andygoodliff

Doug Campbell's Rereading of Romans 1-4

The biggest names in Pauline scholarship have all more or less written their big books on Paul (apart from one NT Wright, from whom we have the only teasers of The Climax of the Covenant and Paul: Fresh Perspectives). E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977), Richard B. Hays, The Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (1989 [see also his collection of essays, The Conversion of the Imagination, 2005]), J. Louis Martyn, Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul (1997 [to be read alongside his Anchor Bible Commentary on Galatians, 1997]), James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (1998), Francis Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (T & T Clark, 2004 [see also Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles, 2007]). In the case of Hays and Watson, they have moved their research focus to the gospels, which is also the case for Dunn in his retirement.

In 2009 Douglas A. Campbell, after 15 years in the writing, published The Deliverance of God and said, that although these scholars had given important fresh insights to the task of understanding and describing Paul's theology, that all had failed to free themselves from what he called Justification Theory, which was like a virus that had infected all exegetical work. Justification Theory is contractual, conditional, Arian (foundationalist), a priori, Forward reading of Paul's letters which emerges fundamentally out of readings of Romans 1-4.

The reaction to Campbell's work has been that although many find much to agree with him in his understanding of Romans 5-8 (where Campbell thinks Paul is at one of his most clearest in terms of what he believes the gospel is), they are unable to join him in his reading of Romans 1-4.

What does Campbell do with Romans 1-4?

1. He says that with F. C. Baur everyone of Paul's letters is written because of opposition and this is also the case with the letter to the Romans.

2. The opposition Paul faces in Rome is the same opposition who were present in Galatia - Jewish Christian Teachers

3. Romans 1-4 then is Paul in direct engagement with this opposition. The interlocutor in Romans 2-3 is the opposition. Campbell then makes a fairly big and decisive claim that Romans 1.18-32 is not the voice of Paul, but the voice of the opposition - we have a block quote of their theology - to which the rest of Romans 2-3 is Paul demonstrates that its claims make no sense. Romans 1.18-3.20 is not Paul preparing for the gospel, but is Paul showing why another 'gospel' is wrong, that is, Romans 1-3.20 is not A which then leads to B (Romans 3.21-26), but should be read antithetically A v B.

4. Other recent attempts to provide new readings of Romans 1-4, Campbell argues tend to either reframing the text (so the likes of Watson and Sanders) or reread the text (so the likes of Dunn and his rereading of the motif of 'works of law' and Stowers). Campbell claims that none of these deal with the problem. We are stuck in a swamp!

4. Paul's gospel is unconditional, covenantal, Athanasian, a posteriori and apocalyptic - it is entirely grounded in the revelation of Jesus Christ. So instead of the slogan sola fide, he is sola Jesus.

5. If Campbell is right in The Deliverance of God it has massive implications for Pauline scholarship and yet also systematic theology and practical theology, most notably in evangelism, which are in large part wedded to the Justification Theory model. This partly why it took 15 years to write as Campbell meticulously seeks to demonstrate in the first nine chapters how so much of theology is caught by this reading.

Last week's two-day conference on Deliverance saw Campbell present the arguments, with admittedly, a largerly friendly audience, the highlights of which was Campbell's live reading of Romans 1-3 as he understands it and later his singing of Charles Wesley's And Can it Be verse 4, as one of the best articulation's of Paul's gospel. (It was nice to meet Alan Torrance, Jeremy Begbie, Andrew Goddard, Chris Tilling, Scott Hafemann and say hello again to Eddie Adams).

In my humble (and non-specialist) opinion it is for others to offer a better reading of Paul, rather than just a dismissal, which works at every level of exegesis, argument, theory, and theology. This is one of the strengths of Campbell's argument.

Campbell was asked, what about if we agree with you, but we can't go with your reading of Romans 1-3. I don't think that works, because what then do you to with Romans 1-3.

We can look forward to Campbell's articel review of Tom Wright's Justification (and apparently Tom's reply) and also (probably) in 2013 a theological commentary on Romans, tentatively titled The End of Religion: A Theological Rereading of Romans.

