Paul and the Apocalyptic Imagination
Page 10
If this moment has taken place, however, and we assume—perhaps optimistically—what we might call a Pauline outcome, then this allows a moment of recognition during the historical reconstruction of Paul. The modern interpreter would be standing within a revelatory situation analogous to Paul’s. In the light of the disclosure to this interpreter that “Jesus is Lord,” she would presumably be comforted to find that, after appropriately sensitive historical reconstruction, the apostle Paul seemed to inhabit the same situation too. Paul’s own account of christological revelation would consequently attest—or “witness to”—and thereby, additionally confirm, the modern interpreter’s location. (This would not necessarily be the most important use of Scripture, but it would be a use of Scripture.) So, the situation for the modern interpreter in relation to revelation is, perhaps somewhat counter-intuitively, “backward.” It proceeds from her to Paul, and not vice versa.
It follows directly from this, nevertheless, that any modern interpreter who shares Paul’s apocalyptic location in the sense of his basic revelation concerning the nature of God in Christ—having responded to it personally and then recognized it in him—endorses, by direct implication, an essentially apocalyptic account of history,[11] meaning by this the most basic claim of Jewish Apocalypses that visible history is not all that is. History is affected by unseen powers, and ultimately driven by God, so an accurate grasp of history is only possible as those powers and the divine action are grasped by revelation.[12] In that literature, revelation generally takes place through heavenly journeys or dreams. But the modern interpreter aligned with Paul must modify this antecedent view to center history on a fundamentally christological account of the divine nature and action. (A journey, we might say, has taken place in the opposite direction.[13]) Hence, any resulting account of Paul will proceed by affirming that he was indeed located in Christ, in some resurrected sense, and will strive to unravel exactly what that means more broadly in the rest of his life as attested by his letters, since this history—in which God is palpably at work, along with other powers—is now fraught with significance. Moreover, this will be a true account of him in historical terms, because it will be rooted in a correct view of history—a suitably open one—even if many modern historians might be a little nervous about it.
It should be clear by this point in our brief discussion, then, just why “apocalyptic” is so important as a description of Paul’s theological epistemology. If Paul is described in these terms, then he attests to the basic structure of Christian truth, in terms of revelation. If he is not so described, then he does not.[14]
With these critical primary or “first-order” realizations in place, it is time to turn and address some further key implications and related confusions. These unfold as we reflect in more detail on the way in which the revelation of the truth found in Christ takes place within a context—whether Paul’s or ours.
The Apocalyptic Starting Point and Its Context
The focus on epistemology in our previous discussion—in the senses of knowledge, information, and disclosure—can artificially isolate one aspect of a broader, richer situation that is fundamentally interpersonal, and consequently, at least in some sense, ontological. It is worth emphasizing that Paul, in the text we noted at the outset of our discussion, does not isolate his claims about correct and incorrect knowing from a location that is deeply relational and bound up with what he now is. He is “in” Christ, through the indwelling work of the Spirit, living thereby, in some sense, in a resurrected location characterized by life beyond death, and hence, by the fullness of the presence of God. Those of his modern interpreters attuned to this dimension in his thinking tend to refer to this in terms of “participation” (see esp. 2 Cor. 13:13 again).[15] But let it suffice for now to say that any affirmation of an apocalyptic starting point for Paul’s analysis in epistemological terms is simultaneously an affirmation that Paul’s actual “location” participates in a new reality; it has ontological correlates. Indeed, the latter is the basis for the former.[16] If we appreciate this, then we now need to think about how this ontology intervenes into a context.
There is, of course, a context for the revelation of Christ, whether to us or to Paul. At the very least, we have to speak of “us” or “Paul” at this moment although, clearly, a great many other things are involved! The revelation takes place to someone somewhere. So, this divine activity is clearly not a-contextual. But it now follows, given that revelation has taken place in a context, that we must engage immediately in further analysis of that context, ultimately in an act or process of discernment.
As the programmatic Pauline text for his inquiry states directly, there are true and false ways of knowing in play that detect the hidden but determinative realities of the context, or that fail to do so. Moreover, to fail to do so is to supply a defective account of a context. Only in the light of God revealed in Christ is any context known truly for what it is, since this will enable figures such as Paul, responding to revelation, to detect what is actually going on. We must think and act κατὰ πνεῦμα and ἐν Χριστῷ, and not κατὰ σάρκα. Moreover, as Paul’s famous but cryptic text implies, this discernment will detect discontinuities and continuities with what precedes it contextually.
Discontinuities
Discernment will detect contextual discontinuities. As Paul freely confesses, he formerly knew both humanity and Christ from a “fleshly” point of view that has been revealed to be fundamentally false. These old perspectives were wrong. The truth is found in Christ, where humanity is primarily located. Moreover, Christ himself is now known truly—as Lord, and not, presumably, as some sad messianic pretender and/or demonic collaborator. But we should probably detect two different types of discontinuity here.
