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2 Cor. 5:14 - One died for all


14 For the love of Christ constrains us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died;


My translation
Submitted by andrew on Thu, 26/04/2007 - 10:21.

In a vigorous Fulcrum article entitled ’The Cross and the Caricatures: a response to Robert Jenson, Jeffrey John, and a new volume entitled Pierced for Our Transgressions’, Tom Wright argues that in order to make sense of the idea of ’penal substitution’ we must locate it

within the biblical world, the Old Testament world, within which the creator God, faced with a world in rebellion, chose Israel - Abraham and his family - as the means of putting everything right, and, when Israel itself had rebelled, promised to set that right as well and so to complete the purpose of putting humans right and thus setting the whole created order back the right way up.

This is broadly correct, though I think he tends to overstate the extent to which Israel was chosen ’as the means of putting everything right’. Wright then makes an emphatic statement about Jesus’ substitutionary role:

It is because Jesus, as Israel’s representative Messiah, was therefore the representative of the whole human race, that he could appropriately become its substitute. (Wright’s italics)

This is supported by reference to 2 Corinthians 5:14: the Christ who was ’made sin’ (or a ’sin offering’) died for all, therefore all died. Wright does not explain how Paul’s logic works here - the argument is only summarily stated. But I would question the conclusion that Paul sees Christ in his death as a substitute for the ’whole human race’. I think that here, though less clearly than in Romans 3:22-26, the logic of Christ’s death for all relates primarily, and perhaps even exclusively, to Israel as the people of God.

The reasons for this, very briefly, are as follows. i) Sacrifice in Old Testament thought is always for the sake of God’s chosen people, so we would naturally expect the logic of sacrifice to bring those parameters with it. ii) If Isaiah 52:13-53:12 is behind Paul’s thought here, it speaks of the servant’s suffering because of the sins of Israel (see the comments on Romans 3:22-26). iii) The all for whom Christ died are the all who have died, which makes it difficult to think that Paul at this moment presents this as a death for the whole world. It is a death for that community that dies and lives in Christ. The argument that Paul is thinking of all who have died ’in Adam’ (e.g. Barnett, Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 289-290) really does not work. iv) The all who have died in Christ also participate in his life (cf. 2 Cor. 5:4, 15); they will be raised with him (4:14); they become ’new creation’ (5:17). These are images of renewed Israel. The point is that the individual believer has become caught up in the story about Israel as it is encapsulated in Jesus’ death and resurrection.

So I would say that in Paul’s understanding Jesus died for the sake of, or in the place of, Israel under the wrath of God, and that under this narrative it makes sense to speak of Christ’s death as a matter of ’penal substitutionary atonement’. But we should hesitate to universalize the argument. He died not for every individual but - this is the thought that lies at the heart of Romans - for the sake of the promise to Abraham when the vehicle of that promise faced destruction.

Of course, because the people of the promise has been saved through Christ’s act of faithfulness, Paul can appeal to the ’world’ to be reconciled to God and become incorporated into that restored community (5:19-20). In a secondary or extended sense, therefore, it can be said that Jesus died for all humanity, but the specific logic of substitution should really be confined to the narrative about the people of God under judgment. Then it becomes a question of how we understand the conditions of YHWH’s covenant with Israel as set out, for example, in Deuteronomy 28.

See also:

Re: One died for all

Submitted by peter wilkinson on Fri, 27/04/2007 - 15:01.

I’ve promised not to be continually jumping in on Andrew’s comments - so I did wait 24 hours before posting this: just in case anyone else wanted to say something. But - fools rush in where discretion is the better part of valour, and procrastination is the mother of invention (as it says in Proverbs).

The logic at the heart of Andrew’s eschatological proposal I find odd - that Jesus died: “for the sake of the promise to Abraham when the vehicle of that promise faced destruction”. This makes the death of Jesus sound rather like a contingency measure - brought in when the grand plan (the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham) seemed to be in danger of failure. I suppose an argument could be made for saying that God knew all along that Israel would fail, and that a contingency measure, the death of Jesus, had to be supplied to keep the plan on track. It just doesn’t sound like that in the argument as presented, and it then wouldn’t really be a contingency measure.

