Pacific Journal of Theological Research Nov 2021

Vol. 16, No. 1

November 2021

CONTENTS Andrew Picard Editorial: A Tribute to Myk Habets

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Alistair J. Cuthbert ‘The Evil One in God’? A Theological Development of Paul S. Fiddes’ Panentheistic Doctrine of God to Account for a Robust Ontology of The Satan and Demonic

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David W. Music Isaac Watts, Hymns, and the Jews

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A. D. Clark-Howard Through ‘Jesus Only’: J. K. Archer, Public Theology, and Baptist Identity in Aotearoa New Zealand

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Ian Hussey A Case for Mono-Ethnic Churches?

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David Devine The Equipping Pastor: A Biblical Model for Baptist Churches Today

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Jeremy Tattersal An Antithesis to a Spirit-less Conformation of Humanity to the Image of the Son: Reading Romans 8:28-30 with Third Article Theology

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Reviews

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research

The Pacific Journal of Theological Research ISSN 1177-0228

Editors

Rev Dr Myk Habets MHabets@laidlaw.ac.nz Rev Dr Andrew Picard andrew.picard@carey.ac.nz

Book Reviews Editor Dr Greg Liston

GListon@laidlaw.ac.nz

Editorial Board Prof Paul Fiddes Dr Steve Harmon Dr Steve Holmes Dr Christa McKirland Regent’s Park College Gardner-Webb University St. Andrews University Carey Baptist College Dr Michael O’Neil Dr Frank Rees Vose Seminary Whitley College Dr Brian Talbot Dundee, Scotland

Dr Edwina Murphy Morling College

Dr Victoria Lorrimar Trinity College

Dr Martin Sutherland Australian College of Theology

Contributing Institutions Carey Baptist College (Auckland, New Zealand) Morling College (Sydney, Australia) Malyon College (Brisbane, Australia) Vose Seminary (Perth, Australia) Whitley College (Melbourne, Australia) The Pacific Journal of Theological Research (PJTR) is an open-access online journal which aims to provide an international vehicle for scholarly theological research with a special focus on the Pacific region. However, topics are not limited to the Pacific region, and all subject matter potentially of significance for theological scholarship and ecclesial communities will be considered. PJTR is especially interested in interdisciplinary biblical, theological, and historical research that intersects with other scholarly disciplines and knowledge sources.

PJTR is published twice-yearly in May and November. Articles are blind peer-reviewed, with submissions sent to international scholars in the appropriate fields for critical review before being accepted for publication. The editors will provide a style guide on enquiry. All manuscript submissions should be addressed to Andrew Picard andrew.picard@carey.ac.nz.

URL: https://www.baptistresearch.org.nz/about-the-journal All business communications Rev Dr Andrew Picard Carey Baptist College PO BOX 12149 Auckland New Zealand Fax: +64 9 525 4096 Email: andrew.picard@carey.ac.nz The Pacific Journal of Theological Research is sponsored by the N.Z. Baptist Research and Historical Society and the R.J. Thompson Centre for Theological Studies at Carey Baptist College. © Pacific Journal of Theological Research, All Rights Reserved, Auckland, New Zealand

Pacific Journal of Theological Research

EDITORIAL: A TRIBUTE TO MYK HABETS Andrew Picard Carey Baptist College In 2012, Myk Habets picked up the reins as Senior Editor of the Pacific Journal of Baptist Research (PJBR) from Martin Sutherland, having worked as Book Reviews Editor from 2007-2011. At the time, the journal was in hiatus and in need of new leadership to renew the journal and provide impetus for the future. Undaunted by the task, Myk embraced this as an opportunity to not only re-establish the journal but also strengthen and extend its work. Equipped with his renowned fecundity, he set about renewing PJBR and establishing it as an international vehicle for theological scholarship, research, and debate in the context of the Pacific.

Renewing the journal began with rebuilding its base. Myk secured the Australasian Baptist colleges as Contributing Institutions, renewed the Editorial Board with established international theologians, and broadened the editorial team to include John Tucker, Sarah Harris, and Andrew Picard. The Baptist and Pacific locators identified the context of the journal, but not its contributors or audience. As Doctor Serviens Ecclesiae, Myk sought to extend the international readership and reach of the journal in the academy whilst also ensuring the fruits of scholarship served the church. Serving the church was not a blithe rider added for theological correctness before moving on to the real work of improving academic rankings. In a publishing world marked by paywalls, Myk sought to remove as many barriers to readership as possible.

PJBR was relaunched in 2013 as an open-access online journal with a new website and database. We write, Myk believed, to be read.

Whilst Myk is rightly famed for his prolific productivity, his relational skills have been equally vital to the re-establishment of PJBR. As his own academic career progressed, Myk utilised his growing networks to invite an array of scholars from Australasia and beyond to contribute to the journal. This resulted in a range of international Baptist and non-Baptist scholars publishing in the journal, and widening the conversation in and beyond the Pacific. Various themed editions were published from Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom that showcased Australian scholarship on the 500th anniversary of Luther, outputs from symposiums held on Steve Harmon’s work, Curtis Freeman’s work, and Darrin Belousek’s work, a themed edition on Baptism from Australian scholars, as well as outputs from the British Baptists’ Theology Live. Myk also took the opportunity to honour scholars who have shaped theology in the Pacific.

This resulted in was festschrifts for Laurie Guy and Tim Meadowcroft to mark their retirements, as well as a festschrift for Paul Fiddes on his 65th birthday. Myk used his editorship to highlight not only the work of established scholars, but also establish the work of emerging scholars. Theology “down under” can suffer from a timidity when the traditional centre of theological scholarship is up and over. Myk emboldened a range of emerging scholars and church leaders to contribute to international conversations alongside leading

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research voices in the field. He further utilised his role to mentor junior academics in the work of academic editing and leadership, welcoming Andrew Picard as Co-Editor in 2019.

Theological scholarship, for Myk, is holy work. For all the labour Myk put into the journal, and he most certainly laboured, theological scholarship remained a joy. Editing a journal has its frustrations, but in Myk’s mind if theology is not joyous then we have missed something central. Scholarship is mission, a participation in the triune God’s mission to redeem and perfect the created world. Under Myk’s leadership, PJBR sought to serve God’s mission in and towards creation. Scholarship is also worship, a prayerful participation not only in God’s action but God’s very being—theotic even. Myk’s editing of the journal was an expression of his love for God, and his desire to serve God and God’s church in the world.

In 2019, the journal undertook a third iteration from The Pacific Journal of Baptist Research to The Pacific Journal of Theological Research (PJTR) to better represent the widening and deepening contributions from and for all ecclesial communities. With Myk’s move from Director of Carey Graduate School at Carey Baptist College to Head of Theology at Laidlaw College, other work has pressed upon him, and he now needs to relinquish his role as Editor. On behalf of the Editorial Board of PJTR and New Zealand Baptist Research, I would like to take this opportunity to record our profound gratitude to Myk for his academic vision, skilled leadership, indefatigable labour, and scholarly acumen over the past fifteen years, including nine as editor.

As Editor, Myk has renewed the journal and established it as a lively vehicle for theological scholarship in the Pacific and beyond. We remain extremely grateful to Myk for his excellent leadership, and we thank him for gifting us a legacy to continue.

As we thank Myk and wish him well in his ongoing work, we also welcome a new co-editorial team.

Andrew Picard will be joined by Christa McKirland as Co-Editor of PJTR to lead the journal into the next phase of its development. Carrying on the long-established tradition of the journal, we will seek to bring together emerging and established voices in theological scholarship. In particular, our future concern is to widen the breadth of contributors, knowledges, and perspectives so that the journal provides a platform for under-represented voices to enlarge and refresh our scholarly conversations. We look forward to the next season of the journal in anticipation of it generating and informing theological scholarship in the Pacific and beyond.

Andrew Picard Co-Editor of The Pacific Journal of Theological Research.

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‘THE EVIL ONE IN GOD’? A THEOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT OF PAUL S. FIDDES’ PANENTHEISTIC DOCTRINE OF GOD TO ACCOUNT FOR A ROBUST ONTOLOGY OF THE SATAN1 AND DEMONIC. Rev. Alistair J. Cuthbert St Mary’s College, University of St Andrews INTRODUCTION Anglican ecclesial theologian Michael Brierley has named the panentheistic turn in modern theology a “quiet revolution.” Indeed, he names over 80 theologians past and present, including this paper’s primary source Paul S. Fiddes, who tread this middle path between the poles of classical theism and pantheism whether by adhering to process theism, self-identifying as a panentheist, or labelled as a panentheist by others.2 Given that theology can be described as the investigation into how all things interact and relate to God, it should not be surprising that in light of rapid developments and progress with regard to our understanding of the natural world and human nature, new ideas have been proffered vis-a-vis divine interaction with the world and vice versa.

A standard definition of Panentheism is that it is “the belief that the Being of God includes and penetrates the whole universe, so that every part of it exists in Him, but (as against Pantheism) that His being is more than, and is not exhausted by, the universe.”3 While this is a good definition to start with, any perusal of the panentheism literature quickly unearths significant disagreement and debate over the nature and breadth of the preposition “in” and what it means that “all is in God.” Moreover, states Gregersen, we need to qualify what “pan” refers to and whether it is literal or not, and most crucially define the ontological position of panentheism in terms of whether there is a two-way interaction with the world somehow contained in God and God receiving a “return” of the world into the divine life. To aid the discussion, Gregersen articulates the three main varieties of panentheism, variations and syntheses of which all panentheisms fall under: soteriological panentheism, where God’s presence and being in the world is a gift and only at the eschaton will God totally be “all in all”; revelational (or expressivist) panentheism, in which God’s Spirit expresses his divinity by departing from God, interacting with the world and returning to God having been enriched by the world and his interaction with it; finally, dipolar panentheism of Whitehead et al, in which some

Despite the grammatical clumsiness of the title ‘The Satan,’ the definite article shall be used throughout the article when referring to the title and symbol of the Hebrew noun ‫ הַ שָּׂ ָּׂטָ֖ן‬and Greek noun ὁ Σατανᾶς as this better reflects the biblical authors’ usage of the noun and best represents the various images and mosaic picture of the spiritual being who is portrayed as the evil archetype behind all nefarious malevolence.

2 Michael W. Brierley, “Naming a Quiet Revolution: The Panentheistic Turn in Modern Theology,” in In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World, ed. Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 1–15.

3 F. L. Cross, and E. A. Livingstone (eds.). Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 1213.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research aspects of God as understood in the classic sense as eternal while the other pole of God (hence the term “dipolar”) is consequent, that is temporal, spatial and affected by the world.4 Parallel to this debate about the meaning of panentheism is the claim - one which connects to the subject matter of this paper—that panentheism is by-and-large most popular among philosophical theologians and less so with systematic or biblical theologians. The main reason for this, asserts leading modern panentheist Philip Clayton, is that when theology enters into inter-disciplinary dialogue with science, metaphysics, ethics or political philosophy, the panentheistic conceptual structure is superior to traditional doctrinal language for addressing problems in these other disciplines, hence entering into the more interdisciplinary domain of the philosophical theologian.5 So if, as I reason to be the case, panentheism is currently enjoying popularity and prevalence in parts of the contemporary theology scene and the theological idea that “all is in God” is widely held to be true, what are the epistemic consequences with regard to the question of the existence of evil? Put differently, how and where does evil exist without concluding that the source of all evil is in God and so is a characteristic of God and therefore caused by God? More specifically, in this paper I want to deliberately focus on another claim made by Clayton that most, if not all, panentheisms follow Augustine and subscribe to a privative view of evil in which the goodness of God works in and through the cosmos to eliminate evil since, he continues, panentheisms that do not take the privative view offer no helpful theodicy since God remains responsible for evil, just as he does in classical theology.6 Indeed, if what Clayton asserts is true, then there appears to be an incompatibility between a panentheistic model of God and an ontological account of evil. In this short paper, I am not arguing against the privation of the good in the doctrine of evil7 but rather want to explore whether or not this apparent incongruence between panentheism and ontological evil is actually real. To do this I will attempt to argue that, in counterpoint to Clayton’s assertion, one can espouse a panentheistic doctrine of God which is defined and capacious enough to account for the presence and phenomenon of ontological evil. To do this I am going to extensively delineate the panentheistic doctrine of God of Baptist theologian Paul Fiddes, and then draw from his inimitable account that presents constructive possibilities which can be developed further than Fiddes does himself in order to establish an ontology of evil within the panentheistic reality of God.8 If successful, then this will near-jettison God’s overall responsibility for evil and could replace the often held privative view of evil within God’s panentheistic realm by offering a counter-theology with a robust ontological account of The Satan and demonic, which has traditionally been held within the Christian faith.

