Here’s Cataclysmic’s own Chad Chambers presenting his paper “Before I was Born: Paul’s Calling and the Question of Time in Galatians” at Houston Baptist University’s ‘Paul and Judaism’ conference going on today and tomorrow.
Chad did a great job and his paper was really interesting, taking a look at how Paul views time in the book of Galatians. Definitely piqued my interest! Well done, brother!!
I have just returned from SBL’s Annual Convention and as always it was a great time. Caught up with old friends, met new friends, and even put a few faces to cyber-friends.
Even though the main reason I make the annual trek is the people, there is another part of the conference…the papers. And as always, I heard really good papers, good papers, and others.
One paper I was really looking forward to this year was Ann Jervis’ “Christ and Time” and it did not disappoint. Last year at a conference at Princeton, Dr. Jervis gave what she called a preliminary look at “Paul’s Understanding of Time” and since it was a smaller conference I had the privilege of discussing the ideas with her at length (a great reason to attend at least one smaller conference each year). When I saw she was going to be giving a paper on the topic at SBL, I knew it would probably be a highlight of the conference.
In her paper, Dr. Jervis offered a critique of the Pauline Apocalyptic School’s view of time (see Paul’s Apocalyptic Imagination). She focused on three points of difference:
Dr. Jervis ended by illustrating that time is often seen as the story of conflict in humanity’s relationships with each other, creation and God. She stated that if this is your definition then time will certainly end. But in her view time is not a story about conflict, that is the result of sin and death’s disruption of time, but a story about relationships. Thus, when in Christ humanity’s relationships with each other, creation, and God are restored so is time; time is eternal.
I find the discussion of time in Paul fascinating, especially since so many rely on the now-not yet paradigm when interpreting Paul without ever defining what now and not yet mean. In this manner, I appreciate Dr. Jervis’ efforts to define time by Christ and in particular to struggle with this very complex topic.
(One further note, one questioner asked how, in her view, does God relate to time? This was a very good question and one I look forward to hearing her answer as she continues to ponder on “Christ Time”)
In case you missed it, Mark Driscoll caused quite a stir yesterday with his comments on Jesus, God, and pacifism. I’ve already offered my general thoughts on why Driscoll is wrong about Jesus (Jesus is Cruciform, Not Octagonal) as have others (three particularly thoughtful responses can be found here, here, and here). But, I still think there is more to say.
You see, I understand why people struggle to understand God as consistently nonviolent.
Let’s be honest. There is a lot of violence directly attributed to God in both the Old and New Testaments.
If you take away Driscoll’s flare for controversial rhetoric, I’ve found that his view represents that of a large amount of Jesus-centered, Kingdom-focused Christians. They understand Jesus’ ethical priorities in the Gospels and don’t want to dismiss or compromise them, but they have no idea how they could possibly interpret Revelation (and other parts of the Bible) without doing so. I think it is important to not simply dismiss these concerns, but to instead offer alternative readings of these problematic passages.
How could one possibly read the violent imagery found in Revelation 14:14-20 (cited by Driscoll) without concluding that Jesus will one day shed the blood of his enemies?
I think Michael Gorman, in his excellent book Reading Revelation Responsibly, provides a possible way forward. He suggests that we take another look at the proper (and intended) function of the violent symbolism in Revelation:
“The language and images of death and destruction (in Revelation) symbolize – in comprehensible, if disturbing, idiom – the universality and finality of God’s ultimate eradication of evil rather than the means by which God brings about that eradication. As the omnipotent One who spoke creation into existence, God hardly needs to resort to literal violence to effect the cessation of evil… Instead, Revelation should be understood as portraying symbolically what God does actually with a divine performative utterance, an effective word not unlike the word that spoke creation into existence.” (p. 152)
There is an abundance of symbolism in the second “harvest scene” of Revelation 14. Is anyone really willing to interpret this apocalyptic passage “literally”? Will there really be a giant angel with a cosmic sickle harvesting grapes and putting them in a divinely-wrathful winepress that produces blood when trodden outside the city? Is the blood going to literally flow as high as 184 miles? Will the Guinness Book of World Records be there to measure it? If not, why must we read the “blood” as real blood being poured out of deceased human bodies that have been ripped apart by Jesus?
