Revolutionary Subordination in Paul's Theology

Link: "Against Empire, A Yoderian Reading of Romans", by Ted Grimsrud at peacetheology.net

Big Ideas:
1. Paul reinforces Jesus' anti-Constantinian stance. "For Yoder, Paul does not lead away from Jesus’ messianic ethic. Jesus and Paul are not stage one and stage two of the development of Christian ethics that leads inevitably to Constantinianism. Rather, what is central to Jesus’ message remains central for Paul."

2. Justification in Pauline thought is social; justification in Romans and Galatians it is the same thing as reconciliation in Ephesians. Yoder says: "Paul cares not so much about systematic theological speculation about how human beings are to made acceptable to God, but rather the very concrete Roman situation in which Jew and Gentile, legalistic Christian and pagan Christian, needed to accept one another."

3. The Christian's relationship to the Powers is one of "revolutionary subordination". Christian community witnesses to the nations the truth and power of the gospel of the kingdom of God to free us from idolatry to the powers.


This idea of "revolutionary subordination" is something I'm interested in unpacking further. Also, I want to ask how my own socio-political context (as a privileged and empowered white male educated U.S. citizen who is registered to vote in a nation that affirms separation of church and state) affects my own application of Jesus' message to my present context. Surely there will be differences from Paul's context in the 1st century Roman Empire in which the state "church" was pagan worship of the emperor.


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"Make me a channel of Your Peace."

-St. Francis

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A Christmas Sermon

Faith and Theology: It's a Boy! A Christmas Eve Homily by Kim Fabricius.

"Today the boy is neither the focus of a faith nor a justification for violence.... Today he cannot be used for anything, particularly to endorse our own agenda. Today he just lies there, wiggling. ... As for me, today I bring you good news about the God disclosed in this child, who happens to be the Word made flesh."

(There is nothing else to this post.)


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"Make me a channel of Your Peace."

-St. Francis

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The Chicago Statement, pt 1

I have been thinking about inerrancy (again) quite a bit recently. I heard informally about a prof in a religion department at a Christian college being discouraged by (some) other members of his department from continuing to teach there because his views about biblical inspiration and authority didn't line up with the Chicago Statement. This irks me. I read the Chicago Statement in Seminar in Biblical Literature with Dr. Helyer a few years ago. I remember thinking at the time that I became less inclined to agree with it as the drafters became more specific. Here are my present thoughts as I go through it again now: Read the Full Post.

(I'm working on my thesis. Really. I wrote most of this last night. I'm taking a short break to post it.)

Comments on the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy

(Based on fulltext retrieved here: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Chicago_Statement_on_Biblical_Inerrancy)

PREFACE

1. The authority of the Christian scriptures (the Old and New Testaments) matters. (¶ 1)

For, as Christians we confess “Christ is Lord”; thus we claim to submit to divine authority in the person of Jesus. If the scriptures are the Word of God—if they in some significant sense represent or mediate to us Christ who is the divine Word—then, as evangelicals are typically understood to confess, we must regard the scriptures as authoritative for our faith and practice as Christ’s disciples. To understand the basis for the evangelical claim that the Bible is authoritative for us, we must properly understand the connection between the authority of the scriptures and the authority of Christ our Lord.

2. The authority of the scriptures is contingent upon their inerrancy.

The writers of the Chicago Statement imply that in order for us to “adequately confess” the authority of the Bible we must recognize its “total truth and trustworthiness”—this latter is the doctrine of inerrancy. (¶ 1) To deny biblical inerrancy, they write, is to ignore the witness of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit—thus, to fail in our loyalty to our God in at least two of God’s Persons—and to refuse to submit to the authority of God’s Word, which submission is a necessary condition of “true Christian faith”. (¶ 2)

At the same time, the drafters of the Chicago Statement admit “that many who deny the inerrancy of Scripture do not display the consequences of this denial in the rest of their belief and behavior”. (¶ 4) This implies (along with the next point below) that the statement should not be understood to condemn all who deny biblical inerrancy as false Christians or as heretics.