First, there are those aspects revealed within Paul’s present location that are simply new as unanticipated pieces of information. As we noted already, prior to the coming of Jesus of Nazareth, neither Paul nor anyone else (perhaps excepting very special circumstances that need not hold us up here) could know that Jesus of Nazareth was God incarnate. This discontinuity with preceding history simply has to respect God’s incarnation within history at a particular point in space and time. The incarnation necessarily entails the presence of information after this event that was not present to humanity before it. Moreover, it was probably new information too that God incarnate in Jesus was crucified. That God would be rejected, shamefully treated, and publicly tortured, was probably new information, prophetic anticipations notwithstanding.
But the revelation of God incarnate in Jesus Christ clearly disclosed to Paul ways in which his own previous life was sinful and misdirected—most obviously, his zeal. Paul’s deep commitment to God prior to his call entailed, he thought, the deployment of violence against members of the early church—an activity revealed to be diametrically opposed to the intentions of God, and hence, necessarily informed by a fundamentally incorrect account of the nature of God, a God who desires to kill Christians (see esp. Gal. 1:13). Indeed, it is vital to appreciate here what I sometimes refer to as Paul’s “Augustinian moment” (or “. . . dimension”).[17]
The revelation of Christ clearly functioned to illuminate and to judge many aspects of Paul’s location, revealing much of its content to be fundamentally sinful. Much that was previously thought to be good, and perhaps, even the height of piety, was revealed to be less central than was previously thought; not to mention, differently oriented (thinking here of the Torah), and even just plain wrong (thinking here of Paul’s violence).[18]
It is in this way and at this moment that the language of discontinuity can—and sometimes must—be deployed. As Paul’s pre-Christian behavior suggests, fundamentally misguided accounts of God are often inextricably bound up with fundamentally misguided, and occasionally vicious actions. Indeed, God-talk that is uncontrolled by Christology has a horrific track record in church history, which is to say that God-talk, independent of Christ, frequently kills. So, when
appropriately controlled by Christology, it is sometimes necessary to pronounce an unambiguous verdict of “no!” against such talk and its sinister accompaniments—the role that Barth’s famous Römerbrief played after WWI, not to mention his rejoinder to Emil Brunner in 1934 as National Socialism was on the rise in Germany.[19]
Apocalyptic readers of Paul can sometimes overstep the mark here, but I take it that this legitimate and important dynamic is what is going on mostly when they deploy the language of discontinuity strongly. The God of Jesus Christ asks his[20] representatives at times to pronounce a negative verdict courageously and firmly against other God-talk that is corrupt; the God of Jesus Christ is simply not to be identified with such talk, and hence, is radically discontinuous with it.[21] Barth pronounced this anathema on the pretentions of modernist and essentially liberal theology in Europe, and especially, when it facilitated nationalism and nationalist aggression (and I am tempted to pronounce the same against Christian advocates of the death penalty in the U. S. A.).
It follows, then, from the intersection of christological revelation with Paul’s context thatevery aspect of that context must now be re-evaluated and sifted under the ongoing impress of this revelation, while the level of distortion present previously within the analysis of that context cannot be overestimated. The revelation of Christ to Paul reveals that he is, as Calvin nicely put it somewhat later, totally depraved.[22] His very thinking—and by direct implication, all of humanity’s—is shot through with corruption, and can only be decisively clarified by the work of God revealed in Christ and the Spirit (Rom. 12:1; Col. 1:21[23]). Fundamental discontinuities will almost certainly become apparent.
However, this is emphatically not to claim that Paul’s context is totally depraved in the sense that it is absent of all goodness—which would lead us to Marcionism. It is simply to claim that his context is comprehensively contaminated; no aspect is free from distortion. Consequently, clear thinking about it will need to lean in the future on the clearest and most decisive illumination within it, who is Christ—a point worth reiterating.
It is not being claimed here that either Paul’s or my context completely lacks either truth or goodness. However, these things are inextricably intertwined with corruption and evil. In order to discern what is what, then, we need desperately to rely on the clearest illumination of this entanglement that we possess, namely, the light of Christ. Without this, we cannot endorse or affirm elements within our previous contexts. But a further reason lies just to hand for operating steadfastly in a christologically-controlled and retrospective fashion. This will also allow Paul’s modern interpreters to detect and to repudiate foundationalism, this being the deadly methodological heresy that slips into the Christian city like the Trojan horse, leading to its fall and destruction.
As we have already seen, it is implicit within the statement “Jesus is Lord” that its truth is self-authenticating. But it follows from this that its truth is a matter of obedience and not merely of recognition or affirmation. To fail to recognize its self-authentication in any way, perhaps by asking if this claim is true, is immediately to step outside of the lordship of God as revealed in Christ, and to assert the existence of a set of truth criteria independent of, and superior to, this location. And consequently, this is to deny the lordship of Christ, here at its most critical moment. It is to deny that the Lord is the truth and the Lord of the truth, and hence, is the Lord! And it is necessarily to assert the existence of another lord—a lord necessarily of one’s own making. (It is not of God’s.) Hence, as Barth elaborates, it is to replicate the primordial sin of Adam and Eve, who were expelled from the garden of Eden for, in effect, requesting an independent starting point for divine knowledge (albeit on the deceptive recommendation of the serpent; see esp. CD III/1). And it is to establish one’s own truth criteria—by which to measure the nature and arrival of God!—and this is clearly an idolatrous and foolish move. Far better to rely on what God says about God. (One could add that this is an utterly artificial reconstruction for a Christian to undertake as well.)
