Union With Christ in the New Testament

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(2) UNION WITH CHRIST IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.

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(4) Union with Christ in the New Testament GRANT MACASKILL. 1.

(5) 3. Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Grant Macaskill 2013 Unless otherwise indicated scripture quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2013 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2013938315 ISBN 978–0–19–968429–8 As printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY.

(6) For Prof. Ivor Davidson and Rev. Alasdair I. Macleod. Hebrews 13:7.


(8) Acknowledgements This book was written in a single semester of research leave, in early 2012, but grew out of a much longer formative period of reflection. Since I began to teach at the University of St Andrews in 2005, I have been privileged to work alongside some excellent colleagues, both in theology and biblical studies, and it is difficult to identify within this group a smaller number that deserve particular credit for their input. Nevertheless, I must mention my current New Testament colleagues—Tom Wright, Scott Hafemann, and Elizabeth Shively—for being willing to contribute their thoughts, and often whole sections of their libraries. Bill Tooman has also been a frequent conversation partner on the Jewish backgrounds explored in the book and, particularly, on Jewish reading strategies. I am also immensely grateful to my Head of School, Professor Ivor Davidson, for his support throughout this project, and for some pivotal conversations about the theological issues that I have dealt with. I am grateful, too, to a number of other young academics throughout the UK who have been an important part of my wider fellowship during the period of this book’s development: Angus Paddison, Jane Heath, David Lincicum, Brandon Gallagher, Casey Strine, and Sarah Apetrei. In the global academic community, Anathea Portier-Young, Lorenzo DiTommaso, Greg Carey, and Lynn Huber—fellows in the study of Jewish apocalyptic—have also contributed to my reflections. I am also conscious of, and grateful for, the ongoing support of Loren Stuckenbruck and others involved in the Enoch Seminar. The semester in which the book was written was disrupted by substantial library refurbishments. I would also like to thank our librarians, Colin Bovaird and Lynda Kinloch, for help in ensuring that these did not disrupt my research unduly and for, as always, maintaining good cheer. I would also like to thank Oxford University Press for accepting the book for publication. I am grateful to the reviewers, who made numerous small but important suggestions, and to Lizzie Robottom, whose advice and guidance throughout the submission process was invaluable. Finally, I want to thank again my immediate family, especially my wife Jane, and my church family here in St Andrews. We have recently said farewell to the Rev. Alasdair I. Macleod and his wife Cathie, as they retired to Lewis, and continue to feel their absence as a loss. This book is justly dedicated to Alasdair, in thanks for years of ministry, along with Ivor Davidson, for leadership and faith. The version of the Bible used throughout this book is the New Revised Standard Version. All quotes are taken from this, unless otherwise indicated..


(10) Contents Introduction. 1. Part 1. Preliminaries: Foregrounds and Backgrounds to the Study of Union with Christ in the New Testament 1. Participation and Union with Christ in New Testament Scholarship. 17. 2. Participation and Union with Christ in the Patristic Tradition and Modern Orthodox Theology. 42. 3. Participation in Lutheran and Reformed Theology. 77. 4. Exploring the Backgrounds to Union with Christ. 100. 5. Examining the Adamic Backgrounds of Union with Christ. 128. Part 2. Participation and Union in the New Testament 6. The Temple and the Body of the Messiah. 147. 7. Other Images of the Temple in the New Testament. 172. 8. The Sacraments and Union with Christ. 192. 9. Other Participatory Elements in the Pauline Corpus. 219. 10. Further Participatory Elements in the Johannine Literature. 251. 11. Grammars and Narratives of Participation in the Rest of the New Testament. 271. 12. Conclusions. 297. Bibliography Index of Selected Topics Index of Modern Authors Index of Sources. 309 337 340 344.


(12) Introduction How is the union between God and those he has redeemed represented in the New Testament? This is an inherently complex question, given that the object of study comprises the writings of multiple authors, each of whom may have undergone a process of theological development reflected in the corpus of texts associated with him. We may brace ourselves to find a dizzying range of potentially conflicting ways in which this union is understood: it may be conceived of in legal terms, as a bond comparable to that of the marriage contract, in ontological terms, as a participation in divine essence or energy, or in some other form or combination of forms. Not only so, some authors may confine the union to a particular group of people, while others may see all humanity as included within it. My argument in this book, however, is that, despite these possibilities, what we encounter in the New Testament is a remarkably cohesive portrayal of the union of human beings and God. A variety of images and narratives is indeed found in the New Testament, but I will argue that through these the authors develop a broadly consistent theology of union that can be outlined as follows: The union between God and humans is covenantal, presented in terms of the formal union between God and Israel. The concept of the covenant underlies a theology of representation, by which the story of one man (Jesus) is understood to be the story of his people. Their identification with him, their participation in his narrative, is realised by the indwelling Spirit, who constitutes the divine presence in their midst and is understood to be the eschatological gift of the new covenant. Reflecting this covenantal concept of presence, the union is commonly represented using temple imagery. The use of temple imagery maintains an essential distinction between God and his people, so that her glorification is understood as the inter-personal communication of a divine property, not a mingling of essence. This union is with a specific people, the members of which are depicted as the recipients of revealed wisdom, and this is the grounds of their intimacy with God. While the mystical language of vision is used to describe this knowledge, it is democratised to indicate that the revealed knowledge in question is possessed by all who have the Spirit, who are marked by faith, not just by a visionary elite. The faith that characterises this group is a real enactment of trust in what has been.

(13) 2. Introduction revealed in Jesus Christ, manifest in the conduct of the members of this community and particularly in their love for one another. The sacraments are formal rites of this union, made truly participatory by the divine presence in them.. This is, of course, something of an abstraction of what we encounter in the texts, and although it may describe some writings fairly neatly, it is less obvious how others (such as Hebrews or James) might be located in relation to this summary. I have no desire to flatten the landscape of the New Testament, or to press texts into a descriptive framework that is simply inappropriate, but over the course of the study the extent to which elements of this summary do, in fact, fit these texts will emerge. Our examination of the New Testament is intended to do justice both to the diversity and the coherence of the witnesses. It must, therefore, strike a balance between the descriptive task of identifying diverse participatory elements across the New Testament corpus, and the analytical task of identifying points of commonality. It will be immediately obvious to anyone familiar with the currents of New Testament scholarship in modern times that each of the statements in the summary is to some extent controversial, with further debates lying in their background. To make the claims that I do in relation to a single author, far less in relation to the New Testament as a whole, may appear to simply beg questions. I am deeply conscious of this and of the challenges involved in a study as broad as this one. But the very breadth that will preclude a detailed engagement with some of the opposing positions will allow contextual support (by which I mean the cumulative evidence of the New Testament writings) to be adduced for my own reading. New Testament scholars are usually very good at examining the context and backgrounds provided by Graeco-Roman and Jewish literature, but we are generally less successful at examining that provided by other New Testament writings and bringing these to bear on our exegesis. There is a vast amount of literature that reads Paul in the light of Qumran; there is rather less that reads Paul in the light of Peter. The objection, of course, is that we run the risk of conflating the distinctive theology of each and doing so without sensitivity to the time-lines on which they are located. But these texts are the products of a movement with a certain cohesion, generated within a compact period of time. It is, then, necessary to the historical task for us to consider how they may relate to one another and to reflect upon the ways in which even their diversity may emerge from a basic unity of thought. This is not to downplay the importance of background study, but simply to recognize that it must not be allowed to overshadow the context provided by the wider New Testament. In fact, I will devote two chapters of this book to an examination of the backgrounds to the New Testament, reflecting the extent to which my previous work on the Jewish contexts of nascent Christianity, particularly those provided by the apocalyptic literature of the Second Temple.

