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New creation in Paul and scripture: a response to John Doyle

Posted 2 July, 2008 - 22:00 by Andrew

John Doyle has now summarized his excellent set of studies of the ‘new creation’ motif in Paul. He claims to have embarked on this course at least partly as a self-defensive response to a piece I had written on the Canaanite ‘genocide’, so I hope a courteous rejoinder is not out of place.

1. I think that too much has been read into my argument about the Canaanite ‘genocide’. For a start, my intention was basically to point out the analogy between i) the judgment on the whole of creation prior to the ‘re-creation’ through Noah and his family and ii) the judgment on the inhabitants of Canaan prior to the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham. This would appear to support the basic contention that the descendants of Abraham were conceived from the start as a ‘new creation’ (using the term metonymically), but I explicitly stated in the comments that this was “not put forward as a justification of the ‘genocide’”.

I do think, however, that for the sake of biblical integrity the church must somehow tell this part of the story. It is not just this particular episode that is at issue - violence is interpreted as divine judgment throughout both the Old and New Testaments. Indeed, Jesus’ death is conceived primarily as the rescue of part of Israel from violent destruction through violent destruction. A modern liberal readership - I include myself - will inevitably have problems with this, but it cannot simply be erased from the narrative and it is bound to have implications for our theology.

The church now finds itself subject to a Lord who refused to resort to violence in order to deliver Israel from oppression and the prospect of destruction, and I conclude from that that the church qua church should never establish or defend itself by means of violence. But what Jesus preserved through his death was a narrative that included the invasion of Canaan - and various other bloody incidents, prophecies and imprecations. If we disown that narrative, we risk again reducing the gospel to an over-spiritualized, dualistic, quasi-gnostic message of personal salvation. I would assert rather strongly that we must not decouple the New Testament from the rest of the train.

2. I agree that the ‘new creation’ in Christ constitutes a ‘radical departure’ from what preceded, the reason being that it presupposes a final victory over death and, therefore, the final renewal of creation as imagined by John in Revelation 21. However, I would argue that the resurrection also entails the renewal of Israel, which is why Hosea 6:1-2 is so important. In that respect, ‘new creation’ language in the New Testament is a natural development of the Old Testament understanding of the restoration of Israel following judgment as a renewal of creation. So, for example: ‘For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind’ (Is. 65:17). The resurrection entails both continuity and discontinuity.

I would also disagree in this connection with the following statement made by John in an earlier comment:

But there arises in the resurrection some other way of being a subjective agent in the world rather than just an object defined by these two competing ways, both of which lead to the same death…. This is neither an us-versus-them exclusive cult nor a one-size-fits-all empire of universal indifference, nor even a scattered multitude of free-ranging individualists, but rather a new way of being an active collaboration of free subjects freely joining themselves together in common cause.

Yes, subjective life in Christ must be fundamentally different at this existential level - differentiated from exclusive nationalism, on the one hand, and an overbearing imperialism, on the other. But I think it is right to insist that this must be preceded by and contained by the thought that in the resurrection the people of God corporately find a new way of being community in the world. The phrase ‘an active collaboration of free subjects freely joining themselves together in common cause’ suggests a democratic social movement, not a self-consciously distinct people of God under the lordship of Christ.

3. The fact that the structural divisions of humanity have been overcome in Christ certainly does not mean that the distinction between microcosm and macrocosm is no longer valid. The distinction remains because it is entailed in the seminal calling of Abraham. What has changed is the basis for the distinction: ‘the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith’ (Rom. 4:13). My argument in Re: Mission is that the descendants of Abraham are always potentially understood as a new or alternative ‘creation’ - that is why I use the term ‘microcosm’. The cross does not nullify the promise to Abraham, so the microcosm / macrocosm distinction remains valid. In the end John appears to recognize this, which confuses me somewhat: ‘Though the post-crucifixion entrance requirements may have changed, the practical upshot may be the same: a chosen microcosm arising from within a failed and dying macrocosm.’

It seems to me an advantage of the ‘microcosm’ language that it provides a category broader than national Israel but nevertheless retains an appropriate apartness from the macrocosm. Jesus’ death may have nullified the distinction between Jew and Gentile, but Paul is quite clear: through the ‘faithfulness’ of Jesus the promise to Abraham would be safeguarded. The term also, of course, carries creational overtones, which is what recommended it in the first place.

4. In my view the subjective or existential aspect to Paul’s understanding of what it means to be ‘in Christ’ really has to do with the experience of those who would literally suffer and perhaps die because of their faith in him. The language highlights the fact that the ‘community of the Son of man’ was required to walk the same narrow and difficult path leading to life - ‘life’ being both the survival of the people of God following judgment and the resurrection of the dead in Christ at his vindication. But even if that historical-eschatological argument is disallowed, I don’t see why this subjective aspect should negate the relevance of the larger biblical narrative about ‘new creation’.

5. I don’t agree that the ‘new creation’ language mitigates or removes the structural division between the microcosm and the macrocosm. ‘New creation’ in Galatians stands for the break down of the division between Jew and Greek (Gal. 6:15), but the framing narrative still has to do with the grounds for inheriting the promise to Abraham: Paul is concerned precisely that the Galatian believers will disqualify themselves from membership of this community by reverting to the law. In 2 Corinthians those who are ‘new creation’ in Christ have been reconciled to God in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17-19), but that simply serves to separate them from those who have not been reconciled, those who are ‘perishing’ (2:15-16). In Ephesians and Colossians to put on the ‘new person’ is to become fundamentally set apart from an old world upon which the wrath of God is coming (Col. 3:6). Again, this appears to be acknowledged elsewhere. Gentiles have become part of the commonwealth of Israel, they have become ‘one new man’ (Eph. 2:15) - and as a result they are no longer ‘by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind’ (2:3).

