Paul and the Apocalyptic Imagination

Ben C. Blackwell, John K. Goodrich, Jason Maston, Ben C. Blackwell, John K. Goodrich, Jason Maston, Ben C. Blackwell, John K. Goodrich, Jason Maston

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781451482089
• eBook ISBN:
  9781506409092
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

Since the mid-twentieth century, apocalyptic thought has been championed as a central category for understanding the New Testament writings and the letters of Paul above all. But "apocalyptic" has meant different things to different scholars. Even the assertion of an "apocalyptic Paul" has been contested: does it mean the invasive power of God that breaks with the present age (Ernst Käsemann), or the broader scope of revealed heavenly mysteries, including the working out of a "many-staged plan of salvation" (N. T. Wright), or something else altogether? Paul and the Apocalyptic Imagination brings together eminent Pauline scholars from diverse perspectives, along with experts of Second Temple Judaism, Hellenistic philosophy, patristics, and modern theology, to explore the contours of the current debate. Contributors discuss the history of what apocalypticism, and an "apocalyptic Paul," have meant at different times and for different interpreters; examine different aspects of Paul's thought and practice to test the usefulness of the category; and show how different implicit understandings of apocalypticism shape different contemporary presentations of Paul's significance.

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Righteousness Revealed

The Death of Christ as the Definition of the Righteousness of God in Romans 3:21–26

Jonathan A. Linebaugh

“He had his own strange way of judging things. I suspect he acquired it from the Gospels.”

—Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Apocalyptic Backgrounds and/or a Christological Apocalypse?

“I had been captivated with a remarkable ardour for understanding Paul in the epistle to the Romans . . . but a single saying in chapter one [δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ] . . . stood in my way.”^[1] This autobiographical reminiscence from Martin Luther describes the experience of countless readers of Romans. When the phrase δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ first appears in Romans (1:17), Paul’s syntax—note the γάρ that links 1:16 and 1:17—suggests that his reference to “the righteousness of God” is explanatory, but the spilt ink (and blood) in which the Wirkungsgeschichte of this Pauline phrase is written tells a different story: this part of Paul is “hard to understand” (2 Pet. 3:16).

But George Herbert can help:

Oh dreadful Justice, what a fright and terror
Wast thou of old,When sin and error
Did show and shape thy looks to me,
And through their glass discolor thee!

This poetic description, which resonates with Luther’s recollection of “hat[ing] the phrase ‘the righteousness of God’” because “according to use and custom,” he understood it as “the active righteousness by which God is just and punishes unrighteous sinners,” suggests that, at least for Herbert, the interpretative problem is not just grammatical; it has to do with what (or who) reveals the definition of righteousness. “When sin and error did show and shape” the “look” of God’s justice, the result was “fright and terror.” But something changes between stanzas two and three: “But now,” Herbert says with a Pauline phrase (Rom. 3:21):

. . . that Christ’s pure veil presents thy sight
I see no fears:
Thy hand is white,Thy scales like buckets, which attend
And interchangeably descend,
Lifting to heaven from this well of tears.

Where “sin and error” revealed a frightful justice, “Christ’s pure veil presents” a righteousness that results in “no fear.” Like Luther before him, who “mediated day and night” until the “connections of [Paul’s] words” overcame “use and custom” with an exegetical entrance “into paradise itself,” Herbert’s transition from “fright” to “no fear” occurs at that Pauline point—“but now”—where Christ reveals the meaning of “the righteousness of God.”

And this, I want to suggest, is an apocalyptic rendering of δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ in the most precise Pauline sense: It is in “the gospel . . . about God’s son . . . Jesus Christ” (Rom. 1:1–4 cf. 1:16–17), that “the righteousness of God” is “unveiled” (ἀποκαλύπτω, Rom. 1:17). For Luther, this meant a new definition: “the righteousness of God” is not the divine justice that punishes the unrighteous, but the gift of Jesus that justifies the ungodly.^[2] For Herbert, a poem:

God’s promises have made thee mine;
Why should I justice now decline?
Against me there is none, but for me much.^[3]

This, however, is not always what apocalyptic means when used as a description of Paul and his theology. Luther and Herbert are apocalyptic readers of Paul in the sense that they interpret God’s gift of Jesus Christ as an apocalypse (cf. Gal. 1:12): “Christ’s pure veil presents” the meaning of righteousness, sings Herbert, echoing Paul’s insistence that “the righteousness of God is made visible” in “the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:21, 24). Here, apocalyptic names an interpretative movement, not from traditional “use and custom” to “the connection of [Paul’s] words,” but the other way around: from a revelatory event to the definition of God’s righteousness it discloses. But apocalyptic, when used primarily to identify the history-of-religions background of Paul’s theology, often serves to make the opposite point. Where apocalyptic names the “from whence” of Pauline concepts, this identification can invite a reading of Paul in which “use and custom” determine the definition of Paul’s vocabulary, not least the phrase δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ.

