Ian & Jocelyn Barker

I’m continuing my write-up of this chapter by looking at the different possible definitions of dikaiosune theon and what Wright concludes as the likely meaning. Hopefully this is not too technical because I believe it is important to see all the different options in order to see why he comes to the conclusion that he does. It also helps us to make a more educated choice.

There are basically four distinct meanings of the phrase. The basic distinction between them is between those who see it as “God’s own righteousness, and those who see it as referring to a status of righteousness which humans have before God” (p. 100). The second view is the common Protestant view. Below is an outline of a diagram that Wright includes that shows all the different views on the meaning of the phrase:

A. God’s own ‘righteousness’

A1. Righteousness as a moral quality

A1a. ‘distributive justice’

A1b. ‘covenant faithfulness’

A2. Righteousness as God’s salvation-creating power

A2a. acts of covenant faithfulness

A2b. non-covenantal world-defeating actions

B. A ‘righteousness’ given to humans

B1. Righteousness as a righteous standing ‘from God’

B1a. ‘imputed righteousness’

B1b. ‘imparted righteousness’

B2. Righteousness as a quality ‘which comes before God’ or ‘avails with God’

B2a. a natural quality recognized by God

B2b. a special gift from God, then recognized as such

Within ‘B’, the two ideas are that righteousness is status given by or from God, or a quality that “counts before God.” Within ‘B1′, that two views are ‘imputed’ and ‘imparted’. “The first sees it as a status, the second as a quality” (p. 102). Within ‘B2′, two views are that righteousness is a natural quality, or “a special gift from God” of which He then approves.

Within ‘A’, there are those who think it is a moral quality within God (A1), and those who see it as God’s saving activity (A2). Within ‘A1′ (moral quality), ‘A1a’ is His distributive justice which is His “moral quality of punishing evil and rewarding virtue” (p. 102). ‘A1b’ is what Wright believes and is “God’s faithfulness to his promises, to his covenant” (p. 102).

Within ‘A2′, we have the proposition that it is “God’s salvation-creating power,” (‘A2b’) that does not reference the covenant, Israel or Abraham. It is for the world but does not use Israel as the vehicle or fulfill any covenants. The second (‘A2a’) sees it as “the actions which embody God’s covenant faithfulness” (p. 103).

Wright claims that the Jewish evidence supports A generally, and ‘A1b’ specifically. He rules out ‘A1a’ which is Latin in nature and is what Luther believed before salvation, and ‘A2b’ because it does not take into account Israel or His covenant. He does see ‘A2a’ as a valid option. Tomorrow we will test his definition out on some of Paul’s passages on dikaiosune theon.

I am going to split this chapter into 3 posts because of the amount and importance of information. In this first post, I’ll outline Wright’s description of the Jewish court system. This chapter is called “Good News for Israel” and carries on from the previous chapter on the gospel for the pagan world. The gospel went to the Gentiles because God had fulfilled His covenantal promises to Israel in the death and resurrection of Christ. (On this point, I find Wright to be very Preterist. Meaning, he sees the promises being fulfilled then, so eschatology is simply about the final resurrection.)

One of Paul’s most crucial and controversial terms is dikaiosune theon, which is translated in the least inadequate way, “the righteousness of God. This phrase appears 8 times in Paul and 7 times in Romans. Wright claims that the obvious meaning of this phrase from the OT is “God’s own faithfulness to His promises, to the covenant” (p. 96). It revolves around His trustworthiness to save Israel (see Daniel 9). “At the heart of ‘God’s righteousness’ is his covenant with Israel, the covenant through which he will address and solve the problem of evil in and for the whole world” (p. 97).

