The Unimaginable Glory of the Gospel: Romans 4:5 (Part 3)

For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about―but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? "Abraham trusted in God, and it was credited to his account for righteousness" [Genesis 15:6]. Now to the one who works, wages are not paid as a gift, but rather as what is owed. But to the person who doesn't work, but places trust in the One who justifies the ungodly, his or her faith is "credited for righteousness." (Romans 4:2-5, trans. JRM)

 

In Romans 4, the Apostle Paul turns to the example of Abraham, the patriarch to whom God made the Bible's fundamental covenantal promises (Genesis 12, 15, 17, 22), promises of a "seed" and, ultimately, of a multi-national family whose "blessing" would mark the reversal of the vertical (Genesis 3) and horizontal (Genesis 11) effects of primeval human sin―promises the apostle claims were fulfilled through the eschatological manifestation of God's saving justice and faithfulness in the Christ event. For Paul, what now matters is belonging to the family of Abraham who receives blessing through Christ. It is here that complications arise, and hence controversies arose. What "seed" or family is he referring to? Is it the "seed" "according to the flesh" (Rom 4:1), the (Jewish) bearers of the promise who bear the mark of the covenant, i.e., circumcision? No, says Paul. What matters instead is belonging to his promised worldwide family (Rom 4:17), consisting of both the circumcised and the uncircumcised (Rom 4:11-12), who alike bear the fundamental Abrahamic family trait, namely the "faith" or "trust" the patriarch exhibited in response to the promise (Genesis 15) before he received the sign of circumcision (Genesis 17) (Rom 4:9-12).

For those of us raised in evangelical or Confessionalist Protestant circles, this all may seem like Theology 101. But problems arise once one assumes that Paul, in Romans 4 (especially in the verses quoted above), is arguing at a principial, trans-temporal, soteriological level against "Jews"―or any other would-be Pelagian moralist, for that matter―who argued the opposite, namely, that "justification," and consequently "salvation," is earned by "good works" that can serve as a basis for "boasting" and staking a claim for oneself before God. [1] Paul is much more subtle in his argumentation than that.

Paul's project in Romans 4 is fundamentally one of redefinition. To be precise, he is redefining the classic Jewish concept of election as a consequence of what he believed to be the eschatological fulfillment of God's covenant with Abraham in Christ's death and resurrection. [2] As we have already seen, the first aspect of this redefinition is that of Abraham's "seed" (sperma), the progeny who would be the beneficiaries of God's unconditioned (as we shall see) promises to the patriarch (e.g., Genesis 15:5, 13; 17:7-10; 22:17-18). For Second Temple Jews, nothing was more fundamental than their adherence to circumcision as the mark of their physical and hereditary covenantal identity, based on the clear teaching found in Genesis 17:

God said to Abraham, “As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. Throughout your generations every male among you shall be circumcised when he is eight days old, including the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring. Both the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money must be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. (Genesis 17:9-13, NRSV)

Paul, however, as we have seen, drives a proverbial wedge between the physical seed of Abraham (kata sarka) and what we may describe as his "spiritual" seed (i.e., the eschatological seed of promise, kata epangelian). And he does so through what was, at the time, a revolutionary reinterpretation of Genesis 15:6. Traditionally, Jewish interpreters read Genesis 15:6 through the hermeneutical lens provided by the covenantal passages of Genesis 17 (circumcision) and Genesis 22 (the Akedah/binding of Isaac). Hence Abraham's "faith" in Genesis 15 was generally interpreted, prospectively, as his "faithfulness" under trial. [3] Thus 1 Maccabees 2:52:

Was not Abraham found faithful when tested, and "it was credited to his account for righteousness?" (1 Maccabees 2:52, trans. JRM) [4]

And, lest we forget, in our haste to cast aspersions on Jews for their "legalistic" misinterpretation of the Genesis text, here is the Lord's brother, James:

Was not our father Abraham justified by works (ex ergōn edikaiōthē) when he offered up Isaac, his son, on the altar? You see that faith was working together (synergei) with his works, and that faith was brought to perfection by these works. And thus was fulfilled the Scripture which said, "And Abraham trusted God, and it was credited to his account for righteousness;" and he was called the friend of God (James 2:21-23, trans. JRM) [5]

Paul, however, reads Genesis 15:6 through a different lens. In what is perhaps his earliest extant letter (49 CE?), he illuminates the text, not through the lens of Abraham's subsequent faithfulness, but rather by looking backwards to the earlier and foundational Genesis 12:3 (Galatians 3:6-9). [6] By doing so he thereby discovers Abraham's trust in God's promise to be the defining trait of those people who constitute the eschatological fulfillment of that promise, those who "by faith (in Christ)" are blessed like and in Abraham. Though he doesn't cite Genesis 12 here in Romans 4, Paul's quotation of Genesis 17:5 ("I have made you the father of many nations") indicates that it indeed provides the grid for his appropriation of Genesis 15:6 in verse 3. [7]

This redefinition of the seed of Abraham also leads necessarily to a redefinition of how "the righteous ones " (hoi dikaioi) are to be identified as well. In the Hebrew Bible, the term "righteousness," when applied to humans, most often takes on the ethical connotation of behavior which is faithful to the obligations established by God's covenant with Israel (e.g., Isaiah 5:7; 56:1) [8] A righteous person is thus one who faithfully observes the Torah and thereby is contrasted with those deemed to be "sinners" and "the wicked" (e.g., Psalm 1:5-6). Instructive in this regard is Ezekiel 18:5-9:

If a man is righteous and does what is lawful and right—if he does not eat upon the mountains or lift up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel … [if he] follows my statutes, and is careful to observe my ordinances, acting faithfully—such a one is righteous; he shall surely live, says the LORD GOD. (NRSV) [9]

Importantly, it is these very "righteous ones" who, throughout Isaiah 40-55 and 56-66, are promised vindication ("justification") in the eschaton through the action of God's saving righteousness. Indeed, the prophet says that those who "pursue righteousness" can await the future manifestation of God's "righteousness" and "salvation" with confidence, in the certain hope that this saving deliverance will last "forever," "through all generations" (Isaiah 51:1-8).

