I finished N. T. Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God! Part 3

I’m continuing to attempt to summarize N. T. Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God. It’s rather like attempting to summarize the Encyclopedia Britannica — or for my younger readers, the Wikipedia. Wright’s book is truly encyclopedic (or Wikipedic). And so I can only offer samples, not a summary.

In Part IV, Wright builds on the preceding parts to take on several topics. Of the most interest to me, he ties Paul back to Roman history so that he can frame the discussion of how Paul’s theology connects to politics.

To what extent are Christians to stay away from the government (as David Lipscomb urged) and to what extent are we called to shape the government (per Jerry Falwell, for example)? And Wright does the detailed labor to find a path between Lipscomb and Falwell.

Wright notes a tension in Second Temple Jewish thought. On the one hand, Jeremiah had advised to the Jews in exile to seek the welfare of the city they were relocated to —

(Jer 29:4-7 ESV) ⁴ “Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: ⁵ Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. ⁶ Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. ⁷ But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

Recently, a number of Christian authors have suggested that this wisdom is equally applicable to the church today, and Wright does not disagree, but he does add some modifications.

The other Jewish attitude toward earthly rulers is found in the visions of Daniel, who prophesied the destruction of worldly kingdoms by God. Paul, of course, took this destruction to have been by Jesus and his Kingdom.

Wright doesn’t deal much with the theocracy that was Israel. Under the Davidic kings, the king of Israel (or later Judah) ruled on behalf of God, subject to the Torah. At least, that was the theory. But there is no modern nation comparable to ancient Israel in this respect — not the United States and not the modern state of Israel.

Rather, today, all nations are far more comparable to Babylon or to Rome than to David’s Israel. The modern analog to  David’s Israel is, of course, the church itself, the Kingdom of God on earth. And Jesus sits on David’s throne, not Obama and not Netanyahu.

Wright explains how Paul modifies the Jewish view of government —

In line with Jeremiah’s ‘seek the welfare of the city’ (and the top-flight civil service jobs of Daniel and his friends), Paul urges his hearers to be good citizens, to make sure that their public behaviour matches up to the gospel, to be good neighbours, to do good to all. In particular, as we shall see, he urges them to obey the governing authorities, to submit to the law, to pay their taxes.

But there is a difference. In Jeremiah’s Babylon, the Babylonian authorities reigned supreme. Jews in exile believed that their one God was somehow still in charge, but they also believed – at any rate, those who listened to Jeremiah or who read Deuteronomy believed – that they were there in exile precisely because of their sin, and that only when the redemption arrived would their situation be alleviated. Paul believed that this new moment had already come. As far as Jeremiah is concerned, there might be many hours of darkness still to come. Paul balances his command to obey the authorities with a reminder that the night is far gone and the day is already dawning.

(Kindle Locations 36581-36589).

Indeed, Paul sees the victory over the powers as won in the resurrection.

The claim is unmistakeable. God, he says, even now leads us in his triumphal procession in the Messiah; this God has celebrated his victory over the rulers of this age, and whatever they may do in the meantime, ‘in all these things we are completely victorious through the one who loved us’. For Paul, as for the gospels, the Messiah is already reigning – and it is the unity and holiness of the church that demonstrates that fact to the puzzled and possibly angry continuing rulers and authorities. This, he says, is the sign that signifies the coming final destruction of the arrogant powers of the world, but the sign to the Messiah’s followers that their ultimate rescue is at hand.

(Kindle Locations 36596-36602).

The church — the Kingdom visible — demonstrates its eternal nature and the end of human government by being the church — that is, as it actually lives as it’s supposed to.

It’s hardly surprising, given how poorly the church succeeds at being the church as it should be, that Christians often see the powerful nation-states as the path to salvation. We just so want to ally ourselves with worldly powers in order to achieve Jesus’ goals. And it shouldn’t take much reflection to realize that we shouldn’t be surprised to see that the nation-state prefers to use its powers to achieve its own ends, not the goals of Jesus.

Paul realizes the distinction between having to live under pagan rule and letting pagan rulers call the shots.

… Paul’s essentially Jewish, almost Jeremiah-like, exposition of how to live under alien rule is radically transformed, here [in Rom 13] as elsewhere, by his eschatology. When he says in 13.11– 14 (as in 1 Thessalonians 5) that the night is almost done and the day is at hand, this does not mean that one can or should therefore sit light to ordinary social life, as in 12.14– 18, or to civic obligations, as in 13.1– 7. If what is coming to birth in the God-given new day is a world of love and justice, then it [behooves] followers of Jesus to live by, and in accordance with, that love and justice in the present, so as to be ready for the day when it comes. And, just as 13.1– 7 needs chapter 12 as one part of its proper context, so it also needs chapters 14 and 15. Paul declares emphatically in 14.4, 7– 12 that all will stand before the divine throne of judgment, and in 15.7– 13 that the risen Messiah is the rightful ruler of the nations. It is when 13.1– 7 is detached from its context and elevated into being a complete statement of ‘Paul’s view of earthly rulers’ or ‘Paul’s political philosophy’ or some such that problems arise. Within the framework of chapters 12— 15 as a whole it plays its limited role, just as it articulates the limited and temporary role of earthly rulers within the creator’s purposes.

(Kindle Locations 36718-36728).

Contrary to some Christian authors, Paul therefore calls for a revolution, but …

A different kind of revolution. A different kind of ‘subversion’ – and, Paul would have said, a more powerful and effective one.

This was not, then, an escape into pietism, as today’s eager quasi-Marxists might allege. That is the route taken by the second-century gnostics; Paul would not have faced riots, imprisonment and the threat of death if all he had been doing was teaching people an apolitical and dehistoricized spirituality. Paul’s vision of the kingdom, its present reality and future consummation, remained emphatically this-worldly. It was not about humans escaping the life and rule of earth by being taken away to heaven in the future, or by anticipating that with a detached spirituality in the present. It was about the transformation, not the abandonment, of present reality.

(Kindle Locations 36794-36800).

Transformation? How?

In a world where many were eagerly worshipping Caesar and Rome, Paul not only reaffirmed the Jewish monotheism which undermined all such self-serving and tyranny-supporting blasphemies, but also offered repeated hints that the specific claims of this emperor and this empire fell significantly within those larger categories. In a world where many, not least many pious and zealous Jews, were eager for military revolution and rebellion against Rome, Paul insisted that the crucial victory had already been won, and that the victory in question was a victory won not by violence but over violence itself. Perhaps the only way one can keep that balance is by strong hints, by poetry, by language all the more powerful because, like some modern plays, it leaves the relevant character just a little off stage. ‘Neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers … nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in King Jesus our lord.’ The power and pretensions of Rome are downgraded, outflanked, subverted and rendered impotent by the power of love: the love of the one God revealed in the crucified and risen Jesus, Israel’s Messiah and Caesar’s lord.

(Kindle Locations 37056-37064).

So the Kingdom is to defeat the powers and pretensions of worldly rulers by love? By unity? By holiness?

Exactly.