The term is a forensic term, meaning, it is court language. There is a Judge who resides over a case that includes a ‘Plaintiff’ (or the accuser) and a ‘Defendant’ (or the accused). There are three points about this:

1. There are three parties. One party is against the other party and the judge decides.
2. For the judge to be righteous means that he tries the case rightly, impartially, and according to the law. He must support the defenseless; those who have “no-one but him to plead their cause” (p. 97).
3. For the plaintiff and defendant, being righteous has none of these connotations because they are not morally upright or deserving of acquittal. For them to be righteous means they have that status “as a result of the decision of the court” (p. 98).

When the plaintiff or defendant is made righteous because the decision goes their way, they are vindicated but this does not mean they are good, morally upright or virtuous. To be ‘righteous’ refers to “the status they have when the court finds in their favour. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“If we use the language of the law court, it makes no sense whatever to say that the judge imputes, imparts, bequeaths, conveys or otherwise transfers his righteousness to either the plaintiff or the defendant. Righteousness is not an object, a substance or a gas which can be passed across the courtroom” (p. 98).

Israel comes before God the judge as the defendant against the plaintiff who is the pagan nations. She pleads for Him to be faithful (righteous) to His covenant. When God vindicates His people, the righteousness they have is not God’s own. His own righteousness is not His own that He bestows. Both the covenant and the law court metaphor demand that their be a future fulfillment. Is is the hope of Israel that God would act on her behalf.

In this chapter, “Good News for the Pagan”, Wright explains how Paul did not change his Jewish message to a Gentile or Greek message. Some have contended that Paul did in fact do this as a rejection of Judaism. Paul saw that his mission was to bring the message of Jesus to the Gentiles because the “the promises of Israel’s restoration had in fact been fulfilled” (p. 82). His message was distinctly Jewish because it confronted the polytheistic belief in pagan gods with the one true God “as fulfilled in Jesus the Messiah” (p. 82). So Paul did not derive his ideas from pagans, but confronted their ideas.

Paul did offer a critique of Judaism that Wright calls a “Critique from Within” because Paul stood as a prophet to criticize and warn those who were abandoning the true Jewish tradition. His critique is not that God has abandoned His people, but that they have failed in their mission, but Jesus has succeeded and is thus their representative. That they have failed and rejected the successor furthers his critique.

Paul saw himself as a Moses pleading with the people to flee from their idolatry that likened them to the pagan world (Rom. 9:1-5; 10:1-2; cf. Ex. 32-33). It was their extreme zeal that had made them pagan-like. His pre-Christian zeal was still worked out in his life by confronting Judaism to get in line with the Torah and pagans to worship the one God, but he did so having a real knowledge having known and been known by God.

His gospel to the pagan world consisted of six truths that Wright identifies:

1. God was the creator of the world, not a force within creation itself. Jesus was the face of this God-creator.
2. Cults and gods infested the pagan world but Paul did not run from this. Rather, he turned the idol feasts into the Lord’s supper (1 Cor. 10). “Pauline theology does not collapse into dualism, leaving paganism with the high ground of celebrating creation” (p. 87). The cross and the symbolic celebration of that event is seen as what the pagan cults strain towards, or, parody.
3. The central theme of Paul’s theology was that the gospel was a confrontation with Roman empirical powers and pagan gods. His use of “Lord” (Kyrios) demonstrates his desire to place Jesus over and against Caesar of Rome.
4. Paul “saw paganism as a self-destructive mode of being human” (p. 89). He offered a new way of being human that was counter-empire. Essentially, the way of the cross.
5. “Paul was telling the true story of the world in opposition to pagan mythology” (p. 89). His story was real and was within the bounds of linear history; the cross is behind them, but new creation is ahead. “The creator of the world will be all in all, by defeating evil and death and claiming the world as his own” (p. 90). Creation will be renewed through Israel.
6. He offered the true wisdom of the world to philosophies. First, we can know God because Jesus died and was raised and has established a family by the Spirit. Second, He has created the world as a vehicle for His glory. Third, God is different from the world, but in no way distant from it.

