God at Work

The last book of the New Testament has evoked more fascination than most of the others. Scholars are fairly confidant in dating the text to around the year 95 A.D., and in asserting that it was written on the island of Patmos. The John who wrote it is the same John who wrote the fourth book of the New Testament and who also wrote the three epistles which bear his name. Philology confirms his authorship of all five texts by means of statistical analysis of his vocabulary.

The question which one may pose to the text is this: what is God doing?

The text states that God gave this revelation, that God is showing what must take place, and that God made this content known by means of an angel. The text gives a noteworthy title to Jesus: the faithful witness. Often texts tell of people who are witnesses to, or witnesses about, Jesus. But in this case, Jesus Himself is the witness. About what, or to what, is He a witness?

Further, the text states that Jesus is the ruler of the kings of the earth, that He loves us, that He has freed us, that He has made us to be a kingdom, and that He has made us to be priests. Richard Lenski writes:

In Revelation the Apostle John presents the prophetic visions that were given him to see and to hear on a certain Sunday in the year 95 while he was in exile on a the small island Patmos opposite the southern coast of the Roman province Asia, toward the end of the reign of the great persecutor of the church, the Emperor Domitian. The apostle wrote Revelation by the Lord's own order (1:19); divine Inspiration guided his pen.

At the beginning of the text, John states one of the themes which recurs throughout its twenty-two chapters: "He is coming." Jesus is on His way. In the text, God also says of Himself that He is the "Alpha and the Omega," "who is, and who was, and who is to come." God emphasizes His all-encompassing nature in order to contrast Himself with the Roman emperor. While Emperors like Domitian, Nerva, and Trajan might work to project an image of power and authority, they are, in fact, infinitesimal on God's cosmic scale.

God is communicative. He says things; He sends angels with messages. The Greek and Hebrew words rendered as 'angel' in English mean, non-metaphorically, 'messenger' in those languages.

After the introductory chapter come the seven letters to the churches. He praises the deeds of the Ephesian church, saying that the people in that church work hard and persevere; the Christians in Ephesus "cannot tolerate wicked men" and investigate and examine the concepts presented by false teachers. They persevere, endure hardships, and do not grow weary. But, given that all humans are born with original sin, and all humans further commit their own sins, what does it mean, not to "tolerate wicked men"? Perhaps this indicates those who bring nothing positive to the fellowship, but maliciously, or at least negligently, detract from the church's efforts at charity.

To the church in Smyrna, Jesus says, more than once, that He "knows" them and their conditions. He knows their difficulties and knows that they publicly ridiculed. He reminds them, however, that they have received spiritual blessings (cf. Romans 15:27 and Ephesians 1:3).

In Pergamum, Jesus says, His followers are dwelling among great evil, yet remain true to Him. They have not renounced Jesus, even though at least one of them has been martyred.

As in Smyrna, so also in Thyatira, Jesus reports that He "knows" about His people - He knows their deeds, love, faith, service, and perseverance - and that they "are now doing more than" they did at first. The repetition of the theme of 'being known' emphasizes the importance which humans attach to it: people seem to want to know that somebody somewhere is aware of them and of their circumstances, and that somebody somewhere cares about them.

Jesus addresses stern words to the church in Sardis: only "a few people" have remained faithful to Him.

For the church in Philadelphia, Jesus says that He is holding open a door which nobody can shut. His followers in that city have kept His word despite their weakness: the have endured "patiently."

The Christians in Laodicea, Jesus states, are largely useless.

After assessing each of these churches for strengths and weaknesses, Jesus speaks of future blessings. To the Ephesians, "the right to eat from the tree of life." To His followers in Smyra, He says that they "will not be hurt at all by the second death." To those in Pergamum, Jesus promises mysterious blessings: "hidden manna" and "a white stone with a new name written on it." To the church in Thyatira, He promises "authority over the nations" and "the morning star." To His few isolated followers in Sardis, Jesus says that they "will walk" with Him, dressed in white, and that He "will never blot out" their names from the book of life, "but will acknowledge" them before the Father. To the Philadelphians, He promises that each one of them will be "a pillar in the temple of" God, and that He will write on each of His followers "the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven," and that He "will also write on" each of them "my new name." To the Laodiceans, He promises that, if they repent, He will give them "the right to sit with me on my throne."

