Paul and the Parousia

Yes, I'm in eschatology mode today, here is Joseph Plevnik's summary on Paul's teaching on the Parousia:

The parousia is the culmination of Christ’s present rule, the beginning of God’s kingdom, and the moment for the resurrection of the dead. The Lord’s coming is thus the moment for the resurrection of the dead. The Lord’s coming is thus the culmination of Christ’s own resurrection and of his lordship, which began with that event. Christ was raised as the first of many and as the one through whom all others will be brought to life. And he was made Lord so that he may put everything under his feet. The parousia is also the culmination of the present existence ‘in Christ.’ Those who belong to Christ will be with Christ at his coming.[1]

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[1] Joseph Plevnik, Paul and the Parousia: An Exegetical and Theological Investigation (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997), 328.

Ian Paul on 1 Tim 2:11-14

Ian Paul gives a spirited defence of an egalitarian take on 1 Tim 2:11-14 and tries to answer several pointed questions. Still not sure if the use of the article can mean that Paul refers to one "specific" birth!

Michael Horton on Jesus vs. Paul

Over at the White Horse Inn, Michael Horton chimes in on the Jesus vs. Paul debate. My own thoughts are in the comments section of the post.

Scot McKnight on Jesus and Paul

Over at CT, Scot McKnight has an article on Jesus and Paul which is well worth checking out!

I think Scot is hitting at what is quite possible the major issue in biblical theology for evangelicals. How do you read Jesus and Paul together? How does Jesus' kingdom message line up with Paul's theology of justification?

Scot's own solution is: "The gospel is first and foremost about Jesus. Or, to put it theologically, it's about Christology. Behind or underneath both kingdom and justification is the gospel, and the gospel is the saving story of Jesus that completes Israel's story. "To gospel" is to tell a story about Jesus as the Messiah, as the Lord, as the Son of God, as the Savior ... Excuse me for piling on here, but only when we grasp the gospel as the saving story about Jesus that completes Israel's story do we see the profound unity between Jesus and Paul. Both "gospeled" the same gospel because both told the story of Jesus."

New Journal Dedicated to Pauline Studies

Dear biblioblogosphere, I'm proud to announce the launch of a new journal dedicated to Pauline studies published by Eisenbrauns. It is called Journal for the Study of Paul and His Letters. On the homepage you can find info on subscriptions and submissions. It's edited by myself with Nijay Gupta (see his blog) as the associate editor and we have an international editorial board. The sample issue is available on-line and the inaugural article is by Dr. Susan Grove Eastman (Duke Divinity School) on "Philippians 2:6-11: Incarnation as Mimetic Participation" - quite a treat to read! The next issue of JSPL will include Paul Foster "Eschatology in the Thessalonian Correspondence", Michael Gorman "Justification and Justice", Richard Bell "Paul's Theology of Mind", and a review of Douglas A. Campbell's Deliverance of God by Michael Gorman and Chris Tilling.

Mikeal C. Parsons on Luke's Paul in Luke: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist

I got to know Mikeal Parsons while he was on sabbatical during my Cambridge years. What year now slips me. I found Mikeal to be a great guy and someone who was both engaging and generous. Recently I picked up his book on Luke which is in the Hendrickson series Luke: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist. I really like the series. I have used the two books Warren Carter has writen on Matthew and John for classes I've taught. Parson's book is quite different that Carter's two and is not really ideal for an introduction to the book. However this is not a criticism of the books since Parson's makes it plain in the introduction that he has not intended it to be such a book.

Parsons uses the format of Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist to focus his discussion on the Greco-Roman context of Luke's Gospel and Acts. One of its chief concerns is to show the role of ancient rhetoric in Luke's writing. Parson's chapters are informative and insightful. Parson's also has a very interesting chapter on the concept of "friendship" and "physiognomy" in the Greco-Roman world and Luke-Acts.

One of the most important sections of the book as far as I'm concerned is his discussion of the relationship between the Paul of Acts and the Paul of the Pauline Letters. For me these 16 pages (123-39) are worth the price of the book. In this section Parsons critiques the standard view that the Paul of Acts is irreconcilably different than the Paul of the letters.