The title of chapter 4 is called “Paul and Jesus.” The central point of this chapter is to show that Paul believed that Jesus was divine, yet could believe this “without leaving for a moment the home base of Jewish monotheism” (p. 63).

To start off with, Wright proposes that Jewish monotheism (belief in one God) made two claims. First, they believed that the God of Israel was the one God of the whole world, and this “was a fighting doctrine” (p. 63). The meaning of this is that God would ultimately defeat the other pagan gods and would use the Jews to accomplish this in some form.

The second claim was that the dualists were wrong (the belief that the material and immaterial oppose each other.) “The material world was not the evil creation of an evil god” (p. 63). Since He created the world, He would save, redeem and heal it. Seeing this, they were committed to a bodily resurrection. They used language to describe how He was near to them: Wisdom, Torah, Spirit, Word and Shekinah.

Jewish monotheism sets its face firmly against emperor worship. They maintained a modus vivendi (“way of living”) until 30 years or so after Christ’s death when two world view’s collided. To the Roman’s, their victory signaled a victory of their “lord.” This was their doctrine of monotheism. So how could Paul hold this idea while claiming that Jesus was God?

1. 1 Corinthians 8:1-6 — Verse 3 (“if anyone loves God, he is known by Him”) echoes Gal. 4:9 where monotheism is not an idea but “is being ‘known’ by the God who says to his people, Israel: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart…” (p. 66). In vv. 4-6, Paul declares that there is only one God and quotes the Shema, (Hebrew for “hear” — from Deut. 6:4), to show that Christ is also this God and Lord. “The Lord our God…the Lord is One” (Deut. 6:4) “One God — the Father…One Lord — Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 8:4). In other words, “He has quoted the most central and holy confession of that monotheism and has placed Jesus firmly in the middle of it” (p. 67).
2. Philippians 2:5-11 — Verses 10-11 come from Isaiah 40-55 (45:23) which is “the clearest and most sustained scriptural exposition and exaltation of the one true God over all false claimants” (p. 68). He will not share His glory with anyone, but Paul has Him sharing it with Christ. This means that the truth about God was revealed on the cross. His understanding of Jesus and God “brought him face to face with the deep, utterly self-giving, utterly trustworthy, love of the covenant God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” (p. 68). The chapter points to God in the face of Christ and reveals that the cross was not something “done” unwillingly or was out of character for God. Self-giving love is who He is. Speaking about Paul, he writes, “for him, the meaning of the word ‘God’ includes not only Jesus, but, specifically, the crucified Jesus” (p. 69).
3. Colossians 1:15-20 — He didn’t comment a lot on this but noted that the creator of the world is also Israel’s redeemer God. Yahweh is seen/recognized in the human face of Jesus.

Jesus was to remain human while He was enthroned. Yet the promise was that God would be near to His people, which introduced the need for the Holy Spirit. Three passages that join the Father, Son and Holy Spirit together as being divine:

1. Galatians 4:1-11 — The Father sent the Son; then He sent the Spirit of His Son. Together, they are “the true revelation of who the one true God is, which puts all other claimants to deity in the shade” (p. 73).
2. 1 Corinthians 12:4-6 — This stresses a three-fold unity.
3. Romans 8:1-11 — The Spirit of Christ dwells in those who are in Christ. “Paul is here ascribing to the Spirit that which was said of YHWH himself, living in the temple” (p. 74).

This chapter focussed on what the gospel was according to Paul. Paul was loyal to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and thus his conversion was not an abandonment of Judaism but a recognition of the climax to Israel’s story in Christ. His responsibility was to tell this story to the world. But what was the gospel he preached?

Wright contends that our modern understanding of the ‘gospel’ may be true, but is not what Paul meant by the gospel. We see the gospel as an “order of salvation” or a “description of how people get saved.” The Jewish understanding came from Isaiah 40:9 and 52:7 and has to do with 1) God’s return to Jerusalem, and 2) the return of Israel from exile in Babylon. To a first-century Jew, the “good news” or “glad tidings” would be the message that the release from captivity was at hand. The Greek would understand this as the birth, accession or victory of an emperor. “To announce that YHWH was king was to announce that Caesar is not.”

