Paul and the Apocalyptic Imagination
Page 27
In the new Day’s reversal of values, the decree
That every mouth be stopped
While grace invades, abases and destroys,
And with each shoot of mortal skill and wisdom lopped
In total loss,
Christ holds the Sum of joys,
No tree upon our land except his Cross.[57]
* * *
Jacques Derrida, “Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in Philosophy,” Oxford Literary Review 6, no. 2 (1984): 3–37, at 24. ↵
Carl Braaten, “The Recovery of Apocalyptic Imagination,” in The Last Things: Biblical and Theological Perspectives on Eschatology, eds. B. Braaten and R. Jenson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 14–32, at 26. ↵
Ludwig Feuerbach, from the preface to the second edition of The Essence of Christianity, trans. G. Eliot (London: J. Chapman, 1854). ↵
William Sanday, “The Apocalyptic Element in the Gospels,” The Hibbert Journal 10 (October 1911): 83–109, at 104; Theodore W. Jennings, Jr. “Apocalyptic and Contemporary Theology,” Quarterly Review 4, no. 3 (1984): 54–68, at 54. ↵
The German title of Klaus Koch’s book, The Rediscovery of Apocalyptic, translated by M. Kohl (London: SCM, 1972), expresses this clearly: modern theology finds itself Ratlos vor der Apokalyptik. The currency metaphor is Johannes Weiss’s own; see Jesus’ Proclamation of the Kingdom of God (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971). For a concise and critical assessment of this trope and its significance, see Christopher Morse, “‘If Johannes Weiss is Right . . .’ : A Brief Retrospective on Apocalyptic Theology,” in Apocalyptic and the Future of Theology: With and Beyond J. Louis Martyn, eds. J. B. Davis and D. Harink (Eugene: Cascade, 2012), 137–53. ↵
So Walter Lowrie in his “Introduction” to Albert Schweitzer, The Mystery of the Kingdom of God, trans. W. Lowrie (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1914), 40. ↵
So thought Weiss, Schweitzer, Troeltsch, et al. “If the Kingdom of God is an eschatological matter, then it is a useless concept as far as dogmatics is concerned”—Julius Kaftan as reported by Rudolf Bultmann, “Introduction” to Johannes Weiss, Jesus Proclamation of the Kingdom of God, trans. R. H. Hiers and D. L. Holland (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), xi. ↵
Thomas W. Gillespie, “Studying Theology in Apocalyptic Times,” Princeton Seminary Bulletin 23, no. 1 (2002): 1–10, at 7. ↵
Richard B. Hays, “‘Why do stand looking up toward heaven?’ New Testament Eschatology at the Turn of the Millennium,” Modern Theology 16, no. 1 (2000): 115–35, at 133. ↵
Walter Lowe, “Why We Need Apocalyptic,” SJT 63, no. 1 (2010): 41–53, at 41. ↵
For various tellings of the story, see Jennings, “Apocalyptic and Contemporary Theology”; Joshua B. Davis, “The Challenge of Apocalyptic to Modern Theology,” in Apocalyptic and the Future of Theology: With and Beyond J. Louis Martyn, eds. J. B. Davis and D. Harink (Eugene: Cascade, 2012), 1–50; and from a different perspective, Cyril O’Regan, Theology and the Spaces of Apocalyptic (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2009). ↵
Käsemann’s original paper, “The Beginnings of Christian Theology,” is collected together with a range of responses in the Journal of Theology and Church, volume 6 Apocalypticism, edited by R. W. Funk (New York: Herder & Herder, 1969). The quoted words are from Richard B. Hays, “‘Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?,’” 116. ↵
Simon Critchley, The Faith of the Faithless: Experiments in Political Theology (London: Verso, 2012), 156. ↵
A concise and direct treatment of these motifs is offered by Geoff Thompson, “From Invisible Redemption to Invisible Hopeful Action in Karl Barth,” in Messianism, Apocalypse and Redemption in 20th Century German Thought, eds. W. Cristaudo and W. Baker (Adelaide: ATF, 2006), 49–62, at 50–54. On the influence of the Blumhardts for Barth’s developing theology, see Christian T. Collins Winn, “Jesus is Victor!” The Significance of the Blumhardts for the Theology of Karl Barth (Eugene: Pickwick, 2009), esp. 155–207 (chapter 4). ↵
Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. E. Hoskyns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933), 314. ↵
For exemplary criticism of Barth’s “transcendent eschatology” in this vein, see Jürgen Moltmann, The Theology of Hope, trans. J. W. Leitch (London: SCM, 1967), 50–58. Cf. J. Christiaan Beker, Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 142–43, where Barth is treated summarily as an instance of a “neo-orthodoxy” that evacuates future eschatology into one at once over-realized in Christology and utterly tangential to historical reality. ↵
On this, see Bruce L. McCormack, “Can We Still Speak of ‘Justification by Faith’? An In-house Debate with Apocalyptic Readings of Paul,” in Galatians and Christian Theology: Justification, the Gospel, and Ethics in Paul’s Letter, eds. M. Elliott et al. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), 177–83, and more extensively, Bruce L. McCormack, “Longing for a New World: On Socialism, Eschatology and Apocalyptic in Barth’s Early Dialectical Theology,” in Theologie im Umbruch der Moderne: Karl Barths frühe Dialektische Theologie, eds. G. Pfleiderer and H. Matern (Zürich: TVZ, 2014), 135–49. Cf. Shannon Nicole Smythe, “Karl Barth in Conversation with Pauline Apocalypticism,” in Karl Barth in Conversation, eds. W. T. McMacken and D. Congdon (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2014), 195–210, for reflections on the broad congruence of aspects of Barth’s theology with key features of the apocalyptic reading of Paul. ↵
Ernst Käsemann, “A Theological Review,” in On Being a Disciple of the Crucified Nazarene, trans. by R. A. Harrisville (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), xv. ↵
David V. Way, The Lordship of Christ: Ernst Käsemann’s Interpretation of Paul’s Theology, Oxford Theological Monographs (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 40. ↵
Ibid., 41–42. Beverly Gaventa has observed in a recent essay that “what is most disturbing about Galatians has less to do with Marcion than with Barmen,” explaining that Paul’s singular announcement of the lordship of Christ which “knows no boundaries and permits no limits”—taken up by Barth as the theme of the second article of the Barmen Theological Declaration—represents the sharp edge of the gospel in Paul, a theme relentlessly emphasized by Käsemann as well. See “The Singularity of the Gospel Revisited,” in Galatians and Christian Theology: Justification, the Gospel, and Ethics in Paul’s Letter, eds. M. Elliott et al. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), 187–99, at 199. ↵
Ernst Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, trans. G. W. Bromiley (London: SCM, 1980), 3. The ubiquity of invocation of hope and the present transformative pressure of the futurum resurrectionis in Barth’s Romans—especially in his exegesis of chapter 6—hold out the place of the future even in his early eschatology. ↵
Bruce L. McCormack, “Can We Still Speak of ‘Justification By Faith’?,” 162. ↵
Bruce L. McCormack, “Longing for a New World,” 144. He later suggests that if we look to understand the present popularity of Barth’s theology in the English-speaking world, to begin with, his current positive reception precisely among apocalyptic readers of Paul “would not be a bad place to start,” (149). ↵
J. Louis Martyn, “God’s Way of Making Right What is Wrong,” in Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), 144n8; Martyn reiterates this remark in his Galatians (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 95, 163. Cf. Karl Barth, Christ and Adam: Man and Humanity in Romans 5, trans. T. A. Smail (New York: Harper & Bros., 1956). ↵
Paul L. Lehmann, “Karl Barth, Theologian of Permanent Revolution,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 28, no. 1 (1972): 67–81, at 77 and 72, where Lehmann is citing Barth’s Römerbrief (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1922), 11 in his own translation. Cf. Matthew Rose, Ethics With Barth: God, Metaphysics and Morals (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 8–9 where he provides a catena of readings of Barth, which associate him with the kind of radical repudiation of the theological significance of the stabilities of the created order which one associates with the radical logic of apocalyptic disjuncture. Rose is citing these readings