Niels Henrick Gregersen, “Three Varieties of Panentheism,” in In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World, ed. Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 20–34.

5 Philip Clayton, “Panentheism in Metaphysical and Scientific Perspective,” in In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World, ed. Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 74.

6 Philip Clayton, ‘The Panentheistic Turn in Christian Theology,’ Dialog 38 (1999): 293.

7 In a paper of this length, it is simply beyond its scope to account for the tradition of the privation of the good and whether or not it is correct.

8 In this article I will not be analysing Fiddes’ theology or critiquing his use of sources. Rather, I will construct a theological case assuming a prima facie acceptance of his theology as a starting point.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research

A FIDDESIAN ACCOUNT OF PANENTHEISM Despite panentheism being a theological proclivity of philosophical theologians, the inclusion of Fiddes, a systematic-constructive theologian, in the ever-growing list of theologians who espouse panentheism, demonstrates that Fiddes breaks the mould somewhat and walks his own unique path within systematics.

Fiddes is a self-identifying panentheist stating, “My own proposal is that ‘pan-entheism’ as the participating of everything in God is a sharing in interweaving movements of relational love.”9 As robustly worked out in his magnum opus, The Creative Suffering of God, he claims that a panentheistic participative doctrine of God is superior to both the classic and pantheistic doctrines of God in order to account for existence, being and non-being in God and creation, and how moral and natural evil affect a passible God of suffering love.10 Fundamentally, as a constructive theologian11 within the Baptist tradition, Fiddes seeks to undergird his philosophical and theological ideas primarily with biblical exegesis. While he accepts that God can and does speak to creation through non-Christian texts and sources, known as the word (small “w”) of God,12 the canon of scripture has a sufficiency because of its openness and created space in order to meet and participate in God.13 The covenantal nature of panentheism is, for Fiddes, intrinsically rooted in the earliest biblical covenant expressed in scripture. All of creation shares in the divine perichoresis14 from the moment God makes a post-flood Noahic covenant with all living creation in Genesis 9:8–17. As a genuine covenant, this makes room for creation to respond to God and participate in God to greater or lesser degrees.15 Since this covenant is never reversed (symbolically reiterated by every appearance of a rainbow) then there is a natural and biblical building on this foundational principle explicated by certain other key biblical texts. In the Hebrew Bible the psalmist declares in Psalm 139 that there is nowhere in all of creation where God’s Spirit is not,16 and the prophets unequivocally announce that God makes other covenants with creation and has relations with other peoples while maintaining a particular covenant with Israel (Hosea 2:18, Amos 9:7, Isaiah 45:1-4).17 Meanwhile, in the New Testament Jesus prays that all believers will be in Paul S. Fiddes, Participating in God: A Pastoral Doctrine of the Trinity (London: Darton, Longman, & Todd, 2000), 292.

Paul S. Fiddes, The Creative Suffering of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 146–267.

11 He accepts the label ‘systematic theologian’ but thinks of himself as a constructive theologian who writes connectional theology between disciplines. Paul Fiddes, personal communication with the author, 15 & 16 March 2016.

12 Paul S. Fiddes, “A Review of ‘Persuade us to Rejoice. The Liberating Power of Fiction’ by Robert McAfee Brown,” Literature and Theology 9 (1995): 110–11.

13 Paul S. Fiddes, “The Canon as Space and Place,” in Die Einheit der Schrift und die Vielfalt des Kanons/The Unity of Scripture and the Diversity of the Canon. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche, eds. John Barton and Michael Wolter (Bd. 118, Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2003), 128–32, 142–45.

14 Fiddes claims, surprisingly, that perichoresis is a theological conviction he sourced, not from Moltmann, but from C. S. Lewis.

Paul S. Fiddes, ‘“For the Dance all Things Were Made’: The Great Dance in C.S. Lewis’ Perelandra,” in C. S. Lewis's Perelandra: Reshaping the Image of the Cosmos, eds. Judith Wolfe and Brendan Wolfe. (Kent: Kent State University Press, 2013), 37–41.

15 Paul S. Fiddes, “Participating in the Trinity,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 33 (2006): 388–90; Paul S. Fiddes, “Preface,” in Covenant and Church for Rough Sleepers. A Baptist Ecclesiology in Conversation with the Trinitarian Pastoral Theology of Paul S. Fiddes, by Daniel SutcliffePratt. Centre for Baptist History and Heritage Studies, Occasional Papers 14 (Oxford: Regent’s Park College, 2017), 1–4.

16 Fiddes agrees with Hopkins that this Psalm shows God indwelling all the ubiquitous inscapes of the world. Paul S. Fiddes, “G. M. Hopkins,” in The Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature, ed. R. Lemon and C. Rowland (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 572–73.

17 Fiddes, “Preface,” 2–3; Paul S. Fiddes, “Covenant and Participation: A Personal Review of the Essays,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 44 (2017): 127–28. For agreement by Hebrew Bible scholars on what Brueggemann calls a “sandal of particularity” see Walter 9

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research the Triune God just as the Father and Son are in each other (John 17:20-23),18 and Paul, using the small “w” word of God from Cretan philosophy, states that all humanity lives, moves and has its being in God (Acts 17:28).19 Most centrally for Fiddes, the Petrine school spiritually encourages readers by promising that the calling and election of Christian believers results in their participation in the divine nature of God (2 Peter 1:4), a promise from which Fiddes develops his ‘participation as relations’ rubric of panentheism.20 Consequently, this biblical-theological foundation of God’s universal and panentheistic omnipresence enables further application and extrapolation into Fiddes’ two other academic disciplines: the relationship between literature and theology, and the ecclesiological nature of the church. Concerning the former, since God can speak in and through non-Christian literature, wisdom can be identified and received not only through observation and mediation but through participation in the world which is participating in God.21 Fiddes defines this as the fear of the Lord, and it is categorised by an open pluralism and boundless knowledge of the world,22 a world which has holistic completion since God in his panentheistic glory relates to each part of it within himself.23 Regarding ecclesiological matters, a covenant theology of panentheism comprises a covenant ecclesiology as the broken church body of Christ, a vertical and horizontal covenant through which God uses the local church as the centre point in order to interact and partner with creation. 24 The panentheistic nature of these covenants is the spiritual blueprint for God’s relationship with the church and creation. God indeed opens up his triune self for creation and the church to share in the life of God, the very life that God determines for himself.25 Revealing himself to all creation enables God to make different covenants that go beyond the church:26 he makes a covenant with the world and then an inimitable type of covenant with Brueggemann, Isaiah 40-66 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 74–76; David Allan Hubbard, Joel and Amos: An Introduction and Commentary (Nottingham: InterVarsity Press, 1989), 247; J. Andrew Dearman, The Book of Hosea (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 125–26.

18 Fiddes takes issue with Volf’s comment that humans cannot indwell in the person of the Spirit, but only his ambience. This simply undermines the obvious understanding of Jesus’ prayer in John 17:21, that the disciples may be in ‘us’ (i.e. the Triune God). Seeing participation as relations, argues Fiddes, helps paint the mutual indwelling of humans in the divine perichoresis. Fiddes, Participating in God, 46–48, cf. Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 211.

19 Fiddes, “Covenant and Participation,” 128–29; Paul S. Fiddes, “Ecclesiology and Ethnography: Two Disciplines, Two Worlds?” in Perspectives on Ecclesiology and Ethnography, ed. Pete Ward. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 32.

20 Fiddes, “Participating in the Trinity,” 375.

21 Paul S. Fiddes, Seeing the World and Knowing God: Hebrew Wisdom and Christian Doctrine in a Late-Modern Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2013), 203–12.

22 Paul S. Fiddes, “’Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?’: Job 28 as a Riddle for Ancient and Modern Readers” in After the Exile: Essays in Honour of Rex Mason, eds. John Barton and David J. Reimer. (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1996), 186–90.

23 Paul S. Fiddes, “Old Testament Principles of Wholeness,” in Iosif Ton - orizonturi noi in spiritualitate si slujire, eds. Sorin Sabou and Dorothy Ghitea. (Oradea: Editura Cartea Crestina, 2004), 36–38.

24 Paul S. Fiddes, “An Ecclesiology of an Undivided Christ,” in Worship, Tradition, and Engagement: Essays in Honor of Timothy George, eds. David S. Dockery, James Earl Massey and Robert Smith Jnr. (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2018), 212–14; Paul S. Fiddes, “Covenant and the Inheritance of Separatism,” in The Fourth Strand of the Reformation: The Covenant Ecclesiology of Anabaptists, English Separatists, and Early General Baptists, ed. Paul S. Fiddes, William H. Brackney and Malcolm B. Yarnell III. Centre for Baptist History and Heritage Studies, Volume 17 (Oxford: Regent’s Park College, 2018), 69–72.

25 Paul S. Fiddes (ed.), Believing and Being Baptized: Baptism, so-called re-baptism, and children in the church. The Faith and Unity Executive Committee. Doctrine and Worship Committee (London: Baptist Union, 1996), 19, 44; Paul S. Fiddes, “Christianity, Culture and Education: A Baptist Perspective,” in The Scholarly Vocation and the Baptist Academy: Essays on the Future of Baptist Higher Education, ed.

R. Ward and D. Gushee (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2008), 9–10; Fiddes gives full credit to Barth for the grace-filled and free basis of God’s covenant with creation which is inseparable from God’s own inner communion of life where God ‘freely determines to be God.’ Paul S. Fiddes, ‘“Walking Together:’ The Place of Covenant Theology in Baptist Life Yesterday and Today,” in Pilgrim Pathways: Essays in Baptist History in Honour of B. R. White, eds. Paul S. Fiddes, William H. Brackney, and John H. Y. Briggs. (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1999), 58–63; cf. CD II/2, §33.2, 161–94.

26 Paul S. Fiddes, “Baptists and Theological Education: A Vision for the Twenty-First Century,” in Baptist Identity into the 21stCentury: Essays in Honour of Ken Manley, ed. Frank Rees. (Melbourne: Whitley College, 2016), 188–92.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research Christians.27 This “Christian-type” covenant is one of the three vertical covenants God enters into with his people: a covenant of grace with human beings for their salvation in Christ; a divine covenant between the Persons of the Triune God; and a covenantal agreement God makes corporately with a church or a group of churches.28 As mentioned above, Fiddes’ central theological tenet of “participation as relations” in God is very much the warp and woof of his articulated panentheistic doctrine of God; indeed, by his own admission, Fiddes believes that this is his unique contribution to trinitarian theology.29 For, asserts Fiddes, “An ‘event of relationships’ is a participatory concept that makes sense only in actual events of daily life. This does not replace revelation with human experience, but locates the self-disclosure of God where God wants to be.”30 Consequently we exist within a universe of participation with relationships at the epicentre, all of which is experienced within the very being of God. The entire universe is engaging in God like this, and so into this experienced framework, we should place all other existential questions which are asked.31 In interlocution with other theologians, he claims not only is this the most appropriate language that we have to speak of the persons of the Trinity,32 but is also methodologically sound: it uses the majority of theological sources (scripture, tradition and experience) and was the approach of the early Church fathers who defined hypostasis subjectively and relationally, not objectively.33 Moreover, purports Fiddes, there are significant advantages of this form of panentheism that include: explaining divine agency in a world state of flux and decay, since the world is a living organism and the creator of the world has to work from inside the organism;34 delineating God’s metaphysical and relational ontology in ways which undermine historical abuses of power and hierarchy in both the church and the world;35 helping humanity in its relationships through forgiveness which is a two-staged journey of discovery

Paul S. Fiddes, “Christian Doctrine and Free Church Ecclesiology: Recent Developments among Baptists in the Southern United States,” Ecclesiology 7.2 (2011): 216–19.

28 It is the second type of vertical covenant, a divine transactional covenant between the persons of the Trinity which is the basis for “persons as relations” participatory panentheistic theology. Paul S. Fiddes, “Theology of Covenant,” in A Dictionary of European Baptist Life and Thought, ed. John. H. Y. Briggs. Studies in Baptist History and Thought Volume 33 (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2009), 124–26; Paul S. Fiddes, “Church and Sect: Cross-currents in Early Baptist Life,” in Exploring Baptist Origins, eds. Anthony R. Cross and Nicholas J. Wood. Centre for Baptist History and Heritage Studies Volume 1 (Oxford: Regent's Park College, 2010), 43– 50.

29 Paul Fiddes, personal communication with the author, 15 & 16 March 2016.

30 Paul S. Fiddes, “Relational Trinity: Radical Perspective,” in Two Views on the Doctrine of the Trinity, ed. Jason Sexton (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 185.