The Fourfold Gospel Concerning Jesus
The central theme of the gospel is that God is King over Israel and the world (Rom. 1:1-5). The proclamation of the gospel leads to people being saved.

1. The Crucified Jesus

While the cross is central, its meaning is different in every use. “The cross is for Paul the symbol, as it was the means, of the liberating victory of the one true God, the creator of the world, over all the enslaving powers that have usurped his authority” (p. 47). Wright sees that we should give priority, though maybe equal priority, to the idea that the cross was a victory over powers and principalities. His death was a covenant-fulfilling act that judged sin and unveiled love.

2. The risen Jesus

The victory was at the cross, but it would not have been completed without the resurrection. The defeat of sin on the cross leads to defeat of death. The resurrection wasn’t a resuscitation nor an abandonment of the body. By “resurrection”, Paul did not mean that is was in some way a spiritual resurrection. The resurrection was a return from exile because it was the defeat of the ultimate enemy of sin and death. Israel was redeemed by their representative. The “end” was to come in two stages: one at the resurrection, the second at the final resurrection of the saints.

3. King Jesus

“The crucified and risen Jesus was, all along, Israel’s Messiah, her representative king” (p. 60).

4. Jesus is Lord

“Jesus was therefore also the Lord, the true king of the world, the one at whose name every knee would bow” (p. 60).

The Gospel of God
The message of gospel was not just about Jesus, but about God who was the God of Israel. It “was a summons to reject pagan idolatry and to turn to the true God” (p. 58). He would one day establish His Kingdom all over the world. Galatians 4:1-11 gives us an outline of the gospel as it sees the Son being sent to redeem Israel from bondage and idolatry. His Spirit is sent to make His people who they were before sin: the children of God and the heirs of God.

“The ‘gospel’ is for Paul, at its very heart, an announcement about the true God as opposed to the false gods” (p. 59).

I’ve been reading some stuff from N.T. Wright and started a book of his called “What Saint Paul Really Said.” That sounds like a pompous title but it is partly a response to a book by A.N. Wilson that claims that Paul was the founder of Christianity and Jesus was just a Jewish Rabbi. Mr. Wright’s views by themselves have caused some controversy in the theological world so I have decided to read a bunch of his stuff in order to see for myself.

The first chapter of this book was a summary of the last 100 years of Pauline theology and outlined the theology of four theologians (Schweitzer, Bultmann, Davies, Kasemann, Sanders) who have challenged the Reformed views of Paul. E.P. Sanders was the most recent of these men and he claimed that “Judaism in Paul’s day was not, as has regularly been supposed, a religion of legalistic works-righteousness” (p. 19). Instead, Jews were keeping the Law in response to God’s election of them by grace. They were keeping the Law in order to say in the covenant people, not to get in.

In chapter 2, “Saul the Persecutor, Paul the Convert,” Wright looks at Paul’s life before his conversion and what was he converted into. The Jewish “zeal” that Paul refers to (Rom. 10:2) was not a zeal for the Law or for works, but it was something that was done with a knife. In other words, Paul was a terrorist (a Shammai Pharisee) who took the promises of God literally and was uncompromising upon them. He saw the Roman occupation of Israel as against God and it was upon him to take care of it. The zeal “is all about acting as God’s agent, to rid Israel of corruption, and so to further the agenda of bringing the kingdom, of freeing Israel from the pagan yoke” (p. 29).

This idea came from Daniel 2, 7 and 9, and he saw it as the people’s role to bring the kingdom and fulfill the promises of God for the land, people, and temple. Wright relates how he used to see Paul in his pre-Christian days as living his life in a moral fashion in order to get to heaven. But he sees that this idea is wrong because he was actually looking for the establishment of heaven on earth, or, the salvation of Israel.