As an aside, teaching a course on Paul I run into this issue a great deal. As recently as this semester I've had to lecture on this topic because one of the textbooks I'm using for the course Pamela Eisenbaum's Paul Was Not a Christian assumes just such a negative stance toward the Paul of Acts. In her study she excludes Acts as evidence for reconstructing Paul.

Parson's however shows by an unconventional means that Luke's Paul would have appeared familiar to the authorial audience who had known Paul through his letters. Parson writes:

We conclude that the authorial audience who knew Paul through his letters (and probably knew him only through those letters) would have recognized Luke's portrait of Paul as a reliable, though enriched and expanded, presentation of that same Apostle who through his rhetoric, miracles, suffering, adn throught, proclaimed that "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself" (p. 139).

I would only quibble with Parson's discussion of the Torah in Paul and Acts (pp. 137-8). The discussion is weakened by the assumption that Paul's on-going relationship to the Torah was not motivated by theological conviction but rather expediency as evidenced in Timothy's circumcision (Acts 16:1-3) and Paul's statements in 1 Cor 9:19-23.

Forthcoming Paul Books

This last year I've been focusing on Paul in the context of the early church. How does Paul relate to other Christian groups? What did other Christians think of Paul? How was Paul an influencer of and influenced by other Christian views? What was Paul's legacy in the early church? As such, I've been involved in editing two volumes with my guru-swami-ninja-jedi buddies Joel Willitts and Joey Dodson to tackle these issues in two volumes with a cast of all-star contributors:

1. Michael F. Bird and Joel Willitts, Paul and the Gospels: Christologies, Conflicts, and Convergences (LNTS 411; London: Continuum, 2011) - 21 April 2011.

This volume attempts to situate the Apostle Paul, the Pauline writings, and the earliest Christian Gospels together in the context of early Christianity. It addresses the issue of how the Christianity depicted in and represented by the individual Gospels relates to the version of Christianity represented by Paul and the Pauline writings.

Paul and the Gospel of Mark

Michael F. Bird (Crossway College, Australia)

James G. Crossley (University of Sheffield, UK)

Paul and the Gospel of Matthew

Joel Willitts (North Park University, USA)

Paul Foster (Edinburgh University, UK)

Paul and the Gospel of Luke

David Morlan (USA)

Stanley Porter (McMaster Divinity College, Canada)

Paul and the Gospel of John

Mark Harding (Australian College of Theology, Australia)

Colin Kruse (Melbourne School of Theology, Australia)

Paul and the Gospel of Thomas

Joshua J. Jipp (Emory University, USA)

Christopher Skinner (Mount Olive College, USA)

2. Michael F. Bird and Joseph R. Dodson, Paul and the Second Century (LNTS 412; London: Continuum, 2011) - 21 April 2011.

This volume looks at the imprint and influence that the writings of the Apostle Paul had in the second century examining the Pauline corpus in conjunction with key second century figures and texts, such as Ignatius, Polycarp, and the Epistle of Diognetus. As such this volume is an exercise in the Wirkungsgeschichte or ‘effective-history’ of Paul. It investigates the impact of Paul’s legacy and examines how this legacy shaped the Christianity that emerged in the second century as represented by the Apostolic Fathers, the early Christian Apologists, and among Gnostic and Judeo Christian groups.

Introduction: Joseph R. Dodson (Ouachita Baptist University, USA)
Paul and the Pauline Letter Collection: Stanley Porter (McMaster Divinity College, Canada)
Paul and Ignatius: Carl Smith (Cedarville University, USA)
Paul and the Letter of Polycarp: Michael Holmes (Bethel University, USA)
Paul and the Epistle of Diognetus: Michael F. Bird (Highland Theological College, UK)
Paul and Marcion: Todd Wilson (George W. Truett Seminary, USA)
Paul and Justin Martyr: Paul Foster (Edinburgh University, UK)
Paul and Valentinian Interpretation: Nick Perrin (wheaton College, USA)
Paul and Judeo-Christians: Joel Willitts (North Park University, USA)
Paul and the Apocryphal Acts: Andrew Gregory (Oxford University, UK)
Paul and Irenaeus: Ben Blackwell (Durham University, UK)
Paul and Tertullian: Andrew Bain (Queensland Theological College, Australia)
Paul and Women: Pauline Hogan (Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, Canada)
The Triumph of Paul or Paulinism in the Second Century?: Mark Elliott (St. Andrews University, UK)