It is in this light that we must understand Paul's somewhat strange conditional sentence in Romans 4:2. The issue in verses 1-8, as was also the case in the earlier Galatians 2:15-16, is this: Who are the "righteous?" And on what basis are they thus considered or pronounced to be "in the right" with God? Abraham, as the father of the Jews and the one to whom the foundational salvific promises were made, was rightly considered to be the paradigm of "righteousness" by both Paul and his implied interlocutors. Indeed, Second Temple Jews portrayed Abraham as the prototypical proselyte, a Gentile who turned away from idolatry to believe in, and worship, the one true God. [10] In every strand of Jewish literature from this period, Abraham's defining characteristic is considered to be his faithfulness in keeping the Torah. For example, the 2nd century BCE writing, Jubilees, says that "Abraham was perfect in all his deeds with the Lord, and well-pleasing in righteousness all the days of his life" (Jub. 23:10). Also in the 2nd century BCE, ben Sira speaks of Abraham's prodigious Law-keeping and attainment of "glory" (doxa):

Abraham was the great father of a multitude of nations,
    and no one has been found like him in glory. 

He kept the law of the Most High,
    and entered into a covenant with him;
he certified the covenant in his flesh,
    and when he was tested he proved faithful. (Sirach 44:19-20, NRSV) 

Lest anyone consider this attribution of Torah-fidelity to be the product of ben Sira's fanciful, anachronistic imagination, consider the Book of Genesis itself, in which YHWH says to Isaac:

"Reside in this land as an alien, and I will be with you, and will bless you; for to you and to your descendants I will give all these lands, and I will fulfill the oath that I swore to your father Abraham. I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven, and will give to your offspring all these lands; and all the nations of the earth shall gain blessing for themselves through your offspring, because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws." (Genesis 26:3-5, NRSV) [11]

Thus, when Paul, in verse 2, says that Abraham had something to "boast" about (kauchēma) if he had been "justified by works" (ex ergōn edikaiōthē), he expresses the seeming plausibility of that proposition in his religious milieu by using a so-called "first class condition," in which the condition (ei followed by an indicative verb) is presented as true for the sake of argument. It is likewise clear that the language of boasting, justification, and works reflects that found a few verses earlier in Romans 3:27-28. This fact suggests rather strongly that the "works" in question here in Romans 4:2 are, at the most basic level, works of the Torah, Jewish works arising from God's covenant with Israel, and not moral works per se, as if Paul were arguing at the level of abstract theological principle. [12] Abraham, by this reckoning, would have been adjudged to be "righteous" (i.e., "justified") on the grounds of his observance of the (yet to be promulgated!) Torah, his faithfulness to his covenantal obligations. Understood theologically, in terms of Abraham's exemplary/paternal role, "justification," on this reading, would be a pronouncement made by means of a descriptive or analytic judgment: people are considered "righteous" if and only if their conduct, in contrast to that of the "ungodly" (asebēs) and "sinners" (hamartoloi), shows themselves to be so by their "delight in" (to thelēma), and hence performance of, the Law (e.g., Psalm 1).

Despite the seeming plausibility of Abraham's envisaged boast, Paul will have none of it. He abruptly, indeed shockingly, shoots such a proposition down: "But not before God" (all' ou pros theon). [13] He is at pains, in other words, to deny the very possibility that Abraham or, a fortiori, anybody else for that matter, could have been pronounced "righteous" based on the performance of the works prescribed in the Torah. These "works," though correctly understood as incumbent upon Abraham's physical seed as the means of their living within the (old) covenant, had been definitively ruled out by the saving righteousness of God, manifested apart from the Law (chōris nomou, Romans 3:21) in the Christ event, which alone brought the Abrahamic promises to fruition. In retrospect, Paul discovered these "works of the Law" to be what John Barclay has described as "dead currency," a "measure of value" no longer relevant, rendered redundant by the cross. [14]

But if this is so, it will require a non-traditional interpretation of Genesis 15:6 like the one provided by Paul both here and in Galatians 3. More significantly, it will require yet another redefinition, namely, that of the nature of "grace" or "the gift" (charis) that underlies the "good news" of the "now time" (Romans 3:21) revelation of God's righteousness. It is to this radical "perfection" of grace, as Barclay puts it, [15] in terms of incongruity, that we will turn in our next, and fourth, installment in this series. And it is there that we will see the unimaginable glory of the gospel.

The Unimaginable Glory of the Gospel: Romans 4:5 (Part 2)

 

Romans 4 has, not without justification, been deemed a "midrash" or commentary on Genesis 15:6, [1] which Paul quotes in verse 3:

Abraham trusted in God, and it was credited to his account for righteousness (Romans 4:3, trans. JRM)

Indeed, the apostle proceeds to elaborate, first, on the meaning of "credited … as righteousness" (elogisthē … eis dikaiosynēn) in verses 4-12, and second, on the meaning of "believed/trusted" (episteusen) in verses 13-21. In doing so, as we saw in our previous post, he he takes up the two major threads introduced in Romans 3:27-31: first, that "justification"―the acquittal or pronouncement that one is "in the right" or "innocent" (dikaios) at the bar of God's eschatological tribunal―comes through faith rather than through Jewish "works of the Law" (3:27-28); and second, that these "works of the Law" are excluded because the "oneness" of God, confessed in the Shema, necessitates that justification be on the same basis, that of faith, for Gentiles as well as Jews (3:29-30). The Abraham story, explicated in chapter 4, is brought forward as demonstration that "faith" "upholds" (histanomen) rather than "invalidates" (katargoumen) the Torah, properly understood (3:31).

This analysis readily shows that Paul adduces the example of Abraham, not simply to point to him as an Old Testament exemplar to "prove" that people have always been "justified by faith," but―as he had previously done in Galatians 3:6-9―to ground his law-free mission to the Gentiles, which he believed was the eschatological fulfillment of God's covenant promises to the patriarch. Most important, to Paul, was the fact that God promised Abraham a "seed" (Genesis 15:5) as numerous as the stars visible in a nocturnal Middle Eastern sky. This promised "seed" was to be his "inheritance," his "very great reward" (Genesis 15:1). [2] The issue, though developed somewhat differently here in Romans 4, is the same as that in (the earlier) Galatians chapter 3: Who belongs to this seed of Abraham promised in Genesis 15? Is Abraham to be understood entirely, or at least necessarily, as "our forefather according to the flesh" (Romans 4:1), with all the covenantal implications found in, for example, Genesis 17? [3] No, Paul argues here in Romans 4. The scope of God's promises to Abraham must not be limited to those who are "of the Law" (ek nomou), that is, Jews (Romans 4:14, 16), those whose circumcision marked them as the bearers of the Abrahamic promise. Rather, since God has, in the words of the promise, "made [Abraham] a father of many nations" (Gen 17:5), he is instead to be viewed as the "father of us all" who "believe" like he did (Rom 4:16-17). What often goes unacknowledged at this point is that here in Romans 4 Paul, as N. T. Wright forcefully argues, is redefining the classic Second Temple Jewish doctrine of election for the eschaton. [4] What ultimately matters is not belonging to the physical seed demarcated by circumcision and Torah-keeping as the bearers of the promise, but rather the worldwide "seed" who would be the actual fulfillment of God's covenant promises to Abraham in and through the work of the physical seed's Messiah, Jesus.

