Chapter Six: Resurrection in Corinth (1): Introduction

 [This is an ongoing project that is analyzing N.T. Wright’s 5 volume series, Christian Origins and the Question of God. This series is widely read and bridges the gap between the academic and devotional world. It is therefore worthy to be carefully analyzed so that all readers can understand his key points while at the same time gaining a critical eye to some of his rather bold claims. This series of posts are concerning volume 3 – The Resurrection of the Son of God.]

N.T. Wright’s discussion of Resurrection in Paul continues in this chapter which is his first concerning first and second Corinthians. Here, Wright presents a remarkably convincing depiction of resurrection in the books. The only real problem with his work is that is that he overstates his case to make resurrection the “magic bullet” by which the rest of the books are understood. This is a natural danger to all of us in the academy who are studying a particular topic and is somewhat understandable; however, it still does need to be addressed.

First, Wright correctly asserts that resurrection is a rather important topic in the Corinthian correspondence. Indeed, with 1 Thessalonians 4, it is the standard place wherein readers have found Paul’s message of resurrection. The problem, of course, is trying to untangle what Paul says about resurrection from the sundry items he address in 1 and 2 Corinthians. Wright explains this problem well:

The resurrection – that of Jesus, and that of Jesus’ people – dominates the Corinthian correspondence. Discussion of such a central topic inevitably becomes entangled in all kinds of other issues, some of which are as complex and unresolved today as they were when critical scholarship first began to investigate them.[1]

The key question, that Wright never addresses, is whether one should untangle resurrection from these other issues. His topic is to understand “what Paul thought of Resurrection” though this is a fundamentally difficult task. Wright here seems to fall into the common trap of recognizing that Paul is not a systematic theologian, but then going farther to create a systematic theology for him! If Paul is truly not a systematic theologian, but instead his arguments are occasional, then why are we trying to create a systematic theology for him? Why are we not simply keeping his views in their own situations? Wright should not be castigated too highly for this – he mostly does keep the conversation about the resurrection in the context of the books; however, it is unavoidable that when one asks what did Paul think about (insert topic here), it will result in trying to mash together his various books and take them out of their situations.

 Wright’s focus on resurrection in the Corinthian correspondence shows this focus. He argues that resurrection was the key issue in the Corinthian correspondence. This is a problem. Whenever one says that there was a key issue, then it suggests all the other issues from which one has “untangled” resurrection are somehow less dynamic, or less important. To show the situation, Wright presents a classic view of resurrection and then the critique of it in 1 Corinthians. Note in his presentation how he argues resurrection – one way or another – is the key issue at hand:

A major proposal was made some years ago to address this: that the Corinthians held some form of over-realized eschatology, and were inclined to believe that they were already ‘raised’ in all the senses they ever needed to be. This was then advanced to explain such passages as 4.8 (“Already you’re filled! Already your rich! Without us, you are kings!”), and several other parts of the text. Chapter 15 was written, according to this theory, to put the record straight, and to argue at length for a future resurrection which would show up the present posturing of super-spiritual Corinthians as such ‘puffed up’ boasting.[2]

Many scholars have come round to the view argued by Richard Hays that the problem at Corinth was not too much eschatology but not nearly enough. The Corinthians were attempting to produce a mixture of Christianity and paganism; their ‘puffed up’ posturing came not from believing that a Jewish-style eschatology had already brought them to God’s final future, but from putting together their beliefs about themselves as Christians with ideas from pagan philosophy, not least the kind of popular-level Stoicism which taught that all who truly understand the world and themselves are kings. Paul urgently wanted to teach them to think of themselves, corporately, individually and cosmically, in a more thoroughly Jewish fashion, in terms of the great Jewish stories of God, Israel and the world.[3]

Note that in both cases, arguing for or against this position, he presents resurrection as the key issue which is dividing the community. He argues that the Bultmannian hypothesis that some felt the resurrection was a present rather than future reality is out of date and instead, it is instead the view that many were not taking resurrection seriously enough. In both cases, he sees the major controversy surrounding resurrection.

The problem, of course, with this view is that if there is any particular issue that dominates 1 Corinthians, it is clearly the divided community as the introduction to the letter proclaims “For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. What I mean is that each of you says “I belong to Paul,” or “I belong to Apollos,” or “I belong to Cephas,” or “I belong to Christ.”[4]  Margaret Mitchell has convincingly shown that the primary issue of the letter was a lack of unity and Paul uses Greek deliberative rhetoric to address that problem.[5] I do not believe Wright disagrees with this, but he certainly does not emphasize it. Instead, he seems to want to argue that the primary reason for the lack of unity is resurrection. Here, he stretches the evidence too far. A cursory reading will show that there were a variety of reasons for the lack of unity within the group.

He argues that in 2 Corinthians he has the same point, but with a different emphasis. He suggests that rather than pushing the group to take seriously the world of the resurrection, instead, he wants to challenge them to see the issue of apostleship as related to the issue of resurrection. Wright explains:

But in much of 2 Corinthians his point, though closely related, is significantly different. Paul has not stopped looking to the future. Far from it. But now, instead of looking to the future and seeing the present as the appropriate preparation for it, he is looking to the future and discovering that it works its way back into the present in ways he had not previously explored, giving hope and strength when neither seemed available by any other means. In both letters, what mattes is the continuity between future Christian hope and present Christian experience. But whereas in 1 Corinthians the movement is primarily toward the future, straining towards the resurrection and discovering what needs to be done in the present to anticipate it, in 2 Corinthians the movement is primarily towards the present, discovering in the powerful resurrection of Jesus and the promised resurrection for all his people the secret of facing suffering and pain here and now.[6]

His issue of suffering and apostleship, are of course united, in that we participate now in the suffering and death of Christ and only in the future will we participate in his resurrection. He maps this out well as he says is a use of eschatology for a pastoral need:

It is important to spell out the logic of what he is saying, because in 2 Corinthians all this is controversial. (a) He believes, as a good Pharisaic Jew, that the creator God raises the dead, in the normal sense. (b) He believes this all the more strongly because he believes that God has already done it in the case of Jesus. (c) He believes that he is living between Jesus’ resurrection and his own future resurrection. (d) He therefore claims, and discovers in practice, that God’s power to raise the dead is at work in the present time, one of its results being that God can and sometimes does rescue his people from what had seemed imminent and certain death. This is inaugurated eschatology in the service of urgent pastoral need.[7]

He therefore suggests that the present is in a unique place.