6. So I would argue that the microcosm is there for the benefit or blessing of the macrocosm - for humanity unreconciled to God. But the people of God may be a blessing only on the basis of a fundamental vocational distinctiveness or apartness or holiness - a covenantally delimited commitment to be God’s ‘new creation’ in the midst of the nations and cultures of the earth. In the language of Exodus 19:5-6: ‘Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

7. Does this mean that the rest of humanity has been relegated to the ‘status of a failed experiment, subject to termination at a moment’s notice by the Experimenter’? I see no basis for characterizing the macrocosm as an ‘experiment’, failed or otherwise. That is not consistent with the idea of a loving creator. But I see plenty of basis for arguing that the New Testament story about Christ is told against a backdrop of judgment - on humanity generally because of sin, but also historically on first century Israel and on Greek-Roman culture. The macrocosm has refused to follow the ways of a just creator God.

8. For the microcosm to be called apart, differentiated from the macrocosm, does not mean that we are stuck with an ‘antagonistic us-versus-them mentality’. The microcosm is called apart for the sake of the macrocosm. The three ‘practical implications’ that John modestly suggests make pretty good sense, in my view, for the descendants of Abraham conceived as a renewed microcosm in Christ. But, as Peter points out, that presupposes the invitation to the world to share in the corporate experience of the recovered creational blessing. It is then on that basis that the church may exist for the benefit of others - may embody in its corporate life, both actually and prophetically, the love of God for a world that has rejected its creator. Naturally, if Christians fail to put off the old humanity, fail to put off the ‘antagonistic us-versus-them mentality’, fail to put off anger and hatred and injustice and violence, then the concrete creational blessing is neither received nor transmitted to others.

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Re: New creation in Paul and scripture: a response to John Doyle

by john doyle - 04/07/2008 - 14:56

 Andrew,

Thanks for your thoughtful interaction with my series of posts, in which I attempted to understand the concept of "new creation" as it appears explicitly in the Bible. Last night I dreamed that you and I got together, I believe it was in a railroad car, and I found myself completely at a loss to explain myself clearly to you. So we’ll see if the dream proves to be a prophecy or a warning that I’ve heeded and managed to avert at least in part. (Note: in the dream someone told me that you were a member of some Mormon sect, so beware if two young men wearing white shirts and ties show up at your door.)

1. To recap: In your prior post about the Canaanite genocide you said that you intended neither to justify nor to disavow the slaughter, but rather to account for it in the context of the broader Biblical theme of the "new creation." Drawing on the Old Testament texts, you proposed that the destruction of the occupants of Canaan be regarded both as God’s judgment on the Gentile nations’ sinfulness as well as a sort of pragmatic necessity, inasmuch as the promised land needed to be cleared out in order that the Israelites might occupy it. You interpreted the genocide in the context of God’s larger works in history, extending from the Flood forward to the destruction of the Roman Empire and perhaps to some future last judgment.

"So just as the macrocosm is cleared of corrupted life
before the ’new creation’ of Genesis 9:1-7 [i.e., the covenant with Noah], so the land of Canaan is
cleared of corrupted life before the consummation of the ’new creation’
promise to Abraham."

You acknowledged that "we have to deal with" God’s command to destroy everything that breathes in Canaan and to kill or enslave the occupants of the neighboring cities; yet, you asserted,

"I
don’t see at the moment that it invalidates the basic argument that
Israel was conceived from the start as a ’new creation’, a response or
counterpart to a macrocosm that had repeatedly rejected the creator."

In brief, then, you framed the the Canaanite genocide in the context of God’s establishing the nation of Israel as the new creation in fulfullment of God’s promise to Abraham, while simultaneously destroying the corrupt peoples who constituted the old creation. Having read this post, I decide to look up the explicit Biblical references to the new creation to see whether they lent support to the general contours of your interpretation. There are five such passages, all occurring in the Pauline epistles. My prior posts and my responses to your post here are couched primarily in the context of those five passages.

2. You contend in the present post that

"‘new
creation’ language in the New Testament is a natural development of the
Old Testament understanding of the restoration of Israel following
judgment as a renewal of creation."

When God encourages Noah and Abraham and Israel to be fruitful and multiply, He’s echoing the blessing He bestowed on the original creation narrative of Genesis 1. Though the words are never explicitly stated in Scripture, I can see how you might regard these blessings as repeated efforts to renew the original creation.

However, Paul speaks not of yet another renewal of the old creation but of a new creation. Disjunction rather than continuity characterizes Paul’s language. In this new creation Paul says that there is neither Jew nor Gentile, and that in Christ’s crucifixion he reconciled the two into one new man. (Gal. 6, Eph. 4). Paul speaks not at all here about the work of Christ bringing about another renewal of Israel as a microcosm and another destruction of the surrounding macrocosm. Rather, addressing himself explicitly to the Gentiles, Paul says that Christ destroyed the dividing wall that had previously separated these two mutually antagonistic subdivisions of the old creation (Eph. 4).

While Paul elsewhere acknowledges God’s distinct blessings on Israel, I see nothing in these passages to indicate that he regards Israel as retaining a distinctive microcosmic status in the new creation. As you say,

"in the resurrection the people of God corporately
find a new way of being community in the world."

3. You contend that

"The fact that the structural divisions of humanity
have been overcome in Christ certainly does not mean that the
distinction between microcosm and macrocosm is no longer valid."

Neither Jew nor Gentile: Christ has merged the two into one new man. I’d say that Paul does disavow any micro/macro distinction that’s continuous with the old-creation divisions of humanity. As I said elsewhere, Paul seems more concerned that his readers act in accord with their new-creation status than in establishing a new set of micro/macro distinctions within the new creation. If such divisions are implicit in Paul’s other writings, he’s explicit in rejecting the old divisions that separated Israel from the rest of humanity.

