Overture—An Invitation to Read Paul Anew
Overture—An Invitation to Read Paul Anew
One reads Paul poorly who does not recognize that for him the presence of the Spirit, as an experienced and living reality, was the crucial matter for Christian life, from beginning to end.
Contemporary Christians have a right to be concerned. In an increasingly secular, individualistic, and relativistic world—dubbed “post–Christian” in the 1960s and now called “postmodern”—the church is regularly viewed as irrelevant at best and Neanderthal at worst. Frankly, much of the fault lies with the church, especially those of us in the church who pride ourselves in being orthodox with regard to the historic faith. For all too often our orthodoxy has been either diluted by an unholy alliance with a given political agenda or diminished by legalistic or relativistic ethics quite unrelated to the character of God or rendered ineffective by a pervasive rationalism in an increasingly nonrationalistic world.
But there is reason for hope as well since contemporary postmodernism looks much like the culture of the Greco-Roman world into which the gospel first appeared some two thousand years ago. The secret to the success of the early believers in their culture lay first with their “good news” centered in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Immanuel had come, bringing both revelation of the character of God (“Have you been with me for so long and don’t know who I am? The one who has seen me has seen the Father” [John 14:9]) and redemption from our tragic fallenness (“You shall call his name Yeshua, for he will save his people from their sins” [Matt. 1:21]). But their success also lay with their experienced life of the Spirit who made the work of Christ an effective reality in their lives, thus making them a radical alternative within their culture.
It often seems otherwise with us. If we have (rightly) kept our central focus on Christ Jesus, we are less sure about the Holy Spirit. Despite the affirmations in our creeds and hymns and the lip service paid to the Spirit in our occasional conversations, the Spirit has been largely marginalized both in the halls of learning and in the life of the church as a community of faith.
I do not mean that the Holy Spirit is not present; he is indeed, or we are not of Christ at all. But the primary emphasis regarding the Spirit’s activity has been on his quiescence, based largely on imagery drawn from Elijah’s encounter with God on Sinai, where the LORD was not in the wind, earthquake, and fire, but came to Elijah in “a still small voice” (1 Kings 19:11–13 KJV). Support for this view is then found in the New Testament by emphasizing Paul’s “fruit of the Spirit” (Gal. 5:22–23), while suggesting that the “gifts of the Spirit” in 1 Corinthians 12–14 were for the apostolic period only. Quiescence, however, has sometimes fostered anemia, not only in the church corporately but also at the individual level, evidenced in part by the myriad of ways individual believers have longed for a greater sense of God’s presence in their lives.
This common “missing out” on the Spirit as an experienced, empowering reality has frequently been “corrected” historically through a variety of Spirit movements—most recently in the twentieth century in the form of the Pentecostal and charismatic movements. Emphasis here has been on the “wind, earthquake, and fire,” and the primary texts referenced are from Acts and 1 Corinthians 12–14. These Spirit movements have also tended to emphasize individualistic spirituality, so that the reality of the Spirit is sometimes merely experienced in the experience. Such piety has frequently lacked sound exegetical basis or betrayed inadequate theological reflection.
The net result has tended toward a truncated view of the Spirit on both sides, accompanied by an inadequate view of the role of the Spirit in Paul’s understanding of things Christian. For him, life in the Spirit meant embracing both fruit and gifts simultaneously and vigorously—what I have come to call life in the radical middle. The Spirit as an experienced and empowering reality was for Paul and his churches the key player in all Christian life, from beginning to end. The Spirit covered the whole waterfront: power for life, growth, fruit, gifts, prayer, witness, and everything else.
But if the empowering, experienced dimension of life in the Spirit is often missed on the one side, too often missing on both sides are two further matters that, for Paul, lie at the very heart of faith. First, the Spirit as person, the promised return of God’s own personal presence with his people; second, the Spirit as eschatological fulfillment (see chap. 5 below), who both reconstitutes God’s people anew and empowers us to live the life of the future in our between-the-times existence—between the time of Christ’s first and second coming.
If the church is going to be effective in our postmodern world, we need to stop paying mere lip service to the Spirit and instead recapture Paul’s perspective: the Spirit as the experienced, empowering return of God’s own personal presence in and among us, who enables us to live as a radically eschatological people in the present world while we await the consummation. All the rest, including fruit and gifts (that is, ethical life and charismatic utterances in worship), serve to that end.
Hence I offer this “invitation” to read Paul afresh, to recognize the crucial role of the Spirit in his life and thought, and in that of his churches. Such a reading, I insist, must be thoroughly exegetical—hence the frequent references to the exegesis presented in GEP— and fully theological, to see how the Spirit fits into the bigger picture of things Pauline. This fresh reading of Paul will make clear that for him the presence of the Spirit, as an experienced and living reality, was the crucial matter for Christian life, from beginning to end. Since that is a theological assertion, some preliminary theological issues must first be addressed in chapter 1. I encourage readers not to get bogged down here. The chapter is necessary in order to establish a reference point for the rest of the book.