Living Wittily

N T Wright, Galatians, and a Commentary for Christian Formation (Part 2)

IN the Introduction to Galatians, Wright takes some time to examine Luther’s world, Paul’s world, and our attempts to do justice to modern biblical scholarship by trying to understand how Paul’s part in the furore in Galatia forged arguments and concepts that still have currency in Christian theology and formation today. In these 40 pages or so Wright reiterates his views on justification, sanctification, works of the law, and the unity of the church across all ethnic, religious and gender barriers. Galatians, he insists, is vitally concerned with the coming together of Jewish and Gentile believers in the single Messiah family.

The situation in Galatia presupposes anxiety amongst some Jewish Christians that admission of Gentile converts on the basis of faith alone would send a signal of civil disobedience to Roman authorities, and call in question the provisions of the Abrahamic covenant for Israel. In addition, for Gentile believers to turn from idols was an act of social dissent, a self-exclusion from much of society, and a dangerous precedent. “What happens if people start to make the claim that Jesus is Lord but Caesar is not?” (31)

Paul’s answer is to root all believers, Jews and Gentiles, within God’s covenant and new creation. Much of the argumentation in Galatians is less about who is in or out and on what basis, and more about the new covenant through faith in Messiah Jesus. “Christian formation in Galatians is rooted in the declaration of new creation, bursting in upon the old world with rescuing power.” (34).

With this new creation and covenant come new demands and a new enabling to fulfil them. Through Christ's atoning death, the power of His resurrection and the coming of the indwelling Spirit, believers are caught up into the story of God’s new, transformed and changed creation. Crucifixion atonement, resurrection life, and Spirit-inspired living, constitute the true Gospel, than which there is no other for Christian believers. That is the argument at the heart of Galatians.

The Spirit is both transformative energy and advance gift. Through the Spirit, Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free are brought into the one family of God, the God of Abraham, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Messiah. As one example of how this works in the letter itself, Wright argues forcefully that for Paul, shared meals at the same table are absolutely non-negotiable for Christian believers. Hence the confrontation with Peter, and Paul’s intransigence on this issue. Separation at the table (as Peter exemplified) on the basis of Jew / Gentile identity markers, is fatal to Paul’s vision of the community of those who are “crucified with Christ, yet who live because Christ lives in them, the Christ who loved them and gave himself for them.”

How Wright’s take on the Galatian situation and Paul’s response to it in this letter all works out, is demonstrated in the remaining 350 pages of verse by verse commentary. This is divided into 9 sections, each of which has a substantial conclusion drawing out the implications of the passage for Christian formation.

Galatians 2.11-21 is covered in fifty pages. Like the other sections Wright provides his own translation, a brief introduction that puts the text block in its literary and rhetorical context. The text breaks naturally into two sub sections, one on Peter and the Antioch incident, the other Paul’s theological argument for his own position. Wright is a good storyteller and his explanation of what exactly was going on between Peter and Paul is a fine piece of narrative exegesis in which Paul tells the Galatians what happened and why it matters. Along the way we learn the two apostles had a history, and that Paul had no option but to have a public showdown. In 2.14 Wright translates, “But when I saw that they weren’t walking down the line of gospel truth, I said to Cephas in front of them all…” That’s fighting talk, and Wright is an excellent guide to what the fight was about.

The argument of Paul is detailed, subtle and aims to establish once and for all the nature of the Gospel, the grounds of salvation as funded and founded in Christ, and as the basis of the new community of believers. Galatians 2.20 Wright sees as pivotal in the letter, indeed the heart of Paul’s theology and experience. Because of the faithfulness of Christ, fulfilled in crucifixion and vindicated in resurrection, believers in Messiah Jesus are part of a new life, and a new creation. They become a Spirit enlivened and driven community, risen in Christ and in which Christ lives, so that by their faith in the faithful Messiah, they embody and demonstrate the Gospel of the crucified and risen Messiah Jesus.  