On Books

I just received a pile of reviews of my book Introducing Paul from IVP-USA. It is always fun to read reviews of your own work and to see what people remember, like, and dislike about it. Generally the reviews are rather good, but sometimes highly amusing. My favourite review is there one where I'm called a "Scottish lecturer in New Testament". Sadly, I shall have to work on my Scottish accent a bit more, perhaps a Shrek marathon will help with Mike Myers as my voice coach. One review, that was quite positive and written from a conservative Reformed perspective had these two detractions: "Bird appears to give preference to a biblical-theological approach to the Scriptures at the expense of systematic theology" and "Bird is less than precise in some of his theological formulations. He fails to explicitly affirm a covenant of works that Adam failed to keep and that Jesus fulfilled as the Last Adam". I have to confess to being guilty as charged on those points, though the first criticism probably explains the existence of the second one! Thank you to all those who the took time to read and comment, pro and con, on that little Paul book.

Paul and the Law in Redemptive-History

Over at Berith Road, Steven Coxhead has an interesting post on Justification by Works of Law in Pauline Perspective. I enjoyed teaching on this subject since I find that most undergraduate students have a default understanding of the law that is quasi-Marcionite. I often set an exam question, "According to Paul, is the law a bad thing that has been done away with, or a good thing that has been fulfilled?" I categorically reject the idea that the Mosaic law is a republication of a covenant of works and it has to be related positively to the Abrahamic covenant (as Coxhead notes). In my view, the purpose of the law was to be a temporary administration of God's grace to govern God's people until the promised seed of Abraham came, to cocoon God's promises around Israel and to protract Israel's capacity to worship God, to point out the reality of sin and the holiness of God, and to intimate the ministries of the Christ. Thus the law was guardian to lead God's people until Christ and to lead them to Christ. Still, Paul can also identify the law as part of an unholy triad comprising of law-sin-death. The law is also bound up with the old age that is passing away and is not the instrument that will ultimately realize the fulfllment of the Abrahamic promises.

Grace as Event

Today I gave my final lecture at HTC. It was on 1 Corinthians 15. I've read over this passage many times, but in my preparation I was struck by Paul's usage of "grace" in 15.10, "But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them-- though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me" (1 Co 15:10 NRSV). Paul says that because he was so unworthy and so unexpected a candidate to become an apostle, he responded to "grace" with a more concerted ministerial effort than his contemporaries. And yet that response Paul again attributes to God's grace. In effect, Paul says that he encountered God's grace, a grace that demanded his response, and now he attributes that very response to God's grace working through him as well! Thus, God's grace works in an initial call and produces the neccesary effects in its subject. This signifies that Bultmann was right when had a section in his NT Theology entitled: "Grace as Event".

Paul and salvation in Judaism(s)

I've added what I think is an important paragraph to my "Salvation in Paul's Judaism" article about Paul's discontinuities as being intra or contra Judaism:

My own view is that Paul very much straddles the “contra” and “intra” Judaism fence depending on what part of his career one looks at, what we make of the gravity of his rhetoric, and contingent upon what social pressures he was facing at the time. Paul is intra-Judaism insofar as most of his community debates can normally be paralleled in halakhic discussions and they are often analogous to similar debates that took place among Jews in the Diaspora (Paul was not the first Jew to argue about food and circumcision and the Gentiles!). On the top of that, Paul’s rhetoric fits the sectarian context of second temple Judaism with rancorous polemics between sects and Paul never intended to set up a new religious entity. Yet Paul can also be seen to be contra Judaism in a very real sense as he seems to be willing to go where very few Jews would wish to follow by lowering the currency of Israel’s election in including Gentiles as part of the “Israel of God”. Indeed, Paul’s exegesis of Lev 18:5, his anthropological pessimism, the triadic link of law-sin-death that he makes, and attributing the law to angels are too raw and radical for most of his contemporaries to accept as “in-house” debates. In any case, Paul’s contrariety will depend entirely on which salvation scheme in Judaism we are talking about for it seems that Paul knew several. In Rom 1:18-32, his critique of idolatry and pagan immorality mirrors the “ethical monotheism” of Philo, Wisdom of Solomon, and Sirach as Paul doubts the existence of pagan philosophers who have a soul that is on its own sojourn towards God and the heavenly Jerusalem. Paul evidently knows of a “covenantal nomism” whereby grace is embedded in the covenant and obedience is merely the appreciative response to maintain one’s election, yet his objection remains that covenantal grace is only efficacious in the context of covenantal obedience which is precisely what Israel lacks (Romans 2–3, 9–11). Paul responds most virulently to an “ethnocentric nomism” (Gal 2:1–3:24; Phil 3:1-9) whereby Christ is merely an add-on to the Sinaitic covenant so that Christ tops-up rather than displaces the salvific function of portions of the Torah. This effectively keeps the butterfly in the cocoon and locates salvation exclusively within the Jewish constituency. Paul strenuously objects that the gospel is the good news that pagans can be saved by becoming Jews. Paul also responds to a “sapiential nomism” (1 Cor 1:10–3:23) that I postulate as a scheme arising in Corinth that perceives in Christ and the Torah a means to wisdom, power and glory. Finally, Paul opposes an “apocalyptic mysticism” that locates salvation as something acquired through law-observance coupled with visionary ascents to heaven couched in the language of Hellenistic philosophy (Colossians).

Paul as Apostle to Gentiles and Jews

I have just finished the first draft of an essay entitled, "Paul: Apostle to Gentiles and Jews". Find it here. I welcome any comments, corrections, and feedback!

Responses to Paul in the Early Chuch

In Charles Talbert's excellent Romans commentary, he lists responses to Paul in the early church:

(1) In some circles he was ignored and there was a focus on the twelve (e.g., Rev 12:14, Didache, Ep. Barn 8.3; Justin Apol 1.39, 50).

(2) Paul was appropriated by groups deemed heretical in the early church (e.g., Marcion, Valentinus, Nassenes, Sethians, etc.)

(3) There were hostile responses to Paul esp. by Jewish Christians (e.g., Acts 21.21; Ebionites, Cerinthians, Ps-Clementine Recognitions 4.35).

I should note that myself and Preston Sprinkle are editing a book on Paul in the Second Century for the LNTS series.

Back from Leuven

I've just returned from K.U. Leuven from an amazing seminar on New Perspectives on Paul and the Jews. From the outset I have to say that I loved Belgium and it was great to be there when Kim Clijsters won the US Tennis Open! Leuven is gorgeous, so European, and best of all it has all the cuisine and culture of France but without the French!! I successfully delivered home a few boxes of Belgian chocolates which is the only reason my wife let me attend. My hosts were very amiable and the interaction with the other seminar participants was great. It was also good to catch up again with Mark Nanos as always and I got to meet Peter Tomson who is another Paulinist. I learnt with some frustration that "H" means mensroom and "D" means the ladies (pictures would have been easier). Some outstanding papers by the exegetes there including William Campbell, Tom Blanton, Michael Bachmann, and Mark Nanos (see photos here).

My paper went okay, though I was a bit out of kilt with the rest of my colleagues. I posit a discontinuity between Paul and Judaism to the extent that Paul is, socially speaking, sectarian. At least at the height of his Aegean mission he's moved his assemblies out of the synagogues and provided an ideological justification for an amiable separation in order to protect the integrity of his Gentile converts precisely as Gentiles. I think Phil Cunningham claimed that he was "disturbed" by my picture of Paul. The problem is that I just don't think Paul has a Sonderweg for Israel and he levels the playing field so that Jew and Gentile both stand condemned under the law (or what law they have) and both find salvation in Israel's Messiah. Moreover, while the church is not a replacement for Israel, the church (made up of believing Jews and Gentiles) is the representative of Israel in the messianic age.