He therefore fits his apostleship within this framework – an apostleship in which one can expect suffering as we are merely acting within the new creation now and not in the future:

Verse 10 [chapter 9] sums up not only all of 11.21-12.9, but, in a measure the entire epistle: the weakness of the apostle, seen to good effect in all the extraordinary things he has to suffer, is the very point at which he is being identified with the Messiah, and hence the very point also at which the Messiah’s resurrection power comes in the present apostolic life and work, anticipating, by the Spirit, the resurrection which still awaits him.[8]

Here, I agree with Wright in his general view – Paul does discuss the challenge of suffering as keyed to the drama of future resurrection versus present reality of the meaning of being in the new creation as opposed to the view of the superapostles who he believes have completely misunderstood this point.

In all, Wright’s discussion of Paul’s view of resurrection is generally strong. The problem is how it can be construed and strained to create monothetic thinking about Paul that is decidedly unhelpful. Further, a discussion of the “new creation” without discussing the Platonic language of participating “in Christ” seems to be a mistake. Wright nowhere discusses this important point in this chapter and it leaves the reader guessing not as to what the resurrection is, but how anyone can be part of this new creation.

---

[1] RSG, 277.

[2] RSG, 279.

[3] RSG, 279-280.

[4] 1 Cor. 1:11-12.

[5] Margaret M. Mitchell Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation: An Exegetical Investigation of the Language and Composition of 1 Corinthians (Westminster John Knox Press, 1993).

[6] RSG, 300.

[7] RSG, 301.

[8] RSG, 309.

Chapter Five: Resurrection in Paul (Outside the Corinthian Correspondence)

 [This is an ongoing project that is analyzing N.T. Wright’s 5 volume series, Christian Origins and the Question of God. This series is widely read and bridges the gap between the academic and devotional world. It is therefore worthy to be carefully analyzed so that all readers can understand his key points while at the same time gaining a critical eye to some of his rather bold claims. This series of posts are concerning volume 3 – The Resurrection of the Son of God.]

N.T. Wright’s chapter discussing Paul is also his first chapter discussing Jesus movement resurrection. Therefore, he first discusses briefly his view that resurrection in the Jesus Movement was generally uniform and simultaneously different from Judaism. He then moves into the second portion of the chapter in which he discusses resurrection in Paul outside of the Corinthian correspondence which he will spend the next two chapters discussing. I argue that Wright’s general position about Paul’s presentation in 1 Thessalonians and Philippians is generally quite well done – with a few exceptions, but that his characterization of the Jesus movement’s uniformity on resurrection is rather overstated. Given that this chapter covers these two topics, I will break this down into two sections.

1.     Wright’s general views about resurrection in the early Jesus Movement

Wright argues that one of the major elements that gave the Jesus movement a clear identity was the generally uniform view of resurrection. Wright explains it as surprising given the diversity of views in the Greco-Roman world, even within Judaism:

One of the most striking features of the early Christian movement is its virtual unanimity about the future hope. We might have expected that Christians would quickly have developed a spectrum of beliefs about life after death, corresponding to the spectrums we have observed in the Judaism from within which Christianity emerged and the paganism into which it went as a missionary movement; but they did not.[1]

He argues that the views of the Jesus movement were relatively unanimous – where they would not be the same for other issues. He argues that it is amazing that it seems to be in line with the dominant Jewish view of the time. However, he notes that this is particularly surprising because Christians saw resurrection quite differently from Judaism. They used the same words, but interpreted it quite differently in the same way.

There are substantial mutations from within the ‘resurrection’ stream of Judaism. In particular, the historian must account for the fact that, with early Christianity thus being so clearly a ‘resurrection’ movement in the Jewish sense, the well-established metaphorical meanings emerge instead. How does it come about, in other words, that early Christianity located its life-after-death beliefs so firmly at the ‘resurrection’ end of the Jewish spectrum, while simultaneously giving the word a metaphorical meaning significantly different from, through in long-range continuity with, the meaning it had within Judaism? How do we account for both the strong similarity between Christianity and Judaism (there is no sign, in early Christian resurrection belief, of anything remotely like a move in a pagan direction) and the equally clear dissimilarities?[2]

Wright then argues that Christians had basically the same view of the resurrection that was dependent upon one basic stream of Judaism, but which had interpreted it in a new way. Wright presents this as quite a conundrum.

The challenge with Wright’s presentation here is that it overstates the case. He argues for “general” unanimity. The only way that early Christianity was unanimous on resurrection is if one used the word “general” quite broadly. He is certainly right that the view presented by the vast majority of the figures in the New Testament (though not all) won out, but it would take several hundred years to get there.

Wright centered his focus on the unanimous view that humans believed in a bodily resurrection: “It meant bodily resurrection; and that is what the early Christians affirmed.”[3] While this is somewhat true, what it looked like and when it occurred varied quite aggressively. For example, in his discussion of Paul he includes Colossians and Ephesians as having essentially the same view as Paul.[4] However, Colossians and Ephesians (Ephesians being dependent upon Colossians) have been famously challenged as to Pauline authorship precisely because of their contrast on the doctrine of resurrection. Ephesians treats resurrection as something that has already happened:

But God who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.[5]

What is key here is that the concept of being raised is clearly in the past tense. Paul firmly opposes this and sees resurrection a thing that will happen at the end of days when it will be truly bodily resurrection from the grave. Wright argues that these are in far more continuity than discontinuity, but his discussion plays down the real tension that these two ideas propose.