—including Lehmann’s—in order to refute their validity. ↵
The phrase is Barth’s from his commentary on Philippians, cited in Timothy Gorringe, Karl Barth: Against Hegemony (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 94. ↵
Bruce L. McCormack, “Longing for a New World,” 146–48; “Can We Still Speak of ‘Justification By Faith’?,” 179. For a very concise presentation of the matter, see Martin de Boer, “Paul and Apocalyptic Eschatology,” in The Continuum History of Apocalypticism, eds. B. McGinn et al. (New York: Continuum, 2003), 166–94. ↵
Walter Lowe, “Prospects for a Postmodern Christian Theology: Apocalyptic Without Reserve,” Modern Theology 15, no. 1 (1999): 17–24, at 19. ↵
Ibid., 20, emphasis original. ↵
Ibid., 23. Cf. Walter Lowe, “Why We Need Apocalyptic,” SJT 63, no. 1 (2010): 41–53, at 48–50. ↵
Ibid., 51–52. ↵
Ibid., 53. The phrase “eschatological realism” is drawn over from Ingolf U. Dalferth, “Karl Barth’s Eschatological Realism,” in Karl Barth: Centenary Essays, ed. S. Sykes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 14–45, a text to which Lowe himself appeals as an ally. ↵
Nathan R. Kerr, Christ, History and Apocalyptic: The Politics of Christian Mission (London: SCM Press, 2009). ↵
Ibid., 64–73. ↵
Ibid., 73, emphasis original. ↵
Ibid., 74–79. Kerr appeals in this regard to Douglas Harink, Paul Among the Postliberals (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2003), 45–56, and Joseph Mangina, Karl Barth: Theologian of Christian Witness (Louisville: WJK, 2004), 124–29. ↵
Kerr, Christ, History and Apocalyptic, 91–92. ↵
Harink, Paul Among the Postliberals, 54. ↵
Robert Jenson, “Apocalypticism and Messianism in Twentieth Century German Theology,” in Messianism, Apocalypse and Redemption in 20th Century German Thought, eds. W. Cristaudo and W. Baker (Adelaide: ATF, 2006), 3–12, at 12. ↵
The citations are from remarks on Romans 5:12–21, Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 166. ↵
Cark Braaten, Christ and Counter-Christ: Apocalyptic Themes in Theology and Culture (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972), 16. ↵
Karl Barth, “The Christian in Society (1919),” in The Word of God and Theology, trans. A. Marga (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 60–61. ↵
Ibid., 40. ↵
Cyril O’Regan, Theology and the Spaces of Apocalyptic (St Louis: Marquette University Press, 2009), 29 et passim. ↵
Barth, “The Christian in Society (1919),” 53. ↵
Carl Braaten, Christ and Counter-Christ (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972), 14. He continues, pointedly, “Theology still must decide whether Aristotle or Jesus is the teacher of God and how he relates or disrelates to the world.” ↵
Martyn, Galatians, 101. ↵
Barth, “The Christian in Society (1919),” 47. ↵
Carl Braaten, “The Significance of Apocalypticism for Systematic Theology,” Interpretation 25, no. 4 (1971): 480–99, at 493. ↵
The trope of “bifocal vision” is taken over from J. Louis Martyn, “From Paul to Flannery O’Connor with the Power of Grace,” in Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), 284. ↵
Barth, “The Christian in Society (1919),” 45. ↵
Ibid., 51. ↵
Braaten, Christ and Counter-Christ, 17–18. ↵
Didache 10:6. ↵
See Lowe, “Why we Need Apocalyptic,” 52. ↵
One might take such questions as echoes of the searching criticisms of modern Christian theology as such once ventured by Franz Overbeck. See his On the Christianity of Theology, ed. and trans. J. Wilson (San Jose, CA: Pickwick, 2002). ↵
Jack Clemo, “The Awakening,” in The Awakening: Poems Newly Found, eds. J. Hurst, A. M. Kent, and A. C. Symons (London: Francis Boutle, 2003), 68–69. ↵
11
Righteousness Revealed
The Death of Christ as the Definition of the Righteousness of God in Romans 3:21–26
Jonathan A. Linebaugh
“He had his own strange way of judging things. I suspect he acquired it from the Gospels.”
—Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Apocalyptic Backgrounds and/or a Christological Apocalypse?
