Dissident Dispatches

by Andrew Fraser

  Again, I understand your disappointment with your mark. For what it’s worth, I found it a stimulating and challenging paper in its own right, and I’m very sorry if you felt personally slighted by missing out on a higher grade.

  With best wishes, and greetings from a very warm and sunny day in North Qld

  Ben

  5: Disingenuous White Liberals

  My exchange with Dr Myers over the Barth paper was not a complete waste of time. Indeed, it reveals the inveterate complacency of the disingenuous white liberal. That Dr Myers is being disingenuous here is plain to see. I was particularly amused by his solemn assertion that he “would never penalise a student just because they happen to disagree with my own views”. This is the man who was part of the academic Gang of Four which in 2011 launched the movement to have me found guilty of various thought crimes and suspended from my studies for the whole of the following academic year! As part of that campaign, he even moved as well to segregate me from my tutorial group for fear that my ideas might adversely affect the “theological formation” of fellow students!

  No less disingenuous is his invitation to appeal his grade. I had already had ample experience of the grievance procedures at CSU as he well knows and had no desire to waste more time and money on such a futile exercise.

  Dr Myers’ claim that he “wanted an essay about the Trinity” simply begs the question: Is Barth’s position actually consistent with trinitarian orthodoxy? One wonders why Dr Myers didn’t raise that precise issue when he set the topic. Perhaps he fails to recognize that Barth replied to the one-sided liberal Protestant obsession with the relationship between man and God with an equally one-sided emphasis on the relationship between God and man. How can a genuinely trinitarian theology occlude the covenantal interaction between God and man in family, church, and nation?

  Of course, Dr Myers’ essay topic is headed Trinity and humility. This had puzzled me when I set about writing my essay since in the 350 pages of the Church Dogmatics IV 1 there are no more than seven index entries for the Trinity, only one of which fell within the readings assigned by Dr Myers. And, in the text of the essay topic itself (78 words), there is “nary a mention” of the Trinity per se. Both the opening sentence in which Dr Meyers sets out the premise of the topic and the following four questions are addressed broadly to the relationship between Christianity (in particular, faith in God as revealed, inter alia, in the “obedient humility” of Jesus Christ) and Barthianism (in particular, the impact on the life of faithful Christians, for better or worse, of Barth’s doctrine of reconciliation).

  Following that lead, my essay was not on the topic of “Christianity and politics” as Dr Myers so disingenuously asserts. It was explicitly addressed to the relationship between Christianity (with special reference to the importance of nationhood in the life of Christian communities) and Barthianism (with special reference to the radically “purified” Christology built into Barth’s emphasis on the unity of the Godhead).

  Both the essay topic and my essay are directed explicitly at the problems created for Christians and Christianity by a doctrine of God focussed on the one moment in the entire course of human history when the imago Dei reveals itself directly to mankind. The essay topic is, therefore, not an invitation to produce a paper on the Trinity simpliciter. Indeed, subsequent reflection on Dr Myers’ remarkably disingenuous claim to the contrary has deepened what for me was the central mystery of his course on The Triune God; namely, why did he devote so much time to an intensive study of Barth’s radically Christocentric doctrine of reconciliation?

  The explanation offered in class by Dr Myers was that Barth’s work is widely credited with the revival of trinitarian theology in the late twentieth century. But Barth did not win that reputation by analysing the relationship between the three persons of the Trinity. Unlike Gregory of Nazianzus and Augustine of Hippo, Barth is uninterested in the threefold character of God. Barth insists that God “is not threefold, but trine, triune, i.e., in three different modes the one personal God, the one Lord, the one Creator, the one Reconciler, the one Perfecter and Redeemer”.395

  For Barth, God is both wholly revealed and wholly hidden only in the Christ-Event. The triune God reveals his essential unity in the obedient humility of Jesus Christ. Following the resurrection of Jesus, the heavenly Father recedes into the background while the Holy Spirit remains the earthly agent of the Son. The Word of God is revealed to us only through the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of the man Jesus Christ. In effect, Barthianism inserts the Lord Jesus Christ into the singular theistic space vacated by the utterly unknowable Yahweh of Old Covenant Israel. In place of a vengeful God of wrath sitting in judgement on a stubborn and stiff-necked people, Barth discovers an eternal God of love unconditionally extending his mercy to the whole of mankind.

