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THE CENTER OF PAULINE THEOLOGY

by

Daniel M. Yencich

A paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for NT 7100: New Testament Theology Dr. Mark A. Matson

Emmanuel Christian Seminary Johnson City, TN 4/4/2012

The Center of Pauline Theology, Daniel M. Yencich 2012

Pauls Master Story and a Theological Center There is always a risk in reducing Pauls theology, which we have access to only via the medium of highly contextualized letters, to a single, central element. Yet, at the center of Pauls theology stands the cross and allowing the cross its centrality in Paul is not really to reduce his theology as much as it is to begin to understand it. All roads in Pauls theology lead towards and away from the cross. It is in the image of the cross of Christs death, never disconnected from his resurrection, that the fullness of God and Gods plan for the world is most clearly and fully articulated in Paul. The cross of Christ is, for Paul, a kind of shorthand of the faith: it is the culmination of Israels story, the power of God for salvation (the Jew first and also the Greek), and an image of what life among believers is to be like in the shadow of a coming eschaton. Philippians 2:5-11 finds the clearest expression of Pauls cross-centered theology and can be considered to be his master story the backdrop against which all of Pauls theology, overarching and contextual, comes to life.1 Here Paul posits a beginning point for theology that finds its locus in Israelite protology (2:6a),2 its telos in Jewish eschatology (2:10-11), and its generative theological power in the image of Christ, whose humility and obedience to God led him to death on a cross (2:6b-9).3 From the point of the cross, Paul is able to freely navigate between the contextual issues in the churches to whom he writes and the grander, master narrative of Gods work and purposes in the world.
1

Michael J. Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 12-13.

Though 2:6a seems to most to be signaling backwards towards Adam, there is also a case to be made for certain Isaianic echoes in 2:7-8. N.T. Wright readily supplies this argument, drawing a strong connection between Jesus and the Suffering Servant of Isa 40-55. See N.T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 60-62.
3

Michael J. Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 12-13.

The Center of Pauline Theology, Daniel M. Yencich 2012

The Cross, Israel and Gods Purposes in Paul The cross of Christ becomes Pauls interpretive key for understanding God, and in so doing, it impinges on the very definition of God, Gods covenant, and Gods purposes and work in the world. Paul, a Pharisee, must redefine who God is, what Gods covenantal righteousness means, and who gets to be a part of that covenant all because of the cross.4 Far from being a theological development over the course of his ministry, the centrality of the cross and its subsequent redefinition of Jewish theological categories (chief among them covenant and covenant people) impresses its mark very early in Pauls letters. In 1 Thess 5:9-10, Paul understands the death of Christ to be the conduit by which Gods people meet their destiny, which is Gods salvation. Though he does not state it in precisely the same way, Pauls thought in 1 Thess 5:9-10 is strikingly similar to what he will say later in his career in Rom 5:6-10 namely that it is through the death of Jesus that we have salvation, justification and reconciliation.5 Though Pauls thought has been widely and routinely cast in the decidedly Lutheran dichotomy of law vs. grace, such a dichotomization, however well it works for systematic theology, is unfortunately problematic. Pauls grand arguments against the Law as such (cf. Gal 3:1-5:15) are made not because there exists some inherent flaw within the Law, but because God has moved in Christ Jesus and done a new thing which completed that which the Law had been intended to do (Rom 10:4). Thus issues concerning the Law are corollary to and exist only

N.T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 260. Michael J. Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 100.

The Center of Pauline Theology, Daniel M. Yencich 2012

because of Gods new work through the cross of Christ. Therefore Israel, its story and purposes, are summarily fulfilled in the cross of Christ. In performing this grand act of salvation in Christ, God has thus opened the floodgates and let the waters of Gods grace out into the nations a dazzling fulfillment of Gods purposes in Gen 22:18. Corporate identity is thus reconfigured from the cross forward, no longer limited to descendants of Abraham according to the flesh but inclusive of all who have faith. Baptism, not circumcision, is now the sign of the covenant that marks out the people of God and in it they participate in Christ.6 How striking it is, then, that the sign of the Christ-covenant is also a sign of Christs death (Rom 6:3-4). At the very point of entry (or a point very near to the point of entry) into Christian faith, Paul affixes a rite of passage that echoes strongly of the salvific act that made covenantal entry possible in the first place. It is here, through the cross, that God has acted, fulfilling the story of Israel, and widened the boundaries of the covenant community. Thus it is here that Paul stakes his central commitments. Because God has acted so decisively in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that is the center of gravity for Pauls theology,7 there was always bound to be some friction with groups within early Jewish Christianity that did not see as fully as Paul did what the cross meant for the Law and wider Israelite religion and religious communities. Yet even in Galatians, where Paul speaks most viciously against the Judaizing practices of his opponents, the pastoral telos of Pauls cross-centered theology is mutuality in Christ. The pointed argument in Galatians works itself out not to the exclusion of those who had gone astray, but to their reconciliation for in Christ there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male
6

James D.G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 443. Ibid., 208.

