[I continue my running thoughts on Douglas Campbell's The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul. I've chosen to switch to second person address since DAC has been around and read the blog and interacted here, and because I know him. Plus, there's no point pretending that we're all objective and dispassionate or that there's not a real human being on the other side of the engagement.]
Ok, Douglas, so I’m about 100 pages into the Tome. I feel like I’m in the room with you–I can hear you voice saying almost every sentence. I like how well it captures your voice.
More substantively, I think you’ve nailed a couple of issues that have plagued Reformed theology (and it’s been more plagued in these the closer it’s stuck to its roots).
Two that stick out to me are the identity of God and ethics. These are tied together, of course. The whole idea of a God who’s defined predominantly by abstract categories, and whose holiness is tied to an abstract, non-historical law is deeply problematic. We can have such a God and voila! we’re only left with a dozen or so possible deities in history that might fit that profile. The connection between God and Israel in particular is crucial for understanding Paul’s God and Paul’s story of salvation.
The ethics piece that you hit on at the end of ch. 3 is also spot on. Folks who put justification by faith at the center of their theology often intentionally underplay obedience, even the possibility for obedience once people have received the Spirit! Moreover, the whole idea that there is a transhistorical moral law means that the Christ-event has no substantive role to play in shaping Christian ethics. In fact, there is no “Christian” ethics at all. A vague Judeo-Christian ethic, tagged “moral law,” takes care of everything.
Your argument gives some important gains here, and mark genuine progress (or a genuine alternative) to a less Pauline, less biblical, and overall less Christian alternative.
I have a few areas where I’m not sure I’m with you, or where I’m afraid that you might have sold the farm already.
First, I’m not yet convinced that “justification theory” entails forward thinking, in-time movement from experiencing plight to experiencing solution. Why can this articulation not be, as Sanders suggests, an a priori argument that Paul makes based on a posteriori convictions? We do things like this all the time. When was the last time I wrote an academic paper that reenacted the line of thinking that I used to come to a position myself? No, we become convinced of things and then we construct artificial arguments to lead other people to our conclusions. Might the same not be said for arguments in favor of justification theory?
Second, I’m struggling with what, or better, who, justification theory is supposed to represent. This is the problem of the straw man that you bring up, and that I expressed my concern over in my first post. In short, when I read your exposition of what justification theory must be, I at the same time am aware of a conservative Calvinist, union-with-Christ-centered Reformed tradition that does not hold what you say Justification Theory entails. In other words, I find myself saying, “Nice argument, if there’s anyone who holds that position.”
This pushes back, I think, to the question of how necessary the description of the theory is. And I’m not convinced that it must be such as you’ve laid it out. Must a two-edged epistemology be self-referentially incoherent? Why not simply paradoxical (but true)?
At any rate, because I’m aware of a Reformed Tradition that makes justification a sub-set of union with Christ (and I, like you, am not at all interested in contractually governed narratives of salvation), I find that the argument doesn’t quite land as one might hope.
Finally, I have to say that I’m a bit worried that you sold the farm in the small print excursus at the end of ch. 3.
Before you got there, I kept thinking, “If Campbell is right about the incompatibility between justification and the alternative, we not only lose Rom 1-4, we lose a heck of a lot of the rest of the NT as well. This is a reconceptualizing not only of salvation but of God in a post-biblical world.”
In your excursus, when you acknowledge that the God of justification theory, including judgment and wrath, is a recurring component of Paul’s theology, I wonder if the whole house doesn’t crumble? It indicates that Paul’s thought is not developed as singularly as the remainder of the argument seems to insist. There is a picture of the God of the Justification Theory who seems to act in accordance with the expectations of Justification Theory. This would seem to undermine the rigorous antinomy that the book depends on. If the God of each system is incompatible–and yet present throughout Paul’s thought, how much more these two different models of salvation?
Indeed, the distaste for the God of violence, coercion, and wrath seems to cause another problem, which is the relationship between Paul’s God and the God of the Old Testament. It seems that this is part of who God is throughout both testaments, and I wonder if you lose too much by insisting on a different vision altogether?
I continue to enjoy the read. I’m looking over your review of Sanders right now and appreciating it very much. I recall a footnote in my book in which I said something like, “It’s interesting to think that if you define salvation in Judaism as we do salvation in Paul (coming through the eschatological judgment), then salvation in Sanders’ scheme is by nomism–works.” I think we’re on the same page with some of those concerns about the significance of PPJ.
More later.
-jrdk
Disclaimer: I am reviewing a copy of this book that I received for free from Eerdmans Publishing Company, though with no stipulation either that I would review it or that I would review it favorably.
Somewhere I thought I saw a claim that Campbell was arguing that the “justification theory” line in Paul was an opponent of Paul that Paul was diatribing. Is Campbell not asserting that throughout? or did I mishear?