(14) Introduction. 3. Period, has been significant to the development of this study. In a previous monograph,1 I argued for a widespread emphasis in ancient Judaism and early Christianity on the eschatological revelation of wisdom to the elect, an emphasis that allows the integration of sapiential and apocalyptic elements within an inaugurated eschatological schema. Even in the diversity and factionalism of ancient Judaism, covenant was a dominant concept, though one contested by the various groups that existed in tension with one another. The groups claiming to be recipients of revealed wisdom understood themselves to be the true heirs of God’s covenant with Israel, though the covenant itself was relativized in importance by this very move, requiring further revelation by God to bring about its fulfilment. The emphasis on revealed wisdom as the privilege of the true elect ensured the uptake of mystical imagery and the vocabulary of vision from the apocalyptic texts. These elements—covenant and revelation—will reverberate through the present study, too, but where the early Christian section of my previous study focused on Matthew and the Jesus tradition, here I will consider the New Testament more broadly. What some readers may find surprising is that, before engaging with this background material, I will spend two chapters discussing the treatment of our topic in historical and (to a lesser extent) systematic theology. The decision to do this reflects my sense both of the distinctive historical issues that bear on New Testament interpretation, and the unavoidably theological nature of the object of study. In terms of the historical issues, two are particularly important in relation to this project. First, a number of scholars recognize the distinctive potential of the early patristic writings, in particular, to cast light upon the New Testament. As works that emerged in cultural proximity to the New Testament, in some cases during the period of the living memory of the apostles, they provide a body of interpretation that cannot be ignored and that may inform our understanding of concepts that are particularly difficult for us, as modern readers, to grasp. One such concept is that of ‘participation’, which, as we will see in Chapter 1, has proved to be a difficult one for modern interpreters. Richard Hays suggests that the Eastern Fathers, specifically, may provide categories that help us to explicate this concept, though he himself does not pursue the matter.2 I have followed through his proposal in Chapter 2 of this volume, finding in the Fathers a useful set of categories and distinctions by which participation is considered, a helpful ‘foreground’3 to inform our 1 Grant Macaskill, Revealed Wisdom and Inaugurated Eschatology in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (Leiden: Brill, 2007). 2 Richard B. Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ: The Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1–4:11 (2nd edn. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 2002), xxxii. The comments are particular to the introduction to the second edition. See our discussion in Chapter 1. 3 I borrow this word from Markus Bockmuehl, Seeing the Word: Refocusing New Testament Study (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006); see, especially, pages 64–5..

(15) 4. Introduction. reading of the New Testament. This will be brought to the study of the New Testament with a measure of caution, in the hope that it will help us to understand the texts that they purport to interpret. Similarly, the Reformed tradition, particularly Calvin, offers a valuable account of participation, one that is informed by theological tradition, but marked by a commitment to reading the New Testament evidence afresh, and in its entirety. Second, as the literature survey in Chapter 1 will confirm, the interpretation of the New Testament doctrines of participation in recent years has already been shaped by theological discussion, in some cases knowingly, in some cases not. By way of illustration, anyone who has followed the debate around the ‘New Perspective on Paul’ will be aware of the prominent role that discussions of ‘Lutheranism’ have played. But biblical scholars have all too often traded on ‘received’ accounts of the theology in question: how many of the studies that have casually dismissed ‘Lutheranism’ have actually examined the writings of Luther or the Lutheran tradition in any depth? Are certain readings of Paul being disavowed because they are assumed to have been governed by a tradition that is further assumed to render certain doctrines in certain ways? Are we in danger of developing readings of the New Testament that are defined against straw men and critically skewed by their own negative agenda? Moreover, just as a negative reaction to a poorly understood theology can distort the reading of the New Testament, so, too, can a positive reaction. Again, by way of illustration, there is growing interest at present in the concept of theosis as a means to explicate Pauline soteriology, but limited evidence that some of those who advocate this are aware of the fluidity of the concept or of the Platonic associations that it commonly has. The demonstrable influence of theology upon biblical interpretation, then, specifically in relation to the question of union with Christ, requires some engagement with the primary theological material, to ensure that biblical scholars are not constructing arguments upon foundations that will not bear the weight placed upon them. This requires us to identify the particular theological discussions that are relevant and to explore them in appropriate depth. This, however, is to consider only one side of the relevance of theology to the task of biblical interpretation, that which appropriately informs the work of the biblical scholar as self-critical historian. But the object of our study—the New Testament—is not just a historical artefact; it is also a body of theological literature, of distinctive importance within the traditions of the church. Analysis of its historical dimensions can never be deemed to fully satisfy the demands of the study of the New Testament: consideration of its operation within the theological traditions is as necessary an element in its study as is the evaluation of its historical contexts and dimensions. For my part, I do not consider the historical and theological dimensions of the study of the Bible to be mutually exclusive concerns, although I recognize.

(16) Introduction. 5. that one’s view of this is determined by underlying philosophical and theological assumptions.4 This position is at odds with the principled exclusion of theology by many biblical scholars, but it has been robustly maintained by others,5 and its central recognitions of Scripture’s inherently theological character and of the value of interpretative traditions have been at the heart of a renewed interest in ‘theological interpretation of Scripture’ in recent decades.6 Although I am in essential agreement with those who have participated in this movement, I do not develop here a fully synthetic approach, of the kind that many theological interpreters would advocate. Instead, I have maintained a functional distinction between the theological and biblical components of the book by allocating separate chapters to each, while, nevertheless, allowing the findings of these chapters to interpenetrate; only in the conclusions have I engaged in a more thoroughgoing synthesis of biblical studies and theology. Moreover, I have maintained a commitment to historical-critical examination of the New Testament throughout. These decisions reflect a set of concerns that I share with others who substantially agree with the aims and principles of the theological interpretation movement7 while being critical of certain elements of its practice. These concerns have been developed in important recent works of reflection on theological interpretation by scholars who may be considered practitioners of the approach, even if they are reluctant to consider themselves ‘insiders’.8 Three of these concerns are especially noteworthy.. 4 For the record, my own view of Scripture has been influenced in particular by the various studies by John Webster, notably his Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). See also his ‘The Dogmatic Location of the Canon’, Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie 43 (2001), 17–43. The essay is republished, along with a number of others pertinent to this discussion, in Webster, Word and Church: Essays in Christian Doctrine (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001). 5 For a helpful categorization of the range of positions taken on this relationship, see Markus Bockmuehl, ‘Bible versus Theology: Is “Theological Interpretation” the Answer?’, Nova et Vetera 9 (2011), 27–47. I will refer to this essay throughout the following discussion, as it represents an important body of critical reflections by a theologically sensitive New Testament scholar. 6 The scale of the literature is now significant. For a useful introduction, see Kevin J. Vanhoozer, ‘What is Theological Interpretation of the Bible?’ in Kevin J. Vanhoozer et al., Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic Press, 2005), 19–26, and Christopher D. Spinks, The Bible and the Crisis of Meaning: Debates on the Theological Interpretation of Scripture (London: T&T Clark, 2007). A helpful categorization of the various approaches may be found in Mark Alan Bowald, Rendering the Word in Theological Hermeneutics: Mapping Divine and Human Agency (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). 7 This use of the term to represent a movement, rather than just a functional approach, is found in Daniel Treier, Introducing Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Recovering a Church Practice (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 9. 8 In particular, I draw upon Walter Moberly, ‘What is Theological Interpretation of Scripture?’, Journal of Theological Interpretation 3 (2009), 161–78 and Markus Bockmuehl, ‘Bible versus Theology’. The latter, in particular, is resistant to being considered an insider of the movement; see pages 35–6, note 14..