Further, if one considers work that did not make the New Testament, it is clear that there was not such a unanimous view of resurrection as Wright wishes there were. For example, the question of a bodily resurrection was challenged by many thinkers. Origen of Alexandria (d. 254), for instance, argued that when we are reunited with God (he argued we all were already once), we would be, if corporeal at all, very incorporeal to a point where we can’t imagine ourselves having any real physical body. In fact, he argued that soma – the “body” can only be seen as an extension of the psyche – the soul. The actual fleshly body – sarx – passes away into the fire. This is simply one very influential figure to show that the view was not nearly as “universal” as Wright would like. There were certainly many different perspectives on the topic. Just because a number of authors in the New Testament agreed did not mean that the movement as a whole agreed.

2.     Paul (outside of the Corinthian correspondence)

For all the concern I had about Wright’s presentation of the general view of resurrection, I tended to value very much what Wright said of Paul’s view on resurrection. He overplays some elements – for instance his valuing of Romans as the key for resurrection language – but if that is the biggest problem, then I would be quite satisfied.

What Wright does, though, is focuses on the question of when the bodily resurrection will take place. He seems to want to argue that the modern concept that the people who have just died have souls who are hobnobbing in a kind of ethereal state has little grounding in Paul. Wright directs this point head on:

How does resurrection in this passage function within Paul’s larger picture? Initially, as an incentive to the right sort of grief (1 Thess. 4.13): not the kind of grief that overtakes people without hope, people in the pagan world the Thessalonians knew so well…This in, in fact, as close as we come in early Christian literature to the theme much beloved of preachers at funerals, namely the promise of a reunion beyond the grave with Christians already dead. Nothing is said, one way or the other, about such a reunion taking place before the resurrection itself; but the pastoral logic of the passage insists that an eventual reunion is what the creator God has in mind, and will accomplish at the time of Jesus’ return.[6]

Wright shows that 1 Thessalonians 4 – one of Paul’s clearest discussion of the resurrection, does not discuss any element of a current half-resurrection where those who are asleep are somehow interacting. Instead, it argues that these figures are very clearly asleep and will not rise until the day of the Lord.

Wright does a very good heuristic move, however, by showing the challenge of this view. He focuses on Philippians 1 which has his angst wherein he seems to suggest that his dying would be unity with Christ.[7] This would seem to suggest a kind of current state of being with Christ before the resurrection. Wright argues that this can be understood in context. He mentions nothing about any resurrection connected with this intermediate state. Instead, he says that it is a comment about a way in which those who have “died in Christ” are somehow united with him even though they are asleep. It is not to suggest the great value of this state, rather, it can be argued, it is to show the weakness of the current world in which we live. The argument is that our present life is so hard – not that the intermediate one before the resurrection will be so good.

What is to be appreciated in Wright’s analysis is that he is fair to those who disagree with him and shows why it is they do so. What he could have done better in 1 Thessalonians was to emphasize the communal concern of resurrection. He mentions it once in quote cited above, but on the whole, he falls into the usual trap of understanding 1 Thessalonians 4 of thinking that it was responding to those who have died and the question of if they had “missed it.” If that was the case, then verse 1 would have solved it – they did not miss it. The next 6 verses are set to explain what will happen all with the idea that the dead will be with them in the future and that there is no priority of those who have died from those who are alive. It is as if the primary problem was not the question that those who died might miss it, but whether they would really be a community in the future. This aspect seems woefully lacking in Wright’s analysis and without it, the conversation becomes too one-sided and does not explain the complexities of the text.

---

[1] RSG, 209.

[2] RSG, 210

[3] RSG, 209.

[4] RSG, 237-240.

[5] Eph. 2:4-7.

[6] RSG, 217.

[7] RSG, 226.

Is Philippians 3:5-9 relevant to Paul’s “conversion?”: An argument for challenging a common reading

Very frequently in conversation about Paul’s theology in both the “New Perspective,” “Neo-Lutheran Perspective” or simply traditional readings, much is made of the nature of Paul’s “conversion” experience.[1] Indeed, much of the “New Perspective” was developed from Stendahl’s argument that we should not think of Paul’s experience as a “conversion” from one religion to another, but rather simply a “calling” to a new mission to the Gentiles. The strength of this argument is a priority of Galatians 1. Philippians 3 is then read with the understanding of Galatians. The traditional perspective reads it the opposite way – that Paul’s proclamation that he now considers his standing within Judaism as skubala and this insight should govern how we read Galatians 1. In both cases, both sides are using Philippians 3 as a fundamental text to teach us about Paul’s conversion. However, a closer look at Philippians 3 seriously questions whether such a grouping is helpful. Rather, this paper suggests that Philippians 3 should be understood as a missional strategy as expressed in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23. This would not fundamentally change which of the views one holds (New Perspective or Traditional readings). Rather, I argue we need to look more carefully at the texts and be careful as to what we they are truly expressing.

The letter to the Philippians is historically confusing, so much that it has led many to think that it is actually a compilation of 3 letters of Paul to the community. Paul seems to have three separate messages and settings that do not seem to completely with each other. Without going too far into this conversation, the letter is divided between Phil. 1:1-3:1; 3:2-4:1; and 4:1-23. Whether or not the book was actually a compilation of three different letters or if Paul simply wrote the letter in three sections, for the purposes of this paper, 3:2-4:1 does seem to have a fundamentally different circumstance in mind than the other sections. Most commentators – even very conservative ones who are very opposed to this division of books of the Bible in practice agree. Very few use any sections of Phil. 1-2 to understand the context in Philippians 3. Therefore, this paper will focus entirely on Philippians 3:2-4:1 as a self-enclosed unit that deserves to be studied on its own.

The use of Philippians 3 for information about Paul’s conversion is based upon the fact that Paul does discuss his “former” life and his “current” life. The text, therefore, was quite naturally read as good information about how he once lived as compared to how he lives now. The text in full is expressed here:

If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: ⁵circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; ⁶as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

7 Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. ⁸More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ ⁹and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.[2]

Here, it can be seen why readers of Philippians have seen it as helpful information as regards to his “conversion.” It presents some kind of contrast between how he lives now and how he lived in the past. This is particularly helpful because of how rarely Paul speaks autobiographically and thus this passage would be very helpful if it was discussing this contrast. The problem, of course, is that nothing in the text itself says when this former and current life are contrasted. It is only an interpretative decision that readers take this autobiographical discussion to be the moment of his “conversion.”