To do this, Paul must, as he did when confronting his Jewish-Christian adversaries in Galatia, deal with the apparent problem that Genesis 17 itself speaks of the covenant as being both "in [Abraham's] flesh" and "everlasting" in duration (Genesis 17:10-11, 13-14). So, in verses 9-12, the apostle appears to attempt an end run around this not insignificant difficulty by pointing to the simple matter of chronology: Abraham was credited with "righteousness" while still in an uncircumcised state. In other words, since Genesis 15 occurred before Genesis 17, the "faith" through which this righteousness was credited to his account in the earlier text must be the mark of the Abrahamic family instead of the sign of circumcision, which he then demotes to the lesser status of being the "seal" (sphragis) of the "righteousness of faith" with which he had been credited (4:11). [5] 

What goes unsaid, and what likewise lies behind his earlier, concentrated scriptural argumentation in Galatians 3, is the fact that Paul has―rather shockingly for a trained rabbinic scholar―driven a proverbial wedge between the Abrahamic Covenant and the (later) Mosaic Covenant, thereby categorically denying the latter any positive, let alone definitive, role in salvation-history (cf. Galatians 3:15-25). Whereas the Torah was given, at least in theory, to be the badge of the covenant people as the bearers of the promise and means whereby they would live within the covenant and thus fulfill their priestly role vis-à-vis the nations, in Paul's view it fills that role no longer. Abrahamic heirship, in the sense in which Paul has redefined the concept, cannot come "through the Law" (Rom 4:13).

Why is this so? And how had Paul come to this (shocking) conclusion? Here it is helpful to note E. P. Sanders's distinction between arguments used to justify a position, and the real reasons that lay behind those arguments. [6] Surely the catalysts for Paul's mature theological thoughts in this matter were, first, his own conversion experience, when a flash of blinding light on the Damascus Road showed him that his "faultless" (amemptos) "righteousness in the Law" was all so much skybala fit for the dung heap (Philippians 3:6) [7]; and second, to his experience in the Gentile mission, when uncircumcised Gentiles, upon placing faith in Christ, received the gift of the eschatological Spirit. The Spirit was, for Paul, proof positive that these Gentile believers had been "justified" by faith and had thereby received the promised "blessing of Abraham" (Galatians 3:1-5, 8, 14). He also understood the Spirit as the fulfillment of the promised circumcised heart (Romans 2:25-29) expected for the Jews when the covenant would ultimately be renewed after exile (Deuteronomy 30:1-6). These experiences necessarily caused the apostle to re-examine the Scriptures and thus reinterpret them in keeping with the "facts on the ground," as it were.

Paul indeed does provide a partial rationale for rejecting "works of the Law" as the path to heirship in verses 14-15. In contrast to so much theologizing from certain corners of the "Old Perspective," it is not the fear that law-keeping would lead people to the sinful attempt to secure their position before God and thus boast in their achievements. [8] Nor, contrary to unguarded rhetoric from correspondent corners of the "New Perspective," and even though Paul is at pains to show that Gentiles must gain admittance to the family the same way as Jews, is it the distinctly postmodern concern of cultural imperialism rearing its ugly head to the detriment of the uncircumcised. No. In Paul's own words: "For if (it is only) those 'of the Law' (who) are heirs, faith has been rendered invalid [kekenōtai] and the promise nullified [katērgētai]. For the Law brings about [katergazetai] wrath" (Rom 4:14-15a, trans. JRM). Here the apostle makes two primary assertions. First, he makes the point, in the words of Ernst Käsemann, that "[t]he promise and faith would be pointless if the law could produce the heirs of Genesis 22." [9] Second, he finds the reason (gar) for this "pointlessness," the reason the promise would be reduced to "a mere dead letter" [10], in a controversial theological deduction based on the incontrovertible facts of Jewish history: The Law had its day in the sun, and it failed. As Paul had argued earlier in the letter, all the Law is capable of doing is providing the knowledge of sin when one inevitably fails to keep its demands (Rom 3:19-20). The "Jew's" boast in Torah and of being a light to the Gentiles is, and has consistently been, invalidated by their perpetual Law-breaking (Rom 2:17-24), and the Gentiles' consequent "blasphemy" of God's name on their account (Isaiah 52:5) shows the nation as a whole still to be in the throes of exile as covenant-breakers (Rom 2:24). [11] 

Yet Paul's gospel declared that in the Christ event God had, in his "righteousness," already fulfilled his promise to Abraham for the whole world (Rom 3:21-26). Consequently, what now mattered was being a part of Abraham's promised, eschatological multinational family promised to the patriarch in Genesis 15, 17, and 22. Since all people, both Gentiles and Jews, have shown themselves to be "under sin," the means of entrance in this family (via the lawcourt metaphor of "justification") must be the same in both cases; and the badge of covenant membership must be the characteristic trait manifested from the beginning by Abraham himself, namely, faith, so as to ensure that the promise operated on the principle of (a redefined) "grace": "For this reason (the promise) is by faith, in order that it might be according to grace, in order that the promise might be valid for all the seed, not to the one who is 'of the Law' only, but also to the one 'of the faith of Abraham,' who is the father of us all" (Romans 4:16a, trans. JRM [more on this subject in installment 4 in this series]).

This leads us back to Romans 4:2-8, which argues strongly for "faith" as the sole defining family trait and means of entry into this eschatological family. It is to those verses that we will return in our next entry in this series.

Frederick Douglass: "What, to the American Slave, is your 4th of July?"

 

Frederick Douglass, circa 1879
(National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain)

Here's Frederick Douglass, 169 years ago today, on 5 July 1852, speaking to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society : 

Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us? …

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.  

In his address, Douglass takes special aim at the Fugitive Slave Act, enacted on 18 September 1850 as part of the Compromise of 1850, which required slaves to be returned to their owners even if they had escaped to free states. In particular, he derides those "Divines" or theologians who defended, not only the law, but the institution of slavery as well:*

I take this law to be one of the grossest infringements of Christian Liberty, and, if the churches and ministers of our country were not stupidly blind, or most wickedly indifferent, they, too, would so regard it.