(17) 6. Introduction. First, the principled commitment of the theological interpretation movement ‘to do justice to the priority of God’9 and to take seriously the text itself is an important corrective to the ‘magisterially’10 diachronic and reductionist approach of much historical-criticism, but the explicit critique of the latter frequently entails a resistance towards the study of the historical dimensions of the New Testament. Against this, Bockmuehl writes: It is not clear why concern for the priority of God should bypass an interest in what happened historically—or the extent to which readerly motivations may affect our understanding . . . Is not the biblical divine discourse, like most of its history of interpretation, inalienably engaged with the extratextual connections between faith and the world we inhabit?11. The biblical scholar’s distinctive object of study is a corpus of theological writing that may be historically located and that positions itself in relation to (and makes claims about) the world. In truth, of course, a range of practices in this regard is identifiable in works of theological interpretation, with figures such as Brevard Childs and Walter Moberly engaging robustly with the historical dimensions of the texts.12 Nevertheless, Bockmuehl’s comments affirm the need for careful historical work to be a necessary part of theologically sensitive New Testament study. For this reason, I maintain a serious commitment to historical enquiry in this book, devoting two chapters to the study of background and dealing, where appropriate, with diachronic issues throughout the exegesis of the New Testament. Second, some of the leading works of theological interpretation have been criticized for devoting too much space to methodology and hermeneutics, and too little to actual interpretation.13 Walter Moberly’s comments on Christopher D. Spinks, The Bible and the Crisis of Meaning,14 illustrate this concern: Although it seems accepted practice to write books about biblical interpretation that do not interpret the Bible, I am increasingly doubtful about the value of the exercise. Unless I am shown how the discussions of principle help enable. Vanhoozer, ‘What is Theological Interpretation of the Bible?’, 22. Vanhoozer, ‘What is Theological Interpretation of the Bible?’, 22, comments ‘Critical tools have a ministerial, not magisterial, function in biblical interpretation.’ 11 Bockmuehl, ‘Bible versus Theology’, 37. 12 Childs’s output engaged explicitly with historical critical issues; there is certainly no ducking of these in his commentary on Isaiah. See B. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001). The same is true of Walter Moberly’s work, e.g. his Prophecy and Discernment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 13 This criticism is brought by Bockmuehl, ‘Bible versus Theology’, 40, against Treier, Introducing Theological Interpretation of Scripture, one of the most prominent recent volumes of theological interpretation. 14 Christopher D. Spinks, The Bible and the Crisis of Meaning: Debates on the Theological Interpretation of Scripture (London: T & T Clark, 2007). 9. 10.

(18) Introduction. 7. recognition, or even production, of good and bad readings of the biblical text in practice, I can find myself wondering what difference it all really makes.15. Certainly, examples of serious extended theological treatments of Scripture could be cited, as Bockmuehl has done elsewhere.16 These, however, do not detract from the point, that the attempts to engage in theological exegesis have all too often been exercises in methodological reflection (or hermeneutical philosophy) and have advanced neither theology nor exegesis. We must deliberately allocate sufficient space to the examination of Scripture itself and this, I think, requires that we do not conflate the study of the biblical texts with the treatment of theology. They require to be coordinated, not conflated. For this reason, I have devoted specific chapters to the study of each area, rather than seeking to synthesize the study of theology with that of the New Testament. In doing so, each is given space to be considered on its own terms, while also being allowed to speak to the cognate discipline. Third, as Vanhoozer and Webster note, our account of Scripture must leave room for it to push back against sinful interpreters,17 for it to function as ‘a knife at the church’s heart’.18 For that to happen, there must be a willingness to modify our theological accounts to accommodate the unruliness of the Word. Often, however, the theological interpretation of Scripture is married to a particular account of doctrine19 and functionally seems to leave little space for the Bible to challenge that account. Again, I would suggest that we take an approach that coordinates, and that does not conflate, biblical and theological study. In order to facilitate proper evaluation of any theological account, we need to understand it on its own terms, according to its own logic. This, I would suggest, requires a functional distinction to be maintained between theology and biblical studies that, nevertheless, does not obscure their interdependence. It is for this reason that I have devoted two chapters to the discussion of key areas of historical and systematic theology, dealing with. 15 Walter Moberly, ‘Review: Christopher D. Spinks, The Bible and the Crisis of Meaning’, Journal of Theological Studies 59 (2008), 711. See also his ‘What is Theological Interpretation of Scripture?’, Journal of Theological Interpretation 3 (2009), 169–70. His comments in the latter are illustrated with reference to John Webster, whose output contains more exegesis than Moberly, perhaps, allows. The criticisms, however, are directed towards the movement more broadly. 16 Bockmuehl, Seeing the Word, 60. 17 Kevin J. Vanhoozer, ‘The Spirit of Understanding: Special Revelation and General Hermeneutics’, in his First Theology (Downers Grove; Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press; Apollos, 2002), 207–35. 18 John Webster, ‘The Dogmatic Location of the Canon’, 43. 19 Notably, Barthian theology has played a key role in the development of the theological interpretation movement: Treier, Introducing Theological Interpretation, 14, identifies Barth as the principal stimulus for the contemporary interest in theological interpretation. Much of Vanhoozer’s work, which could not be located in this account, is nevertheless defined in relation to it and in dialogue with it..