I maintain, on other hand, that the cross of Jesus was central to the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham - and became its key focus, and that this is the “mystery” to which Paul refers in Ephesians 3:4-6, which was revealed through the gospel - which itself had been explained in the preceding section of Ephesians 2:14-17, at the centre of which was the cross - Ephesians 2:16. The cross of Jesus was the event for which everything had been preparing, and was in itself the centre of the fulfilment of God’s plans. In Colossians 1:27, the “mystery” of “Christ in you, the hope of glory” is the Christ in whom God’s fullness lived, and through whom God proposed to reconcile all things “on earth or in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross.” - Colossians 1:19. By this very means (the cross), the gentiles were to be included as “members together of the one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.” - Ephesians 3:6, and by the same means (the cross) “God has chosen to make known among the gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery” - Colossians 1:27. The gentiles were always included as the express purpose of Jesus’s death on the cross.

The same is said in Galatians: “The scripture foresaw that God would justify the gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham” - Galatians 3:8. How did this come about? By the death of Jesus on the cross - Galatians 3:13, the same word “redeemed” which applied “to us” now repeated (verse 14) “in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the gentiles through Christ Jesus” - not as a secondary consequence, but a primary intention.

The ‘smaller’ narrative which Andrew develops is of course quite different from Wright’s understanding of the narrative - the larger narrative which has an overview of Israel’s failure throughout the entire OT, leading incrementally and cumulatively to the death of Jesus on the cross. I find this in every way so outstandingly impressive that I can’t understand why anyone would want to propose any other narrative basis - but be that as it may, that is not for me to say.

At the heart of Wright’s criticism of Jeffrey John’s interpretation of the atonement is a crucial statement (concerning the wrath of God) - “a good, wise and loving creator, who hates - yes, hates implacably - anything that spoils, defaces, distorts or damages his beautiful creation”. The significance of the interpretative perspective which underlies the argument here is that it understands sin in a way that I find to be missing from Andrew’s narrative interpretation - and indeed from a great deal of contemporary theological reinterpretation of the biblical narrative. Sin in Andrew’s revised narrative becomes something that was a localised problem for Israel within her covenant, which God addressed through Jesus, and only secondarily became of relevance to the gentiles (they could come into Israel’s blessing if they wished - but the story wasn’t primarily addressed to them or about them).

I find it very difficult therefore to see that a case can be made, as Andrew wishes to make it, for saying that “he died for all” (2 Corinthians 5:15) means “he died for all (Israel)” and not “he died for all (the world)”. The context certainly does not suggest it. In the preceding argument of 2 Corinthians, Paul has been drawing out conclusions about the working of death and resurrection within the life of the believer based on his own experiences of mortality - possibly whilst in prison in Ephesus. This leads him to the opening of Chapter 5, where he contrasts the “earthly tent” (of the body) with the “heavenly dwelling” - which is not some otherworldly state of existence, but the body which has been designed for the state of existence fully to come about at the resurrection. The main point is that here, the perspective is the renewal of the entire cosmos, not the local event of the destruction of Jerusalem, as per Andrew’s eschatological narrative. The context of 2 Corinthians 5 is therefore anything but a limited interpretation of Israel’s story.

Further, there is also the context of the community who were the recipients of Paul’s letter. Had that community been entirely or mainly Jewish, it might have been inferred that “all” as in “died for all” meant Israel, as the body of people represented in “all” who received the letter. But by this stage, the church at Corinth was anything but mainly Jewish, and the “all”, lacking precise definition within the context of the letter, would at least have been taken to mean those who received the letter - gentile as well as Jew - not some primarily and others only in a secondary sense. In fact that kind of distinction would have run entirely against Paul’s insistence elsewhere that one of the works of Jesus’s death on the cross was to destroy such a distinction in his own body.

But here the context of the NT as a whole provides the understanding we need as to how “all” is defined.

“God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son” - John 3:16. How can an atonement which was only intended for Israel and only in a secondary sense for the gentiles be finely distinguished from such a statement?

Then there are further statements:

“He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world.” - 1 John 2:2.

“His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross.” - Ephesians 2:15-16.

“For God was pleased to have all his fulness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” - Colossians 1:19

I also take the whole thrust of Romans through the first five chapters to be leading to the cross as a provision for Jew and Gentile. Paul lays the foundation to his argument that Israel could not claim an exclusive possession to the privileges of the law, because “when gentiles who do not have the law do by nature the things that are required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts” - Romans 2:14. Also, the true descendants of Abraham were not those who performed “works of the law”, or racial descendants, but - “he is the father of all who believe but have not been circumsised in order that righteousness might be credited to them.” - Romans 4:11.

So in Romans 5, the death of Jesus is set, not exclusively in the context of Israel’s disobedience, but in the context of the disobedience of Adam, the sin which spread to “all” - verse 12, meaning not “all Israel” but “all the world”. Death followed sin, not just in Israel, but in the whole world - even before Israel came into the picture - verse 14. And here, we see “sin” not simply as people doing wrong actions, but as a power which has people in its grip. We also see “death” not simply as people dying of old age or sickness or in war, but as a power which binds the world and its inhabitants to futility.

