Paul and the Apocalyptic Imagination

by Ben C Blackwell

  I. Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), 164. ↵

  C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975), 1:211, is a partial exception. ↵

  G. Bornkamm, “The Revelation of God’s Wrath,” in Early Christian Experience (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 49. ↵

  The connection between Rom. 2:4–5 and 3:25–26 tells decisively against W. G. Kümmel’s insistence that πάρεσις should be translated “forgiveness” rather than “passing over” (“Πάρεσις und ἔνδειξις. Ein Beitrag zum Verständis der paulinschen Rechtfertigungslehre,” in Heilsgeschehen und Geschichte: Gesammelte Aufsätze. 1933–1964, ed. W. G. Kümmel [Marburg: Elwert Verlag, 1965], 260–70). ↵

  Paul’s use of ἱλαστήριον in Rom. 3:25–26 operates within an interpretation of the cross as eschatological judgment, and therefore, together with the liberative (ἀπολύτρωσις) metaphor, the cultic evocations conjured by the use of ἱλαστήριον do not function as independent though complementary “lines of approximation” (Barth, CD IV/1, 274) to the ultimately non-metaphorical truth of God’s salvific act. Rather, in Rom. 3:25–26, ἱλαστήριον and ἀπολύτρωσις are coordinated by, and thus contribute to, an interpretation of the cross as God’s eschatological judgment. ↵

  See Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale, trans. A. Nichols (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990), 119: the cross is “the full achievement of the divine judgment.” For a discussion of Paul’s description of the death of Christ in relation to the final judgment imagined by an early Jewish apocalypse, see my “Debating Diagonal Δικαιοσύνη: The Epistle of Enoch and Paul in Theological Conversation,” Early Christianity 1, no. 1 (2010): 107–28. ↵

  This does not mean, as Barth claims (A Shorter Commentary on Romans, trans. D. H. van Daalen [London: SCM Press, 1959], 24–26), that the “day” of Rom. 2:5 (cf. 1:18; 2:16) refers to the cross; but it does suggest, however paradoxically, that the future judgment referred to in 2:5–10 occurs on the cross. Thus, while Paul continues to affirm the futurity of judgment (Rom. 14:10–12; 1 Cor. 3:12–15; 4:4–5; 2 Cor. 5:10), his consideration of its soteriological shape in Rom. 8:31–34 is determined by God’s prior and ongoing act in his Son (cf. the greater-to-lesser logic of Rom. 5:9). The relationship between present and future justification is thus the reverse of what Wright suggests: present justification is not an accurate “anticipation of the future verdict” (“The New Perspective on Paul,” 260); the future word of justification is an echo and effect of the justifying judgment enacted in the cross. ↵

  Jüngel, Justification, 87. ↵

  It is therefore accurate to gloss “the righteousness of God” as iustitia salutifera (so, Cremer, Die paulinische Rechtfertigungslehre, 33), not because it is opposed to divine judgment, but because in the death of Jesus, as Seifrid comments, “the contention between the Creator and the fallen creature is decided in God’s favor and yet savingly resolved” (“Paul’s Use of Righteousness Language Against Its Hellenistic Background,” in Justification and Variegated Nomism: Volume II—The Paradoxes of Paul, eds. D. A. Carson et al. [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004], 39–74, at 59; cf. G. Theißen, Erleben und Verhalten der ersten Christen: Eine Psychologie des Urchristentums [Munich: Gütersloher, 2007], 315–16). ↵

  See Philo’s insistence that, as a matter of principle, δικαιοσύνη works κατ’ ἀξίαν (Leg. 1.87; Mos. 2.9; Sobr. 40)—that is, in accordance with some criterion of “fit” or correspondence between human “worth” and divine action. For “correspondence” as the defining characteristic of God’s righteousness in at least some early Jewish texts, see chapters two and seven in my God, Grace, and Righteousness. ↵

  Peter Stuhlmacher is therefore right to argue that “justification involves an act of judgment” and is “decidedly located in the final judgment,” but he underemphasizes the Pauline stress on the “now-ness” of this justifying judgment (Revisiting Paul’s Doctrine of Justification: A Challenge to the New Perspective, trans. D. P. Bailey [Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2001], 14). ↵