(19) 8. Introduction. each according to its own logic, while recognizing that each ultimately constitutes a reading of Scripture, capable of informing our own reading. Our examinations of ancient and modern theology will highlight that the central question of this study is inextricably linked to three other issues. The first concerns the union of God and man that is internal to the incarnation. The orthodox doctrine of the two natures understands the incarnation as sui generis, an economic reality that is unique and, hence, non-analogous in key respects to all other experience of human communion with God. At the same time, the true humanity of Jesus makes possible human communion with God and serves as the pattern upon which the Christian life is modelled. The tradition has always sought to take seriously these two elements of distinction and identification. By comparison, various modern theological approaches to the incarnation, critical of ‘two-natures’ conceptuality, have sought to identify a much higher degree of correspondence between the divine–human union of Jesus and that experienced by believers, modifying or even denying the uniqueness of Christ. Notably, in modern times, Adoptionism and Spirit Christology have advanced such accounts of the incarnation and, correspondingly, of the union of the believer to God. Importantly, as we will see in Chapter 1 and at various points throughout the study, such accounts are often developed with specific reference to the New Testament writings and to the work of particular biblical scholars. Our study, then, requires us to consider the ontology of the incarnation. This does not require us to identify in the New Testament the precise configurations of that ontology that developed in the later christological formulations, but it does require us to pay attention to the ways in which the real divinity and real humanity of Christ are depicted in relation to human union with God. The second issue proceeds from this and concerns the nature, work, and mode of being of the Holy Spirit, both in the incarnation and in the divine– human union experienced by other human beings. It is clear even from a cursory reading of the New Testament that the experience of God is described in terms that give prominence to the presence of the Holy Spirit in human beings. As a result, accounts of union may be fundamentally altered by different conceptions of the Spirit, whether seen as impersonal divine power/energy or as personal presence and agent. Attention to the way in which the Spirit is described, then, is a necessary part of the study of divine– human union, along with attention to the configuration of the incarnation. Our reading of the Eastern Fathers will demonstrate that this was a significant part of their consideration of participation. Before turning to the third issue, it is worth making explicit that these first two take us into the territory of historical Trinitarian theology. The fact that the church considered itself compelled to speak in Trinitarian, and not Binitarian, monotheistic terms reflects the force of the New Testament itself.

(20) Introduction. 9. and not later political or socio-ecclesiological pressures.20 Some New Testament scholars who have focused on questions of Christology prefer to speak of ‘Binitarianism’21 (or of God as ‘Binity’)22 because of the distinctive presentation of Jesus as divine in the New Testament and his prominence as an object of worship. Once the focus is shifted to the nature of the human union with God experienced by his people, however, the necessity of Trinitarian accounts of God in the New Testament becomes clearer. The third issue to which our central question is linked is that of the nature of the atonement. Inevitably, to speak of the union between God and human beings requires us to speak of the problem of sin and the way(s) in which the incarnational narrative is understood in relation to this. Quite specifically, there is the question of how the New Testament writers describe the atoning significance of the life and death of Jesus in relation to the human beings that benefit from it. Is atonement something that simply happens externally to the individual human, making possible a set of benefits, or is there some internal dimension to the atonement, by which it is realized within a person or community? How does this relate to the configuration of the incarnation itself and to theologies of the cross? The range of images used in relation to the cross in the New Testament cautions against any simple response to these questions, but they must be kept in mind throughout our study. This begs the further question: if what we are examining in our study of the union of God and human beings is essentially rapprochement, then are we not simply studying the soteriology of the various authors, a common subject matter of biblical studies, and giving it a different label? Yes and no. This is indeed an examination of the soteriological frameworks of each writer, but it is distinctively concerned with the nature of the relationship into which human beings are saved and how this relates to and transforms their modes of being. Further, it is concerned with the question of why the New Testament writers use participatory or locative grammar, vocabulary, and imagery to articulate that relationship and, proceeding from this, why those in this relationship are described in terms that suggest that they possess or embody divine properties, such as glory. Still, to note these three related issues is to acknowledge that the study of divine–human union in the New Testament is embedded within a further set of issues that have dogged the disciplines of theology and, more recently, biblical studies through the centuries. Those issues will hardly be settled in the context of a volume such as this, but a study specifically devoted to. 20 Gordon D. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson, 1994), 827–45. 21 E.g. Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003). 22 James D. G. Dunn, ‘Rediscovering the Spirit’, Expository Times 84 (1972), 7–12..

(21) 10. Introduction. divine–human union will speak to these. My findings in this book will have implications (however limited) for how biblical scholars construe the incarnation, how they construe the work of the Spirit, and how they construe the atonement. By its very focus, it may offer some fresh possibilities for resolutions of the justification debates in New Testament studies.. TH E SH AP E OF THE S TUDY The book will fall into two sections, Part 1: Preliminaries (Chapters 1–5) and Part 2: Participation in the New Testament (Chapters 6–11). My intention throughout the first part of the book is not to offer much by way of original primary research, but to survey the work of others with a view to laying the foundations for my own study of the New Testament in the second part. That said, some important conclusions will emerge throughout these early chapters, oriented uniquely towards the question that we explore in this book. The study will begin (Chapter 1) with a review of some of the key literature on participation in Paul. Most of the key recent work on participation has been conducted in Pauline scholarship and an examination of this material will help to establish the issues with which we must deal in this study. The fact that the Pauline discussion has largely been isolated from that concerning other New Testament books will demonstrate the need for a broad study such as this one. This chapter will also draw attention to the unavoidable necessity of engagement with historical and systematic theology in the treatment of this topic. In examining one author, James D. G. Dunn, we will also highlight the place that Adam Christology occupies in the discussion and the need for some clarity in the treatment of this. Chapter 2 is largely given over to an examination of the Greek patristic accounts of deification, beginning with Justin Martyr and continuing up to and through the key writings of the Cappadocian Fathers. With such a study, we pursue Richard B. Hays’s suggestion that the Eastern Fathers, in particular, may help us to understand the concepts of participation in the New Testament. These are well-trodden paths for historical theologians, though they have received fresh attention in recent years, notably from Russell,23 and there has been something of a paradigm shift regarding the influence of Platonism on the tradition. However, the recent revisions in scholarly views concerning the influence of Hellenistic philosophy and religion on the Fathers seem not yet to have found their way into biblical discussion. What emerges most strikingly from the discussion of the Greek Fathers is precisely what they do 23 Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)..

(22) Introduction. 11. not affirm and go to some lengths to distance themselves from: a straightforwardly Platonic account of participation or a pagan notion of absorption into deity. Instead a range of themes emerges that corresponds surprisingly well with our summary (with the qualified exception of the covenant dimension), including a strong emphasis on revelation. This chapter will begin, however, with a study of modern Eastern Orthodox accounts of theosis. By opening with such an examination of the fully developed doctrine, our study of its early development will be placed upon a trajectory and we will be sensitized to key themes in the Fathers. It will also allow us to highlight both continuity and development from the patristic period and, in particular, the significance of post-Palamite theology to modern accounts. This discussion will serve to demonstrate the problems associated with the use of theosis in a descriptive account of the New Testament writings, as distinct from its validity in specific theological schemata. An excursus on Spirit Christology will also be included in this chapter, since that theological movement has developed in response to modern Orthodox criticisms of Catholic theology. Chapter 3 will be given over to an examination of Reformed accounts of participation. In part, the warrant for this will lie in the prominence of Karl Barth’s influence on some of the key Pauline studies, which will be identified in Chapter 1. Barth’s work must be located in relation to his Protestant forebears, however, and this justifies a broader examination of the Reformed tradition. To this end, we will focus on Calvin and the subsequent Reformed Scholastic movement. In addition to preparing the way for a discussion of Barth, Calvin’s contribution offers real resources for the examination of Scripture. As with Luther (whose work will also be considered in this chapter, particularly in relation to the Finnish School of Luther), Calvin engages in close reading of Scripture, in his case quite broadly, and does so steeped in the tradition of medieval theological doctors. A number of works have appeared in recent years that focus on Calvin’s account of union with Christ and that follow his legacy through into the Reformed tradition.24 In Chapter 4, we will begin to consider the backgrounds to the New Testament presentation of participation. By necessity, this chapter will cover a range of quite disparate material, ranging from the Old Testament through various examples of Jewish literature. Some attention will be paid to the sociological models of corporate identity that have been used to explain the participatory dimension of the New Testament, but the limited value of these requires us to identify important thematic or conceptual precursors in the Old Testament and more broadly in Judaism. In particular, we will examine the themes of covenant and glory, considering their development through the Old. 24. These are outlined in our discussion in Chapter 3..