There were two key ideas that Saul (or Paul) held onto as a Pharisee: justification and eschatology. Justification was a law-court term and eschatology was the salvation of Israel. Justification has to do with God judging nations hostile to Israel and rescuing His people. He writes, it is “the coming great act of redemption and salvation, seen from the point of view of the covenant (Israel is God’s people) on the one hand and the law court on the other (God’s final judgment will be like a great law-court scene, with Israel winning the case)” (p. 33). This was seen in Daniel 7. Eschatology had to do with the climatic event that would sort all things out for Israel in the salvation of Israel and the defeat of their enemies. The two ideas come together in that their justification would happen in an eschatological context. It was their hope.

So what did Paul realize on the road to Damascus? “The one true God had done for Jesus of Nazareth, in the middle of time, what Saul had thought he was going to do for Israel at the end of time” (p. 36). What could this mean?

• the resurrection (Ezek. 37) had happened to one man;
• it validated Him as the true Messiah (Rom. 1:4);
• it meant that the end of the age had begun while sin, death and rebellion was still present. In this way, two ages were overlapping;
• the age to come meant that Gentiles were to be saved;
• the cross itself was eschatological.

There is a section in Goldingay that is very good and thought-provoking but is too large to quote. So I will summarize the content with some of my thoughts. It is on the Sovereignty of God and is contained in a larger section called “How History Works” (pp 646-48).

He begins by telling us that “a dominant image for God in Christian theology and piety is that God is Lord – sovereign, king, emperor, president.” This is a common understanding that we have. Yet he contends that while the “First Testament” does refer to God in this way, it “is more guarded in the use of such terms.” In other words, the First Testament does not describe the reign of God as one who “continuously exercises executive power.”

He makes the point that creation was an act of His sovereign power when He overcame “dynamic powers that could have frustrated the project.” Yet in the pages following, the people He has made are exercising their own sovereignty and God lets them. The common Christian explanation for this is that God lets His people exercise their own freewill in order to draw out voluntary love. He writes, “That may be true, though the Bible does not make the point and does not seem aware of an issue here.” He explains that the way the First Testament is written (especially in the narrative of Kings and Chronicles), we are given the sense that the events are taking place because humans are initiating them and not because God is acting. God is involved, but not in a way that controls the story like we think He does or would like to think He does.

He claims that we can compare God’s relationship with the world to a parent and their child or a president and their company. “Parenthood may provide a good model for God’s relationship with Israel, presidency for God’s relationship with other peoples.” Parents and presidents are responsible for the actions of their children/employees, but it would be odd to say that the actions of the children/employees are the actions of the parent/president. Parents/presidents are not sovereign in the lives of their children/employees, but can instill values that are put into action by the sovereignty of the child/employee.

Finally, he contends with the idea that God’s sovereignty is the outworking of a predetermined plan or that Israel’s story is the outworking of God’s will. The idea we get from the First Testament is that the story is not moving with a predetermined plan or is the result of God’s sovereignty, but is a wrestling match. Indeed, it is God arm-wrestling Israel with one hand tied behind His back as He restrains from using absolute power. This is the continuation of the wrestling match that He had with the first Israel.

He admits that this could be because God does not want to overwhelm but to win over. He feels all the frustation of a parent who wants to see their child grow and mature but does not see such results. Thus,

“God exercises sovereignty in letting humanity in general and Israel in particular have their own sovereignty whether or not they exercise it God’s way. God thus accepts human frustration of the divine purpose and accepts being pushed out of the world…That is the First Testament story, finding its logical conclusion at the cross…though God still waits for the world and for God’s own people to see sense and respond.”

