I honestly hadn't heard of this before stumbling on the AmCon (that's such an appropriate acronym!) article, so I'm grateful for the background information:
In the reporting about Francis not issuing an official apology for the recently discovered bodies around Canadian residential schools - a lot of which were administered by religious denominations, including the RCatholic church - mostly they haven't noted that him not doing so was because the Canadian Conference of Bishops are divided on issuing an apology and having Francis go to Canada to deliver it. One of his major initiatives was to restart the devolution of decision making out of the Vatican and into national conferences and dioceses - which, considering how many of the bishops were JPII right-wing hacks and almost as bad appointed under Benedict XVI has its downsides along with a few up sides.
It's remarkable how much of that late-classical-medieval theology has been problematic in the way these white-supermacists are taking advantage of. I was just reading some of the early debates in the First Congress surrounding slavery and, though with a decidedly Federalist-secularist (you could almost say Mammonist) accent, they are saying similar things in support of keeping up the slave trade.
One of the things that was most eye-opening for me was reading the Pauline letters without taking that later theological thinking for granted, they're a totally different thing if you do that. Augustine is one of those I blame for a lot, perhaps it's because I haven't read Anslem at all. I find Gregory of Nyssa and Issac of Syria more congenial and, to my thinking, closer to scripture. Though there's a lot in Orthodox theology that's seriously messed up too. I do find that the closer to the Scriptures you get the less messed up it is, though lots of it is still confusing and unclear.
But I'm more interested in the theological issues, which I'll get to in a moment; after noting the Holy Roman Empire used to do this, following on a practice established by monarchs centuries before, and proving in some ways the Roman Church is still a medieval institution:
Maybe I should mention that a lot of the Canadian bishops opposition is based on the enormous debt that JPII's visit to Canada left them with, something like 34 million dollars and that the various scandals of that time decimated the support of the churches. JPII was not a very good Pope in a lot of ways.
The Holy Roman Emperor never had a fixed abode; just empty castles around the Empire. He took his furnishings and staff with him, filled up the next castle, then expected the city to provide for his needs. Monarchs had done this before, on royal visits, but the HRE made it the central fact of his existence on earth. I immediately thought of that when I read this about the debt JPII left to the churches in Canada. I'm not sure the HRE ever did that much for the empire (which was never really an empire; and he was never really an emperor), either.*
But I digress....
My re-assessment of Paul began with Krister Stendahl. His book Paul Among Jews and Gentiles was not new when I was in seminary, but it was the first bomb to go off in our collective heads as we were forced to reconsider the "Paul" we all thought we knew (and almost every "Paul" you think you know is wrong). When I try now to recreate that struggle, I can’t. I’m fully on the other side of it now. But it was like wrestling with an angel; I remember that. It was when I began to break free of all the ideas of salvation I'd grown up with.
Let me let Stendahl (a Lutheran bishop and Biblical scholar) put Paul in historical (which is to say also ecclesiological) context:
For Paul had not arrived at his view of the Law [Stendahl is concerned with Romans 7:19] by testing and pondering its effect upon his conscience; it was his grappling with the question about the place of the Gentiles in the Church and in the plan of God, with the problem Jews/Gentiles or Jewish Christians/Gentile Christians, which had driven him to that interpretation of the Law which was to beome his in a unique way.....
Yet it was not until Augustine that the Pauline thought about the Law and Justification was applied in a consistent and grand style to a more general and human problem....His Confessions is the first great document in the history of the introspective conscience. The Augustinian line leads into the Middle Ages and reaches its climax in the penitential struggle of an Augustinian monk, Martin Luther, and his interpretation of Paul. (Stendahl, pp. 84-85)
If it doesn't yet seem clear that everything you know is wrong, let me quote myself:
Recognizing this can have a very upsetting effect on one's assumptions about individual actions and the concept of corporate responsibility. Is it even possible to think of oneself as an individual, and yet not think of oneself in terms of an introspective conscience? Stendahl's thesis is that it is not only possible, but that it is precisely how Paul saw himself and the world, and so when he says "Miserable sinner that I am!," it is not a cri de couer or a mea culpa such as we, in a post-Augustinian world, imagine it. No more so than Paul would automatically interpret the act of the prostitute in Luke's anointing story as an outward display of an inward act of conscience. That kind of introspection, which we think so fundamental to "human nature," is not so fundamental at all. It is the result of human thought, of philosophy; of the efforts of a saint of the church.