(23) 12. Introduction. Testament and their uptake in Jewish apocalyptic. Recent developments in scholarship on both of these areas will offer important resources for our study. We will also examine the mystical tradition in Judaism, noting the particular relevance that this may have for the understanding of the mystical imagery and vocabulary in the New Testament. Finally, the issue of messianism will be considered in relation to themes of participation. Chapter 5 will involve an examination of the Adam traditions in Judaism. A detailed study of this kind is necessary to ensure that the treatment of Adamic themes in the New Testament, particularly Paul, is properly ordered. Specifically, we will take up the observation made in Chapter 1 concerning the importance of Adamic glory to some accounts of Christology and, from this, Christian participation. Such ‘Adam Christology’ is often developed on the assumption that much of the material preserved in Christian tradition that depicts Adam as glorious is originally Jewish. The problems with this view will be highlighted, as will the fact that other figures are also presented as glorious. Taken together with the findings of Chapter 4, this will highlight that glory is a property of God, shared with or given to human beings in the divine presence. Chapter 6 will begin the study of the New Testament and will focus on the paired images of the church as temple and body of Christ. That these images can be traced back to the earlier stages of Christian theology will be highlighted throughout the chapter; we can with some justification, therefore, regard them as core to New Testament theology. The pairing or fusion of the images is unique to the New Testament within Judaism and this must be explained: I will argue that it reflects the messianic interpretation of Psalm 118 (LXX, 117). Various specific observations will be made concerning how this pairing of images relates to participation: it maintains the distinction between God and the creatures present in the temple, while allowing his glory to be shared with them; it is covenantal, and specifically related to the Spiritpromises of the new covenant; and it involves a particular union between believers and the Messiah. Among the various observations made in this chapter, these are key. Chapter 7 will examine a further range of temple images in the New Testament. These do not portray the church as the temple or body and must, therefore, be treated separately from those in the previous chapter. Like them, however, they emphasize that participation is a matter of divine presence, by which God shares himself with his people, in the heavenly or eschatological temple. This concept is developed in each using covenant imagery that, once again, is specifically related to the new covenant promise of Jeremiah 31, read in terms of other prophetic texts, notably Ezekiel 36 and 37. The connection between Christian union with God and the ontology of the incarnation will begin to emerge in this chapter, particularly in the study of John and Hebrews..

(24) Introduction. 13. Chapter 8 will examine the sacraments in the New Testament. We will discuss the accounts of baptism and Eucharist found in the New Testament and the symbolic references to the sacraments that may deepen our understanding of them. We will note the evidence that the sacraments can be traced back to the earliest stages of the development of New Testament theology and, indeed, that they may have informed and governed some of the theological moves that will be studied in later chapters. In particular, their covenantal significance will be highlighted. Given that the sacraments can be traced back to the earliest strata of the New Testament, their significance in establishing the broad covenantal frameworks of participation in New Testament theology will be recognized. The next three chapters, 9–11, are given over to the study of the narratives and grammars of participation in the New Testament. Chapter 9 is devoted to the study of the Pauline literature, Chapter 10 to the Johannine literature, and Chapter 11 to the rest of the New Testament, inevitably treated in less depth. We will note the limitations in seeking to develop an account of participation based primarily on grammatical constructions (the use of spatial grammar, et cetera) and will instead note that such constructions must be contextualized in their narratival contexts, by which I mean the ‘stories’ that appear to control their theologies and the ways in which they develop these. Again, these chapters will highlight the importance of covenant in structuring the underlying narratives of the various authors, to an extent that may not generally be acknowledged in New Testament studies. Throughout these chapters, we will also note the ways in which the incarnational narrative determines the ways in which participation is represented and the implications these may have for the ontological configuration of the incarnation. We will also encounter a number of ways by which the eschatological revelation of wisdom is emphasized and will note the participatory dimensions of these. The ‘Conclusions’ offered in Chapter 12 will be more than just a cursory rehearsal of the argument. It is here that the various strands of evidence will be brought together with a view to defending the summary claims offered at the beginning of this chapter and to evaluating current scholarship on participation in the New Testament. I will also seek to make clear why I believe ‘union with Christ’ to be the most appropriate description of the theology of the New Testament. The conclusions will be more synthetic in character, considering the potential significance of this study of the New Testament for theological scholarship that intends to take seriously the biblical evidence..


(26) Part 1 Preliminaries: Foregrounds and Backgrounds to the Study of Union with Christ in the New Testament.


(28) 1 Participation and Union with Christ in New Testament Scholarship We begin our study of participation or union with Christ in the New Testament with a review of the treatment of the topic in modern New Testament scholarship, particularly that on Paul. Within the constraints of a study such as this, we cannot examine every contribution that has been made to scholarship in this area—there would be limited value to this, in any case—but we can identify the key contributions and, from these, can recognize the issues that, rightly or wrongly, have shaped the discussion during the last century or so, including the recent resurgence of interest in participatory accounts of atonement. Most of the studies that we will examine in this chapter are concerned with Paul, the notable exceptions to this being the earlier contributions of Bousset, Deissmann, and Schweitzer, which were broader in scope. In part, this reflects the fact that the recent interest in participation has been located particularly in the context of Pauline studies. This itself, however, reflects the increasing specialization or, more pejoratively, fragmentation of New Testament scholarship during the modern period and particularly during the twentieth century.1 Scholars in each area primarily talk to other scholars working in that area and not to those in cognate fields of biblical scholarship. This has, to some extent, been ideologically driven by the conviction that attempts to construct a New Testament theology wrongly assume a theological consistency between the various writers, itself an assumption subject to serious criticism.2 But it has 1 The early part of the twenty-first century has seen some movement towards a recovery of integrated readings, following trajectories that were beginning to emerge in the late twentieth century. There were, of course, always works that sought to be more integrative, particularly in Catholic and Evangelical biblical scholarship, but these were often treated as less central to the academic field. 2 The scholarly discussion of this is substantial. Key works include Georg Strecker, Das Problem der Theologie des Neuen Testaments (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1975); Peter Stuhlmacher, Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments. Bd. 1, Grundlegung von Jesus zu Paulus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997), notably the introductory discussion. See also the various essays in his Biblische Theologie und Evangelium: Gesammelte Aufsätze.