In describing how Jesus remedied this hopeless situation, in contrasting “the gift” with “the trespass”, there is no possibility of an interpretation which limits “the gift” to Israel alone. Such a thought runs entirely contrary to the argument Paul has been patiently developing though the preceding four chapters.

I find this focus on the global implications of the death of Jesus explicitly developed in the NT, and underlying it, an awesome picture of the global power of sin. Both, and especially the latter, I find to be missing in Andrew’s revised eschatological narrative. What I see to be true in miniature, in the interpretation of 2 Corinthians 5:15 as provided in the commentary, I also find to be true of the narrative as a whole: one narrative which plays down the significance of sin and the centrality of the cross, and one which is the opposite. Not only do the two narratives contrast, but they move away from each other, so that to pursue one narrative is, in my opinion, to diverge entirely and increasingly from the other. This means that the underpinnings which are so vital to the traditional narrative, which require an uncomfortable and distasteful identification with the less pleasant aspects of the story, are less necessary in the revised narrative which the commentary provides for us, where the ugly realities of sin can be bypassed for the sake of the more amenable, if now somewhat amorphous, attractions of the ‘blessing of Abraham’.

I’ll do my best now to keep quiet for a while, but it’s difficult!

P.S. Sorry this post has leapfrogged a couple of more recent ones - but I noticed a couple of typos that needed correction. Also apologies that the comment grew in the revision - I just found more and more references that seemed to support my point of view.

Re: One died for all

Submitted by andrew on Tue, 01/05/2007 - 10:45.

Peter, I appreciate your restraint.

Obviously your response raises far too many specific issues to be dealt with under the heading of a commentary on 2 Corinthians 5:14. A good part of it relates to a reading of Romans which can be addressed elsewhere; and really the major part of your critique has to do with how the whole biblical narrative works. Clearly this is of crucial importance for how we frame Paul's argument at this point in the letter, but there is still the problem of how we manage this under the particular heading and without obscuring the actual commentary. Your response has been to reassert the safer metanarrative in all its glory without, for the most part, dealing with the specific points put forward in the commentary. To my mind it is this sort of inattention to detail that has encouraged the larger misreadings of modern evangelicalism.

That said, I will strongly insist that the restricted approach that I have taken to the narrative does not diminish the significance either of sin or of the cross. The question is rather how do these core factors operate within the narrative that is being told in the New Testament. My argument is simply that we read the New Testament better if we learn to read it from within the narrative, sharing its limited historical perspective, rather than retrospectively from a distance of 2000 years - not least because I think this will allow us to develop a much more coherent and realistic sense of participation in the narrative.

But to say, for example, that in Romans Paul deals with the 'localized' problem of Israel's sin does not mean that the global power of sin has gone missing from the eschatological narrative. First, Paul also addresses the 'localized' problem of the sins of the Greek-Roman world. Secondly, he argues for the inevitability of Israel's sinfulness in particular from the fact of universal sinfulness in Adam. But this is brought in not because he is making an argument about universal sin and salvation but because he is making an argument about Israel. Your brief summary of Romans filters out precisely the elements that ground the argument in history - and therefore in eschatology. The most important of these elements is the statement about the 'wrath of God', which in Romans, in the New Testament generally, and in the Old Testament, is to be understood not as an ultimate judgment but as the destruction or overthrow of a nation or culture.

My argument is that the New Testament deals with a certain critical and decisive stage in the history of God's people. But once the narrative moves beyond that stage, we are still confronted with the enormous problem of human sin, the corruption of God's good creation, and the missional challenge to respond to it as a people defined by Christ's death.

I repeat the point: Paul's argument in Romans has to do fundamentally with how God remains faithful to his promise to Abraham when the descendants of Abraham are destined for destruction. It is a contingent argument: Paul is situated in history faced with an apostolic calling to announce and explain to the nations that YHWH has redeemed and is restoring his people (cf. Rom. 1:5; 15:7-21). That is a deeply biblical story, and how you can characterize it as a 'contingency measure' is beyond me. But it is also a story about Israel, about a people, and it seems to me that we must think much less about the personal salvation of individuals and much more about the calling, redemption, and place in the world of a people if we are to read the Bible well in this post-modern age.

