Paul's Gospel and Caesar's Empire

AV1611 · #1 (**permalink**) 05-24-2008, 12:18 PM

I have just fiished NT Wright's "Paul's Gospel and Caesar's Empire" which I found very enlightening.

...if Paul's answer to Caesar's empire is the empire of Jesus, what does that say about this new empire, living under the rule of its new lord? It implies a high and strong ecclesiology, in which the scattered and often muddled cells of women, men and children loyal to Jesus as Lord form colonial outposts of the empire that is to be: subversive little groups when seen from Caesar's point of view, but when seen Jewishly an advance foretaste of the time when the earth shall be filled with the glory of the God of Abraham and the nations will join Israel in singing God's praises.

Ivanhoe · #2 (**permalink**) 05-24-2008, 02:51 PM

Yeah, it's awesome stuff. I have no difficulty affirming justification by faith in faith alone and acknowledging Tom Wright's good insights here. In the coming days when the American Empire and the EUSSR began to attack Christianity overtly, this stuff by Wright will provide good ammo.

staythecourse · #3 (**permalink**) 05-24-2008, 03:12 PM

That book looks like something I'd agree with. I believe the Antichrist will govern a world government with a ecumenical world religion either a part of the government or working alongside it. Christians, and other nonconformists, will be paying the price in my understanding.

Ivanhoe · #4 (**permalink**) 05-24-2008, 03:15 PM

I think it is an essay which can be found at N.T. Wright Page

AV1611 · #5 (**permalink**) 05-25-2008, 05:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ivanhoe

I think it is an essay which can be found at N.T. Wright Page

It is

I have started reading Wright to see what he actually says. Thus far I am at the "He is saying some very interesting things as well as some things I am uncomfortable with" stage.

Ivanhoe · #6 (**permalink**) 05-25-2008, 08:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AV1611

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ivanhoe

I think it is an essay which can be found at N.T. Wright Page

It is

I have started reading Wright to see what he actually says. Thus far I am at the "He is saying some very interesting things as well as some things I am uncomfortable with" stage.

That is where I have been for 3 years now. I have read about 4,000 pages of him and listened to all of his audio. So he gets some things wrong on how he formulates justification? But even then, it isn't the full Roman Catholicism that people accuse him of.

He is probably the most awesome theologian/apologist when it comes to fighting gnosticism (e.g., New Age, Bart Ehrmann, Liberal Christianity, etc).

TimV · #7 (**permalink**) 05-25-2008, 09:44 AM

Quote:

In the coming days when the American Empire and the EUSSR began to attack Christianity overtly, this stuff by Wright will provide good ammo.

Wright is so oily he makes an eel feel like sandpaper in comparison. He can't keep from the "edge" in the sense of double meanings. He'll take a story like Christ asking for a coin and saying "who's image is this" and then interpret "Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar" by more than half implying Christ was calling for revolution. He'll find a place in the Maccabees where the idiom "pay them back in their own coin" is used like the current English idiomatic expression and claim that's what Christ meant by "Give unto Caesar" in a lecture he gave that I read. And in another place he'll just throw the idea out but imply that He probably didn't mean it totally that way like here:

Matthew for Everyone - Google Book Search

"Subvert the Empire" is a central theme of Wright. He'll complains that the rain forests are being destroyed for the needs of the Empire

Quote:

And the empire just goes and destroys another bit of the rain forest, because it needs it for whatever particular economic/political project it’s got.

Response: The Seattle Pacific University Magazine

and then drink some tea grown on former rain forest land, and whether he sees it as inconsistant or not I have no idea. If the guy would just come out and say what he means people would be much less suspicious of him.

AV1611 · #8 (**permalink**) 05-25-2008, 09:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TimV

If the guy would just come out and say what he means people would be much less suspicious of him.

