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History, providence and the apocalyptic Paul

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 November 2017

Grant Macaskill
Grant Macaskill*
Affiliation:
King's College, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 [email protected]
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Abstract

The debate concerning the apocalyptic Paul has been narrowly focused on the continuity/discontinuity of historical events in his writings, but if this question is to be considered theologically, it must be seen to concern a specific or localised part of God's relationship with creation, as classically understood in terms of ‘providence’. Because it informs all talk of God's involvement with the cosmos, providence establishes necessary linkages between otherwise separate concepts. Relocating the debate within the framework of providence allows the seemingly irreconcilable claims made on each side to be relativised, such that each may be seen as valid when understood to represent distinct areas within a bigger account of the relationship of God and cosmos. At the same time, this recognition necessarily constrains the language with which the claims ought to be made. All of this provides a safeguarded space within which the details of the Pauline texts can be considered without the risk of naïve naturalisation.

Keywords

apocalypticPaulprovidencesalvation historyN. T. Wright
Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 70 , Issue 4 , November 2017 , pp. 409 - 426
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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References

1 See Martyn, J. Louis, Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1997)Google Scholar and Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1997); and Käsemann, Ernst, ‘Die Anfänge christlicher Theologie’, Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 57 (1960), pp. 162–85Google Scholar (ET: ‘The Beginnings of Christian Theology’, Journal of Theology and Church 6 (1969)).

2 See Wright, N. T., Paul and the Faithfulness of God (London: SPCK, 2013)Google Scholar; Wright, Paul and his Recent Interpreters (London: SPCK, 2015); Campbell, Douglas A., The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Re-reading of Justification in Paul (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010)Google Scholar. There have also been several public debates between the two, the most celebrated of these taking place at Duke Divinity School and at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in San Diego, both in 2014. Although the public debates have mainly involved Wright and Campbell, other representatives of the apocalyptic approach, particularly Beverley R. Gaventa and Martinus C. de Boer, have also been targeted in Wright's publications. Barclay offered a robust critique of Wright's Paul and the Faithfulness of God in his review of the book in SJT 68 (2015), pp. 235–43. Criticisms of Wright are also woven through Barclay's own landmark contribution, Paul and the Gift (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015). Barclay is not, in a simple sense, a representative of the ‘apocalyptic Paul’ approach and is critical of its representatives at points in his own work (see e.g. his comments on Campbell in Paul and the Gift, pp. 171–3), but has also contributed to publications associated with the approach (e.g. Gaventa, Beverley (ed.), Apocalyptic Paul: Cosmos and Anthropos in Romans 5–8 (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2013)Google Scholar). His comments on Wright's reading of Martyn's work in the SJT review (pp. 235, 237–9) indicate broad support for Martyn against Wright.

3 The recently published version of Samuel Adams’ doctoral thesis, completed under the supervision of Alan Torrance at the University of St Andrews, highlights the theological character of the underlying discussion and, specifically, of the points of division. Adams, Samuel V., The Reality of God and Historical Method: Apocalyptic Theology in Conversation with N. T. Wright (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015)Google Scholar.

4 See e.g. Elliott, Mark W., The Heart of Biblical Theology: Providence Experienced (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012)Google Scholar. The bulk of this book is given over to tracing recent accounts of biblical theology and the critiques that have emerged of these; the final chapter, however, turns to the constructive suggestion that providence (rather than e.g. covenant) might be the key to developing a coherent biblical theology.

5 Those interested in that particular question might consider reading Schrage, Wolfgang, Vorsehung Gottes? Zur Rede von der providentia Dei in der Antike und im Neuen Testament (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2005)Google Scholar. For further reflections on providence in New Testament writings, see Davd Butticaz, Simon, L'identité de l'Église dans les Actes des Apôtres: De la restauration d'Israël à la conquête universelle, BZNW 174 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Elliott, Heart of Biblical Theology, pp. 154–8.

6 Käsemann, ‘Beginnings of Christian Theology’, p. 40. For original publication details, see n. 2 above.

7 It is significant that in the volume dedicated to exploring the theological ramifications of his own work, J. Louis Martyn begins with a personal note on the impact that Käsemann's lectures had on him while he was a student in Göttingen: ‘A Personal Word about Ernst Käsemann’, in Davis, Joshua B. and Harink, Douglas (eds), Apocalyptic and the Future of Theology: With and Beyond J. Louis Martyn (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2012), pp. xiii–xv Google Scholar.