If you can't face the length of Deliverance (Chris Tilling called it a monsto-graph), then let me encourage you to read The Quest for Paul's Gospel (an earlier set of essays) and Campbell's responses to Gorman and Tilling in the Journal for Paul and his Letters (Spring 2011) and Matlock and Macaskill in the Journal for the Study of the New Testament (December 2011). You will never read Paul the same way!

The Debate over The Deliverance of God by Douglas Campbell goes on

The latest Journal for the Study of the New Testament contains two review articles by Barry Matlock and Grant Macaskill of The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul and a response from Douglas Campbell

Zeal for Paul but Not According to Knowledge: Douglas Campbell’s War on ‘Justication Theory’
R. Barry Matlock

Review Article: The Deliverance of God
Grant Macaskill

An Attempt to be Understood: A Response to the Concerns of Matlock and Macaskill with The Deliverance of God
Douglas A. Campbell

These are the second set of extended article length reviews that I know of (a list of other reviews can be found here) and have just in time ahead of the two day conference taking place from tomorrow at King's College London on the book with Doug himself, Alan Torrance, Chris Tilling, David Hilborn and others.

Possible Areas of Baptist Historical Research

Some Baptist historical research that someone should be commissioning (perhaps the Centre for Baptist History and Heritage and the Angus Library at Regent's Park College, Oxford):

1. new biographical studies of Henry Wheeler Robinson, Ernest Payne, John Clifford

2. plus of course more on John Howard Shakespeare to add to Peter Shepherd's helpful study

3. the history of the Baptist Assembly

4. the David Coffey years. It's 5 years since Coffey was General Secretary and as yet there has been little or no reflection on the contribution and changes. They loom large and I think will probably be measured against those of Shakespeare and Payne in terms of scope.

5. the changing nature of ministerial formation, especially in the last twenty years

Anything else?

The Baptist Union Debate and some Comments on Words

The conversation about the Baptist Union currently shows no sign of slowing down. Some further comments to add, which are hopefully helpful or at least open up the conversation in new directions.

1. First, this is still a relatively small conversation currently between a group of mostly Baptist ministers who are largely talking to one another ... our influence is not that influential

2. As the debate goes wider and more people become aware of what is happening, we will see more voices coming out of the woodwork who suddenly care about being Baptist ... like the church members who never come to meetings until they discover that the pews might disappear or the such like ... too many Baptists are baptist with a very very small 'b'.

3. We would do well to explore and be attuned to issues of theology, church and power - so Baptist theologian Roy Kearsley's Church, Community and Power (Ashgate, 2008) and Stephen Sykes' Power and Christian Theology (Continuum, 2006), amongst others, should be on our reading lists. Where does power and authority lie? We cannot escape that some voices can hold much influence, but here Kearsley wants us to see that this should be used not as 'power over', but as 'power to' and 'power with' others and 'power through' vulnerabilty and weakness. Power lies not in any one place or person.

3. There seems to a possible opening divide between those who think that missiology should be in the driving seat and those who are more ecclesially minded. The mission group think the ecclesial lot are not missionary enough, the ecclesial lot think the mission group have no concept of the church. Here I believe we must work hard not to become oppositional and recognise that the Declaration of Principle reminds us that Jesus Christ is the one in the driving seat.

4. Personally I think we need to hold on to the language that Rowan Williams coined of 'mixed economy', to which I take to mean we need churches that have long histories and churches that have short histories; we need churches that push the edges and churches that care for the centre ... and we need a Union (a way of being and partnering together) that values, nurtures, and encourages both.

5. Therefore I am hesitant about some use of words like 'pioneer', 'movement', 'institution' - especially where the former are used positively, the latter negatively - which seem to encourage the telling of the Baptist story as one in which a group of pioneers broke away (separated) from the institutions of the day (the established CofE) to form a movement, and now the 'Baptist Union' has become a new institution, and so we need new pioneers and a new movement. My fear is this is possibly too simple and seems to join the voices of postmodernism that decry insitutions as bad. I would want to offer that yes we need renewal, yes we need a reconnecting with the grassroots, yes we need innovation and imagination, but at the same time we should perhaps heed the words of John Colwell where he writes 'it is entirely understandable ... where the Church's faith is either dismissed or maginalized, that the Church should be fearful concerning its future effectiveness - but too often the proposed 'remedy' is more deadly than the pain' (Living the Christian Story, 2001, p.164). We must ask ourselves whose story are we telling and for what purpose? Where actually are the margins - where we claim marginal status, or claim to speak for those who are, are we in fact more 'centre' than we realize? Who gets to be a pioneer - is pioneering cool (hipster Christianity), while the rest is old, boring and outdated?

