Crux sola est nostra theologia
Check out a new theological resource, the Lexham Survey of Theology. I recently contributed 15 articles to this collection, which brings together orthodox Christian summaries of various theological topics. It also uses Logos Bible Software to provide direct links to other systematic theological works on various doctrines.
Part of the issue with the New Perspective on Paul (NNP) is that this group of scholar reads Paul’s “works of the law” as being equivalent to “Judaism.” As Stephen Westerholm points out, the NNP scholars project their scholarly interpretation of what they think first century Judaism was like onto Paul’s statements about the “works of the law.” Of course, if one takes this line what Paul says about the law makes no sense, since it posits that first century Judaism was a “religion of grace” or, really, a religion that mixed grace with law. As a result, NNP scholars think that Paul must “really mean” to criticize first century Judaism for not knowing that the covenant signs of the old dispensation don’t really apply anymore. But Paul doesn’t make his point mysterious at all. In Galatians 3, he explains what he means by the “works of the law.” Namely, he refers to the Sinaitic covenant. Hence, all his statements about the law have nothing to do with Judaism or the empirical religion of Israel in the OT period. They have to do with the logic of reward and punishment that Sinaitic covenant establishes.
I’m working on my new book on justification and have finished the portion directly dealing with Jesus in the Gospels. I’m now moving on to Paul. I’ve begun my assault on the New Perspective. If we look at the context of Rabbinic Judaism, I think we can find a number of polemical echoes in Paul – although it’s hard to say how much is pre-70 A.D. Rabbinic tradition and how much gets generated after the fact. There are two interesting ideas in Rabbinic Judaism to which Paul seems to be responding:
A. That there is an “evil impulse” in humanity, but that it can be master by the law.
B. That although Israel isn’t going to be 100% perfect in obeying the law, they can always draw on the reserve of good will in the merits of the patriarchs.
On the first point Paul argues not only that the evil impulse is morally incapacitating, but that the law actually eggs it on and makes it worse. Hence, the law doesn’t help us master it.
On the second point, Paul inverts the idea of the merits of the fathers and claims that we’re actually under the curse of our ancestor Adam.
From the perspective of Luther’s Genesis Commentary, the idea that the Kingdom of God comes if we fix politics is all wrong. In his commentary on the primal narrative of human life before the Fall, Luther shows that God established first the Family and then the Church as the original and most authentic setting of human existence. They were created before the Fall into sin and therefore are not necessarily a response to the condition of human sin. Rather, they are a natural setting for human life on earth. These orders only become unworkable on their own after sin arrived on the scene. Therefore after the Flood, in Genesis 9 God promulgates the new law of retribution, thereby implying the establishment of the Order of the State, as Paul confirms in Romans 13. Hence, the State and its coercion are not meant as a means of fulfilling human life. It is, unlike the other Orders, something created in order to counteract human sin and therefore make up for the failures of the first two Orders. As a result, it cannot replace these other Orders.
This of course brings us back to the Wolf. Belfort, like many others in our society, did not belong to the Church and did not have much of a family life (the little he has, he systematically destroys). In terms of his behavior, he is able to do many, many things which are illegal, but — oddly enough — the government doesn’t care about most of them. When he is finally convicted, the prosecutors have no interest in his use of prostitutes or cocaine! Hence, the normal and natural settings for human life are barren for him. They do not function as either a medium of vocation, or as a means of moral formation. He has no ultimate hope in his life, and so he feels that Epicurean excess is the only reasonable goal of human existence. He has no sense of the law of God as taught by the natural law and summarized in the Decalogue. And, hence, the only thing left over to direct and restrain him is the State. Since the State is not omniscient and omnipresent, it cannot actually regulate his moral and spiritual life — even if that was its role — in a way that could force him to live a productive life. All it can do is come in and pick up the pieces. He is free to get away with whatever he can.
Within such a situation then, the State must either remain impotent in the face of a corrupt culture in which the Orders of the Church and Family are non-functional, or it must actually take over those functions and become more and more intrusive, totalizing, and, indeed, tyrannical. And this latter course more often than not happens. And so there comes about a kind of symbiotic effect. The more the Church and the Family deteriorate as Orders of Creation, the more the Order of the State takes over their functions. And the State must then feeds children and supports families because there are no families or fathers. The State teaches “virtue” (after a fashion) in public schools. And to many secularists the State becomes a kind of religion and now brings the kingdom. Nevertheless, it is likewise the case that as the State takes over these functions and becomes more and more totalizing, it also accelerates the deterioration of the Orders of the Family and the Church as well.
A few weeks ago, my wife and I went to see The Wolf of Wall Street about the corrupt stockbroker, Jordan Belfort. Very good, I thought, although not my favorite movie of the year (David O. Russell’s American Hustle wins that honor). It was a bit long, and I think that certain more lurid scenes could probably have been cut. That being said, it was an interesting study in personal ambition and the power of human beings to engage in almost limitless self-corruption (Incidentally, although some may doubt the truth of some of Belfort’s stories, the FBI agent who followed him stated in an interview that, to the extent he could verify things, the stories were not exaggerations). In many respects though, I think director Martin Scorsese got fundamentally wrong why Belfort became corrupt and the nature of his corruption. The film was never really preachy (something Hollywood often cannot help), but the subtext was quite obviously an indictment of capitalism. There was even a reference to the 1%, that is, a nod in the direction of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
I would of course make a couple of points about this. First, of course, any economic system is corruptible, because humans are by nature corrupt. This is obvious and I need not elaborate on this by pointing to historical examples. Secondly, there is nevertheless a possibility for capitalism with virtue (one might say). Certainly the Puritans had a vibrant capitalist culture while maintaining a relatively high level of morality (at least in human terms). The Dutch did as well. Historian Simon Schama has documented this in his book The Embarassment of Riches about the Dutch in the 17th century. In my own city, Grand Rapids, this culture of virtuous capitalism has continued, with the old and wealthy Dutch families using their resources to build up the civic life of the city in some very remarkable ways. One the heirs to the DeVos fortune spoke at Aquinas College’s graduation back in 2010 and gave a talk on business life and Christian vocation that would have warmed Martin Luther’s heart. So, I think what Belfort’s problem and the problem of current economic system is not really capitalism per se, but capitalism without virtue.
So if it’s not capitalism, but capitalism without virtue that’s the problem, why did The Wolf of Wall Street become the way he did and not like a more virtuous capitalist? I would argue that part of the problem with Scorsese’s critique is that it doubles down on the problem that created Belfort in the first place. Scorsese somehow thinks there needs to be more state-control. Indeed, over the previous 100 years or so, we have developed the notion that the state is really the center of human life. This is a mistake made not only by the Left of the political spectrum, but also by the Right. That being the case, in our current political discourse the state is meant to bear weight that it wasn’t established by God to bear as an Order of Creation. In other words, the assumption is that human flourishing happens if we get politics right. In fact, not just human flourishing happens, but maybe even the Kingdom of God happens – witness the strange messianic projects that both liberal and conservative Presidents have conjured up in recent decades. It’s just the matter of invading one more country and converting it to democracy, or it’s a just matter of inventing one more social program- and “Bam!” the kingdom has come!
To be continued…