The last passage Gaffin considers is Galatians 2:19-20:
For through the Law I died to the Law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
Gaffin's comments are brief: "The notion of resurrection with Christ is not difficult to see in these verses.... The death to the law spoken of is correlative with death to sin. Therefore, since this death is described in terms of solidarity with Christ in His crucifixion, the life which forms its pointed contrast should be understood in terms of solidarity in His resurrection. Moreover, since this life is obviously life in individual, existential union with Christ ("Christ in me"), the co-crucifixion and the co-resurrection in view are likewise primarily experiential in nature."
From there he returns to the three sorts of union which he described when dealing with Romans 6. He quotes Murray in order to reiterate the need for caution in dealing with these senses: "It is necessary to stress both aspects, the past historical and the experiential in their distinctness, on the one hand, and in their inter-dependence, on the other." He goes on to look at two trends in Pauline interpretation that, to his mind, fail to strike this balance. One is the notion that baptism brings near the death of Christ, erasing time and space so that the believer is made contemporary with it. As he puts it, "in baptism the death of Christ as an event is made present in the experience of the recipient." The other is to say that "in the sacrament all temporal and spatial distinctions are eliminated so that the believer becomes contemporaneous with Christ's death and resurrection."
But the quesiton remains, how does one talk about this union in a way that captures the real solidarity but does not deny historical distinctness? "What is the relationship between the respective experience of Christ and the believer? How are we to understand the interdependence of experience which is temporally distinct yet described in terms of co-resurrection?" Or, as Murray says, "it is difficult to determine how the finished action of Christ in the past relates itself to those who are contemplate in that action prior to the time when that past action takes effect in their life history." He quotes with favor a statement by Murray: "something occurred in the past historical which makes necessary what is realized and exemplified in the actual life history." In a footnote he offers a quote from Ridderbos as well: "whatever happened to Christ, happened to the Church, not only analogously or metaphorically, but in the historical sense of the word." He notes that Ridderbos goes on to describe the union in terms of "corporate personality." He says that Ridderbos's treatment of this concept, however, tends toward vagueness, largely because he brushes the disputes over realism and federalism. Nevertheless, Gaffin says he is willing to speak in terms of corporate personality, provided that certain conditions are met:
1) that there is no toning down of the distinction between predestinarian, past historical, and existential union.
2) that Christ is given primary place in this relationship. As he puts it, "For Paul, the union of Christ and believers involves more than the 'identity of the individual and the group to which he belongs.' It is not a relationship of perfect reciprocity; nor is the direction of thought reversible. For instance, Paul neither says nor implies that Christ has been raised with believers."
3) that the representative aspect of Christ's role in this relationship is retained. "This is perhaps most clear in II Corinthians 5:14f. Despite distinctive twists in phraseology and ideas, the orbit of thought is the same as in Romans 6:1ff. From the consideration that Christ died 'for all', Paul directly draws the corporate conclusion that 'all' died.... Paul never separates the corporate point of view from the representative." For Paul, in other words, the notions of representation and union are linked but distinct. Gaffin particularly stresses this point. "The solidarity involved does not destroy the personal identity of either Christ or the believer." This seems all the more correct when one considers that in the High Priestly Prayer of John 17, Jesus compares His oneness with His people to the oneness enjoyed by Himself and the Father, a Trinitarian oneness that is entirely real but without any blurring of personal distinction.
This third qualification means that the basic project of the ordo salutis is fully legitimate, despite some of the criticisms offered in the last post. There is still a distinction of persons, and thus the question of how the persons interact is a legitimate one. "Paul's notion of Christ as a corporate person," he writes, "does not eliminate the necessity of reflecting on the place of an ordo salutis in Paul, on how he related the benefits possessed (existentially and individually) by believers to the past historical accomplishment of Christ." To put this a litte differently, this means that there is still a clear place in Paul's teaching for a distinction between redemption accomplished and redemption applied. What cannot be lost, though, is that there is an indissoluble connection between the two of them, and not just one of cause and effect or basis and superstructure. The individual believer is united to Christ in His accomplishment of redemption, and especially at the point of His resurrection, and it is only by virtue of that that any benefits accrue to the believer. In other words, the benefits are not somehow stripped from Christ once they have been obtained and then transferred across space and time to the believer. The benefits remain with Christ and the believer is joined with Him across space and time (though not in a way that compromises his or her spatial and temporal identity), even if we can go on to describe a sub-instrumentality that is at work within that union.
And not only is there an indissoluble connection of present with past, but of the present with the future as well, because Christ's death and resurrection were eschatological at their very core. "Because in Christ's resurrection the history of redemption has reached its eschatological consummation, the soteriological experience of the believer accordingly has an eschatological character. For Paul, eschatology is not only the goal of soteriology but also encompasses it, constituting its very substance from the outset." Gaffin will make quite a bit of this observation in the third part of the book.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Friday, June 22, 2007
I'm Back!
Well, time got away from me and I never finished this summary. Some themes from this book have been coming up in a conversation w/ a friend, though, which has made me want to finish. So with that, I resume:
Gaffin has been arguing that our union with Christ in His resurrection is portrayed as both future and past. That is, our resurrection, while having commenced with the resurrection of Christ, is pictured both as waiting for future completion and as having already been completed. I left off with his treatment of Romans 6:3 and following, where he argues that our resurrection is portrayed as having already been completed:
Romans 6:3-8 Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him...
Paul is responding to the charge that his gospel would yield antinomianism. He replies by saying that believers have died to sin. Clearly, this death to sin is an already completed reality - Paul can use it as a premise on which to base an argument about the nature of the believer's life in the present. As Gaffin puts it, "the death to sin spoken of here has taken place in the life history of the individual believer." The question remains, of course, whether the same could be said of the resurrection.
The remainder of the passage clearly indicates that it can. Paul defends his claim about the death of the believer to sin by appealing to the meaning of baptism. "Baptism is 'into Christ'...' that is, baptism signifies union with Christ." This certainly means we are united with Him in His death and burial. By itself, however, that is not a satisfactory description. There is an additional element to this union that cannot be missed."Strictly speaking," Gaffin writes, "death to sin is not an adequate description of the believer's existence, because it has only negative force. The believer is one united with Christ in His death and burial 'in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life." Or in other words, union with Christ involves union with both His death and His resurrection. As surely as our union means that we have already died with Christ, it also means that we have already been raised with Him. And as surely as that is true, we must live a new life.
This line of thinking, Gaffin suggests, brings out something unspeakably central to Paul's theology - the idea of total union. "Really more basic than the thesis that the believer has died to sin is the notion of union with Christ in the various pahses of His messianic experience. Hence Paul's line of reasoning is as follows: on the one hand, as Christ died (to sin), so believers by virtue of union with Him in His death have died (to sin); on the other hand, as Christ was raised form the dead, so believers by virtue of union with Him in His resurrection have been raised form the dead. Because of the solidarity between Christ and believers, the inseparability of [death and] resurrection from death in the case of the former means their inseparability in the experience of the latter." Verse 5 states this explicitly - "for if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection." Gaffin quotes Murray's comments on this verse: "The underlying though is again the inseparable conjunction of Christ's death and resurrection, and the inference drawn from this conjunction is that if we are united with Christ in His death we must be also in His resurrection. Disjunction in our case is as impossible as disjunction in His."