You assert that "the cross does not nullify the promise to Abraham," and Paul agrees. In Gal. 3 Paul contends that the whole era of Israel and the Law
constituted not a fulfillment of the promise made to
Abraham, but rather a temporary measure instituted "because of
transgressions." The Abrahamic promise finds its fulfillment not in the
national identity of Israel but in solidarity with the dead and
resurrected Christ. It’s a blessing that extends not to just one nation but to all, as envisioned in the original promise. As you say,

"Jesus’ death may have nullified the distinction between Jew and
Gentile, but Paul is quite clear: through the ‘faithfulness’ of Jesus
the promise to Abraham would be safeguarded."

4. Paul’s five passages about the new creation make no references to the Christ-followers’ suffering or their surviving a coming judgment, so I offer no response to your fourth point.

5. I’m not sure I agree with your reading of Galatians that

"Paul is concerned precisely that the Galatian believers will disqualify
themselves from membership of this community by reverting to the law."

Paul worries that he’s wasting his breath, and that the Galatians are going to start following the Law as a means of assuring their justification before God and purging themselves from sin. The Law is an artifact of Israelite distinctiveness, specifically intended to establish the Jews as a "peculiar people" among the Gentiles. This sort of separation isn’t just futile; it’s old-creation thinking, suitable only for Israelite children and Gentile slaves. You Gentiles are no longer slaves, says Paul; in Christ you are now sons of God and fellow-heirs (Gal. 4:7). Circumcision and the Law — distinctive marks of the Jewish microcosm — are nothing in light of the new creation. So it’s not so much that the Galatians are in danger of disqualifying themselves, but that they’re looking to qualify themselves with false assurances based on the obsolete in-versus-out criteria that characterized Israel’s distinctiveness.

You say:

"In Ephesians and Colossians to put on the ‘new
person’ is to become fundamentally set apart from an old world upon
which the wrath of God is coming."

The wrath of God poured out on the old world isn’t at all the focus of these Pauline passages about the new creation. The split between old man and new man described in these texts isn’t a division between individuals or groups of people. Rather, old man/new man is an internal split within the individual believer in Christ. When Paul encourages his readers to lay aside the old man and to put on the new man, he is addressing himself to those who have already placed their faith in a Christ who through death and resurrection brought a new creation into being in the world.

You say:

"Gentiles have become part of the commonwealth of Israel, they have become ‘one new man’ (Eph. 2:15) - and as a result they are no longer ‘by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind’ (2:3)."

You’ve slipped back into the old paradigm here. Paul pointedly does not say that the Gentiles have become part of Israel; rather, the two, formerly divided by a wall of enmity, have been merged together into something altogether new.

(As an exegetical aside, "children of wrath" doesn’t explicitly refer to the wrath of God. In Eph. 2:15 Paul says it was the Law that created mutual enmity between Jew and Gentile. In this context, a "child of wrath" might well be someone who continues to live in this old-world milieu of mutual antagonism, of wrath poured out by one nation upon another, an antagonism provoked by the Jewish Law.)

6. Disregarding your microcosmic language, I agree that Paul regards those who believe in Christ as a blessing to the whole world. But invoking God’s blessing on Israel, setting them apart as "a kingom of priests and a holy nation," is precisely what Paul sets aside. This sort of spiritual aristocracy is old-creation thinking that’s been nullified in Christ.

7. Inasmuch as the Pauline new creation texts don’t speak of judgment on 1st-century Israel or on the world, I offer no reply other than what I’ve already noted: the violent establishment of Israel through the destruction of Canaanite nations is regarded by Paul as a temporary expediency occupyinng a closed interval between the promise made to Abraham and its fulfillment in Christ’s death and resurrection.

8. You acknowledge:

"The three ‘practical implications’
that John modestly suggests make pretty good sense, in my view, for the
descendants of Abraham conceived as a renewed microcosm in Christ."

That’s gratifying, Andrew, though again you insist on reinstituting the microcosmic language which, as I read Paul, characterizes old-creation distinctions. Reiterating Peter Wilkinson’s point, you emphasize that the community of faith is called to invite others to share in the new-creation resurrection blessings made possible in Christ. Amen.

Re: New creation in Paul and scripture: a response to John Doyle

by Andrew - 05/07/2008 - 18:43

Though the words are never explicitly stated in Scripture, I can see how you might regard these blessings as repeated efforts to renew the original creation.

Perhaps not 'explicitly stated' as such, but the very obvious parallel between the words to Adam and Eve and the words to Noah and his family is certainly not accidental and strongly suggests that the further recurrence of the terminology in the patriarchal narratives is theologically significant:

And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth." And God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so. (Gen. 1:28-30)

And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything...." (Gen. 9:1-3)

Paul speaks not at all here about the work of Christ bringing about another renewal of Israel as a microcosm and another destruction of the surrounding macrocosm.

I agree that for Paul the 'new creation' language relates to the transformation of the individual and that in these contexts discontinuity is to the fore. But I would still maintain that in Paul's thought the transformation of the individual occurs within a bigger story about the transformation of a community. This seems to me clear enough from Romans 9-11: Paul thinks of the Gentiles as having been attached to a saved remnant of Israel. It is also apparent from his repeated insistence that it is through faith that people become heirs of Abraham. If this was a radical departure, there would be no need to bring Abraham into the picture.

But it is not 'Israel' that has the 'distinct microcosmic status' as new creation - if by that we mean national Israel as defined by Law, geography and ethnicity. It is the people of God as family of Abraham that must be reconceived as a corporate expression of the original paradigm, which I think is stated fundamentally in creational terms.

I’d say that Paul does disavow any micro/macro distinction that’s continuous with the old-creation divisions of humanity.