So there's nothing wrong with reading Paul through an Augustinian lens, as that can apply the Law and Justification in a consistent and grand style to a more general and human problem. But let's face it, it can also lead to a distinctly evil soteriology (and to do that you have to also abandon Augustine. Give the man his due, he is a saint, you know, and one of the most influential and important thinkers in Western culture.) if we are going to understand what scriptures and the church fathers are teaching us, we have to listen to what they are saying, not to what we think they are saying. To combat the latter, we have to regard the former with new eyes (or go more deeply into Augustine, who is abused either way by the failure to take him more seriously). What I'm getting at is Stendhahl's central thesis:
"In the history of Western Christianity--and hence, to a large extent, in the history of Western culture--the Apostle Paul has been hailed as a hero of the introspective conscience." He makes his first critical point by questioning "the often tacit assumption that man remains basically the same through the ages." "[B]oth the historian," Stendahl notes, "and the theologian, both the psychologist and the average reader of the Bible, are well advised to assess how this hypothesis of contemporaneity affects their thinking, and their interpretation of ancient writings."
To begin to strip away Augustine from Paul allows you to read Paul anew; but I wouldn't confuse it with a "truer" picture of Paul's writings. It's different, but the "true" Paul is beyond our grasp. Take that as po-mo or as midrash, you still reach the same conclusion. Still, it directs our notions of "salvation" away from products of personal introspection (on one hand "How do I feel about myself?" and on the other "How does this save those heathen souls from perdition?") and toward a salvation that encompasses people, not ideas (I may have a soul; but I'm quite certain I have friends and family).
Let me drop in a long quote here:
For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
Romans 7:18b-24
The interpretation of that passage seems so obvious to us now. But it is an interpretation that would make no sense to Paul's original audience, or to almost any audience prior to Augustine. Which is damned hard to imagine, but there's that problem of anachronism again. Let me just quote from Stendahl again:
...it is exactly at this point that Western interpreters have found the common denominator between Paul and the experience of man, since Paul's statements about 'justification by faith' have been hailed as the answer to the problem which faces the ruthlessly honest man in his practice of introspection. Especially in Protestant Christianity--which, however, at this point has its roots in Augustine and in the piety of the Middle Ages--the Pauline awareness of sin has been interpeted in the light of Luther's struggle with his conscience. But it is exactly at that point that we can discern the most dramatic difference between Luther and Paul, between the 16th and the 1st century....
Now, to put Paul in his proper context, as a 1st century Jew interpreting the law and the gospel for a Gentile audience, what do we need to understand?
It is pointed out that for the Jew the Law did not require a static or pedantic perfectionism but supposed a covenant relationship in which there was room for forgiveness and repentance and where God applied the Measure of Grace. Hence Paul would have been wrong in ruling out the Law on the basis that Israel could not achieve the perfect obedience which the Law required.
Stendahl's interpetation of Paul turns on Phil. 3:6: "I was blameless as to righteousness-of the Law, that is," and he points out that Romans 2-3 "deals with something very different."
The actual transgressions in Israel--as a people, not in each and every individual--show that the Jews are not better than the Gentiles, in spite of circumcision and the proud possession of the Law. The "advantage" of the Jesus is that they have been entrusted with the Words of God and this advantage cannot be revoked by their disobedience (Rom. 3:1ff.), but for the rest they have no edge on salvation. The Law has not helped. They stand before God as guilty as the Gentiles, and even more so (2:9). All this is said in the light of the new avenue of salvation, which has been opened in Christ, an avenue which is equally open to Jews and Gentiles, since it is not based on the Law, in which every distinction between the two rests....The only metanoia (repentance/conversion) and the only grace which counts is the one now available in Messiah Jesus. Once this has been seen, it appears that Paul's references to the impossibility of fulfilling the Law is part of a theological and theoretical scriptural argument about the relation between Jews and Gentiles.
You'll notice, if you're still paying attention, that we are no closer to answering the question "What is 'salvation'?" But to move to an answer, we first have to move away from the concept that sin was universalized by the cross, and that Paul was the theologian who first established that truth for us.
Clear as mud, right? Start with the passage from Romans, one often cited for the proposition of the "divided conscience" (or, in more modern parlance, the question: when you talk to yourself, who are you talking to? And who's doing the talking?) I'm not sure Paul is as concerned with fulfilling the law as we assume. I think the Law was guidance, not restrictions. Jesus says he has come to fulfill the Law; but he also says the Law was made for people, not people for the law. The Law is supposed to be a benefit, not a reason to punish. A guide; not a maze. I read Paul as trying to explain why the Law seemingly makes him miserable, when it is supposed to offer him liberation (i.e., guidance; liberation from error and uncertainty as to outcome, not the freedom to do as you damned well please). He's not trying to excuse or abandon the Law; he's trying to explain its place in providing the gospel message he is now preaching.