  By making the Christ-Event the pivotal moment in the cosmic drama of salvation history, Barth did spark renewed interest in the Trinity. Before Barth, the Father was recognized as the first person of the Trinity. But Barth sees in the Son the fount of the sovereign grace that orthodox Reformed theology ascribed to the Father. Indeed, in Barth’s radical Christology, both the Father and the Holy Spirit are relegated to the theological sidelines. He thereby neatly sidestepped the accusations of subordinationism and Docetism that bedevilled early Christologies.

  Subordinationists treat the Son as a lesser God subordinate to the Father. Docetism, on the other hand, insists that Christ in his essence was not a man of flesh and blood. Instead, he was always and only a divine being, wearing his apparent humanity as a disposable garment to be shed following the crucifixion. Barth offered a strikingly novel way of understanding Jesus Christ, one that avoids the pitfalls of Trinitarian heresies denying the homoousious of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

  To all intents and purposes, however, Barth’s theology is a sort of inverted subordinationism which substitutes the Son for the Father. Only through the Son can we know the Father who has been stripped of his sovereign authority. The obedient humility of the incarnate Word of God expresses perfectly both divine and human nature. Indeed, by travelling “into the far country” to become the man Jesus Christ, God takes upon himself the sins of all men everywhere and for all time. In this way, the sovereign grace of the Lord Jesus Christ extends membership in the people of God to the whole of humanity.

  Having been commanded by Dr Myers to discover the Trinity in Karl Barth’s doctrine of reconciliation, I can only confess that I have failed in that mission. But how could I make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear? My investigation of the relationship between Christianity and Barthianism suggests that Barth was not just a universalist; he was also a closet neo-Unitarian. Only by formally affirming (in vast clouds of verbiage) the presumptive (but unprovable) presence of both the Father and the Holy Spirit in the “once for all” direct revelation of the Christ-Event could Barth maintain his standing in neo-orthodox and evangelical circles. But the bottom line of Barth’s theology is that the Son alone provides Christian faith with its “objective” foundation.

  Still, one must be impressed by Barth’s fancy intellectual footwork. He maintains the theological illusion that he is a defender of orthodox Christianity while helping to subvert the trinitarian foundations of Christian nationhood incarnate in the Spirit, water, and blood of the really existing, historic peoples of Europe. In recognition of such consummate skill in the art of high-minded dissimulation, I hereby nominate Karl Barth as the patron saint of disingenuous white liberals everywhere, in and out of academia.

  6: NT Wright Paul: Fresh Perspectives (London: SPCK, 2005)

  Introduction

  This book sets out to establish that the historical Jesus and his apostle Paul were working in tandem to bring the story of ancient Israel to its climax. Indeed, NT Wright contends that, like most second-Temple Jews, both Jesus and Paul “believed themselves to be actors within a real-life narrative” in which the God of Abraham fulfils “his promises at last through t
he apocalyptic death and resurrection of his own beloved Son”.396 Both Jesus and Paul were Jews telling a Jewish story, albeit to different audiences: Jesus mainly to the lost sheep of Israel and Paul primarily to the Gentiles. Wright’s emphasis on the Jewish character of the Bible story from Genesis to Revelation is perhaps the greatest strength of this book.