8 See Macaskill, Grant, Union with Christ in the New Testament (Oxford: OUP, 2013), pp. 21–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 The complex of relationships is explored in helpful detail by Ziegler, Philip, ‘Some Remarks on Apocalyptic in Modern Christian Theology’, in Blackwell, Ben C., Goodrich, John K. and Maston, Jason (eds), Paul and the Apocalyptic Imagination (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), pp. 203–10Google Scholar. The article is particularly attentive to the mutual influence of Barth and Käsemann and the place of both in the writings of Martyn et al.

10 Kabisch, Richard, Die Eschatologie des Paulus in ihren Zusammenhängen mit dem Gesamtbegriff des Paulinismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1893)Google Scholar.

11 See the works listed in n. 1 above.

12 Martyn, Galatians, p. 280. The comment concerns the language of co-crucifixion that is encountered in Gal 2:19.

13 Ibid.

14 See Martyn's classic essay, ‘Epistemology at the Turn of the Ages: 2 Corinthians 5:16’, in Farmer, William R., Moule, C.F.D., and Niebuhr, Richard R. (eds), Christian History and Interpretation: Essays Presented to John Knox (Cambridge: CUP, 1967), pp. 269–87.Google Scholar

15 Martyn, Galatians, pp. 336–52.

16 Ibid., p. 326. Note also Martyn's comment on Gal 3:19–20 (Galatians, p. 342): ‘we can see, then, that the Law and its curse constitute an angelic parenthesis lodged between and differentiated from two punctilliar acts of God himself, the uttering of the promise to Abraham and to Abraham's singular seed, and the sending of that seed, Christ. This again indicates that the Law does not stand in a redemptive-historical line between the promise and the coming of the seed. Precisely the opposite . . .’

17 For discussion and analysis of this, see Macaskill, Grant, ‘Review Article: The Deliverance of God’, JSNT 34 (2011), pp. 150–61Google Scholar, esp. pp. 158–9.

18 The most detailed engagement with the ‘apocalyptic Paul’ is now Davies, James P., Paul among the Apocalypses: An Evaluation of the ‘Apocalyptic Paul’ in the Context of Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic Literature (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016).Google Scholar

19 Most obviously, Wright, N. T., The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991)Google Scholar.

20 For a good overview of his approach, see the chapter titled ‘The Plot, the Plan and the Storied Worldview’, in N.T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, pp. 457–537.

21 See Martyn, Galatians, p. 266, n. 163: ‘one recalls that Karl Barth was an exegete as well as a systematic theologian; for over a considerable period of time he correctly emphasized that Paul saw Adam in the light of Christ, sin in the light of grace, and so on’. Martyn follows Barth in this insistence that Paul moves constantly from solution to plight, and not vice versa.

22 This nuancing of his account is reflected in Paul and the Faithfulness of God, where he identifies an outer, controlling story of God and creation, and various subplots unified by that outer story, but not necessarily linked in a linear scheme. See pp. 468–85 for the key points, which are then developed through the rest of the chapter.

23 See Paul and the Faithfulness of God, pp. 475–516.

24 See esp. Adams, Reality of God, pp. 207–27.

25 Francis Watson sees Paul's gospel as non-narratable: rather than locating the story of Jesus within a singular story of Israel, Paul draws ad hoc on the multiple narratives of God's dealings with that people in ways that inform or shape his own explication of the gospel but do not determine it. Watson, Francis B., ‘Is there a Story in These Texts?’, in Longenecker, Bruce (ed.), Narrative Dynamics in Paul: A Critical Assessment (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2002), pp. 231–9.Google Scholar

26 Especially problematic has been the deist conception of providence, which locates the doctrine within the doctrine of a perfect creation. For a discussion of this approach that acknowledges the value of what it seeks to maintain, see Sonderegger, Katherine, ‘The Doctrine of Providence’, in Aran Murphy, Francesca and Ziegler, Philip G. (eds), The Providence of God (London: T&T Clark, 2009), pp. 145–9Google Scholar.

27 Webster, John B., ‘Providence’, in Kapic, Kelly M. and McCormack, Bruce L. (eds), Mapping Modern Theology: A Thematic and Historical Introduction (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2012), p. 203 Google Scholar. Webster offers a similar statement in ‘On the Theology of Providence’, in Murphy and Ziegler, Providence of God, p. 158: ‘Providence is that work of divine love for temporal creatures, whereby God ordains and executes their fulfilment in fellowship with himself. God loves creatures and so himself orders their course to perfection: mundum per se ipsum regit, quem per se ipsum conditit.’

28 See Tanner, Kathryn, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002)Google Scholar, particularly pp. 5, 41–5, as well as her The Politics of God: Christian Theologies and Social Justice (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), esp. pp. 98–108; and Kelsey, David, Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2009), pp. 215–41Google Scholar.