What if the symbolism and imagery isn’t mean to communicate the means of judgement but the effect of judgement? This isn’t just special pleading by the “pansies.” After all, there are plenty of nonviolent themes in the book of Revelation. Jesus is declared worthy to rule because of (not in spite of) his nonviolence. The church is commanded to follow Christ’s example and conquer by their blood (not that of their enemies).
And why do we have to assume that God can’t effectively eradicate evil nonviolently? Gorman points out that Revelation itself provides clues that this might be the case. For instance, the sword that strikes down Jesus’ enemies comes from his mouth in Revelation 19:11-16, 21. As Gorman says, “This signifies the effective word of God’s judgement – the wrath of God and the Lamb – that needs no literal sword, and which a literal sword could never accomplish.” (pg. 153) Likewise, Gorman notes that there is no fighting recorded during the five great “battle scenes” of Revelation. No blood, no guts, no bombs, no swords, no violence. When I teach through the book of Revelation, this is always a striking feature of the book to high schoolers – it is anti-climatic. Revelation never follows through on the expectation it builds in the Western reader for a classic Armageddon battle. Why? Gorman answers, “Because the images of battle are supposed to suggest to us the promise and reality of God’s defeat of evil, but they are not the means of that defeat… Christ’s only weapon is the ‘sword’ of his word.” (pg. 155) I think Gorman’s suggestion, that God might eradicate creatures in a way similar to how he created and sustains them, is worth serious consideration.
So then, what is the message of Revelation 14? That God will, because of his desire for a peaceful new creation, fully and finally judge all that is evil. It is not clear to me that this passage is meant to do anything more or anything less than this. In particular, I find it hard to accept that it should cause me to radically reinterpret the picture of God we have received in Jesus.
While I don’t imagine this reading will convince everyone (anyone?), it should at least make it obvious that pacifists aren’t ignoring these “violent” texts. There are real, viable ways to read Revelation that don’t make God into a monster. Maybe we should try them out.
Do you agree?
Apocalyptic literature is a land of vivid dreams, other-wordly visions full of heroes and villains. And very few read them as is they have no meaning, but many read them looking for the wrong meaning.
In teaching Old Testament, one of the things I try to emphasize with my students is that these books are history written for a purpose. Did they record history? Certainly, but the writers of the Old Testament were not primarily objective historians recording Israel’s history for the sake of future generations. Rather, they were ‘theologians’ interpreting God’s activity in time and space to urge Israel to place their absolute trust in God. Their primary focus was how particular events from the past could shape their audiences’ view of the present world and actions in the present world. In other words, they were not simply retelling history to explain past realities, they were interpreting history to create a desired present reality. Or as I repeatedly say to my students, writing history with a present purpose.
I share this example because I think it relates to how we should read apocalyptic literature (apocalypses).[1] Jewish apocalypses differ from the Old Testament’s historical books in one main detail they focus on future events not past ones, but they have a similar purpose. Do some apocalypses offer actual visions of the future?[2] Certainly, but most writer’s of apocalypses were not primarily focused on recording the future for the sake of future generations. Rather, they offered glimpses of God’s future activity in time and space to urge Israel to be faithful to God in the present. Anathea E. Portier-Young writes, “Their visions portrayed reality in a new light in order to change now only how their audiences saw, but also what they did.”[3] Apocalyptic writers ‘predicted’ the future not to provide a map to find the treasure, but to create a desired present reality. In other words, apocalyptic literature is predicting the future with a present purpose.
This view of apocalyptic literature can have a profound effect on the way we read and interpret these great writings. Instead of reading them as treasure maps, where we escape into a world of dreams and visions with the primary purpose of identifying the markers of God’s future activity (e.g. answering questions like, Who is the anti-Christ? or Is this the war to end all wars?). I believe we can return to reading them as they would have been intended, as calls to present faithfulness to God.
Apocalyptic literature is not an excuse to abandon reality but a challenge to engage reality. They are not an excuse to focus solely on the magnificence of God’s future coming, but a challenge to look for places where we can work to make his kingdom a reality in the here and now.
