the Jews, never to the Roman authorities. When he does refer to civil rulers, they are always anonymous and never specifically identified with Rome.

Tom and others in the ”Paul and Empire” coalition argue that Paul uses “code” or “hidden transcripts.” This whole scenario strikes me as absurd. There is not a single hint in Paul’s writings of a second meaning. Why on earth would Paul need to write in code? Paul’s letters are private communications carried by trusted friends. There were no secret police in Paul’s day opening the early Christians’ mail to look for signs of political insubordination.

What would Paul be saying that needed to be coded? That Caesar is not God or son of God? Philo said so openly and more or less directly to the emperor’s face. That Roman governors were responsible for terrible miscarriages of justice? Josephus says that time and again in public writings that were even presented to emperors. That the empire brings as much war as peace, injustice as justice? Even Tacitus, from the heart of the establishment, can see that and say that in his famed history of Rome. That one should not take part in the Imperial cult? Paul said that in 1 Corinthians with regard to eidolothuta.  Josephus said the cult was useful neither to God nor human beings. The image of Paul as too afraid to say what he thinks strikes me as bizarre. Paul expected persecution. He would hardly have tried to avoid it by speaking in code.

We should learn from the history of exegesis:  the Valentinians teach us that once you start looking for code in Paul, you can end up just about anywhere you want.

At base, Tom’s argument works by inference:  the Roman Empire was so important, Paul must have said something specifically about it. Rome and Caesar must be somewhere in Paul’s letters. We just have to adjust our spectacles. But if we are determined to find it, we will.

You know the story of the little boy in the crowd watching as the emperor paraded down the street in his supposedly new clothes and was bold enough to say, “But the emperor is naked!” I feel like that little boy, only in this case, when I am bidden to watch the emperor walking around Paul’s letters, I rudely blurt out, “But I see no emperor!” [Laughter] Sorry to be so impolite, but I try to tell the truth. 28 years ago you taught me, Tom, in reading the New Testament to pay very close attention to what is actually there and not to read any theologies or history-of-religions backgrounds that have to be imported into the text. I learned well from you during those two enthralling years of Cambridge supervision and I have come back to remind you of your lesson. [Laughter]

But what if Paul has his own peculiar perception of the world? What if the event that dominates history for Paul is not the Roman Empire but the cross and resurrection of Jesus and the new creation that these events inaugurated? What if that event changes Paul’s understanding of history? We have to read Paul’s letters according to his vision of reality, not according to that of his contemporaries.

As I explained in my posts on By Oath Consigned, Kline sees in Scripture two main types of covenants:  law covenants and promise covenants, or, using different but equivalent terminology, covenants of works and covenants of grace.

The most notable instances of law covenants are:  the pre-fall Adamic covenant of works, and the post-fall Mosaic covenant which includes a republication of the works-principle of inheritance with respect to Israel’s retention of the land. There is also the pre-temporal, eternal, intratrinitarian covenant between the Father and the Son, which is similarly founded on the works principle inasmuch as Christ as the second Adam merited the reward on the ground of his obedience-unto-death.

With regard to promise covenants, we think immediately of the Abrahamic covenant, the Davidic covenant, and the New Covenant. Especially with the Abrahamic and Davidic covenants, there are many similarities between them and the ANE royal grant, although we must also bring in the self-maledictory oath for the Abrahamic, an element that is not typically present in royal grants.

Michael Horton broadly follows this Klinean model in his recent books on covenant theology, e.g., God of Promise. With that in mind, I came across this interesting anecdote reported by Scott Clark concerning his colleague on the WSC faculty:

Some might find interesting that, at the recent AAR meetings (American Academy of Religion) in San Diego, Mike asked a renowned semitics scholar if he though that the Royal Grant/Suzerain Treaty approach “works” to explain the two sorts of covenants in Scripture and he said (paraphrasing) “Yes, absolutely.”

I wish Clark provided an attribution for this quote, but it’s nice to hear that at least some Semitics/OT scholars acknowledge the two main types of ANE covenants (royal grant = promise covenant; and suzerainty treaty = law covenant) and are willing to apply the distinction to a biblical theology of the covenants. I don’t recall the details now, but I think Bernhard W. Anderson also supports the application of this distinction to the main biblical covenants in his Contours of Old Testament Theology (1999). 