At the very moment that they are thanking God for the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, and for the right to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, they are utterly silent in respect to a law which robs religion of its chief significance, and makes it utterly worthless to a world lying in wickedness. Did this law concern the “mint, anise, and cumin” — abridge the right to sing psalms, to partake of the sacrament, or to engage in any of the ceremonies of religion, it would be smitten by the thunder of a thousand pulpits. A general shout would go up from the church, demanding repeal, repeal, instant repeal! — And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. Further, if this demand were not complied with, another Scotland would be added to the history of religious liberty, and the stern old Covenanters would be thrown into the shade. A John Knox would be seen at every church door, and heard from every pulpit, and Fillmore would have no more quarter than was shown by Knox, to the beautiful, but treacherous queen Mary of Scotland. The fact that the church of our country, (with fractional exceptions), does not esteem “the Fugitive Slave Law” as a declaration of war against religious liberty, implies that that church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, and not a vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love and good will towards man. It esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. A worship that can be conducted by persons who refuse to give shelter to the houseless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and who enjoin obedience to a law forbidding these acts of mercy, is a curse, not a blessing to mankind. The Bible addresses all such persons as “scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, who pay tithe of mint, anise, and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith.”

But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. Many of its most eloquent Divines. who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for Christianity.

For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! welcome atheism! welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny, and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke, put together, have done! 

(Read the entire speech here.)

Years ago I wrote a piece, based on the Apostle Paul's paraenesis in Romans 13, entitled "Why I Don't Celebrate the Fourth of July". I still stand by what I wrote then (where the rubber hits the road: working within the system to rectify wrongs and, if necessary, nonviolent civil disobedience, yes; armed revolution, no). Nevertheless, one would be perverse to deny the power of Thomas Jefferson's exalted rhetoric in the Declaration of Independence, adopted in Philadelphia on 4 July 1776, to the effect that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." I am proud to be an American because of this very ideological commitment, which has benefitted the world more than any words of mine could adequately convey. Nevertheless …

The problem then, as now, is that these great words were not applied to people across the board. African slaves and the millions of indigenous Americans living on the Continent were not afforded these rights. What pangs of conscience many of the founders felt about this hypocrisy were conveniently suppressed, only to be alleviated more than 80 years later by the horrors and bloodshed of the Civil War. Even then, it wasn't until 1964―during my own lifetime!―that racial, religious, and sexual discrimination were finally proscribed legally in my country. And yet, as anybody with eyes to see recognizes, systemic injustice continues to exist, denied only by those for whom such denial is politically, socially, and/or economically convenient.** Matters have not been helped by the so-called "conservative" majority of the Supreme Court, who eviscerated the 1965 Voting Rights Act with their unconscionable, and legally dubious, Shelby County v. Holder decision in 2013, and did even more damage to the Law by upholding Arizona's freshly-minted voter restrictions in last week's party-line Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee decision. All people's votes are equal according to the law, but it is more than apparent that some people's votes are more equal than others.

I write this, not (entirely) to be contrary, but rather to hammer home the illegitimacy of a certain right-wing view of what "patriotism" entails. Patriotism is not to be confused with "Nationalism," which, in its blind adherence to a mythical narrative of American righteousness and faith in some hazily defined and unhistorical notion of American "exceptionalism," amounts to little more than a form of low-rent idolatry. By contrast, "Patriotism," rightly understood, entails both pride in the nation's ostensible values as well as criticism of it when it fails to live up to those ideals, in hope of goading it to repentance and faithfulness to those ideals.

Of course, not all see it that way. I am 64 years old, and I well remember the outcry over John Carlos' and Tommie Smith's black power salutes on the Olympic Medal platform at Mexico City in 1968 (with the approval of Australia's silver medal-winning Peter Norman). I remember the criticism Vietnam protesters received from Nixon supporters over their opposition to a war America should never have prosecuted ("America: Love it or Leave it;" alas, Mike Stivic's lectures to Archie Bunker in Norman Lear's All in the Family should have nipped this hollow criticism in the bud). More recently, I am flabbergasted with the abuse and blacklisting of former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick for his kneeling during the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner before games to highlight the continued racism in American society (i.e., America's not living up to its stated ideals; the question left unanswered, of course, is this: Why is the anthem even played before games? How is it even remotely relevant?). Most recently, the same faux "outrage" and criticism was leveled against American hammer thrower Gwen Berry for turning away from the flag after her 3rd place finish in the recent 2021 Olympic trials (For her "sin," Texas―where else?―congressman Dan Crenshaw wants her kicked off the team).

More insidiously, manufactured "conservative" outrage over "Critical Race Theory" and the New York Times's "1619 Project"―not to mention hilariously wrong-headed reactions such as Donald Trump's "1776 Commission" and Texas's "1836 Project"―manifest a willingness to double down on whitewashed mythology when genuine American history proves too uncomfortable. Such "conservative" snowflakes, in the words of Jack Nicholson's Col. Jessup in A Few Good Men, "can't handle the truth."

But here's the point: Both verbal and symbolic criticism of America's shortcomings do not evince a dearth of patriotism. Criticism of American hypocrisy and failures does not equal "hatred" of America. What such criticism demonstrates is that the critic believes in American ideals and is calling the nation to faithfulness to their stated ideological commitments.*** In other words, such criticism is, in point of fact, evidence of the presence, rather than the lack, of patriotism. And it is, at the very least, bad form for men and women, who are the beneficiaries of both the acknowledged and unacknowledged privilege our country affords to white people, to condemn minority populations for their criticism of the country for reneging on its promise of "liberty and justice for all." After all, such "liberty and justice" are what they are entitled to. Moreover, the very constitution such "conservatives" claim to love guarantees the right of these people to air these criticisms. And that's nothing more than the great Frederick Douglass, on explicitly Christian grounds, did in his speech 169 years ago. "Liberty and justice for all." That's what America stands for. Here's to hoping that it will make strides in this direction in this, its 246th year.

The Unimaginable Glory of the Gospel: Romans 4:5 (Part 1)

 

Now to a worker, wages are not credited as a gift, but as what is due. But to the person who does not work, yet places trust in the One who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited with righteousness (Romans 4:4-5, trans. JRM)

As one raised in an evangelical household by a theologian father, and as one who attended a Lutheran elementary school for grades 1-4, the thought expressed here by Paul the Apostle is ingrained in my theological DNA. "Justification," and hence "salvation," does not come by "works," but only through faith in Christ. All human pretensions to moral achievement must, in the words of the great Lutheran New Testament scholar Ernst Käsemann, be "reduced to dust" in the face of the creatio ex nihilo of God's action in the gospel. [1] Indeed, the notion that God (only!) "justifies the ungodly" is itself unimaginable good news to one confronted each and every day by his constitutional ungodliness. More than that, this text may be understood as a precis of the apostle's famous theology of "grace." To understand it more fully, one must place it in the flow of Paul's argument in this, his most profound letter.

