Paul and the Economy of Salvation

Reading from the Perspective of the Last Judgment

Byrne,, Brendan,SJ

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781493430673
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

"This important study is the fruit of a lifetime of reflection, teaching, and writing on Paul.... [This is] the work of a mature master of his trade who has a firm grasp of an issue crucial to an understanding of the Pauline view.... A beautifully crafted publication."-- FrancisJ. Moloney, SBD, Australasian Catholic Record This major contribution to Pauline scholarship by a widely-respected New Testament scholar is the culmination of over forty years of teaching on Paul. Brendan Byrne demonstrates that topics often discussed in Pauline studies and Christian theology go astray when the significance of the last judgment falls from view. Offering a fresh Catholic perspective that engages with centuries of Protestant interpretation, this book recaptures the significance of the motif of the last judgment for the interpretation of Paul.

1

The Apocalyptic Background to Paul

The apocalyptic world view is the fundamental carrier of Paul’s thought.” So wrote J. Christiaan Beker in 1980 in a classic study that gave fresh impetus, in the closing decades of the last century, to the locating of Paul within the Jewish apocalyptic tradition.1 Of course, behind Beker stood Ernst Käsemann, who, in a more general reclamation of the apocalyptic worldview in New Testament studies, famously described Apokalyptik as “the mother of all Christian theology.”2 Behind Käsemann himself stood a tradition stemming from Albert Schweitzer and, more remotely, Richard Kabisch (1868–1914), who insisted that Paul’s theology must be explained not directly from the Old Testament but from the worldview more immediately surrounding him, which was thoroughly imbued with eschatological expectation.3 Schweitzer is generally considered to be the figure chiefly responsible for the recognition of Paul as an apocalyptic thinker, though curiously he entitled the work in which he maintained this case The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle.4 Schweitzer argued against a prevailing tendency to explain Paul from the cultural matrix of Hellenism. On the contrary, Paul, like Jesus before him, is to be understood within the framework of the pressing eschatological expectation of contemporary Judaism. In view of the imminent end of this world, redemption is achieved solely through participation in Christ—­hence the “Christ-­mysticism” that is the central category (“main crater”) of his theology, besides which “justification by faith” is merely a “subsidiary crater.”5

Rudolf Bultmann accepted the thoroughly apocalyptic cast of Paul’s thought but, in the interests of meaningful contemporary interpretation, sought to separate out the essential core gospel, interpreted in an existentialist sense, from the mythological framework that encased it.6 While the program of “demythologization” set aside apocalyptic as unintelligible to people today, Bultmann’s explanation of key elements of Paul’s apocalyptic worldview remains valuable, notably in the recognition that “justification” has an essential ordering to the prospect of the last judgment, as we will see.

Reacting to the sidelining of apocalyptic in respect to Paul, Käsemann rejected the existentialist individualism of Bultmann’s anthropological approach. A predominant focus on realized eschatology neglects the “eschatological reservation” whereby apocalyptic protects Paul’s theology from collapsing into the Hellenistic “enthusiasm” against which the apostle had to battle, especially in Corinth.7 As the classic illustration of Paul’s debt to the apocalyptic tradition, Käsemann pointed to 1 Corinthians 15:20–28, where Christ must continue to reign before finally surrendering the lordship of the universe to God.8

Following in the line of Käsemann, J. C. Beker insisted on the apocalyptic texture of Paul’s thought as he explored the dialectic between its “coherent core” and its “contingent expression.”9 The coherent core is a symbolic structure representing a Christian modification of the apocalyptic language of Judaism, a modification principally deriving from the centrality of Christ’s death and resurrection.10 This event led to both the “softening” and the intensifying in Paul of the apocalyptic dualism between the present age and the age to come; the latter is already interpenetrating the former, though without lessening the sense of imminence of the judgment and the final triumph of God.11

In the 1990s J. Louis Martyn initiated a whole new direction in appreciation of the apocalyptic cast of Paul’s thought. Martyn acknowledged a debt to Beker’s consistently apocalyptic interpretation of Paul but, working especially from Galatians, insisted on the radical dualism of the two ages, greatly lessening the sense of a linear progression of salvation.12 Martyn speaks of the Christ event as a divine “invasion,” which is itself an “apocalypse,” involving, in epistemological fashion, a totally new way of seeing God, Christ (see 2 Cor. 5:16), and reality as a whole.13 The divine apocalypse in Christ ushers in the new creation, bringing a fresh set of antinomies (oppositional pairs; “Spirit”/“flesh,” “death of Christ”/“law”) in place of the antinomies of the past age (“Jew”/“Greek,” “slave”/“free,” “male”/“female”).14