I found Wright’s interpretation of this passage persuasive, non-polemical, exegetically thorough and theologically rich in suggestion. As a passage of commentary focusing on Christian formation, the conclusions on pages 160-168 are not of the “hints for how the text applies and can be used in preaching” type! Five core principles of spiritual theology emerge: The people of God are defined by their relation to Jesus Christ; faith and righteousness (pistis and dikaiosyne) describe exactly the basis of Christian community; Paul is not arguing the end of Jewish faith, but its fulfilment in Jesus Messiah; Galatians is an ecumenical document arguing passionately for the unity of all Jesus believers; to be crucified and risen in Christ is to live a new life, subversive of cultural norms and characterised by the practices of Jesus and the fruits of the Spirit. Each of these points is substantially argued.   

Perhaps a final quotation will give a flavour of commentary for Christian formation:

““The life I do still live in the flesh, I live by the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Whenever genuine Jesus-shaped preaching and pastoral work take place, the faithful self-giving of Jesus will be both the driving and guiding force. And the love outpoured on the cross, generating an answering love, remains at the heart of the formation both of Jesus-followers as individuals and, yet more demandingly of the common life that seeks to invoke and follow the Son of God.” (167)

Galatians is well served by good commentaries. These include De Silva (most recent, and alert to Paul’s rhetorical and theological strategies) Dunn (new perspective), Keener (rich in background), Longenecker (showing its age but solid traditional), Martyn, De Boer (both apocalyptic perspective), Matera (new perspective and Catholic), Moo (traditional Reformed), and Oakes (historical and social background).

This volume by Wright does seem to bring something beyond the historical and exegetical excellence in many of these commentaries. Wright is just as committed to excellence in those same disciplines, but in this commentary with additional reflection on how the text is to be embodied, lived and practiced in the life “now lived by the faithfulness of the Son of God.” The nearest equivalent in my view is Richard Hays’ luminous commentary, unfortunately hidden away in vol. XI of The New Interpreter’s Bible (2000). There too there’s an emphasis on historical exegesis, but with a separate section of application. Wright now supplements, but certainly doesn’t replace Hays as a commentary on Galatians for personal and community formation.

Is such a new series justified? Yes, if subsequent volumes maintain the quality of Wright’s initiating work on Galatians, and yes, if they are as spiritually and pastorally knowing. Does Wright fulfil his remit? Yes, though in his own way, and within the now well-known, and for some controversial, theological and exegetical matrix within which he does his work to the blessing of the wider church. This is a readable, stimulating and authoritative commentary. Tolle lege. 

N T Wright, Galatians, and a Commentary for Christian Formation (Part 1)

Galatians. Commentaries for Christian Formation, N T Wright, Eerdmans, 2021. 420pp, (Currently available approx. £23)

Reviewing the first volume of a new commentary series forces two questions. Do we need another commentary series in a market awash with options? If so, what makes this new series distinctive enough to contribute something new, significant and worth the price?

Eerdmans explain at the outset why they think this series will make a valuable and distinctive contribution.

“Commentaries for Christian Formation interpret Scripture in ways aimed at ordering reader’s lives and worship in imitation of Christ, informing their understanding of God, and animating their participation in the church’s global mission with a deepened sense of calling.”

Some commentary series on the New Testament are historical-critical, intentionally academic in style, and strictly exegetical in content, like the International Critical Commentary, Yale Anchor Commentary and the New International Greek Testament Commentary. Others are mid-range and combine scholarly exegesis with more accessible exposition, like the New International Commentary on the New Testament and the Paideia series.

Then there are those that aim at application, though still grounded in scholarly engagement with the text, such as New International Version Application Commentary and the Story of God Commentary.

A recently burgeoning field is theological commentary in which attempts are made to explore and expound the theological content of the text, with more or less attention to detailed exegetical foundations. The Two Horizons Commentary, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible and Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible are now well established series in this genre.

Each of these series has their Editor’s or Publisher’s preface indicating the level of academic engagement and critical style, the target readership and the justification for their particular series in an admittedly (over) crowded field. Having read some of those prefaces again, and several review essays on recent commentary activity, it would seem this new series while combining several of these approaches, does so on the way to fulfilling its more specific goal and authors’ remit.

Critical scholarship, exegetical details of grammar, syntax, literary and lexical analysis, historical and social contextual study, are all drawn together in the service of a theological and formative explication of the text. “Exegesis is itself a way of doing theology”, the publishers claim. Italics for emphasis is in the original. So this new series aims at a partial reversal of the aims in other series. It isn’t so much what the commentator does with the text, as what the text does to the commentator / reader. Information is put into the service of formation, for the purposes of personal transformation as the reader engages with, and is engaged by, the sacred text.