We agree on that. But the fundamental distinction remains nevertheless - between a 'regenerate' people in Christ that has inherited the blessing of Abraham and an 'unregenerate' humanity. The language is perhaps distasteful, but it accurately captures the distinction between creation that has been renewed and creation that has not.

Paul’s five passages about the new creation make no references to the Christ-followers’ suffering or their surviving a coming judgment, so I offer no response to your fourth point. 

No, that had to do with your comments on 'the individual’s subjective participation in the Christ event': I think you have existentialized the idea of being in Christ (in fact, I rather see that as your overall strategy), removing it from its eschatological-historical context. Still, Paul's statement about being 'new creation' in 2 Corinthians 5:17 can quite easily be read as a summary of the preceding argument about sharing the suffering of Christ.

So it’s not so much that the Galatians are in danger of disqualifying themselves, but that they’re looking to qualify themselves with false assurances based on the obsolete in-versus-out criteria that characterized Israel’s distinctiveness.

The distinction may be a rather fine one, but Paul regards the Law as inevitably imposing a curse on those who do not abide by everything written in it (Gal. 3:10-12). His argument in Romans is that the Law now condemns Israel to destruction, so for the Galatians to submit to the Law would make them also liable to destruction. The Law is not obsolete. It now pronounces the wrath of God against a disobedient people.

The wrath of God poured out on the old world isn’t at all the focus of these Pauline passages about the new creation. The split between old man and new man described in these texts isn’t a division between individuals or groups of people.

No, I disagree. Paul's argument both in Ephesians and Colossians is that the believers should put off their old corrupt nature, which is manifested among the Gentiles, and put on the new nature for this crucial reason: it is because Israel failed to do this that the wrath of God is coming upon the 'sons of disobedience' (Eph. 5:6). I take this phrase to be a reference not to the Gentiles (though Paul expected the wrath of God to come upon the Greek-Roman world) but to disobedient Israel and the prospect of war. He is concerned about the behaviour of individuals because the fate of communities is at stake.

And as an exegetical aside, Colossians 3:6, which presents the same basic argument, speaks explicitly of the 'wrath of God'.

You’ve slipped back into the old paradigm here. Paul pointedly does not say that the Gentiles have become part of Israel; rather, the two, formerly divided by a wall of enmity, have been merged together into something altogether new. 

What Paul says is that they were formerly 'alienated from the commonwealth of Israel' but now have been 'brought near in the blood of Christ'; they are 'no longer strangers and sojourners, but... are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God' (Eph. 2:12-13, 19). The language is shifting around a bit here, but it still looks to me as though he is thinking of the Gentiles who have come to faith in Christ to have become in some sense part of Israel. If Paul can make 'separated from Christ' and 'alienated from the commonwealth of Israel' parallel statements (Eph. 2:12), he surely means that to be joined to Christ is to be joined to the commonwealth of Israel.

But remember, all this is prior to AD 70, when there was still a chance that Israel would repents and escape the wrath of God - Paul's hope is that the inclusion of Gentiles will make Israel jealous and provoke the repentance of the whole people. Subsequently the inclusion of Gentiles in national Israel does not make sense - from that point on it is no longer the national paradigm that concretely represents the microcosm but a genuinely new community defined by faith in Christ. It is at this stage in the narrative that I would agree with you that 'invoking God’s blessing on Israel, setting them apart as "a kingom of priests and a holy nation," is precisely what Paul sets aside'.

John, I notice that you had nothing to say about Hosea 6:1-2. Why would Jesus (and Paul) speak of resurrection on the third day in accordance with the scriptures if he did not in some way see this as a 'resurrection' of Israel suffering under divine judgment?

Re: New creation in Paul and scripture: a response to John Doyle

by john doyle - 05/07/2008 - 23:28

More later, but I want to say that I agree with your first point, Andrew: it’s impossible to miss the parallels between the Genesis 1 creation narrative and the blessing on Noah. These parallels highlight the continuity between the two events, both of them playing in the same register. From within the corrupted world God chose Noah and his family to embark on a renewal and a purification of the old creation. Periodic renewals and purifications are characteristic of the Old Testament narratives, most of which deal specifically with Israel as the chosen microcosm: their separation from the world as a chosen people; their periodic disobedience, punishment, and repentance as indicators of God’s continual and specific concern for their well-being; and God’s use of the unchosen macrocosm as his usually unwitting agents in dealing specifically with Israel.

This is all old-creation stuff, says Paul; it died on the cross. Paul never uses the biological be-fruitful-and-multiply formula in describing the new creation. That sort of language is inadequate to describe the radical break created in Christ’s death and resurrection. Also, repeating the old-creational tropes would likely trigger old-creation associations especially among his Judaizing readers, and Paul is relentless in insisting that the old paradigm of separation and purification of a chosen race no longer holds.

Re: New creation in Paul and scripture: a response to John Doyle

by john doyle - 06/07/2008 - 15:31

Andrew, you say:

"But I would still maintain that in Paul’s
thought the transformation of the individual occurs within a bigger
story about the transformation of a community. This seems to me clear
enough from Romans 9-11: Paul thinks of the Gentiles as having been
attached to a saved remnant of Israel."

I’m neither equipped nor inclined to turn expand the scope of my engagement from the the "new creation" theme to a systematic theology of the New Testament, so I’ll offer only some tentative thoughts about Romans 9-11. Paul explicitly addressed this letter to a Gentile audience. In chapter 9 he shifts his attention to my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites. There’s no way of knowing for sure, but I could imagine that the Gentile believers wondered whether, in light of the "new creation," God had abandoned Israel. As he did also in the Galatians letter, Paul shifts the temporal context back in time, from Israel to Abraham, emphasizing that

it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants (Romans 9:8)

In other words, the Abrahamic promise isn’t fulfilled through the biological "be fruitful and multiply" apparatus of the old creation — the means by which the nation of Israel attained distinction — but through some other channel altogether. Specifically, the biopolitical collective entity called "Israel" is not that channel, and it never was. Why? Because the channel passes through Christ and is apprehended not by biological inheritance nor by moral superiority but by faith in a resurrected Christ — the same channel by which Paul’s Gentile readers have entered into the new creation.