31 “What is God [parts 1&2]?” Paul S. Fiddes, accessed October 21, 2021, (https://www.closertotruth.com/series/immortality-andpersonal-consciousness#video-2221).

32 McCall is seriously critical of Fiddes’ notion of relationality without involving language of persons. He claims that the emphasis on relations means a jettisoning of classic Christology and embracement of degree Christology. Thomas H. McCall, “Response to Paul S. Fiddes,” in Two Views on the Doctrine of the Trinity, ed. Jason Sexton. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 197–203. Fiddes’ rejoinder is that all human language falls short and that our own human experiences of living in relations with others can be seen to reflect and participate in the relations in God. Paul S. Fiddes, “Rejoinder Comments and Clarification,” in Two Views on the Doctrine of the Trinity, ed. Jason Sexton. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 205–06. Concerning the charge of classic or degree Christology, Fiddes remains ambiguous. See Paul S. Fiddes, review of Christology in Conflict. The Identity of a Saviour in Rahner and Barth by Bruce Marshall. Journal of Theological Studies 40 (1989): 700–703.

33 Holmes disagrees, claiming that the Eastern Fathers were committed to divine simplicity more than Fiddes acknowledges and that the concept of ‘relations’ does not connect to the idea of personhood, as claimed by Fiddes. Stephen R. Holmes, “Response to Paul S. Fiddes,” in Two Views on the Doctrine of the Trinity, ed. Jason Sexton (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 188–90. For a sustained defence of this rebuttal point, see Stephen R. Holmes, The Holy Trinity: Understanding God’s Life (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2012), 97–120.

34 Fiddes, The Creative Suffering, 37–42.

35 Fiddes, Participating in God, 62–108.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research and endurance;36 enhancing intercessory prayer, since humans pray “in God” and this influences God’s persuasive activity and directs the urgings of the Holy Spirit;37 and the use and application of love in creative ways as the Trinity affirms that love is relational and not simply attitudinal.38 Ontologically, God is love and has loving right relations within his triune self and so the optimal way to describe this is via the language of participation.

Overall, Fiddes’ claim of “participation as relations” situates him in a unique position within trinitarian theology and creates a challenge when any attempt is made to situate him on the continuum of panentheistic understanding, which some suggest currently exists.39 Vital to this positioning exercise are the various ontologies of bilateral relations between God and the world which seek to elucidate the degree to which the world is somehow contained in God and God’s perfection is influenced and affected by the world and creation.

Space limitation precludes a full articulation of Fiddes’ answer to this question; but in light of his description of panentheism as a sharing in interweaving movements of relational love, his increasing openness to experience as a legitimate source of theological formulation,40 his insistence on holding the incarnation of Christ as the key to understanding the world as God’s body, and his constructive work on panentheism, forgiveness and reconciliation, collectively all justify placing him on the continuum as one example of a Christian panentheist: the qualified view that states that God necessarily exists without any creation, that the creation cannot exist without God, and that God willingly opens up his self-sufficiency to contingent creation in order to have a genuine, bi-lateral reality to his panentheistic nature that he has freelydetermined to have with the world.41 Moreover, Fiddes’ belief in post-death development and progressive possibilities42 also aligns him with soteriological panentheism which frames God ‘all-in-all’ talk in eschatological terms recognising the future consummation of all things dwelling in God in the eschaton.

Fiddes, Participating in God, 192–220.

Fiddes, Participating in God, 116–26, 131–44.

38 Paul S. Fiddes, “Creation Out of Love,” in The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis, ed. John Polkinghorne. (London: SPCK, 2001), 167–91.

39 The fact that Fiddes is situated somewhere on the continuum is factually accurate since he goes to lengths to differentiate his position from both pantheism and classical theism. He strongly opposes Molnar’s classic theistic assertion that God is totally unaffected by the events of the world, and he corrects Molnar’s conflation of pantheism and panentheism stating that God can be conceived as one who desires contributions to his satisfied and blissful state by creation without reducing God to a deity who depends upon finite things external to himself. Paul S. Fiddes, “Response to Paul D. Molnar,” in Two Views on the Doctrine of the Trinity, ed.

Jason Sexton. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 104–08.

40 Fiddes, “Relational Trinity,” 162–63, 182–85. It appears that a later, more developed, emphasis of Fiddes is that not all experiences can become normative but only those which witness to the revelation of God in Christ. Paul S. Fiddes, “A Response to Andrew Moore” (paper presented at the one-day colloquium on the Doctrine of God in conversation with Paul Fiddes, St Mary’s School of Divinity, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife, 16 April 2016). Notwithstanding the previous warnings against boxing in or labelling a theologian, this openness to much experience could tentatively identify Fiddes as a theologian who utilises a broad conservative approach to theological construction, which is open to using both reason and experience (especially phenomenologicalempirical evidence) in order to gain new and fresh reflections on God and subsequently revise traditional doctrines. “The great theologians of each generation have realized that merely repeating particular formulations inherited from the previous generations would only preserve the gospel by petrifying it.” F. LeRon Shults, Reforming the Doctrine of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 201.

41 My strong suggestion in order to help Fiddes clarify his position would be to use as one of his defending scriptures Acts 17:2428, not v.28 alone, as the five verses collectively establish both God’s self-existent ontology and panentheistic reality.

42 Paul S. Fiddes, The Promised End: Eschatology in Theology and Literature (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 49–52, 133–35; Paul S. Fiddes, “The Making of a Christian Mind,” in Faith in the Centre, ed. Paul S. Fiddes (Macon: Smyth & Helwys Press, 2001), 12–14; Paul S. Fiddes, “Acceptance and Resistance in a Theology of Death,” Modern Believing 56 (2015): 228–36.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research ONTOLOGICAL EVIL AND THE PANENTHEISTIC REALITY OF GOD Having established the fundamental elements of Fiddes’ panentheistic doctrine of God, undergirded by his unique ‘participation as relations’ trinitarian theology, let us now turn attention to Clayton’s assertion of an apparent incompatibility between a panentheistic model of God and an ontological account of evil. Here I will offer, in counterpoint, an outline of a panentheistic doctrine of God which accounts for the presence and phenomenon of ontological evil, one that near-jettisons God’s responsibility for evil and strongly aligns with the scriptural witness of the final eradication of all evil in the eschaton. In other words, I want to now address how and where evil exists within God’s omnipresent holiness and goodness without making God the primary cause of evil.

From the outset, it needs noting that Fiddes rejects Moltmann’s concept of zimsum, arguing that it implies that evil is a necessity of creation43 but instead, like other panentheists, promulgates Augustine’s privatio boni. Fiddes juxtaposes this privative view with both a nuanced, dialectical understanding of Barth’s das Nichtige account and Heideggerian being and non-being, in order to develop an understanding of evil as a slipping into nothingness and a definition of hostile and alienating non-being of the fallen world that represents the foreign nature of suffering which arises from a free creation. This non-being is that which befalls the sovereign God as he exposes himself to it and suffers from it.44 A significant corollary of Fiddes’ a-priori commitment to a panentheistic-participatory doctrine of God, which, he concludes, coheres better with evil as non-ontological privatio boni,45 is that any definition of evil as a negation of the good means that when answering the how and where of evil’s co-existence with God’s omnipresent holiness and goodness, there is no lacunae for the scriptural witness of malevolent spiritual beings rebelling against God and creation, nor a place of perdition for all sentient beings who, as a consequence of their freewill defiance and apostasy, come under the judgement and wrath of God. This becomes problematic when one wants to align with the tradition of the faith, purport the prima facie understanding of the biblical witness regarding the demonic and evil realm, and seriously account for personal experience and phenomena of evil and spiritual warfare as a valid source for theological formulation.

Paul S. Fiddes, “Something will come of nothing: on A Theology of the Dark Side,” in Challenging to Change: dialogues with a radical Baptist theologian. Essays presented to Dr Nigel G. Wright on his Sixtieth Birthday, ed. Pieter J. Lalleman (London: Spurgeon's College, 2009), 93–95; cf. Nigel G. Wright, A Theology of the Dark Side: Putting the Power of Evil in its Place (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 77. In this conclusion Fiddes agrees with Wright that the necessary result of creation is not evil, but rather than evil is a distinct possibility of creation and so is to be viewed as a threat to creation. Both Wright and Fiddes’ analysis of Moltmann’s zimsum is accurate given that Moltmann states that the nihil created by God’s withdrawn presence in which he creates his creation, is nonavoidable God-forsakenness, hell, and absolute death. It is this forsakenness, i.e., nothingness, that God on the cross enters into, overcomes, and makes part of the eternality of God. This is his omnipresence, as reflected by the Psalmist in Psalm 139:8. Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation: An Ecological Doctrine of Creation (London: SCM Press, 1985), 86–93.

44 Fiddes, The Creative Suffering, 261–67. Of course, claims Fiddes, the consequence of the death of the living God on the cross is the allowance of death and non-being within God himself. Fiddes, The Creative Suffering, 193–200. Significantly, Fiddes’ dialectical approach to Barth reflects well the tension in Barth’s articulation of “nothingness” which strongly asserts an inevitability of the ontic reality of nothingness alongside creation but the emphatic denial that neither God nor creation is the author of nothingness since “nothingness is neither as the Creator or creature is.” CD III/3, §50.4, 349–68.

45 Fiddes, “Something will come,” 94–95; Paul S. Fiddes, “Tragedy as Rhetoric of Evil,” in Rhetorik des Bösen / The Rhetoric of Evil, ed. Paul S. Fiddes and Jochen Schmidt (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2013), 170.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research Indeed, there is a constructive-theological case to be made via greater interlocution of contemporary constructions of ontology as naked existence which does not preclude privatio esse but remains situational within a panentheistic definition of God’s omnipresence. A number of theologians draw on Boethius’ definition of personhood as ‘individual substance of rational nature,’ thereby proposing a minimalist definition of existence and sentience that could be applied to The Satan and demonic in order to defend their ontological particularity without bestowing full personhood as found in humanity,46 a kind of semireal ontology without human personhood.47 Now, while I acknowledge that there are forms of privatio boni which hold a robust account of The Satan,48 and some panentheistic accounts that adhere to an ontological The Satan and demons with volition and sentience,49 I propose that the greatest potential for this construction lies in Fiddes’ use of von Balthasar’s theology of the Trinity, specifically the room within the “yes” between the Father and Son for a creation with volition to rebel by stating an emphatic and rebellious “no” within the triune relations of God. Fiddes’ appeal to and use of von Balthasar’s “yes” and “no” in the relations between the Father and Son has become a persistent and permeating idea in his more recent compilation of work50 and he draws heavily upon von Balthasar’s work on dramatic soteriology, specifically the exploration of the initiation of the incarnated Son into the divine life of the Trinity and the central role played by libertarian freedom. This results in a delineation of the drama of the Trinity, a drama of kenosis couched in both divine and creaturely freedom. The creation of the world is the first and most significant act of kenosis, a freely given divine act

Thomas A. Noble, “The Spirit World: A Theological Approach,” in The Unseen World: Christian Reflections on Angels, Demons and the Heavenly Realm, ed. Anthony N. S. Lane. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 217–19; Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology, Vol.1: The Triune God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 117; Wright, A Theology, 81–82.

47 E. Janet Warren, Cleansing the Cosmos (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2012), 260–76.

48 As highlighted by Kirkpatrick, Dante’s description of The Satan is both ontological and parasitical. He is described as “that creature who had once appeared so fair,” a reference to Lucifer, one of the sons of light, who has now become a parasitical figure and exists as a “negative image of ultimate truth.” This is specifically illustrated by his three faces parodying as the ultimate negative of the Holy Trinity - hatred, ignorance, impotence. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, trans. Robin Kirkpatrick (London: Penguin Books, 2012), Canto 34, 154–58, 533–35.

49 Jonathan Edwards is a salient example. Strong and persuasive cases have been made that his doctrine of God is both neoplatonic and panentheistic; a “qualified (christian)” panentheism, to use Gregersen’s terminology. For a convincing case that Edwards’ God is a simple and free being and creation is a necessary output of God’s creative nature and like an emanation from God see Oliver D. Crisp, Jonathan Edwards on God and Creation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 138–63. Moreover, within his panentheistic doctrine of God Edwards holds to a personalist-ontological account of The Satan which he proffers in his works. For instance, in The Nature of True Virtue Edwards argues that both virtue and vice is proportionate to greatness or malevolence of being, and that human disapprobation of conscience results in quintessential wickedness of the human heart. As a result, these nefarious persons are conjoined to the devil and his demonic angels—spiritual beings who lack any virtue and are extremely evil and cursed—to be sent away into the everlasting fire. See Jonathan Edwards, The Nature of True Virtue, ed. Taylor Drummond. (Poland: Independent Publisher, 2020), 63–77.