So how well does this inaugural volume of N T Wright fulfil those prefatory promises? “Paul wrote Galatians out of political and theological concerns.”(6) The political issue is, who should be reckoned as part of the new community of Jesus Messiah? To answer this, Wright goes through what is now a familiar exposition of his own ‘fresh perspective’ on Paul, compared with the ‘new perspective’ (now showing its age) and ‘the old perspective’ which many continue to hold as the most valid and viable interpretation of Paul.

Part two of this review will try to answer that question - I'll post it tomorrow. 

Hymn Singing: a health giving spiritual exercise in Christian realism.

I am still looking forward to a time when we can gather in church, without worrying about Covid, and sing our hearts out. Christians have been singing the Faith since the earliest communities began to form after the Resurrection and Pentecost. Music is one of God’s gifts that helps us express our deepest human emotions – praise and joy, longing and hope, devotion and love, sorrow and grief, repentance and forgiveness.

When it comes to our worship together, shared music-making is one of the ways we join our hearts and voices in ‘a sacrifice of praise.’ If you want to start a lively discussion ask someone what their favourite hymn is. If you want to start an argument, rubbish someone else’s choice. I still remember a new minister (no, it wasn’t me) holding up the church hymn book and telling the congregation “this needs to go!” It wasn’t a good start.

There are lines and verses from hymns that lodge in our minds and become part of our prayers, they stay inside as resources for those moments when we need God’s help, guidance and grace. Here are several that do it for me:

“Take from our souls the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess, the beauty of Thy peace…”

“My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.”

“Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”

“Great is Thy faithfulness! Morning by morning new mercies I see…”

You will have your own personal hymn-prayers; those lines that you know by heart, and which nourish, strengthen or energise you at those times when, for no obvious reason they pop into your mind. Clue – the Holy Spirit knows the hymns you know!

At the start of another year, I think we are still suffering from what could be called subdued hope, and long haul weariness. A low-grade anxiety affects how we see the world. We look at how life is through Covid tinted glasses.

Habits of the mind can quickly become the habits of the heart. Which is why it’s important for Christians to take off the negative tinted glasses and look at the world as people who actually believe that there is no shadow of turning with our faithful God. Instead of morning by morning having our mood, our minds and our view of the world shaped and coloured in the grey emulsion of media news, hum in your head “morning by morning new mercies I see,” or pray for “the beauty of thy peace.”

In other words look at the world through the lenses of “Amazing Grace”, or “the Lord’s my Shepherd”, or “Lord the light of your Love is shining”, or “Before the throne of God above, I have a strong and perfect plea” Get the idea? Remember what Paul urged the Roman Christians in chapter 12? Here are his words in J B Philips translation:

“Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity.” (Romans 12.2)

Singing hymns is a process of re-setting our bearings, and changing the lenses through which we look at the world. Hymns are one way God “reclothes us in our rightful minds”, and “re-moulds our mind from within.”

Here’s a hymn often sung at the start of New Year. The first and last verse can become our prayer for 2022. It describes the mind-set that looks look at the world through the clear lens of faith in God’s faithfulness:

Lord, for the years your love has kept and guided,
urged and inspired us, cheered us on our way,
sought us and saved us, pardoned and provided:
Lord of the years, we bring our thanks today.

 Lord for ourselves; in living power remake us –
self on the cross and Christ upon the throne,
past put behind us, for the future take us:
Lord of our lives, to live for Christ alone.

Singing our praise and prayers, alone, or when we are together, is a health giving spiritual exercise in Christian realism. We sing together to express our hopes and fears, to tell our love and devotion to the Triune God of love, to seek forgiveness for ourselves and others, to celebrate the faithfulness, goodness and mercy of God, and to give ourselves in love and service to God and others – all of these things. And every time we do we are refusing to let the world squeeze us into its mould. Instead we are allowing God to re-mould us from within to do God’s good, perfect and loving purpose for our lives.

"Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time."