He goes on to comment on this word "likeness". While this term is sometimes pressed into the service of debates about the mode of baptism, Gaffin argues that something radically different is at work here. He thinks it underscores the idea of distinction, and argues that as such it further supports the view that the finished resurrection in view here is one presently realized in the life of the believer. As he puts it, "Believers have died to sin, and this death is an actual experience of believers. Accordingly, their resurrection invariably conjoined with this death is likewise understood in an existential fashion. Now since... [the] death and resurrection in view... is [the] death and resurrection which has taken place in the life history of the believer, the structure of this experience cannot be identical with Christ's. To cite just one difference, the former lacks the somatic aspect which is an essential characteristic of the latter. Apparently, then, Paul is reflection on these differences in verse 5. And his use of 'likeness' confirms rather pointedly that the solidarity with Christ in His resurrection described here is an experience in the life of the individual believer." The same thought, he suggests, occurs in verse 6 - our old self has been crucified with Christ, and thus we died to sin, and the new self has been raised with Christ, and thus we lived to righteousness. There is clearly an existential emphasis here.
Before moving on, Gaffin returns to and once more underscores this idea of total union. "Before leaving this passage," he writes, "one point already noted along with several of its implications needs to be stressed. In establishing his central thesis that believers have died to sin, Paul does not argue directly from their involvement in Christ's death. Rather his death is their death because they are united to him. Baptism is into his death because baptism is into Christ Jesus. In other words, union with Christ is the basic conception; only because believers are joined to him as he is by virtue of his death (crucifixion, burial, and resurrection) can they be said to paricipate in these events, to have died with him, and so forth." He emphasizes again that the union in view here is existential - that is, it is not purely objective, but has an internal, subjective dimension and thus manifests itself in the inner and outer life of the believer. As he puts it, "Baptism signfies and seals a transition in the experience of the recpient, a transition from being (existentially) apart from Christ to being (existentially) joined to Him. Galatians 3:27 is even more graphic: 'Those who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.'" That is not to say that the union is not objective also - it has both components, and we cannot abandon either of them. To put that a slightly different way, it is broader than our life history, but still incorporates our life history.
He suggest that this is very clear in Ephesians 2:12 "where Paul says that the Ephesian Christians, chosen in Christ before the foundation fo the world, were 'at that time separated from Christ'.... The Christless, alien state described in the immediate context of verse 12 coincides with the 'walk' in trespasses and sins mentioned in verses 1ff. Consequently, the transition described in verses 5f. as being made alive with Christ, etc. pivots on being joined to Christ in an existential sense." To put this in slighlty different terms, we were united with Christ in eternity past (what Gaffin calls predestinarian union) and in Christ's own personal life history (what he calls redemptive-historical union) and within our own personal life history (what he calls existential union). These three are distinct and separate, but at the same time intimately connected with each other.
It is vital, he suggests, to avoid collapsing any of these senses into each other. And particularly the existential sense, since this, as Ephesians 2 seems to indicate, is the sort of union in which transition from wrath to grace is finally effected. The former two senses are presupposed by and responsible for existential union, to be sure, but that does not make existential union negotiable or less important. As Gaffin puts it, "There is no element in the whole of Paul's soteriology more basic than this existential union with Christ. To treat it in abstraction form or to the exclusion of the ideas that believers have been chosen eternally in Christ and were contemplated as one with Christ at the time of His sufferings, death and resurrection would of course radically distort Paul's perspective. The predestinarian, the past historial, and the existential 'in Christ' are indissolubly connected. The former two, each in its own way, are the basis for and give rise to the latter. But precisely this organic bond, this inseparability, makes equivocation in dealing with Paul's teaching on union with Christ a subtle danger to which the interpretation of Paul is constantly exposed. Falling upon the Scylla of equivocation may not be so serious an error as shipwreck on the Charybdis of isolation or exclusion; however, the former can hardly fail to produce a confused understanding of Paul. For, as we have seen and will continue to see, in Paul's soteriology the realization of redemption in the experience of the individaul, both in its inception and in its continuation, is based on the experience of being joined to Christ."
Finally, Gaffin makes some very important observations about the way the ordo salutis has traditionally been conceived. Going back to William Perkins, there has been a long tradition of seeing salvation as a "Golden Chain" - a series of distinct events running from eternity past to future glory, each one premised upon the previous one. Gaffin suggests, however, that this is not entirely faithful to the Pauline perspective. "The existential crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection are not distinct or separate occurences in the experience of the individual believer. Each is not a separate state in an ordo salutis but an spect of the single, individsilbe event of being joined to Christ experientially." That is to say, rather that a "Golden Chain", we ought to think of one salvific event - union with Christ - which brings a set of simultaneous yet distinct benefits. Though, as future posts will show, that is a somewhat awkward way of speaking, since it makes it sound like the benefits come after and rest on top of being united to Christ. Gaffin would argue instead that union with Christ is the essence of each benefit, that it functions as the basic framework for describing each benefit. As he puts it, "This needs to be kept in view continuously when discussing the idea of being raised with Christ. The latter is always exponential of the experience of incorporation. Romans 7:4 makes this clear: the positive end interposed between having died to the law...through the body of Christ and bearing fruit to God...is not being raised with Christ but being joined to Him as the one who has been raised." He will bring this out in much more detail in future parts of the book.
Gaffin has been arguing that our union with Christ in His resurrection is portrayed as both future and past. That is, our resurrection, while having commenced with the resurrection of Christ, is pictured both as waiting for future completion and as having already been completed. I left off with his treatment of Romans 6:3 and following, where he argues that our resurrection is portrayed as having already been completed:
Romans 6:3-8 Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him...
Paul is responding to the charge that his gospel would yield antinomianism. He replies by saying that believers have died to sin. Clearly, this death to sin is an already completed reality - Paul can use it as a premise on which to base an argument about the nature of the believer's life in the present. As Gaffin puts it, "the death to sin spoken of here has taken place in the life history of the individual believer." The question remains, of course, whether the same could be said of the resurrection.
The remainder of the passage clearly indicates that it can. Paul defends his claim about the death of the believer to sin by appealing to the meaning of baptism. "Baptism is 'into Christ'...' that is, baptism signifies union with Christ." This certainly means we are united with Him in His death and burial. By itself, however, that is not a satisfactory description. There is an additional element to this union that cannot be missed."Strictly speaking," Gaffin writes, "death to sin is not an adequate description of the believer's existence, because it has only negative force. The believer is one united with Christ in His death and burial 'in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life." Or in other words, union with Christ involves union with both His death and His resurrection. As surely as our union means that we have already died with Christ, it also means that we have already been raised with Him. And as surely as that is true, we must live a new life.