For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call on Him. (Romans 10:12)

Paul begins chapter 11 by distinguishing a chosen and faithful remnant of Israel - a microcosm within the microcosm you might say. But he says this narrowing of Israel is a temporary measure, intended to make possible the expansion of the promise far beyond the geographic and ethnic boundaries of Israel. When Paul speaks metaphorically of the olive tree (11:17ff.), he’s again referring not to Israel according to the flesh but to the descendants of Abraham according to the promise. While some of the "natural branches" — i.e., Israelites according the flesh — have been pruned from the branch, they can be grafted in again through faith.

…a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles have come in; and thus all Israel will be saved. (Rom. 11:25-26)

Is Paul saying that "all Israel" is a newly-pruned olive tree of the spirit, consisting of a faithful remnant selected from among Jews and Gentiles alike? Or is he saying that all Israel according to the flesh will eventually be reconciled and regrafted into the spiritual descendants of Abraham, along with the "fullness" of the Gentile descendants? It’s hard for me to say, but Paul wraps up his excursus on Israel, embedded within this longer letter to the Gentile believers in Rome, with this:

For just as you [i.e., Gentiles] once were disobedient to God but now have been shown mercy because of their disobedience, so these [i.e., Jews] also now have been disobedient in order that because of the mercy shown to you they also may now be shown mercy. For God has shut up all in disobedience that he might show mercy to all. (Rom. 11:30-32)

As I read this extended passage then, Paul contends that the pruning of the Israelite branch down to a remnant constituted a temporary measure. The pruning was implemented in order to make possible the explosive growth and flowering of the whole tree, Jew and Gentile alike, fulfilling the expansive promise made to Abraham long before Israel had even sprouted. Participating in this promised expansion — call it the "new creation" — is achieved by faith in God’s grace and mercy bestowed despite disobedience, or even because of it, through the death and resurrection of Christ.

More later hopefully…

Re: New creation in Paul and scripture: a response to John Doyle

by Andrew - 06/07/2008 - 21:45

John, aren’t we more or less in agreement here? I probably need to read your comments a little more closely, but let me put my argument as simply as I can and tell me at what points you fundamentally disagree with it.

1. The seminal promise to Abraham following the repeated failure of creation to live up to expectations is framed implicitly as a restarting of creation in microcosm. As the story unfolds the descendants of Abraham fulfil this mandate by becoming a nation defined by Law, kingship, temple and geography. Thus the ‘new creation’ is shaped according to a national template.

2. The nation of Israel fails to live according to the Law, kingship becomes corrupted, the temple is destroyed and the people are exiled from the land. This state of failure persists, in effect, right down to the time when Jesus announced good news about an imminent intervention of God as king to transform this situation.

3. The dark side of this announcement is that the national template for the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham is about to be destroyed. The good news is that a new template or new covenant is emerging, defined by faith in Jesus, the life-renewing presence of the Spirit, and characterized not least by the obliteration of deeply ingrained divisions in humanity.

4. But because this is explicitly determined as a recovery of the promise to Abraham and because it anticipates a final renewal of heaven and earth, the emerging template retains creational dimensions. The blessing of the people in Christ is not a purely spiritual matter; it is the blessing of the original creation, the blessing of humanity as community in relation both to the creator and to the earth; and the renewed people of God are sent out beyond the microcosm of obsolete national Israel into the whole world to claim it as God’s ‘holy land’.

5. My reading of New Testament eschatology suggests that this process of renewal is a protracted one because of opposition first from Judaism, then from Rome. It is only once we get to Christendom that we really see the emergence of a new template by which the church seeks to express the sovereignty of Christ over the whole world.

6. The tension between Christendom and dissenting movements such as the Anabaptists is analogous to the tension between national Israel and the prophets, but this does not in itself invalidate the mainstream attempt to represent the fulness of a renewed humanity.

7. That template has also now collapsed, and we now have the demanding task of constructing a new template to give expression to the seminal promise to Abraham, to give body to the DNA of creation renewed, in a postmodern or post-Christendom world.

Re: New creation in Paul and scripture: a response to John Doyle

by peter wilkinson - 07/07/2008 - 11:25

Andrew - I’m only commenting on your summary, not the discussion as a whole. Much of your interpretation of scripture hangs on your 4th point - which contains a mixture, as I see it, of things which scripture affirms, and things it does not.

Your emphasis on the recovery of the promise to Abraham, through Christ, contrasts with  the NT presentation of Christ as the fulfilment of that promise. This is a crucial difference, as it also affects creation, and the message which is to be proclaimed worldwide. We are not encouraged to see the period of Israel under the Law as a parenthesis, with Christ facilitating a return to the emphasis of an earlier phase, but to see Christ as the very meaning and fulfilment of the promises to Abraham and Israel. Christ is the means, in himself, of how creation is to be blessed and reclaimed.

How does this rearrangement of things affect the message to be proclaimed and life to be lived? In your version, Christ becomes secondary to the purpose. In the NT, Christ is the purpose. Everything we have, and everything which is to happen to creation, is to be found only in him. The focus is not ‘the promise to Abraham’ of a renewed creation, but the content of that promise, which is Christ, and how it was to come about, which is exclusively in relation to him.

Your 5th point reflects your view of NT faith - which for you is not a template for faith beyond the immediate historic context. This is a huge contrast with what most take to be true - no matter how skilfully and energetically you argue it. It’s not surprising that you see in the post-Constantinian political and ecclesiastical arrangements the potential for an interpretation of the faith which bears out your basic assumptions. But are your views anywhere substantiated by the views of early contemporary theologians - mainstream or otherwise? I suspect they would be horrified if it was suggested that they were providing an interpretion of the NT which denied its authority for believers beyond the immediate 1st century context.