50 In my research on Fiddes it first appears in 2006 in Fiddes, “Participating in the Trinity,” 388–90, and since then has reappeared with much regularity, especially within his corpus of work on ecclesiology. Select works include Paul S. Fiddes, “Dual Citizenship in Athens and Jerusalem: The Place of the Christian Scholar in the Life of the Church,” in Questions of Identity: Studies in Honour of Brian Haymes, ed. A. R. Cross and R. Gouldbourne. Centre for Baptist History and Heritage Studies Volume 6 (Oxford: Regent's Park College, 2011), 133–36; Paul S. Fiddes, “Preface,” in Tradition and the Baptist Academy, ed. Roger A. Ward and Philip E. Thompson. Studies in Baptist History and Thought 31 (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2011), xi–xviii; Paul S. Fiddes, “A Conversation in Context: An Introduction to the Report, The Word of God in the Life of the Church,” American Baptist Quarterly, 31 (2012): 19– 21; Paul S. Fiddes, Brian Haymes and Richard Kidd, Baptists and the Communion of Saints: A Theology of Covenanted Disciples (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2014), 95–101; Paul S. Fiddes, “’Koinonia: The Church in and for the World.’ Comment on the Final Part of The Church – Towards a Common Vision (Faith and Order Paper 214),” in Baptist Faith and Witness, Book 5, ed. Eron Henry. Papers of the Commission on Mission, Evangelism and Theological Reflection of the Baptist World Alliance 2010-2015 (Mclean: BWA, 2016), 41–44; Paul S. Fiddes, “The Trinity, Modern Art, and Participation in God,” in Christian Theology and the Transformation of Natural Religion: From Incarnation to Sacramentality. Essays in Honour of David Brown, ed. Christopher R. Brewer (Leuven: Peeters, 2018), 96. As Fiddes said to me in person, “there is only one place that anyone can say ‘no’ to God and this is in the ‘yes’ of the Son to the Father.” Paul Fiddes, personal communication with the author, 15 & 16 March 2016.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research that brings forth the Son and posits an absolute and infinite distance that can contain all other distances including that of sin.51 Therefore, within this infinite distance is contingent creaturely freedom, an act of autonomy that is expressed in a rebellious “no,” a refusal to concede truth, and denial of origin. As von Balthasar declares, “the Father’s self-surrender to the Son and their relationship in the Spirit (which grounds everything) human freedom participates in the divine autonomy, both when it says Yes and when it says No.”52 When creation says “no,” a twisted knot in the Son’s pouring out of himself within the relation with the Father is realised, which is a situation made possible because it is only within the Son’s eucharistia to the Father that human freedom and perversion is exercised.53 Consequently, when defining the demonic and evil realm in terms of personalist ontology, von Balthasar offers some threads of enquiry and development not so easily discernible in Barth or Fiddes. Von Balthasar postulates a kenotic theology of covenant, one that avoids internal innocuous suffering in the Trinity while grounding all experiences of suffering in God. So, within the infinite distance between Father and Son when the Son is freely brought forth in an act of divine kenosis, there is a resultant incomprehensible separation of God from himself in which exists a twisted knot - a dark, malevolent, bitter reality of separation predicated upon creaturely freedom, both physical and spiritual, and including the possibility of hell, given the free but absolute segregation of the Father and Son.54 So, in order to make a constructive-theological case for God’s omnipresent, panentheistic nature, which accommodates a personalist-ontological account of evil, we need to go beyond Fiddes’ use of von Balthasar. To adapt von Balthasar’s theological construct to allow for the nefarious rebellious “no” of ontological evil located within the “yes” of the Son to the Father, exploration and expansion needs to be posited regarding the malleable degrees of God’s omnipresence, and consideration of the origin and freewill of evil sentient beings who have volition and self-awareness. If, because of the freely desired segregation of the Father and Son, as argued by von Balthasar, there is an infinite and incomprehensible distance which contains all other distances, sin and wicked forms of separation including hell, then arguably this distance is not static and closed but rather resistant to definition, mutable and open to adaptation, which could include the containment of personalist-ontological evil.55 Ultimately, if as already proffered, the rebellious “no” that constitutes a twisted knot in the “yes” between Father and Son is autonomy that denies both truth and origin, then the maximal expression of that

Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory. Vol. IV - The Action, trans. Graham Harrison. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 319–28.

52 Balthasar, Theo-Drama. Vol. IV, 328.

53 Balthasar, Theo-Drama. Vol. IV, 328–32; Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale, trans. Aidan Nichols, O.P. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990), ix, cf. Paul S. Fiddes, “Sacrifice, Atonement and Renewal: Intersections between Girard, Kristeva and Von Balthasar,” in Sacrifice and the Modern World, eds. Johannes Zachhuber and Julia Meszaros. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 61–62; Fiddes, “Participating in the Trinity,” 389.

54 Balthasar, Theo-Drama. Vol. IV, 319–28.

55 It is the openness and malleable nature of the relations within the Triune God that Fiddes claims grounds human experience such as a measure of music, a sequence of thought in science, or the blow of a chisel, within the dynamic flow of God’s triune life. Fiddes, “Relational Trinity,” 178.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research rebellion is surely the biblical-mythical account of the angelic fall56 and subsequent existence of Lucifer, otherwise known as the devil or The Satan, the one represented behind the number of the beast, 666 (Revelation 13:18). This number best signifies an ultimate falling short of divine perfection and represents a spiritual being who exercises disproportionate maniacal power as the ultimate denier of his own creaturely origin. As a created being currently in a state of ultimate rebellion, therefore, The Satan has a place within the relations of the Trinity, specifically in the twisted “no” knot found in the “yes” between the Son and the Father.57 In contradistinction to Fiddes’ claim that because the world is God’s there is no room for The Satan but only internal and external structures of evil,58 it needs to be maintained that it is plausible to locate all evil, including personified evil in God, specifically in the rebellious ‘no’ within the infinite distance of the “yes” between the Father and Son. For this to be theologically convincing and satisfying one needs to articulate, as described above, an understanding of The Satan and his minions which comfortably situates via media between the demythologised, non-personalist position of Fiddes and the fully personal and autonomous view of many popular spiritual warfare advocates.59 However, despite these differences, Fiddes’ panentheism can still be utilised since it is a qualified Christian soteriological panentheism, which allows for the exercising of creaturely freedom in positive and negative ways, differing intensifications of God’s Holy Spirit, and degrees of divine presence and hiddenness. In other words, at present, creaturely and spiritual rebellion exists within God’s omnipresence.

In sum, therefore, it can be concluded that all origins and expressions of evil can be located within the near-realised soteriological panentheism of God without God being the sole author and originator of evil. Ontological evil is located in the extreme twisted “no” within the “yes” between the Father and Son, an extreme knot in the relations of the Trinity. The reason for its presence is the irrevocable autonomy given to creation, both physical and spiritual, which has manifested itself in choices of extreme rebellion as well as adherence. Therefore, as claimed by Fiddes, God is not free of all responsibility for evil since he created

I use the term “biblical-mythical” not to suggest an untrue account but rather to better reflect the mystery and ambiguity of Isaiah 14:12-21 and Ezekiel 28:1-17.

57 One obvious but unanswerable question concerns the lapsarian implication of whether the kenotic “yes” between the Father and Son was logically and chronologically prior or consequent to the fall of spiritual beings. Not only does this question posit unknowable qualities of God’s transcendent esse within his triune self to the fore, but all certainty remains illusive when it comes to questions of the origin of The Satan, evil and the demonic. For not only, despite the equivocation of the serpent with The Satan in Revelation 12 and 20, are there various views concerning the chronology of the fall of The Satan in relation to the birth and ministry of Christ incarnate, but also, as Wink makes clear in his seminal works on The Powers, scripture reveals a malleable and changing The Satan, one who defies definition since he evolves from a divine viceroy residing in God’s presence (Job 1-2) to the antithetical malevolent enemy of God who will ultimately meet his end before the full consummation of the new heavens and new earth (Revelation 20:710). Walter Wink, Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces that Determine Human Existence (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 9–40.

58 Paul S. Fiddes, “Internal and External Powers. A Response to ‘Journeying in Hope; Paul’s Letter to the Romans and John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress and The Holy War in Conversation,’ by Scott C. Ryan,” American Baptist Quarterly 33 (2014): 324.

59 See for example Anglican minister David Watson, David C. K. Watson, God’s Freedom Fighters (London: Movement Books, 1972), 50–67.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research a world of freewill-possibilities for good or ill.60 This minor divine culpability he faces is the reason why he participates and suffers in solidarity with creation.61 CONCLUSION In this paper it has been contended that defining God’s nature and character in panentheistic terms need not necessarily determine a privative definition of evil to the preclusion of an ontologically semi-real account of The Satan and demons with volition and sentience. Fiddes’ central theological tenet of God’s panentheistic omnipresence via creation’s participation in the divine triune nature of God has been used and developed in order to construct a theology of panentheism capacious enough to locate within it the reality of demonic personalist-ontological spiritual beings. By examining Fiddes’ covenantal form of panentheism organised around “persons as relations” participation and subsequently developing von Balthasar’s twisted “no” in the “yes” of the Father and Son, as used by Fiddes, I have proffered a way to theologically promulgate the all-encompassing sovereign presence of God that co-exists with the irrevocable libertarian freedom of creatures, both physical and spiritual, to either rebel or follow their original design.

Moreover, crucial to the construction of this case was the taking of and developing von Balthasar’s trinitarian theology in his work on dramatic soteriology into the unchartered theological realm of spiritual beings who have autonomy, volition, self-awareness and, following Boethius, a minimal definition of quasibeing and personhood. While outside of the scope of this paper, this understanding, I would argue, better attests to the scriptural narrative, contemporary experience of demonization and exorcism, and makes more sense pastorally by nullifying a number of pastoral difficulties that arise when a robust ontological account of The Satan and demonic, as traditionally held in the Christian church, is replaced by a privative-only view of evil, since this fails to better reflect the majority-prevalent practices and beliefs of the contemporary Christian faith.

It is regrettable that in adopting an a-priori commitment to evil as privation, Fiddes has limited his definition of panentheism in a way that does not allow for serious exegetical engagement of biblical texts on the demonic and phenomenological investigation of modern-day accounts of deliverance ministry. He is potentially open to the same well-known criticism of Barth, who was arraigned for his rejection of the idea of an angelic fall through lack of exegesis of the salient passages historically and traditionally held to describe what Augustine called the “angelic catastrophe.”62 Indeed, there seems no conclusive reason, as held by Philosophically and analogously, however, God is only to blame as much as, say, the brainchild behind the invention of the gun is every time a gun is used in a fatal shooting. The inventor may have speculated guns being used this way in the future but that does not render him responsible and culpable for each death by shooting.

61 Fiddes, “Something will come,” 99-100; Paul S. Fiddes, “Christianity, Atonement and Evil,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil, ed. Paul Mosser and Chad Meister (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 217–18. Fiddes offers this argument in response to Hick’s claim about evil’s place in the divine aim. Fiddes contends that Hick’s argument still doesn’t offer a satisfactory answer to Dostoevky’s Ivan Karamazov’s moral question about whether or not the universe, as it is, is worth the tears of one tortured child.

62 Barth’s denial that demons are fallen angels is primarily based upon two major concerns: First, it conflicts with his argument that, contrary to common misconception, demons belong to intrinsic evil known as the nothingness not the negative side of creation, and second, in light of how little is known about the nature of human freedom, it is far too speculative to postulate about angelic 60

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research Fiddes and other modern panentheists, to restrict an understanding of divine panentheism which has to account for the existence of evil only to a privatio boni understanding of evil. Despite the lack of conclusive, non-ambiguous biblical data on the origins and necessary nature of evil, scripture together with tradition and experience does allow one, to use Barth’s nomenclature, to construct a biblical demonology without descending into a speculative philosophy of demons,63 and explicate a theological case that accounts for situations and experiences of ontological evil while maintaining that “the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it; in God we live, move, and have our being; and we may participate in the divine nature” (Psalm 24:1; Acts 17:28; 2 Peter 1:4).

spiritual freedom that, it is claimed, led to the rebellion of Lucifer and one-third of the angels. CD III/3, §51.3, 530–31. Barth’s strong stance against any notion of an angelic fall has, notes Bromiley, seriously undermines Barth’s excellent work on making angels a subject of theological investigation and left him vulnerable to the charge of marginalising the demonic and whether he is indeed “obeying scripture as the criterion of dogmatic purity and truth?” Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1979), 155.

