MetaCatholic

(This is the last post of a series on Michael Bird’s The Saving Righteousness of God. The first post can be found here, and the second here.)

I got my comments on the excellent chapter six out of the way in my first post. And I only have one brief comment on the interesting seventh chapter before I come back to chapter five. I’m still digesting the arguments Bird makes in chapter seven, which stress the works of obedience which need to go hand in hand with justification. So Bird proposes a Christian reading of Romans 2, whereby “Paul is speaking of Gentile Christians who fulfil the Torah through faith in Christ and life in the Spirit” (p166). I’m not persuaded this fully belongs to the rhetorical logic of the opening sections of Romans, though I’ve certainly been given food for thought and encourage to rethink this section of Romans. I found myself wishing Bird had taken time to interact with Stowers’ rhetorical analysis¹ which offers a very different view based on the rhetorical device of speech-in-character (προσωποποιία).² Although I strongly disagree with Stowers’ overall conclusions, I do find his arguments on this particular point quite illuminating. In the end, I can’t help but feel that Bird’s reading may be influenced by the way in which alternatives are more problematic for his Reformed tradition. He himself notes that this view finds its support mainly among “reformed and neo-orthodox interpreters.” (p166)

I return to chapter five, one of the places where the origin of much of the book in previous essays is apparent, for it seems odd to get a sketch outline of the NPP halfway through, even though the placement of this piece makes a lot of sense. He outlines first the areas where the NPP has been particularly criticized by the Reformed tradition, and then proceeds to areas where he sees concurrence. This is a useful discussion, although I think the strength of the Reformed critique is overstated (I would, wouldn’t I?). In particular (and he shares this with Carson’s introduction and conclusion to Justification and Variegated Nomism)³ he overlooks the what I see as the widespread nature of something at least resembling covenantal nomism in Second Temple literature, and puts more stress on the exceptions. Assuming Paul, by his own word, to have more in common with the Pharisees, as I do, (and taking Paul seriously as a witness to reconstructing historical Pharisaism) it would seem that the principal documents for reconstructing the mainstream of the Judaism Paul knew will be Mishnah and apocalyptic writings. It is not immediately apparent that (beyond demonstrating the bounds of diversity) 4QMMT is representative of the – probably mainstream – Judaism which the pre-conversion Paul knew, loved and was educated in.

While I think that Bird handles this debate with his customary eirenicism, and wherever possible seeks not compromises, but mutually informed views, this is his most negative chapter in relation to the NPP. As in all discussions around these topics I found myself with two particular questions. Do we take Paul too much at his own word in these reconstructions? And what of “faith in Christ / the faithfulness of Christ” which is in danger of being the elephant in the room?

By taking Paul too much at his own word, I mean that I think we assume too readily that the way in which Paul characterized his opponents’ or interlocutors’ theology and arguments was the same way in which they characterized their own. In particular, and in historical context, “justification by the works of the Law” is not an exact polar opposite to ”justification by the faith of Christ.” For those who do not believe Jesus to be Messiah, there has been no resurrection and no inauguration of the eschaton, so that the most “works of the Law” can do is testify to the hope (even expectation) of vindication, and perhaps “remind” God to bring it about. By contrast, for Paul the vindication has a present as well as future aspect, for God has vindicated Messiah in the resurrection, and the Law’s testimony to the hope of God’s vindication is supplanted by Messiah’s testimony to the present happening of God’s vindication. These contrasts, which Paul pulls into theological opposition, are unequally yoked. Failing to give due weight to this temporal inequality will pull any reconstruction about what Paul’s Jewish opponents believed out of skew. Correspondingly part of what Paul is doing in argument about Christian Judaizers in Galatia is demonstrating the wrongness of applying pre-resurrection faithfulness to a post-resurrection Messianic situation. To adapt Sanders pithy viewpoint: “This is what Paul finds wrong with Torah: it is not Christ.”⁴

Then there is the question of the faith of Christ – πίστις χριστοῦ – which phrase, despite all the arguments about it, is given little enough attention by Bird. Does it signify the “faithfulness of Christ” or “faith in Christ”? In a passing footnote (p147 n113) he says that he sees the genitive as deliberately ambiguous. Granted that the phrase is ambivalent (which I think it is) I am not convinced (as I noted in the previous post) that language actually works like this. Phrases, like words, are not discrete containers of meaning, but bring one or other aspect of their semantic field to the fore, depending on the syntax and discourse within which they are embedded. It may carry one meaning as a connotation while primarily denoting the other, but I am not persuaded that it can carry two different denotative meanings at the same time. Admittedly each of those denotations can, and I think in Paul’s thought does, logically entail the other, but I see “ambiguity” as a cop out here.

If, as I think we should, we privilege the subjective genitive “the faithfulness of Christ”, then part (and only part) of the contrast between it and “works of the law” is about the pattern of faithfulness by which God’s people are called to live. The faithfulness of Christ looks backward to the cross and resurrection as sharing God’s vindication of that faithfulness, the works of the Law look forward to a hope of vindication. God has chosen to vindicate Christ’s pattern of faithfulness, and not that of the works of the Law. Therefore putting our trust in that faithfulness as God’s way of life is the only pattern by which we can experience present, and hope for future, vindication. The argument between old and new perspectives then falls into a different configuration, in which, I think, the NPP has the better of the argument.