6. We would do well to consider again why we are the Baptist Union and not the Baptist family (despite its popularity in usage), or the Baptist Movement or the Baptist Network. Here the 1996 and 1997 short studies Something to Declare and On the Way of Trust, by the Baptist Principals at the time (of the four English Colleges) should be set texts in our thinking and talking. (See also A Call to Mind: Baptist Essays Towards a Theology of Commitment and Bound to Love: The Covenant Basis of Baptist Life and Mission).

Books on Food and Faith

In the past I've drawn attention to the large number of books that have been published in recent years on hospitality and also martyrdom. To this can be added the number of studies around food and faith.

1. Good Eating - Stephen H. Webb (Brazos, 2001)

2. Not Bread Alone: The Uses of Food in the Old Testament - Nathan MacDonald (Oxford, 2008)

3. The Theology of Food: Eating and the Eucharist - Angel F. Méndez-Montoya (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009)

4. Theology on the Menu: Asceticism, Meat and the Christian Diet - David Grumett and Rachel Muers (Routledge, 2010)

5. Eating and Believing: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Vegetarianism and Theology - David Grumett and Rachel Muers (eds.) (T & T Clark, 2008, 2011)

6. Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating - Norman Wirzba (Cambridge, 2011)

7. Plus a helpful but hard to get hold of article by David Grumett, Luke Bretherton and Stephen Holmes, 'Fast Food: A Critical Theological Perspective', Food, Culture and Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research 14.3 (September 2011)

Round-up on Baptists and Union

Since Baptist Union Council four weeks ago there have been a flurry of posts on the Baptist Union and its future. Here's a round-up, in case you've missed anything. While the number of bloggers have been smaller those who have commented are a larger number (although I this is still a fairly small, but hopefuly not insignificant, conversation).

Pre-Council

2012: The Making of a Modern Denomination

Are we Baptists too bland, too safe?

During Council

BUGBCouncil  - The Emperor's New Clothes

Council - reasons for optimism

Post Council

What Lies Beyond 400?

Baptist Ecclesiology in the United Kingdom

Whose Union? Which Future?

Crisis? Which Crisis? Choose yours...

Influential English Baptists?

Infl-who-ential?

How to the change the world (or a union)

Sniffing out influence

Questions for the Baptist Union

Maybe the time

Investing in Baptist Theology and History

The last ten years have seen some of the most creative theological reflection from Baptist thinkers. Sean Winter has called it a 'golden age of Baptist theological writing' ('Tracks and Traces: A Review Article', Baptist Quarterly 41.7, July 2006). We have seen important contributions from Paul Fiddes, Nigel Wright, John Colwell and Brian Haymes. Ian Randall's English Baptists in the Twentieth Century has set a new bar for Baptist history. Interesting projects have produced books on Baptist sacramentalism, Baptist hermeneutics, and a broader shift towards what has been named 'Baptist Catholicity'.

However, there is a really need to invest financially into producing future generations of Baptist scholars and perhaps especially women theologians. Currently there is a Baptist scholarship fund, which enables no more than two people at one time to be supported for doctoral research by the Union. In addition there is a Further Studies Fund, which offers smaller grants for up to three years for students pursuing postgraduate degrees. We need to enable more. In a number of recent cases our Baptist colleges have appointed non-Baptists to tutorial posts, which I can only surmise in part to because the pool of capable Baptist scholars being so small.

I would like to see the Union use more of its financial resources to support four scholarship posts, with one designated to those engaged in biblical research, one for those engaged in Baptist history and the other two more open. It may not be that all of these would be taken up all the time, but the opportunity would be there.

In addition to that we would need to find the ways and means of gathering those Baptists engaged in theological and biblical research together.