63 Barth pleaded that we not allow theology to become philosophy: an angelology should not be confused with a philosophy of angels. CD III/3, §51.1, 410–12.

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ISAAC WATTS, HYMNS, AND THE JEWS David W. Music Baylor University, Waco Isaac Watts is well known as the “Father of English Hymnody,” the person who broke the monopoly of metrical psalm singing and was largely responsible for the introduction of freely-composed hymns into Anglophone Christian worship. His two principal collections of congregational song, Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1707) and The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament (1719), are the sources for some of the most familiar hymns in the English language, including “Alas, and did my Saviour bleed,” “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun,” “Joy to the world,” and “When I survey the wondrous cross.” Watts’s life, his place in history, and his hymns have been explored in many books and articles since his death more than 250 years ago.1 One feature of Watts’s hymns and hymn collections that has been little examined is his mentions in them of the Jews. This is somewhat surprising, since the Hymns and Spiritual Songs were designed to supplement (or replace) the singing of the Hebrew psalms, and The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament were intended to “Christianize” them; furthermore, Watts often referred directly to the Jews in his hymn texts.

One of the few writings to explore this topic is Stephen Orchard’s 1998 article “The Hymns of Isaac Watts.” In a brief aside, Orchard observes that “Watts followed the Gospel writers, especially John, in referring to the Jews as the persecutors of Jesus,” and goes on to say that “This was not a conscious antisemitism in the modern sense but it is still anti-semitic.” He then quotes stanzas from two of Watts’s versions of Ps 118 that speak of the “envy” of the Jews in rejecting Jesus and comments that, “In his enthusiasm for the new Israel, and for protestant Britain’s providential role, Watts lost sight of the Jews as a people. In this he was no different from most of his contemporaries who, if they thought about the different faiths to be found in the world at all, regarded them as unenlightened and at the mercy of God.”2 As Orchard notes, many Christians throughout the ages have expressed the view that the Jewish race was responsible for the crucifixion and death of Jesus. Furthermore, in the view of most Christians of Watts’s day—and, indeed, of many both before and since—God originally selected the Jews as his chosen people but their rejection of Jesus as the Messiah led to their own rejection, with the church now constituting the chosen people, a view that is known as “supersessionism.” These perspectives on the Jews (as well as The first full-length study of Watts’s life and work was published in 1780 by his friend and ministerial colleague Thomas Gibbons, Memoirs of the Rev. Isaac Watts, D. D. (London: For James Buckland and Thomas Gibbons). Other important studies include Thomas Milner, The Life, Times, and Correspondence of the Rev. Isaac Watts, D.D. (London: Simpkin and Marshall, 1834); E. Paxton Hood, Isaac Watts: His Life and Writings, His Homes and Friends (London: Religious Tract Society, 1875); and Arthur Paul Davis, Isaac Watts: His Life and Works (New York: Dryden Press, 1943). The most thorough published study of Watts’s hymns is Harry Escott, Isaac Watts, Hymnographer: A Study of the Beginnings, Development, and Philosophy of the English Hymn (London: Independent Press, 1962).

2 Stephen Orchard, “The Hymns of Isaac Watts,” Journal of the United Reformed Church History Society 6, no. 3 (1998): 161. See also Sharon Achinstein, Literature and Dissent in Milton’s England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), who claims that Watts’s hymns were “premised upon a rejection of ancient Israel, eschewing a superstitious, particularist ‘Jewishness’” (241).

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research others that lie outside the scope of this article) have sometimes led to deplorable persecutions that have been visited upon this people group throughout history.

Orchard’s brief discussion of antisemitism in Watts’s hymns is helpful but does not paint quite the whole picture and perhaps leaves an incorrect or at least unbalanced impression of Watts’s references to the Jews. The purpose of this article is to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the mentions of the Jews in Watts’s hymns and psalm versions.3 Why did he make these references? What are the biblical backgrounds for them? Are they really what they seem to be on the surface? The article does not intend to excuse, explain away, or mute any antisemitic elements in Watts’s hymns. However, a study of the lyrics shows that it is vital that they be viewed in their scriptural context, not be taken out of the context of the hymn as a whole, and be related to what Watts was trying to accomplish in his work on congregational song. Seen in this manner, the references are often at least understandable, if not acceptable for modern use, because of the possibility of misunderstanding.

It should be stressed that this article is concerned exclusively with Watts’s references to the Jews in his two congregational songbooks and not views that might have been expressed in others of his publications.4 There are two reasons for this restriction. Since Hymns and Spiritual Songs and The Psalms of David Imitated both came toward the beginning of his career and were among his earliest publications, these two sources provide a perspective on his early views. More importantly, unlike many of his other religious writings, which were often designed primarily to be read by theologians, the two books of congregational song were very “public” volumes that put words into the mouths of parishioners and thus were an extraordinarily important voice on the subject, especially since the hymns were widely used in churches of many denominations throughout the eighteenth century and well beyond. For the same reason, though attention will be given to the preface and “Short Essay Toward the Improvement of Psalmody” in Hymns and Spiritual Songs and the preface and explanatory notes for the texts in The Psalms of David Imitated, the focus will be primarily on the hymn texts themselves, since these are the words that were actually sung by the congregation.5 One item that must be borne in mind when interpreting Watts’s references to the Jews is his italicisation of the words “Jew” and “Jews.” This practice might seem as though he is calling special attention to the terms, making them stand out in the context, and perhaps suggesting a negative implication. However, this orthographic feature does not have that purpose: it was his practice to italicise most proper nouns in the text. For example, the words “Christian,” “Gentile,” “Jesus,” and “Adam” are also generally italicised.

Thus, no special meaning should be read into this orthographic feature.

Throughout this article the word “hymn” will be used in a generic sense to include both the freely-written texts and the psalm versions. When a more specific meaning is intended it will be made obvious from the context.

4 Quotations from Watts’s hymn texts in this article are from the second edition of Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1709, hereafter HSS) and the first edition of The Psalms of David Imitated (1719, hereafter PDI) unless otherwise noted. The second edition of Hymns and Spiritual Songs dropped several psalm paraphrases that had appeared in the first edition (and were subsequently incorporated into The Psalms of David Imitated), included a large number of new texts, and made revisions to the hymns. Poems by Watts that were subsequently adapted as hymns, as well as the hymns he wrote to accompany sermon volumes of the 1720s are not included in this study.

5 The “Short Essay” was deleted from Hymns and Spiritual Songs after the first edition, and the preface to The Psalms of David Imitated was truncated and the notes to the hymns omitted in the second and some subsequent editions of that book.

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WATTS’S PURPOSES IN HIS HYMNS From the beginning of Christianity, adherents of the new religion held the Old Testament to be the word of God, but very early in its history, the church rejected many of the ceremonies and customs it portrayed as being outward and “fleshly” in orientation, in contrast to the inward and “spiritual” nature of the New Testament and its worship.6 Elements of the Old Testament such as animal sacrifice and the use of musical instruments in worship were rejected as now abrogated or were reinterpreted in allegorical or symbolic terms. Such views were particularly characteristic of the churches that stemmed from the Genevan Reformation under John Calvin, including the English Congregationalists, among whom Isaac Watts was a prominent minister.

However, one Old Testament book held a special place among the Reformed churches, and that was the book of Psalms. Calvin believed that “no one can sing things worthy of God, except what he may have received from him” and that “we shall find no better nor more proper songs to do this than the Psalms of David.”7 Thus the Reformed churches used the psalms almost exclusively for their congregational singing, to which they added a few other passages from the Old Testament (e.g., the Ten Commandments), the New Testament (the Nativity Canticles), and post-biblical traditional song (the Te Deum). This was the tradition in which Isaac Watts was raised but one he sought to expand and modify.

In the prefaces of both Hymns and Spiritual Songs and The Psalms of David Imitated, Watts set out his purpose for the two books: to replace or at least to supplement the singing of the Old Testament psalms in Christian worship. The prefaces and “Short Essay” contain a number of comments that can be read as critical of the Jews. The most negative of these statements is found in the preface to The Psalms of David Imitated.

What need is there that I should wrap up the shining Honours of my Redeemer in the dark and shadowy Language of a Religion that is now for ever abolished; especially when Christians are so vehemently warned in the Epistles of St. Paul against a Judaizing Spirit in their Worship as well as Doctrine? And what Fault can there be in enlarging a little on the more usefull Subjects in the Style of the Gospel, where the Psalm gives any Occasion, since the Whole Religion of the Jews is censur’d often in the New Testament as a defective and imperfect Thing? (xx-xxi).

This is Watts’s clearest statement of supersessionsim in the prose sections of either book: the religion of the Jews is often reproached in the New Testament as “defective and imperfect,” it has been superseded by the coming of Christ, and Christians are to beware of attempts to require Gentiles to become Jews as a part of

This is particularly evident in a survey of the references to music found in the writings of the early church fathers. These have been usefully gathered and translated in James McKinnon, Music in Early Christian Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

7 John Calvin, “Epistle to the Reader” from Cinquante Pseaumes en francois par Clem. Marot (1543), quoted in David W. Music, Hymnology: A Collection of Source Readings (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1996), 67.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research coming to Christ. In Watts’s view, strict adherence to the singing of versified psalms is a prime example of this “Judaizing Spirit.”8 While Watts’s language in this instance may be unduly harsh according to modern sensibilities, it is important to remember that his intent was to show that the unrevised psalms were not suitable for singing by eighteenth-century English-speaking Christians. He was also attempting to explain why and how his work differed from and was superior to previous psalm versifiers and the current practices of the churches. A more typical comment is in the preface to the first edition of Hymns and Spiritual Songs, where he observes that in singing the psalms as they were usually given in earlier English psalters, When we are just entring [sic] into an Evangelic [i.e., New Testament] Frame by some of the Glories of the Gospel presented in the brightest Figures of Judaism, yet the very next Line perhaps which the Clerk parcels out unto us, hath something in it so extremely Jewish and cloudy, that darkens our Sight of God the Saviour: Thus by keeping too close to David in the House of God, the Vail [sic] of Moses is thrown over our Hearts. (1707, v) Watts acknowledges that the Hebrew psalms contain “some of the Glories of the Gospel” but that they also include things that are “Jewish and cloudy, that darkens our Sight of God the Saviour.” The references to Jewishness, cloudiness, and darkening of sight indicate that these references are to Old Testament practices that cannot be fully understood by contemporary Christians. Watts had in mind here psalmodic references to “Burnt-Offerings or Hyssop, with New-Moons, and Trumpets and Timbrels” and similar features that would have little or no meaning for eighteenth-century English-speaking Christians (PDI, xv). His complaint was not so much about the Jewish elements in the psalms, which, as he put it, were “suited to their [i.e., the Jews’] Dispensation” (HSS, 1707, 268), but about the continued use of the psalms in unaltered form by contemporary Anglophone Christians, for whom the Jewish elements in the texts could hold little or no relevance. Thus, he says, when Christians sing only versifications of the psalms, “we express nothing but the Character, the Concerns, and the Religion of the Jewish King [David], while our own Circumstances and our own Religion (which are so widely different from his) have little to do in the sacred Song” (PDI, iv).

Indeed, Watts even found it difficult to believe that all of “David’s” psalms were “appointed by God for the ordinary and constant Worship of the Jewish Sanctuary or the Synagogues” since several of them “seem improper for any Person besides himself.” And if they were not entirely appropriate for the Jews themselves, “much less are they all proper for a Christian Church,” giving him leave, he felt, to omit, add to, or alter them at will (PDI, viii-ix).

THE HYMN TEXTS Watts’s mentions of the Jews in his hymns can be divided into seven categories according to their general approach and subject matter: the insufficiency of Old Testament ritual for Christians, the ancient Hebrews as an example for Christians, the role of the Jews in the crucifixion, Jewish rejection of Jesus as the Messiah, It should be pointed out that Watts’s reference is to the Jewish religion, not to the Jewish race. While the distinction might be a fine one, in that criticizing a person’s religion can be construed as criticizing a person, religions are fair game for critique in the same way as political, economic, or social views.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research the combination of Jews and Gentiles or Greeks as representatives of all humanity, the debt owed by Christians to the Jews, and the equal access of Jews and Christians to God. Some of these categories, at least on the surface, seem to reflect critical views of the Jews, while others appear to provide positive, or at least balanced, images. As will be seen, the references do not always fall neatly into the seven categories: there is sometimes overlap between them and some might easily be listed under other headings. Hopefully, however, the present organization will be helpful in assessing Watts’s references.