The "justification by faith" Stendahl refers to comes in Romans 8:
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you[a] free from the law of sin and death. 3 For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh,[b] God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering.[c] And so he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
And also in Romans 2. Since Stendahl refers to Romans 2 and 3; those are worth quoting here, too:
You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. 2 Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. 3 So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? 4 Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?
5 But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. 6 God “will repay each person according to what they have done.”[a] 7 To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. 8 But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. 9 There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; 10 but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 11 For God does not show favoritism.
12 All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. 14 (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.) 16 This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.
Chapter 3 takes us into very deep waters indeed:
What advantage, then, is there in being a Jew, or what value is there in circumcision? 2 Much in every way! First of all, the Jews have been entrusted with the very words of God.
3 What if some were unfaithful? Will their unfaithfulness nullify God’s faithfulness? 4 Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar. As it is written:
“So that you may be proved right when you speak
and prevail when you judge.”
5 But if our unrighteousness brings out God’s righteousness more clearly, what shall we say? That God is unjust in bringing his wrath on us? (I am using a human argument.) 6 Certainly not! If that were so, how could God judge the world? 7 Someone might argue, “If my falsehood enhances God’s truthfulness and so increases his glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner?” 8 Why not say—as some slanderously claim that we say—“Let us do evil that good may result”? Their condemnation is just!
9 What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. 10 As it is written:
“There is no one righteous, not even one;
11 there is no one who understands;
there is no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.”
13 “Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit.”
“The poison of vipers is on their lips.”
14 “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 ruin and misery mark their ways,
17 and the way of peace they do not know.”
18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. 20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.
21 But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement,[i] through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26 he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
27 Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. Because of what law? The law that requires works? No, because of the law that requires faith. 28 For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. 29 Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, 30 since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. 31 Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather, we uphold the law.
I want to stop to point out that Paul's use of "atonement" there is not Anselm's from 3 centuries later. The source I'm using includes this footnote: "The Greek for sacrifice of atonement refers to the atonement cover on the ark of the covenant (see Lev. 16:15,16)." So don't get your theological feet tangled; there is enough undergrowth here to hack our way through already.
We could discuss what "power of sin" Paul is talking about. It's not the one the tent revivalists and Bible-thumpers shout about. It's not the cause of human mortality ("the wages of sin" are death, but that's because not following God's rules doesn't lead to life, only to despair. Sin pays in death; God pays in life.), or the failure to cross every "t" and dot every "iota."*** And if you pay attention to Paul's use of "righteousness," and keep in mind "righteousness" and "justice" are inseparable, and "faith" means "trust," not "blind allegiance and acceptance," then you begin to read Paul with new appreciation. But I'm not here to teach you to read Paul the way I do, or the "right" way. Note, for example, verses 19 and 20: the Law doesn't make us righteous; but neither does it condemn. The law reveals, and we become conscious, in the Law, of our mistakes. But if the Law is meant to guide you in life, and without the Law you have no guide, then how do you know what you are doing wrong? So if the Law makes you aware of your "sin," it it is simply making you aware of what you do wrong; so that you can do right. The Law is neither cudgel nor burden; it is an aid.**
Rather then spend too much time in exegesis of the text (do that for yourselves, like good little Protestants), I want to drop in a few more words from Stendahl that are extremely relevant to the starting point of this discussion, and to the diversion in to Romans:
Nobody can come to grips with the drama of history unless he recognizes that most of the evil in this world is done by people who do it for good purposes. Evil is not that popular. If one gathered together a lot of people and said, "Let us be evil together," it would not go over very well. Thanks be to God!....
Thus the question is not to balance judgment and mercy. Whenever one reads the Bible or theology, what I would call the "who-is-who" question always arises. Who speaks to whom and for whom? The mighty message of God was often heard in a wrong way because one listened in on the wrong message. There are many examples of this. Jesus did say, "Man does not live by bread alone," but he never said that to a hungry person. When he was faced with hungry persons he fed them--4000 or 5000. And he mass produced wine in Cana just to prevent the wedding feast from turning into a fiasco. It was to Satan that he said "Man does not live by bread alone," speaking for and to himself. The church, however, often quoted Jesus in the wrong direction--to the hungry, in defense of the well-fed.