  Wright’s goal is to correct claims made by generations of biblical criticism that there is “an apparent mismatch between the teachings of Jesus and Paul”. On Wright’s reading, the New Testament does not show Paul scrunching the “wonderful universal message” preached by Jesus “back into the small and distorting framework of his Jewish, especially rabbinic, mind”. Nor did Jesus preach “a pure Jewish message” that Paul “falsified…by turning it into a Greek, philosophical and even anti-Jewish construct”. Wright attributes differences between Paul and Jesus not to a clash between Semitic and Hellenic cultures but to their distinctive roles in the inauguration of a new creation. If Jesus was the architect or composer who designed the Kingdom of God, Paul was the master builder who laid the foundations or the conductor who first played the score set down by the Messiah.397

  A Jewish Story

  Otherwise, the themes of Paul’s teaching reflected the dominant narrative of second-Temple Judaism: the story of Israel and its covenant with the one creator God. For Paul, Jesus was “the point at which creation and covenant came together”. The covenant people had themselves become “part of the problem within creation”.398 The advent of Jesus as Messiah heralded the renewal of God’s covenant with Israel. Paul’s theology integrated a “vision of human sin and redemption” with the story of “Israel’s fall and restoration”. Paul, in other words, was “not simply assuming an implicit narrative about how individual sinners find a right relationship with a holy God”. Rather “the divine solution to the problems of the world is simply to break in to an otherwise unfruitful and corrupt ongoing historical process and to do something radically new”.399 God’s restorative justice would be made manifest in an apocalyptic climax to the history of Israel.

  According to Wright, Paul “believed that Jesus was the Messiah promised by God to Israel, and that his death and resurrection in particular constituted the great apocalyptic event through which God’s hidden plan was at last revealed to Israel and, through the preaching of the gospel, to the world”. It was at this point that Paul drew on “first-century Jewish attitudes toward pagan authority” to construct a “counter-imperial theology” in which “God would rescue his people from pagan oppression”. Wright tells us that “for Paul, Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not”.400 But Paul was not preaching civil disobedience much less open rebellion. Rather he redefined “God, God’s people, [and] God’s future for the world” in his vision of a New Exodus from the corruption and oppression of the “present evil age”. (Gal 1:4) Wright contends that the “polemical target” of Paul’s “re-reading of Israel’s scriptures” was “not Judaism…but paganism”. His vision of liberation was “reshaped around Jesus and the Spirit, rooted in the Jewish scriptures, and claiming to be the reality of which paganism possessed a parody”. Paul’s message to the rulers of the world was simple: “The Exodus will happen again, on an even grander scale. Pagan rulers, be warned”.401

  The New Exodus from Old Covenant Israel

  Unfortunately, Wright never pursues the New Exodus theme beyond the “moment” of Jesus’ death.402 For that reason, he sees no need to locate Paul himself within the unfolding narrative of the Second Exodus event which extends beyond the cross. Moreover, at a minimum, the Exodus imagery suggests that God’s people must wander in the wilderness for years before they reach the Promised Land. Carrying the search for symmetry further, it comes as no surprise that Paul, like Moses, does not live to see the New Jerusalem descend from heaven. In this context, one might be tempted to attach apocalyptic significance to the forty year interval between the cross and the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. Wright however will have none of that.

  According to Wright, Paul himself believed “that the ultimate dramatic apocalypse…the full disclosure of God’s secret plan, has already come about”. On Wright’s account, it is through the death and resurrection of the Messiah that “God acts decisively to fulfil the covenant promises and so to renew both covenant and creation”. Accordingly, he cannot see in Paul’s image of the crucified Lord as a Paschal Lamb in 1 Corinthians 5:7 anything more than an “almost casual reference”.403 He is so determined to see Paul’s theology as a counter-imperial form of resistance to “pagan rulers” that he blinds himself to the reality that the Jerusalem Temple itself had become “a synagogue of Satan”. (Rev 2:9) According to Tom Holland, carnal, national Israel had become so separated from God that she was “now behaving like Pharoah; she oppose[d] the Exodus of the people of God” from the Old Covenant.404

  In dealing with the Exodus theme, Wright’s dogged insistence on the continuity between Paul’s thought and second-Temple Judaism becomes his book’s greatest weakness.405 Wright is exceedingly anxious to avoid the charge of supersessionism — the theological third rail in the postmodern, politically-correct academy.406 The fact is, however, that Paul knew that the death and resurrection of Christ had transformed utterly the meaning of Jewishness. “After the Jews rejected Christ, Judaism ceased being a religion and became an ideology…Israel simultaneously lost its biological basis. The New Israel, the true children of Moses and Abraham, was now the Church.”407 Both Paul and Jesus clearly looked forward to the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (which came in AD 70) as the apocalyptic sign that God was through, once and for all, with carnal, national Israel. Unfortunately, Wright is reluctant to give full credence to their belief that all of God’s promises (and warnings) to Old Covenant Israel were to be fulfilled in their own time.408

