McKnight's post is a letter largely addressing the issue that I've seen pop up periodically in the thoughts and writings of emergents: shouldn't we be more concerned with following Jesus and his teachings than with Paul? Many emergents think that the Church (especially evangelicals) has paid a disproportionate amount of attention to Paul rather than Jesus. Here is McKnight's paragraph explaining the issue with his reader:
Your point seemed to favor one idea: that Jesus is not only “the first one we need to go to” (which your friend advocates) but (what you think) the “only one we really need. After all,” you ask, “what else do we really need besides Jesus’ teaching?” Besides, you observe, Paul’s “so abstract and theoretical and all his stuff about justification doesn’t really make sense to any of us.”
I encourage you to read McKnight's post, it was thoughtful, generous and insightful. My response would probably not be any of these things.
McKnight's conversation partner reflects a common understanding within the Emergent Movement. That is, we should be what some have called "red letter Christians" who avoid the common trap of "reading Jesus through the lens of Paul." This line of thought concerns me (which should be no surprise for those who know me well), I guess for two main reasons.
One, this strikes me as awfully arrogant. What makes us think we can interpret Jesus better than Paul? I mean, wasn't Paul a Jew who lived in the same time frame as Jesus? Wasn't he the one who encountered the risen Christ and had his life radically transformed? Wasn't he the one who risked his life to preach the good news of this Savior to the entire world, and ultimately faced his death because of this? How arrogant would I be to think that I can understand and apply Jesus' teachings better than Paul?
Two, there seems to be a fundamental problem with hermeneutics here (by "hermeneutics" I mean the process of applying an ancient text to today, the basic question is "how do we get from there to here?"). Because we don't grasp the first issue (how Paul applies Jesus' teachings), we don't grasp how to apply Paul. If we studied Paul and asked the questions "how?" (how does Paul apply Jesus?) and "why?" (why does Paul apply it in this way?) we might have a clue to following Jesus' teachings. It seems to me that Paul would be a great case study for us. While our contexts are certainly different, there are striking similarities that could give us a clue how to preach the gospel faithfullly in our context. Both contexts (Paul's and ours) are pluralistic, socially diverse, economically diverse, morally loose, and so on. (It's interesting to note that Jesus ministered in a monotheistic and morally stringent- to the point of legalism in some cases- atmosphere. That doesn't sound too much like modern day America, does it?)
I think this is what bothers me when McKnight's reader says that "all his [Paul's] stuff about justification doesn’t really make sense to any of us." It was this doctrine that Paul used to defend the right of Gentiles to fellowship with Jews. It wasn't abstract or theoretical. It was practical. Justification by faith meant that Gentiles could eat with Jews (making the reverse true as well), worship with Jews, etc, without having to become "Jews" (circumcision being the most obvious issue). It doesn't get much more practical than that. Given that emergents are so concerned with equality between classes/races/cultures/etc (one of their most admirable qualities), justification should be emphasized in their circles, not diminished. I think the movement would be much more powerful and productive if it would spend more time reflecting on these things.
3 comments:
Hey Danny,
You're more thoughtful, generous, and insightful than you think. Thanks for this post. What you said about our society looking more like Paul's than Jesus' stuck out to me. I think this is totally true for us up in the Northeast, but I get the feeling that the Emergent Movement is partially a reaction to legalistic Christian culture. People who grow up in areas, or homes, that are "monotheistic and morally stringent" may be more likely to get caught up in the pursuit of righteousness (sometimes forgetting it comes from faith) and can lose touch with the radical life Jesus has called us to in favor of just trying to be good. This might explain the renewed focus on the teachings of Jesus, but I agree with you that we can't leave Paul in the dust as we strive to know Jesus more.
-M
Matt, I hear what you're saying, especially about the reaction of the Emergent Movement. I find it interesting, though, that the words "be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect" is found in red letters. And this is the middle of a large red-letter section that gives us some of the most morally stringent teaching in the Bible (the Sermon on the Mount).
By the way, terrific point about the pursuit of righteousness coming from faith. Gut check.
The following is from an e-mail sent to me by my roommate about this blog post. It was intended to be a comment, but he felt it grew too long to post here. I disagreed, so here it is, courtesy of jp:
Red Letter theology has always seemed peculiar to me. The words of Jesus recorded in the Gospels can be blunt ("Wait, that means I'm an adulterer? But I'm not even married!"), confusing ("And how exactly do the dead bury their own dead?"), and cryptic ("So how do I get my camel through the eye of a needle?"). How are we to interpret such difficult teachings? Do we follow them to the letter with asceticism and masochism that hating our families and plucking out our eyes require? Do we temper them through the lens of rhetorical hyperbole? Even after a critical reading of His words, we need help to apply His truth. Three entities help us.
First, we have the Holy Spirit, and He helps a lot because He's God
too. Plus, He's with us all time, which is pretty cool.
Second, we have Paul. If there's any human whoever had a "perfect
theology," it was Paul. After encountering Jesus on the road to
Damascus and without any prior belief in Him, Paul "did not
immediately consult with flesh and blood, nor did [he] go up to
Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but [he] went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus (Gal 1:16b-18)." That period of time was three years. Then he met Peter for 15 days before returning to Jerusalem 14 years later. And what does he doe when he eventually does meet the apostles? He rebukes them (Gal 1,2). So, somewhere in there, God supernaturally endowed Paul for his missionary journeys with sound theology. I'd say he's a pretty good reference to teach us more about Jesus.
Third, we have the disciples and the other apostles. They also wrote a good chunk of the New Testament. These are they guys who lived day-to-day life with Jesus (or like Luke, at least were very close to the guys who did). They were privy to intimate moments with the Lord and teaching that was not given to the multitudes. When his disciples
asked why he taught in parables, Jesus responded to his disciples, "To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted.... But blessed are your eyes because they see; and your ears, because they hear. For truly I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it (Matt 13:11,16-17)." I think these guys can really give us
some insight.
I think one of the reasons why Red Letter Christians concentrate so
much on those red letters in the Bible is that they have grown tired
of the "dos and don'ts" of legalistic Christianity. They are really attracted to the compassion and love that Christ embodies, and so am I. They say that the church is guilty of concentrating too much on Paul's list of sins than on the grace of the cross. That's assuredly true in some congregations, but adopting a limited theology to avoid it is simply reactionary. It's kind of like the guy who fell off one
side of his horse only to get back in the saddle and fall off the
other side.
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