This line of thinking, Gaffin suggests, brings out something unspeakably central to Paul's theology - the idea of total union. "Really more basic than the thesis that the believer has died to sin is the notion of union with Christ in the various pahses of His messianic experience. Hence Paul's line of reasoning is as follows: on the one hand, as Christ died (to sin), so believers by virtue of union with Him in His death have died (to sin); on the other hand, as Christ was raised form the dead, so believers by virtue of union with Him in His resurrection have been raised form the dead. Because of the solidarity between Christ and believers, the inseparability of [death and] resurrection from death in the case of the former means their inseparability in the experience of the latter." Verse 5 states this explicitly - "for if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection." Gaffin quotes Murray's comments on this verse: "The underlying though is again the inseparable conjunction of Christ's death and resurrection, and the inference drawn from this conjunction is that if we are united with Christ in His death we must be also in His resurrection. Disjunction in our case is as impossible as disjunction in His."
He goes on to comment on this word "likeness". While this term is sometimes pressed into the service of debates about the mode of baptism, Gaffin argues that something radically different is at work here. He thinks it underscores the idea of distinction, and argues that as such it further supports the view that the finished resurrection in view here is one presently realized in the life of the believer. As he puts it, "Believers have died to sin, and this death is an actual experience of believers. Accordingly, their resurrection invariably conjoined with this death is likewise understood in an existential fashion. Now since... [the] death and resurrection in view... is [the] death and resurrection which has taken place in the life history of the believer, the structure of this experience cannot be identical with Christ's. To cite just one difference, the former lacks the somatic aspect which is an essential characteristic of the latter. Apparently, then, Paul is reflection on these differences in verse 5. And his use of 'likeness' confirms rather pointedly that the solidarity with Christ in His resurrection described here is an experience in the life of the individual believer." The same thought, he suggests, occurs in verse 6 - our old self has been crucified with Christ, and thus we died to sin, and the new self has been raised with Christ, and thus we lived to righteousness. There is clearly an existential emphasis here.
Before moving on, Gaffin returns to and once more underscores this idea of total union. "Before leaving this passage," he writes, "one point already noted along with several of its implications needs to be stressed. In establishing his central thesis that believers have died to sin, Paul does not argue directly from their involvement in Christ's death. Rather his death is their death because they are united to him. Baptism is into his death because baptism is into Christ Jesus. In other words, union with Christ is the basic conception; only because believers are joined to him as he is by virtue of his death (crucifixion, burial, and resurrection) can they be said to paricipate in these events, to have died with him, and so forth." He emphasizes again that the union in view here is existential - that is, it is not purely objective, but has an internal, subjective dimension and thus manifests itself in the inner and outer life of the believer. As he puts it, "Baptism signfies and seals a transition in the experience of the recpient, a transition from being (existentially) apart from Christ to being (existentially) joined to Him. Galatians 3:27 is even more graphic: 'Those who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.'" That is not to say that the union is not objective also - it has both components, and we cannot abandon either of them. To put that a slightly different way, it is broader than our life history, but still incorporates our life history.
He suggest that this is very clear in Ephesians 2:12 "where Paul says that the Ephesian Christians, chosen in Christ before the foundation fo the world, were 'at that time separated from Christ'.... The Christless, alien state described in the immediate context of verse 12 coincides with the 'walk' in trespasses and sins mentioned in verses 1ff. Consequently, the transition described in verses 5f. as being made alive with Christ, etc. pivots on being joined to Christ in an existential sense." To put this in slighlty different terms, we were united with Christ in eternity past (what Gaffin calls predestinarian union) and in Christ's own personal life history (what he calls redemptive-historical union) and within our own personal life history (what he calls existential union). These three are distinct and separate, but at the same time intimately connected with each other.
It is vital, he suggests, to avoid collapsing any of these senses into each other. And particularly the existential sense, since this, as Ephesians 2 seems to indicate, is the sort of union in which transition from wrath to grace is finally effected. The former two senses are presupposed by and responsible for existential union, to be sure, but that does not make existential union negotiable or less important. As Gaffin puts it, "There is no element in the whole of Paul's soteriology more basic than this existential union with Christ. To treat it in abstraction form or to the exclusion of the ideas that believers have been chosen eternally in Christ and were contemplated as one with Christ at the time of His sufferings, death and resurrection would of course radically distort Paul's perspective. The predestinarian, the past historial, and the existential 'in Christ' are indissolubly connected. The former two, each in its own way, are the basis for and give rise to the latter. But precisely this organic bond, this inseparability, makes equivocation in dealing with Paul's teaching on union with Christ a subtle danger to which the interpretation of Paul is constantly exposed. Falling upon the Scylla of equivocation may not be so serious an error as shipwreck on the Charybdis of isolation or exclusion; however, the former can hardly fail to produce a confused understanding of Paul. For, as we have seen and will continue to see, in Paul's soteriology the realization of redemption in the experience of the individaul, both in its inception and in its continuation, is based on the experience of being joined to Christ."
Finally, Gaffin makes some very important observations about the way the ordo salutis has traditionally been conceived. Going back to William Perkins, there has been a long tradition of seeing salvation as a "Golden Chain" - a series of distinct events running from eternity past to future glory, each one premised upon the previous one. Gaffin suggests, however, that this is not entirely faithful to the Pauline perspective. "The existential crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection are not distinct or separate occurences in the experience of the individual believer. Each is not a separate state in an ordo salutis but an spect of the single, individsilbe event of being joined to Christ experientially." That is to say, rather that a "Golden Chain", we ought to think of one salvific event - union with Christ - which brings a set of simultaneous yet distinct benefits. Though, as future posts will show, that is a somewhat awkward way of speaking, since it makes it sound like the benefits come after and rest on top of being united to Christ. Gaffin would argue instead that union with Christ is the essence of each benefit, that it functions as the basic framework for describing each benefit. As he puts it, "This needs to be kept in view continuously when discussing the idea of being raised with Christ. The latter is always exponential of the experience of incorporation. Romans 7:4 makes this clear: the positive end interposed between having died to the law...through the body of Christ and bearing fruit to God...is not being raised with Christ but being joined to Him as the one who has been raised." He will bring this out in much more detail in future parts of the book.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Resurrection and Redemption, Part IV
As mentioned in the last post, Gaffin calls attention to four passages which clearly affirm that the resurrection of believers with Christ has in some sense already been completed in the present: Ephesians 2:5-6, Colossians 2:12, Romans 6:3-8, and Galatians 2:19.