There is a pattern, for the churches, in the way Jesus speaks: first, an analysis of their strengths and weaknesses; second, instructions, imperatives, and commands; third, promises of future blessings. Some churches have strengths, others have weaknesses, and some have both. The church in Laodicea, which receives the sternest evaluation, also receives the most powerful promise.

Some of the symbolism here is obscure. The hidden manna may evoke the jar of manna preserved in the ark in the temple; the temple having been destroyed by the time of John's writing, this manna would be in an undisclosed location - known only to God. Whether on earth or in heaven, this manna would be God's alone to dispense; if in heaven, it represents the eternal feast. Banquet imagery permeates the entire text. The white stone on which is written a name may represent the follower's new identity; written in stone, it is permanent, and supersedes all other previous identities. To give the morning star as a gift may mean to impart glory; starlight and sunlight symbolize God's glory throughout Scripture.

A group of cousins and siblings, all bearing the surname Zahn, have contributed greatly to textual scholarship. Citing the work of Theodor von Zahn, Richard Lenski writes:

John had lived and labored in and out of Ephesus since the days of the Jewish War which destroyed the Jewish nation. Domitian died September 18, 96. This date makes it necessary to place the visions of Revelation in the year 95. John was not exiled by the emperor himself; he was condemned to exile by the proconsul of Asia, "who would not have been able upon his own authority to punish in this way a preacher of the gospel and an adherent of the Christian faith if he had not felt himself authorized so to act by some decree issuing from the Imperial Government, or some regulation tolerated by it, by which the propagation of the Christian religion was to be checked by the courts or the police," Zahn, Introduction III, 409. How long the exile continued we do not know. There is nothing to prevent us from dating Revelation in the year 96, the actual year of Domitian's death. Nerva ruled until 98, then followed Trajan. John was released after Domitian's death and died during Trajan's reign.

The challenge for the reader, in examining John's Revelation, is to be vigilant against the all-too-human tendency to read legalism into the text. When Jesus cites the strengths of the seven churches, these are not accomplishments achieved by human effort, but rather gifts which have been given to these churches, given by Jesus through the Holy Spirit. When Jesus cites the flaws of these congregations and commands repentance, He is issuing an imperative which human effort can never satisfy; only the Holy Spirit working inside the believer can create obedience. God is never satisfied with human feats. The promised blessings for the churches are not rewards for their exertions, but rather confirmations for the activity of the Holy Spirit in and among them.

A careless reading of John's Apocalypse will yield works righteousness. But the reader must ever bear in mind that the purpose for which the Revelation was given to John was comfort. Legalism does not comfort. Grace does.

Jesus Uses Irony

Irony is a well-documented and much studied phenomenon. There are many types and definitions of irony. For the present meditation, irony is understood as words being used to indicate something other than their literal meanings, and words being used to refer to something which may even be in tension with their literal meanings.

The New Testament contains irony, and one who fails to recognize the irony will be misled in the task of understanding the text. Some commentators seem to have never entertained the idea that Jesus occasionally speaks ironically.

Consider the following narrative from Matthew. It seems to contain multiple ironies. The man addresses Jesus with the title "Teacher," but perhaps does not want to be taught. He poses the question, "what must I do?" to gain eternal life, yet the mega-text informs the reader that the proper question to ask to Jesus is "what can you do?" that the supplicant might have eternal life.

For an ordinary human to ask, "what must I do to gain eternal life?" is to elicit the answer "nothing." There is nothing he can do to gain eternal life, because it is impossible for him to gain it. God can give it, but man cannot achieve it.