There were two climactic quotes from the conference. (1) Hans-Joachim Sander (Salzburg) said that "[U]nfortunately Christian systematic theology is not George Clooney" - for context see this coffee advert - and he thus established the first piece of proof in modern European history that German theologians actually are capable of humour. (2) One seminar participant (whose name I shall conceal less he be excommunicated from Rome!) made the controverial remark: "Mission is a violation of human rights"! Now if what one means by that is that we should refrain from aggressive proselytizing activity or coercion or from inflaming religious tensions, then fine. But surely freedom of religion entails the freedom to practice and propagate one's own religion, does it not? Freedom of speech means I have the right to tell you what you don't want to hear. My response was that I thank God that 15 years ago my human rights were violated when a Christian community shared the love of Christ with me in telling me the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The concept of Jewish evangelism certainly was a "no, no". Mark Nanos said, "Jews have had more than enough oppotunity to be made aware of Christian propositional truths, including by coercion, and have suffered enough for them, that it is no longer necessary or appropriate to evangelize Jews with the hope that they become Christians. Christianity is no longer Judaism, unlike the case for Paul." The deplorable history of forced conversions to Christianity is just that, deplorable. Still, I know enough messianic Jews (including some in my local church!) that are grateful that those among the goyim shared the good news of Israel's Messiah with them. The Catholic document Nostra Aetate seems to lean in the direction of censuring evangelism of the Jewish people. Although whether this is a pastoral document or a dogmatic one is a matter of perspective. See further the article on mission in the Dictionary of Jewish Christian Relations by Helen Fry which overviews the background, issues, and concerns related to Jewish evangelism. I have to confess that I just don't get the Catholic doctrine here. Granted that we are now living in a post-holocaust age and we want to foster genuinely positive relations between Jews and Christians, even so, how can you forbid propagation of the "One True Faith" when the first bishop of Rome was St. Peter the Apostle to the Circumcision? Maybe Michael Barber and Brant Pitre can help me out on this one. With due respect to my colleagues, during much of the discussion one verse kept going through my head was: "If righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died for nothing" (Gal. 2.21).

My final comments at the seminar were: (1) Markus Barth is probably one of the best resources there is for doing exegesis and biblical theology about the Jewish people and more attention should be given to him on this subject. I think Barth can help us appropriate what Paul means when he said: "All Israel will be saved". (2) We should not tie any single view of Jewish-Christian relations to insights from the New Perspective on Paul since the NPP itself is diverse and, what is more, mainline scholarship is now effectively "beyond" the NPP polarities (see works by Robert Jewett, Francis Watson, and John Barclay as examples). (3) We have to remember that Paul's message of the cross was a stumbling block to Jews (1 Cor. 1.18-19) and Paul got himself flogged by synagogue officials he says five times (2 Cor. 11.24). If in our quest to find a Paul congenial to promoting good Jewish-Christian relations we end up with a Paul who is neither offensive nor whippable, then that is proof that we have made Paul in our own image.

Overall, a fine conference, very insightful and learned seminar presenters, a wonderful atmosphere and location, and much to think about as a result.

The Paulineness of Paul's Speech in Acts 13

Paul's evangelical preaching in Pisidian Antioch in Acts 13.16-41 and in Lystra/Derbe in Acts 14.15-17 are among the lesser studied speeches of Acts (lesser compared to Peter's Pentecost sermon, Stephen's martyrdom speech, and Paul's Areopagus address). The authenticity of the speeches in Acts are obviously question since it is debated as to whether Luke was even intending to give an accurate account, did he have sources that heard and remembered the orations, then there is the relative uniformity of the speeches and their accordance with Luke's own theological perspective, not to mention the practice of speech narration in antiquity. As I'm reading Jimmy Dunn's Beginning from Jerusalem (and for the rest of my natural life I shall probably still be slowly wading through it), Dunn makes a good point about the elements of contact that Paul's speeches in Acts 13-14 have with Paul's letters:

- Paul's understanding of the gospel as for the Jew first and also for the Greek (Acts 13.46/Rom 1.16).