Barth refuses, then, to step outside of God’s self-authenticating self-disclosure that has taken place definitively in Christ, by the Spirit, and to embrace some alternative. This is and must remain his epistemological starting point. Only this steadfast refusal to wander keeps the interpreter located—obediently—within the truth. So all appropriate God-talk is done from within this location, after the fact, in response to this location. Hence, there must now be no a priori or antecedent epistemological task fundamentally preparatory to and for the truth.
This mistaken procedure, however it is undertaken, is usefully called “foundationalism,” because it is an attempt by human beings to construct their own foundation for talk about God as against relying on the one God supplies; it is, in Alan Torrance’s terms, “criterial immanentism.”[24] But any such procedure is disobedient, unnecessary, and inaccurate to boot. So Barth urges Christian thinkers in the strongest possible terms to eschew such an approach. (He had further, extremely important reasons for adopting his position in addition to mere theological and epistemological purity, namely, inevitable political and cultural compromises, but space precludes addressing them here as they deserve.)
Hence, there are good reasons for emphasizing the discontinuities present within the context of revelation. We must be open to aspects of the divine revelation that are genuinely new (i.e., to “us”—things such as the assumption of humanity in relation to Jesus from Nazareth); we must be open to the judgment of that revelation on elements of our context that we might previously have identified with the divine purposes but that turn out to be anything but; and we will, in this fashion, also maintain a constant vigilance against the fundamentally destructive methods of foundationalism. But with this appropriate level of vigilance in place—the recognition of the “no” that is spoken to a context—we must also turn toward and recognize the positive elements within our context to which God is saying “yes.” To fail to do this would be to fall into a set of different but equally egregious errors.
Continuities
Christ is God arriving in his own “context,” hence he is per definitionem its climactic moment (Rom. 9:5; 10:4). Moreover, he must also be per definitionem its inner rationale (1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:15–20). He therefore illuminates what creation is. What Christ reveals God to be in his incarnate revelation, we know God to be “antecedently,” as the theologians later put it, in his creation, and even “prior” to this, in election (Rom. 8:28–30).[25] Hence, although this might be dramatically new information for us, this is not a new initiative or development on the part of God. God has always been a communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and this is now revealed unambiguously to be the key to creation, as well as to redemption (and as Paul well knows; see i.e., Rom. 8:29–30). The early Fathers used the language of “mystery” or “[divine] secret,” drawn largely from Paul, to describe this dynamic. Christ has always been the key to creation and to history, but this information was a divine secret, locked up in the hidden counsels of God, and only disclosed after the coming of Christ to his apostles and prophets, and through them to the church.[26] And much the same logic applies to history, and to God’s special relationship within history with Israel.
Even as creation is now revealed to be the context that God has created for fellowship with humanity, redemption is now revealed to be the restoration of God’s original creative purposes. Moreover, that restoration, made necessary by the intrusion of evil and the advent of sin (Rom. 5:12), is effected when God assumes a particular human body specifically located within Judaism (Rom. 9:1–5). And at this crucial moment, several things become apparent.
As Paul is well aware, in assuming a human body, God is effecting the salvation of humanity (so 2 Cor. 5:14b); the counter-point to Christ is consequently Adam (Rom. 5:12–21; Gal. 3:28). But God assumed a particular human body, within a specific time, place, and people—a Jewish body (Gal. 4:4–5). Moreover, a Jewish body was
then resurrected, becoming the template for the new humanity (1 Cor. 15:22, 45). It follows from these realizations that Jesus is the climactic moment for Israel (Rom. 10:4), and that Israel was shaped primarily by its anticipation of this climactic moment. Hence, the basic structure of Israel prior to the incarnation is promissory. Paul therefore crafts a narrative of Israel oriented by this pinnacle, in the calling of Abraham and of the other patriarchs, which points ineluctably forward to the great moment when God gifts Israel with life (i.e., permanent resurrected life) in and through Christ (see esp. Gal. 3:15–29). This crafting is emphatically retrospective; it is clear as we look back from the answer to the question what the question was. But this is not a revised historical claim; it is an epistemological one. Israel was always determined by its anticipation of Christ, and hence, had a fundamentally anticipatory or promissory structure.[27] Paul—and perhaps even many of Israel’s other earlier occupants—simply did not know this.
With these realizations in place, this is hopefully the right moment at which to attempt some brief clarifications in relation to the very difficult and important further questions clustering around this aspect of Paul’s thinking (and not only Paul’s, of course).