John Barclay's Paul and the Gift (2015) has been hailed as one of the most groundbreaking works in Pauline scholarship in the last twenty years. Barclay argues that modern scholars have misread Paul and his contemporaries within Second Temple Judaism as though their definition of ‘grace' and ‘gift' were the same as “the modern (Western) ideal of the ‘pure' gift, which is supposedly given without strings attached” (562).
Barclay helpfully provides six different axes along which a gift might be ‘perfected' (that is, drawn out to an extreme for the sake of definition). He distinguishes six possible perfections of the gift: its superabundance, its singularity (the giver is nothing but gracious), its priority, its incongruity, its efficacy, and its non-circularity (69). Barclay demonstrates that the final perfection is entirely modern: gifts in the ancient world always obliged the receiver to reciprocate. Although Paul speaks of the first five perfections of the gift, the one he most emphasizes (in contradistinction to most of Second Temple Judaism) is the incongruity of grace with the worthiness of the recipient. The second half of Barclay's book explores Paul's concept of the gift in Galatians and Romans. Barclay notes in conclusion,
The reading of Paul offered in this book may be interpreted either as a re-contextualization of the Augustinian/Lutheran tradition, returning the dynamic of the incongruity of grace to its original mission environment where it accompanied the formation of new communities, or as a reconfiguration of the ‘new perspective,' placing its best historical and exegetical insights within the frame of Paul's theology of grace (573).
Schmemann's slim volume (the main body is only 100 pages) is a profound and unusual meditation on the sacraments as worldview. He begins by pointing out that “Man must eat in order to live” (11). But unlike the animals, man is called to bless God for his food, and therefore acts as priest for the whole created order: “he stands in the center of the world and unifies it in his act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it to God” (15). The Eucharist in Orthodoxy arise out of this sacramental understanding of the world.
Schmemann complains that all too often “theologians applied to the Eucharist a set of abstract questions in order to squeeze it into their own intellectual framework” (34) instead of following along the Eucharistic liturgy itself, which he proceeds to do, step by step. The opening movements of the Preface are “our ascension in Christ, our entrance in Him unto the ‘world to come'” (41)—an idea quite amenable to Calvin's view of the Supper, as is Schmemann's remark that in the epiclesis “it is the Holy Spirit who manifests the bread as the body and the wine as the blood of Christ” (43).
In baptism, meanwhile, for theologians “validity was the preoccupation, and not fullness, meaning, joy” (67). But there is a stern side, for in the excorisms “the first act of the Christian life is a renunciation, a challenge. No one can be Christ's until he has, first, faced evil, and then become ready to fight it” (71). This is an aspect of baptism that could profitably be incorporated into the Protestant experience of baptism. In chrismation, “the very fulfillment of baptism” (75), we see that “the only true temple of God is man and through man the world” (76).
The most intriguing part of the book was the chapter on the sacrament of marriage, entitled “The Mystery of Love”. If marriage is a revelation of Christ and the church, then it is not private but sacramental (82). In wonderful symbolism recalling Genesis the priest puts crowns on the bridal pair, an announcement that “each family is indeed a kingdom” (89).
Towards the end of his book, Schmemann observes that a sacrament is not so much a miracle as “the manifestation of the ultimate Truth about the world and life, man and nature, the Truth which is Christ” (102).
This book engages five voices on conversation on the eucharist: Brother Jeffrey Gros (Roman Catholic), John R. Stephenson (Lutheran), Reformed (Leanne Van Dyck), Baptist (Roger E. Olson), and Pentecostal (Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen). The Eastern Orthodox perspective is conspicuously absent, which unfortunately limits the value of the book.
Gros spends much of his chapter on transubstantiation. “Externally, the bread and wine retain their appearance even after consecration,” he writes. “Yet at the same time the whole Christ is sacramentally present in them-the whole Christ, body and blood, soul and divinity”. The Catholic formulation in historic debates has been transubstantiation. “Although other explanations of this presence would be possible, none has yet been approved by the Catholic Church” (9). It does not repeat Christ's sacrifice but “sacramentally re-presents it” (11).
Stephenson, in the most polemical chapter (Olsen describes it as “offensive” (82)), defends the corporeal presence of Christ's body and blood. This creates “an insuperable wall of separation between orthodox Lutheranism and the wide world of Protestantism” (61), while “the different ways in which Lutherans and Roman Catholics articulate the real presence are in themselves not necessarily church-divisive” (65).