So two ironies already lie in the man's first utterance.

Jesus, seeing through the apparent urgency in the man's question, deflects it with an ironic non-answer. Note that Jesus answers a question with a question. "Why?" - Christ's question goes to motive. Why would the man ask if he already has an answer in mind, if he is not eager to learn, and if his question is so ill-formed that no reasonable answer is possible? The questioner perhaps considers himself to be good; in that case, why bother Jesus with a question? The question would be insincere.

Jesus deflates the man's ego a bit by reminding him that only God is good. Jesus then offers ironic advice. Jesus, and the reader, know from the mega-text that "keeping the commandments" is impossible. Whether one is speaking of the ten commandments, the 613 commandments, or natural law, humans are incapable of perfect implementation. The man, however, is oblivious to the irony, which only heightens the irony.

An absolutely impossible command is ironic; the failure to see such a command for what it is generates humor. Had Jesus issued a command to drink the entire ocean, or draw a square circle, the effect would be the same.

Incognizant of the irony, the man pursues the matter: which commandments must he keep? As if, to the ironic command to draw a square circle, he'd responded with a request for clarification about whether he should draw it with a pencil or a pen. The humorous effect is prolonged by the question.

Jesus patiently begins a list of commandments. It doesn't really matter which ones He mentions, because sinful human nature is incapable of faithfully following any of them, or any set or subset of them.

And behold, a man came up to him, saying, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The young man said to him, “All these I have kept. What do I still lack?” Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

The man's oblivious naivete is matched only by the inflated opinion he has of himself. To claim to have faithfully followed the law, no matter which variation of 'law' is meant, is to claim perfection. The ironies here are multiple: to claim perfection and then request guidance - if the man were really that good, he wouldn't need to ask Jesus for instruction. More basically, there is irony in the claim to have followed the law. It is axiomatic to the mega-text that such perfection is unachievable by human effort.

Having claimed perfection, the man asks what he still needs. This is a self-contradiction. If he were as good as he claims to be, he would need nothing. He undermines his own claim to moral superiority. "I have everything: what do I still need to obtain?"

Christ's answer contains several unspoken premises: "if you would be perfect - but you can't get there by doing things - here's what you must do." Alternatively: "if you would be perfect - but didn't you only now imply that you were morally perfect? - here's what you must do." Jesus is patiently answering the man, but to humorous effect to the knowing reader.

Jesus then gives an ironic imperative: give away all your possessions. If this were truly what was required to obtain eternal life, then the rest of Matthew's text, and the rest of the New Testament, would be useless and futile. Two thousand years of Heilsgeschichte would be unnecessary. Christ's painful suffering and death would be unnecessary.

The three final thoughts in the narrative depart from irony. Jesus tells the man that it is possible to have treasure in heaven. Jesus is not being ironic, but the man's limited imagination and limited perspective create irony. Then Jesus tells the man to follow; the man who approached Jesus and called him 'Teacher' and who asked what must be done is, as Jesus and the reader know even before the man has finished hearing the final imperative, not interested or willing or able to follow Jesus.

No human can, of his own volition, follow Jesus. Rather, people follow Jesus only as the Holy Spirit calls and enlightens them, sanctifies them, and preserves them in faith. All people lack the ability to follow Jesus, or to decide to follow Jesus - but most especially one like this man, who considers himself to be morally perfect.

The denouement reveals that the man, whose moral estimation of himself was so high, is merely a crass materialist. Irony is located in the tension between the high-sounding salutation and question which he first addresses to Jesus at the beginning of the narrative and the man's baseness as the end of the narrative.

If we contrast Mark's version of the narrative to Matthew's, the irony continues, as in Mark's version, the man addresses Jesus not only as "Teacher" but "Good Teacher." While the man addresses Jesus as 'good', he in reality considers, consciously or subconsciously, himself to be good, apparently unaware of both his original sin and his committed sin. Considering the phrase text-critically, if Matthew worked from Mark, he may have felt it sufficient to recount merely an excerpt from the salutation rather than the longer version given by Mark.