1) Ephesians 2:5-6 even when we were dead in our transgressions, [God] made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus
He begins by noting an exegetical challenge posed by this verse and each of the others. As he puts it, "do they refer solely to what took place in the historical experience of Christ, or do they apply as well to what has happened in the actual life experience of the individual believer?" In other words, is the action in these verses something that happened to Christ and only to us as we are contemplated in Christ, so that the action is not something that took place, strictly speaking, within our own life experience? For example, in Hebrews it is said that Levi paid a tithe to Melchizedek when Abraham did so because Levi was "in the loins" of his ancestor. As a historical event, however, that payment took place in Abraham's life, not Levi's. Is something similar going on here, so that when it says we have been raised and seated with Christ it would be wrong to think this refers to something within our present life experience, or is there reason to think that the finished resurrection mentioned here has to do with an event in the life of the believer as well?
Gaffin suggests that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this verse has reference to an event in the life of the believer. The biggest indication of this is that the deadness mentioned at the beginning is a deadness in sin and the enlivening and resurrection involve some sort of "transformation and ethical renewal." These facts exclude these verses from referring exclusively to something which took place in the historical experience of Christ. Not only that, but the enlivening and resurrection are described later on in verse 10 as being "created in Christ Jesus", which seems to suggest that Christ is not the subject of these actions. Furthermore, the purpose in view for the subject of these actions is a walk of good works prepared beforehand, seemingly presented here to contrast with the walk of transgressions mentioned at the beginning of the passage. That seems to indicate that the subject of these actions once walked a transgressive lifestyle before being raised.
It seems, then, that in the actual life history of the believer there is a transition from wrath to grace [or, in the terms of the passage, from a walk of transgressions (vs 2) to a walk of good works (vs 10)] that is equated with having been raised with Christ and seated with Him in heaven. That Paul carries the action through to being seated with Christ indicates that this resurrection is not incomplete or partial, but full and complete.
2) Colossians 2:12-13 having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions,
Here again, the language of having been raised with Christ seems to indicate something that is a present reality in the life of the believer. One indication of this is that verse 13 and Ephesians 2:5-6 are structured similarly (as are, indeed, both epistles as a whole). Beyond that, the instrumentality of the resurrection is held to be a personal act of faith. Furthermore, in the first verse of the next chapter, Paul urges his readers to strive for a life of holiness based on the fact of having been already raised with Christ in the present (3:1).
3) Romans 6:3-8 Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him...
Gaffin gives this passage a much more extended treatment and draws some extremely important conclusions. (more later)
1) Ephesians 2:5-6 even when we were dead in our transgressions, [God] made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus
He begins by noting an exegetical challenge posed by this verse and each of the others. As he puts it, "do they refer solely to what took place in the historical experience of Christ, or do they apply as well to what has happened in the actual life experience of the individual believer?" In other words, is the action in these verses something that happened to Christ and only to us as we are contemplated in Christ, so that the action is not something that took place, strictly speaking, within our own life experience? For example, in Hebrews it is said that Levi paid a tithe to Melchizedek when Abraham did so because Levi was "in the loins" of his ancestor. As a historical event, however, that payment took place in Abraham's life, not Levi's. Is something similar going on here, so that when it says we have been raised and seated with Christ it would be wrong to think this refers to something within our present life experience, or is there reason to think that the finished resurrection mentioned here has to do with an event in the life of the believer as well?
Gaffin suggests that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this verse has reference to an event in the life of the believer. The biggest indication of this is that the deadness mentioned at the beginning is a deadness in sin and the enlivening and resurrection involve some sort of "transformation and ethical renewal." These facts exclude these verses from referring exclusively to something which took place in the historical experience of Christ. Not only that, but the enlivening and resurrection are described later on in verse 10 as being "created in Christ Jesus", which seems to suggest that Christ is not the subject of these actions. Furthermore, the purpose in view for the subject of these actions is a walk of good works prepared beforehand, seemingly presented here to contrast with the walk of transgressions mentioned at the beginning of the passage. That seems to indicate that the subject of these actions once walked a transgressive lifestyle before being raised.
It seems, then, that in the actual life history of the believer there is a transition from wrath to grace [or, in the terms of the passage, from a walk of transgressions (vs 2) to a walk of good works (vs 10)] that is equated with having been raised with Christ and seated with Him in heaven. That Paul carries the action through to being seated with Christ indicates that this resurrection is not incomplete or partial, but full and complete.
2) Colossians 2:12-13 having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions,
Here again, the language of having been raised with Christ seems to indicate something that is a present reality in the life of the believer. One indication of this is that verse 13 and Ephesians 2:5-6 are structured similarly (as are, indeed, both epistles as a whole). Beyond that, the instrumentality of the resurrection is held to be a personal act of faith. Furthermore, in the first verse of the next chapter, Paul urges his readers to strive for a life of holiness based on the fact of having been already raised with Christ in the present (3:1).
3) Romans 6:3-8 Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him...
Gaffin gives this passage a much more extended treatment and draws some extremely important conclusions. (more later)
Resurrection and Redemption, Part III
Well, Easter is approaching, so I'd better get on with these summaries, especially since the sort of methodological matters the last two posts describe don't even scratch the surface of what Gaffin does in his book. Without further adieu, then --
Gaffin begins the second part of the book by stating explicitly what he takes to be the central theme in Pauline theology. "Running through the relevant material is a central theme which governs the whole: the unity of the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of believers." He proposes to spend the second portion of the book demonstrating this basic thesis and the next and last portion of the book explaining how this concept controls the application of redemption.
The unity just mentioned has two aspects to it, both a future and a present aspect, or, to use the popular jargon, an already and a not-yet aspect. Gaffin begins with the future/not-yet aspect, and examines several passages that assert such a union:
1)I Corinthians 15:20: But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep.
The significant concept here is "firstfruits." The concept of firstfruits goes back to the grain offerings prescribed by the Mosaic law. The "firstfruits" were the first and best portion of the harvest offered as sacrifice to God. The concept, however, was not that this portion of the harvest belonged to God and the remainder belonged to the Israelites. The notion was that the whole harvest was given by and belonged to God. That is why He has the right to claim a sacrifice of the firstfruits. And in sacrificing the firstfruits, the Israelites were acknowledging that the entirety of the harvest came from God. The firstfruits, then, are a token of the whole harvest. The whole significance of the sacrifice lies in the fact that they stand for and are connected with the entire yield. As Gaffin puts this, "they are a token expression of recognition and thanksgiving that the whole has been given by God.... "Firstfruits" expresses the notion of organic connection and unity, the inseparability of the initial quantity from the whole. It is particularly this aspect which gives these sacrifices their significance."
To speak of Christ as the firstfruits of those who are asleep, then, does not simply indicate that He is the first to raise. It implies some sort of connection between His resurrection and the general resurrection of all believers. As Gaffin puts it, "His resurrection is the representative beginning of the resurrection of believers.... His resurrection is not simply a guarantee; it is a pledge in the sense that it is the actual beginning of the general event.... Paul views the two resurrections not so much as two events but as two episodes of the same event."