  Wright, “New Perspective on Paul,” 260. ↵

  The term “forensic” indicates not just the legal connotations of the δικ- word group; it describes the enactment of final judgment in the arrival of the eschaton that is the death of Jesus Christ. The related phrase, “declare righteous,” likewise indicates more than the verdict of an ordinary judge; it is the effective pronouncement of the creator that re-creates sinners as righteous. ↵

  Following Cranfield (Romans, 1.205), I take as the subject of 3:24 the “all” of 3:23 while recognizing that 3:24 continues the main theme from 3:21–22. Campbell is probably correct to see the anthropological statement of 3:23 as an elaboration of the “all the believing ones” of 3:22 such that the subject of the passive form of δικαιόω in 3:24 is doubly qualified by the “all of faith” and the “all sinned” (The Rhetoric of Righteousness in Romans 3.21-26, JSNTSup 65 [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1992], 86–92). ↵

  J. D. G. Dunn, Romans 1–8, WBC 38a (Waco: Word, 1988), 168. ↵

  J. Flebbe, Solus Deus: Untersuchungen zur Rede von Gott im Brief des Paulus an die Römer, BZNW 158 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 68. ↵

  Cf. Käsemann, Romans, 93. ↵

  S. J. Gathercole, Where is Boasting: Early Jewish Soteriology and Paul’s Response in Romans 1–5 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 224. He adds, “the ‘righteousness of God revealed apart from the Law’ in 3:21 is equivalent to “the righteousness of God through faith” in 3:22.” ↵

  F. Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 72 (italics original). ↵

  Barth, CD IV/1, 621. ↵

  For the linking of the liturgical predictions of Romans 4:5 and 4:17 and the related claim that creatio e contrario describes a modus operandi that connects the divine acts of creation, resurrection, and justification, see my God, Grace, and Righteousness, 152–54; Käsemann, Romans, 123. ↵

  Bayer, Martin Luther’s Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation, trans. Thomas H. Trapp (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 172. ↵

  Cf. Watson, Hermeneutics, 169: “Paul sets faith on the border between despair and hope and sees it facing in both directions. Faith is both despair of human capacity and hope in [the] saving act of God.” The passive forms of ἐνδυναμόω and πληροφορέω in 4:20 and 4:21 suggest that even Abraham’s believing is generated by God through the promise (cf. Rom. 10:17). It is suggestive that when Paul gives voices to “the righteousness of faith,” he hears it saying an anthropological no—“Do not say in your heart who will ascend to heaven . . . or who will descend to the abyss?”—and a christological yes—“The word is near you” (Rom. 10:6–8). ↵

  Barth, CD IV/1, 632. ↵

  LW 26:130 = WA 40/I:229, 22–30. Read with the hindsight of Romans 3 and 4, Paul’s opening announcement that “the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel” “just as it is written, ‘the one who is righteous by faith will live” (Rom. 1:16–17, quoting Hab. 2:4) can be heard as an expression of the christological yes that positively defines “the righteousness of God through faith.” Thus, to read Romans 1:17 as saying that God’s righteousness is gifted to faith is, as filled out by Romans 3:22, to say that Christ, who is “our righteousness” (1 Cor. 1:30) is given to faith in the gospel. ↵

  Käsemann, Romans, 101: “Precision is given to sola gratia by sola fide.” Cf. Jüngel, Justification, 149–226, 236–59, who demonstrates that the reformational solas are ordered in such a way as to preserve solus Christus. The common charge that the objective genitive reading of πίστις Χριστοῡ is anthropological rather than christological is simply false at the level of historical theological description. For this, see my “The Christo-Centrism of Faith in Christ.” Once the theological objections are addressed, the strong semantic case for something like the objective genitive can be heard: 1
) Paul’s instrumental faith clauses are derived from the ἐκ πίστεως of Habakkuk 2:4, which does not (pace R. B. Hays, The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel’s Scripture [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005], 119–42) employ ὁ δίκαιος as a christological title, but as a reference to the generic, believing human, a point confirmed by the appeal to Abraham in Romans 4 and Galatians 3 (Francis Watson, Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles:Beyond the New Perspective [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007], 240). 2) In Paul, Jesus is never the subject of the verb πιστεύω and Paul’s habit of interpreting an instance of the verb in a citation with reference to the noun (e.g., Rom. 4:3, 5; 9:32–33 10:5–11, 16–17) indicates that the meaning of the noun and verb have not drifted apart (R. B. Matlock, “Detheologizing the ΠΙΣΤΙΣ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΥ Debate: Cautionary Remarks from a Lexical Semantic Perspective,” NovT 42, no. 1 [2000]: 1–23, at 13–14; cf. Watson, Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles, 243). 3). The question of redundancy in Romans 3:22, Galatians 2:16, 3:22 and Philippians 3:9 points to “a much wider pattern of repetition of πίστις/πιστεύω in Galatians and Romans, rooted in Genesis 15:6 and Habakkuk 2:4” that functions to disambiguate the genitive phrase (R. B. Matlock, “Saving Faith: The Rhetoric and Semantics of πίστις in Paul,” in The Faith of Jesus Christ: Exegetical, Biblical and Theological Studies, eds. M. F. Bird and P. M. Sprinkle [Peabody: Hendrickson, 2009], 73–89, at 89). ↵