The two different perspectives on Paul consider this same text and use it quite differently. The traditional “Lutheran” perspective argues that Paul’s conversion was a shift in his thinking. Smart scholars recognize that there was no such thing as “Christianity” when Paul lived, but they argue that he didn’t know what to call this new revelation, but he did see it as something aggressively different. They argue that Galatians 1 presents the event while Philippians 3 presents the content. Galatians 1 does clearly present Paul’s version of what happened:

 11 For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; ¹²for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

13 You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. ¹⁴I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors. ¹⁵But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased ¹⁶to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being, ¹⁷nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus.[3]

Paul, therefore, describes the event as a revelation of God’s son, Jesus Christ, to him and gave him the mission of going to the Gentiles. The traditional readers then argue that Paul here does not tell us the content of the revelation. Instead, they argue that he merely discusses the event as an event. They then use Philippians 3:7-9 as the content:

7 Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. ⁸More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ ⁹and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.[4]

The argument is that the content of Phil. 3 provides the means by which Paul saw his life radically differently. This was, for the traditional perspective, what the implications of the revelation of God’s son. The primary shift, then, was that Paul radically altered his life and that at that revelatory moment, he ceased his former life in Judaism and started a new one completely differently. Some would go even farther and say that he saw the error in his old life and its impossibility and that he found a new solution to this crisis. The revelation then, was primarily, and introspective psychological shift. The mission to the gentiles, then, was secondary. The fact that he went to the gentiles was really only an extrapolation from the fact that Paul has abandoned and denigrated the value of the Torah. Therefore, he can easily go to the gentiles who were, before this moment, excluded as they didn’t follow Torah.

The New Perspective, by contrast, prioritizes Galatians 1 over against Phil. 3. They interpret Galatians 1’s comment that it was “God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace” which had contacted him. Paul does not see this as a new god, a new religion, nor a new understanding of the law. Instead, he sees it as a revelation of God’s son with the primary purpose of ^“so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles.” The mission to the Gentiles was the primary content of the message. They prove this by focusing on the same passage from Philippians, merely emphasizing Phil. 3:6 as the guide for what follows. Phil 3:6 argues that in Paul’s “former life” he had no problem following Torah: “As to righteousness under the law, [I was] blameless.” The New Perspective, then, argues that this shows us what his life was life “before” his conversion – he was someone who felt that he absolutely was following Torah and had no problem. The primary argument, of course, is that there was room for forgiveness in Torah. Paul was quite comfortable saying that both “As to righteousness under the law, [I was] blameless” and “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”[5] The New Perspective, then, argues that Philippians shows us clearly that Paul’s “conversion” was not a shift from following the law legalistically (and unsuccessfully) to abandoning it as a new covenant. Instead, they argue that Paul did not see this revelation as a functional change in his religious world, just that he received a special “calling” to go to the Gentiles. They then argue that Phil. 3:7-9 which discusses his seeing his previous merits as skubala is merely secondary to that primary mission. They argue that Paul abandon’s his perfectly good salvation he already possessed in order to reach the gentiles: “In order that I may gain Christ ⁹and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.”[6] The argument, then, is that at Paul’s “calling” he abandons Torah observation – which he could well have used for salvation – and now embraces Christ as if he were a gentile.

I am not particularly interested, in this article, in arguing for or against either of these previous positions; what I would like to note is that both sides implicitly assume that Philippians 3 should be interpreted as conversation about Paul’s conversion. Both sides feel that anything talking about former Torah observation with current non-observation must have been at the point of his “conversion.” That assumption is what I argue needs to be more carefully considered. First, it is necessary to look carefully at the whole text of Philippians and ask if this necessarily has anything to do with the “conversion” scene. Consider the text again with that question in mind:

 If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: ⁵circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; ⁶as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

7 Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. ⁸More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ ⁹and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.[7]

If one reads carefully, he has no conversation about the point at which, nor the motivation for his abandoning Torah observation. He certainly does narrative his change in behavior. However, it should be noted that he doesn’t say that it was at the point of revelation as depicted in Galatians 1 that he made this shift. Further, while he does say that he abandoned Torah observation so that he could be in relationship with Christ as his primary covenant, he does not say that Torah observation is necessarily in competition. He does suggest that righteousness under the Torah – which it should be noted he does imply he really did have – was different than righteousness gained by Christ, however, he never completely says they are mutually exclusive.

If we do not know when he makes this shift – the assumption that it was at his “conversion” scene is simply an assumption – then reasonable question ought to be asked why he made this shift. If he made the shift directly at his conversion, then the combining of Phil. 3 and Galatians 1 would make good sense. However, neither text suggests that as something that necessarily occurred. Galatians 1 never says anything about abandoning Torah just as Philippians 3 does not say anything about the “conversion” experience.

Further, the problem is complicated given the polemical challenge of both texts. Galatians 1 is challenging the church in Galatia that his authority is not from a human source. Philippians 3 is warning those of the “evil workers” – Jewish Christian missionaries – who are preaching circumcision. Philippians 3 then is making a strong argument that circumcision is unnecessary and to do so, he uses his own example of not following Torah. However, if the primary argument is that something is unnecessary or extraneous, that is hardly reason to suggest that it was antithetical to his gospel.

If his message is simply one that following Torah is not necessary (and given that the time is short, a general waste of time for the gentiles), then it is far more challenging for us to ask when he abandons Torah. If his message is that one can be following Torah and following Christ – it is just not necessary – there is definitely room for Paul to have made this shift at some time separate from his “conversion.”

Real question can be raised as to whether this would best be understood in regard to his missional strategy. He argues that when he tries to reach a group, he either follows Torah or not depending upon the preference of the group. Famously he argues thus in 1 Corinthians:

19 For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. ²⁰To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. ²¹To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. ²²To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, so that I might by any means save some. ²³I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.[8]  

Paul clearly abandons Torah when he functions with the Gentiles. He further can follow Torah when he is with Jews. Philippians 3 then could easily be reflecting upon a missional strategy that he could have adopted at really any time – it would not necessarily have to be at his “conversion.”

