GALATIANS 2:20 AS A CORRECTIVE TO SELECTED CONTEMPORARY VIEWS OF CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY Philip Adam McClendon, Ph.D. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2012 Chair: Dr. Robert L. Plummer This dissertation examines various contemporary Protestant views of Christian Spirituality in light of Galatians 2:20 in order to correct some common errors caused by the elevation of personal subjectivism and the misinterpretation of Scripture. The purpose is to demonstrate the continual necessity of the Scriptures as the normative grounds for evaluating and correcting the theological and practical expressions of Christian spirituality. Christian spirituality focuses on the way that one lives as led by the Spirit in light of one’s understanding of and experience with God. While the role of the Spirit in Christian spirituality is critical, direct emphasis on the necessity of grounding one’s spiritual understanding and experience within the context of Scripture is often an absent element. Without the governing standard of the Bible, and with the increased influences of ecumenicalism, mysticism, secularism, subjectivism, and relativism within Protestantism, Christian spirituality remains somewhat ambiguous and covers a substantial range of religious beliefs to include biblical as well as extra-biblical ideas. Thus, to demonstrate how the Scriptures can help govern limits within Christian spirituality, Galatians 2:20 will be examined. This dissertation, then, employs Galatians 2:20 as a guide for establishing essential concepts concerning the spiritual life and, in so doing, corrects some common misunderstandings of the spiritual life. Chapter 1 defines spirituality and provides a brief history of interpretation for Galatians 2:20. Chapter 2 demonstrates that the cross is central to the justification of the believer and results in a transformation of life. Chapter 3 reveals that the Spirit serves as Christ’s representative to the believer empowering them for Christian living. Chapter 4 emphasizes the reality that although the believer is to progress in sanctification, they will continually experience spiritual tension in this life between the Spirit and the desires of the flesh. Chapter 5 explains that personal faith is the means by which the believer lives out the indwelling presence of the Spirit. This lived faith is motivated by the sacrificial love of God. Chapter 6 provides a conclusion based on the preliminary thought regarding the necessity of biblical spirituality in light of some current trends within Christian spirituality.

Galatians 2:20 as a Corrective to Selected Contemporary Views of Christian Spirituality

Following recent intertextual studies, Wells examines how descriptions of ‘heart-transformation’ in Deut 30, Jer 31–32 and Ezek 36 influenced Paul and his contemporaries' articulations about grace and agency.

Grace and Agency in Paul and Second Temple Judaism: Interpreting the Transformation of the Heart

The primary aim of this dissertation is to consider how Irenaeus of Lyons’ christocentric reading of protology, soteriology, and eschatology provides a useful theological framework for organizing Pauline ktisiology in a way that contributes to contemporary ecotheological scholarship. This investigation builds upon recent shifts away from covenant theology and toward theological frameworks that more thoroughly consider creation themes, as well as cultural shifts toward greater ecological consciousness. Together, these shifts have contributed to the development of ecotheology as a new respected field within constructive theology. Given that creation theology has not been considered a strong thread within Pauline theology and that the Pauline corpus has not been a source for many contributions to the ecotheological discourse, this study opted for a history-of-reception approach. Irenaeus of Lyons (115-202 CE) is an exceptional example of a reader who is sensitive to both creation categories and christological texts within the Pauline corpus, and he was, therefore, a valuable resource for this study.
In order to bring the creation theology of Paul, as framed by Irenaeus, into conversation with the emerging corpus of ecotheological scholarship, this study is organized around three areas of exegetical and theological inquiry. First, it explores the structural significance of creation motifs in Pauline theology as well as their relation to Christology, soteriology, and ecclesiology. Second, it analyzes Irenaeus’ deployment of Paul in the formation of a biblical theology of creation. And third, through these exegetical and theological resources, this study suggests possibilities for how Pauline theology might contribute toward the growing corpus of ecotheology.

Christ, New Creation, and the Cosmic Goal of Redemption: A Study of Pauline Ktisiology and Its Interpretation by Irenaeus

This thesis uses the theories of Wilfred Cantwell Smith about religion in general and scripture in particular. It attempts to link them more closely than Smith himself did. Building on Smith, the thesis argues that the designation of a text as scripture influences the way religious followers approach it. They bring their deepest convictions and pressing concerns to it as presuppositions, but also use the text as a window onto the transcendent, a means of grappling with ultimate reality, leading to a use of the scripture (a concept larger than the words on the page) in ordering the world as they think it should be. The thesis applies these insights to the Anglican Communion. It considers the approach to the Bible taken by formative Anglican thinkers, and declarations about the Bible from the Lambeth Conferences. It then considers the approach to the Bible in Africa, on the part of both academic theologians (many of whom are Anglicans) and of African Anglican church leaders. It focuses on Anglican biblical approaches to the issue of homosexuality, currently splitting the Communion. Both parties to this debate claim to base their position on the Bible. However, in Smith's terms, each position relies less on interpreting a text than on bringing deep convictions to scripture and working on it to establish what is thought to be the will of God and thus to order the world as it should be. The thesis argues that Smith's insights shed considerable light on the underlying dynamics of this debate, and that recognition of these dynamics would make the debate far more tractable and fruitful.