All of this is tremendously important for providing the background to Paul’s distinction between “law” and “promise” (Rom 4; Gal 3). Paul does not view the Abrahamic covenant and the Mosaic covenant as two continuous administrations of a single covenant of grace but as ”two covenants,” one that (by the efforts of the flesh) bears children who are slaves, the other that (by the power of the Spirit) produces sons who are free (Gal 4:21-31).

Right now I’m almost finished with Francis Watson’s Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (2004) and am delighted to see that he supports this interpretation of Paul’s view of the biblical covenants. Watson speaks of the Pauline “antithesis” between faith and works. He argues by detailed exegesis that Paul derives this antithesis from a careful reading of Scripture itself: “The one who does these things shall live by them” (Lev 18:5) versus “The one who is righteous by faith shall live” (Hab 2:4). Watson speaks of Paul’s “antithetical hermeneutic” (p. 125), the “irreducible twofold content” of Scripture (p. 167), and “the inner-scriptural anomaly of the two incommensurable covenants” (p. 208).

Paul is acutely aware of the tension between the unconditional Genesis promises and the conditional offer of “life” that derives from the law given at Mount Sinai. In the promise, God commits himself unconditionally to future saving action on behalf of Abraham and his seed — an action that will bring blessing to the entire world. In the law, “life” is now conditional on observance of the commandments. (pp. 276-77)

One of the highlights of SBL for me was picking up the new UBS Greek New Testament: A Reader’s Edition at a great price ($28.00 = 60% off the list price of $69.95). Here’s the product description from the Christian Book Distributors site:

Based on the highly-respected United Bible Society text, this Reader’s Edition combines the Bible text of the latest edition of the UBS4 Greek New Testament, along with a running Greek-English Dictionary featuring translations of all vocabulary items occurring less than 30 times in the New Testament on each page, compiled by Barclay M. Newman. Translations are given according to context, definitions of idiomatic word combinations are given, along with a grammatical analysis of all difficult verb forms. This reader-friendly layout enables you to easily transfer from text to dictionary, and an appendix providing translations of all vocabulary items occurring more than 30 times in the New Testament is provided.

In my opinion, this volume is superior to Zondervan’s A Reader’s Greek New Testament, since the UBS version provides parsing information for difficult forms. In addition, some readers complain that the Zondervan edition uses paper so thin that the words from the recto bleed through.

If you want to compare the two, here are some PDF samples from the opening chapters of Matthew:

United Bible Society
Zondervan

Whichever tool you choose, I recommend that pastors and seminary students get one of these and start working their way through the Greek New Testament using my annual plan. A reader’s Greek New Testament will considerably reduce the pain of actually looking up every word you don’t immediately recognize (which, BTW, is still a worthwhile exercise, since a good lexicon like BDAG provides extended definitions and a broader picture of the semantic range of each word).

New Year’s resolutions are just around the corner. Make 2008 the year that you read through the Greek New Testament. Even if you do not fully understand every form or every construction, it’s still worthwhile to literally read the sounds of the Greek words, with whatever degree of comprehension you are able to muster. With merely one year of Greek study and a tool like this, you can do it! Don’t be intimidated. Your knowledge of the New Testament from years of reading the English Bible will assist you. Even if you miss 90% of the hard constructions this year, when you try it again next year you’ll have more time to stop and look some of them up, and gain another 10% of comprehension. And the year after that, you’ll gain another 10%, etc. 

There is no greater delight in Bible study than reading God’s word as he gave it, unmediated through translation. The person and work of Jesus Christ as announced by the apostles in the pages of the New Testament is the pinnacle of divine revelation (Heb 1:1-2). What a gift that we can have direct access to the apostles’ doctrine.