  John Edmund Cox, Miscellaneous Writings and Letters of Thomas Cranmer (Cambridge: Parker Society, 1846; reproduced by Regent College Publishing), 132–33. ↵

  Käsemann, Romans, 96. ↵

  Barth, CD IV/1, 16–17. This does not, of course, mean that “the law and the prophets” do not “bear witness to” God’s righteousness revealed in the gospel, but it does suggest they do so precisely as voices that “pre-preach” (Gal. 3:8) and “promise beforehand” the “gospel . . . about God’s Son, Jesus Christ” (Rom. 1:1–4). The crucified and risen Christ is the definition of δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ both before and after the “now” of the gospel, but it is only in this “now” that the “mystery kept secret” in “the prophetic writings” is “disclosed” (Rom. 16:25–26, echoing the revelatory vocabulary—φανερόω—of Rom. 3:21). ↵

  12

  Thinking from Christ to Israel

  Romans 9–11 in Apocalyptic Context

  Beverly Roberts Gaventa

  “Therefore from now on we consider no one from a human point of view.

  Even if we once considered Christ from a human point of view,

  we no longer consider him in that way.

  If anyone is in Christ: new creation!”

  —2 Corinthians 5:16–17

  Sometime in the mid-to-late 50s of the Common Era, the Apostle Paul planned to travel from Corinth to Jerusalem, then Rome, and then Spain. In anticipation of this important venture, he wrote an extended letter to congregations of Christians[1] in Rome. The letter seeks Roman support, both for his encounter with those in Jerusalem who resist his understanding of the gospel and for his planned mission in Spain. Yet, the letter is also a proclamation of the gospel, as Paul fears or suspects that many Roman Christians (most, but not all of whom are gentiles) have not heard the gospel in its fullness. What they comprehend is that God’s Messiah has arrived in the person of Jesus of Nazareth and that this arrival means gentiles may be included among God’s people without circumcision. Indeed, some of these gentile Christians even believe themselves to have displaced Jews as God’s beloved.

  Paul’s letter strenuously affirms the inclusion of gentiles and rejects the false conclusion that gentiles have displaced Jews as God’s beloved, but it does far more than that. As Paul presents the gospel in this letter, it is nothing less than God’s powerful intervention on behalf of a humanity (both Jew and Gentile) enslaved by powers named Sin and Death. These powers have held in captivity all of humanity, all of the created order, to the extent that even the Law is employed by Sin and all of humanity is rendered hostile to God. In the death and resurrection of Jesus, God triumphs over Sin and Death, signaling God’s imminent triumph over all anti-God powers and redeeming humanity (indeed, the whole of the cosmos) for new life. In other words, Romans belongs squarely under the heading of apocalyptic theology.[2]

  Over the last decade or so, I have published a series of articles that contribute to the sketch above.[3] Most of those contributions focus on Romans 1–8, but what is to be said of Romans 9–11, which many scholars identify as the heart of the letter?[4] To put the question sharply, can an apocalyptic reading of Romans be extended beyond chapters 1–8 into 9–11, or does it fall apart at the white space that demarcates the chapters? Worse yet, does an apocalyptic reading of chapters 1–8 inevitably reduce the role of chapters 9–11, returning us to the time when scholars treated Paul’s discussion of Israel as a mere “aside” or “appendix” to the main part of his argument?