Leanne Van Dyck argues for the Reformed view—Calvin's instrumentalism, in contrast to Zwingli's memorialism or Bullinger's parallelism. Calvin viewed the sacrament as a true means of grace, with Christ's ascended presence mediated by the Holy Spirit (106)—an emphasis the Pentecostal Kärkkäinen finds intriguing (124).
Olson sides with historic Anabaptists and Baptists in rejecting “any idea that the grace of God is especially attached to these visible, physical objects or emblems” (131). He grants that “emblems are objects in an event in which Christ is present and active in strengthening participants' faith” (132). There is no real presence; at most the ordinance can be compared to the renewal of wedding vows (142).
Kärkkäinen admits that “Pentecostals have devoted little attention to developing any kind of constructive theology of sacraments in general or the Lord's Supper in particular” (169). Pentecostals have generally adopted the memorialist view, but surprisingly have not reflected on the Spirit's role in mediating Christ's presence (181). Many questions and possibilities remain for the emerging generation of Pentecostal scholars. Perhaps the most interesting possibility would be Calvin's doctrine of the Lord's Supper combined with Pentecostal fire.
In the opening pages of The Prophetic Imagination, Walter Brueggemann charges that “the contemporary American church is so largely enculturated to the American ethos of consumerism that it has little power to believe or to act” (1). He urges the church to recover its faith tradition, and with it the ability to speak and act with “prophetic imagination.” His hypothesis is simple: “The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us” (3). Such ministry serves both to criticize the dominant narrative and to energize towards God's future.
Brueggemann, a leading Old Testament scholar, turns to the story of Israel and God's call for her to form a new social reality. He begins with the Exodus account, Israel's experience of the redeeming power of God that shaped national identity and dominates the entire Old Testament horizon. This narrative “is designed to show the radical criticism and radical delegitimizing of the Egyptian empire” (9)—a regime whose order and stability is based on oppression of the stranger. Into this situation God speaks through Moses with passionate authority: “Let my people go!” “Moses was ... concerned not with social betterment through the repentance of the regime but rather with totally dismantling it in order to permit a new reality to appear” (21). Israel is powerfully summoned to experience the freedom of God in a community built on justice and equality.
However, a deep problem emerges in Israel's history. The monarchy against which God warned comes to full and ominous flower in the reign of Solomon. In contrast to the radical Mosaic vision, “the entire program of Solomon now appears to have been a self-serving achievement with its sole purpose the self-securing of the king and dynasty” (23). What develops is a new “royal consciousness” that seeks to preserve the status quo at all costs, including oppression and forced labour. The unrestrained dance of freedom is replaced by dulled satiation (26). God, once worshipped as transcendent and free, now is domesticated in a temple in the royal city (28). “The dominant history of that period, like the dominant history of our own time, consists in briefcases and limousines and press conferences and quotas and new weaponry systems. And that is not a place where much dancing happens and where no groaning is permitted” (36).
In sharp contrast, the prophetic imagination visualizes a future where God and people are truly free. But this begins with grieving at the brokenness and injustice in the present. Brueggemann turns to Jeremiah as the paradigmatic “weeping prophet”. Jeremiah was called to groan and grieve almost alone for Israel's idolatry and injustice. “This denying and deceiving kind of numbness is broken only by the embrace of negativity, by the public articulation that we are fearful and ashamed of the future we have chosen” (56). Only then can prophecy move on to its second function: to energize. It is (Second) Isaiah who is the prophet of hope par excellence. He offers new symbols and new songs of God's freedom and power to make a new beginning, for “our hope is never generated among us but always given to us” (79).
Brueggemann traces this dual theme of prophetic criticism and energizing in Jesus' ministry. Jesus criticizes not only in words, as is often noted, but in his very deeds. After all, “empires are never built or maintained on the basis of compassion ... thus compassion that might be seen simply as generous goodwill is in fact criticism of the system, forces, and ideologies that produce the hurt” (89,89). But Jesus's ministry is also one that produces amazement, for the entire prophetic tradition finds its highest fulfillment in him (102).
The key weakness of the book is that the target for prophetic ministry is always assumed to be idolatrous surrounding culture, when in fact it is almost always the people of God, being called back to their broken covenant with Yahweh. The prophetic ministry the church needs most is the one that calls us to faithfulness to our own identity as God's holy people. In his concluding “Note on the Practice of Ministry”, Brueggemann observes that “the task of prophetic ministry is evoke an alternative community that knows it is about different things in different ways” (117). In this way the prophetic imagination helps the church be truly missional, by reminding her that a true missionary encounter with the world will require criticism through tears as well as the joyful announcement of God's new reign in Jesus.
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