An old uprooted tree stump, a sculpted memorial miles from anywhere, shaped and formed by weather, a piece of natural art still in process, not so much imagined and worked, as a work which encourages imagination.

 

When was this tree? What happened? Who planted it and how long ago? Did birds nest in it? Did folk take time to rest beneath it?

 

Transience, the passing of time, changes, contingency, impermanence, - the words we use to describe life at its precious best, time in which to flourish, bear fruit and be who we are.

 

"Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end." Ecclesiastes 3.11

Advice from Jimmy Welsh on Reading Karl Barth.

As a boy I learned a lot from old Jimmy Welsh. (back row, centre) He was the stableman who looked after the last two Clydesdale horses on the farm, ploughman, fencer, dyke builder, ditch digger and all round one-man farm maintenance squad.

One day, I must have been about 7, I was standing watching him clearing the drains around the dung midden where the farm stored all that stuff later called more politely, farmyard manure. It was dirty work, which is about as descriptively inadequate as I can make understatement sound. 

Up to his ankles in slurry, using draining rods and a shovel, he just got on with it. At one point as the gurgling from the drain signalled success, he stood up, pushed his bunnet back and said something I'd heard him say before, and would hear often enough again. "Aye Jim, hard work's no' easy."

Two things about Jimmy Welsh. First, this gruff friendly giant, six foot of lean, weathered can-do and know-how, was kind and patient enough to let me go with him when he was working down the fields, up the woods, in the byre, barn or wherever his particular set of skills were needed. Second, the first bike I ever rode on my own was his huge framed bone shaker, which I could only ride by putting my leg through the frame, under the bar! That's another story, which ended remarkably well, given I still cycle so many decades later, in decent weather.

"Hard work's no easy." Jimmy Welsh could have written some of the shorter ripostes in the Book of Proverbs. Whether clearing midden drains, grooming a Clydesdale horse, repairing a drystane dyke, ploughing long straight furrows by the score, scything the edges of the cornfield after the binder had passed, Jimmy worked with an economy and efficiency that impresses me to this day. He got the job done. What we now call 'challenges' he took as part of the job. Patience wasn't so much a virtue as the word used to describe the determination of someone  whose job was to repair this particular part of the world, and to take great satisfaction in doing it. 

So what's the connection between Jimmy Welsh and a post which has Karl Barth in the title. This at least. Reading Karl Barth is hard work, and "hard work's no' easy." But like Jimmy Welsh's never-ending maintenance work around the farm, reading Karl Barth has that same mixture of tasks and demands, of challenge and achievement.

And yes, there are times when it's really hard going. Like when I have to wade through dense pages of smaller print, with long interminable sentences and names I've never heard of and may never again. It helps to think of the tolerance and kindness of Jimmy Welsh, and hear him saying, as a truth that is better accepted than resented, "Hard work's no easy."

So I read on.

Here is Barth in full flow on the grace of God.

"The only answer to Χάρις is εὐχαριστία. But how can it be doubted for a moment that this is asked of [each person.]  Χάρις always demands the answer of εὐχαριστία. Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth. Grace evokes gratitude like a voice an echo. Gratitude follows grace like thunder lightning. Not by virtue of  any necessity in the concepts as such. But we are speaking of the grace of the God who is God for man, and the gratitude of man as his response to this grace." (CD IV.1, 41) 

 (The photo is of Emil Brunner and Karl Barth. Barth's controversy with Brunner was a painful episode, and an unnecessary breach of friendship. That Barth wrote a conciliatory note on hearing of Brunner's impending death was an act too little celebrated. The story of that is for another time.)      

Karl Barth, Shovel by Shovel, and Wheelbarrow by Wheelbarrow

In 1952, the Methodist New Testament scholar, Vincent Taylor, produced a commentary on the Gospel of Mark which became a benchmark for thorough exegesis, a model of the discipline. Taylor took account of all aspects of the text including lexical, textual, grammatical, syntactical, intra-textual and theological, and the result was a near encyclopaedic and detailed exposition of the Greek text of Mark's Gospel. It is still not fully past its use by date.

He was once asked how he had completed such a monumental project. He told the parable of the topsoil and the wheelbarrow. Having moved house, and a keen gardener, he had a large truck load of topsoil delivered, if I remember the story correctly, ten tons. The driver dumped all of it on his front driveway. The only way to move it to the back garden was shovel by shovel, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow. And that, said the good Dr Taylor, was also how he wrote his commentary - over the years, word by word, verse by verse and chapter by chapter. 