"Justification by Faith," the hallmark of the Protestant Reformation, is often understood in terms of what systematic theologians refer to as the ordo salutis, the "order" in which the benefits of Christ's salvific achievement are applied to the believer. Hence, for example, the "effectual call" of the Spirit engenders "faith," which then results in God's declaration of the believer as "righteous" (i.e., justification). That's all well and good, so far as it goes. But the Apostle Paul, both in Romans 3-4 and, earlier, in Galatians 2-3, develops his notion of justification by faith in the context of the historia salutis, how God has worked out his saving purposes in history. To be precise, in these two letters Paul consistently portrays "justification" as the entail of the eschatological fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant. 

Traditional Protestant exegesis has tended to portray Romans 1:18-3:20  in terms of an indictment of both Gentiles and Jews as individual sinners who are under sin's dominion and, hence, in need of the message of justification by grace proclaimed in the gospel. Of course, these chapters may, not wrongly, be used to convey this message. But the text, as Paul wrote and intended it, goes far deeper than this. Indeed, rhetorical analysis shows that the true target of his argument in this passage are his fellow "Jews" (Rom 2:17), existentially secure in their possession of, and performance of, the Torah as the charter of the covenant ("works of the Law," Rom 3:20), and hence confident of their superiority to the Gentiles, characterized by their "godlessness" (asebeia) and "unrighteousness" (adikia)  (Rom 1:18), to whom they presume themselves to be "teachers" and "guides" (Rom 2:18-20). Whereas, in point of fact, their failure to perform the Torah in which they boast causes these benighted Gentiles to "blaspheme" God's name on their account (Isaiah 52:5, quoted in Rom 2:24), implying they were still under the covenant curse of exile. [2] Indeed, their very "faithlessness" to their covenant obligations (Rom 3:3) provided all the evidence needed to show, as the Scriptures attest, that "all"―they no less than the Gentiles to whom they felt superior―were under the dominion of "Sin" and, hence, in need of rescue (Rom 3:9-18). [3] God, one might suppose, was on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, his "righteousness" demands that he show no favoritism and must, therefore, judge sin on the facts of the case (Rom 2:1-16). On the other, he has made promises to the Jews, and his righteousness likewise demands that he remain faithful to those promises (Rom 3:3-4). The "solution" to this dilemma, the means by which God's moral integrity [4] is maintained, is found in the "now-time" (nyni de) "manifestation" (pephanerōtai) or enactment of God's saving covenant "righteousness" in the atoning death of Christ, as a consequence of which he justly "justifies" Jew and Gentile sinners alike by his grace through their faith in Christ (Rom 3:21-26). [5]

This argument would have shocked most Second Temple Jews, no doubt like it would surely have confused the erstwhile Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus. Had not God chosen the people of Israel and made covenant with them? How, then, could he demolish the "distinction" (diastolē, Rom 3:22) between Jew and Gentile simply on the basis that all, as everyone acknowledges, "have sinned" (hēmarton, Rom 3:23)? Wouldn't the "biblical" solution be the one put forward in Deuteronomy 30:1-6, where God would rescue the people from exile and "circumcise their hearts" if and when they themselves turned back in repentance to follow the Law? [6] Indeed, such a worldview lay behind the zeal of so many of the Jews of Paul's day to perform what he terms "the works of the Law" (erga nomou). So Paul heads off this potential objection right away by asking, "Where, then, is boasting?" and immediately and categorically excluding such "boasting" from consideration (Rom 3:27). This, contrary to long-pedigreed Protestant assumptions, is not the classic boast of the Pelagian moralist who seeks to establish his or her standing before God on the basis of moral achievements. [7] It is, rather, the Jewish boast of covenantal privilege over against the Gentiles (cf. Rom 2:17). [8] Indeed, the little word "or" (ē) that introduces Romans 3:29 ("Or is God the God of the Jews only?") suggests quite clearly that "justification by works of the Law" would, by definition, limit justification to the Jews, who alone possessed the Law so as to be able to perform these distinctively Jewish practices. [9] For Paul, this potential Jewish boast is precluded by what he ironically terms "the law of faith" (nomos pisteōs)―the Torah, in other words, understood through the narratival hermeneutical grid laid bare in the apostle's recounting of the Abraham story which he provides in Romans 4. [10] Indeed, this "law of faith" expresses the manner in which Paul's gospel of "justification by faith" for Jew and Gentile alike "upholds" (histanō) the Torah (Romans 3:31). [11]

To validate this assertion, Paul turns, as he had done a few years earlier in Galatians 2, to the story of Abram/Abraham in Genesis 15, in particular the so-called "prooftext" of Genesis 15:6:

Abraham trusted in God, and it was credited to his account as righteousness (Romans 4:3, trans. JRM)

Traditional Protestant exegesis has, of course, looked at this as a "scriptural proof" or biblical "illustration" of the doctrine of justification by faith [12] On this reading, the Jews were mistaken in presuming that they could establish their position before God by performing the Law; on the contrary, as per this reading, Paul argues that "justification" has always been by faith (even if the content of that faith had changed over the course of salvation-history), and he goes to the story in Genesis about Abraham's faith and justification to "prove" this.

Such an understanding, however, runs into insurmountable difficulties, not least of which is the fact that the very clause used by Paul with reference to Abraham's prototypical justification ("it was credited to his account as righteousness;" LXX elogisthē autōi eis dikaiosynēn) is used also of Phinehas in Psalm 106 (LXX 105):31―the very Phinehas whose "zeal" for the Law led him to run a spear through Zimri and his Midianite lover, Cozbi, thereby propitiating YHWH's wrath against the people for their worship of Baal of Peor and stemming the plague he had sent in response to their idolatry (Numbers 25). Just as Abraham's "crediting with righteousness" [13] was concretized, as it were, by God's entering into a covenant with him (Genesis 15:18), so God made a "covenant of peace" with Phinehas, according to which his descendants would constitute a lasting priesthood (Numbers 25:12-13).

No. The reason Paul cites the example of Abraham in Genesis 15:6 is not because he sees the patriarch as a prime early example of a timeless or trans-temporal doctrine of justification by faith. Rather, it is because Abraham is not only the father of Israel; he is, more fundamentally, the one who, via the unconditional covenant promises given to him in Genesis 12, 15, 17, and 22, was chosen by God to to rescue the world from its primeval apostasy―"sin," both in its vertical (Genesis 3) and horizontal (Genesis 11) dimensions. It is these promises to which Paul sees God being faithful in the powerful manifestation of his saving "righteousness" in the Christ event (Rom 1:16-17; 3:21-26). 