- Paul as fulfilling the mission of the Servant of Isaiah 49.6 (Acts 13.47/Gal 1.15-16, etc.)

- Paul's sermon in 14.15-17 is a variation of his indictment of paganism in Rom. 1.20-23.

- Echoes of Paul's exhortation abut suffering as a necessary prequisite to glory in Acts 14.22 are common enough in his letters.

Steve Walton did his Ph.D thesis on Paul's Speech to the Ephesian elders and the exhortaton in 1 Thessalonians (SNTS), and I wonder if a comparison of the Paulinism of Acts 13-14 with Romans would be a good subject for some other brave soul.

The Origin of Paul's Gospel

I have always wondered how to reconcile Gal 1.11-12 ("I did not receive [parelabon] the gospel from humans, neither was I taught it, but through a revelation of Jesus Christ") and 1 Cor 15.3 ("I received [parelabon] as the gospel that Christ died for our sins ..."). In Beginning from Jerusalem(p. 354), Jimmy Dunn offers his own resolution which I find interesting:

"Paul assuredly did not think of his gospel as a different gospel from that agreed upon by Peter, James and John (Gal. 2.2-9); the gospel of 1 Cor. 15.3-4/5 was the gospel which they all preached (1 Cor. 15.11). What was different about Paul's gospel was his conviction that it was open also to Gentiles, that the gospel he received in the tradition handed down to him at the time of his conversion (1 Cor. 15.3) was the message regarding God's Son which he had been commissioned to deliver to the Gentiles (Gal. 1.16). That was why Paul was such an uncomfortable bed fellow with his fellow apostles: he saw himself as first and foremost 'apostle to the Gentiles'; and as far as Paul himself wasa concerned, that had been the case from his commissioning itself."

Mark Nanos on the Myth of the Law-Free Paul

My friend Mark Nanos has published his ETS-paper on "The Myth of the 'Law-Free' Paul Standing Between Christians and Jews" at the on-line journal Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations. Mark there gives his arguments for Paul being a law-observant Jew.

Jerome Murphy-O'Connor on Paul's Conversion

Jerome Murphy-O'Connor writes:

"His encounter with Christ reveals the truth of what he had once taken as falsehood by forcing a new assessment of what became the Christological and soteriological poles of his gospel. Christ was the new Adam, the embodiment of authentic humanity. The Law was no longer an obstacle to the salvation of Gentiles; they could be saved without becoming Jews" (Paul: A Critical Life, p. 79).

Paul: Apostle to the Gentiles AND Jews?

Every now and then I turn to an issue that has continued to fascinate me, namely, Paul's missional work among Jews. Martin Hengel wrote: “It was never possible to draw a neat division between mission to the Gentiles and mission to the Jews in the church”.[1] I think this is entirely correct. Yes, Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles, nations, Greeks, uncircumcised, those-without-law, and idol worshippers (1 Cor 9.21; Gal 2.7-9; Rom 11:13; 1 Thess 1:9, etc.). But he sure spent a lot of time in synagogues according to Acts and he mentions Jewish evangelism in 1 Cor 9:20 and Rom 10:14-14. Note also how Paul describes his apostolate as beginning from Jerusalem as far around as Illycrium (Rom. 15.19) - what Gentiles did he proclaim the gospel to in Jerusalem? If Paul was intent on heading to Spain, maybe he was influenced by Isa 66.19-20 which depicts Jews and Gentiles as journeying from there to Jerusalem in order to share in the new creation. Anyway, my part-time research project (beyond 1 Esdras at the moment) consists of looking at evidence for Paul as Apostle to the Jews among the nations.

[1] Martin Hengel, The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ, 154.

Paul and Pagan Sexual Ethics

If you think Paul is a bit too harsh in Rom. 1:26-28, consider this image from ancient Rome (sadly, I could not bring myself to post it on the blog, be warned, it is pretty explicit).