Faced with any major task or project it's good advice. You get it done by doing it, the cumulative result of regular, disciplined work, bit by bit, day by day. Which brings me to Karl Barth and his Church Dogmatics. I want to read Volumes IV.1 and IV.2 - I've wanted to do this for years. That's 1620 pages. This too can be broken down to manageable proportions so long as they are regularly and faithfully completed. I've drawn up a reading schedule of 7 pages per day. So the first volume will be done by just after Easter. Both volumes will be completed by some time early August. After that I'll have a rest, I think. 

So, shovel by shovel, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow. By the way, Karl Barth also uses the wheelbarrow as a metaphor for how you tackle the gargantuan task of writing the Church Dogmatics, let alone reading them!

“The angels laugh at old Karl. They laugh at his trying to capture the truth about God in a book on dogmatics. They laugh, because volume follows volume, each thicker than the last, and as they laugh they say to each other: “Look! There he goes with his [wheel]barrow full of volumes on dogmatics.”

I'll check in at Easter and let you know how it goes - and perhaps a few posts with some reflection on what to make of sitting at the feet of the most influential theologian of the 20th Century. 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

The Interrupting Summons of an Ancient Tree Stump

We all have our strange ways and peculiar tastes. While walking in the woods I am known to wander off the path and stare for a wee while at something that used to be. I mean something that used to be a tree.

That's right. I am fascinated by old tree stumps. Especially those that have been weathered and wintered for years, the elements carving and forming their strange architecture, often overlaid by lichen, moss and last autumn's leaves.  

Take this one, which sits in a forest recently flattened by Storm Arwen. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see in its circular broken walls and jagged peaks an inspiration for one of those spectacular mythical ruins that made the film version of Lord of the Rings such a memorable experience.

That this too, used to be a tree, is a thought that I find strangely poignant, a feeling on the verge of mild melancholy of the kind that makes you smile, briefly. Perhaps a generation ago this tree was felled, its wood harvested and used. For what? Furniture, fencing, a house frame? 

In any case once a tree is gone the roots become superfluous, no longer needed to pump nourishment and water up into this no longer gigantic living organism. 

Slowly the stump begins to decay, and a process of slow formation takes place. The serendipitous play of wind and rain, sunshine and ice, bacteria and fungi, insects and moss and lichen may seem random, explicable only as the contingent activity of environmental forces. Nobody makes a tree stump - they just happen.

Or so it may seem. For myself, I've come to appreciate the biological statement that is a weathered and sculptured tree stump. Aesthetics comes into it too - I think there is beauty and form in these old remains of a tree.

During these two years (almost) of Covid restrictions and constraints, of life overshadowed by widespread social anxieties and recurring uncertainties, I have discovered the significance of paying attention to what is there, and what attracts me. That means taking time to ask what it is about a landscape, a tree, a flower, a cloud formation, and yes, a tree stump, that summons our attention and affection. 

It may be that one strategy for dealing with Covid, or at least its impact on our social and mental health, is to look for beauty where we least think to find it, to form the habit of seeing beyond our own noses and beneath the surface of things. 

That's what happened on yesterday's slow meandering through the woods. An unhurried walk was interrupted by sunlight on a tree stump, a summons to acknowledge the persistence of nature's creative impulse, in the midst of a decimated forest. As a person of faith I've learned to trust those interruptions, and to sense in them a nudge away from niggling negativity towards gratitude, appreciation, and a hopeful trust in God's creative and recreative activity in our world.

But to be clear - avoidance of negativity doesn't invalidate sadness, poignancy, that instinctively human, and humane sympathy, with a living world where nothing is forever, where things get broken, and we discover that part of our calling is to care, to repair and where possible, to heal.

And yet, there are glimpses of glory that surprise us, moments of epiphany when we truly see, interrupting summons to pay attention and love the world as it presents itself to us - often in something as easily missed as an ancient sunlit tree stump.

(The tapestry is an original of my own, based on a Hebrew script which means "Tikkun Olan - To Repair the World")