I continue to wander through the Hays Festschrift (HF): The Word Leaps the Gap: Essays on Scripture and Theology in Honor of Richard Hays. This week I turn to E. P. Sanders' contribution: "Did Paul's Theology Develop?" (325-50). So far it looks to me as if this Festschrift will be one of the more timeless ones. For example, I'm sure Sanders has been writing something of late, but I sure haven't noticed. This article appears to me to be the next most significant blip from him on Paul since the mid 80's when he wrote Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People.
He makes me smile in the first half of the essay, because it seems to have some of the same defensive tone that Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People had at times. I remember this long footnote somewhere where Sanders is irritated at people who took him to say in Paul and Palestinian Judaism that participation in Christ is the center of Paul's theology over and against justification by faith. I didn't say that, he protests--they are two ways of saying the same thing.
His main sparring partner in the first half of the piece is not Richard Hays but Douglas Campbell, who also teaches at Duke Divinity School. Funny that both Stanley Hauerwas' piece we reviewed last week and Sanders' piece this week have a kind of personal defense tone to them. Dunn's piece that I may do next week also has a fun personal dimension--he starts with a "Dear Richard" letter.
In any case, Sanders spends the first 13 pages of the essay making distinctions between words like "systematic," "consistency," "diversity," and "coherency" in Paul's writings, as well as "development" and "growth." Campbell puts Sanders in the same bucket as Heikki Räisänen in terms of Paul being inconsistent, and Sanders doesn't want to be put there (330-31).
Paul is not systematic, no (325-26). Paul is consistent when he is addressing similar questions (326-27). The problem is that he makes very diverse statements (327-28) and with "different questions, different answers." Paul's thought is "coherent, unsystematic, not notably inconsistent" (328).
Sanders argues that the coherency of Paul's thought is found in two key principles (328):
1) The God of Israel is God of the whole world; he called the Jewish people, brought them out of bondage, and gave them the law; but all the creation is his.
2) In recent days, God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to save the whole world from the wrath to come, without regard to whether or not people are Jewish.
In the second half of the essay, Sanders explores growth in Paul's views on several key topics:
Eschatology
Sanders was not inclined to call the variations in Paul's statements on resurrection among his letters as development in Paul and Palestinian Judaism (432-33 n.9) because the expectation of a future resurrection is repeated in Romans. Interestingly, I gave a paper at SBL this year in which I did not find a definitive statement in Romans that related resurrection to a future event. I am a bit in process as to my exact conclusion here, except that I think Paul's entire thinking on death and resurrection bears significant re-examination on several aspects.
In any case, Sanders would now call what we see in the course of Paul's letters on this topic "development," by which he does not mean that Paul retracted anything he had said previously. "if 'develop' means 'retract,' then clearly Paul's thought did not develop. His thought shifts in some verses of 2 Corinthians and in Philippians 1 but returns to a previous point in Philippians 3" (340).
For purposes of time, since I didn't intend to spend this long this morning, let me present the summary Sanders himself provides at the end of the essay:
1. Paul grows from having the Spirit and having a few gifts in 1 Thess. and 1 Cor. to include living in the Spirit and not in the Flesh in his later letters.
2. Paul grows from faith meaning to be steadfast and confident to include dying with Christ and becoming one person with Christ.
3. Paul grows from thinking of this present Christian life as enduring suffering while being blameless to include being enriched by spiritual gifts and one's transformation beginning in the present.
4. Paul grows from imitation relating to suffering as he did to include sharing in Christ's suffering and death.
5. Paul grows from transformation as new life in the future to incude new life in the present as well as in the future.
6. Paul grows from the body of Christ meaning to have various roles in the church to include being one person with Christ.
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6 comments:
Ken,
It is so nice to read over your shoulder. You have all the background conversation in your hip pocket...it brings life to the Sanders article...can not wait for the Jimmy Dunn review.
Thanks Dave--we're going to miss you next semester while you're in Zambia!
I've often thought that it wasn't fair going through school having to study these books with no idea who these people were or where they've come from. Of course Dunn can keep these people straight, I used to think, he knows them, drinks coffee and other things with them, he's been debating with them for years--while they were writing these books!
:-)
Ken, you mention in the Haurwas article that you understand text and tradition with "spirit". Is "spirit" your understanding of "context" or experience? Then this is "reader-response", which is nothing other than personal encounter that Karl Barth believed or "the Word becomes the Word of God", neo-orthodoxy. We can't help but be influenced by our experiences, but the way we put together our faith is such a complex understaking for the individual, much less those who would want to understand developmental issues, via psychology...
While i am defensive to the text and the tradition (as absolutized), as both have been limitations for me, reason must be appropriated within experience, which was what you debated with a Calvinist type many years ago...text/tradition vs. reaons/experience...We do try to bring coherency to our lives through theologizing. Sometimes there is no way to bring meaning out of situations, other than as Job did..it was the theologians who were rebuked in that book, as they had it all together and thought Job needed their help...but it was they who needed help...Job needed a dose of reality, maybe, but his friends weren't being friendly, not really...:)
Would you think that Paul, as a Jew, understood "God", but used Christ, as a moral model to develop others in his pastoral epistles, But, his later writings were works about faith. Faith was understood fully in Romans and Galatians. Paul was not seeking to make a new religion, but understood a broader understanding of Judiasm, where others were included. Was the later letter of Hebrews, written by ?, a mentoring tool? Christ was useful as a moral model in this framework where those who had been persecuted could "follow in his steps". This was a means of teaching or training in virtue.
Christian faith, then, is not about all of what it has become (belief, dogma, doctrine, theology), but is about ethics.
You've convinced me enough to buy the book. I'll do that by clicking on your 'books I'm reading' to give you a small percentage profit through Amazon. I know it won't be much but I'm glad to do it anyway! :)
Every penny counts :-)
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