In this light, Paul understood the "reckoning with righteousness" in response to Abram's faith as an adumbration of his own Law-free gospel to the Gentiles, in which Jews and Gentiles alike―and together!―would experience the worldwide blessing promised him in Genesis 12:1-3. [14] What mattered then, as it matters now, is belonging to the family of Abraham, the family that experiences the blessings of God's covenant with the patriarch. The questions that demand answers, of course, are, first, Who belongs to this family of Abraham? and second, How does one come to belong in it? The Jews, at least those in the scope of Paul's argument here in Romans, were comfortable in, and confident because of, their election, their covenanted identity as children of Abraham "according to the flesh" (kata sarka, Rom 4:1). [15]  Because of their physical descent from Abraham and, more importantly, their covenantal identity marked by circumcision (Genesis 17:11-14; note verse 13b: "So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant"), they saw their performance of "works of the Law," not as the means whereby they might establish their position before God, but rather as the means of living within the covenant and marking them as the ones who would be vindicated when God finally acted in his righteousness to establish the kingdom. [16] Paul, however, detected another familial identity, one that took primacy, in God's later covenant promise that Abraham would be "a father of many nations" (Genesis 17:5). [17] This family would be a family of faith, a worldwide and multi-ethnic family of people, both uncircumcised and circumcised, who walk in Abraham's footsteps and wear the emblem of faith (Rom 4:11-12, 16-18).

The key to understanding Romans 4 is to recognize that the chapter is meant to be a scriptural validation of Paul's two major assertions found in Romans 3:27-31. [18] First, justification is by faith, not the Jewish "works of the Torah" (vv. 27-28). Second, the monotheism of the Shema demands that Jews and Gentiles be justified on the same basis and in the same way (vv. 29-30). Paul deals with the first in 4:2-8 and the second in 4:9-18 [19]. What unites these two emphases, as we will ultimately see, is their foundation in God's sovereign, unconditioned, and unspeakably glorious grace. In our next installment, we will turn to verses 9-18 and discuss why it is that faith, and not "works of the Law," is the badge of Abraham's family.

A Funeral Sermon

 

Teri's Mom's Memorial Service

17 June 2021

John Knox Village

Orange City, Florida

"The undiscover'd country from whose bourn/ No traveler returns." Thus Shakespeare’s Hamlet, musing on death in his famous "To Be or Not To Be" soliloquy. In his existential desolation over his father’s murder, Hamlet longs for death as a "consummation/Devoutly to be wish'd." But he had a problem: death is the great unknown. Would there be damning consequences if he took his own life? So Hamlet laments, "Conscience doth make cowards of us all." [1] Shakespeare’s matchless literary creation reminds us of one nasty fact: Death is the Great Equalizer. All of us―great or small, prince or pauper, accomplished or pedestrian―must, sooner or later, come to terms with death.  What matters is how we come to terms with it.

For Christians, it's all too common to fall back into a Platonic pattern of thinking in which the "real person" is one’s soul. In this way of thinking, our mortal body is, by implication, merely tangential to our soul and not a necessary, defining component of our identity. Even in cases, like Irene's, when death has come after a long and fruitful life, the temptation is to take comfort in the notion that she has now reunited with her parents with Jesus in heaven, and to leave it at that. Now I don't want to downplay the sliver of truth found in such comforting thoughts. After all, the Apostle Paul does say, in words etched on my own father’s grave marker, that at death a Christian, though "absent from the body," is "present with the Lord." [2] And hence we can surely rejoice in the knowledge that Irene is now with her Lord.

Upon reflection, however, simply focusing on this as if it were the whole story is both unsatisfying and unbiblical. For in the Bible death is portrayed as an interloper disrupting God’s designs for his good creation. As such death is always worthy of grief, just as Jesus himself wept over the demise of his friend Lazarus. [3] Death, from this point of view, must be defeated. It must be destroyed. It must be abolished. And God is not one to do deals or make compromises. Make no mistake, leaving the body in the grave while the “real person” resides in “heaven” would be a compromise of the first order.

The Apostle Paul, as a trained biblical scholar, knew this. He knew, and made central to his thought, God’s promise of a new creation. He knew, from Psalm 102:27, that God had no intention to abandon what he had created; rather, God intended ultimately to exchange this old creation for a new one like a simple change of clothing. Paul knew the implications of this hope for God’s people as well. In Isaiah 25, the prophet wrote:

        On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples

            a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,

            of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.

        And he will swallow up on this mountain

            the covering that is cast over all peoples,

            the veil that is spread over all nations.

        He will swallow up death forever;

        and the LORD God will wipe away tears from all faces. [4]

 

This promised "swallowing up" of death has one necessary entailment, as the prophet proclaims in the very next chapter:

        Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise.

            You who dwell in dust, awake and sing for joy! [5]

Paul understood this scriptural logic clearly. This is evident, above all, in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, where he argues, in great detail, that resurrection is a necessary component of the Christian gospel. The climax of his argument in this chapter comes in verses 50-58:

I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory." [6]

"O death, where is your victory?

O death, where is your sting?" [7]

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the Law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

 

This is a spectacular passage, not least because of what, perhaps surprisingly to many, the Apostle says about resurrection. Resurrection, Paul makes crystal clear, is not the mere resuscitation or re-animation of a corpse. "Flesh and blood"―in other words, humanity as it is now composed: ephemeral, weak, perishable―by definition cannot come into possession of the kingdom of God, that final state of affairs when, as Paul writes in verses 27-28, death will have finally been defeated and God will be "all in all." What is needed, and what therefore will be given when Christ returns, is transformation. [8] And this transformation will happen, Paul says, instantly―in the blink of an eye, as it were. The dead will be raised “incorruptible,” without degenerating decay. [9] And "we"―that is, those still alive when Christ returns―will be “changed,” just like the heavens and earth in Psalm 102. At that time, we will not lose the bodies we now have. On the contrary, the bodies we now have will put on new sets of clothes, clothes that represent a new type of physicality: one that cannot decay, cannot wear out, and, most importantly, cannot die. As Paul later wrote in Irene's favorite book, Philippians, Christ, by his sovereign power, "will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body." [10] The resurrection hope, in other words, is the hope for an immortal physicality. It is the hope of the ultimate death of death.

This is good news indeed―so good, in fact, that Paul rhetorically transports himself into that promised future to taunt death, just as a victorious warrior might mock his defeated foe : "O Death," he says, "where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?"