29 Fergusson, Creation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014), p. 52; the comment specifically concerns the patristic deployment of the doctrine. For the expression, ‘distributed doctrine’, and its significance, see Webster, ‘On the Theology of Providence’, pp. 159–61.

30 Webster, ‘On the Theology of Providence’, pp. 159–62.

31 For these distinctions, see Webster, ‘On the Theology of Providence’, pp. 169.

32 Fergusson, Creation, p. 53.

33 Webster, ‘On the Theology of Providence’, p. 169.

34 Wright's account of monotheism resists the recent drive towards seeing Second Temple Jewish monotheism as much looser than traditionally assumed. As an example of the very different pathways that such an approach takes, see Litwa, David We are Being Transformed: Deification in Paul's Soteriology (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For further bibliography on this approach, see his discussion on pp. 229–57.

35 Barth's own account of providence, of course, represents a revision of the tradition, not least because of his understanding of the relationship of being and act. It is, nevertheless, an essentially classical conception of the relationship between God and cosmos, one that refuses to elide the fundamental distinction between the two. See Green, Christopher, Doxological Theology: Karl Barth on Divine Providence, Evil and the Angels (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2011)Google Scholar.

36 It is important that the doctrine of scripture is properly located within theological systems and rightly derived from the doctrine of God, rather than being considered as itself a foundational doctrine. See Webster, John, ‘The Dogmatic Location of the Canon’, in his Word and Church (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001), pp. 9–46 Google Scholar.

37 See Adams, Reality of God, esp. pp. 65–106, but more broadly throughout. At the point where one might expect to see some genuine engagement with canon (pp. 237–40, ‘Apocalypses and the Covenant: Reading Irruption in the Context of a Long Story’), the discussion is disappointingly thin and focused only on the Martyn–Wright debate. Adams’ argument mirrors and expands the one encountered in Torrance, Alan J., ‘Can the Truth Be Learned? Redressing the “Theologistic Fallacy” in Modern Biblical Scholarship’, in Bockmuehl, Markus and Torrance, Alan J. (eds), Scripture's Doctrine and Theology's Bible: How the New Testament Shapes Christian Dogmatics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2008), pp. 143–64Google Scholar.

38 While applying the term to Martyn's work may be too easily dismissive, there is some genuine warrant for applying it to Campbell's developments of the apocalyptic approach. See Barclay's comments, Paul and the Gift, p. 173.

39 See the comments to this effect concerning the scripture index of Campbell's The Deliverance of God, which is rather thin on the Old Testament texts, in Macaskill, ‘Review Article: The Deliverance of God’, p. 154.

40 In particular, see Hays, Richard B., Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

41 See Moberly, Walter, Old Testament Theology: Reading the Hebrew Bible as Christian Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2013)Google Scholar; and Seitz, Christopher R., Word Without End: The Old Testament as Abiding Theological Witness (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998)Google Scholar; Seitz, Figured Out: Typology and Providence in Christian Scripture (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001).

42 For Hays’ criticisms of Wright on this point, see his comments in ‘Knowing Jesus: Story, History and the Question of God’, in Perrin, Nicholas and Hays, Richard B. (eds), Jesus, Paul and the People of God: A Theological Dialogue with N. T. Wright, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011), p. 57 Google Scholar. For the identification of scripture in terms of speech-act theory, and for a rich theological engagement with the canonical drama, see Vanhoozer, Kevin J., The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2004)Google Scholar.

43 Note, here, the classical statement of Aquinas: ‘It is not only in the substance of created things that goodness lies, but in their being ordained to an end, above all to their final end, which, as we have seen, is the divine goodness’ ( Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologiae, 1.22.1, trans. Gilby, Thomas (London: Blackfriars, 1966), p. 89 Google Scholar). The point of note here is precisely that providence operates with respect to ‘things’, considered particularly as objects of the benevolence of God.

44 Interestingly, John Webster recently argued for the necessary distribution of the doctrine of creation across the theological system, linked to theology proper by the doctrine of providence. The distribution of each doctrine, then, is linked to the other. See Webster, John, ‘ Non ex aequo: God's Relation to Creatures’, in Moore, A. and Clarke, A. (eds), Within the Love of God: Essays on the Doctrine of God in Dialogue with Paul Fiddes (Oxford: OUP, 2014), pp. 95–107 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. Richadson, C., in Christology of the Later Fathers, ed. Hardy, Edward (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1954), p. 302 Google Scholar; cited in Tanner, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity, p. 43.

46 Ibid., 95-6; cited in Tanner, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity, p. 5.