Finally, if one considers Acts, there is not good reason at all to think that Acts argues that Paul abandoned Torah on the road to Damascus. While Acts is usually seen with great skepticism, one would think that this book – which traditional perspective authors claim is clearer as far as Paul changing from one religion to another – would make it clear that Paul abandons Torah observation. However, in chapter 9 on the road to Damascus, there is nothing about Torah observation. Further, Ananias makes no mention of it. In fact, Peter’s revelation that Torah observation was not always necessy will not occur until the following chapter. The text does say that Paul went in and out among the believers – and seemingly also the Gentiles, it says nothing about whether Paul actually abandoned Torah or not. In fact, there is no indication at all in Acts that Paul even preached a gospel that did not include Torah observation until Acts 15 when the Jerusalem council comes to that decision. It is later very clear that Paul does preach that Gentiles do not need to follow the Torah covenant, as Jews frequently accuse him of doing. However, when one reads it carefully, it should be noted that he is accused of telling other people not to follow Torah, not that he himself does not: “This man is persuading people to worship God in ways that are contrary to the law.”[9] Finally, Paul even follows proper temple worship in Jerusalem.[10] Of course, none of this proves Paul didn’t abandon Torah in Acts, however, the assumption that Acts agrees that Paul’s conversion included his abandonment of Torah is simply inaccurate. The conversion experience in Acts mentions nothing about Torah. In fact, Acts would suggest that this shift came later (if at all).

All of this does not end with me arguing that Philippians 3 cannot be used to interpret Galatians 1. When there is so precious little about Paul’s life, it would be a mistake to discard anything. What I am arguing however, is that the implicit assumption that these texts must be talking about the same event is incorrect. Any connection between the two texts must be proven. That his abandonment of Torah occurred at his “conversion” is a possible hypothesis – but it is only a hypothesis. I have presented another possible one – that this could have been a later development based upon his mission to the Gentiles. My hypothesis is to be viewed simply as that – another possible hypothesis. In either case, both the New Perspective and the traditional perspective would do well to be more careful with the combination of these two texts.

---

[1] Throughout this essay, I will put the “conversion” in quotes merely because this provides middle ground. The New Perspective on Paul challenges whether Paul truly “converted” – i.e. changed from one religion to another whereas the traditional perspective insists upon the word. Providing the quotation marks is a way of recognizing that Paul did go through some transformative event – whether it is better construed as a “call” or a “conversion” is outside the scope of this essay. I use the term “conversion” simply because it is the most traditional naming of the event and thus the most recognizable for readers. I am not here implicitly supporting or denigrating either position.

[2] Phil. 3:4b-9.

[3] Gal. 1:11-17.

[4] Phil. 3:4b-9.

[5] Romans 7:15

[6] Phil. 3:9.

[7] Phil. 3:4b-9.

[8] 1 Cor. 9:19-23

[9] Acts 18:13; 21:21-26.

[10] Acts 24:14-18.

Chapter Four: Time to Wake Up (2): Hope Beyond Death in Post-Biblical Judaism

 [This is an ongoing project that is analyzing N.T. Wright’s 5 volume series, Christian Origins and the Question of God. This series is widely read and bridges the gap between the academic and devotional world. It is therefore worthy to be carefully analyzed so that all readers can understand his key points while at the same time gaining a critical eye to some of his rather bold claims. This series of posts are concerning volume 3 – The Resurrection of the Son of God.]

N.T. Wright’s second chapter wherein he considers resurrection in second temple Judaism will bring out a relatively rare aspect in these blog reviews – I tend to agree with him. Wright argues that, much like Biblical views, second temple Judaism was interested in a “life after life after death.” He argues that this was a revolutionary moment that was primarily understood in apocalyptic terms. This post will simply summarize some of his key points and then show what it is that Wright is attempting to foreshadow and prove about Christian ideas (and countering false ideas).

First, Wright presents that belief in resurrection was fundamentally different from an idea of a non-bodily ethereal life directly after one dies. Rather, the hope that was presented was something that occurred at the end of days which would be very much a kingdom of God on earth in a new kind of existence. Wright argues that there were various different views of life after death, but that they were all relatively the same for this particular aspect:

If the bible offers a spectrum of belief about life after death, the second-Temple period provides something more like an artist’s palette: dozens of options, with different ways of describing similar positions and similar ways of describing different ones.[1]

 Resurrection, we must again insist, meant life after “life after death:” a two-stage future hope, as opposed to the single-stage expectation of those who believed in a non-bodily future life.[2]

The two passages present thing clearly – there was a variety of different types of writings (and there were), but in some way, there always was a view that something else was coming. I would have used the language of a “coming kingdom” more than Wright did, but the idea is essentially the same.

Wright is correct in showing that all of the expectation for a future life were revolutionary in its grandest sense. The expectation of a future life after death was popular in the sense of not just extending a life, transporting out of this life, or becoming above this life. Instead, resurrection implied a radical disruption and recreation of the sense of life itself. There is no way to express this outside the language of revolution.

The real problem was that resurrection was from the beginning a revolutionary doctrine. For Daniel 12, resurrection belief went with dogged resistance and martyrdom. For Isaiah and Ezekiel, it was about YHWH restoring the fortunes of his people. It had to do with the coming new age, when the life-giving god would act once more to turn everything upside down – or perhaps, as they might have said, right way up. It was the sort of belief that encouraged young hotheads to attack Roman symbols placed in the Temple, and that, indeed, led the first-century Jews into the most disastrous war they had experienced.[3]

Wright, in his interest in understanding the context of Judaism as focused around the problem of “exile” focuses more on the political than the cosmic, but for second temple Judaism, these things were united.

Their not having their land was accepted as a condition of the corrupted world in which they lived. They recognized that for any future life that would have things set “right” again, they could not simply exist as the political entity Israel as they did under the monarchy as before the Babylonian exile, they had to go farther and change the way living was structured. The way they would receive the land was not by conquering their foes in battle, it was through changing who and what their foes were. If they simply ceased to exist in a cosmic battle between good and evil in which good wins (as god would be directing it), then a real kingdom of God could be established.