In your 5th and 6th points, I’ve argued before, and argue again, that Christendom is a poor concept to apply to the faith since early post-apostolic times, since it is a term unheard of in the NT itself, and suggests concepts which are nowhere hinted at in the NT, even as possibilities, beyond the immediate 1st century period. On the other hand, there have been recovery and renewal movements which attempted to retain the simplicity and purity of the original faith from the very earliest times, which were continuous throughout the period to the present day, were widespread (throughout Europe) and historically extensive. In fact the recovery movements cut across boundaries - they existed both within and outside the ‘official’ church.

Within and outside the ‘official’ church, what criteria should we be looking at to assess the integrity of the faith? I suggest: 1. an overriding devotion to Christ, as the key to everything believed, and 2. evidence of the character of Christ in the lives and lifestyle of those who believe. Such qualities cut across ecclesiastical boundaries, where authority is vested in the particular truths or organisational procedures a church may adopt, be it apostolic succession, nature of the priesthood, bishops, doctrinal differences concerning the eucharist, baptism, Spirit-reception, or whatever.

Today, a healthy worldwide pluralism of faith rests alongside a bigotry and  denigration of alternative expressions of faith which is astonishing and regrettable - mainly because of boundaries being set where they were never intended to be.  A healthy faith rests on an inclusive attitude towards others, provided that there is clear evidence of overriding devotion to Christ, and evidence of the fruits of Christ’s character in the lives of those who follow him.

Re: New creation in Paul and scripture: a response to John Doyle

by john doyle - 07/07/2008 - 16:55

I think maybe my work is done here, Andrew, inasmuch as we’ve now moved back into interacting with your distinctive Biblical theology rather than exploring the Pauline texts describing the new creation. In this context my biggest objection to your seven-point theology is your insistence that Israel constitutes a fulfillment of the promise to Abraham. Paul questions whether it ever did, and he affirms that it doesn’t now.

To regard Israel as any sort of model for building the new creation in Christ seems fundamentally ill-conceived. A radical spiritual exceptionalism in which God acts with benevolence on behalf of
only a small subset of humanity while dismissing the rest as
degenerates worthy of enslavement and destruction: I suspect I’m not the only one who regards this sort of thing as barbaric
and fascistic. It’s the ideology of separation, elitism and violent suppression of
infidels that has fueled so much destruction and
insular self-absorption in the name of Christ over the centuries, and that still motivates the American religious right’s "crusades" in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world. As a collective force of militant separatism, Christianity presents itself as an imminent threat to outsiders, bent on eventual world domination and the concomitant destruction of its enemies. This radical anti-humanistic aggression might be an inescapable feature of Christianity in all its guises; if so, perhaps you’re doing the world a favor by reiterating the message.

In looking carefully at those five passages I was tentatively exploring the possibility of discovering a more all-embracing version of Christianity in Paul’s writings, one in which grace and resurrection life replace judgment, punishment and insular separatism as the basis for new life in Christ. If those five texts are a valid indication, then Paul regards Christianity as a radical break from the old us-versus-them paradigm. He does not commend anything about Israel — its ethnic purity, its law, its separation from the other nations — as exemplary of the new creation. When he looks for a precedent he harkens back before Israel to Abraham and the expansive promise God made through him to all nations. He speaks of grace and faith and an explosive opening outward of God’s benevolence.

A pattern begins to emerge on your new blog. In one post you note the continuity between the Canaanite genocide and the Christian new creation. In a subsequent post you argue that a particular Christian charity inappropriately cites Christ’s words in Matthew 25:31ff to justify their work among the poor of the world, whereas Christ was really talking about the promised reward awaiting those who specifically helped his own disciples. It’s not wrong for Christians to feed the world’s poor, you demur, but they need a better Scriptural justification for doing so. You don’t offer an alternative justification; rather you limit your remarks to debunking — Scripturally, of course — the one they’ve chosen. Why is it so important for you to reinforce these barriers between microcosm and macrocosm, to the point of cautiously excusing genocide of outsiders and cautiously rejecting charity extended to them? Perhaps unbelievers should be issued a distinguishing mark — a tattoo, say, or a star sewn into their clothing — so that well-meaning Christians don’t mistakenly help them out in times of trouble.

Re: New creation in Paul and scripture: a response to John Doyle

by Andrew - 07/07/2008 - 17:06

Just to clarify, my argument is that national Israel was
conceived as a fulfilment of the promise to Abraham, and therefore as
in some sense a renewal of creation, according to Law. That template
failed and was swept away in the war against Rome. In Christ things are
different - not least, ethnic distinctions are removed - but the New
Testament as a whole still assumes separation because not all choose to
be part of a new covenant in the Spirit. Discussing a few verses out of
context doesn’t get round that fact.

A radical spiritual exceptionalism in which God acts with
benevolence on behalf of
only a small subset of humanity while dismissing the rest as
degenerates worthy of enslavement and destruction: I suspect I’m not
the only one who regards this sort of thing as barbaric
and fascistic.

This is really depressing. The point has been made repeatedly that the
church understands itself to be called apart, renewed by the Spirit,
bound in loyalty to Jesus, for the sake of the world, in
order to be a medium of creational blessing; eg.:

For the microcosm to be called apart, differentiated from
the macrocosm, does not mean that we are stuck with an ‘antagonistic
us-versus-them mentality’. The microcosm is called apart for
the sake of the macrocosm.

I do not understand why you persist in caricaturing this as a
‘radical spiritual exceptionalism in which God acts with benevolence on
behalf of
only a small subset of humanity while dismissing the rest as
degenerates worthy of enslavement and destruction’.