If this seems to be reading too much into the concept, the same idea is present in Romans 11:16 - "If the first piece {of dough} is holy, the lump is also; and if the root is holy, the branches are too." As he argues it, "since the relation between the first portion of dough and the root is not exactly analogous...yet each is made the basis for postulation, the specific point of the parallel and so the consideration governing the argument must be the factor of organic union." And even if this is not persuasive, Romans 8:23 is too clear to be missed: "And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for {our} adoption as sons, the redemption of our body." The ideas is that "the Spirit presently possessed by believers is a token, an initial enjoyment of the adoption which hereafter will be fully and openly received in the resurrection of the body." If a connection between a future and present reality such that the future reality is brought into the present is in view when the Spirit is called "firstfruits", the same idea should be borne in mind when Christ is called "the firstfruits of those who are asleep." The idea is not just that He is first to be raised, but that His resurrection is connected with our future resurrection in such a way that our future resurrection has already begun with Christ's resurrection - our future resurrection is of a piece with His.
Lest there be any further doubt, Gaffin turns to the two verses following I Corinthians 15:20: For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. The two "fors" are instructive. The first one provides a rationale for verse 20, meaning it explains why Christ as risen is the firstfruits of the dead. And the answer is that through Him came "the resurrection of the dead" - or in other words, through Christ as raised the resurrection of the rest of the dead happens. The idea is not simply that Christ is first, then, but that His resurrection is connected with or touches the resurrection of the rest of the dead. And why/how does Christ's resurrection do this? The second "for" provides the answer - because "in Christ all will be made alive." The resurrection of the dead happens through Christ's resurrection because in Christ's resurrection all are somehow made alive. Again, the notion is clearly much deeper than temporal priority - Christ's resurrection and the resurrection of believers are in some kind of vital, organic connection with each other so that the very act of resurrecting Christ brings life to all believers in and of itself.
2) Colossians 1:18 He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.
This expression "firstborn from the dead" is closely related, Gaffin suggests, to the phrase that occurs just a little bit earlier in verse 15, "firstborn of creation." This latter phrase has sometimes been taken to mean that Christ is the first creature, but that interpretation, Gaffin argues, is not sustained by the immediate context. In the very next verse, the reason offered for Christ being the firstborn of creation is that "by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth." That statement would not be true if Christ's being firstborn means Christ is Himself a creature. The better interpretation, Gaffin argues, is that "'firstborn' is to be understood in terms of...the Old Testament, where the literal force of both 'first' and 'born' has receded, and the term has become an indication of uniqueness, special status and dignity, marking one as the recepient of exceptional favor and blessing." He suggests this usage is clear in Exodus 4:22 and Psalm 88:27, where Israel and David respectively are called "firstborn." The idea, then, is that because all creation was made through Christ, Christ has a special exalted status over all creation in virtue of which He is called "firstborn."
Against this context, calling Christ the firstborn from the dead a few verses later implies a special, unique, and exalted status over the dead due to the fact that they will be resurrected through Him in a way analogous to the creation being made through Him. The force of "from", however, is signficant and should not be missed. Christ is not just firstborn of the dead as in the case of creation, but from the dead. This is a marked breakdown in the analogy - Christ does not belong to the class of created things, but He does (or better, did) belong to the class of the dead! Moreover, He became firstborn inasmuch as He was brought from or out of that class. Christ was raised from the dead, then, and through that He acquired a special, exalted status - as the text puts it, a place of supreme preeminence or a status as "firstborn" - because in that act the resurrection of believers more generally was achieved. As Gaffin puts it, "His is the beginning of the 'general epochal event' which at the same time makes him head over the others; with his resurrection is given the resurrection of believers."
As further confirmation, this phrase is immediately preceded by calling Christ "the beginning" and suggesting that He is "head over the body" of the church. Again, more than just temporal priority is involved in these phrases. The notion of preeminence due to the fact that Christ imparts life through organic connection is the much more dominant emphasis, as is clearly communicated in the image of head and body and even in the term "beginning" (compare, for example, where God is spoken of as the "beginning and the end" - obviously, there is more in place there than simply coming first).
3) I Corinthians 15:12-19 Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.
In these verses, Paul is arguing hypothetically - that is, he reasons in an "if-then" fashion. He is reasoning about the resurrection of Christ and of believers more generally, and he argues that a denial of either one involves a denial of the other, indicating a close and inextricable bond between them. "If Christ has been raised, then the proclamation of general resurrection cannot be called into question. Similarly, to deny Christ's resurrection, in effect, denies the resurrection of believers.... On the other hand, he can reverse the line of argument by reasoning directly from a denial of the resurrection of believers to a denial of the resurrection of Christ.... This shows just how firm and close in his mind is the bond between the two resurrections; he views them no so much as separate occurences as two episodes of the same event."
4) II Corinthians 4:14 knowing that He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and will present us with you.
In this verse, our future resurrection is said to be "with Jesus." This is terribly hard to explain without a conception like the one outlined above. We are forced either to acknowledge the future tense of the verse and claim that Christ is in some sense not yet raised or acknowledge the pastness of Christ's resurrection and ignore the future tense of the verse. If we acknowledge both the future tense and the pastness of Christ's resurrection, we are hard pressed to see how this is a resurrection "with Jesus" unless we go into complex qualifications the text doesn't even begin to bother with. The simplest course is just to acknowledge that our future resurrection is enough connected with Christ's past resurrection that we can simply call it a resurrection "with Jesus." Paradoxically, the two resurrections are temporally distinct yet also simultaneous.
These verses, then, clearly show that our future, bodily resurrection is in some way connected with Christ's past bodily resurrection, so much so that our future bodily resurrection has already begun in Christ's resurrection. It is not just that Christ's resurrection is the model or archetype of ours, then, coming before but identical in kind with our own, a pledge that God was satisfied with His death and thus a guarantee that God will release us from the hold of death on the last day. All of that is true, but there is more. His resurrection actually is the beginning of our future resurrection.
There is enormous dogmatic signficance to all of this. As Gaffin says, however, "the verses considered so far stress the organic connection between the resurrection of Jesus and the future, bodily resurrection of believers. To conclude, however, that the soteric significance of the latter lies only in this tie grasps only half the picture and so misses the whole. We must now take into account those places where Paul says that the believer has already been raised with Christ." In short, in addition to these passages where our resurrection is seen as underway but still future, there are passages that speak of our resurrection with Christ as having already been completed. It remains to consider those passages (which will be the subject of the next post) before we get into the dogmatic signficance of these considerations.
Gaffin begins the second part of the book by stating explicitly what he takes to be the central theme in Pauline theology. "Running through the relevant material is a central theme which governs the whole: the unity of the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of believers." He proposes to spend the second portion of the book demonstrating this basic thesis and the next and last portion of the book explaining how this concept controls the application of redemption.
The unity just mentioned has two aspects to it, both a future and a present aspect, or, to use the popular jargon, an already and a not-yet aspect. Gaffin begins with the future/not-yet aspect, and examines several passages that assert such a union:
1)I Corinthians 15:20: But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep.