Today I listened to one of the MP3’s that I linked to in my previous post, N. T. Wright’s lecture titled “God in Public: The Bible and Politics in Tomorrow’s World.” It was an invited lecture delivered on Sunday afternoon, November 18, 2007, at SBL in San Diego. I think this lecture helps to explain some crucial things about Wright’s theology. One thing that struck me was the similarities between Wright and Brian McLaren. This shouldn’t be surprising since McLaren is heavily dependent on Wright’s books, particularly Jesus and the Victory of God.

First, Wright states that his theological writings about Jesus and Paul have inherently political implications. Wright’s theology and Wright’s politics are a package deal. If you like his theology, but you aren’t too keen on his anti-American politics, then you might want to go back and rethink the theology. 

I’ve gotten used by now to getting plaintive emails from people saying things like, ‘We like what you write about Jesus and the resurrection. We are fascinated by what you say on Paul. But why are you so critical of our president?’ [Laughter] But my answer normally has to take the form, ‘If you actually read what I say about Jesus […?…] understand what Paul was on about, you have to take the questions of God in public seriously in a whole new way.’ … Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are all in their various ways about ‘God in public,’ about the kingdom of God coming on earth as in heaven through the public career and death and resurrection of Jesus. [Minute 12]

Second, he defines the kingdom of God so that the accent falls on saving the world, the creation, while the salvation of “individual souls” gets subordinated: 

Yes, Jesus did indeed launch God’s saving sovereignty on earth as in heaven, but this couldn’t be accomplished without his death and resurrection. In other words, the problem for which God’s kingdom project was and is the answer was deeper than could be addressed by a social program alone. Equally too, yes, Jesus did die for our sins, but his whole agenda of dealing with sin and its effects and consequences was never about rescuing individual souls from the world but about saving humans so that they could become part of his project of saving the world. [Minute 22] 

Third, Wright argues that the death, resurrection, and lordship of Christ inaugurated the eschaton, thereby entrusting to earthly rulers the duty of anticipating the new creation here and now, what he calls “restorative justice.” His proof text in support of this theory is Psalm 2, the same passage appealed to by Reformed theocrats of various stripes. He then says: 

Jesus was hailed as already Lord of heaven and earth, and in particular as the one through whom the Creator God will restore and unite all things. And this gives a sharp focus to the present task of earthly rulers … Now, since Jesus’ death and resurrection … they are to look forward … to the ultimate eschaton. One day God will right all wrongs through Jesus, and earthly rulers – whether or not they acknowledge this Jesus and his coming kingdom – in fact are entrusted with the task of anticipating in a measure that final judgment and final mercy … They are to enact in a measure, in advance, the time when God will make all things new and will once again declare that it’s very good. [Minutes 37-38]

Fourth, the church’s role is to remind the earthly rulers of their obligation to enact Jesus’ victory here and now and to call the earthly rulers to account when they fall short:

Along with this vision of God working through earthly rulers there goes a vocation to the church to be the people through whom the rulers are to be reminded of their task and called to account … Part of the way in which the church will do this is by getting on with and setting forward those works of justice and mercy, of beauty and relationship, which the rulers know in their bones ought to be flourishing but which they seem powerless to bring about … Thus, the church in its biblical commitment to doing ‘God in public’ is called to learn how to collaborate without compromise (hence the importance of the common good theory) and to critique without dualism … The aim of this lecture, then, is to encourage readings of the Bible which by highlighting the public-ness of God and the gospel set forward such reforms as will enable the church to play its part in holding the powers to account and thus advancing God’s restorative justice. [Minutes 38, 40, 45]

My main objection to this view of politics is that it conflates the city of God with the city of man to the detriment of clarity with regard to both. Wright views the kingdom of God as not really being about the salvation of the elect on the basis of the atoning death of Christ applied to sinners through effectual calling in the context of the preaching of the gospel. Though personal salvation is included, it is only a means to the end of helping God finish his project of restoring creation. Wright is correct to interpret the kingdom of God in a creational context, but he is wrong in his over-realized eschatology which assumes that the new creation is advancing quite publicly even prior to the eschaton in the physical creation, in society, and in the political realm. This is exactly the opposite of Jesus’ teaching concerning the hidden nature of the kingdom in its present pre-eschatological phase. In so doing, he denigrates the spiritual, largely non-public, hidden-from-view activities of God’s Spirit in effectually calling the elect, justifying them by imputing the satisfaction and righteousness of Christ to them, and progressively sanctifying them in Christ-like character and personal obedience. The redemption of larger societal structures is more interesting to Wright.