I think his views are pretty clear from these:

New Perspectives on Paul, by N.T. Wright
The Shape of Justification
http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_J...ical_Basis.pdf
Paul in Different Perspectives by N.T. Wright
http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_B...hteousness.pdf

The following seems pretty clear to me:

What then is this vindication, this dikaiosis? It is God’s declaration that a person is in the right; that is,
(a) that their sins have been forgiven, and
(b) that they are part of the single covenant family promised to Abraham.
Notice that opening phrase: God’s declaration that. Not ‘God’s bringing it about that’, but God’s authoritative declaration of what is in fact the case. This is the point, of course, where some have accused me of semi-Pelagianism. That might be so if I intended to denote, with the word ‘justification’, what the tradition has denoted. But I don’t. Paul, I believe, uses vindication/justification to denote God’s declaration about someone, about (more specifically) the person who has been ‘called’ in the sense described above. Vindication is not the same as call.

And we now discover that this declaration, this vindication, occurs twice. It occurs in the future, as we have seen, on the basis of the entire life a person has led in the power of the Spirit – that is, it occurs on the basis of ‘works’ in Paul’s redefined sense. And, near the heart of Paul’s theology, it occurs in the present as an anticipation of that future verdict, when someone, responding in believing obedience to the ‘call’ of the gospel, believes that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead. This is the point about justification by faith – to revert to the familiar terminology: it is the anticipation in the present of the verdict which will be reaffirmed in the future. Justification is not ‘how someone becomes a Christian’. It is God’s declaration about the person who has just become a Christian. And, just as the final declaration will consist, not of words so much as of an event, namely, the resurrection of the person concerned into a glorious body like that of the risen Jesus, so the present declaration consists, not so much of words, though words there may be, but of an event, the event in which one dies with the Messiah and rises to new life with him, anticipating that final resurrection. In other words, baptism. I was delighted yesterday to discover that not only Chrysostom and Augustine but also Luther would here have agreed with me.

Traditional protestants may not like this much, but it is I submit what Paul is saying. And I want you to notice right away, before I draw some broader conclusions from all this, three things that follow. First, Paul’s doctrine of what is true of those who are in the Messiah does the job, within his scheme of thought, that the traditional protestant emphasis on the imputation of Christ’s righteousness did within that scheme. In other words, that which imputed righteousness was trying to insist upon is, I think, fully taken care of in (for instance) Romans 6, where Paul declares that what is true of the Messiah is true of all his people. Jesus was vindicated by God as Messiah after his penal death; I am in the Messiah; therefore I too have died and been raised. According to Romans 6, when God looks at the baptised Christian he sees him or her in Christ. But Paul does not say that he sees us clothed with the earned merits of Christ. That would of course be the wrong meaning of ‘righteous’ or ‘righteousness’. He sees us within the vindication of Christ, that is, as having died with Christ and risen again with him. I suspect that it was the mediaeval over-concentration on righteousness, on iustitia, that caused the protestant reformers to push for imputed righteousness to do the job they rightly saw was needed. But in my view they have thereby distorted what Paul himself was saying. (Source)

Ivanhoe · #9 (**permalink**) 05-25-2008, 10:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TimV

Quote:

In the coming days when the American Empire and the EUSSR began to attack Christianity overtly, this stuff by Wright will provide good ammo.

Wright is so oily he makes an eel feel like sandpaper in comparison. He can't keep from the "edge" in the sense of double meanings. He'll take a story like Christ asking for a coin and saying "who's image is this" and then interpret "Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar" by more than half implying Christ was calling for revolution. He'll find a place in the Maccabees where the idiom "pay them back in their own coin" is used like the current English idiomatic expression and claim that's what Christ meant by "Give unto Caesar" in a lecture he gave that I read. And in another place he'll just throw the idea out but imply that He probably didn't mean it totally that way like here:

Matthew for Everyone - Google Book Search

"Subvert the Empire" is a central theme of Wright. He'll complains that the rain forests are being destroyed for the needs of the Empire

Quote:

And the empire just goes and destroys another bit of the rain forest, because it needs it for whatever particular economic/political project it’s got.

Response: The Seattle Pacific University Magazine

and then drink some tea grown on former rain forest land, and whether he sees it as inconsistant or not I have no idea. If the guy would just come out and say what he means people would be much less suspicious of him.

