The following was initially a blog post. I have refrained from editing out matters of informality etc.
Disclaimer: While I am a reasonable typist, I nonetheless cannot type at speech-speed at the best times, much less on a laptop keyboard. Consequently, these notes vary from word to word to close summary, and much of the ground in between. To be sure of precise wording, you will of course need to consult the tapes or CDs.
N. T. Wright: God's People Re-Visioned
Paul's rethinking of God (already discussed) dovetails with a rethinking of what it means to be God's people.
The belief in God's people is not merely a theory, but is embodied in the apostolic task to found and nurture communities of faith.
Jewish views of God's people
There were indeed many Judaisms of Paul's day; yet there was a singular center upon which the differing Judaisms represent variations. This variety, suggests Wright, does not allow a smuggling back in of Pelagianism or semi-Pelagianism.
The belief that Israel was the chosen people of the Creator God is everywhere present in the Second Temple literature. This belief is often in the face of contrary evidence, when the nation is being "beat up" by the nations of the world.
But throughout, there is a belief that God called Israel and had given her the land to live in and the law to live by. In Deuteronomy 7, God says this is "because I love you."
The purpose in God's mind is to undo the problem of the kosmos, the problem of Adam's sin. Somehow, through this people, God is going to deal with the problem that has overthrown His creation and His image-bearers. Israel is chosen out of the world, and for the sake of the world.
This conception of Israel is stated classically in the exodus story, and is reiterated again and again. But the prophets declare that the people who were to solve the problem have contributed to it and become a part of it. Yet, because Israel is the people of the one God, He will soon act to make things right.
When God did for Israel whatever He was going to do, then at last the Gentiles would be brought into the picture, whether in judgment, or blessing, or both. One way or another, God's purpose in election (to root evil out of the world through Israel) would be fulfilled. This, says Wright, "is what I would mean by 'redemptive-historical fulfillment.'" (Here Wright is, of course, alluding to the question he had earlier put to Gaffin.)
Redefinition around Messiah
In Paul, election is re-shaped around Jesus. Paul reaffirmed Israel's election, even while redefining it (Romans 9.4). God will be true to His original promises, even though all men - including Israel - are false.
Galatians
It is natural for Paul to go back to Abraham, because he really does reaffirm the common thought of Judaism: "I will create Adam first, and if he goes wrong, Abraham will 'sort it all out.'" He really does reaffirm the election of Israel - but he redefines it.
Galatians 2 is about this question: What does it mean to be a member of God's people? The discussion with Peter only makes sense if the community in Antioch has been living in some sense as the renewed people of God (i.e. as a renewed/redefined Israel). By separating himself, Peter implies that the Gentiles must take on the identity of ethnic Jews by getting circumcised.
Galatians 2.15-16 obviously refers to the way in which God's people have been redefined. No flesh will be justified through works of Torah. Wright makes several comments on three key terms in these verses:
1. pistis Christou: "the faithfulness of the Messiah." Jesus' pistis does not refer to His belief, but to His faithfulness, His faithful fulfilling of the divine plan for Israel.
2. Justify. The passage works best by seeing the verb justify as a statement regarding who belongs to the people of God, and how you can tell that in the present. Often this word is used (by Christians) to describe what happens when a person becomes a Christian - this, says Wright, is not Paul's use.
3. Works of the law: This does not refer to "ladder climbing," but to the works one might do to demonstrate that one is a part of God's people. But (for Paul) they are "beside the point;" they are, at best, an extension of ethnic Judaism. God's people are redefined through the Messiah.
Regarding Galatians 2.17-18, Wright comments: If Paul goes back within the "walls" (Judaism defined by Torah), Torah itself will declare him a transgressor. "If I go back to hide in the law, I will discover that the law says that I have broken it."
On 2.19-21: The "I" here refers, not to Paul's private spiritual experience, but to the theological truth concerning what happens when one moves from the world of Torah to the Messiah: "through the law I died to the law that I might live to God."
Crucified with the Messiah. Many elements of Paul's thought come together here. Messiah represents His people, so that what is true of Him is also true of them - namely, crucifixion and the Messiah's own new life. Even as Yahweh's love was the basis of the original definition of Israel (in Deut 7), so too here: the love of Christ.
Paul says, "If righteousness came by Torah, Messiah died in vain. In context, righteousness must refer to one's status as a member of God's people. This covenant status is not defined by Torah. The new righteousness denies that there should be a separation between Jews and Gentiles at meals.
This is worked in detail in the following chapter, which Wright summarizes simply: "God has one family, not two." That the single family promised to Abraham is the point of the chapter is made clear in 3.29: Who are the family of Abraham? All those en Christo ("in Christ").