By the same token, Wright sacralizes the city of man so that it loses its character as part of God’s common-grace, non-holy order for the provision of a temporary field upon which the operations of soteric grace may be played out via the gospel mission of the church. Common grace is the key here! Kline has taught us that God established a common grace order that began after the fall and which will be terminated at the second coming. Civil rulers belong to this common grace order. They are neither sacred nor sinful, although individual rulers can usurp god-like prerogatives and become sinful, even Satanic in their opposition to the kingdom of God. But as ordained by God civil rulers are merely given to promote temporal justice, to protect the life, liberty, and property of its citizens. They are not agents of the eschatological kingdom. They are not means of bringing in the eschaton.

Finally, Wright never shows that the New Testament anywhere “entrusts” to earthly political rulers this supposed duty of anticipating the eschatological new creation by means of restorative justice. He appeals to Psalm 2, but no New Testament texts, to support his view that Christ uses civil rulers to bring in his kingdom here on earth, visibly, and in the concrete structures of society outside the visible church. (BTW, Psalm 2 must be interpreted eschatologically, in accordance with the apostolic hermeneutic attested in Acts 4:24-30 and elsewhere.)  

I still plan to post on the Wright vs. Barclay debate on “Paul and Empire,” which will shed further light on Wright’s view of the relation of God and politics.

A Duke grad student named Andy Rowell recorded these SBL sessions in MP3 format:

(1) Bauckham’s response to Kloppenborg, Collins, and Crossley re. his book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. The critics’ comments are not included.

(2) N. T. Wright, God in Public: The Bible and Politics in Tomorrow’s World. I didn’t attend this session, but I heard it was packed and that the Bishop’s talk was met with rapturous applause.

(3) The debate between N. T. Wright and John M. G. Barclay, in two parts:

Paul and Empire, part 1
Paul and Empire, part 2

Here are my memories of my third and final day at SBL (Monday). Although the conference actually ended on Tuesday, I had to leave early for work.

On Monday morning, I went to hear Ross Wagner and Francis Watson give erudite papers on Paul’s use of Isaiah. Wagner’s talk was less interesting to me than Watson’s. Watson argued that Paul interpreted the Suffering Servant of deutero-Isaiah as referring to Jesus as Messiah. This is a debated point in NT scholarship, and I think he did a good job of making the case. He then showed that Paul (or perhaps the primitive community before him) interpreted the death of Christ as in some sense “for our sins” by utilizing the categories and even vocabulary contained in the LXX of Isa 53. It wasn’t entirely clear whether Watson was arguing for penal substitutionary atonement, but he came close and, when presssed by a respondent, did not wish to deny it. 

I think Watson’s paper was on the whole persuasive, but I would have wanted him to be more clear on penal substitution. Also, I agree with Seyoon Kim that Paul’s theology has three sources:  (1) the Damascus Christophany, (2) the traditions about the words and deeds of Jesus handed down by the primitive Palestinian church, and (3) both interpreted in light of the Scriptures of Israel. Watson tends to attribute the origin of Paul’s theology to Scripture alone and downplays the role of the Damascus Christophany and the Jesus tradition.

Watson claims that the early church took the negative event of Jesus’ death as a criminal and turned it into a positive thing (”for our sins”) by interpreting the cross in light of Scripture, especially Isa 53. I don’t doubt that the Scriptures played a huge role in providing the categories for interpreting the death of Christ as having saving significance. But I disagree with Watson to the extent that he seemed to be arguing that the death of Jesus was viewed as entirely negative until a later point (years later?) when it was transformed into something positive by the church as it reflected on the cross in light of Scripture. This is problematic for me because it either downplays or entirely neglects the role of Jesus’ own teaching concerning his death as a saving event:  (1) the famous “ransom” saying of Mark 10:45 || Matt 20:28, (2) the several passion predictions, and (3) the cup-saying at the last supper in which he spoke of “the blood of the covenant which is poured out for many.” The authenticity of these sayings of Jesus is, of course, disputed. But I would have liked to hear Watson explain why he neglected them. Is it because he thinks they’re not authentic? Or it is because he thinks they’re authentic but does not interpret them as expressing atonement theology?