You’re saying that is his assertion, but that he backs off in the excursus?
I haven’t gotten there, yet. He begins by outlining “Justification theory” as a way of holding together a coherent soteriology that places justification at the center. It is built largely on a reading of Romans 1-3, but he hasn’t brought in his theory of why this is there. That’s still coming. I’m only on p. 108, after all…
The argument of “Deliverance” is so deliciously convoluted that I cannot see how one could review the book without reading the entire book first, or at least reading it backwards. We need to view the book in the same way that Campbell explains Paul’s theology: As we must participate in Christ by looking backwards instead of using the mental gymnastics of personal faith, so we should read Campbell’s “Tome.”
Perhaps that’s another reason to write a series of dialogues (or notes/letters) rather than a formal review as I read. I’m raising questions, making observations, but not speaking any final words.
That’s a good bit of what the blog genre is as I engage it anyway: thoughts in process, often much thinner or less well developed than one would find in print.
But I’ll do my best, after reading it, to read it backwards as well!
Having read the book twice, I must say that it probably would be more helpful to read the exegetical section first (even if it is at blazing speed) and then to go through (huge amount of) introductory material.
After I go through in order I’ll let you know if I wish I’d followed your advice!
You read the book twice?
Stephen: I think Mike Gorman’s got him: read it thrice!
One of my fellow grad students enjoys poking fun at NT scholars for this. As he says, “they” prefer to read a 500 page historical-philological-exegetical book, possibly multiple times, to reading a 150 page book introducing them to something relevant in contemporary sociological, ethnological, psychological, etc., studies. Making this decision often is understandable given their historical and data-set focus. Making it 95-100% of the time, however, helps explain the ridiculous myopia of “NT Studies.”
I agree with my fellow grad-student wholeheartedly on this. Probably a bit of cheap shot here. I understand why Paul scholars read books like Campbell’s.
Seeing people talk about having read the book multiple times reminds me of this comment and my similar frustrations with the field. NT scholars would likely serve the academy and church (gasp!) better if we/they, at least every now and then, chose reading “the other book” (e.g., sociology, psychology, or even studies on our own data-sets by people outside the usually recognized group of “NT Scholars”) over reading Campbell’s book for the second or third time.
Actually, this comment from my fellow grad student comes to mind every time I see Campbell’s book in my office and ponder reading it all (beyond the 150-200 pages I have read from various sections). The last time this happened I chose to read Pascal Boyer’s, Tradition as Truth and Communication: A Cognitive Description of Traditional Discourse (only 120 pages!) instead. Boyer, FYI, is a big time cognitive-psychology scholar, who publishes extensively on cognitive psychology and religion. I remain quite pleased with my decision…and think the time I spent reading Boyer contributed vastly more to my understanding of Paul (and my abilities to use his letters for other purposes), even though the book does not touch on Paul or even writing-specialists for that matter, than it would have had I chosen to read Campbell’s book : ).
But this is just me. I realize this is probably a cheap shot on this thread. Don’t get me wrong, I think Campbell is brilliant and, from what I have read of his recent book, it clearly displays his insightful brilliance…even in the MANY places where I disagree with him. That doesn’t change the fact that the next time I ponder finishing Campbell’s book I will probably read something from my “theory” stack of books instead.
In DAC’s defense: he is trying to get the whole world to see Paul, Paul’s gospel, Paul’s God, etc. differently. That takes a massive effort. Also, he shows evidence of having done precisely the sort of interdisciplinary reading you’re talking about, so now we’re into some theoretical questions.
In my defense: we read these books in part because they’ve been written and this is our field. A legitimate Paul scholar can’t say I haven’t read x, y, or z but I know Paul so it doesn’t matter. I’ve got Paul memorized but nobody gives a crap. We have to be able to engage in the literature in our field.
And, you’re right. We probably need to get out more. But on the other hand, I’d rather see us getting out more into doing OT theology, Judaism, and Christian theology rather than theory. But then, I’ve been jaded by David Steinmetz who said something along the lines of, “There’s nothing done without theory that theory can’t teach us while confusing us and making the process infinitely more painful and clouded along the way.”
Interesting that you wonder who holds this Justification Theory view. Probably quite a few at Fuller do!
I found myself in hearty agreement with Campbell on these points, seeing the tension that the typical twofold justification/sanctification explanation raises. But maybe that’s because I spent a few years among Calvary Chapel folks and then a few years among Foursquare Pentecostal folks in Bible college.
I truly see much of what Campbell is addressing in those movements, so perhaps the Justification Theory isn’t particularly Lutheran as he suggests, having trickled down from the Reformation and now into mainline pop Evangelical teaching. So I see his arguments thus far (I just started Part II) as both fully plausible and palpable among those who think and practice their faith critically.