The coin notwithstanding, his original point (subversion of empire) is quite provacative. I am all for subverting Empires, be they European or future American. Sure, he goes leftist on issues he should (Doug Wilson has given good responses to this) but he at least takes the challenge seriously. He rightly sees that the Gospel is political and not individualistic (in other words, he attacks the Enlightenment).

TimV · #10 (**permalink**) 05-25-2008, 10:42 AM

Quote:

but he at least takes the challenge seriously. He rightly sees that the Gospel is political and not individualistic (in other words, he attacks the Enlightenment).

But he only does it when it's safe. I'm making an assumption, but I think some of his pay comes from money the UK government controls (someone please correct me if I'm wrong) and while he loves to dump on whatever an Empire is he is impassioned about how wonderful a Monarchy is, calling it the best form of government.

He stands as a brave contrarian when it comes to gay ordination, but when it comes to women Bishops he co-authored the official response to Father Kaspar's (RC) speech to the House of Bishops criticizing the COE practice of ordaining women, and his response was that women Bishops are a really neat thing.

He spends paragraphs on two letter Greek words but uses his influence to press for a "Jubilee" year to cancel third world debt, even though the jubilee doesn't have anything to do with canceling debt.

I'm all for subverting unlawful authority (as well as having personal issues which go beyond unlawful authority) but Wright is more an armchair Che Guevara than an Oliver Cromwell.

AV1611 · #11 (**permalink**) 05-25-2008, 11:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TimV

he is impassioned about how wonderful a Monarchy is, calling it the best form of government.

MOSES · #12 (**permalink**) 05-25-2008, 12:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by staythecourse

That book looks like something I'd agree with. I believe the Antichrist will govern a world government with a ecumenical world religion either a part of the government or working alongside it. Christians, and other nonconformists, will be paying the price in my understanding.

Just curious where you came up with such beliefs. Do you have actual sound exegesis of scripture that brought you to your understanding.

I am seriously very curious. I' ve seen others say such things but I have never had anyone ever point out scripture to justify such beliefs.

BACK on TOPIC--

Question concerning NT wright:
I have read some of his stuff online concerning doctrine...But, what I have heard concerning his socio-political ideas, is that he is very much a socialist.
Does anyone know if that is true?

AV1611 · #13 (**permalink**) 05-25-2008, 12:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MOSES

But, what I have heard concerning his socio-political ideas, is that he is very much a socialist.

He is centre-left.

Backwoods Presbyterian · #14 (**permalink**) 05-25-2008, 01:18 PM

He is what they call in Canada a "Red Tory".

Ivanhoe · #15 (**permalink**) 05-25-2008, 01:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TimV

Quote:

but he at least takes the challenge seriously. He rightly sees that the Gospel is political and not individualistic (in other words, he attacks the Enlightenment).

But he only does it when it's safe. I'm making an assumption, but I think some of his pay comes from money the UK government controls (someone please correct me if I'm wrong) and while he loves to dump on whatever an Empire is he is impassioned about how wonderful a Monarchy is, calling it the best form of government.

He stands as a brave contrarian when it comes to gay ordination, but when it comes to women Bishops he co-authored the official response to Father Kaspar's (RC) speech to the House of Bishops criticizing the COE practice of ordaining women, and his response was that women Bishops are a really neat thing.

He spends paragraphs on two letter Greek words but uses his influence to press for a "Jubilee" year to cancel third world debt, even though the jubilee doesn't have anything to do with canceling debt.

I'm all for subverting unlawful authority (as well as having personal issues which go beyond unlawful authority) but Wright is more an armchair Che Guevara than an Oliver Cromwell.

In other words, he has some problems within his worldview. I agree. Who doesn't? No one here, not even Wright, is advocating an "all-or-nothing" approach.

I cringe at some of his formulations, true. But at least he is recognizing the reason for which he acts, be they faulty applications: the cosmic claims of King Jesus.

staythecourse · #16 (**permalink**) 05-25-2008, 01:57 PM

Shawn,

Thanks for the note.

I see it happening at the very point of Christ's time and I believe it will happen all over again just before He comes back except to the church rather than the Christ.