Ernst Käsemann provides a representative and influential example. His interpretation of “‘The Righteousness of God’ in Paul,” to quote the title of his 1961 address to the Oxford Congress,^[4] is an instance of a larger history-of-religions reconstruction. His celebrated thesis that “apocalyptic is the mother of all Christian theology” is, in the first instance, an historical rather than a theological claim.^[5] It is a judgment about “Die Anfänge christlicher Theologie” and represents a shift from Käsemann’s pre-1950 answer to the history-of-religions question in terms of Hellenistic and gnostic backgrounds.^[6] From the start, the definition of “apocalyptic” proved elusive,^[7] but for Käsemann, its use was necessary because the near equation in Germany of “eschatology” and a doctrine of history made it impossible to say “eschatology” and mean “Endgeschichte.”^[8] Apocalyptic, in Käsemann’s use and context, thus refers to a specific kind of eschatology characterized by a constellation of features related to Endgeschichte: the expectation of an imminent parousia, a cosmic rather than individualistic orientation, the antithetical correspondence of Urzeit and Endzeit—all of which work together to pose an apocalyptic question: Who is the world’s true Lord?^[9]

Käsemann’s interpretation of “the righteousness of God” in Paul is shaped by this religionsgeschichtliche thesis, especially in terms of method. Working in the tradition of Hermann Cremer’s programmatic suggestion that Paul’s expression, “the righteousness of God,” is derived from and consonant with the Old Testament understanding of righteousness as a “relational concept” (Verhältnisbegriff),^[10] Käsemann’s hermeneutic works to the Pauline definition of δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ from the pre-Pauline meaning of the phrase. In his words, “I begin my own attempt to interpret the facts by stating categorically that the expression δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ was not invented by Paul.”^[11] For Käsemann, δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ is a “formulation which Paul has taken over,” a formulation stemming from Deut. 33:21 and mediated to Paul via apocalyptic Judaism, as evidenced by the use of the phrase in T. Dan 6:10; 1QS 10:25; 11:12; 1QM 4:6.^[12] This means that, from where Paul stands in the history of his religion, δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ is a “feste Formel,”^[13] a traditional phrase with a trajectory of use that pre-defines the phrase as used by Paul. Thus, while Käsemann can say, with reference to Phil. 3:9 and Rom. 3:22, that “whatever else God’s eschatological righteousness may be, at any rate it is a gift,”^[14] he insists on “der Machtcharakter der Gabe” because “the formulation which Paul has taken over [i.e., δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ] speaks primarily of God’s saving activity, which is present in his gift.”^[15]

The hermeneutic, governed by the religionsgeschichtliche thesis, is that defining δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ in Paul requires finding δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ outside of and before Paul. Käsemann knows what Paul means when he writes “the righteousness of God”—“God’s lordship over the world which reveals itself eschatologically in Jesus”^[16]—because he knows that “in the field of the Old Testament and of Judaism in general,” the same phase is used to describe God’s saving action undertaken in faithfulness to those with whom he is in covenant relationship.^[17] To borrow Luther’s words to describe Käsemann’s method, pre-Pauline “use and custom,” what we might call the theological lexicon of the Old Testament and apocalyptic Judaism, interpret “the connection of [Paul’s] words.” Hence, David Way’s suggestive observation: “although [Käsemann] pays a great deal of attention to the historical background of the theme . . . he does not treat the actual occurrences of [δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ] in Paul’s letters in any detail.”^[18]

But that is not to say that Käsemann is necessarily wrong. Rather, what this juxtaposition with Luther and Herbert exposes is that the word “apocalyptic” can function in a variety of ways. This, perhaps, is both its peril and potential, but in ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Contributors
• Preface
• Index of Names
• Index of Ancient Writings