As my wife said, the amazing thing about this divine armwrestle is that God knows all along what humanity will choose to do. He does not exercise His will over us even when He knows our own sovereignty will harm us. What kind of person would do that? Indeed, Jesus Himself is the only person who did do this as He accepted the decision of man and was “pushed out of the world.” I love God for this. I love that He describes Himself in this way, even if there is more to the idea of God’s sovereignty that was has been described in this section. Reading the OT, the narrative does really give us this idea. There is a dance between God’s sovereignty and man’s sovereignty.

I loved this quote from Goldingay. He has been working his way through Kings and Chronicles and offers this observation on “How History Works”:

“One cannot say that Yhwh’s will is always being done. Nor can one say that Yhwh is not involved in events at all. One cannot say that Yhwh’s work is always clear, or that it is never so. One cannot say that it is characteristically miraculous, or that it is never so. One cannot say that Yhwh always sees that wrongdoing gets punished, but neith does the narrative sugest insight on why mercy operates in some contexts and not others. It thus recognizes the untidiness in history. The stories offer a range of insights on possible interpretations of events but rule out any inference that they offer formulas by means of which history can be infallibly explained or the outcome of events can be predicted. The serendipity of human and divine freedom plays a role in events.” (p. 643)

I’m in the 9th chapter of Goldingay and he is going through the time from Solomon to the Exile. He is mostly talking about “What Yhwh Expects” and “How Yhwh Reacts” in context of Kings and Chronicles where king after king rebels against God which leads to the division of Israel into a Northern and Southern Kingdom. “Ephraim” was a common name for Northern Israel (10 tribes) and its capital city was Samaria. “Judah” was the name for Southern Israel whose capital was Jerusalem. Ephraim was destroyed around 700 by Assyria and Judah from 605 to 586 by Babylon.

After that short history lesson, I had to blog this quote because it is fantastic:

“Israel’s story was designed to be an account of Yhwh’s dealings with Israel granting blessing and, where needed, deliverance, which would manifest Yhwh to the world, and an account of Israel’s responsive deciding for Yhwh, its life of obedience, which would also contribute to the manifesting of Yhwh to the world. Instead it has become a story of disobedience and therefore of disaster–an Unheilsgeschichte which means ‘disaster’ as far as I can tell]. Its end is inevitably the loss of the land, because life in the land is part of the positive story and of the blessing that cannot appropriately continue. At point after point, Ephraim has declined to behave as Israel. It has ceased to be Israel. It then appropiately ceases to be.”

This is a great description of what Israel was meant to be in the earth and where it all went wrong. The one thing that I would add to this is the fact that its very punishment and disobedience is a manifestation of God to the earth. Human depravity and righteous judgment is on display in the story of Israel and God.

I’m continuing to read Goldingay. I really like the book as I’m getting further into it. I really recommend it. Today I was reading about God’s instructions to the Israelites to build a tabernacle and God’s meeting with Moses on Mt. Sinai. He was talking abotu Exodus 32-33 and the incident of the golden calf and God’s response to the people.

Basically, the people start worshipping this golden calf while Moses is talking to God up on the mountain. God gets really mad about this and wants to let His anger loose upon them and kill them. Moses steps in and tells God that His name would be profaned among the nations if He did this because His glory is tied to the success of the Israelites. God agrees and changes His mind.

The next day, Moses goes to God to make atonement for the sin of the people. He offers to be blotted out of the book of life if that’s what it takes for Israel to be saved. But God doesn’t budge on that and tells Him that His angel will go with them. Before He had promised that an angel who had His name in him (Him?) would go before them (23:21). But now He declares that His presence will not go with them (33:3). Apparently, God changed His mind about being with them because of their sin against Him.

In commenting on this, Goldingay writes,

“Both people and Yhwh need some distance form each other, as a disobeyed mother or a betrayed wife may need some distance from the children or husband whom she still loves, especially when she has the kitchen knives at hand.” (p. 413)

Hilarious. He goes on to note that there is a paradox in His care of His people as His love of them means that they will be disciplined by Him (Amos 3:2).