The Insufficiency of Old Testament Ritual Like most Independents and other Calvinists of his day, Watts maintained that “ceremonial worship,” the use of rites and formulas in the worship of God, was not acceptable, at least not unless the heart and spirit were also engaged. This critical view of “formal worship” was expressed in the first stanza of his hymn “Not all the outward forms on earth” (A95).9 Not all the outward Forms on Earth, Nor Rites that God has giv’n, Nor Will of Man, nor Blood, nor Birth, Can raise a Soul to Heav’n.

While this stanza does not directly mention Old Testament ritual, the reference to “Rites that God has giv’n” certainly implies it: God originally commanded the laws of animal sacrifice and ritual observance but since the coming of Christ they have been done away with. The first two stanzas of part 2 in Ps 51 LM, “Lord, I am vile, conceiv’d in sin,” are more specific in their rejection of the “ceremonial worship” of the Old Testament as a basis for salvation.

No bleeding Bird, nor bleeding Beast, Nor Hissop-Branch, nor sprinkling Priest, Nor running Brook, nor Flood, nor Sea, Can wash the dismal Stain away.

Jesus, my God, thy Blood alone Hath Power sufficient to atone; Thy Blood can make me white as Snow; No Jewish Types could cleanse me so. (sts. 5–6)

Watts divided Hymns and Spiritual Songs into three “books.” Throughout this article texts from this source will be identified by a capital letter representing the book (A=book 1, B=book 2, C=book 3), followed by the hymn number in that book; thus, A95 indicates hymn no. 95 in book 1. In The Psalms of David Imitated, Watts often made more than one version of a psalm (usually to provide for metrical variety) and sometimes divided a psalm into several parts. Pieces from this collection are listed here by the number of the psalm and, where relevant, the hymnic meter (determined by the number of syllables per line) and part number: LM=Long Meter (8888), SM=Short Meter (6686), CM=Common Meter (8686), 10.10.10.10.10.10 (six lines of 10 syllables each), and 10.10.10.10.11.11 (four lines of 10 syllables and two of 11 syllables). Individual lines are described by the number of the stanza followed by a colon, then the line number (e.g., 2:3=stanza 2, line 3). All Scripture quotations are from the KJV since that was the version followed by Watts in writing his hymns.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research Here the Jewish Old Testament rituals are called “Types” that foreshadow the fuller salvation provided by God through Jesus Christ. That, of course, is not a reflection on the Jewish people, who simply worked with the revelation they were given in the Old Testament and who, since the resurrection, have the same opportunity of belief or nonbelief in Jesus as anyone else. In a sense, the stanzas of these two hymns can be read as parallel to Watts’s opinions regarding the congregational song of the church: though the rituals of the Old Testament were commanded by God they are no longer adequate as expressions of worship for New Testament Christians; in like manner, the psalms, though a part of Holy Writ, are insufficient as the sole expression of praise for Christians.

Another, more general, reference that can be understood as critical of Old Testament ceremonial worship is found in “The voice of my beloved sounds” (A69), based on Cant 2:8–13, which includes the lines “The Jewish wintry State is gone / The mists are fled, the Spring comes on” (4:1–2) derived from verse 11, “For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.” The implication is that the dark, cold, “wintry” Hebrew religion of animal sacrifice and ceremonial worship has been supplanted by the sunny, warm “Spring” of Christianity’s more inward and spiritual worship. This is about as close as Watts ever comes to a direct statement of supersessionism in his hymn texts.

The Old Testament Jews as an Example for Christians Even if the Old Testament rituals are no longer efficacious, Watts views the experiences of the ancient Hebrews as useful for providing examples for Christians either to emulate or to be warned by. In this he follows Paul’s opinion in 1 Cor 10:11 that “all these things happened unto them [the people of Israel] for examples: and they are written for our admonition.” Many of the Jewish references occur in the context of a recounting of Old Testament events, in which Watts simply retells one of its stories or ideas and relates it to Christian experience. For example, in his hymn about heaven, “There Is a Land of Pure Delight” (B66), he compares a glimpse of the celestial country across the sea of death to the Hebrews’ view of the Promised Land across the river Jordan.

[Sweet Fields beyond the swelling Flood Stand drest in living Green: So to the Jews Old Canaan stood, While Jordan roll’d between.]10 (st. 3) In another text from Hymns and Spiritual Songs, “Let Us Adore th’Eternal Word” (C5), Watts compares the Communion bread with the manna that God sent to the Israelites in the wilderness, remarking that “The Jews the Fathers dy’d at last / Who eat [sic] that Heavenly Bread; / But these Provisions if we tast[e], / We live, tho we were dead” (st. 3). The stanza is based on John 6:33 and 49, “For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.... Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead.” That the ancient Jews “dy’d at last” though they ate the manna is a mere statement of fact, Watts added brackets in some hymns to indicate that the specified stanzas could be omitted without adversely affecting the message of the text.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research and though the claim is made that through Communion “We live, tho we were dead,” this is obviously meant in a spiritual sense, not as a critique of the ancient Hebrews, since Christians themselves will ultimately die physically (which Watts points out) even if they partake of the Lord’s Supper.

In some cases, however, the allusion to an Old Testament text as a lesson for Christians casts the Jews in negative terms. In most of these instances, Watts is referring to Jews of the former dispensation who proved to be faithless to their God, not to the Jews as a race. Indeed, these references usually paraphrase critical references in the Old Testament itself.

Thus, the second part of Watts’s version of Ps 78 points out that “Jacob’s antient Race” was “a stiff rebellious House” that was “False to their own most solemn Vows, / And to their Maker’s Grace” (st. 1).

This theme continues in the fourth part of the same psalm: “Great God, how oft did Israel prove / By turns thine Anger and thy Love?” (1:1–2) These verses parallel rather accurately the psalm on which they are based, which calls the Hebrew “fathers” “a stubborn and rebellious generation; a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not steadfast with God” (v. 8), who “lied unto him with their tongues” (v. 36b). Watts’s past-tense verbs “was” and “did,” and the adjective “antient” show that Watts had in mind the Jews of the Old Testament—in fact, the very people about whom the psalm was written, and not all Jews at all times or places. The principal critique that should be applied here is his use of “Race,” which might easily be read as a broader critique than Watts probably intended. Watts’s point in his paraphrase of this catalogue of failures is found in the last two lines of part 4, stanza 1: “There in a Glass [i.e., mirror] our Hearts may see / How fickle and how false they [our hearts] be.” The message is clear: learn from the experience of the Old Testament Hebrews because Christians are just as likely to be “stubborn,” “rebellious,” “fickle,” and “false” as were they.

Watts goes on to exclaim, “How soon the faithless Jews forgot / The dreadfull [sic] Wonders God had wrought!” (2:1–2). This too reflects the biblical record of alternating faithfulness and unfaithfulness on the part of the Old Testament Jews, but, following his source Scripture, which he lists as “v. 32. &c.,” the hymn writer further points out the fact of God’s forgiveness and continued love for his chosen people even in the midst of their backsliding.

Yet did his Sovereign Grace forgive The Men who not deserv’d to live; His Anger oft away he turn’d, Or else with gentle Flame it burn’d.

He saw their Flesh was weak and frail, He saw Temptations still prevail; The God of Abraham lov’d them still, And led them to his holy Hill. (sts. 6–7)

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research A similar approach characterizes two of Watts’s versions of Ps 95. The Short Meter paraphrase, “Come sound his praise abroad,” ends with two stanzas that, on the face of it, seem to consign the Jews to perdition because of their “stubbornness” and their being an “unbelieving Race.”

But if your Ears refuse The Language of his Grace, And Hearts grow hard like stubborn Jews, That unbelieving Race.

The Lord in Vengeance drest Will lift his Hand and swear, “You that despise my promis’d Rest, “Shall have no Portion there. (sts. 5–6) This language is troublesome, but it must be read in the context of the Scripture passage the poet is paraphrasing. Watts’s stanza 5 parallels verses 8–9 of the psalm, “Harden not your heart [i.e., do not be stubborn], as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work,” while stanza 6 is based on verse 11: “Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest.” As in Watts’s hymn based on Ps 78, his reference to the stubbornness of the Jews is in regard to those of the Old Testament who are mentioned in the psalm. It will be noted that stanza 5 is not a complete sentence, despite the period; its continuation (st. 6, the last strophe of the hymn) applies the judgment to all unbelievers. The problem with the hymn again lies principally in Watts’s use of the term “Race,” which can readily be misinterpreted as referring to all Jews of every time and place. Since his approach to the passage was as a warning to Christians to learn a lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures, that was surely not his intent, but his use of a term that might suggest the entire ethnic group is unfortunate. Ultimately, the point of these stanzas for Watts is found in the first two lines of stanza 5: do not refuse “the Language of [God’s] Grace” or your fate will be the same as those who were forbidden to enter the Promised Land.

The Long Meter version of the same psalm, “Come, let our voices join to raise,” carries a similar message, but in language that is probably less open to misunderstanding. Here the Jews are called “A faithless unbelieving Brood / That tir’d the Patience of their God” (4:3–4), but the reference is more obviously to the Old Testament people who were the subject of the original psalm (“Israel, that saw his Works of Grace,” 4:1). As in the Short Meter version, the important point is for Christians to learn from the experience of the early Hebrews.

[Look back, my Soul, with holy Dread, And view those antient Rebels dead; Attend the offer’d Grace to Day, Nor lose the Blessing by Delay.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research Seize the Kind Promise while it waits, And march to Zion’s heavenly Gates; Believe, and take the promis’d Rest; Obey, and be for ever blest.] (sts. 6–7)

The Jews and the Crucifixion One of Watts’s hymns and several of his psalm versions make reference to the Jews in relation to the crucifixion of Jesus. However, these mentions need careful attention to their contexts in order to understand exactly what Watts is saying.

Certainly, the hymn “Infinite grief! amazing woe!” (B95) begins with a stanza that sounds like a straightforward blaming of the Jews and Romans for the crucifixion: “Hell and the Jews conspir’d his Death, / And us’d the Roman Sword” (1:3–4). Though he did not mention it as a scriptural source for the text, Watts’s lines draw from Luke 22:2–3, “And the chief priests and scribes sought how they might kill him” and “Then entered Satan into Judas.” In Watts’s hands, “the chief priests and scribes” become “the Jews,” and Judas (who has been taken over by Satan, the chief of hell) has become the epitome of “Hell.” Thus, Watts, following Luke, blames Judas (or Satan) and the Jewish religious leaders, not the Jewish people, for conspiring the death of Jesus. Without knowledge of this scriptural background, which would probably be the case in most congregational singings of this text, misunderstanding would almost surely occur, and Watts’s use of the generic term “Jews” here is unwise. And, while “Hell” and “the Jews” are obviously two different things, their linkage could be misconstrued by less attentive readers or singers as meaning that the Jews were in league with hell.

Also regrettable by twenty-first century standards is his later mention of “the more spightful Jews” (3:4), though to whom this refers is not certain: does he mean the Jews who were more spiteful than other Jews or the Jews who were more spiteful than the Romans? Here again, though we cannot be certain, the reference is probably a continuation of the earlier mention of the gospel writer’s “chief priests and scribes,” who in other places in the gospels are said to have delivered Jesus to Pilate out of “envy” (see below).

However, the average parishioner who might not have been familiar with the scriptural background would probably misunderstand the intent. In any event, the rest of the hymn points out that it was not the “Roman Bands” or the “spightful Jews” who were responsible for the death of Jesus, but the sins of the hymn writer— and by extension, of the singer(s) themselves.

‘Twere you, my Sins, my cruel Sins, His chief Tormentors were; Each of my Crimes became a Nail, And Unbelief the Spear. (st. 4) Watts’s other texts that mention the role of the Jews in the crucifixion are found in his versions of the messianic Pss 2, 22, and 69. “Why did the Jews proclaim their rage” (Ps 2 LM) was published in the first (1707) edition of Hymns and Spiritual Songs but was dropped in the second edition in anticipation of including 23

Pacific Journal of Theological Research it in The Psalms of David Imitated, where it was ultimately printed as one of three versions of the psalm. This Long Meter version and his later Short Meter arrangement, “Maker and sovereign Lord,” are similar in that both draw not only on the Old Testament psalm but also on Acts 4:24–30, the words spoken or sung by the disciples after the release of Peter and John by the chief priests and elders; embedded in the passage is a quotation of the first two verses of Ps 2.11 Watts’s use of the surrounding material in Acts in a version of Ps 2 is particularly clear in “Maker and sovereign Lord,” which begins with two stanzas enclosed in brackets that embrace the non-psalmic parts of the disciples’ words; the second stanza reads as follows.