At Christ's time you had the world government (Rome in Pilate) and the chief priest (Caiphas) shaking hands and really liking each other for the first time when they were treating Christ with contempt and killing Him.

You see it in the Catholic Church where the Pope was shaking hands with government officials all over the known world killing real Christians (and other non-conformists)

The Anglican Church with Henry the VIII persecuting brothers

Here's a guy that did some research.

Revelation is impossible for me to understand but I can say fairly confidently that when John speaks of the "beast" he is speaking of a Caesar-like figure and his right hand man is a false prophet. And these two terribly persecute the brethern.

We are living in an age where the world religion is inclusivistic to a greater and greater extent except for US! We are exclusivistic because Christ is the way! So, homosexualty (remarkably accepted in Roman culture and increasingly so today), abortion, (same thing), divorce among Pharisees (Christian-culture folk of our day) to me speaks of history repeating itself all over again with the King showing up (again) except this time with a sword rather than crucifixion.

Where did I pick this up? Man I don't know. It may be a fanciful idea I have cultivated based on an erroneous view of what Revelation says with an eye to what we humans tend to do with religion and government (our way or die!) and a remnant that stays the course unto salvation at the expense of their lives.

I do not like the church and state working together. It speaks of death to believers and doctrine repeatedly. Now, you who know Revelation and history better, please put me to task on this because it effects my entire view of how we Christians are to relate to government. I am "hands-off" laissez faire in regards to Christians and the government (though I know the confessions see no ill in it)

Ivanhoe · #17 (**permalink**) 05-25-2008, 02:14 PM

I would urge caution against Br. David Cloud. While he loves the Scriptures, and I have been blessed by reading his website for over 2 years, he comes from a strict old-school dispensational approach that is divorced from the anchors of the Patristic, Medieval, and Reformation church.

staythecourse · #18 (**permalink**) 05-25-2008, 02:28 PM

I don't know Cloud from a tree full of owls. I just wanted a quick run down of when protestants reverse the table and get involved in politics with ample doses of doctrine while holding the sword as government officials.

Thanks for the warning on his other doctrine though.

MOSES · #19 (**permalink**) 05-25-2008, 03:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by staythecourse

I do not like the church and state working together.

Then do you have problems with Christ sitting on his throne as head of both Church and State?
If Christ be the king of both, which he is, then there is going to be some sort of "working together" between church and state.

I think, (just my opinion) that you have a problem with apostate relegion working together with a tyrannical state...(both of them working contrary to God's law). And yes, that is a problem and I don't like it either.

Note: In the book or Revelation you have Apsotate Israel (judaism) working together with the tyrannical state (Rome) in persecuting and killing the saints....(but that is a different issue then Godly Church and State working together under CHRIST the KING)

staythecourse · #20 (**permalink**) 05-25-2008, 03:52 PM

Quote:

Then do you have problems with Christ sitting on his throne as head of both Church and State?

No. I await with eager anticipation. I just don't want the queen to sit on the throne before the King.

Quote:

Note: In the book or Revelation you have Apsotate Israel (judaism) working together with the tyrannical state (Rome) in persecuting and killing the saints....(but that is a different issue then Godly Church and State working together under CHRIST the KING)

And I see and apostate group of false professors (like the Pharisees) doing the same.

MOSES · #21 (**permalink**) 05-25-2008, 04:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by staythecourse

Quote:

Then do you have problems with Christ sitting on his throne as head of both Church and State?

No. I await with eager anticipation. I just don't want the queen to sit on the throne before the King.

Quote:

Note: In the book or Revelation you have Apsotate Israel (judaism) working together with the tyrannical state (Rome) in persecuting and killing the saints....(but that is a different issue then Godly Church and State working together under CHRIST the KING)

And I see and apostate group of false professors (like the Pharisees) doing the same.

Well your wait is over my friend (and no need to worry about "the queen") for Christ has already taken his seat on the throne.

staythecourse · #22 (**permalink**) 05-25-2008, 04:20 PM

Quote:

Well your wait is over my friend (and no need to worry about "the queen") for Christ has already taken his seat on the throne.

Yes, in heaven but not on earth.