Wright correctly points out that this ideal was thoroughly apocalyptic. The understanding of hope was fully apocalyptic in that there was an expectation that the evil in this world must be destroyed. Wright explains:

And in the middle of the texts and their subject-matter we find frequent references to the purposes of Israel’s god for his people after their death. In keeping with the genre and style of the apocalyptic writing, these references are often cryptic; but again and again the hope they express, as we might expect from the spiritual heirs of Daniel and Ezekiel, is not for a permanently disembodied immortality but for a resurrection at some time still in the future.[4]

There is a reason it is called “apocalyptic hope.” The apocalyptic is the world in which there is an expression that there is a great evil in the world that is putting down the good. This evil must be punished and destroyed. Those who are righteous are currently suffering and are to but wait until God will destroy that evil. When that happens, once for all, life will be fundamentally different. Therefore, the coming changes are in the language of judgment – the apocalyptic event is judgment upon that evil that is currently plaguing the world:

Resurrection thus belongs clearly within one regular apocalyptic construal of the future that Israel’s god has in store. Judgment must fall, because the wicked have been getting away with violence and oppression for far too long; when it does, bringing with it a great changing in the entire cosmic order, when those who have died, whose souls are resting patiently, will be raised to new life. Many of these apocalypses, as we have seen, allude to Daniel 12 in making the point. And all of them, in doing so, hold together what we have seen so closely interwoven in the key biblical texts: the hope of Israel for liberation from pagan oppression, and the hope of the righteous individual for a newly embodied, and probably significantly transformed, existence.[5]

The new existence only can occur when judgment occurs, evil will be destroyed and then Israel can truly be Israel.

Part of the effects of the destruction of Israel is that the whole people of God will be united. If they were not, then how can the readers say that the new life is any different from the previous? If that is so, then there must be a new way of dealing with the problem of death and thus the concept of resurrection is used. Resurrection is a new way of living in the future that includes everyone after the apocalyptic event:

[Resurrection] was one particular story that was told about the dead: a story in which the present state of those who had died and would be replaced by a future state in which they would be alive once more. As we noted a the end of chapter 1, ‘resurrection’ was a life after life after death, the second of two stages in the post-mortem program. Resurrection was, more specifically, not the redefinition or redescription of death, a way of giving a positive interpretation to the fact that the breath and blood of a human body had ceased to function, leading quickly to corruption and decay, but the reversal or undoing or defeat of death, restoring to some kind of bodily life those who had already passed through that first stage. It belonged with a strong doctrine of Israel’s god as the good creator of the physical world.[6]

For evil and death to be destroyed, then they had to practically destroyed for it to be a new kingdom of God.

Wright’s analysis is generally sound. It can be argued that his emphasis on the apocalyptic is overemphasizing one version of Judaism to the detriment of others. The Sadducees, for instance (which Wright does discuss as an exception to the rule)[7] held that there really was no significance to a future life at all outside of the traditional value in descendants as the focus of how to live forever. The Sadducees cannot have been the only Jews to have this view. However, a fair point can be argued that this view is certainly not left to us in surviving texts. Those who wrote and whose writings have been preserved do tend to prioritize an apocalyptic expectation – indeed, the Sadducees themselves left us no writings that have been preserved. Therefore, even if this was not the majority position, it certainly was the loudest minority that dominated the discussion at least in later Jewish though and most probably during that same period.

Wright, however, presents all of this in order to set up a dialogue that is coming – that resurrection should not be understood as something that happens directly after someone dies, but rather is something that happens at the end of days. This is not surprising for Jewish thought in the second temple period, but would be rather shocking to many modern Christians who make vague comments about heaven as if it is something that is currently being populated directly after one’s death. Therefore, Wright goes to extra lengths to counter this position that resurrection was a future expectation rather than a present reality for those who have died. Consider the following example:

In that world, nobody supposed that the dead were already raised; resurrection, as we have seen, describes new bodily life after a present mode of ‘life after death.’ So: where and what are the dead now? To this, we may surmise (and verse 9 will demonstrate it further), the Pharisees gave the answer: they are at present like angels, or spirits. They are presently disembodied; in the future, they will receive their new embodiment.[8]

Wright makes this comment to address his readers. There are very few people who think that the Pharisees would have thought that there was any type of resurrection as a present state. There are, however, many Christians who believe this. Wright here is foreshadowing his future argument about the New Testament which will show that this construct was for ancient Judaism and is the same for the New Testament. He realizes that this will challenge many evangelical Christians’ understandings and he is completely comfortable with that – in many ways that is his primary goal.

---

[1] RSG, 129.

[2] RSG, 130.

[3] RSG, 138.

[4] RSG, 153-154.

[5] RSG, 162.

[6] RSG, 201.

[7] RSG, 131.

[8] RSG, 133.

Chapter Three – Time to Wake Up (1): Death and Beyond in the Old Testament

 [This is an ongoing project that is analyzing N.T. Wright’s 5 volume series, Christian Origins and the Question of God. This series is widely read and bridges the gap between the academic and devotional world. It is therefore worthy to be carefully analyzed so that all readers can understand his key points while at the same time gaining a critical eye to some of his rather bold claims. This series of posts are concerning volume 3 – The Resurrection of the Son of God.]

The Hebrew Bible is notorious for its relative disinterest in life after death. This, of course, is only notorious because of the later Christian obsession with life after death, thereby making the silence in the Old Testament shocking. N.T. Wright explores this problem well showing how there was a general disinterest in what later Christians would be interested in with any type of life after death and anticipates that what will come later can, in some ways, be understood given the worldview of the Hebrew Bible itself.

Wright sets up the problem well. He notes that the interest in any type of resurrection was – to be generous – dormant in the Old Testament.  This, of course, is a shock to Christian groups who use resurrection as one of the most fundamental tenets. Wright explains this problem well to begin the chapter:

It is all the more surprising, then, to discover that, within the Bible itself, the hope of resurrection makes rare appearances, so rare that some have considered them marginal. Though later exegesis, both Jewish and Christian, became skilled at discovering covert allusions which earlier readers had not seen – a skill shared, according to the gospels, by Jesus himself – there is general agreement that for much of the Old Testament the idea of resurrection is, to put it at its strongest, deeply asleep, only to be woken by echoes from later time and texts.[1]

Aside from the pun about coming from sleep to waking up as a corrolary for death itself, I’m not sure if Wright can be quite as generous as this. Some early texts have far less a dormant idea than they basically have no idea at all. Wright explains this himself. There simply was very little to no interest in life after death for the majority of Israel:

In fact, however, an interest in ‘life after death’ for its own sake was characteristic of various pagan worldview (that of Egypt, for instance), not of ancient Israel.[2]

The interest was simply not there.