(29) 18. Preliminaries: Foregrounds and Backgrounds. also reflected the nature of scholarship more widely: a growing profusion of secondary literature makes it ever more difficult to achieve thorough coverage of issues and literature once the scope of a given study extends beyond a single writer, book, or even verse. Subtly, this can alter our sense of what a scholarly voice must sound like, or what a scholarly page should look like, so that attempts to think across the fields of New Testament study (far less bringing these into conversation with fields of theology) are deemed inappropriate or impossible.3 To some extent, those concerns are valid and forcibly remind us that biblical scholarship will increasingly need to become collaborative if it is to be constructive. Yet, whatever form such collaboration might take, individual scholars need to be prepared to relate fields to one another in their contextualization of even the most specific subject matter and there is something of an inconsistency in this regard. Before we even begin our review, then, an important point has begun to emerge: there is an obvious need for studies that seek to relate this theme in Pauline scholarship to the examination of other parts of the New Testament. Other key points of enquiry will emerge in the course of our review, but this observation is the driving justification for the present study.. EARLY TREATMENTS OF PARTICIPATION IN MODERN SCHOLARSHIP. Adolf Deissmann The current interest in participation in Pauline scholarship is generally traced back within modern biblical studies to the writings of Adolf Deissmann.4 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002); Christoph W. Stenschke, ‘Strong Cases for the Unity of New Testament Theology: A Survey of Four Recent English New Testament Theologies’, Religion & Theology 17 (2010), 133–61. More broadly dealing with the unity of New Testament theology in relation to the Old, see Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology in Crisis (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1970) and Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible (London: SCM Press, 1992). For an attempt to balance unity and diversity without allowing the voice of one biblical author to dictate the terms on which others are understood, see the ‘conference table’ approach of G. B. Caird and L. D. Hurst, New Testament Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 3 In fact, it is interesting that those studies that have sought to engage in such analysis across the New Testament have typically been the work of theologians. An interesting example is that of Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition, 79–89. Such works are, however, understandably light in their engagement with biblical scholarship (although Russell’s familiarity with recent movements in New Testament and Second Temple Judaism studies is impressive). 4 Chiefly, Gustav Adolf Deissmann, Paulus: Eine kultur- und religionsgeschichtliche Skizze (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1911), translated as St Paul: A Study in Social and Religious History,.

(30) Participation and Union with Christ in New Testament Scholarship. 19. Deissmann recognized the prominence that the ‘in Christ’ formula appeared to have in Paul’s thinking and sought to explore this in relation to the wider contours of his thought and context. In his view, the formula reflected a mystical concept of intimacy with Christ, which was derived from Paul’s Damascus Road experience. The phrase ‘in Christ’ was primarily of locative significance and, famously, Deissmann illustrated this in the following terms: Just as the air of life, which we breathe, is ‘in’ us and fills us, and yet we at the same time live in this air and breathe it, so it is also with the Christ-intimacy of the Apostle Paul: Christ in him, he in Christ.5. Linked to this, Deissmann also saw Paul’s use of the genitive ‘of Christ’ as distinctively shaped by this notion of intimacy with Christ. It was a ‘genitive of fellowship’ or ‘mystical genitive’,6 basically parallel in significance to ‘in Christ’. From this, Deissmann challenged contemporary Protestant configurations of justification, arguing that ‘justification by faith of Christ (ø Å F æØ F)’ should be understood as ‘justification in faith’,7 that is, a transformative condition emerging from intimate communion with Christ. In ways that would anticipate more recent scholarship, Deissmann saw the Damascus experience as transforming Paul’s entire sense of being,8 but he understood this within the broader context of the influence of Hellenistic mysticism.9 This Mystik was, in turn, understood in terms of the German scholarship of that period to denote a range of experiences of ‘consciousness of God’, from ego-centric mysticism, in which the self is entirely lost in God, to theo-centric mysticism, in which a consciousness of God transforms or sanctifies the mystic without effacing the individual’s self-consciousness. Paul’s mysticism was the latter: ‘[he] was not deified nor was he transformed into spirit by this communion, nor did he become Christ’.10 This meant that Deissmann understood the representative aspects of the atonement in participatory terms best described as ‘inter-personal’, that is, involving communication between persons:. trans. Lionel R. M. Strachan (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1912). See also Deissmann, Die Neutestamentliche Formel ‘In Christo Jesu’ (Marburg: N. G. Elwert’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1892). 5 Deissmann, St Paul, 140. 6 Deissmann, St Paul, 162–3. 7 Deissmann, St Paul, 169–70. 8 Deissmann, St Paul, 130–1. Compare the studies of Seyoon Kim, The Origin of Paul’s Gospel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), Alan F. Segal, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), and Carey C. Newman, Paul’s Glory-Christology: Tradition and Rhetoric (Leiden: Brill, 1992). 9 10 Deissmann, St Paul, 147. St Paul, 152–3..

(31) 20. Preliminaries: Foregrounds and Backgrounds. The Christ-centred Christianity of Paul is therefore neither a breach with the Gospel of Jesus nor a sophistication of the Gospel of Jesus. It secures for the many the Gospel experience of God which had been the possession of the One, and it does so by anchoring these many souls in the Soul of the One.11. While understanding Paul’s mysticism in relation to Hellenistic conceptuality, Deissmann’s work carefully distinguished these, maintaining in Paul a foundational concern for the essential distinction between God and his creation and a key recognition of the mediatorial role of Christ. Two criticisms can be brought to Deissmann’s work. First, recent grammatical and syntactical analysis of ‘in Christ’ (and its various parallel prepositional phrases) suggests a more complex and fluid significance to the construction than Deissmann allowed, locally determined in each occurrence.12 Deissmann, in other words, placed too heavy a burden onto one meaning of this phrase. Second, and more importantly, Deissmann’s writings lack a clear account of how, precisely, ‘many souls’ are anchored ‘in the Soul of the One’. As important as his agitations were, his own intellectual heritage did not provide him with an adequate framework within which to account for this.. Wilhelm Bousset A second work to locate Paul’s teaching on participation in relation to mysticism was Wilhelm Bousset’s hugely influential study, Kyrios Christos.13 This religionsgeschichtliche analysis would, of course, dictate the terms of christological study in biblical scholarship for much of the subsequent century; Larry Hurtado, in the preface of his own study of Christ-devotion, Lord Jesus Christ, published ninety years later, presented his work specifically as a challenge to Bousset’s long-standing paradigms and findings.14 It is a testimony to the scope of Bousset’s study that we discuss it here in relation to a theology of participation, but it also highlights the fact that our subject matter is inextricably bound with that of Christology; an account of human union with God inevitably entails reflection upon the theology of incarnation. Like Deissmann, Bousset recognized that Paul’s ‘mysticism’ was different from its Hellenistic counterparts. In the latter, ‘the individual mystic achieves for himself the blessed state of deification. The divine is completely absorbed 11. St Paul, 258. See, Constantine Campbell, Paul and Union with Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Study (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012), especially chapters 3–6. 13 Wilhelm Bousset, Kyrios Christos: Geschichte des Christusglaubens von den Anfängen des Christentums bis Irenäus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprect, 1913); translated as Kyrios Christos: A History of the Belief in Christ from the Beginnings of Christianity to Irenaeus, trans. John E. Steely (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1970). 14 Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ, 13–26. 12.