The Center of Pauline Theology, Daniel M. Yencich 2012

and female; for all are one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:28). A shift in anthropology and social status also undergirds Pauls pastoral aims throughout the short letter to Philemon. The same basic argument is to be found in Romans as well. Though the letter does not explicitly state the contextual problems of which it seeks to solve, it is clear that the Roman church struggles with issues of division between Jews and Gentiles.8 Paul begins in 1:16 by stating in no uncertain terms that he is unashamed of the gospel, that it is the power of God for salvation, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. His argument moves forward in establishing a equal base for all people to be in need of Gods salvation, which has been shown most fully in the cross of Christ (8:34). Here Pauls center works broadly as a theological metanarrative: because of the human condition, humans are in need of salvation and because of Gods new action in Christ, humans now have access to that salvation through Christian faith. Paul brings this broad theological narrative of salvation via the cross to bear on concrete matters of personal freedom, morality and the messy business of living in a mixed community (12:1-15:13). Thus Pauls grand theology of cruciform salvation finds immediate and important application in the matters of everyday living. The Cross and Christian Life in the Shadows of the Eschaton In Pauls correspondence with the Corinthian church, other issues of church division crop up and Paul is able to bring the same theological metanarrative to bear as he did in Galatians and Romans. In 1 Cor 1:18-2:5 Paul establishes the cross as foundational, as it is both the wisdom
Witherington has suggested that the situation to which Romans is addressed, at least in part, is the aftermath of the Edict of Claudius in ca. 49 CE in which many Jews were expelled from Rome, only to be allowed to trickle back in smaller numbers some years later. The situation to which Paul writes, according to Witherington, is one of a church deeply divided between a Gentile majority and Jewish minority; what Paul seeks to do, then, is bridge the divide between Jew and Gentile in a church shattered as much by religion and culture as by edict of Caesar. See Ben Witherington III, Pauls Letter to the Romans: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 12-16.
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The Center of Pauline Theology, Daniel M. Yencich 2012

and power of God. As such, it is true wisdom for humans (2:13). The apprehension of this wisdom hangs upon faithful imitation of Christ a posture of proper spiritual discernment (2:15) that seeks to have the mind of Christ (2:16b) and live the life of Gods calling (7:17). Pauls theology thus hangs not just upon intellectual assent, faith understood most crudely, but rather it hangs also upon the taking on of the mind of Christ to live rightly in the shadows of the coming eschaton. Here Michael Gorman is again helpful as he elucidates the Pauline master story of Philippians 2:5-11: Because God is most fully disclosed in the kenotic act of Christs obedient death, God is by definition kenotic and cruciform.9 If Paul has successfully redefined the God of Israel as the God of Christ upon the cross, then any and all language in Paul concerning participation in Christ must be fully anchored in a kind of cruciform holiness in the likeness of Christ. Christian living between the times is thus marked out as participation in Gods holy, kenotic, cruciform life what we may appropriately call theosis.10 Paul is at great pains to instill in his churches a posture of participatory holiness, which itself is a cross-centered theological ethics for community life (cf. 1 Thess 4:1-12; 1 Cor 5-8; Rom 12:9-15:6). The cross stands as a symbol of Gods radical resolution to Israels story, the deciding moment of his salvation for the Jew first and also the Greek and also as the posture of Christians who await together the fulfillment of Gods promises in the eschaton. The cross the lens through which Paul appraises religious history, theology proper, and moral reasoning. In short, it is his point of departure for understanding all that is, for the cross of Christ is itself a

Michael J. Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 28. Ibid., 123.

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The Center of Pauline Theology, Daniel M. Yencich 2012

radical redefinition that impinges on all of reality. The cross is Pauls center, the place from which he preaches, teaches, and builds up communities of Gods newly-redefined people.

The Center of Pauline Theology, Daniel M. Yencich 2012

BIBLIOGRAPHY Dunn, James D.G. The Theology of Paul the Apostle. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998. Gorman, Michael J. Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Pauls Narrative Soteriology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009. Witherington III, Ben. Pauls Letter to the Romans: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary. Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2004. Wright, N.T. The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993.

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