  In this chapter, I argue that Romans 9–11, far from being an “aside” or “appendix,” extends the argument Paul has made from the beginning of the letter: in the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus, God has begun to reclaim the world that belongs to God alone. God’s action in Christ Jesus reveals retrospectively the extent of human enslavement; the whole of humanity (indeed, the whole of creation) is, in effect, revealed in Christ Jesus. (In the familiar language of E. P. Sanders, “the solution precedes the problem.”[5]) A similar argumentative logic is at work in Romans 9–11: the action of God in Christ Jesus reveals something about Israel. The argument here is not primarily about Israel’s faith or lack thereof; it concerns Israel’s past, present, and future, as Israel’s very identity is revealed in light of Christ.

  In addition, Christ is far from being sidelined in chapters 9–11, as it is Christ through whom Israel’s identity is being revealed. In this sense, the shape of the argument in chapters 9–11 coheres with chapters 1–8 in that here also, the solution (in this case, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ) reveals the problem (namely, the identity of Israel). What Paul does in these chapters is to think backward from the cross and resurrection, the event that inaugurates God’s triumph. As he thinks backward, he sees Israel as God’s adopted child, recipient of a number of gifts. Those gifts culminate with the Christ, who is from Israel physically, and yet, separated from Israel by his identity with God. In the argument that follows in Rom. 9:6–11:36, Israel is read through Jesus Christ, read through God’s creative initiative, through God’s staging of a race for righteousness, and through God’s redemption. This story has far less to say about Israel’s faithfulness or failings than it does about God’s creation of and intervention in Israel for God’s own purposes.

  Because the preceding language about Israel’s identity may be confused with the question of membership in Israel, it is important to be as clear as possible. When I say that God’s action reveals Israel’s identity, I do not mean that Israel is now identified with the (mostly gentile) church or that the notion of “Israel” refers only to those Jews who recognize Jesus of Nazareth as Israel’s messiah (i.e., some faithful subset of Israel). I understand the membership of Israel to be coterminous with what is usually referred to as “ethnic” or “historic” or “biological” Israel. What I see at issue here is not the composition of Israel (the membership roster, to put it crudely), but how Israel is to be understood in relation to God; for Paul, the identity of Israel is known not by looking back to Abraham or Moses or David and reasoning forward, but through Christ and from Christ backward.[6] It is in that sense that the logic of chapters 9–11 resembles the logic of chapters 1–8. In both cases, the “solution precedes the problem,” or better, the Christ event generates a new understanding. This is not a new Israel in terms of its human membership, but an Israel whose relationship to God is revealed in light of the apocalypse of the gospel (1:16–17).

  Minding the Gap: Reading from 8:31–39 to 9:1–5

  The white space that separates Rom. 9:1 from 8:39 in our Greek New Testaments
may be helpful from the point of view of book designers, with their proper concerns for aesthetics and readability. Yet, the separation of Paul’s comments at the outset of chapter 9 from what precedes has severely misleading consequences, especially when it comes to the role played by Christ.[7] Paul’s comments in 9:1–5 both connect Israel with what has been said earlier about the “we” of believers and simultaneously set Israel apart as a people with a particular relationship to God—a relationship that is now to be understood through Jesus Christ.

  To begin with, in 8:31–39, Paul has succinctly identified Christ as God’s “own son,” not withheld but handed over on behalf of “us,” the one who died, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God and intercedes on “our” behalf. It is because of God’s action in this Christ that Paul can affirm with such conviction that nothing can separate “us” from the love of God in Christ Jesus (8:39). The assumption appears to be that there are, in fact, powers that want to separate humanity from its rightful Lord, but this separation is impossible because they have not the power (οὔτε . . . δυνήσεται). All of these comments assume that the risen Christ wields immense power (and see 1:4, 16).[8]

  Bearing this same discourse of power in mind as we move into chapter 9 causes certain features of the text to leap off the page. In v. 1, as Paul repeatedly affirms the truthfulness of what he is about to say, he begins by insisting that “in Christ,” he is speaking the truth. He speaks “in Christ,” that is, as one who lives in the realm of the powerful Christ whose intervention and love have been so emphatically asserted in chapter 8.[9] And in v. 3, he swears that he would wish to be cut off from Christ because of his brothers and sisters. Paul’s connection with and concern for fellow Jews cannot be overlooked or minimized here (or in 10:1), but the primary identity he asserts is his identification with Christ. In light of the end of chapter 8, the wish to be anathema from Christ is an absurdity: it cannot happen.[10] It is his location in Christ that controls what he writes here and throughout 9–11 and not primarily his identity as a Jew.