(32) Participation and Union with Christ in New Testament Scholarship. 21. into the human’.15 In Paul, however, the gravity remains with the divine being, whose will draws humans—indeed, all reality—into itself in fellowship.16 Despite Bousset’s recognition that parallels between Paul and Hellenistic mysticism are difficult to find,17 however, he saw a certain overlap with ‘mystery piety’, that is, the kind of experience associated with the Hellenistic mystery religions.18 Consequently, some of Bousset’s language concerning the experience of union with God in baptism suggests a degree of essential absorption: ‘[B]aptism serves as an act of initiation in which the mystic is merged with the deity, or is clothed with the deity’.19 Bousset identified two key points in Paul’s theology of participation. The first, as reflected in the last quotation, is the role played by baptism as an initiatory rite signifying clothing with the deity. The second is the effective equating of ‘in Christ’ with ‘in the Spirit’.20 These two formulae were, in Bousset’s view, essentially parallel and interchangeable. That observation reflected a sensitivity to both the prominence of the Spirit in Paul’s theology and the close association of the Spirit to the reality associated with Jesus. As we will see in our own study, however, Bousset failed to recognize the key ways in which the two are distinguished in Paul.. Albert Schweitzer As important as the contributions of Deissmann and Bousset were, however, it is the work of Albert Schweitzer that has left the most prominent legacy upon scholarship in this area.21 Schweitzer famously described Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith as a ‘subsidiary crater’ within the ‘main crater’ of his theology of mystical union with Christ22 and in many ways this comment has continued to influence Pauline studies, as scholars search for the ‘centre’ of the apostle’s thought. Like his predecessors, Schweitzer understood Paul’s theology as mystical and sought to categorize the apostle’s thought in relation to other kinds of mysticism.23 His essential definition of mysticism was broad enough to accommodate a range of experiences, beliefs, or phenomena: 15. 16 Bousset, Kyrios Christos, 166. Bousset, Kyrios Christos, 168–9. 18 Bousset, Kyrios Christos, 164. Bousset, Kyrios Christos, 170. 19 20 Bousset, Kyrios Christos, 158. Bousset, Kyrios Christos, 158. 21 In particular, see Albert Schweitzer, Geschichte der paulinischen Forschung: von der Reformation bis auf die Gegenwart (Tübingen: Mohr, 1911), translated as Paul and His Interpreters: A Critical History (trans. William Montgomery. London : A & C Black, 1912). Also Albert Schweitzer, Die Mystik des Apostels Paulus (Tübingen: Mohr, 1930), translated as The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (trans. William Montgomery. London: A & C Black, 1931). 22 Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul, 225. 23 For the development of Schweitzer’s thought on this matter, see James Carleton Paget, ‘Schweitzer and Paul’, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 33 (2011), 223–56. 17.

(33) 22. Preliminaries: Foregrounds and Backgrounds. We are always in the presence of mysticism when we find a human being looking upon the division between earthly and super-earthly, temporal and eternal, as transcended, and feeling himself, while still externally amid the earthly and temporal, to belong to the super-earthly and eternal.24. Within this, he distinguished the Christ-mysticism of Paul from the Godmysticism of John, arguing that the former does not portray the believer as united to God himself, but rather to Christ, with the experience of divine presence a mediated one. As such, there is no question of Paul’s thought involving deification. Through this alone it is clear that Hellenistic and the Pauline mysticism belong to two different worlds. Since the Hellenistic mysticism is founded on the idea of deification and the Pauline on the idea of fellowship with the divine being, it is impossible to find in the Hellenistic literature parallels for the characteristic phrases ‘with Christ’ and ‘in Christ’ which dominate the Pauline mysticism.25. This emphasis on the mediatorial function of Jesus in the union (which, pace Schweitzer, I will argue characterizes the New Testament writings broadly) is a key element of Schweitzer’s findings, and will be important to my study. But, while careful to set Paul’s Christ-mysticism apart from Hellenistic mystical thought, as well as from much of the rest of the New Testament, Schweitzer nevertheless described the union involved as leading to a certain loss of selfhood, an absorption of the individual believer into the corporate personality of Jesus. Every manifestation of the life of the baptised man is conditioned by his being in Christ. Grafted into the corporeity of Christ, he loses his creatively individual existence and his natural personality. Henceforth he is only a form or manifestation of the personality of Jesus Christ, which dominates that corporeity.26. An important dimension of this was his influential argument that this must be construed in terms of apocalyptic theology. Schweitzer was heavily influenced by Kabisch’s work on Pauline eschatology,27 which identified a straightforward ‘two-ages’ schema in Jewish apocalyptic that was carried into the New Testament. He saw Paul as expecting ‘the immediate return of Jesus, of the Judgement and of the Messianic Glory’.28 Drawing into this Wrede’s arguments concerning the place of cosmic. 24. Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul, 1. Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul, 16. For further discussion of the distinctions between Pauline and Hellenistic mysticism identified by Schweitzer, see Campbell, Paul and Union with Christ, 37. 26 Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul, 125. 27 Richard Kabisch, Die Eschatologie des Paulus in ihren Zusammenhängen mit dem Gesamtbegriff des Paulinismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1893). 28 Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul, 52–3. 25.

(34) Participation and Union with Christ in New Testament Scholarship. 23. redemption in Paul,29 Schweitzer concluded that the apostle awaited an eschaton that would entail ‘the deliverance of mankind from the dominion of the powers’,30 within which the perishable world of the evil age would be transferred to the imperishable one of the new age. This transfer had begun to be realized in the resurrection, and the sufferings of believers were a realistic participation in this death and regeneration.31 This involves the transformation of believers into a new spiritual condition: ‘[T]hese Elect are in reality no longer natural men, but, like Christ Himself, are already supernatural beings, only . . . in them this is not yet manifest’.32 Two key points must be noted in relation to his apocalyptic mystical scheme. First, the eschatological reality is a corporate one. The union that exists in Christ is not with the individual, nor is the suffering of the individual the verification of that union; rather, individuals are brought into identification with his body as the church and thus lose their individual identity, participating corporately in his death in their collective suffering.33 The ‘body of Christ’ in Paul is not simply a metaphor, therefore, but a reality. Second, the apocalyptic union envisaged by Paul is at odds with traditional Judaism, but is significantly anticipated by the Jewish apocalyptic eschatologies of the period, marked by a ‘two-ages’ schema.34 Here, we encounter one of the elements of Schweitzer’s thought that lingers most problematically in current New Testament scholarship. Influenced by assumptions about the nature of Spätjudentum that were characteristic of the period, Schweitzer’s account of apocalypticism and its manifestation in Paul’s writings assumes that it is at odds with the Torah-centred ‘legalistic’ piety of the Pharisees. To be apocalyptic is to reject Torah as belonging to the evil age. In his later revitalization of Schweitzer’s work, Käsemann would inherit such a notion and, in doing so, would ensure that his own heirs, following J. Louis Martyn (discussed in ‘‘Apocalyptic’ Readings of Paul’, pp. 35–6), would operate with the assumption that Paul is essentially hostile to the Torah. Yet, as we will see in Chapter 4, the relationship of apocalyptic thought to Torah-piety is rather more complex and certainly cannot be reduced to a matter of simple rejection. Neither can such a rejection be justified by recourse to a ‘two-ages’ apocalyptic schema, since the evidence that we now have about Jewish apocalypticism reveals a much more complex and fluid schematization of time. Paul’s understanding of righteousness and redemption, then, may be more positively informed by Torah than is often assumed to be the case, even when it is identified as apocalyptic in content or emphasis. 29 30 31 32 33 34. William Wrede, Paulus (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1906). Schweitzer, Paul and His Interpreters, 167. Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul, 141. Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul, 110. Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul, 101–27 and 141–59. Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul, 26–40..