Matthew also omits the fact that the man knelt. The greeting, as given in detail in Mark, emphasizes the homage which the man pays to Jesus, a homage made ironic by the fact that the man understands neither his sin or nor his inability to do anything about his sin. Mark gives a slightly different version of the man's question: not, what must I do to "have" eternal life, but to "inherit" it. There is a tension between 'do' and 'inherit' - in order to inherit something, one must do nothing; rather, someone else must die.

Mark's version of Christ's response is also more detailed: again answering a question with a question, Jesus asks "why do you call me good?" Again the question goes to motive. Is the man's act of honoring Jesus sincere? Or does the man seek self-justification? Does the man realize that, despite himself, he has affirmed Christ's divinity?

And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

Commented on Mark's version of the events, Richard Lenski writes:

The man does not ask how he may obtain life eternal as if he were at a loss as to the way and the means. On the contrary, he thinks he knows quite well how, namely, by his doing something, some one good thing.

Like all humans, he finds it difficult to believe and consistently internalize that salvation is God's action, not man's, in which man is passive and God is active. It is fallen human nature which wants somehow to believe that it at least cooperates with God in salvation, if it does not accomplish the matter entirely on its own. Lenski continues:

In the question: "What shall I do?" there lies, of course, the assumption that the questioner has the necessary ability and may easily reach the goal that Jesus has reached. All he needs is to know the thing that is to be done.

Lenski briefly considers the tension between 'do' and 'inherit' in the man's question, but does not extract the full ironic contradiction from it, preferring instead to see 'inherit' as a synonym for 'obtain' and leaves it at that. Further, Lenski sees Christ's imperative to give his wealth to others as a call to internal repentance. Lenski does not see the command as ironic.

Yet, considered as a literal answer to a literal question, irony seems the more plausible reading. The question is already ironic, "what must I do to have eternal life?" - because the action is God's, not man's. Consider the question, "what must I do to ensure the continuation of Jupiter in its orbit around the sun?" - what man would be foolish enough to imagine that he can 'do' anything about that?

But even if we grant the question, Christ's answer remains ironic. Go, sell your possessions, and give to the poor: good and God-pleasing actions, but nobody will find admission into heaven based upon them. Rather, such actions are performed out of gratitude for the salvation which God has already given.

Lenski fails to see the degree and amount of irony in Christ's words, and strives to make literal sense of them.

Luke's version of the matter adds only a generalized comment about wealth. Yet this comment sheds a bit of light on the matter:

Jesus, seeing that he had become sad, said, “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” Those who heard it said, “Then who can be saved?” But he said, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”

Those who witnessed the exchange between Jesus and the man understood: taken literally, the words would indicate that salvation is impossible. So they say, "who then can be saved?" - a rhetorical question, roughly, "so, nobody can be saved, right?" Jesus points, as ever, to the fact that God saves; man does not save, but rather man is saved. Man is passive, God is active. Therefore, salvation is 'impossible' with human effort; but it is "possible with God."

Is Wright Right?

The English scholar Tom Wright, better known as N.T. Wright, has attracted both attention and controversy. Jason Byassee describes Wright's aims in publishing:

Wright's goal in his teaching and writing is to massively revise the way Christianity has been articulated for generations. Christian faith, for Wright, is not about going to heaven when you die. It is not about the triumph of grace over the law of the Old Testament. He says its key doctrine is not justification by grace alone, the cornerstone for the Protestant Reformers. The church has misread Paul so severely, it seems, that no one fully understood the gospel from the time of the apostle to the time a certain British scholar started reading Paul in Greek in graduate school.