One question remains, however: On what basis does Paul have this supreme confidence? Is it, after all, mere wishful thinking? The apostle provides a clue to the answer in verse 57, where he gives "thanks to God, who gives us the victory"―present tense, conveying the certainty of its ultimate eventuality―"through our Lord Jesus Christ." At the beginning of 1 Corinthians 15, Paul quotes a pithy, two-part, traditional summary of the Christian gospel: "The Messiah died for our sins according to the Scriptures;" and "he was raised the third day according to the Scriptures." [11] Indeed, Paul’s entire argument for resurrection hangs on the historical occurrence and theological significance of Christ's own resurrection. For Paul, the resurrection of Jesus was not some strange, isolated occurrence that somehow "proved" he was "God." No. Jesus' resurrection was, as Paul says in verse 23 of 1 Corinthians 15, the "firstfruits," in other words, the guarantee and the model of the ultimate resurrection of all his people. Meanwhile, sin―death's poison-filled stinger that facilitates its lethal dominion―has been dealt with and was, as Paul later says in Romans, "condemned" on the cross. [12] Sin's venom, in other words, was absorbed by Christ for the benefit of his people. [13] With its poison thus drained, death’s formerly lethal sting is made, in ultimate terms, harmless. Death, in other words, has been rendered stingless. It holds no terror, for those who sleep in the Lord do so in the certainty of their future resurrection.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have thought often of my mother-in-law Irene. I have perused some old photographs, dating back to her youth back in Pennsylvania. Memories flooded back of all of the trips Teri and I have made over the past 4 decades to Jersey, PA, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Florida, not to mention the cruise to the Bahamas the family took to welcome the new millennium. I will remember long and interesting conversations with her, her cooking, her unfailing hospitality … and, most of all, her genuine love for the Lord. The thought of not seeing her again in this life brings a certain melancholy. Death, you see, remains a tragedy. But this melancholy we feel is tempered in the faith that death’s stinger has been disabled. We who are in Christ will see Irene again, and for that we can be forever grateful to our Lord and Savior for his victory over sin and death.

So, rest in peace, our dear Irene, "in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ." [14] To God alone be the glory.

Cairn University Drops Its Social Work Program: "Critical Theory" and "Intersectionality" the Culprits?

My tiny undergraduate alma mater, Cairn University, in the Bucks County Philadelphia suburbs, made the national news recently, and not for the best of reasons. On May 24, President Todd Williams announced that the university would drop its Social Work program, which has been an important part of the school's identity and mission for more than 50 years, back to when it was still located at 18th and Arch Streets in Center City and called Philadelphia College of Bible. News of this decision made its way to the august pages of The Washington Post, and from there to multiple Twitter feeds, such as those of Philadelphia-based Christian activist/author Shane Claiborne, Butler University New Testament scholar James McGrath, and University of Michigan Ph.D. candidate Garrett Pace (the thread here is particularly interesting). In response, the National Association of Social Workers and its Pennsylvania chapter urged the school to reconsider its decision, poignantly including pleas from past and current students of the highly-regarded program.

Now, I have no doubt the reasoning behind the decision to close the program was complex, including, as was later clarified, funding and enrollment concerns. Times have been rough for small, private colleges and universities, and the past year's COVID epidemic hasn't helped matters. But this can hardly have been the main reason, considering that just this spring the school's new MSW program achieved candidacy for accreditation by the Council of Social Work Education’s Commission on Accreditation. Indeed, my own 50+ years of experience with fundamentalist/evangelical Christianity suggests that Williams himself articulated the real reason. The issue concerned the most recent draft of the CSWE's required institutional criteria for accreditation (you can read the entire draft here). In Williams's words: 

The draft … embraces a social and cultural agenda that now includes the acceptance of a view of human sexuality, gender identity, and gender expression that is inconsistent with the University’s biblical position on human sexuality … if approved, institutions will be required to align with the values and purposes of the profession that are outlined in the document as being built upon a set of critical theory and intersectionality assumptions and values inconsistent with our biblical view of humanity, human nature, and the world.

Having read the document, I assume the "offending" passages are to found on pages 10-11, which detail educational policy and curriculum related to "Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ADEI):"

Programs provide the context through which students learn about their positionality, power, privilege, and difference, and develop a commitment to dismantling systems of oppression, such as racism, that affect diverse populations. Programs recognize the pervasive impact of white supremacy/superiority (and its ensuing privilege) and prepare students to have the knowledge, awareness, and skills necessary to engage in anti-racist practice. The dimensions of diversity, equity and inclusion are understood as the intersectionality of multiple factors including but not limited to age, caste, class, color, culture, disability and ability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity and expression, generational status, immigration status, legal status, marital status, political ideology, race, nationality, religion/spirituality, sex, sexual orientation, and tribal sovereign status. Faculty and administrators model anti-racist practice and respect for diversity and difference.

A detailed response would take me too far afield. But permit me the following. First, "concerns" over LGBTQ+ issues are nothing new in the evangelical world. But this doesn't have a necessary connection to a Christian's role and duty as a social worker. The job of a social worker, especially in cases where family conflict, exclusion and, yes, oppression (more on this presently) is involved is NOT to be a prophet or preacher, proclaiming the sins of, and ultimate judgment of God on, the oppressed … or, what is worse, refusing to help such a person because of their perceived or actual sins. Indeed, no matter what the Christian social worker's theological view on such matters―wrong or right!―his or her job is to act towards them based on love, indeed to show Christ's love to that person, always keeping in mind one's own failures, foibles, and sins that, were it not for God's unconditioned, amazing grace, they would, as the Apostle Paul would say, still be "in" (1 Cor 15:17). Discrimination and violence against LGBTQ+ people remains a serious matter, and it is one Christians must not avoid. These are people, after all, created to be in God's image; hence the fact that they are due "respect" in their difference (as the CSWE's draft says) is, or at least should be, a given. In larger terms, the typical evangelical attitude and stance toward LGBTQ+ people over the years, today no less than in the past, has been a manifestation of the selective moralism that judges those whose "sins" they themselves won't commit, while ignoring (or not even recognizing as sins) those they happily indulge in. A lesson I learned long ago is that, as the crowd chanted at the '68 Democratic Convention in Chicago, "the whole world is watching." And they notice the hypocrisy.