This would see the Baptist Union - the churches, associations, the national resource and colleges - investing in its theological future. It would acknowledge the contribution of its dedicated theologians, historians and scholars - what Paul Fiddes terms 'doctors of the church' ('Dual Citizenship in Athens and Jerusalem' in Questions of Identity, Regent's Park College, 2011, p.140) - as a vital resource to the health and faithfulness of those being formed for ministry and of course the wider life of the Union. By 'dedicated' I mean those whose work is focused on the theological task of asking what kind of God and so what and this is in large part pursued in the academy, but in service of the church. We should value that amongst our theologians we have those who know the early church fathers, the reformers, and the voices of the last century. To put it another way there is a difference between Paul Fiddes, Professor of Systematic Theology, Doctor of Divinity and those who have obtained a BD, BTh or MA in one of the theological disciplines, and that we should recognise and value the theological wisdom that the likes of Paul Fiddes and others offer to the life and health of the Union. This is not to suggest we only listen to those with the title 'Dr', but it is to say that we must certainly not ignore them because they have the title 'Dr'.

Here I would also hope to see in the future that amongst our regional ministers with responsibility for pastoral care, enabling mission and administration, we might see some dedicated theologians. (As above this is not say there are currently no regional ministers who are not theologians, but it is to say that no regional minister currently holds the kind of office or position of theologian). These dedicated theologians would be given space to think, research, write, teach and so resource their associations and at the same time the wider Union. For some associations they have links with their local Baptist colleges, but sadly in our colleges must of our Tutors are so overstretched that there is little time for them to contribute in meaningful ways to questions and tasks of confessing the faith, being church, and how theology interacts with economics, politics, the arts, etc.

Sam Wells is coming back to England

Sam Wells, author of Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics, God's Companions, and most recently Do Not Be Afraid and co-editor of The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics and currently Dean of Duke Divinity Chapel is coming back to England to be vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London. This is great news!

Wells is an excellent theologian and preacher and will be a good re-addition to the Church of England (he has also just published a book on What Anglicans Believe) and the wider Christian church in the UK. He will not be far from his friend Ben Quash, Professor of Christianity and the Arts at King's College London.

Wells replaced William Willimon as Dean in 2005, and if they were big shoes to fill, who ever follows Willimon and Wells will have an even harder act to follow.

Beyond Old and New Perspectives

Chris Tilling has posted the programme for the 2-day conference at King's College London on Douglas Campbell's The Deliverance of God. Its looks great. I can't wait to go.

Renewing the Baptist Assembly

Someone has asked me how Baptist Assembly might be renewed in the future. I thought I'd share some comments here as part of the conversation of the future on the Union beyond 400.

1. It would be great if someone could write a history of the Assembly - how it has changed in purpose, format, etc.  I think there is a real need to reflect on what has happened to Assembly in the last 20 years.

2. We should move away from Assembly being a gathering for 'inspiration, communication, instruction and deliberation' (Wright, Challenge to Change, 1991, p.167) to something more deliberately deliberative. Something where every church would feel it necessary to send someone because the life and mission of the Union was at stake. This would see it as an 'ecclesial gathering' - part of our being church - and not just an optional extra.

3. Assembly is currently more focused on communicating this is what we're doing and there is not enough space to ask what should we be doing. This should be reversed. The evenings could be a place for inspiration, communication and celebration and the mornings and afternoons creating some serious space for listening, dialogue, and open conversation around our life together and the issues of the day.

4. Assembly should be a place to 'give weight to the decisions of Council' (Nature of Assembly and Council, 1994, p.21). Resolutions like the ones of the Apology and women in leadership should have been brought to Assembly for affirmation. In the five years I have been coming to Assembly, the 'business' meeting of Baptist Union has been largely a non-event, where the 'delegates' sit passively before set-piece presentations.

5. I recognise that doing large listening and dialogue is not easy and in many ways it would be a practice we would need to learn, it would be easier if our church meetings were places for this kind of work. Steve Holmes' paper on church meetings in Questions of Identity (Regent's Park College, 2011) is a study of church meetings as theological practice.

6. I am concerned that the future of Union will largely be bypassed or sidelined at this year's Assembly with the title Beyond 400 that begs precisely for this kind of listening and discussion. Unfortunately being held in London and being a half-day shorter and one day given over to a range of one-day conferences, space will be hard to find, even if it was desired. In 2009 the theme of Assembly was 'Who do you think we are?', a fantastic question to ask and a good and timely opportunity to explore our identity together. It never happened.