In any case, it seems to me that a theology of Jesus’ death as having saving significance can be traced back to Jesus himself and did not only arise years afterward as the early church tried to grapple with the death of their Messiah. The disciples, to be sure, did not grasp the significance of Jesus’ teaching concerning his death, but once he rose from the dead and appeared to them alive, it seems that they pretty quickly put two and two together. Of course, I recognize that further development occurred as the church then developed a more advanced theology by means of further reflection on Scriptures such as Isa 53, but I would prefer to view this as a theological development rooted in Jesus’ own words, not a new insight unrelated to Jesus’ teaching.

I’ll write another post on the second session I attended that Monday afternoon. It was titled “Paul and Empire” with N. T. Wright and John M. G. Barclay presenting and debating. It was the scholarly equivalent of mixed martial arts.  

My second day at SBL was a lot of fun and focused on my primary reason for being there. I did little in the morning, but in the afternoon I sat/stood by my poster and answered questions from those who stopped by. The foot traffic on the second floor of the San Diego Convention Center wasn’t heavy, unfortunately, but a few people came by and stopped at my poster.

Even though the traffic was light, one person stopped by who made the whole thing worthwhile — Kent Yinger, Associate Professor of NT at George Fox Evangelical Seminary. His name is even mentioned in both my poster and my paper. His dissertation, Paul, Judaism, and Judgment According to Deeds, was published in the SNTS Monograph Series in 1999. He holds to the Gentile Christian, non-hypothetical view of Rom 2:12-16 which I critiqued in my paper. It was helpful to have someone from the other side to interact with, which is exactly what I wanted. One nice thing is that he used to work at Fuller as the director of the Center for Advanced Theological Studies which oversees the Th.M. and Ph.D. programs in the School of Theology. He’s also friends with Don Hagner. So we had that connection in common and hit it off right away. Even though we disagree on Rom 2:13 we had a good, friendly exchange that helped me to spot a structural problem in my paper, as well as to get a clearer understanding of his own position. 

Later that night I attended a big confab on the 500 books (I exaggerate) published this year on the Gospel of Judas where the authors got to present their books for 5 minutes each. Afterward, I got to meet Simon Gathercole who has also written a book on the Gospel of Judas. But my interests lay elsewhere. Gathercole is another representative of the Gentile Christian view, but he does not hold the NPP interpretation of “works of the Law” as a technical term for Jewish exclusivism and boundary markers, which makes him something of an anomoly. I wish I could have had more time with him, but he did reinforce for me the need to expand the section on my paper in which I deal with the difficulty of making a big disjunction between “doers of the Law” (2:13) and “works of the Law” (3:20).   

Another session I attended was on biblical lexicography with a focus on Greek lexicography of both the NT and LXX. John A. L. Lee and Albert Pietersma were among the speakers that I most enjoyed. Lee sounds like an Asian name but he’s just a regular white guy from Australia. Both Lee and Pietersma are highly regarded experts in the rarified field of LXX studies. I was delighted that Pietersma’s lecture was directly relevant to my proposed dissertation topic. (I plan to write on Hermann Cremer’s Hebraic/relational interpretation of Paul’s righteousness terminology. This issue is directly relevant to the NPP because it is the philological basis for the Dunn/Wright view that “the righteousness of God” means “God’s covenant faithfulness.”) Pietersma did not mention the dikaios word group but he addressed the broader methodological question of how one can determine whether any given Greek word shows signs of Semitic influence. Afterward I got a chance to discuss with both Lee and Pietersma the seed of my dissertation idea and to get their opinion on Cremer’s theory. They were both quite skeptical of it (Cremer’s theory) and thought that I was on the right track. I was so excited to get some confirmation from these doyens of LXX lexicography. 

So my second day at SBL was very productive for me. I plan to do a slight re-write and expansion of my paper on Rom 2:13 in light of what I learned from my helpful interactions with Yinger and Gathercole. With regard to my dissertation, I feel energized to move forward with my topic.