Martyn’s radical view of Paul as an apocalyptic thinker has been taken up by a number of scholars, notably his doctoral students Martinus de Boer15 and Beverly Roberts Gaventa.16 Central to de Boer’s work is the discernment of “two tracks” in Jewish apocalyptic literature: a “cosmological apocalyptic track” and a “forensic apocalyptic track.” In the former, the created world has come under the domination of evil angelic powers, alienating humankind from God, a situation that will be remedied by their defeat in a divine deliverance on a cosmic scale. In the latter, the emphasis falls on human free will and individual decision, with all heading toward a final judgment in which the righteous will be rewarded with eternal life and the sinful punished in death. De Boer sees the latter pattern predominating in Romans 1–5, while the former emerges in Romans 6–8 (with 5:12–21 constituting a bridge passage where the two patterns interpenetrate to some degree).17

The tendency initiated by Martyn (the “rectification perspective”) has reached its most extreme form in the work of Douglas Campbell. In a monumental rereading of Paul, indebted also to Sanders, Campbell finds in Romans 1–4 an apocalyptic soteriological schema of a markedly punitive forensic nature (“justification theory”) that Paul attributes to a Jewish Christian teacher whose views Paul himself seeks to refute and replace with a participatory, relational, and christocentric schema to be found in Romans 5–8.18

The extreme form of the apocalyptic interpretation of Paul seen in Campbell has not commanded general acceptance.19 Likewise, the distinction between a “cosmological apocalyptic track” and a “forensic apocalyptic track,” promoted by de Boer and taken up enthusiastically by Martyn, has been challenged as not borne out in the letters, including the flow of the argument across Romans 1–8.20 More generally, the entire tendency stemming from Martyn to stress a rigid break in Paul with the prophetic promises and any sense of continuity in the story of salvation has provoked a strong reaction in the name of a more “covenantal” approach to his theology. Thus N. T. Wright has devoted a substantial section (part 2, “Re-­enter ‘Apocalyptic’”) of his recent survey of Pauline scholarship to a critical review of the apocalyptic interpretation of Paul from Käsemann to Campbell but with particular focus on the tendency initiated by Martyn.21 Wright in fact reveals himself to be highly dubious of applying the term “apocalyptic” to Paul in general, insisting that the term has become so loosely applied as to be virtually meaningless and that features considered essential characteristics of apocalypticism (e.g., the motif of the “two ages”) are simply characteristic of Second Temple Judaism as a whole.22

One may share the reservations voiced by Wright and others concerning the erosion, in the name of an apocalyptic “invasion,” of any sense of continuity with the era of promise and still retain, nonetheless, the category of “apocalyptic” as an essential background to the understanding of Paul.23 The key thing is to be clear about what one means by the term and not to stray too far in a generalizing way from the Jewish texts in which its chief features appear. The specific focus of the present enquiry on the motif of the last judgment will be an advantage in this respect.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. The Apocalyptic Background to Paul
• Chapter 2. “Righteousness” in Paul
• Chapter 3. The Last Judgment in the Letters of Paul aside from Romans
• Chapter 4. The Last Judgment in Romans 1:1–3:20
• Chapter 5. The Last Judgment in Romans 3:21–4:25
• Chapter 6. The Last Judgment in Romans 9–11
• Chapter 7. The Last Judgment in Romans 12–15
• Chapter 8. The Last Judgment in Romans 5–8
• Chapter 9. The Universal Need for Salvation: Moment 1
• Chapter 10. The Sending of the Son: Moment 2a
• Chapter 11. The Divine Act of Reconciliation: Moment 2b
• Chapter 12. Living in Hope of Glory Revealed: Moment 3
• Chapter 13. Paul and the Economy of Salvation: Theological Reflection
• Bibliography
• Index of Modern Authors
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Sources
• Cover Flaps
• Back Cover