(35) 24. Preliminaries: Foregrounds and Backgrounds. Having identified these important elements in the pioneering German research into participation, we may now turn to consider the various developments of the later twentieth century and up to the present time. Although the various streams within this have run alongside and spilled into one another, and consequently cannot really be separated, it is helpful to consider them under a set of headings that will allow us to see where the primary currents have run.. FROM THE NEW PERSPECTIVE TO T H E O S I S AND ADAM CHRISTOLOGY. E. P. Sanders The 1977 publication of E. P. Sanders’s Paul and Palestinian Judaism,35 and the subsequent development of the so-called ‘New Perspective on Paul’, was arguably the most important of the factors leading to the resurgence of interest in participatory accounts of salvation. Challenging the assumption that Judaism was significantly and widely legalistic at the time of the composition of the New Testament, Sanders’s work called into question the validity of ‘Lutheran’36 readings of Paul, with their emphasis on the justification of the individual by faith, rather than by ‘works-righteousness’. This was not entirely out of the blue: an important antecedent to Sanders’s observations was to be found in Krister Stendahl’s seminal essay, ‘The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West’,37 which also challenged individualist readings as anachronistic projections onto Paul of modern values and psychologizing tendencies. Stendahl’s article highlighted the deficiencies in the evidence adduced for a guilt-convicted Paul, and emphasized the fundamentally ‘salvation-historical’ character of the apostle’s notion of faith. What Sanders brought to the discussion was a detailed and thorough examination of the Jewish texts that might have informed Paul’s thought, 35 E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (London: SCM Press, 1977). 36 This is the label typically used for theologies that uphold some model of justification by faith. The lack of qualification with which it is used is revealing; the faultline presented by Sanders reflects engagement with a particular kind of Lutheranism and, in certain respects, the entire debate has reflected a particular axis of Anglo-German scholarship, one in which Calvinist or Reformed theology and exegesis of the New Testament have scarcely featured. It is interesting, for example, how little engagement there has been with the work of Herman Nicolaas Ridderbos, Paul, an Outline of his Theology (trans. John Richard De Witt. London: SPCK, 1977) or, for that matter, with Calvin’s own writings. 37 Krister Stendahl, ‘The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West’, Harvard Theological Review 56 (1963), 199–215..

(36) Participation and Union with Christ in New Testament Scholarship. 25. from which he argued that the contemporary Judaism was not legalistic, in the sense that the word is generally used, but rather operated in terms of ‘covenantal nomism’. By this, he designated a belief in the priority of divine grace in the initiating of covenant and the place of legal observance for those graciously living under its conditions. No longer opposed to a simplistically conceived legalism, Sanders argued that Paul’s apparent negativity towards Judaism and Torah were consequential to his belief that Jesus was now the appointed way of eschatological salvation and that this requires to be explained by some notion of participation in Christ,38 though he left rather open the question of what precisely this might involve. But what does this mean? How are we to understand it? We seem to lack a category of ‘reality’—real participation in Christ, real possession of the Spirit— which lies between naive cosmological speculation and belief in magical transference on one hand and a revised self-understanding on the other. I must confess that I do not have a new category of perception to propose here. That does not mean, however, that Paul did not have one.39. In many ways, Sanders was here openly building on the work of Schweitzer, but his closer examination of the Second Temple sources—now, of course, including the wealth of material found in the Dead Sea Scrolls—as well as later rabbinic texts meant that he was much more restrained and nuanced in his understanding of how Jewish apocalyptic thought might relate to its wider religious, traditional, and intellectual context. A common theme in much of Sanders’s work is that mysticism and apocalyptic thought are diffuse elements in Judaism, not confined to distinct counter-order groups.40 Partly as a result of this, Sanders’s account takes seriously the issue of the Law—positively construed within Judaism—for Paul’s thought; hence the question of the significance of Christ is differently configured. Nevertheless, he shares with Schweitzer the conviction that forensic accounts of salvation in Paul’s theology have missed the true participatory centre of gravity.. Richard B. Hays and Michael J. Gorman Some scholars have developed Sanders’s language of participation in ways that are more knowingly theological. Richard Hays, in his important contribution to the pistis Christou debate, The Faith of Jesus Christ 41 (see ‘The Faith of Jesus 38. Perhaps the most important text for Sanders was 1 Cor 6:15, in which believers are ‘members of Christ’. 39 Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 522–3. 40 See also his discussion in E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63BCE–66CE (London: SCM Press, 1992), 9–10. 41 Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ..

(37) 26. Preliminaries: Foregrounds and Backgrounds. Christ: Richard B. Hays Again’, pp. 31–4), takes up Sanders’s admission of ignorance and seeks to inform it in two ways. The most important of these, and the one with which Hays is primarily concerned, is the concept of ‘narrative participation’: the story of the faithful Messiah becomes the story of God’s people, with their uptake into the story made possible by his faithfulness (as an eschatological act) and their part in the story, their own faithfulness, a necessary consequence of his. This development is useful in many respects and has been influential on the scholarship of others,42 but says little of the mechanisms of participation. I will suggest in ‘The Faith of Jesus Christ: Richard B. Hays Again’ (p. 33), when we consider the debate around pistis Christou, that this is a deliberate move on Hays’s part, reflecting a nuanced theological position. In addition to this core contribution, though, Hays also suggests in passing that our understanding of Paul’s categories of participation may be informed by the study of patristic theology: My own guess is that Sanders’s insights would be supported and clarified by careful study of participation motifs in patristic theology, particularly the thought of the Eastern Fathers.43. The specific identification of the Eastern Fathers likely reflects the place of deification—what would eventually become the technical concepts of theosis and theopoesis—in their writings. Hays simply offers this as a suggestion for further research, without further development, but his speculation is taken up by Michael Gorman.44 Gorman seeks to apply the theological language of theosis broadly to the writings of Paul, arguing that the cruciform nature of the divine identity as revealed in Christ is one in which we participate in salvation: To be in Christ is to be in God. At the very least, this means that for Paul cruciformity—conformity to the crucified Christ—is really theoformity, or theosis.45. It is noteworthy that Gorman does not actually engage with the patristic writings, as Hays suggests, nor does he offer much by way of an actual definition of theosis. In his own usage, the term indicates ‘that humans become like God’.46 Theosis is ‘transformative participation in the kenotic, cruciform character of God through Spirit-enabled conformity to the incarnate, crucified, and resurrected/glorified Christ’.47. 42. Notably, Douglas A. Campbell, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009). 43 Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ, xxxii. The comments are particular to the introduction to the second edition. 44 Michael J. Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009). 45 Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God, 4. 46 Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God, 4–5. 47 Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God, 7..

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