[1] Apocalypses are found among the literature of many nations in the Ancient Near East.
[2] We must also recognize that many apocalypses were actually written after the events being ‘predicted.’ In these cases, the future is a literary device but it does not change the fact that they used ‘future’ events as a means to give meaning to present events.
[3] Portier-Young, Apocalypse Against Empire: Theologies of Resistance in Early Judaism, 217.
I have discussed the apocalyptic imagination several times on this blog…
The ‘Lacking’ Apocalyptic Imagination
…and in my next several posts I want to continue the discussion by highlighting several different views of Paul’s apocalyptic imagination. This first installment discusses:
‘The Martyn School’
J. Louis Martyn writes, “Paul’s theological point of departure is…the apocalypse of Christ and the power of that apocalypse to create a history.”[1]
The opening and closing of Paul’s letter to the Galatians frame the whole letter in an apocalyptic manner. Galatians begins with a declaration of deliverance as Paul writes, “the Lord Jesus Christ, ‘who gave up his very life for our sins,’ so that he might snatch us out of the grasp of the present evil age, thus acting in accordance with the intention of God our Father.” (1:3b-4).[2] As the result of Jesus Christ’s death “for our sins,” he liberated “us” from the destructive power of the world. Richard Hays writes, “Paul’s gospel declares God’s gracious invasion of the world.”[3] Thus, Paul’s apocalyptic gospel is evident from the letter’s opening words, as he begins Galatians proclaiming deliverance from this evil world through God’s apocalyptic act in the death (1:3-4) and resurrection (1:1) of Jesus Christ.
Galatians closes by focusing on the new that has come. Gal. 6:12-15 contains some of Paul’s most striking language as he explains that the old world has been crucified to him and he to the old world through the cross of Jesus Christ. He writes, “As for me, God forbid that I should boast in anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the cosmos has been crucified to me and I to the cosmos.” (6:14). Nevertheless, Paul does not end with crucifixion, instead concluding with an ecstatic cry, “new creation” (6:15). In 2 Cor. 5:17, Paul explicitly connects “new creation” with being “in Christ” saying, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation,” and the image is the same in Galatians. Those who are “in Christ Jesus” (3:26) receive “the Spirit of [God’s] Son” (4:6) thus they “belong to Christ Jesus” (5:24) and with him they die to the old and live in “new creation” (2:20, 6:14-15).
The beginning and ending of Galatians highlights how Paul views the Christ-event as the act that brings about the death of one world and the inauguration of another. Bruce W. Longenecker writes, “[Paul] envisages the establishment of a new realm of existence. It is a sphere of life wholly differentiated from the ‘cosmos’ that has been crucified to Paul a domain where distinctive patterns of life are operative.”[4] Simply stated, Christ in his death and resurrection rescues “us” from the present evil age and inaugurates new creation. God’s sending of his Son to liberate humanity is the axis around which everything revolves. The old defeated. The new inaugurated. The present altered. To quote at length, Douglas A. Campbell writes,
Nothing can be the same again. Both Paul and his fellow Christians are living in a new reality that, in a sense, only they can understand. In the light of this new reality they understand that Christ has rescued them from a tortured previous reality within which they were oppressed by evil powers. Christ and his followers are presently at war with that evil dominion, and to a degree the war extends through the middle of each Christian community and each Christian person in the form of an ongoing conflict between flesh and spirit. Nevertheless, Christ has effected the decisive act of deliverance and victory. Christians are saved and dramatically! They have been set free and must now resist the temptation to lapse back into the old, evil, but strangely comfortable reality from which they have been delivered.[5]
God has transformed the cosmos by creating a history, a new creation, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
[2] Translations of Galatians are from Martyn’s commentary. J. Louis Martyn, Galatians, The Anchor Yale Bible (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 3-10.
[3] Richard B. Hays, Galatians, New Interpreter’s Bible IX (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2000), 202.
[4] Bruce W. Longenecker, The Triumph of Abraham’s God (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1998), 37.
[5] Douglas A. Campbell, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009), 190.
Cruciform Theology 