  Wright acknowledges, of course, that Paul expected the parousia — the second coming of Christ — to happen “very soon” and that it would consummate the renewal of creation that began on the cross. Nevertheless, he simply asserts that “the final coming together of heaven and earth” still lies somewhere in our future, thereby undercutting Paul’s credibility.409 Wright does not deny that Paul would have seen the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 as the Day of the Lord promised in 1 Thessalonians 2:16. But he insists that this-worldly, historical event was merely an “interim judgement” that must be distinguished from “the great moment” of the parousia that Paul describes in 1 Thessalonians 4 (and which we are presumably still awaiting).410

  Conclusion

  Wright’s book applies the sceptical methodology long associated with the quest for the historical Jesus to the deconstruction of the apostle Paul.411 Predictably, therefore, the result is more a muddled than a fresh perspective on Paul’s place in the salvation history of Israel.

  7: Dodging the Jewish Question

  How the Political Theology of Christian Universalism Distorts the New Perspective on Paul

  Introduction

  The new perspective on Paul is the label attached to the work of a loosely aligned coterie of New Testament scholars who, in one way or another, question the orthodox Lutheran (and more broadly Protestant) view that Paul saw faith not works as the basis upon which individual sinners are justified before God. Martin Luther (1483–1546) characterized both the pettifogging works-righteousness among Jews and the sale of indulgences by the Roman Catholic Church as the corrupt result of the belief that anyone can earn their salvation. For the Reformed tradition, it was axiomatic that the elect were saved by the free and sovereign grace of God not as a just reward for exemplary good works. They found scriptural authority for that doctrine in Paul’s letters where his “insistence upon justification by faith, not works” set Christianity apart from the world. The “affinities of Judaism,” by contrast, “are with the world”.412 Rethinking the relationship between Christianity and Judaism has been the central thrust, for better or worse, of the new perspective on Paul.

  The “old perspective” on Pauline the
ology received a racial underpinning in the nineteenth century. Especially in Germany, theologians and philosophers pointed to an intractable conflict between (Western) Christian idealism and (Eastern) Jewish materialism. Liberal theologians such as FC Baur (1792–1860) declared that Paul invented Christianity in his inspired break with the dead weight of Jewish legalism. By attributing “absolute importance” to “the person of Christ,” Paul stood “on a platform where he [was] infinitely above Judaism”. Thanks to Paul’s openness to the Hellenic spirit of freedom, Christianity became an “absolute religion” while Judaism remained “relative, limited, and finite”.413 Such views were commonplace among New Testament scholars well into the twentieth century.

  By the 1970s in the USA, however, “you only ha[d] to mention the word ‘supersessionism’ to evoke the chimneys of Auschwitz”.414 Decades later, even the mainstream liberal Protestant existentialism of the German theologian Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976) continues to attract academic disapproval because he believed that “Christian authenticity is diametrically opposed to and profoundly antithetical to Jewish legalism”.415 Unsurprisingly, “the latest stage in the debate about Paul and the Jewish law” was “sparked by a large-scale attack on what are taken to be Christian caricatures of Judaism.”416 The orthodox Reformed doctrine of justification by faith was not the first target of the scholars who pioneered the new perspective on Paul. The goal was not to sniff out anti-Semitism among an older generation of scholars.417 Instead, the new perspective sought to rehabilitate the image of the Jewish religion. The challenge to Reformed orthodoxy was merely a collateral consequence of the ecumenical movement in academic theology.418 In the area of Pauline studies within New Testament scholarship, that movement has produced many positive results. Unfortunately, the ongoing development of the new perspective on Paul itself has been seriously distorted by the need to confine both its theology and its practice of historical criticism within the limits of a politically correct, putatively Christian universalism.