3. The Chicago Statement is not intended as a creedal statement (¶ 3)

This implies that the drafters of the Chicago Statement did not wish the statement to be employed as a litmus test for orthodoxy. It is not to be regarded so highly as, for example, the Nicene Creed as a statement of orthodox faith (what has been believed “always, everywhere, and by all”). Likewise, the three-day consultation which resulted in the Chicago Statement should not be regarded so highly as an ecumenical council—i.e., on par with the Council of Chalcedon which gives us the definition of Christological orthodoxy. The drafters explicitly lay no claim to infallibility. (¶ 5)

The Chicago Statement is intended to (a) affirm and clarify the doctrine of inerrancy, (b) to exhort other Christians to understand and appreciate the importance of this doctrine, and (c) to spur on “a new reformation of the Church in its life, faith, and mission.” (¶ 3)

[Autonoesis: #2 above is the one point from the Preface which I would like to debate; I’m not sure I’m convinced it is true. Clearly its plausibility will depend on what is meant by “inerrancy” and what is meant by “authority”.]

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SUMMARY STATEMENT

The truthfulness of God & the revelatory purpose of scripture

I. “God, who is Himself Truth and speaks truth only, has inspired Holy Scripture in order thereby to reveal Himself to lost mankind through Jesus Christ as Creator and Lord, Redeemer and Judge. Holy Scripture is God's witness to Himself.”

Explication

1. God does not lie. Hence, whatever is the Word of God is by definition truthful and trustworthy.
2. The Christian scriptures are inspired by God (1 Timothy 3:16)
3. God’s inspiration of the scriptures is for the purpose of God’s self-revelation. (This is apparently thought to be the primary purpose of the scriptures.)
4. Scripture reveals God through Jesus Christ. (The person of Christ is the primary revelation—I mean that the witness of scripture is that God reveals Himself to humanity through Jesus; the object of the witness clearly takes priority to the witness itself.)
5. Scripture in particular reveals God as Creator, Lord, Redeemer, and Judge. (These are important roles for God & God-in-Christ in the story of salvation-history).

Comment

• I’ll accept the first point in my explication on philosophical (i.e., a priori) grounds. (It would seem strange to accept that God does not lie because scriptures accepted as the Word of God say so…just because someone says they never lie doesn’t mean this is true. I don’t think God is an instantiation of Machiavelli’s Prince. And the reason I don’t think so has to do with natural theology (for better or for worse!)).

• I’ll accept the second point on grounds of apostolic authority (i.e., I think Paul said it, and I think he said it as a representative of Christ bearing Christ's authority). However, I’m not committed to apostolic infallibility or inerrancy. (It would seem, BTW, that the claims: (1) biblical authority is contingent upon biblical inerrancy and (2) apostolic authority is contingent upon apostolic inerrancy would stand or fall together…. My skepticism on both points seems connected. But strangely the typical fundamentalist Protestant thing to do, I think, would be to accept the former while being at least somewhat skeptical of the latter. Maybe good Catholics would accept both?)

• Probably, "The Christian scriptures are inspired by God" is supposed to imply "The Christian scriptures are the Word of God"; hence, combined with the first point, "The Christian scriptures are by definition true and trustworthy." (I.e., biblical inerrancy). I'm not sure I'm satisfied yet that "inspiration" has been unpacked enough to justify logic. Has it yet been established that this claim is false: "the scriptures are not the Word of God, yet they contain the Word of God"?

• My points 3-5 might be understood to limit the content of the inspired/inerrant biblical revelation. For instance, the Chicago Statement says here "Scripture is God's witness to Himself"--but is every statement in scripture a statement about God? Similarly, one might question that every statement in scripture is a revelation of God to lost human beings through Jesus Christ as Creator, Lord, Redeemer, and Judge. Perhaps the so-called "infallibilist" (as typically distinguished from "inerrantist") could say, for example, that scientific/historical details about the creation are not inerrant, but the big-picture idea that God is Creator is inerrant. And maybe the openness theologians that ETS disciplined on grounds of their purported rejection of inerrancy a few years ago (or their caricatures, anyway) might say that future/”historical” details about the eschaton are not inerrant, but the big-picture idea that God is Judge is inerrant. And maybe someone could say that all statements about God and God’s actions are inerrant, but historical statements about the actions of human beings (what Pilate or even Moses said or did, say) are not inerrant.

• To be fair, the statement here leaves open that God might have additional purposes in inspiring scripture. But certainly to this point the Chicago Statement does not require people who agree with it to attribute any further purposes to God than to communicate revelation about God, especially about God-in-Christ and certain of God's roles in salvation history.
  

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"Make me a channel of Your Peace."

-St. Francis

Read the full post.