The reader is faced with a number of interpretive questions: is Byassee's description of Wright accurate? If so, what exactly is Wright presenting as long-lost core of the Christian faith? Is Wright arguing that recent centuries have misplaced the real meaning Christianity? If so, what is that real meaning?

According to Byassee, Wright's examination of the Pauline epistles is a historical one. Wright invented a phrase, the "new perspectives on Paul" approach, to emphasize that he would work from primary documents and historical data, and read Paul in manner which deliberately attempt to avoid two millennia of accumulated commentary and theology. Wright claims to peel back the layers of tradition and find the real historical Paul.

Historians can identify a long line of thinkers, dating back at least to Martin Luther, and arguably as far back as the later prophets of the Old Testament, who have stated that their task was to uncover the original and forgotten meanings in sacred texts. In this way, Wright is not new. Byassee summarizes some of Wright's work this way:

Theology, argues Wright, is something Paul pioneered. Jews and Romans could talk about spiritual matters such as fortune, or unseen powers that require our placating. But theology does work among the earliest Christians (and us) that it never had to do for their predecessors. Theology does the work for Paul that circumcision, food laws, and Sabbath did for the old Paul, the zealous Jew Saul of Tarsus. It marked out a community as distinct from the world. It still does — just not nearly as biblically in most cases as Wright thinks it should.

Arguing that he's uncovered the real Paul, Wright's thoughts become more interesting when he states what Paul's real theses are. According to Byassee's analysis of Wright,

Paul was not worried about where believers' souls would go after death. Christians of the late medieval period were worried about hell and felt they had to earn entry to heaven with works. This is the theology Martin Luther taught and wrote against, helping to ignite the Protestant Reformation.

Luther rejected the notion that individuals had to work and earn salvation. If we accept Byassee's interpretation, Wright rejects the notion that individual salvation is the central topic at all. Byassee continues:

But Jews of Paul's time were nowhere near so individualistic, so obsessed with the next life, so unfamiliar with grace as were the late medieval Christians. Instead of teaching about souls being saved from hell, say Wright and others, Paul is centrally teaching about God's faithfulness to Israel. He is showing that Yahweh is a God who keeps his promises, and so can be trusted to fulfill his promises in history.

Wright and those who've gathered around the rubric "new perspectives on Paul" offer a proposal about what Paul's main point is. Neither the 'individual' nor 'salvation' capture, Wright and his fellows claim, Paul's central topic.

In the long view of the Heilsgeschichte, Wright believes, according to Byassee, that

the works commanded in the law are good gifts from God. Paul doesn't say not to do them because you'll go wrong and think you're earning salvation. He says not to do them because the Messiah has come and the world is different now. All people can worship Israel's God and should do so together without ethnic division.

Wright seems to argue that Paul's message is not about individual salvation at all, and only secondarily about corporate salvation. Wright's Paul presents a type of salvation by belonging - Jews are saved because they are God's chosen people; Gentiles are saved because they have been adopted into the family of Israel. But salvation, of whichever type, is not the main theme of Wright's Paul.

Some readers have accused Wright of denying the immortality of the soul, because he argues that salvation is not the main message of the New Testament. Other readers see Wright as leaving the immortality of the soul intact, but simply asserting that it's not important.

Wright seems to be pointing us toward our calling as God's people, whether we are genetic Israelites or ingrafted Gentiles. Wright's Paul is telling us what our mission is, not how to be saved. Wright emphasizes the corporate, but, he says, he does not exclude individual considerations. Speaking of those readers who accuse him of collectivism, Wright responds that

it is simply not true, as people have said again and again, that I deny or downplay the place of the individual in favor of a corporate ecclesiology. True, I have reacted against the rampant individualism of western culture, and have tried to insist on a biblically rooted corporate solidarity in the body of Christ as an antidote to it. But this in no way reduces the importance of every person being confronted with the powerful gospel, and the need for each one to be turned around by it from idols to God, from sin to holiness, and from death to life.