Despite these cavils, I want to commend this book to my students and friends. Those who like me come from outside the reformed tradition may occasionally wonder what some of the fuss is about. Bird explicates the arguments generously and charitably. He also makes us pause to re-think positively the strength of the Reformed interpretation: his re-reading of Romans and Galatians in chapter 6 is particularly forceful in that regard. But I would also want to encourage those of my friends who are suspicious of the NPP to read and ponder this book. It is offered, and I hope it will be received, as one to make us bear with one another and pursue the things that make for peace.⁵

1. Stanley K Stowers A Rereading of Romans Yale 1994 [↩]
2. Ibid p17, p101ff [↩]
3. D Carson, P T O’Brien, M Seifrid eds. Vols 1 & 2 combined, Baker 2004 – many of the contributors to Vol 1 on Second Temple Judaism find something more like Sanders’ pattern of religion than Carson admits. Garlington’s comment in his review article (available here (PDF) from the excellent Paul Page) is fair: “Carson’s summaries and conclusions are conspicuously at odds with the majority of the essayists enlisted by him.” p6 [↩]
4. Sanders says: “In short, this is what Paul finds wrong in Judaism: it is not Christianity.” – Paul and Palestinian Judaism Fortress Press 1977 – p552 [↩]
5. see p5 [↩]

(This is the second post of a series on Michael Bird’s The Saving Righteousness of God. The first post can be found here)

Chapter 2 of Bird’s book focuses on the meaning of righteousness, a topic on which much has been, is being and will be written, now and possibly unto the age to come. It is perhaps in this chapter that I felt Reformed dogmatics were coming closest to pulling Paul out of shape. In particular, I see the whole debate about imputed and imparted righteousness as an interesting historical argument, which may have had its own proper context, and been perfectly appropriate in its day, but which has (I think) nothing to do with the historical Paul. I’m with Wright when he observes that judges do not hand their righteousness over when passing judgement.¹ Bird himself doesn’t think this should be a major issue, and is inclined to leave imputation primarily to the systematic sphere.

On other debates he is, I think broadly right to see that relational and norming concepts of righteousness cannot be split apart (pp10-12). I am less sure about his view that forensic and transformative understandings are “linked logically rather than conceptually” (p18), though I think he is right to see, and work with the linkage that does indeed exist. I think in part that we disagree about how language works. Bird does seem to me to operate more with the idea that “words” have” meanings” whereas I work more with the idea that lexical units have semantic fields. Consequently, I think that the denotative meaning of a lexical unit is the least it brings to the sentence party, while its connotative meanings come along as expansive family and friends. The denotation thus shifts around, depending on context, and one or other connotation in one context may come to the foreground as denotation in another. One result of this is that I find greater fluidity and less need for fixedness in determining how different meanings interplay. It is, however, more a difference of emphasis, because Bird remains very attentive to context.

The main section of the second chapter is a whistle stop tour of interpretations around the idea of righteousness as covenant participation. Like him, I do not see apocalyptic eschatology and covenant theology as in opposition, though instead of finding links only in Paul’s underlying narrative world (p31 – a very Wright-ian theme that I’m not fully persuaded of) I would tend to see apocalyptic as providing a myth, and a language with the aid of which Paul thinks through his covenant theology and narrative. Bird is convincing (and I hope convincing to others) on holding the personal and the corporate together, the salvific and the ecclesiological. What I personally would have liked to see more about here is the undercurrent of theodicy that also runs through Paul’s argument, that this is to prove God is righteous (Rom 3:25-26).

I’m not going to say much about his third chapter, except that his emphasis on the importance of resurrection for justification is, in my view, vital and well-argued, nor much about chapter four except these brief remarks Unfortunately, imputed righteousness returns to the fray, although Bird does usefully show a range of views amongst the earlier Reformed tradition. That said, he actually argues for what he calls “incorporated righteousness.” As far as I know² this is his basic term, and he argues for it from a number of passages. I found this a very helpful way of looking at Paul’s argument, one that does justice to a number of themes, and one that offers a meeting ground for the old and new perspectives. My only qualification — and this is an idea I’m slowly working towards, is that there is, I think, also something that might be called mimetic righteousness. Incorporation into Christ by the Spirit actually invites faithful participation in his faithfulness, by which means his righteousness becomes mine.

What this section of the book shows is that working with the disagreements and tensions between different views can be done creatively and not polemically, and it is part of what makes a sometimes dense argument quite refreshing.

1. N.T. Wright What St Paul Really Said Lion 1997, p98. As an aside I note that I stopped using Wright’s book as an introductory text for a course for lay people precisely because he too gets bogged down in the ins and outs of this argument. What surprised me was that even those from evangelical churches had only a hazy grasp of the Reformation doctrine, and getting into those issues only got – in my view – in the way of getting into Paul. Apparently there are a number of evangelical churches where musical style is the article by which the church stands or falls. [↩]
2. and p70 n46 also suggests this [↩]