As I was re-reading my previous post, I realized that my remarks on the Reasoner and Ito paper could be construed as if I thought the thesis was in Rom 1:1-7 or elsewhere. I just wanted to clarify that I do believe Romans 1:16-17 (or, perhaps 1:15-17) is the theme/thesis of Romans, in accordance with the traditional Reformation reading. Paul is not ashamed of the gospel because it is the powerful means that God uses to save humans, Jew and Gentile, and the reason it is God’s powerful instrument of salvation is because in it ”the righteousness of God” is revealed from faith to faith. I take “the righteousness of God” as a genitivus auctoris, that is, a genitive of author or source, not a subjective genitive (the dominant view today).  As the NIV translates it, it is the righteousness that comes from God, the righteousness of Christ that is bestowed as a gift and received by faith. This is the central theme of Romans, as unpacked in 1-11, which is then followed by a parenetic section and letter closing (12-16).

Yesterday was my first day at SBL. I took the train from LA down to San Diego. That was fun because I was able to relax, do some work on my computer, and read for a bit. The ride was 2 hours and 50 minutes. 

SBL is being held at the San Diego Convention Center which is right on the San Diego harbor. It’s a bit colder than I anticipated and overcast in the mornings. I made the mistake of picking a hotel that is a good walk from the convention center. I should have stayed at the Marriott which is right next to it. My hotel, the Manchester Grand Hyatt, is next to the Marriott. So I have to walk past the Marriott before you come to the Convention Center. Then, when you get to the Convention Center it is so huge you have another looong walk to find the main registration area and the exhibit hall where the books are. Fortunately, many of the smaller meetings are in rooms in the Marriott which isn’t too far of a walk for me. My poster is displayed in the second floor of the Convention Center. Unfortunately, not many people wander up there.

When I arrived on Saturday morning, I got a brief chance to talk to Karen Jobes, who co-authored with Moises Silva the excellent book Invitation to the Septuagint, as well as a good commentary on 1 Peter in BECNT. I wanted to ask her about the role of the LXX in influencing the meanings of certain Greek terms used in the NT since this is something I will probably be needing to use for my dissertation (specifically the so-called Hebraic/relational interpretation of Paul’s “righteousness” terminology, e.g., the Dunn/Wright view that “the righteousness of God” = “God’s covenant faithfulness”). Our conversation was very brief as she had another appointment to run off to. But she was really nice though and gave me her card. She told me to email my question and she’d get back to me.

In the afternoon I went to hear Richard Bauckham defend his awesome book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, against the onslaught of three pretty hard-nosed liberals — John Kloppenborg (Toronto, Q expert), Adela Yarbro Collins (Yale), and James Crossley (Sheffield).

Kloppenborg admitted that Bauckham demonstrated that there would have been an expectation in the first century that biographies relied on eyewitness testimony. However, he was skeptical that the gospels contained much because Mark doesn’t explicitly claim it, and to the extent that the Luke and John sort of imply that they relied on eyewitness testimony, they were merely using a literary device to give the impression of historical reliability.

Collins and Crossley both made a big deal out of the fact that if we accept the gospels as containing eyewitness testimony, then we are forced to accept the miracles as literally true events which cannot be explained by scientific reasoning, and that’s  unacceptable. Collins wanted to argue that we can accept the  miracles as theologically true but factually false, while Crossley wanted to say they were haggada (fanciful embellishments and stories) created by the early church.

Bauckham did a great job fending off the vultures. He had some great one-liners like, “Luke probably knew more about Q than any of us, or even John Kloppenborg for that matter.” Basically, the debate was over form criticism. What’s fascinating is that the three respondents seemed to admit that Bauckham had made a strong case, and that form criticism had lots of problems. But they still wanted to believe it:  (a) because it has to be true since there’s no other explanation for the formation of all these fanciful stories about Jesus, and (b) because if we accept the reliability of the gospels then we have to believe in miracles, and we modern people can’t do that. It was the old debate over the historical critical method which rules out supernatural divine intervention in history on a priori grounds. That’s just the way history is done, and if you want to play that “game” you have to play by the rules. Bauckham clearly had these people a little scared because he wasn’t playing by their rules and yet he was making some pretty good points that they couldn’t answer.