Your argument about the context of 2 Corinthians 5:14-15 suffers, to my mind, from the general assumption that Paul was consciously writing within the same universalized metanarrative that we have today. That is historically improbable, and I don't think it is either required theologically or helpful exegetically. Paul speaks of his own suffering not as illustrative of mortality in a universal sense (again you are filtering too much out) but as signs of the authenticity of his apostolic ministry - and I would suggest as evidence that the story of the suffering 'community of the Son of man' is being played out in his experience and in the experience of the early church. This is all part of the story of Israel. Notice that he sums up his appeal to the Corinthians with a quotation from Isaiah 49:8 (2 Cor. 6:1-2). He invokes the story of Israel's salvation. He is thinking about the people of God under judgment, not about the whole of humanity at all times.

This narrative about suffering certainly has universal and cosmic implications, which are brought out in other texts, not least Romans 8:18-25. But there is no reason why these larger effects should not be attributed to the particular event of the atonement for Israel's sins that is achieved through the death of Christ. This is entirely in conformity with the pervasive argument in Isaiah that when God delivers his people from the consequences of their sins, the event will have global ramifications.

The point about the presence of Gentiles in Corinth is irrelevant. Paul's argument is that Gentiles have been grafted into the original stem of Israel, so they inevitably share in the effects of Israel's story. Christ died as an atoning sacrifice for the whole people of God, therefore all those who are part of that people (through baptism into his death), whether Jews or Gentiles, have died with him and live for his sake.

I recognize that you have listed a number of other passages, including 1 John 2:2, which is of some significance. I suggest we discuss these separately some time.

Re: One died for all

Submitted by peter wilkinson on Thu, 03/05/2007 - 19:58.

Andrew

You said:

“Your response has been to reassert the safer metanarrative in all its glory without, for the most part, dealing with the specific points put forward in the commentary. To my mind it is this sort of inattention to detail that has encouraged the larger misreadings of modern evangelicalism.”

Whoah! The only “safe” reading is the one that most agrees with all the evidence. We are at present not agreed on this. I provided a detailed broader background and a detailed contextual response to your commentary on 2 Corinthians 5:14. I may not have hit your detailed meaning entirely, but inattentive to detail it was not - and neither can the readings of “modern evangelicalism” be so sweepingly dismissed.

Your own commentary introduced Wright’s article from Fulcrum, and rested heavily on your own developed interpretation of a “dominant eschatological narrative”, so I think it was appropriate for me to refer to these as well as suggest what I take to be the interpretive background to the death of Jesus - in the light of the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham.

Perhaps you can help me with this conundrum. On the one hand you say that the death of Jesus must be understood within the (narrower) narrative of Israel; ie it was for Israel’s national sins that Jesus died, and his death was not universal in its scope. But then you concede that the gentiles (ie the rest of the world) also received the benefits of Jesus’s death. How do you think this was so, if it was not a direct intention of Jesus in his death?

I understand your answer to be that the gentiles entered the community of the renewed Israel, and so benefited from their story, including the death of Jesus for Israel. I disagree - believing that the death of Jesus was God’s way of directly fulfilling the wider intent of the narrative, that renewal was always for the entire world, and not simply for Israel. The resurrection of Jesus was the beginning of the renewal of creation, not just Israel. It was a Jewish gospel for a gentile world, and there was no intermediate step of having to enter a (renewed) Jewish community first before access to its benefits could be derived. The gentiles had direct access to God through Christ just as much as the Jews.

Behind this interpretation over what might seem at first to be hair-splitting is the view that God’s intention was always the renewal of the entire cosmos, and that the focus was not Israel but the world. I take this to be the case from Ephesians, Colossians, as well as the outline of the first five chapters of Romans I presented. It’s also there in 1 John, and visible in the gospels also.

The real difference is not over exegesis, but the views which predetermine our exegesis. In your case, there is a postmodern desire to deconstruct a dominant interpretive scheme - which has actually been the scheme of the church throughout the ages, and not simply a modern evangelical concoction. You want the gospel, such as it is in your deconstructed version, to be one story amongst others, not taking on airs for itself, in a kind of postmodern community of faiths. But I see the gospel as something which challenged the accepted worldviews in the days of Jesus and Paul, Jew and gentile, and which continues to challenge the worldviews of today - not least the postmodern preference for a freedom and diversity of spiritualities.

Why is this of any significance? Because it means that believers in Turkey or any part of the world can be confident that Jesus died for them, in a primary intended sense, and not in the secondary sense of having first to step through the hoop of entering a (renewed) Jewish community. Jesus died for the sins of the world, not “for the sake of the promise to Abraham when the vehicle of that promise faced destruction”. The faith isn’t that complicated.

Let’s keep talking.

Re: One died for all

Submitted by paulchen on Thu, 03/05/2007 - 23:31.