[The Things so long foretold

By David are fulfill’d, When Jews and Gentiles joyn’d to slay Jesus, THINE Holy Child.]

The strophe is derived from Acts 4:27–28, which comes immediately after the quotation from the psalm: “For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.” It will be recognized that Watts’s stanza is a more-or-less straightforward rendering of this passage, with “Jews” merely substituted for “the people of Israel.” The next stanza begins the paraphrase of the psalm itself, with Watts extending the Acts reference to Gentiles and Jews into his paraphrase of the psalm’s first two verses (“Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed”).

Why did the Gentiles rage, And Jews with one accord Bend all their Counsels to destroy Th’ Anointed of the Lord?

It is obvious, of course, that this paraphrase, based as it is on the Acts passage, merely follows the scriptural account from the New Testament and does not hold the Jews as a people as any more responsible than the “Gentiles” for the death of Jesus.

The references to the Jews and Romans in Watts’s earlier paraphrase of Ps 2, “Why did the Jews proclaim their rage,” though less explicit than “Maker and sovereign Lord,” also seem to have been inspired by the Acts passage.

Why did the Jews proclaim their Rage?

The Romans why their Swords employ?

Against the Lord their Powers engage

Acts 4:24 (KJV) says that the disciples “lifted up their voice to God with accord, and said, . . .,” and the following words are lyric poetry, suggesting that the words might have been sung rather than spoken. If spoken, there is the possibility that at least the quoted psalm verses were sung.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research His dear Anointed to destroy.

The wording of this stanza is so similar to that in the third stanza of the later “Maker and sovereign Lord” that it is tempting to see the latter as a mere rewriting of this one. It should be pointed out that in these two hymns Watts has used Jews and Gentiles (or Romans) as a gloss on the “nations” of the original psalm verse, meaning that he is using the terms in an inclusive manner to suggest humanity, a feature that will be discussed further below.

Watts’s Long Meter version of Ps 22, “Now let our mournful songs record,” notes that at the crucifixion “The Jews behold him thus forlorn, / And shake their heads and laugh in Scorn; / ‘He rescu’d others from the Grave; / ‘Now let him try himself to save[’]” (st. 8). This and the two following stanzas are an insertion from Matt 27:39–43, which tells of the insults hurled at the crucified Jesus by “they that passed by” and “the chief priests . . . with the scribes and elders.” In the tenth stanza, Watts refers to them as “Barbarous People! Cruel Priests!” The parallelism between stanza 10 and the reference in Matthew suggests that Watts is making the following equation: “they that passed by” = “Barbarous People” and “chief priests” (etc.) = “Cruel Priests.” So far so good, but in stanza 8 Watts uses the single term “Jews”; does he mean by this both “they that passed by” and the priests? If so, that would suggest (in his mind, at least) that all those who “passed by” were also Jews. However, in the gospel account the words he quoted the “Jews” as saying are attributed only to the religious leaders, implying that here again the generic term “Jews” was intended to apply specifically to them.

On the surface, two of Watts’s versions of Ps 69 also seem to blame the Jews for the crucifixion. In both cases, Watts is paraphrasing verse 8, “I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother’s children.” Watts turns this into “‘Amongst my Brethren and the Jews / ‘I like a Stranger stood’” and “The Jews, his Brethren and his Kin, / Abus’d the Man that checkt their Sin.”12 Gentiles could hardly be said to have been Jesus’ “kin,” and here again the reference is probably to Jesus’ countrymen who called for his crucifixion rather than the Jews as a whole.

Rejection of Jesus as the Messiah Several of Watts’s hymns make note of the Jews’ rejection of Jesus as the promised Messiah. In some of these cases, Watts uses past tense, indicating that the reference is principally to the Jews of the first century who did not acknowledge his messiahship. One of these hymns is “Behold What Wondrous Grace” (A64).

‘Tis no surprizing [sic] thing That we should be unknown; The Jewish World knew not their King, God’s everlasting Son. The stanza is derived from the last clause of 1 John 3:1, “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew

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“Save me, O God, the swelling floods” (Ps. 69 CM pt. 1, 8:1–2); “‘Twas for thy sake, eternal God” (Ps. 69 LM pt. 2, 2:1–2).

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research him not” (emphasis added). In the hymn, Watts substitutes “The Jewish World” for the simple “the world” of the epistle. While the statement is true in a sense, both “the world” of the Scripture and the majority of Jews (Watts’s “Jewish World”) having rejected Jesus, some Jews did recognize Jesus as the Messiah, and the generic use of “Jewish” seems to be ill advised by modern standards.

In “Who has believ’d thy word” (A141), Watts twice mentions the Jews directly. Stanza 2 opens with the lines “The Jews esteem’d him [Jesus] here /

Too mean for their Belief,” while stanza 4 claims that

God was “pleas’d to bruise / His best-beloved Son” “for the stubborn Jews / And Gentiles then unknown.”

The scriptural background Watts indicated for the text comes from Isa 53, but Watts also probably had in mind Acts 13:43–46, in which Luke indicates that “many of the Jews and religious proselytes [in Antioch of Pisidia] followed Paul and Barnabas” but that “when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy, and spake against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming,” upon which Paul declared that the missionaries would “turn to the Gentiles.” “Stubbornness” could certainly characterize the “envious” Jews of Antioch of Pisidia, but Watts’s use of the term here seems out of place, as does the substitution of “Jews” and “Gentiles” for the more generic “our” in Isa 53.

Psalm 118:22, “The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner,” was quoted often in the New Testament, particularly by Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels, who applied it to his rejection by the Jewish leaders; as Matt 21:45 put it, “when the chief priests and Pharisees had heard his parables [and his quotation from the psalm], they perceived that he spake of them.” Thus, it was natural for Watts to make the same application in two of his versions of Ps 118.

See what a living Stone The Builders did refuse;

Lo what a glorious Corner-stone The Jewish Builders did refuse;

Yet God hath built his Church thereon

But God hath built his Church thereon

In Spight of envious Jews. (SM, st. 1)

In Spight of Envy and the Jews. (LM, st. 1)

These examples illustrate a common approach of Watts in which he rewrites a text to provide it in a different hymnic meter, while leaving its basic structure and much of its wording intact; which of these stanzas might have been the original cannot be determined. These are the stanzas that were quoted by Orchard, and they seem particularly harsh in calling the Jews “envious.” However, there are two mitigating factors at work.

First, the second stanza of “See what a living stone” goes on to point out that it was “The Scribe and angry Priest” who rejected Jesus, a feature that is also present in the Common Meter version (not quoted here), which calls them “The foolish Builders, Scribe and Priest.” Second, in calling the Jews “envious,” Watts is reflecting Mark 15:10, “For he [Pilate] knew that the chief priests had delivered him for envy” (also Matt 27:18), which indicates further that Watts had in mind the religious leaders.

One of Watts’s versions of Ps 8, “Almighty ruler of the skies” (LM), should be mentioned here because of the similarity of some of its language to that in the versions from Ps 118. Watts paraphrases verse 2 of the psalm, “Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightiest still the enemy and the avenger,” in his second and third stanzas, then in 26

Pacific Journal of Theological Research stanzas 4–5 he inserts a paraphrase of Matt 21:15–16, which tells of the Triumphal Entry and in which Jesus quotes from the psalm verse.

The frowning Scribes and angry Priests In vain their impious Cavils bring; Revenge sits silent in their Breasts, While Jewish Babes proclaim their King. (st. 5) In contrast to the imitations of Ps 118, here it is the children rather than the scribes and priests who are given the generic label “Jewish,” and they are viewed positively because of their recognition of Jesus as the Messiah.

Watts’s Communion hymn “How rich are thy provisions, Lord” (C12) is based on the parable in Luke 14 of the man who gave a supper to which the invited guests refused to come, upon which the host told his servant to “Go out into the highways and hedges” and find others to share in the festivity. Jesus told the story at a Sabbath meal in “the house of one of the chief Pharisees,” and the other guests were apparently also “lawyers and Pharisees” (vv. 1, 3), so the parable was aimed primarily at those in attendance at the meal. In the second stanza of his hymn, which Watts enclosed in brackets, he notes that God’s “ancient Family the Jews / Were first invited to the Feast, / We humbly take what they refuse, / And Gentiles thy Salvation taste.” Like all parables, the analogy in this one should not be extended too far, and it might be thought that this is what Watts has done, since the salvation of the Gentiles did not depend upon the rejection of Jesus by the Jews, and, of course, not all the Jews rejected Jesus.

Without specifically identifying it, however, Watts also seems to be referencing Rom 11:11, where Paul says, “I say then, Have they [the Jews] stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles.” Like Paul, Watts’s stanza does not say that the Jewish refusal led God to abandon them, but that Christianity had broken out of its originally Jewish identity to encompass also the Gentiles. The main point in the hymn is that “We” must take the feast “humbly” because the “Gentiles” were not the first to be invited to it.

Jews and Gentiles/Greeks as Representatives of Humanity References to the Jews also come in passages where they are linked with another people group in a negative, positive, or sometimes an ambivalent sense. In these cases, Watts seems to have intended the combination to be a synonym for all of humanity. For example, “Vain are the hopes the sons of men” (A94), based on Rom 3:19–22, begins with the following stanzas.

Vain are the Hopes the Sons of Men On their own Works have built; Their Hearts by Nature all unclean, And all their Actions Guilt.

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Let Jew and Gentile stop their Mouths Without a murm’ring Word, And the whole Race of Adam stand Guilty before the Lord.

Here Watts “translates” the phrase “all the world” (v. 19) as “Jew and Gentile” (representative of “the whole Race of Adam”) to show that “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). Similarly, the fourth stanza of “So did the Hebrew prophet raise” (A112) paraphrases the “whosoever” of John 3:15, “That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life,” as “The Jew beholds the glorious Hope, / Th’ expiring Gentile lives” to show that salvation is offered freely to all, regardless of one’s ethnic or former religious heritage.

A scriptural background that recurs several times in Watts’s hymns is 1 Cor 1:22–23, “For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock and unto the Greeks foolishness,” as can be seen in the following stanzas from various texts.

Christ and his Cross is all our Theme; The Mysteries that we speak Are Scandal in the Jews Esteem, And Folly to the Greek. (A119, st. 1) Let Jews and Greeks blaspheme aloud, And treat the holy Child with scorn; Our Souls adore th’ Eternal God Who condescended to be born.13 While Jews on their own Law rely, And Greeks of Wisdom boast, I love th’ Incarnate Mystery, And there I fix my Trust. (“Dearest of all the names above,” B148, st. 4) “Greeks” and “Jews” are also used to represent the whole human race in Watts’s paraphrase of 1 Cor 13, where his version of “Though I speak with tongues of men and of angels” (v. 1) becomes “Had I the Tongues of Greeks and Jews, / And nobler Speech that Angels use” (1:1–2).

Two important references to Jews and Gentiles (or Greeks) as representative of humanity are in Watts’s versions of Pss 87, “God in his earthly temple lays,” and 149, “All ye that love the Lord rejoice.”

“The king of glory sends his son” (B136, st. 4). See also the similar line in “Go preach my gospel, saith the Lord (A128), st. 3: “[‘Go heal the Sick, go raise the Dead, / Go cast out Devils in my Name; / Nor let my Prophets be afraid, / Tho Greeks reproach, & Jews blaspheme’].”

13

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research Watts titled Ps 87 “The Church the Birth-place of the Saints; or, Jews and Gentiles united in the Christian Church.”

In paraphrasing verse 4, “I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon to them that know me: behold Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia; this man was born there,” the author stresses that the population of “Zion” (the church) will include “Egypt and Tyre and Greek and Jew,” who “Shall there begin their Lives anew.” “All ye that love the Lord rejoice” (Ps 149) calls on those who “love the Lord” to “let your songs be new” (1:1–2) and observes that “The Jews, the People of his Grace, / Shall their Redeemer sing; / And Gentile Nations join the Praise / While Zion owns her King” (st. 2). The Jews are here acknowledged as the people through whom God’s grace was revealed, and, though they must accept Christ like anyone else, the “Gentile Nations” are to join with them in praise. There is certainly no hint of racial exclusion here.

The Debt Owed by Christians to the Jews One of the most interesting features of Watts’s mentions of the Jews is his acknowledgement that Judaism is essentially the bedrock upon which the Christian church was founded. This is hinted at in “How Rich Are Thy Provisions, Lord” (discussed above), when he notes that “Thine ancient Family the Jews / Were first invited to the Feast,” but is more fully and clearly developed in “Gentiles by nature we belong” (A114).