The significant concept here is "firstfruits." The concept of firstfruits goes back to the grain offerings prescribed by the Mosaic law. The "firstfruits" were the first and best portion of the harvest offered as sacrifice to God. The concept, however, was not that this portion of the harvest belonged to God and the remainder belonged to the Israelites. The notion was that the whole harvest was given by and belonged to God. That is why He has the right to claim a sacrifice of the firstfruits. And in sacrificing the firstfruits, the Israelites were acknowledging that the entirety of the harvest came from God. The firstfruits, then, are a token of the whole harvest. The whole significance of the sacrifice lies in the fact that they stand for and are connected with the entire yield. As Gaffin puts this, "they are a token expression of recognition and thanksgiving that the whole has been given by God.... "Firstfruits" expresses the notion of organic connection and unity, the inseparability of the initial quantity from the whole. It is particularly this aspect which gives these sacrifices their significance."
To speak of Christ as the firstfruits of those who are asleep, then, does not simply indicate that He is the first to raise. It implies some sort of connection between His resurrection and the general resurrection of all believers. As Gaffin puts it, "His resurrection is the representative beginning of the resurrection of believers.... His resurrection is not simply a guarantee; it is a pledge in the sense that it is the actual beginning of the general event.... Paul views the two resurrections not so much as two events but as two episodes of the same event."
If this seems to be reading too much into the concept, the same idea is present in Romans 11:16 - "If the first piece {of dough} is holy, the lump is also; and if the root is holy, the branches are too." As he argues it, "since the relation between the first portion of dough and the root is not exactly analogous...yet each is made the basis for postulation, the specific point of the parallel and so the consideration governing the argument must be the factor of organic union." And even if this is not persuasive, Romans 8:23 is too clear to be missed: "And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for {our} adoption as sons, the redemption of our body." The ideas is that "the Spirit presently possessed by believers is a token, an initial enjoyment of the adoption which hereafter will be fully and openly received in the resurrection of the body." If a connection between a future and present reality such that the future reality is brought into the present is in view when the Spirit is called "firstfruits", the same idea should be borne in mind when Christ is called "the firstfruits of those who are asleep." The idea is not just that He is first to be raised, but that His resurrection is connected with our future resurrection in such a way that our future resurrection has already begun with Christ's resurrection - our future resurrection is of a piece with His.
Lest there be any further doubt, Gaffin turns to the two verses following I Corinthians 15:20: For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. The two "fors" are instructive. The first one provides a rationale for verse 20, meaning it explains why Christ as risen is the firstfruits of the dead. And the answer is that through Him came "the resurrection of the dead" - or in other words, through Christ as raised the resurrection of the rest of the dead happens. The idea is not simply that Christ is first, then, but that His resurrection is connected with or touches the resurrection of the rest of the dead. And why/how does Christ's resurrection do this? The second "for" provides the answer - because "in Christ all will be made alive." The resurrection of the dead happens through Christ's resurrection because in Christ's resurrection all are somehow made alive. Again, the notion is clearly much deeper than temporal priority - Christ's resurrection and the resurrection of believers are in some kind of vital, organic connection with each other so that the very act of resurrecting Christ brings life to all believers in and of itself.
2) Colossians 1:18 He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.
This expression "firstborn from the dead" is closely related, Gaffin suggests, to the phrase that occurs just a little bit earlier in verse 15, "firstborn of creation." This latter phrase has sometimes been taken to mean that Christ is the first creature, but that interpretation, Gaffin argues, is not sustained by the immediate context. In the very next verse, the reason offered for Christ being the firstborn of creation is that "by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth." That statement would not be true if Christ's being firstborn means Christ is Himself a creature. The better interpretation, Gaffin argues, is that "'firstborn' is to be understood in terms of...the Old Testament, where the literal force of both 'first' and 'born' has receded, and the term has become an indication of uniqueness, special status and dignity, marking one as the recepient of exceptional favor and blessing." He suggests this usage is clear in Exodus 4:22 and Psalm 88:27, where Israel and David respectively are called "firstborn." The idea, then, is that because all creation was made through Christ, Christ has a special exalted status over all creation in virtue of which He is called "firstborn."
Against this context, calling Christ the firstborn from the dead a few verses later implies a special, unique, and exalted status over the dead due to the fact that they will be resurrected through Him in a way analogous to the creation being made through Him. The force of "from", however, is signficant and should not be missed. Christ is not just firstborn of the dead as in the case of creation, but from the dead. This is a marked breakdown in the analogy - Christ does not belong to the class of created things, but He does (or better, did) belong to the class of the dead! Moreover, He became firstborn inasmuch as He was brought from or out of that class. Christ was raised from the dead, then, and through that He acquired a special, exalted status - as the text puts it, a place of supreme preeminence or a status as "firstborn" - because in that act the resurrection of believers more generally was achieved. As Gaffin puts it, "His is the beginning of the 'general epochal event' which at the same time makes him head over the others; with his resurrection is given the resurrection of believers."
As further confirmation, this phrase is immediately preceded by calling Christ "the beginning" and suggesting that He is "head over the body" of the church. Again, more than just temporal priority is involved in these phrases. The notion of preeminence due to the fact that Christ imparts life through organic connection is the much more dominant emphasis, as is clearly communicated in the image of head and body and even in the term "beginning" (compare, for example, where God is spoken of as the "beginning and the end" - obviously, there is more in place there than simply coming first).
3) I Corinthians 15:12-19 Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.
In these verses, Paul is arguing hypothetically - that is, he reasons in an "if-then" fashion. He is reasoning about the resurrection of Christ and of believers more generally, and he argues that a denial of either one involves a denial of the other, indicating a close and inextricable bond between them. "If Christ has been raised, then the proclamation of general resurrection cannot be called into question. Similarly, to deny Christ's resurrection, in effect, denies the resurrection of believers.... On the other hand, he can reverse the line of argument by reasoning directly from a denial of the resurrection of believers to a denial of the resurrection of Christ.... This shows just how firm and close in his mind is the bond between the two resurrections; he views them no so much as separate occurences as two episodes of the same event."
4) II Corinthians 4:14 knowing that He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and will present us with you.
In this verse, our future resurrection is said to be "with Jesus." This is terribly hard to explain without a conception like the one outlined above. We are forced either to acknowledge the future tense of the verse and claim that Christ is in some sense not yet raised or acknowledge the pastness of Christ's resurrection and ignore the future tense of the verse. If we acknowledge both the future tense and the pastness of Christ's resurrection, we are hard pressed to see how this is a resurrection "with Jesus" unless we go into complex qualifications the text doesn't even begin to bother with. The simplest course is just to acknowledge that our future resurrection is enough connected with Christ's past resurrection that we can simply call it a resurrection "with Jesus." Paradoxically, the two resurrections are temporally distinct yet also simultaneous.
These verses, then, clearly show that our future, bodily resurrection is in some way connected with Christ's past bodily resurrection, so much so that our future bodily resurrection has already begun in Christ's resurrection. It is not just that Christ's resurrection is the model or archetype of ours, then, coming before but identical in kind with our own, a pledge that God was satisfied with His death and thus a guarantee that God will release us from the hold of death on the last day. All of that is true, but there is more. His resurrection actually is the beginning of our future resurrection.