Thus, 3.23-29 puts it all together. All those who believe/are baptized belong to the Messiah. They are marked out against unbelieving Jews and against paganism.
In Galatians 6.14-16, Paul returns to what he said in chapter 2: the crucifixion of the Messiah turns everything inside out - the world is crucified to him, and he to the world. The larger map of the purposes of God is therefore cosmic in scope: new creation (cf 2 Cor 5.17; Rom 8). It is not just about the individual, although that is true - true of you individually, so that you may be an agent of the renewal of the kosmos.
Paul pronounces peace and blessing "upon God's Israel": this is the redefined people en Christo. It is a polemical redefinition, saved for the end, to round off the letter.
Philippians 3
Paul speaks of the circumcision as the mutilation - in Greek a play on words between peritome (circumcision) and katatome (mutilation). Corresponding to this, Paul abruptly says: "Circumcision - that's us: those who worship God in Spirit, who boast in Messiah Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh." Here Paul's critique joins with that of the prophets.
Paul offers a mini-autobiography in Philippians 3.4-6. The crown of the list: dikaiosune ("righteousness") defined by Torah, according to which he was "blameless."
All this gain, Paul counted as loss through the Messiah. In Christ is a new covenant status. Philippians 3.9 speaks, not of the righteousness of God (as in Romans), but a righteousness from God. This is not, therefore, parallel to dikaiosune Theou in e.g. Romans 10.3.
Many passages could be employed to fill in this picture provided in Philippians 3. For example, Colossians 2.11, 14, 20; 3.1: "The cross redefines your identity and you have been circumcised in Christ." In Colossians 2.8, Paul says, "Don't be led away captive." The Greek is sulagagon - a contemptuous pun, Wright suggests: invert the lambda (Greek "l") and you have sunagogon. The message: "Don't let anyone 'synagogue' you."
Romans
Having denounced human idolatry and sin in the previous chapter, Paul in Romans 2 turns his attention to his own former self, and his contemporaries, in 2.17ff: here, the prophets themselves speak to Israel. Boasting in Torah has been rendered null and void, because there has been massive Torah-breaking, undermining Israel's claims for herself via Torah.
In Romans 2.25-29, there is a "new covenant" theme. Paul puts forth the suggestion: Suppose God has a category of uncircumcised people who keep Torah (because they are "circumcised in heart" - a new covenant promise). Romans 2.28-29, Wright suggests, depend for their force on another pun: "whose praise is not from men but from God;" the name Judah is Hebrew for praise. In other words: the word for praise is no longer defined ethnically, but refers to the one who is "a Jew in secret." Circumcision consists in the Spirit rather than the letter; this is who gains praise from God.
Romans 3.1-9 is vital in Pauline theology, and anticipates the following chapters. Paul's point is that in the Messiah, God has remained true despite Israel's faithlessness. Election was never merely for Israel's own sake, but for Israel to be the light of the world. Paul's comment that Israel was "entrusted with the oracles of God," Wright says, means that the oracles were not for herself, but for someone else. And Israel has been unfaithful to the divine commission. Wright notes that Paul can only write like this if he believes that God really did choose Israel.
How will God keep the covenant? How will He be faithful, granted all that has happened? Romans 3.21-26 addresses this problem. It is not merely the universal problem of human sin - although that problem is addressed within this context. The larger problem is God's faithfulness, which is revealed in the Messiah.
What is the main point about the Messiah's faithfulness, or obedience (Rom 5)? Both Philippians 2 and Romans 1-8 give the answer: the Messiah's sacrificial death. The Messiah has done through His death what Israel was called to do in the first place; His death has made the atonement through which the nations are redeemed. He has acted on behalf of Israel for the whole world. The cross of the Messiah lies at the heart of election.
The incorporation of the Gentiles into the people of God is thus where the whole argument was going. Otherwise, as Paul indicates, God would be the God of the Jews only (Rom 3.29).
Romans 4, then, Wright suggests, is not "a proof from Scripture of this doctrine," but rather an exposition of the covenant.
How does justification work?
Paul has already spoken in Romans 2 regarding the final judgment according to the whole life lived. Justification by faith takes place in the present: all who believe in the gospel is the only way you can tell in the present who will be justified in the end.
It is not true, Wright says, that justification has nothing to do with sinners (as some have charged him with holding). The covenant was always a rescue operation. The point is that the term justification itself does not denote the process by which one is brought from unbelief to new life - Paul employs call to describe that. Those whom God called, them He justified.