Much more concerning is Williams's undeveloped accusation of "values … built upon a set of critical theory and intersectionality assumptions … inconsistent with our biblical view of humanity, human nature, and the world." Leaving aside the common and prejudicial evangelical use of the adjective "biblical" to denote one's own, traditional view of what the Bible meant and means―any number of faulty schemes can, of course, be passed off as "biblical," such as another one dealing with gender relationships, i.e., "complementarianism;" what matters, of course, is exegesis and hermeneutics―the tossed-off way these words are used suggests, quite strongly, that pressure has been exerted by the most conservative elements of the school's base and/or donors. Indeed, "Critical Race Theory" (one aspect of what Williams describes as "critical theory"; for a helpful, concise summary of CRT from Purdue University, see here) has become the latest bugbear in conservative circles, political and theological alike (though the distinction between these seems to be hardly defensible any more). From Donald Trump's infamous September memo to the Office of Management and Budget, to Republican State Legislatures attempting to ban teaching of CRT in schools (Florida, the latest, did so yesterday), conservative politicians certainly view the concept as red meat to their base and kryptonite to their continued political hegemony. (As an aside, as often in politics, in many cases there seems to be an inverse relationship between understanding and condemning the issue).

As a theologian, I am of course more interested in how conservative theologians have taken this criticism up, knee-jerk style, at the very same time as the SBC kerfuffles over sexism (Beth Moore, Russell Moore) and racism (Moore) have exposed divides and massive moral failures within the largest Protestant denomination in the country. Christian parachurch organizations such as Cru and denominations such as the SBC―at least four black pastors resigned following the 30 November 2020 release of a statement from the six SBC seminary presidents condemning CRT―have been divided over the issue. Conservative critiques have come from, inter alia, the British church historian Carl Trueman (for a rebuttal, see Valerie Hobbs at Jesus Creed), Neil Shenvi and Pat Sawyer at the Gospel Coalition, and Voddie Baucham in his spanking new book, Fault Lines (for a devastating critique, see Bradly Mason at his blog here). For a much more nuanced approach, showing that CRT's concern for justice and condemnation of white supremacy and structural racism have orthodox precedent in the thought of the traditional Black church in America, see the article in the Anglican Compass by Wheaton New Testament scholar and ACNA Bishop Esau McCaulley (who earned his Ph.D. at St. Andrews under the direction of N. T. Wright).

I am not interested in defending everything propounded under the guise of CRT. I certainly do not deny sundry problematic elements in the way some of it is framed. But one would need to be blinded by presuppositions not to recognize the truth in its notions of white privilege, systemic racism, and the complications arising from intersectionality. Likewise, consider the argument of Shenvi and Sawyer that the following disjunction necessitates claiming the incompatibility of CRT with biblical orthodoxy:

Or consider the question of our fundamental problem as humans: Is our fundamental problem sin, in which case we all equally stand condemned before a holy God? Or is our fundamental problem oppression, in which case members of dominant groups are tainted by guilt in a way that members of subordinate groups are not?

This is a classic example of what even an introductory-level undergraduate could discern as a false dichotomy, encouraged by the unnecessary use of the adjective "fundamental." Of course, at one level, the "sin" because of which all stand condemned before the bar of God's justice is fundamental to Paul's doctrine of justification. At another level, however, "oppression" is a primary way in which what, in the same letter to the Romans, Paul refers to as "Sin" is manifested in the realm of human societies and relationships; and, as such, it must be acknowledged and fought by Christians who, at the very least, should see it as their mission to implement the priorities of God's kingdom in this already/not yet period of the outworking of God's salvific designs for his world. The issue, in a basic sense, concerns the nature of the gospel. Is it simply the pinched, soterian, individualistic, and often implicitly Platonic/dualistic gospel of 20th century American fundamentalism? Or is it the full-orbed gospel of the Kingdom of God and New Creation articulated on the pages of the New Testament? The latter surely includes the former, but it must not be placed in the former's straightjacket.

Likewise, the related, all-too-common attempt to define "racism" solely in terms of individual attitudes and acts of prejudice, without considering its demonstrable historic and social contours, including structures of oppression that remain hidden and unrecognized by the minds of so many in the privileged group(s), is simply unacceptable. The notion that human social dynamics can and have operated as power structures with both inner and outer aspects ("principalities and powers") was the major focus of the work of the late theologian Walter Wink.* And, I would argue, no greater system of oppression has operated on American soil more persistently than that of systemic racism. And yet all too many Christians―including, alas, those of a Reformed or Calvinist orientation―refuse to acknowledge this or, what is more important, take responsibility for it in any meaningful way.

Ed Blum was perhaps my biggest influence while I was studying for my Th.M. at Dallas Seminary. Ed had two earned doctorates, a Th.D. in New Testament from DTS, and a D.Theol. from Basel in Systematic Theology. He was a notoriously independent thinker, and so I took him for multiple classes: Exegesis of 1 Corinthians, Reformation and Post-Reformation Church History, and an elective on Augustine. He also was a Teaching Elder at the church we attended while living in Dallas. When he spoke, I listened. I can still remember a comment he made in one of his classes: "I see some good in [Karl] Barth. I see some good in [Rudolf] Bultmann." To someone reared and trained in the verities of dispensationalist fundamentalism, this was a shocking statement to hear. But Blum was right. The older I have gotten, I have recognized more and more good in Barth, though I still disagree with him in fundamental ways. The same goes for Bultmann, with whom I disagree even more fundamentally. Indeed, as I used to tell my students, I have learned far more from people with whom I disagree than from those with whom I agree. 

This is precisely the attitude Christians should take with regard to CRT. In an interview with Mitchell Atencio at Sojourners (accessed in the blog of Messiah University historian John Fea, another Cairn graduate), Wheaton College professor Nathan Cartagena discusses how he uses CRT in his classes. He speaks of "turning philosophical water into theological wine." By this he means:

That would mean that something like CRT, the movement, is going to be nourishing and life-giving in a way that water is. Then, I want to fit [CRT] in with certain ideas about being made in the image of God, common grace, and general revelation. As we talk about “theological wine,” we are seeing this nourishing “water” as now being in contact with Christ. It’s Christ, a member of the Trinity, that’s taking this up and helping us to see how we can view God’s creation better. CRT scholars are helping us to think through how to move in more decolonial ways and address the church’s egregious history.

That is the way to go, not throwing the baby out with the bathwater for convenience's sake.

The Cairn story is a personal one for me. Not only did I attend there, but my dad taught Bible, Theology, and Greek at the college from 1957 until his death in 1986. He, John Cawood, Mae Stewart, Lin Crowe, and other professors there made a lasting impression on my life. I count as friends some who still serve on the faculty and administration. So I mean it when I say that the news of the school's discontinuing their social work program grieves me. Social work, in my reckoning, is one of the most significant ways Christians can bring the good news of the kingdom to bear on the day-to-day realities of this fractured world, particularly in the city where I was raised and which I still love. So I respectfully ask that President Williams and the Board reconsider their decision.