Wilfred Cantwell Smith's theory of scripture related to the use of the Bible in African Anglicanism

Rudolf Bultmann’s existential approach to New Testament theology found many supporters in the twentieth century. It also provoked a forceful response from his student Ernst Kasemann, who insisted that Bultmann’s individualizing interpretation, especially of Paul, was defective on exegetical, theological and philosophical grounds, because it ignored Paul’s cosmic and communal theology. The debate between these two scholars has been furthered quite vigorously in subsequent Pauline scholarship. Most scholars have followed Kasemann’s lead (directly or not) in reading Paul in a comprehensively, and, often, exclusively communal fashion. However, recent voices have questioned whether the communal reaction against Bultmannian existentialism may be one-sided, and may obscure other, equally important facets of Paul’s thought. This article surveys the debate between Bultmann and Kasemann, and the trajectories it has taken since, with special attention directed towards the most pressing interpretive issues related to...

The Individual and Community in Twentieth- and Twenty-first-Century Pauline Scholarship

Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul By J Louis Martyn Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1997 xvii + 334 pp $3995 (cloth) "The only real antidote to whatever distortion of the gospel arises is simply the gospel itself, proclaimed once again" Those words from J Louis Martyn long ago in a semester seminar on Galatians were mysterious at first In time, they began to clarify Paul's complex preaching strategy in Galatians They also characterize Martyn's own apostolic labors on Paul's theology, represented by this impressive volume of essays, written and rewritten over the course of more than thirty years of teaching and studying Paul "Antidote" signals both serious opposition (see Martyn's essay on "Apocalyptic Antinomies") and that the outcome is a matter of life and death because "the truth of the gospel" (Galatians 2:5) is at stake: a distorted version of the gospel is as poisonous to the church as nerve gas This is war! As Martyn explains in "From Paul to Flannery O'Connor with the Power of Grace," Paul's apocalyptic gospel is less about unveiling than a dynamic invasion In the same essay, Martyn describes himself as one of those who has been "seized by Jesus Christ" (p279), committed to the confession that Jesus is Lord, the Christ, God's Messiah Martyn follows both Paul and Ernst Kasemann in viewing the gospel as "the event that defines the category of God's power," being itself God's powerful invasion of the world to bring about new creation So if the truth of the gospel is at stake and we are at war, then all's fair, right? In the same essay, Martyn contrasts two kinds of power, represented graphically in the civil rights struggle during the Montgomery bus boycott of the winter of 1955-1956 The power of the city fathers is revealed to be the power of the Old Age, quid pro quo, this for that, as if that were the only kind of power and as if those who had it had all the power there was and could do whatever they wanted But the power on the other side of the table does not accept this agenda The black community knows that there is power of a different order, not visible to Old-Age eyes, but finally invincible because it is the power of the unconditional love of God revealed in the crucifixion of his Son This grace is powerful enough to keep that community walking on sore feet every day, instead of riding the segregated buses, and singing of God's "amazing grace" to the unredeemed world (summarized from pp 288-89) The gospel itself, preached once again, is the only real antidote to the distortions that oppose it …

Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul

The relationship between trinitarian doctrine and human society is intensely debated today. Can Paul's ethical ecclesiology help? Paul's missionary theology requires a careful working out of the interrelations of the term "people of God" taken from Israel's Scriptures, and another term, the "body of Christ," deriving from the sacraments and popular social theory. Are these opposing ecclesial descriptions? Has one superseded the other? At issue is nothing less than the integrity of God. This paper argues that a close study of a third Pauline ecclesial term, "koinonia of Spirit," can clarify the problems of sameness and difference and of the one and the many in Pauline theology. A complex integrity holds together: Israel and the Gentiles; Christ and his church; and the Oneness of God with the divine Lordship of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Paul's practical problems led to his "trinitarian" reflections, suggesting that the relationship between dogmatics and practical theology works both ways. Introduction Recent articles by Karen Kilby and Miroslav VoIf have reviewed and critiqued what they describe as a growing interest in "social doctrines of the Trinity."1 According to Kilby social theories of the Trinity often project our ideals onto God. For "social theorists" God is more appropriately modeled on three human beings than one, yet the three are somehow one, bound together by the divine perichoresis, which is then glossed in human communal terms as "interrelatedness, love, empathy, mutual accord, mutual giving and so on."2 Given the difficulties that result from such projection, she calls on theologians to renounce the idea that the point of the doctrine of the Trinity is to give insight into God and to see it instead as a grammatical rule for reading the biblical stories, describing the experience of prayer, and otherwise structuring Christian discourse.3 Miroslav Volf, on the other hand, although critical of the naively optimistic claims that Nicholas Fedorov and others made for humanly realized historical programs based upon the Trinity, does want to argue that the doctrine of perichoresis teaches us not only about the unity of God but also about God's identity. Theological constructions of God's identity as "non-reducible" and "not self-enclosed" when situated in the biblical "narrative of divine self-donation" can indeed provide a social "vision" for the church, if not a social program.4 From the perspective of the church's rethinking of its relation to the Jewish people and vice versa, Kendall Soulen is also interested in the doctrine of the Trinity and the identity of God.5 While the church has revived its interest in the ancient doctrine of the Trinity with newfound pride, it has been much more self-critical of its past teachings about the Jewish people. Soulen insists that these two questions (the triune identity of God and the church's relationship to Israel) must be rethought together. Trinitarian theology must affirm that "the triune God is the Holy One of Israel" in such a way that God's identity as YHWH is "genuinely constitutive for understanding God's eternal identity and ultimate purposes for creation."6 These theological discussions and others like them suggest that ecclesiological and ethical dimensions of trinitarian thinking are very much alive in the church today. While contemporary theologians usually begin with the doctrine of the Trinity as given, in order to explore its social and ethical implications for the church, the church's first theologians addressed social and ethical issues arising in the church and found themselves writing in ways that would eventually be called "trinitarian." One of the clearest examples is the apostle Paul. Writing from within the world of what we now call the New Testament, Paul only knew that he was sending advice-filled letters to early Christian communities whose presenting problems were myriad and complex. As Paul attempted to address their ethical and ecclesiological issues, he found it necessary to speak of God's complex identity. …

People of god, body of christ, koinonia of spirit : The role of ethical ecclesiology in paul's trinitarian language

Can our biblical texts and legal traditions help us to assess the wisdom of the Windsor Report's recommendation for tighter structures and more formal procedures? Among other texts, the two rival accounts of how Israel got its first king form an important precedent for today's conversations about covenant and centralized authority. Similarly, the long conversation with text and tradition that comprises biblical interpretation has dynamics like the classic law/equity debate stemming from British common law and analogous discussions about interpreting the United States constitution and congressional statutes. The Windsor Report wisely bases its primary arguments on Paul's insistence that church unity is both commanded by God and worth the hard interpersonal and cross-cultural work it demands of us all. Nevertheless, a subsidiary theme of the Report hinting that our difficulties could be solved by increased legal structure threatens to undercut that powerful theological vision. Before attending seminary, I studied law. During the first semester of law school, in a course on contracts and remedies, we were introduced to the ancient English distinction between law and equity. To oversimplify greatly, the tradition of common law developed in the civil courts, while the remedies associated with equity originated in ecclesiastical courts. Law regarded only what was contained within "the four corners" of a legal document: if the defendant had in fact signed the contract and subsequently defaulted, then the court would find for the plaintiff and apply the legal penalty. The justice of law is traditionally blind to the identity of the parties and to external factors. Law focuses on the facts of the case as contained in the contract itself. Equity, on the other hand, claimed the right to notice other extenuating circumstances that were relevant to the case and to suggest more appropriate remedies. The equitable tradition of church law insisted that if the defendant could hardly read or did not understand the nature of a contract, and if the plaintiffs sales agent had made misleading statements designed to confuse or apply undue pressure to sign, and if the plaintiffs company had a long history of exploiting those who were poor, powerless, and illiterate, these factors, external to the "four corners," were relevant to the question of justice between the parties. Equity asks whether penalties should be applied against corporate greed (even though the companies might be operating entirely within the law) instead of against poor and poorly educated persons (who had admittedly signed the contract and subsequently defaulted exactly as the plaintiff had claimed). This debate goes on today with respect to the aggressive marketing of credit card companies, their targeting of poor credit risks, subsequent collection practices, and the proposed tightening of bankruptcy laws. The tendency of law is to try to abolish equity by increasing legislation and adding structure. The apparent solution to the perceived problems of flexibility and ambiguity is tighter control, greater specificity. More statutory law, designed to give the courts less room for interpretation, is the consistent response of law to equity. Law values conservation and predictability, so important to the corporate world, over reforms that call its established ways of operating into question. But without equity, it is difficult to see how law would ever question its own assumptions or initiate reforms of its own practices. Seminary and subsequent biblical studies have increased my appreciation of these complex dynamics. Whereas the landowner surely has the right to harvest all the way up to the four corners of the field, something like equity urges that the edges of the fields be left for the poor to glean (Deut. 24:19-22). Credit card companies would blanch at the idea of a Jubilee year when debts were forgiven (Lev. 25), but a reference to that equitable adjustment is engraved on our Liberty Bell. …

A. Katherine Grieb

Papers

Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul

People of god, body of christ, koinonia of spirit : The role of ethical ecclesiology in paul's trinitarian language

"But It Shall Not Be So among You": Some Reflections towards the Reception of the Windsor Report within ECUSA