There is enormous dogmatic signficance to all of this. As Gaffin says, however, "the verses considered so far stress the organic connection between the resurrection of Jesus and the future, bodily resurrection of believers. To conclude, however, that the soteric significance of the latter lies only in this tie grasps only half the picture and so misses the whole. We must now take into account those places where Paul says that the believer has already been raised with Christ." In short, in addition to these passages where our resurrection is seen as underway but still future, there are passages that speak of our resurrection with Christ as having already been completed. It remains to consider those passages (which will be the subject of the next post) before we get into the dogmatic signficance of these considerations.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Resurrection and Redemption, Part II
As Part I begins, Gaffin notes that major shifts in the understanding of Paul have usually been accompanied by major shifts in methodology. His purpose in this first section of the book, therefore, is to take note of the methodological shifts that took place in Vos and Ridderbos.
The biggest shift, he argues, is the recognition of Paul as a theologian. He notes that in The Pauline Eschatology, Vos sees Paul as the "father of Christian eschatology" and the "greatest constructive mind ever at work on the data of Christianity." For Vos, Paul is engaged in a theological task that is fundamentally continuous with that of later generations of interpreters, notwithstanding the fact that Paul has a unique apostolic authority. Gaffin contrasts this approach with Kuyper's. For Kuyper, "Scripture itself is not theology but underlies it. The biblical writers must not be called theologians, because theology is unthinkable apart from previously formed dogmas, and dogma is a product of the life of the (institutional) church. Thus stress is placed exclusively upon the disjunction, the discontinuity in principle, between Scripture and the biblical writers on the one hand and the dogmas and theologians of the church on the other. The Bible itself contains no dogmas but rather the 'material' out of which the church 'constructs' dogma."
Gaffin suggests that Vos's approach is truer to Scripture. He notes that "revelation is a differentiated phenomenon, coming as acts or words." The words, he says, have two functions: they describe and record the acts, but they also explain the acts. This often occurs at the same time (which itself could be discussed at length and is rife with hermeneutical implications - when it reports history, the emphasis of Scripture is both on what happened and on the meaning of what happened). In some cases, however, the accent of the words will be on one or the other, and in the case of Paul the accent is on explanation. "The almost exclusive concern of his writing and preaching is expounding, 'exegeting' the history of redemption as it has reached its climax in the death and resurrection of Christ. In Paul's perspective, Christ's place in the history of revelation is conditioned by and exponential of a specific redemptive-historical context." Viewed this way, it is more appropriate to see Paul as Vos sees him. Paul is not, as Kuyper seems to think of him, simply an eyewitness to events which, once inscripturated, serve as data for the theological task. His writings are not simply attestation, they are exposition; he is commenting on what he has seen and what has already been seen by others - principally, the resurrection of Christ - so as to draw out its full theological significance.
Looking at Paul this way carries a number of implications. For one thing, it means that there may be methodological norms in Paul and not just norms of content. "If, in the common activity of theologizing, Paul, as apostle and instrument of revelation, is distinguished from his interpreters by providing part of the inspired and indispensable foundation...for subsequent theological activity, it follows that his interpreters should be concerned not only with the material, the particular concepts found in Paul, but also with the way in which Paul himself handles this material and structures the various conceptions." Gaffin also suggests that this might help us see why the interpretation of Paul is so vexing (as Peter himself attests). In Paul we encounter a theologian of enormous depth, but we encounter him only in the context of applying that theology to specific, occasional problems. One could imagine trying to work backward to the full shape of Einstein's theories armed with nothing but an email of his (pardon the anachronism) to a university student who wrote asking a specific question. "The Pauline epistles may be aptly compared to the visible portion of an iceberg. What juts above the surface is but a small fraction of what remains submerged. The true proportions of the whole lie hidden beneath the surface. The contours of what can be seen at a first glance may also prove deceptive. Put less pictorially, that conception or line of thought having relatively little explicit textual support, on reflection may prove to be of the most basic constitutive significance. This state of affairs makes the interpretation of Paul, particularly a comprehensive attempt, an inherently difficulty and precarious undertaking." Of course, an immediate further implication is that the principle task of Pauline interpretation is to unearth this underlying structure of thought - to be attentive not only to what is explicit, but to that which is implicit.
Having said all this, Gaffin returns to the question of the ordo salutis, long thought to be the central concern in Paul. He closes by noting that whatever conception of the ordo salutis Paul has, it will be controlled and governed by his understanding of the history of redemption. He promises that exactly what this means and its full implications will become clearer as the study progresses. As he says, "it may be maintained here as a working principle, subject to further verification, that whatever treatment Paul gives to the application of salvation to the individual believer is controlled by his redemptive historical outlook."
In Part II, Gaffin begins to get into the meat of the study - the place of the resurrection in redemptive history and Paul's theology.
The biggest shift, he argues, is the recognition of Paul as a theologian. He notes that in The Pauline Eschatology, Vos sees Paul as the "father of Christian eschatology" and the "greatest constructive mind ever at work on the data of Christianity." For Vos, Paul is engaged in a theological task that is fundamentally continuous with that of later generations of interpreters, notwithstanding the fact that Paul has a unique apostolic authority. Gaffin contrasts this approach with Kuyper's. For Kuyper, "Scripture itself is not theology but underlies it. The biblical writers must not be called theologians, because theology is unthinkable apart from previously formed dogmas, and dogma is a product of the life of the (institutional) church. Thus stress is placed exclusively upon the disjunction, the discontinuity in principle, between Scripture and the biblical writers on the one hand and the dogmas and theologians of the church on the other. The Bible itself contains no dogmas but rather the 'material' out of which the church 'constructs' dogma."
Gaffin suggests that Vos's approach is truer to Scripture. He notes that "revelation is a differentiated phenomenon, coming as acts or words." The words, he says, have two functions: they describe and record the acts, but they also explain the acts. This often occurs at the same time (which itself could be discussed at length and is rife with hermeneutical implications - when it reports history, the emphasis of Scripture is both on what happened and on the meaning of what happened). In some cases, however, the accent of the words will be on one or the other, and in the case of Paul the accent is on explanation. "The almost exclusive concern of his writing and preaching is expounding, 'exegeting' the history of redemption as it has reached its climax in the death and resurrection of Christ. In Paul's perspective, Christ's place in the history of revelation is conditioned by and exponential of a specific redemptive-historical context." Viewed this way, it is more appropriate to see Paul as Vos sees him. Paul is not, as Kuyper seems to think of him, simply an eyewitness to events which, once inscripturated, serve as data for the theological task. His writings are not simply attestation, they are exposition; he is commenting on what he has seen and what has already been seen by others - principally, the resurrection of Christ - so as to draw out its full theological significance.