Peter and Andrew, I hope you won't mind entering your discussion here. When reading Peter's comment two biblical references came in my mind.

1. Matthew 21:42 in my reading of the text and especially the preceding parable it becomes apparent that Jesus has been sent in his father vinyard (Israel) to 'make things right' primarily for his own people. vers 42 then is for me important in looking at your discussion: yes, Jesus came first for his own people, but his death became the cornerstone. This is a picture for me that his death (which in the parable wasn't even intended) extends to 'others' also. Verse 43 then even gives a hint of the 'others'

2. Romans 11:17 should make it even much more clear that Paul thinks of non jewish followers as being beneffiting through Israel. Peter - where is your principal problem in us benefitting from what Jesus has done not in a primary sense - as long as we also can be close to God through Jesus? Believers in Turkey and elsewhere can still be confident that Jesus died for them; be it primarliy or by extension through Israel. As Long as Jesus died for us there shouldn't be such a big problem. It is good to talk to you again,

Mathias

Re: One died for all

Submitted by andrew on Fri, 04/05/2007 - 10:28.

Mathias, believe me, you are more than welcome to join in.

The parable of the vineyard illustrates very well how Jesus saw the story of Israel unfolding. It is a parable, in the first place, about who should have responsibility for leading the people of God; but the reference to Psalm 118 in verse 42 may also bring into view Israel's state of oppression under Rome and the means by which YHWH will save his people from their enemies. I have posted a commentary on it. There is nothing in this passage to suggest that Jesus was thinking of the Gentiles, but Paul's argument in Romans is certainly that Gentiles are being incorporated into the Israel that is saved by Jesus' death.

Re: Re: One died for all

Submitted by peter wilkinson on Sat, 05/05/2007 - 11:22.

Thank you Mathias for your comment and questions, and Andrew for pointing us to your commentary on the Matthew 21:33-44, and the reference in the parable to psalm 118 in particular.

I agree that in the parable of the tenants, Jesus is talking about national Israel, and their rejection of him. Also that the reference to psalm 118 in verse 42 implies a broadening of the significance of the temple to come, with the chief cornerstone being Jesus as the one rejected by national Israel but exalted by God, an exaltation demonstrated not least by the reception of the message about him by peoples other than ethnic Israel.

The people in the parable (verse 43) to whom the kingdom of God is given in the light of the tenants’ rejection of the landowner’s son is ‘ethnos’ - which is of course the Greek word elsewhere translated as ‘gentiles’. There is therefore a strong suggestion in the passage that the kingdom would be given to them, as a people producing its fruit. But this thought needs to be balanced by the counter-truth that we do indeed owe a lasting debt to historic Israel.

Your reference to Romans 11:17 points us to the benefits we have received for all time from historic Israel, but it was particularly applicable to the church in Rome in the 1st century, where the issue of relationship between Jew and non-Jew had a more immediate historic relevance. This relationship is one of the key issues Paul addresses throughout the letter.

Perhaps my point wasn’t clear enough. I was asserting that when a non-Jew (or anybody) hears the kerygma of Jesus, he/she (or they) do not first have to join a community, participate in a narrative, and only then can they receive the gift of life which has been offered. On the contrary, they can respond immediately and directly to God in the light of the proclamation given, and immediately and directly become members of a community of the people of God in themselves, as well as members of a worldwide community in a larger sense, and incorporated into local expressions of that community in whatever way is applicable.

In that sense everybody who responds to the gospel of Jesus benefits from what was given primarily and initially to Israel. Everyone in that sense is grafted into the natural olive tree (in a strange reversal of the normal procedure of horticulture).

What I perceive in Andrew’s account is that the death of Jesus is somewhat exclusively for the sins of historic Israel, and for others only in the sense that its benefits are accessible by entering the community of renewed Israel, and participating in the narrative of historic Israel. This seems to me to set up a hoop that has to be jumped through before the benefits of the death of Jesus can be obtained - you can only benefit from the death of Jesus after you have done certain things first, and his death isn’t really for you anyway.

In Andrew’s account, the death of Jesus was intended primarily to save those in Israel who believed in him at that time from an immediately impending disaster - which occurred in the Jewish wars of AD 66-70. In that sense, the death was not universal in its scope, but limited to the salvation of Israel at that time, so that the promise of Abraham might be fulfilled through the preservation of a people through whom it was to come.

In other words, when the logic is followed through, the death of Jesus has very little direct personal application to anyone outside 1st century Israel - except perhaps as a model for patient endurance in persecution. On the other hand, the blessing of Abraham is available to everyone (when they enter the renewed community of the people of God) without first having to be exposed in a personal way to the mediating sacrificial death of Jesus.