If we strive for a sympathetic reading, we can note that it's not an either/or matter; it's not a case of binary opposites. Rather, it's a questions of emphasis. God deals with humans as individuals, and He also deals with them as groups. Both are always in play. The question is the mix or balance. When is God dealing individually? When corporately? Commenting on the third chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans, Wright notes that

Paul makes what most commentators in the reformation tradition regard as a strange shift in verse 29, when he asks ‘Or is God the God of the Jews only?’ (Notice how the NIV, for instance, omits the word ‘Or’.) If he had been talking all along simply about individual sinners being put right with God, we should indeed regard this as a sudden intrusion of ethnic questions. But he hasn’t. As chapter 4 will reveal, when we allow it to play its full role, he has been talking about God’s faithfulness to the covenant with Abraham, and about God’s creation of a single family from both halves of sinful humanity. God’s declaring that sinners are now in a right relation to himself and God’s declaring that believing Jews and believing Gentiles belong in the same family are inextricably bound up with one another.

Another way to understand the controversies surrounding Wright is to ask, what is the definition of the word 'gospel'? Wright's answer does not deny, but de-emphasizes, the notion of salvation:

When Paul refers to ‘the gospel’, he is not referring to a system of salvation, though of course the gospel implies and contains this, nor even to the good news that there now is a way of salvation open to all, but rather to the proclamation that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth has been raised from the dead and thereby demonstrated to be both Israel’s Messiah and the world’s true Lord. ‘The gospel’ is not ‘you can be saved, and here’s how’; the gospel, for Paul, is ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’.

The closer one examines both Wright and what others say about him, the more numerous and complex the questions become. If right sees salvation in a corporate light, what does that do to grace? It's possible to formulate a theology of unmerited favor in a corporate setting as well as in an individual setting. A field of investigation lies in the fact that the English words 'you' and 'your' cover, rather than disclose, the distinction between singular and plural, while the Hebrew and Greek words make explicit this difference.

Imagine if English-speaking Christians had to choose between singular and plural versions of 'you' and 'your' when they uttered formulaic expressions like "for you" and "for your sins."

Paul's words to the Ephesians make some of Wright's assertions plausible and perhaps even persuasive:

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Note first that the occurrences of 'you' and 'your' are plural in verse eight of chapter two. Note secondly that conjunction 'for' indicates that we were created and saved in order to do good works. Salvation was merely a preliminary move on God's part: first, He saved us; then, He puts us to work. Wright's books and articles are too numerous, too long, and too complex to be easily sorted out. Generations of scholars will probably examine his work for years to come, and endless numbers of debates will be organized to attempt to finalize what Wright meant.

N.T. Wright has authored texts which are long, complex, and numerous. A detailed analysis of his work would take years, and such analysis would itself be long and complex. We can, however, identify two directions in which such analysis would proceed: first, the definitions of 'salvation' and 'gospel'; second, the interplay between individual and corporate. Such an analysis would ask whether Wright sees more than 'entry into the afterlife' as belonging to the definitions of 'gospel' and 'salvation' and, if so, what that "more" might be. An analysis would also ask to which extent each of the two dimensions - corporate and individual - figure in the definitions of 'salvation' and 'gospel' and conceptual framework which each of those words represents.

Is salvation, for Wright, more than simply getting into heaven? Is the gospel more than simply the information that one is getting into heaven? And does that "more" - whatever it may be - perhaps figure around our corporate identity as much as, or even more than, our individual identity? If being 'saved' means being used by God to work out His plans on earth, could it be that we do that work more corporately than individually? Is eternal life merely the first part of the gospel, in which Jesus tells us that we don't need to worry about getting into heaven and then tells us about how He wants us to live as His people on earth?

The lasting value of Wright's work has yet to be established, but it will depend on this: to which extent does Wright drive his reader back to the actual text of the Old and New Testaments? To which extent does Wright nudge his reader closer to Jesus? These questions will determine the final net worth of Wright's activities.