He does not commend anything about Israel — its ethnic
purity, its law,
its separation from the other nations — as exemplary of the new
creation. When he looks for a precedent he harkens back before Israel
to Abraham and the expansive promise God made through him to all
nations. He speaks of grace and faith and an explosive opening outward
of God’s benevolence. 

 Agreed.

You don’t offer an alternative justification; rather you
limit your
remarks to debunk — Scripturally, of course — the one they’ve chosen.
Why is it so important for you to reinforce these barriers between
microcosm and macrocosm, to the point of cautiously excusing genocide
of outsiders and cautiously rejecting charity extended to them?

Again you are twisting my words. I wish neither to excuse
genocide nor to deny charity towards the poor. This is primarily a
matter of biblical interpretation. There is to my mind an intriguing
parallel between the flood and the Canaanite ‘genocide’ that I think is
worth exploring in the light of the new creation theme. I don’t like
killing any more than you do, but it’s there in scripture and I’m not
sure it helps in the long run to ignore it. It’s also pretty clear to
me that Jesus does not tell the sheep and goats story in order to
encourage charitable activity. That’s also a simple matter of biblical
interpretation. The fact that I didn’t immediately offer an alternative
justification does not mean that I oppose charitable giving. My interest was simply in something else: ‘the positive point is of immense significance, narratively speaking: the story is an assurance given to the disciples that they will share in the vindication of Christ himself when the Son of man comes to receive a kingdom’. Again, I
don’t understand why you are so determined to misrepresent what I am
 saying.

Finally, my intention is not to reinforce the barriers between microcosm and macrocosm. There are no barriers. There is a radical difference, but there are no barriers. My intention is rather to suggest that the church should understand its calling expansively, as a summons to embody in itself the full scope of creational existence. Why is that ‘fascistic’? There is no denigration of the rest of humanity in this. If anything, it presupposes a critique of the church as being too narrow in its self-understanding and a rather high regard for the human spirit.

Re: New creation in Paul and scripture: a response to John Doyle

by john doyle - 13/07/2008 - 13:00

 Andrew,

The reason I react with such vehemence to your distinction between microcosm and macrocosm, between sheep and goats, between regenerate and degenerate, is that on all these divides I occupy the position of the rejected "other." I would have been one of the Canaanites slaughtered by the Israelites in the name of their God; I am the one who you regard as unregenerate and under condemnation; I am the one who will presumably be swept away in the last judgment so that your regenerate microcosm can fill the whole earth.

Now my condemnation might be justifiable if this particular God really exists: His ways are beyond our ways, the clay can’t question the potter, etc. The radical barrier distinguishing membership in the regenerate microcosm consists in believing that this God does exist, that He is right, and that one should cooperate with Him — even if it means actively helping Him slaughter entire nations or affirming His right to destroy everyone who doesn’t believe in Him. From the non-believer’s standpoint this sort of radically non-humanistic theism is fascistic by definition. And the barrier is a rigid one: join us, believe what we believe, or our Leader will execute you. Of course one can choose to believe in order to save one’s skin, but isn’t there more integrity in upholding one’s beliefs even under threat of death?

So when I read your attempts to come to grips with the Canaanite genocide by acknowledging God’s right to do away with whole nations man, woman and child, I regard you as a justifier of an all-powerful fascistic regime whose ruler may change tactics but whose strategy (microcosm versus macrocosm) remains constant throughout history. When you say that Jesus promises rewards to those who feed the regenerate hungry but not necessarily to those who feed the unregenerate hungry, and yet you offer no justification for feeding everyone, I regard you as someone who may well turn his back on me in my time of trouble unless I renounce my beliefs. Whether these are your consious intentions or not, it’s how things look from the perspective of the unregenerate goats out here in the non-Christian macrocosm. Surely you can suspend your belief long enough to see that?

There are other ways of reading Paul’s new creation texts, even within a Christian exegetical framework — ways that emphasize disjunction from Old Testament fascism rather than continuity, ways that emphasize the expansiveness of the resurrection life rather than its restrictiveness, ways that destroy barriers between in and out rather than erecting them, ways that emphasize grace rather than judgment. It’s in the context of these more gracious readings that I can find at least the possibility of common cause with Christians, in which all of us retain the integrity of our beliefs in the spirit of love. Of course you’re not obligated to make the effort; neither am I obligated to search for a version of the Christian faith that I can live with. And there’s no assurance that our efforts will bear fruit that satisfy everyone’s tastes. But I do make that effort, for reasons that aren’t always clear to me — maybe it’s masochism, as some of my non-Christian friends suggest. Sometimes I get tired of it, but that’s my problem and not yours.

Re: New creation in Paul and scripture: a response to John Doyle

by Andrew - 07/07/2008 - 16:18

We are not encouraged to see the period of Israel under the Law as a parenthesis, with Christ facilitating a return to the emphasis of an earlier phase, but to see Christ as the very meaning and fulfilment of the promises to Abraham and Israel.

Peter, the question I would ask here is this: Under what circumstances do the promises to Israel that are fulfilled in Jesus arise? I would hazard a guess that pretty much all the prophecies that are seen in the New Testament as finding fulfilment in the Jesus story relate to the theme of judgment and restoration. In other words, the messianic hope emerges as a response to the failure of Law-based Judaism and the prospect of ensuing destruction. Christ becomes necessary (you won’t like me putting it that way) because the Law eventually condemned the people to destruction. So national Israel inevitably becomes a parenthesis.

In the NT, Christ is the purpose.

No, if Christ is the saviour, the purpose must be defined in terms of what is saved, surely? God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. The purpose is the actualization of God’s love for the world. The means is the giving of the Son. The purpose has to do with the effective missional existence of a people for God’s own possession in the world; Christ is the means by which that purpose is fulfilled. Isn’t this Paul’s argument in Ephesians 1: the whole story about Jesus, right up to the statement about all things being put under his feet, is ‘for the church, which is his body, the fulness of him who fills all in all’?

