It’s been nearly a year and 7 hospitalizations since my copy arrived from Amazon on November 6, 2013, but I finally finished the 1,700-page book.
Having a one-week vacation helped, but what helped more was Amazon’s offer to sell me the electronic copy for Kindle for only $2.99 because I’d already paid full price for the hard copy.
By being able to read it on the Kindle, I could read portions in the car and otherwise not have to drag around a 300-pound volume just in case I had a few moments available to read theology.
Better yet, I’m already finding that I use the electronic version to look up key words and concepts without having to flip back and forth to the index. The book is well indexed, but it’s just so much easier to type “Jeremiah” or “epistemology” into the search engine than to flip between the pages in the two volumes and the index.
[Now if only Logos, Accordance, or BibleWorks would let me buy a $2.99 version to use the book as a commentary in one of those wonderful products — well, the first software company to emulate Amazon this way will dominate the Bible software market. I mean, if I can show where I bought the book at retail (such as showing a copy of my Amazon order), then the publisher should let me buy the electronic version from a software company for less than $5.00 for the same reason Amazon has cut the same deal.]
Paul and the Faithfulness of God
On the other hand, if you’ve read and enjoyed the first three volumes of the Christian Origins and the Question of God series, then these two volumes are likely right up your alley. Paul and the Faithfulness of God is for the Bible student who routinely uses Greek resources and who follows the debates among Pauline scholars. For them, this is an essential resource.
For everyone else, my first choices would be his recent, marvelous How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels
There are portions of the book that are utterly relevant, fascinating, and can’t-put-down reading, whereas that are other portions that are far removed from the concerns of the Churches of Christ. Wright spends large portions of the book in dialogue with Pauline schools of thought we’ve in the Churches have always considered “liberal,” and correctly so in my view, and so we have no reason to unlearn what these 20th Century schools of thought taught.
Schweitzer, Bultmann, and Heidegger are rarely part of Church of Christ studies, because the Churches rejected theological liberalism from the outset. The entire Modernist project to read the scriptures as though uninspired has never been of much interest among us — and that’s a good thing.
But as a result, there are large sections of the book that are very difficult to read, because Wright is debating against ideas that have never carried much weight within our tribe. I mean, it’s just so obvious that these other thinkers have a low view of the scriptures and inspiration that reading Wright’s proofs of the obvious gets to be a bit tedious.
On the other hand, while Wright is destroying these arguments, he’s also exegeting the scriptures and doing so brilliantly — meaning I felt compelled to read through these sections just to gather the crumbs that fall from his intellectual table.
And on the other-other hand (I really need at least three hands here), Wright also challenges Universalism and the idea that Christianity is for Gentiles and Judaism is for Jews — both of which are gaining some ground within the Churches. And he demolishes those theories.
One can only hope that the book’s ultimate impact is to redirect New Testament studies into a healthier direction — one that respects Paul genuine purposes and understands Paul in context. And placing Paul in context is what Wright does best here.
Wright quite sensibly finds Paul to be a Second-Temple period (from Nehemiah to the fall of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans) Jew, influenced primarily by the Tanakh (Old Testament), but also familiar with other Jewish writings and thought. He was a Roman citizen and well-enough educated to know his way around Mars Hill in Athens. He surely knew his Greek philosophy, but he was not seeking to blend Judaism with Hellenistic thought.
Rather, Paul was a Jew, steeped in the Scriptures, who believed that the Messiah had come, been crucified, and been resurrected by God. He saw what we call “Christianity” as true Judaism. The Jews, Paul taught, should have recognized Jesus as the Messiah, realized that he’d been enthroned by God, and followed him — just as Paul did — because good Jews should bow before their Messiah.
Paul saw the Old Testament as fulfilled in Jesus and the Torah radically transformed as viewed through Jesus and his resurrection. He saw the promises of God to Abraham honored in Jesus and, therefore, the nations invited into God’s kingdom.
And he wept over the refusal of most Jews to accept Jesus as Messiah, looking instead for a military leader who’d lead them in successful rebellion over Rome, that is, a man like Bar Kokhba, who did exactly that in the early second century — until Rome hit back with such brutal vengeance that Judaism lost the Promised Land and had to give up nearly all hope of a militaristic Messiah.
Here’s something of an introduction.
Chapter 1
Wright spends the first chapter (68 pages!) on Philemon — a surprising introduction indeed. I posted on this back in November: Paul and the Faithfulness of God: Philemon as Guide.
Wright compares Paul’s letter to Philemon to a remarkably similar letter written by Pliny also during Roman times.
In Pliny’s letter, a social superior prevails on an inferior to be merciful to his own inferior freedman because the freedman had repented. In Paul’s letter, a rabbi in prison for his beliefs prevails on a brother in Christ — a social superior under Roman culture — to treat a runaway slave as a peer because they’re brothers in Christ.
(Phm 1:15-16 ESV) 15 For this perhaps is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, 16 no longer as a bondservant but more than a bondservant, as a beloved brother — especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.
In short, implicit in Philemon, but driving every word, is an understanding of a unity and breaking down of social and ethnic barriers through Christ. Christianity changed everything.
Here’s an outline of chapter 2 —
2 Like Birds Hovering Overhead: The Faithfulness of the God of Israel
1. Introduction
2. Who Were the Pharisees?
3. Praxis and Symbol: Torah and Temple
4. Stories and Questions in the Second-Temple Jewish World
(i) Introduction
(ii) The Continuous Story
(a) Introduction
(b) The Story Retold: Bible
(c) The Story Retold: Second-Temple Literature
(d) The Story Retold: After AD 70
(e) The Story Retold: Conclusions
(iii) The Continuing Exile
(iv) A World Transformed, Not Abolished
(v) Story and Scripture
(vi) From Story to Question: the Implicit Pharisaic Worldview
5. The Theology of a Pharisee
6. The Aims of a Zealous Pharisee
7. Conclusion
The captions should make clear that this chapter is packed with history and other insights about the world of Paul. Indeed, Wright meticulously recreates the First Century world inhabited by Paul but from the Jewish perspective.
This was probably my favorite part of the book because it so directly relates to our hermeneutics. Knowing Paul’s world and culture dramatically impacts what we understand him to be saying.
For example, Paul saw Jesus as the end of the exile that began when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the Temple. If we don’t get that, we misunderstand most of the prophecies Paul refers to, and Paul’s work is all about the fulfillment of prophecy.
[to be continued]