Who speaks to whom? For whom is judgment mercy? That is the question, and unless one understands it, even the most glorious dialectical understanding of theology becomes not only counterproductive but evil. (Stendahl, p. 105-06)
I will tell you know that I have preached this message; and it is not a popular one. As Stendahl points out, "reconciliation" is a beautiful word. "Yet here in the United States we have been poignantly taught that reconciliation may be a word abused by the comfortable and for the "haves." He goes on:
Of course, for him who has and for him who is comfortable, reconciliation is very attractive--the sooner the better, so that we give up as little as possible. That is what reconciliation has come to mean, in stark contrast to the Christian tradition's sign of reconciliation, the cross where Christ gave all in order that reconciliation might be had. Judgment and mercy. We must resist all homogenizing, neutralizing, dialecticizing and balancing acts with these terms. There is little mercy except the chance of repentance for us who sit in judgment; but when judgment comes upon us, there is much mercy for the oppressed.
I will pause here to say that’s a lesson Declan Leary clearly needs to learn. And another topic:
Stendahl also offers this interesting note on repentance, from Mark 5:23-24: "So, if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. As Stendahl notes:
...it is not that you have something against your brother--the Westerner tends to read it that way. The Westerner, perhaps, does not even feel guilty before God (whom he encounters in a beautiful I-Thou relationship) if the other person has something against him. He would say: that is his business. But if he, as a product of Western culture, has negative feelings toward his brother, he will feel responsible and anxious to clean it up. Jesus has it the other way around, in good extrovert fashion: ...and (you) remember that your brother or sister has something against you. That has to be cleaned up first. Repentance means action in response to the pain of others.
Krister Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1976), pp. 98-104)
And again, back to the subject of the nature of God's grace and God's salvation:
Few are those who are willing to give, but the true believers are those who rejoice when God takes away that which they thought of as theirs, and gives to whomever he wants.
Consider what this means. Judgment and mercy are not balanced over against each other in a scheme in which a last judgment is tempered and adjusted by God's grace, or Christ, or the blood, or the cross, or the intercession of the saints. That is not the way it is. Mercy, salvation, liberation are all part of God's judgment. God's judgment brings mercy to those who need mercy. Judgment is justice for those who hunger and thirst after it, those deprived of it....It is important to revive and revitalize the biblical meaning of judgment (krisis) as that establishment of justice which by necessity means mercy for the wronged and loss for those who have too much.
I would venture to put it this way: salvation is not for you, it is for them. Your concern should, therefore, be for them. Not their spiritual state, but their mental/physical/social state here and now (which is how we think of it today; not how Paul thought of it in 1st century Rome. We separate them; Paul would aggregate them.). Two last quotes to make my point; first, to introduce James Barr:
It is similarly felt however that Hebrew thought saw man as a person within a totality, while Greek thought tended to see him as an individual, i.e., in essence as one separated from others, and then to form collectivities by grouping individuals together. The conflict of individual and collectivity thus arises from the Greek tradition. But Hebrew life was lived in a social totality of religion and justice.
James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language, (Philadelpia: Trinity Press International 1991), pp. 10-13)
Barr is not endorsing that variant of the false Whorf-Sapir hypothesis, and neither am I. I wouldn't say the Hebrews and 1st century Jews actually thought fundamentally differently than the Greeks. I would say rather that they assumed differently. And we do, too.
And then back to close with Stendahl:
The English language is a "docetic" language, as we learned theologians say. It has an unusual ability of dividing up words into that which is more spiritual and that which is less spiritual, so that one distinguishes between "justice" and "righteousness".... This phenomenon is worth noting. It is one of the peculiar ways in which language exerts great power over our thought habits and patterns of speech. So also with righteousness and justice: they are the one and only justitia.
(Is English docetic because of the grammar of English? Or because of Anglo-Saxon thought formed in part by Augustine? There is an interesting difference in the Christianity of Julian of Norwich and the Christianity of the unknown author of the "Dream of the Rood." But not necessarily a fundamental one.) So when justice rolls down like waters...so does righteousness. Miserable sinner that I am, who is to save me from this body of....thought?
Well, I'm less miserable this way than in trying to persuade myself native children were abused (separated from their parents, forced to abandon their language and culture, forced to never see their families again) for their own greater glory. That is sin, indeed. If you can't see the Law highlights your sin there, even Paul can't reach you.
*The practice isn't unusual. When the then head of the UCC visited my church on it's 150th anniversary, the church paid for his trip. Then again, the trip didn't cost the churches in Texas $34 million.
**Is the Law, then, universally applicable? No; as Paul says , the Law was given to the Jews, and among other things Jews have never insisted the world keep kosher or sustain the covenant of Abraham. Universality is again the stumbling block, and there are always two choices: to make the message a threat and a punishment, or to make it Isaiah’s city on the hill to which all the nations want to come.
***yes, I know, iotas don't have dots.