Wright correctly points out that this was not a problem for Israelites (as many seem to think it would be). A worldview that would be depressed of not having anything after death would have to be in contrast to another that thought there was life after death:

It would be wrong to give the impression that the early Israelites were particularly gloomy about all this. Only a world which had already begun to hope for something more interesting and enjoyable after death would find this vision unusual or depressing.[3]

This point that Wright makes is important for his Christian readers. Many Christians fall into the trap of thinking that without a belief in a future life in the kingdom of God, then, there could be no hope. However, that is only true if one is hoping for something else and then learns one is not going to get it.

Wright, then moves into a proof (in which this will be the first chapter to be followed by the next) that argues that resurrection did eventually become part of the worldview, it was a natural extension of the very worldview that was already present:

When belief in resurrection eventually appeared, it is best understood, as I shall argue below, not as a strange foreign import but as a re-expression of the ancient Israelite worldview under new and different circumstances.[4]

In form, this is good logic. Any development of an idea needs to be something that actually develops; not something that crops up out of the blue. While I agree with Wright in this element, I would slightly shift what precisely shifted to lead to a discussion of resurrection.

Before exploring this aspect, though, it should be noted what Wright does very well. Wright recognizes what resurrection would have meant to an Old Testament sensibility. It had to mean something that occurred after death rather than in place of death. Wright explains this clearly:

The texts we shall consider, however we understand their detailed nuances, are not speaking about a new construal of life after death, but about something that will happen after whatever ‘life after death’ may involve. Resurrection is not just another way of talking about Sheol, or about what happens, as in Psalm 73, ‘afterwards’, that is, after the event of bodily death. It speaks of something that will happen, if it does, after that again. Resurrection means bodily life after ‘life after death’, or, if you prefer, bodily life after the state of ‘death.’ That is why it is misleading – and foreign to all the relevant texts – to speak, as does one recent writer, of ‘resurrection to heaven.’[5]

What Wright is arguing is that resurrection needs to be seen as a new state of something. It is not what Elijah or Enoch experienced. It is something else once the domain of death, the place of sheol, or the time of this world has to be completed. It is the step after that. This is where analogies of the dead coming out of the grave break down. While they do, they don’t come out of the grave in the sense that Lazarus did in John 11. That would simply be going through the process again – any resurrection had to be something that was a step beyond that.

Wright argues that the whole idea of life after death arose out of a rereading of God’s covenant with Israel. In this, Wright must be correct. However, his argument is that the development came from the logical extension of a theology of exile. Wright explains his perspective:

It is not difficult to see what expulsion from the garden would have meant (not only to readers, but to editors of the Pentateuch) during and after the exile in Babylon, especially in light of the promises and warnings of the great Deuteronomic covenant. Moses held out to the people life and death, blessings and curses, and urged them to choose life – which meant, quite specifically, living in the promised land as opposed to being sent into the disgrace of exile. But already in Deuteronomy there was the promise that even exile would not be final: repentance would bring restoration and the renewal both of the covenant and of human hearts. The explicit link of life with land and death with exile, coupled with the promise of restoration to the other side of exile, is one of the forgotten roots of the fully developed hope of ancient Israel. The dead might be asleep; they might be almost nothing at all; but hope lived on within the covenant and promise of YHWH.[6]

Here, Wright argues that it was exile which caused them to rethink the covenant promises in a new way that led to a conversation about life after death and in this relies heavily upon Daniel to show the interest in the rest of the chapter.

Wright here is certainly correct that it had to do with the covenant, but I am not sure exile is the best solution in this case. He leans upon Daniel, but Daniel, by many scholars, is dated to closer to the Maccabean period than the Babylonian exile meaning that it is written to a community that is comfortable (in some sense) in diaspora for over 400 years. Further, his argument that exile is death and the land is life would have been true at one period – particularly noted in the book of Exodus – it is not clear that it always would be the same.

The shift, however, was covenantal. In the Old Testament, there was one clear way to preserve immortality – through descendants. Descendants is one of the most important features in the whole of the Hebrew Bible and one of the major reasons for it was that this was the “eternal” side of the covenant with Abraham – the covenant would be for Abraham’s descendants as well as him himself. What shifted, it could be argued then, was less of a clear understanding of descent. Communities in diaspora with no hope (outside of the eschatological) of truly all uniting together in the land in the present time, then hypothesized a coming kingdom of God when all of the descendants of Abraham could finally unite in the land. While this sounds like Wright’s position on exile – and in some ways it is – there was an equally powerful drive that was motivated more by unity with ancestors so that descendants were less important.

Recall that while this was the central tenet of Old Testament religion, by the time of the New Testament, the emphasis seemed to be seriously shifted. Further, the early Jesus movement seems to have completely abandoned it. That shift in thinking cannot have been accidental. While some would argue that this was due to the cultural world of Greece and Rome, the solution was the same.[7] If the eternal promise would not be eternal through descent, then it needed to be eternal in another way. The most logical solution, then, would be life after death of some kind.

Further complication could be the influence we see so commonly in the New Testament that death was coupled with sin. If that is the case, then how could a perfect order stand for it? If it was a very natural thing that always existed, then any future kingdom would be fine with it. However, if one lived without sin (which they did think was practically – even if not logically – possible), then logically sin would not be just. If God is just, then there must be some way of dealing with this issue.

These points are not to challenge the value of Wright. Wright’s main points are very good. As said many times throughout this blog series analyzing Wright’s very popular book series, I analyze his work this way because he presents very common views far better than many of those who parrot his position. Therefore, I hope it is taken as a compliment to his work that I analyze it in this way.

---

[1] RSG, 85.