The point of the covenant was to deal with idolatry and sin so that the world as a whole could be rescued. Thus in Romans 5.17, the justified reign in life - not simply so that they themselves might be rescued, but that God reigns through them. Through this creation of a united Jew + Gentile family, God declares to the powers that their time is up, that a new humanity has been decisively launched. Wright adds, "I have wondered sometimes what subtexts are going on when this is resisted. . . ."
Redefinition through the Spirit
2 Corinthians 3 describes the transformation of covenant membership in the light of the Spirit. Likewise, Romans 7-8 speaks of renewal through the Spirit, a renewed called to holiness. This holiness is not defined by Torah - and yet it draws upon Torah for "outline guidance" and the heart of the matter. It is, after all, the mind of the flesh which cannot submit to God's law. The believer, however, is "not in the flesh, but in the Spirit" (Rom 8.9). And that implies: these ones do in fact in a strange new way fulfill Torah, apart from circumcision and other such works of Torah. They embody a holiness which comes from the heart, and ought to make the pagan nations see who the living God really is.
Romans 12.1-2 speaks of the undoing of the decline and decay of humanness - which includes sexual orientation issues. Those in Messiah are to be "humans put back together again."
In Romans 9-11, the Messiah is hardly mentioned, and the Spirit not at all from 9.6 onward. Some suggest that this indicates Paul has in mind an independent path of salvation for Israel. That, however, is disproved by 10.4-13. Those who wish to be part of the covenant renewal must turn to the Messiah. So too, the quotation of Joel alludes to the role of the Spirit. Paul is challenging the Romans to think the story through for themselves; chapters 9-11 is a massive retelling of the Scriptural narrative, and it is shaped according to the pattern of Messiah and Spirit which Paul tells elsewhere. There is a "Messiah-shaped pattern" to Israel's history. Israel itself is cast away for the reconciling of the world. (Presumably, Wright is alluding to the fact that so it was with Christ Himself.) The picture as a whole gives us the whole of Israel's story - in that pattern, the Messiah was crucified and raised to new life.
Romans 8 teaches us that God loves the world, and wants to renew it. The world groans, and we groan with the kosmos. We cannot dismiss the mess of the kosmos simply because one day it will all be better. After all, we do not - and may not -treat sin in that fashion: "One day I will be raised and never sin again, so I need not worry about holiness." Wright comments: "I hope you would hit someone such as that with a heavy. . . dose of inaugurated eschatology!" You need to anticipate in the present what you will be in the future; so too for the creation. This is not a derogation from our gospel duty; it is part of our gospel duty.
It is traditional to locate justification within soteriology. But within Jewish thought it is part of covenant theology - which includes soteriology. "By ecclesiology, I don't mean what you might get in a classic Protestant dogmatics; we need to rethink ecclesiology itself. Only then can justification take its proper place."
Brief Thoughts
Plenty to chew on, once again. Naturally, the more texts are covered, the greater the opportunity to find disagreement. I have written on a great deal of these passages, not least in my forthcoming essay, "These Are Two Covenants: The Mosaic Law in Paul's Thought" (soon to be published by Athanasius Press in Abiding in the Vine: Essays in Covenant Life), as well as elsewhere. Here is not the place to go into detail on those exegetical matters, but I will simply note one:
It seems to me that Wright places the stress in Romans 2-3 in the wrong place. I don't think that 2.17ff is the charge against Israel; as many have noted, if it is, it is rather weak, since the sins Paul picks up on are rather extreme. I think the charge is actually in 3.1-8, and it seems to me that Wright misses the point there by focusing on ethnological/ethnocentric issues. Wright notes that Israel was "entrusted with the oracles of God;" he suggests that Israel's failure lay in supposing that those oracles were for themselves and not the nations. I am not convinced that is Paul's point; he certainly does not develop that line of thought within the immediate context.
It seems to me, rather, that 3.1-8 as a whole is directed toward the fact that Israel has received God's Messianic promises (the "oracles") and yet, rather than displaying pistis (faith or faithfulness) toward God's Messiah, have instead disbelieved Him, and in fact crucified Him (hence the citation of Psalm 51.4 in Rom 3.4 - I encourage my readers to check out the unquoted portion of that verse and reflect upon what it might mean). It seems to me that Wright's reading reflects what I view as a tendency in the NPP (often overcome by Wright himself) to focus upon ethnological issues when more fundamental salvation-historical issues are more apropos. Those ethnological issues are often present and far more crucial than many interpreters have recognized, but I think the temptation is to overplay them among NPP writers (particularly with Dunn, but to a lesser degree with others).
This may have been Wright's least cohesive presentation. I suspect that he ended up short of time, and thus the progression of thought was not quite as clear as usual. Or else my notes were worse than usual - you'll have to be the judge when you hear the lectures!
Nonetheless, much material to pore over and test exegetically and conceptually.