“I had been captivated with a remarkable ardour for understanding Paul in the epistle to the Romans . . . but a single saying in chapter one [δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ] . . . stood in my way.”[1] This autobiographical reminiscence from Martin Luther describes the experience of countless readers of Romans. When the phrase δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ first appears in Romans (1:17), Paul’s syntax—note the γάρ that links 1:16 and 1:17—suggests that his reference to “the righteousness of God” is explanatory, but the spilt ink (and blood) in which the Wirkungsgeschichte of this Pauline phrase is written tells a different story: this part of Paul is “hard to understand” (2 Pet. 3:16).
But George Herbert can help:
Oh dreadful Justice, what a fright and terror
Wast thou of old,When sin and error
Did show and shape thy looks to me,
And through their glass discolor thee!
This poetic description, which resonates with Luther’s recollection of “hat[ing] the phrase ‘the righteousness of God’” because “according to use and custom,” he understood it as “the active righteousness by which God is just and punishes unrighteous sinners,” suggests that, at least for Herbert, the interpretative problem is not just grammatical; it has to do with what (or who) reveals the definition of righteousness. “When sin and error did show and shape” the “look” of God’s justice, the result was “fright and terror.” But something changes between stanzas two and three: “But now,” Herbert says with a Pauline phrase (Rom. 3:21):
. . . that Christ’s pure veil presents thy sight
I see no fears:
Thy hand is white,Thy scales like buckets, which attend
And interchangeably descend,
Lifting to heaven from this well of tears.
Where “sin and error” revealed a frightful justice, “Christ’s pure veil presents” a righteousness that results in “no fear.” Like Luther before him, who “mediated day and night” until the “connections of [Paul’s] words” overcame “use and custom” with an exegetical entrance “into paradise itself,” Herbert’s transition from “fright” to “no fear” occurs at that Pauline point—“but now”—where Christ reveals the meaning of “the righteousness of God.”
And this, I want to suggest, is an apocalyptic rendering of δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ in the most precise Pauline sense: It is in “the gospel . . . about God’s son . . . Jesus Christ” (Rom. 1:1–4 cf. 1:16–17), that “the righteousness of God” is “unveiled” (ἀποκαλύπτω, Rom. 1:17). For Luther, this meant a new definition: “the righteousness of God” is not the divine justice that punishes the unrighteous, but the gift of Jesus that justifies the ungodly.[2] For Herbert, a poem:
God’s promises have made thee mine;
Why should I justice now decline?
Against me there is none, but for me much.[3]
This, however, is not always what apocalyptic means when used as a description of Paul and his theology. Luther and Herbert are apocalyptic readers of Paul in the sense that they interpret God’s gift of Jesus Christ as an apocalypse (cf. Gal. 1:12): “Christ’s pure veil presents” the meaning of righteousness, sings Herbert, echoing Paul’s insistence that “the righteousness of God is made visible” in “the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:21, 24). Here, apocalyptic names an interpretative movement, not from traditional “use and custom” to “the connection of [Paul’s] words,” but the other way around: from a revelatory event to the definition of God’s righteousness it discloses. But apocalyptic, when used primarily to identify the history-of-religions background of Paul’s theology, often serves to make the opposite point. Where apocalyptic names the “from whence” of Pauline concepts, this identification
can invite a reading of Paul in which “use and custom” determine the definition of Paul’s vocabulary, not least the phrase δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ.
Ernst Käsemann provides a representative and influential example. His interpretation of “‘The Righteousness of God’ in Paul,” to quote the title of his 1961 address to the Oxford Congress,[4] is an instance of a larger history-of-religions reconstruction. His celebrated thesis that “apocalyptic is the mother of all Christian theology” is, in the first instance, an historical rather than a theological claim.[5] It is a judgment about “Die Anfänge christlicher Theologie” and represents a shift from Käsemann’s pre-1950 answer to the history-of-religions question in terms of Hellenistic and gnostic backgrounds.[6] From the start, the definition of “apocalyptic” proved elusive,[7] but for Käsemann, its use was necessary because the near equation in Germany of “eschatology” and a doctrine of history made it impossible to say “eschatology” and mean “Endgeschichte.”[8] Apocalyptic, in Käsemann’s use and context, thus refers to a specific kind of eschatology characterized by a constellation of features related to Endgeschichte: the expectation of an imminent parousia, a cosmic rather than individualistic orientation, the antithetical correspondence of Urzeit and Endzeit—all of which work together to pose an apocalyptic question: Who is the world’s true Lord?[9]