Later on, at a Pauline Epistles section I ran into a friend who’s doing his Ph.D. at Fuller under Seyoon Kim on Galatians 3:10 (arguing for the traditional implied premise that everyone is under a curse because no one can do all things written in the Law). I hit it off with him earlier this year when we took ”Paul and the Law” together with Dr. Hagner. He’s definitely critical of the NPP and not afraid of the ghost of Luther. We sat together and listened to several lectures with our Greek New Testaments open, and whispering objections to each other.  N. T. Wright, Paul Achtemeier, John M. G. Barclay, Beverly Gaventa, and Don Garlington were in the audience. Dude, I felt so sorry for the speakers!

One lecture was a team thing by Mark Reasoner (Bethel) and Akio Ito (from Japan). They argued that Rom 1:15 is the thesis of Romans, not 1:16-17, because of the “for … for … for …” structure which makes these verses subordinate to the main idea, which is “So my purpose is to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome.” They wanted to argue that since the time of the Reformation, scholars have wanted to see 1:16-17 as the thesis because we want to read the doctrine of justification into the text and see Romans as a timeless theological treatise rather than a specific letter written to a address specific situation (the need for Jews and Gentiles to all get along in one happy family). I didn’t ask any questions during the Q&A time, by my reaction is:  Okay, you’ve proved grammatically that vv 16-17 are subordinate to v 15, but that just makes vv 15-17 the thesis! Big whoop, nothing has changed in my view. Maybe that’s why one questioner in the audience suggested that we look at vv 1-7 (the sender identification) as the thesis and get away from 1:15-17 altogether.

The second lecture by Preston Sprinkle was interesting and well delivered. He explained that there is a third option in the pistis Christou debate. Traditionally, the two main views are (a) objective genitive — human faith in Christ, and (b) subjective genitive – Christ’s own faith/faithfulness toward God. He explained his dissatisfaction with both views and argued for a third option that he discovered in a footnote – (c) “faith” as the gospel itself, as in “the faith” (e.g., Gal 1:23), which makes possible the human response of faith. The main passage that supports this view is Gal 3:22ff which speaks of the coming of “faith” in redemptive historical terms such that it is clearly not referring to an anthropological or psychological possibility within people but to something objective and historical. Sprinkle didn’t claim that he was absolutely convinced of this third view, but he wanted to put it on the table. He also spent a good deal of time dealing with the history of this view, mostly among German scholars. I don’t want to rule this option out without investigating further, but my initial problem is that, while it makes good sense in Gal 3:22ff, I would like to understand better how it fits with other passages (e.g., Paul’s use of Hab 2:4, and passages where Paul contrasts “faith” and “works”). I still lean toward the objective genitive (see Moises Silva’s helpful critique of the subjective genitive in Justification and Variegated Nomism, vol. 2).

Anyway, that’s a brief summary of my first day at SBL. Today I have to stand by my poster for two and a half hours and answer any questions people have about the hypothetical interpretation of Romans 2:13. I know my view is considered old-fashioned and out-of-touch, but, hey, that’s the great thing about SBL. You come and present your view, no matter how wacky, and you interact with people from other points of view and worldviews, and you have at it. There are plenty of people running around here who are sympathetic to more traditional minded thinking. Judging by the laughter and the clapping, there was clearly a contingent of evangelicals or evangelical-sympathizers at the Bauckham discussion.

So, it doesn’t bother me to be here at SBL. One minute you can see Mark Goodacre, the next minute you see the octagenarian Joseph Fitzmyer shuffling along all by himself. (Fitzmyer may be a Roman Catholic, but he defends the forensic meaning of Paul’s justification language.) And then the next minute you see some young Chinese-American fundamentalist-looking guy with a badge saying he’s from Dallas Theological Seminary. Then you might see some bibliobloggers like Michael Bird and Chris Tilling walking together. (I saw all of the above.) So it’s all good!