I take this to be, ultimately, what Andrew means by saying that the death of Jesus was not a universal act. But the universality of the death of Jesus is implied in the broader narrative, and in the presentation of Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” - John 1:29, and numerous other references to its universality which I have aready referred to, and therefore continues to be of direct relevance to people in all ages.

The people in the parable

Submitted by andrew on Sat, 05/05/2007 - 11:45.

The people in the parable (verse 43) to whom the kingdom of God is given in the light of the tenants’ rejection of the landowner’s son is ‘ethnos’ - which is of course the Greek word elsewhere translated as ‘gentiles’. There is therefore a strong suggestion in the passage that the kingdom would be given to them, as a people producing its fruit.

Peter, the singular makes this very unlikely. Genesis 12:2 LXX has the singular ethnos: 'I will make you a great nation...'. 1 Peter 2:9 has 'you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation (ethnos), a people for his own possession' in a passage that also quotes Psalm 118:22-23. There is no reason to see an allusion to the Gentiles in the Matthew 21:43. The issue here, as I keep saying, is the fate of the people of God descended from Abraham, which is resolved by a story about rejection and exaltation. The status of Gentiles is defined in relation to that principal narrative.

The people in the parable

Submitted by peter wilkinson on Tue, 08/05/2007 - 11:28.

Andrew: no, I think you overstate the case; ’ethnos’ is more likely to be seen as a contrast to Israel, rather than simple continuity with Israel, and given Matthew’s constant bias (favour to the gentiles, criticism of Israel), it is more likely that the gentile association of ’ethnos’ would have been heard. If Matthew had wanted to avoid such an association, he might have used a word like ’laos’.

So what do you make of 1

Submitted by andrew on Tue, 08/05/2007 - 12:50.

So what do you make of 1 Peter 2:6-10 (a letter addressed to the ’dispersion’), where you have the same quotation about a rejected stone, a reference to the church as a ’holy nation’ (ethnos hagion) alluding to Exodus 19:5-6, and a very clear assumption that the church as such is the Old Testament people saved by and reconstituted around Jesus?

I would also point out that the contrast in Matthew 21:43 is not between this ’nation’ and Israel, as you suggest, but between this ’nation’ and the current rulers of Israel. Surely the dominant thought, therefore, is of renewed Israel no longer under the corrupt rulers but under the reign of God?

So I come back to my basic argument: it is God’s people that is saved through the drama of the stone that is rejected by the rulers of Israel but then made ’head of the corner’.

Re: So what do you make of 1

Submitted by peter wilkinson on Fri, 11/05/2007 - 14:35.

I take ‘the rejected stone’ and the temple allusions in 1 Peter 2:6-10 to have the same meaning in context as in the rest of the NT, where they are presented as being designed for Jew and gentile together - eg Ephesians 2:19-22. The new temple, with Christ as ‘the chief cornerstone’ - Ephesians 2:20, was made possible by the death of Christ on the cross, the immediate effect of which was the destruction of the ‘dividing wall of hostility’ between Jew and gentile - Ephesians 2:14.

The meaning of Exodus 19:5-6 in the NT as a whole is that the kingdom of priests and holy nation were Jew and gentile together as a renewed people of God. In 1 Peter, it may be that for the sake of a predominantly Jewish audience, Peter was not explicitly making that interpretative qualification, but neither does he suggest that psalm 118 had an exclusively Jewish fulfilment for the 1st century. In the light of the NT as a whole, including accounts of Peter in Acts, such a restriction becomes an unsupportable interpretation.

It seems clear to me that Matthew is using the word ‘ethnos’ in the same way that he uses if throughout that gospel - to refer to gentile nations. Nevertheless, this would not exclude the sense as developed in the rest of the NT of the renewed people of God - in which Jew and gentile occupied an equal place, though by the time the gospel was written, gentiles were predominant.

I somehow doubt that we are really in disagreement about these details; I think we disagree over how people outside 1st century ethnic Israel became part of the renewed people of God. In the rest of the NT, and in the accounts of Acts in particular, it seems obvious. They heard the death and resurrection of Jesus proclaimed, and saw it as applying to themselves, as well as to Israel. This direct personal application was confirmed by immediate manifestations of the Spirit on those who believed - which to Peter and the apostles was proof that they equally with Jews were to be regarded as members of the renewed people of God. There was no intermediate step of having to enter a narrative or community which was primarily for somebody else, before they could receive the benefits of that narrative.

Why is this significant? Because entry to the people of God was and is via faith in Jesus, his death and resurrection, relevant to all peoples in the 1st century and to all peoples in all times. Jesus died for Jew and gentile, not just Jew, in all times, not just the 1st century.