Your 5th point reflects your view of NT faith - which for you is not a template for faith beyond the immediate historic context. 

I have to say I still see nothing intrinsically wrong - as a matter of historical interpretation - with the argument that the New Testament understanding of ‘faith’ is fundamentally shaped by the eschatological narrative that is everywhere presupposed, that this eschatological narrative is historically contingent (it has to do with the restoration of the people of God and the enthronement of Christ as king in place of Caesar), and that this contingency should therefore be taken into account when we try to explain what faith should mean for us, when we are not part of that eschatological narrative.

…Christendom is a poor concept to apply to the faith since early post-apostolic times, since it is a term unheard of in the NT itself, and suggests concepts which are nowhere hinted at in the NT, even as possibilities, beyond the immediate 1st century period.

I agree. The New Testament does not really describe Christendom - I don’t think the New Testament sees much beyond the victory over Rome. But the church unquestionably modelled itself on empire and that is not described in the New Testament. So either we dismiss the Christendom church as an unholy departure from the New Testament and argue that it is only in the dissenting movements that the true faith survived, or we ask whether in the light of scripture as a whole there is some way of making sense of the church’s instinct to become a globally organized polity.

The evangelical simplicity of your formula for integrity of faith is very attractive and in many respects I would thoroughly endorse it, but I don’t think it provides an adequate hermeneutic of scripture.

Re: New creation in Paul and scripture: a response to John Doyle

by samlcarr - 08/07/2008 - 17:26

On the microcosm/macrocosm - separation/embrace questions it seems to me that the NT itself voices both in apposition and as such our current debate is not new! There is always a struggle between doing what Jesus did/said to do and doing what comes naturally. For a spirit filled and enthusiastic young church it looks as though doing what came naturally took precedence. We do see in Peter’s vision e.g. that the aim was otherwise and this is a fact that Paul does emphasize but then eventually Paul himself is taken prisoner while attempting to appease the very circumcision obsessed gang that he has been arguing against all along…

The incarnation is a massive embrace. Separation as a hallmark of holiness definitely gets tossed.

It is those (few) fools who see Jesus way as being right in spite of all the evidence against it that gives Paul, and us too, some hope!

Live to serve : Serve to live

Re: New creation in Paul and scripture: a response to John Doyle

by peter wilkinson - 10/07/2008 - 13:24

Andrew - with apologies to John Doyle for creating a digression from the subject of his thread:

 Promises to Israel fulfilled in Christ - restorarion of Davidic monarchy; return of YHWH to the temple; outpouring of the Spirit; resurrection of the dead - literal and metaphorical; defeat of YHWH’s enemies; second Exodus; forgiveness of sins; new covenant. None of these seem limited in themselves to the theme of judgment and restoration in the limited sense in which you frame it.

Christ is the purpose - well yes there was an object in view, but the way in which that object was addressed was relating everything back to Christ, and what happened in and through him.

You could call this an evangelical simplicity; as an interpretation, I think it provides a hermenutical key to the NT which integretates otherwise disparate and as yet unexplained events and promises of the OT.

Again, apologies to J.D. for not interacting with his main argument. And back to the river bank. I’m developing a new fantasy along the lines of The Last of the Summer Wine - Foggy, Compo and Clegg. Leave it to you to judge who’s who. (What? You’ve never watched it?).

Re: New creation in Paul and scripture: a response to John Doyle

by john doyle - 12/07/2008 - 22:00

Recovering my equanimity somwhat, I’m prepared to respond to your 7-point summary in light of Paul’s five passages describing the new creation:

1. Of course Paul never addresses this point in the five passages in question, but extrapolating from them I disagree with your interpretation. God’s be-fruitful-and-multiply blessing to Abraham is entirely in keeping with the Genesis 1 creation — call it the "old creation" — and need not imply anything about how the original creation failed and needed to be restarted. Israel too is an extension of the old creation, as Paul says in Ephesians 2 and in Galatians 3. The old creation is shaped by national template; for Paul the new creation demolishes this old template.

2. Again, nothing in Paul’s 5 texts addresses this point. He ignores Israel except to point out that the Jew-Gentile distinction no longer means anything important. The importance of Israel died on the cross, says Paul; the subsequent destruction of the temple or the diaspora are not at all in Paul’s focus.

3. Again, the national template has already been destroyed in Christ’s death; the new template has already been established in Christ’s resurrection.

4. The promise to Abraham remained a promise until it was fulfilled in Christ’s death and resurrection and extended by faith to all nations; i.e., to the macrocosm of humanity which, in keeping with the Gen. 1 blessing, has been fruitful and multiplied on a grand scale.

5. The new template was already established at Christ’s death and resurrection, and Paul is already bearing testimony to its emergence. The old creation persists even as the new creation is continually being renewed.

6. I offer no opinion on the Anabaptists, Christendom, or post-Christendom.

7. I see nothing in Paul to suggest that the new template established in Christ’s death and resurrection would ever collapse.

In sum, based Paul’s description the new creation didn’t emerge gradually; it burst on the scene at the cross. The new creation definitively abolishes the distinctive importance of Israel, beginning from the crucifixion and moving forward in history from that event. Paul addressed the new-creation texts primarily to a Gentile audience, so his references to Israel are of secondary importance.

Again, I’m not interested in putting forward a systematic New Testament theology, nor even in critiquing yours. I wanted to exegete the only five texts in the whole Bible that explicitly refer to the "new creation." I’d say that, because Paul coined the phrase, his understanding should be definitive when applying the new-creation paradigm to Old Testament texts. I don’t think that it’s particularly appropriate for a reader to infer a new-creational theme in the Old Testament and then to impose that inference on what Paul explicitly states later.

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