[2] RSG, 87.

[3] RSG, 90.

[4] RSG, 87.

[5] RSG, 108-109.

[6] RSG, 92-93.

[7] For this shift, see Peter Brown, Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).

Conflicted Feelings about Marcus Borg’s life and work

Marcus Borg has passed away. The news report can be found here. There will surely be, in the following days several pieces presented about his life and legacy. This paper is my writing this as a scholar in the field of early Christianity and the conflicted feelings that I have about what value and challenges he (and others of his ilk) have brought to the academic study of the field. There is certainly a conversation to be had about whether Borg was helpful or not for the devotional life of Christians, but that is not primarily what this post will be about. Instead, I want to consider his work for its scholarly sake.

Borg was both a scholar of the historical Jesus and an activist for progressive Christianity. He, along with John Dominic Crossan and Robert Funk established and maintained the controversial Jesus Seminar which mixed these two interests. For Borg’s purely academic work (mostly in articles, less in books) his scholarship was generally academically sound. In his books, however, he often wrote for a mass audience with sometimes some wildly fantastic claims. These claims were very helpful for his interest in a progressive Christianity, but less helpful for discussion of the study of Christianity in its academic field.

Borg can be placed among a number of scholars whose work was more or less helpful for mass current movements, but rather questionably helpful for the progress of the study of Christianity. With Borg can be placed figures like John Dominic Crossan, Bart Ehrman, and Reza Aslan. These figures have clear social agendas and hope to convert their readers to their particular points of view. Frequently, when they do this, they sacrifice some academic acumen. Much like Borg, these figures, when they do truly scholarly work, are good scholars. When, however, they spend more time on challenging the mass audience to rethink their assumptions, they often sacrifice their scholarly strength to make a more shocking statement. All one has to do is to consider the difference between Ehrman’s very academic and valuable book on Christian pseudepigrapha Forgery and Counterforgery: Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics wherein Ehrman argues that pseudepigraphy was practiced as a polemical discourse for and against other pseudepigraphical texts. This tome is over 600 pages, well documented and is a boon for the academic study of religion. Then, compare that to his popular sensational book Forged: Writing in the Name of God – Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. In this second book, he abandons his argument that pseudepigraphy was a polemical discourse and instead just writes a book on why the mass audience shouldn’t believe the traditional authors wrote the Bible. This divergence is striking. In one, Ehrman does the hard work of furthering the conversation about the concept of authorship in antiquity; in the other, he just tries to stir up people’s convictions (both those who love the scripture and those who hate it).

Borg can be seen in a very similar light. The majority of his publications were not scholarly works. They were public appeals to a mass audience in order to stir up feelings that others may or may not have held. This was encapsulated most profoundly with the Jesus Seminar which held a council to decide which sayings of Jesus in the Gospel was more or less historical and even went so far as to create a book with the “authentic” sayings of Jesus based on some relatively vague principles. The study of the historical Jesus is an art rather than a science, but the resultant book of the process would not fit within even the academic study of the historical Jesus. It does not clearly show why certain pieces were included and others were excluded. It does not explain clearly why some key pinciples were selected. Instead, it is a book that is relatively useless in the academic sphere, but rather thought provoking for those in the public realm and certainly sold a lot of copies.

It should be briefly noted that it is not only liberal scholars who fall into this trap. Similar things could be said of Luke Timothy Johnson, N.T. Wright, and Raymond Brown. These figures also vacillate between very good exegetical and academic studies and popular works that really are not scholarly precise. Further, there are figures such as Karen Armstrong who only really work in the public sphere and never really make a contribution to the academy in any real way.

What are scholars to think of all of this? Was Borg good for the academic field of the study of religion? I would argue he was. Borg reached an audience who would have had absolutely no interest in the academic field of religion and got them interested. He brought people to the door – for the right or wrong reasons – that could challenge them to explore further into the field.

I did not care for most of Borg’s conclusions. He was either a buffoon or worse yet, just a propagandist. However, whatever he did, he got people to stop and ask questions. For the field of early Christianity, we should applaud all of these figures who take the time to try to reach a mass audience. While Borg’s conclusions were academically skeptical, the sources he dialogued with were the same sources that academics use. A vast number of people got interested in the academic field.

What is even more important is which people got interested due to Borg’s work. Borg’s work was universally despised among the conservative Christian groups. That audience was probably not reached by Borg and for the most part, his books were probably not even read. However, I am not sure this group really needed convincing that the study of early Christianity was valuable. Instead, he reached an entirely different group who were either disenfranchised to the study of early Christianity, or even more probable, those who had no interest in the first place.

Would I have preferred that Borg be more academically sound in his books? Of course I would. Elaine Pagels and Robert Louis Wilken have accomplished this  - they have written very popular books that have sold very well among laity, but retained their academic integrity. These authors, though, are rare. Few people are able to accomplish this task. Marcus Borg did not do this. While I would have preferred he act in that manner, then I am starting to critique him simply for not being exceptional. That is hardly a fair critique of someone’s career.

Some might challenge me that Borg’s conclusions were too popular and challenged the faith of some devotional Christians. That might be true. However, I would wonder if a book they read by a distant scholar really was more challenging to their faith than living within modern society where there are many who challenge faith positions of Christians. The only way that Borg could truly challenge the faith of someone is if the solution to this crisis is simply to ignore questions. As a teacher, that is not something that I can recommend. A faith seeking understanding must be the goal of Christians. Many would not find Borg all that helpful and therefore would not read his books at all. However, that does not necessarily mean Borg has done more harm than good.

The field of early Christianity is always in jeopardy. Horror stories are told of programs closing and jobs being lost. Borg’s work, then, should be applauded for making the field relevant – even if we don’t like how he made it relevant. A reader who gets interested because of one of Borg’s books very like will follow by looking at more standard scholars. That reader might well enroll in a class. No matter where one falls on the view of the historical Jesus, most all of us in the academy should believe that things that promote further education in our field are good. Borg did this. Perhaps in a way that some didn’t like, but rather than hanging him for poor conclusions, perhaps we should see the value in that he caused people to even ask questions – regardless of what conclusions he held.