What I perceive in

Submitted by andrew on Sat, 05/05/2007 - 12:16.

What I perceive in Andrew’s account is that the death of Jesus is somewhat exclusively for the sins of historic Israel, and for others only in the sense that its benefits are accessible by entering the community of renewed Israel, and participating in the narrative of historic Israel.

Peter, it’s a bit frustrating that we can’t keep the focus on the details of the interpretation of 2 Corinthians 5:14. Still, the general issues that you raise need to be addressed.

Your summary of my argument here is interesting. The way you put it, the Gentiles gain access to the benefits of Christ’s death by entering the community of renewed Israel and by participating in the narrative about the people of God. But ’entering the community of renewed Israel’ is the benefit of Christ’s death. This is exactly Paul’s argument in Ephesians 2:11-22: because of Christ’s death Gentiles have become part of the commonwealth of Israel. That is ’salvation’ for the Gentiles - not to be subject to the wrath of God by becoming part of a ’justified’ people.

I don’t see this as some post-modern concoction on my part. The biblical texts repeatedly exhibit a reference to a core narrative in which Israel is saved through the faithfulness of Jesus and Gentiles are incorporated into that saved ’nation’. Even an isolated text like John 1:29 does not abrogate this core narrative.

The question about how Christ’s death is personally relevant to us now is a very important one. My argument in The Coming of the Son of Man is that Christ’s death and vindication have a direct personal relevance for the suffering community of the early church that they do not have for the post-eschatological church. But that does not mean that they have no significance for us. One could say, for example, that to be incorporated into a people that has been redefined by the New Testament story must mean dying to the old nature, must mean receiving the gift of life, must mean coming under the lordship of one gave himself for the sake of God’s new creation in the world. The argument is that this relationship is structured narratively rather than existentially or personally and that this allows us to read the New Testament without having to bend it into the shape of a modern evangelical personalized mytheology - ’mytheology’ is my new word for a theology that has been over-abstracted from its historical origins.

What I perceive in

Submitted by peter wilkinson on Tue, 08/05/2007 - 12:14.

Andrew - I think your exegesis of 2 Corinthians 5:14 raises all the wider issues under discussion. It wouldn’t do to be unable to see the theological wood for exegetical trees!

The point at issue seems to be hair-splitting, until the implications are spelt out - which you do in your final paragraph, especially your statement:

“Christ’s death and vindication have a direct personal relevance for the suffering community of the early church that they do not have for the post-eschatological church”

(and here, it is important to note that ‘post eschatological’ has a particular meaning for you which is not shared by most other commentators).

So we could, for instance, look at Romans 6, and I would say that it has direct relevance for Christians at Rome as well as believers of all ages, who are incorporated into Christ (not just a people) by baptism, and you would say - no, it’s only 1st century Christians to whom that applies; Christians of later ages do not qualify for such a direct experience of Christ; he didn’t die for them or for their sins.

I therefore think that you press your interpretation too far.

We do become part of a people by believing in Christ (actually, you put it the other way round: we believe in, or benefit from, Christ by becoming part of a people).

There is an eschatological narrative running through the gospels in particular and parts of the NT which relates to a 1st century fulfilment.

There is also a broader narrative which provides the context for Abraham and the history of Israel which you either avoid or understate, in which the death, resurrection, ascension and outpoured Spirit of Jesus were the central events. By contrast, you are inviting us to be part of a narrative frozen in history, not one which opens out with relevance for all people in all time. In this smaller narrative, you still haven’t said how the benefits received by the people for whom it was written become more broadly available for those for whom it was not directly intended. This is a theological issue as much as an exegetical issue.

I think your description of a modern evangelical ‘mytheology’ is precisely that - it doesn’t exist; you have created it. One could argue that you are replacing it with another equally non-existent ‘mytheology’. The biblical version of history, Abraham’s, Israel’s and Christ’s story, is that there is a narrative which we enter by believing in Christ, there is a community we enter by the same means, and there is an existential encounter with God on the basis not of a leap of ‘blind faith’, but faith inspired by reasonable evidence. This faith is a direct response to Christ, and not via the preliminary requirement of entrance into a narrative or community and a second-hand relationship with him.

I am very happy to discuss all the detail of this as far as exegetical analysis is concerned, though actually I have been doing that for some time in response to your various comments and posts. During the course of such contributions, I have made some observations which I take to be fatal weaknesses of your exegetical assumptions, as well as fatal conclusions towards which your exegesis has been a trajectory. Not the least of the latter is that there is virtually nothing in the NT which can find application beyond the 1st century. Of the former, I would say that the most prominent is that OT concepts and terms are taken in an undeveloped way as definitions of their use or their fulfilment in the NT.