Looking at Paul this way carries a number of implications. For one thing, it means that there may be methodological norms in Paul and not just norms of content. "If, in the common activity of theologizing, Paul, as apostle and instrument of revelation, is distinguished from his interpreters by providing part of the inspired and indispensable foundation...for subsequent theological activity, it follows that his interpreters should be concerned not only with the material, the particular concepts found in Paul, but also with the way in which Paul himself handles this material and structures the various conceptions." Gaffin also suggests that this might help us see why the interpretation of Paul is so vexing (as Peter himself attests). In Paul we encounter a theologian of enormous depth, but we encounter him only in the context of applying that theology to specific, occasional problems. One could imagine trying to work backward to the full shape of Einstein's theories armed with nothing but an email of his (pardon the anachronism) to a university student who wrote asking a specific question. "The Pauline epistles may be aptly compared to the visible portion of an iceberg. What juts above the surface is but a small fraction of what remains submerged. The true proportions of the whole lie hidden beneath the surface. The contours of what can be seen at a first glance may also prove deceptive. Put less pictorially, that conception or line of thought having relatively little explicit textual support, on reflection may prove to be of the most basic constitutive significance. This state of affairs makes the interpretation of Paul, particularly a comprehensive attempt, an inherently difficulty and precarious undertaking." Of course, an immediate further implication is that the principle task of Pauline interpretation is to unearth this underlying structure of thought - to be attentive not only to what is explicit, but to that which is implicit.
Having said all this, Gaffin returns to the question of the ordo salutis, long thought to be the central concern in Paul. He closes by noting that whatever conception of the ordo salutis Paul has, it will be controlled and governed by his understanding of the history of redemption. He promises that exactly what this means and its full implications will become clearer as the study progresses. As he says, "it may be maintained here as a working principle, subject to further verification, that whatever treatment Paul gives to the application of salvation to the individual believer is controlled by his redemptive historical outlook."
In Part II, Gaffin begins to get into the meat of the study - the place of the resurrection in redemptive history and Paul's theology.
Resurrection and Redemption, Part I
Since life has a bit less required reading in it these days, I've been going back to some books that I only read in part during seminary, either because I didn't finish them or because they were only assigned in part. One of those is Gaffin's Resurrection and Redemption; I was assigned a large portion of the second half of the book, but read it quickly, and I was never assigned the first half. As Easter is coming, I thought this would be a perfect time to return to it, so what follows is the first of a series of overviews of the arguments in that book. After Easter, I hope to type some thoughts on the relationship between church and state - that topic seems to be coming up everywhere I turn lately. For now, though, Gaffin:
The purpose of Gaffin's book is to demonstrate the central place of the resurrection of Christ in the history of redemption, and in the Introduction he says that two things motivated him to write about this. The first is that while Reformed theology has always claimed to be Pauline, "it has not found particular dogmatic significance in Paul's statements regarding Jesus' resurrection." He blames this on two things. First, "access to the structure of Paul's teaching has been sought in terms of the ordo salutis." That is, it was believed that the center of Pauline teaching had to do with the application of Christ's work to the individual believer, and so the Pauline corpus has been approached with that range of questions in mind. But secondly, where attention has been given to Paul's statements regarding the accomplishment of redemption it has usually focused on the atoning effects of Christ's death. "Interest in the resurrection for the most part has been restricted to its apologetic value and as a stimulus to faith," Gaffin writes. When it is treated beyond this, it is usually noted in passing as the beginning of Christ's exaltation and the mark of the efficacy of His death (the latter of which almost subordinates the importance of Christ's resurrection to that of His death). Part of the purpose of this book, then, is to draw out the dogmatic significance of Christ's resurrection to a greater extent.
His second motivation is that the Reformed tradition has been slow to accept the methods of biblical theology: "Only gradually has orthodox scholarship come to recognize that biblical revelation is given as an organically unfolding process, that is, as a history, and that therefore dealing with the biblical writers in terms of their respective places in this history, that is, with respect to their individual contributions, is not only desirable but necessary." As a result, it has also been slow to consider Pauline thought as a distinct and self-contained unit standing in organic continuity with the history of revelation. The pioneering attempts at this within the Reformed tradition was in the work of Geerhardus Vos and Herman Ridderbos. And, Gaffin argues, "both men have, independently, come to the same basic conclusion." That conclusion, he says, is this: "The center of Paul's teaching is not found in the doctrine of justification by faith or any other aspect of the ordo salutis. Rather, his primary interest is seen to be in the historia salutis as that history has reached its eschatological realization in the death and especially the resurrection of Christ." Another major purpose of the book is to explain this statement more thorougly.
The goals of the book, then, are two - to bring out the centrality of the resurrection in the history of redemption and to bring out its centrality for Pauline theology, both of which have traditionally been underappreciated by Reformed theology.
With that said, Gaffin begins Part I of the book where he addresses matters having to do with methodology.
The purpose of Gaffin's book is to demonstrate the central place of the resurrection of Christ in the history of redemption, and in the Introduction he says that two things motivated him to write about this. The first is that while Reformed theology has always claimed to be Pauline, "it has not found particular dogmatic significance in Paul's statements regarding Jesus' resurrection." He blames this on two things. First, "access to the structure of Paul's teaching has been sought in terms of the ordo salutis." That is, it was believed that the center of Pauline teaching had to do with the application of Christ's work to the individual believer, and so the Pauline corpus has been approached with that range of questions in mind. But secondly, where attention has been given to Paul's statements regarding the accomplishment of redemption it has usually focused on the atoning effects of Christ's death. "Interest in the resurrection for the most part has been restricted to its apologetic value and as a stimulus to faith," Gaffin writes. When it is treated beyond this, it is usually noted in passing as the beginning of Christ's exaltation and the mark of the efficacy of His death (the latter of which almost subordinates the importance of Christ's resurrection to that of His death). Part of the purpose of this book, then, is to draw out the dogmatic significance of Christ's resurrection to a greater extent.
His second motivation is that the Reformed tradition has been slow to accept the methods of biblical theology: "Only gradually has orthodox scholarship come to recognize that biblical revelation is given as an organically unfolding process, that is, as a history, and that therefore dealing with the biblical writers in terms of their respective places in this history, that is, with respect to their individual contributions, is not only desirable but necessary." As a result, it has also been slow to consider Pauline thought as a distinct and self-contained unit standing in organic continuity with the history of revelation. The pioneering attempts at this within the Reformed tradition was in the work of Geerhardus Vos and Herman Ridderbos. And, Gaffin argues, "both men have, independently, come to the same basic conclusion." That conclusion, he says, is this: "The center of Paul's teaching is not found in the doctrine of justification by faith or any other aspect of the ordo salutis. Rather, his primary interest is seen to be in the historia salutis as that history has reached its eschatological realization in the death and especially the resurrection of Christ." Another major purpose of the book is to explain this statement more thorougly.
The goals of the book, then, are two - to bring out the centrality of the resurrection in the history of redemption and to bring out its centrality for Pauline theology, both of which have traditionally been underappreciated by Reformed theology.
With that said, Gaffin begins Part I of the book where he addresses matters having to do with methodology.
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