Finally, I have been unable to insert paragraph breaks in this text. Any suggestions?

...and you would say -

Submitted by andrew on Tue, 08/05/2007 - 18:03.

...and you would say - no, it’s only 1st century Christians to whom that applies; Christians of later ages do not qualify for such a direct experience of Christ; he didn’t die for them or for their sins.

There are two issues here, which you’ve muddled up.

The first has to do with the experience of participating in Christ’s death and resurrection. My argument is that this is an experiential notion and that within the story of the Son of man it has a relevance to the early church insofar as it was called to confront the same enemies as Jesus confronted (Jewish hierarchy, Rome and the satanic power behind both), to imitate Christ, that it does not have for the church today. Romans 6 is couched in rather general terms - and I would certainly associate myself with it in a general sense. But I still wish to maintain that Romans was written with a historically restricted eschatological narrative in view, and that even here Paul presupposes the overtly eschatological framework of Romans 8 - and indeed, the argument about wrath and judgment on the ancient world.

The second issue has to do with Jesus’ death for others. Jesus died for the sake of the survival of the people of God, for its sins - and died for individuals insofar as they make up the people of God. In other words, the corporate narrative has priority over (but does not exclude) the private narrative.

We do become part of a people by believing in Christ (actually, you put it the other way round: we believe in, or benefit from, Christ by becoming part of a people).

Hmm, I don’t follow this. I thought I made it clear that I see the potential for participation in the community as a consequence of Christ’s death.

By contrast, you are inviting us to be part of a narrative frozen in history, not one which opens out with relevance for all people in all time.

Not at all. The question is how does the narrative open out. I’ve made the point before that Israel saw itself as part of a tradition crucially shaped by the historical event of the exodus from Egypt - that was a living, prophetic, transforming reality, not something frozen in history. But more to the point, to say that Jesus died for the people of God and by virtue of his faithfulness has been raised as Lord over that people during the coming ages can hardly be construed as denying his relevance for all people. You cannot become part of that people without coming to terms with the ’holiness’ and purpose that it has in Christ.

However, there is a significant shift of emphasis involved in placing the emphasis on Christ’s death for the people. It makes the community central to mission. This needs thinking through a lot more, but I would hazard the argument that modern evangelicalism has systematically downplayed the role of the people of God as the agent or locus of God’s purposes within creation. Personal salvation is not the chief end of mission. It is the ongoing existence of the people as a creational microcosm, summed up in the ’cosmic’ Christ that constitutes the overarching missional narrative.

Re: ...and you would say -

Submitted by peter wilkinson on Fri, 11/05/2007 - 15:03.

I don’t think I’m muddling things; I think there was a sense in which the death of Jesus was for the sake of the survival of his people through judgement which came upon the ancient world (though it must repeatedly be said that this is less obvious in relation to Rome than it is in relation to Jerusalem and Israel - and even the Jews ‘survived’ as a people through this judgement).

I think there was an urgency to Jesus’s message because he foresaw the Jewish catastrophe, which to him was the culmination of Israel’s historic obduracy and rejection of God’s purposes. But I disagree that the message was therefore limited in its thrust to this context of forthcoming catastrophe. On the contrary, Jesus was much more focused on the powers that lay behind Israel and Rome, Israel’s historically continuing exile from the blessings of God, and therefore her failure to receive forgiveness of sins.

Israel’s failure to receive forgiveness of sins and therefore the blessing of God connects us with the wider narrative, which you seem reluctant to mention, of sin and death, which is the focus, for instance, of Paul’s interpretation of the gospel in Romans, culminating in chapters 5,6,7 and 8. This was the narrative which underlay Israel’s story, and connected Israel’s story with the story of the rest of the world, from Genesis 3 onwards.

I would repeat, that I see the gospel as the proclamation of Jesus, his life, death, resurrection and ascension as the way in which the NT presents the fulfilment of the OT and OT prophecy, and which brings the meaning of the history of Israel to bear on the wider world and creation itself. I don’t see this as having primarily a restricted relevance to Israel in the 1st century; all the evidence points away from such a conclusion.

Like you, I see much more historic context to a letter like Romans than is generally conceded. I don’t see this particularly related to any specific 1st century judgement on Rome or Jerusalem - there is too little evidence for that in the letter. On the other hand, there is massive evidence for a 1st century need to address Jew/gentile issues, arising from current experiences in the church, and requiring a radical interpretation of Israel’s history.

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