Gentiles by Nature we belong To the wild Olive-wood; Grace took us from the Barren Tree And graffs [sic] us in the Good.

With the same Blessings Grace endows The Gentile and the Jew; If pure and holy be the Root, Such are the Branches too. (sts. 1–2) Watts lists the scriptural source for the hymn as Rom 11:16–17: “And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert grafted in among them, and with them partakes of the root and fatness of the olive tree; Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee.” The context of Paul’s writing is his “heart’s desire and prayer to God” that Israel “might be saved” (Rom. 10:1), his question of whether or not God has “cast away” the Jews (11:1), and his answer that there is still “a remnant according to the election of grace” (11:5). In this hymn for the dedication of children, Watts picks up Paul’s metaphor of grafting a wild olive branch into the trunk of a tree as a symbol of the fact that Christianity has been grafted onto the trunk of Judaism. It is particularly important to note that it is not the Jews who constitute the “Barren Tree” but the Gentiles, who have been rescued from barrenness by being grafted into the “pure and holy” “Root” of Judaism.

A similar thought occurs in the fifth stanza of Watts’s version of Ps 47, “O for a shout of sacred joy.”

The stanza “translates” clauses from verses 4 and 7–8 of the psalm.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research Watts In Israel stood his antient Throne,

Psalm 47 He shall choose our inheritance for us, the

He lov’d that chosen Race,

excellency of Jacob whom he loved. (4)

But now he calls the World his own,

God is the King of all the earth (7)

And Heathens taste his Grace.

God reigneth over the heathen (8)

The stanza could be read as a hint of supersessionism, especially since “lov’d” is in past tense; however, there is no reference to Israel or the Jews having been replaced or rejected, merely that God’s love has now expanded beyond that one people group to encompass the entire human race.

The Worship of Jews and Gentiles Finally, we come to several texts in which Watts seems to suggest an equality in the efficacy of worship by both Jews and Gentiles. The hymn writer made several paraphrases of Ps 50, two of which are nearly identical except for their metrical arrangement, “The Lord, the sovereign sends his summons forth” (“To a New Tune,” 10.10.10.10.10.10) and “The God of glory sends his summons forth” (“To the old proper Tune,” 10.10.10.10.11.11). In both cases, Watts applies the psalm to “The last Judgment” (title). At the end of the “New Tune” paraphrase Watts attached the following note.

All the Saints have made a Covenant with God by Sacrifice, (as in the Text [of Ps 50]) and as it were set their Names to God’s Covenant of Grace, ratified by the Sacrifice of Christ of eternal virtue; Tho’ the Jews did it in the antient Forms of Worship, and the Gentiles in the New. (p. 137).

The sentence seems to be intended to explain stanza 3, which is a gloss on verse 5 of the psalm, “Gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice.”

Behold my Covenant stands for ever good, Seal’d by th’ Eternal Sacrifice in Blood, And sign’d with all their Names; the Greek, the Jew, That pay’d the antient Worship or the new, There’s no Distinction here: Come, spread their Thrones, And near me seat my Favorites and my Sons.

In this remarkable stanza, Watts acknowledges that though the worship practices of the Old Testament Hebrews may have been “ceremonial” and were abrogated by the coming of Christ, they were still the expressions of people who were being faithful to God and were thus acceptable to him. While Watts, together with most Christians, believed that since the resurrection acceptance of Christ is necessary for salvation, he nevertheless made it plain that, in his view, the faithful Jews of the Old Testament, as well as later Jews who believed in Jesus, were among the saved who could offer acceptable worship to God. Two other texts contain similar references. “Bless, O my soul, the living God,” part 1 of his Long Meter paraphrase of Ps 103, mentions that God showed his power and gave his commandments through

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research Moses, “But sent his Truth and Mercy down / To all the Nations by his Son” (st. 7), then ends with the following stanza, which links “The Gentile with the Jew” “In Work and Worship so divine.”

[Let the whole Earth his Power confess, Let the whole Earth adore his Grace; The Gentile with the Jew shall join In Work and Worship so divine.] (st. 8) The first five stanzas of “God of eternal love” (Ps 106 pt. 2) present a catalogue of ancient Israel’s failures and God’s faithfulness, ending with a sixth stanza that repeats nearly verbatim lines from his “O for a shout of sacred joy” quoted above.

Let Israel bless the Lord, Who lov’d their antient Race; And Christians join the solemn Word Amen to all the Praise.

At the end of the hymn Watts included a note of explanation about its text, which reads in part, “Tho’ the Jews now seem to be cast off, yet the Apostle Paul assures us that God hath not cast away his people whom he foreknew. Rom. 11. 2. Their unbelief and Absence from God is but for a Season, for they shall be recalled again. V. 25.

26” (280). It is important to note in this stanza that the Jews (“Israel”) are not linked with another ethnic group (“Gentile” or “Greek”) as in the previous examples, but with “Christians.” This is another statement that faithful Jews of the Old Testament era and faithful Christians of the New Testament era (whether Gentiles or ethnic Jews) worship the same God and have the same access to him.

One final example that perhaps sums up Watts’s overall attitude about the Jews is in the third (last) stanza of “Not different food or different dress” (A126), titled “Charity and Uncharitableness.”

Let Pride and Wrath be banish’d hence, Meekness and Love our Souls pursue: Nor shall our Practice give Offence To Saints, the Gentile or the Jew. A stanza such as this certainly calls into question any statement that Watts was racially antisemitic in writing his hymns and indicates that his references to the Jews had no intention of causing “Offence.” His hope, like that of Paul, was that the Jews would ultimately accept Jesus of their own free will, and that Gentile and Jewish Christians would join together in worship of God. CONCLUSION As we have seen, Isaac Watts’s hymnic references to the Jews are not always what they appear to be on the surface. Many of the references have a negative connotation, but an examination of their scriptural backgrounds, their contexts as part of an entire hymn, Watts’s purposes in writing them, and other 31

Pacific Journal of Theological Research information shows that in the vast majority of cases these allusions referred either to the unfaithful Jews of the Old Testament or to the Hebrew religious leaders or others of Jesus’ time, and that Watts’s intention was not a condemnation of the Jews as a whole or as a race. On the contrary, he readily admitted the debt owed by Christians to the Jews and held, with Paul, that God still had a plan for them. Of course, as with other Christians, he believed that Old Testament religion had been superseded by the New Testament, and that the Jewish leaders had a role in the crucifixion of Christ, but it appears that Watts did not harbor undue hostility toward the Jews as a race of people, and his hymns certainly demonstrate no encouragement whatever toward persecution or disadvantaging of them. Indeed, he went out of his way to say that “our Practice” should not “give Offense” to them.

This is not to say, however, that these hymns, which have mostly disappeared from common use anyway, should necessarily be sung by modern congregations: they are too susceptible of misunderstanding.

In a post-Holocaust world, calling the Jews “envious” or “spiteful,” or linking “hell and the Jews” is surely out of place, regardless of the author’s original aim. The problem with many of Watts’s references to the Jews is not so much in his probable intention as it is in how they might be (and have been) misconstrued by modern congregations and critics.

The perceived antisemitic elements in Watts’s hymns result principally from two things: his tendency to use the word “Jews” in a manner that often disguises the original biblical context and is thus susceptible to misinterpretation, and his combining of verses from different parts of Scripture. While it has been shown that in his use of the terms “Jew” or “Jews” he usually had in mind specific groups of Jews, these terms are too broad not to be subject to misrepresentation. In these instances, we could wish that Watts had been more precise in his choice of words.

The hymn writer had a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures, and in both Hymns and Spiritual Songs and The Psalms of David Imitated he brought the full range of that knowledge to bear on the song of the church. Thus, in Ps 22 he could have the “Jews” “shake their heads” and laugh in scorn at Jesus on the cross, or bring the words “envious” and “envy” from the New Testament into Ps 118. Most of the time, Watts’s juxtapositions from different parts of the Bible are creative and enhance the message of the text. 14 In the case of some references, however, the combinations result in paraphrases that to modern sensibilities can come across as derogatory or even hateful, and while that was probably not at all what Watts intended, it removes these hymns from potential use.

In his 2010 article “From Experiential Educator to Nationalist Theologian: The Hymns of Isaac Watts,” John M. Hull described what he believed to be an “imperial theology” in Watts’s familiar “Jesus shall reign where e’er the sun.” In concluding his discussion of this hymn, Hull wrote that “Watts … did not intend to create an imperial theology. He intended to make the psalms meaningful for Christian worshippers.”15 In like manner, it can be said that Watts did not intend to express antisemitic viewpoints in

A good example is his allusion to Phil 4:19, “But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus,” in the first stanza of his CM version of Ps 23, “My shepherd will supply my need.”

15 John M. Hull, “From Experiential Educator to Nationalist Theologian: The Hymns of Isaac Watts,” Bulletin of the Hymn Society of Great Britain and Ireland 264, vol. 19, no. 9 (July 2010), 269.

14

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research his hymns. He intended to write hymns and psalm versions that would be meaningful for Christian worshippers. If in the process he sometimes made references that today are not viable, we must recognize that fact, learn from it, and be grateful for his other work, which has enriched Christian congregational singing for more than 300 years.

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THROUGH ‘JESUS ONLY’: J. K. ARCHER, PUBLIC THEOLOGY, AND BAPTIST IDENTITY IN AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND A. D. Clark-Howard Carey Baptist College, Auckland Charles Sturt University, Sydney John Kendrick Archer (1865-1949) was a New Zealand Baptist minister and politician who served an active ministerial and political career within the Baptist Union of New Zealand and New Zealand Labour Party.

Despite his enigmatic and unique blend of political and pastoral offices—serving in various English and New Zealand Baptist pastorates, as president of both the Baptist Union of New Zealand and the New Zealand Labour Party, three-term Mayor of Christchurch, and appointed member of the Legislative Council—Archer remains an underexamined figure within both the religious and political history of New Zealand and in wider Baptist studies.1 This article examines the first decade of Archer’s time in New Zealand where he emigrated from England, draws together an analysis of the social and political currents which shaped his context, examines his own turbulent career within the years of World War I, and offers a reading of a selection of Archer’s preaching and other addresses. I argue that the period between two sermons delivered to the Assembly of Baptist Union of New Zealand—“Jesus Only” in 1910 and “Covetousness” in 1918—represents a maturing and crystallising of Archer’s public theological vision which he pursued with force into his later years. Finally, I conclude by setting this analysis of Archer within a paradigm of public theology in order to offer insights into the field of Baptist studies and theology.

BAPTIST AND NATIONAL IDENTITY IN EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY NEW ZEALAND J. K. Archer arrived at the pastorate of Napier Baptist Church in 1908 from England in his forty-third year.

He entered a growing and increasingly buoyant Union situated amidst a developing post-British colony which, despite its youth, was approaching its own unique social existence and consolidation simultaneous to the development of the Baptist church. From its formal inception in 1882, the Baptist Union of New Zealand saw significant growth in both congregations and members at the turn of the twentieth century.

Within the twelve years from 1903-1914 there was an increase of 59% in local church membership.2 This

Though he appears in various political and church histories, only two scholarly publications exist on Archer in and of himself, both written in the 1990s. See: Martin Sutherland, “Pulpit or Podium? J. K. Archer and the Dilemma of Christian Politics in New Zealand,” The New Zealand Journal of Baptist Research 1 (1996): 26–46; and Barry Gustafson, “Archer, John Kendrick,” in Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, vol. 3, ed. Claudia Orange (Wellington: Allen & Unwin. 1996), 16–17. This does not include a biography commissioned by the New Zealand Baptist Historical Society in the 1970s which remains the most extensive secondary account of Archer’s life to date. See: N. R. Wood, “John Kendrick Archer: Baptist Minister—Christian Socialist 1865-1949,” Bulletin of the New Zealand Baptist Historical Society 7 (1970): 1–22.

2 J. Ayson Clifford, A Handful of Grain: The Centenary History of the Baptist Union of N.Z., vol. 2 (Wellington: New Zealand Baptist Historical Society, 1984), 71.

1

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research was a deliberate and fruitful result of an effort for growth and development in the Union; the 1901 Assembly resolved to form at least one new local church each year.3 This goal was quickly surpassed, yet alongside this increase Baptists in New Zealand were searching to find their own sense of coherency and identity within the new settler society. Whereas dissenting traditions in England had long-established practices of nonconformity, the general ecclesial situation was markedly different in Aotearoa, a dynamic which Archer himself wrestled with during the war years. Entering with growth into the new century, Baptists in New Zealand were nonetheless struggling to mark out their own identity in the “new” world.4 The Union’s new life reflected wider cultural and social forces at play. Within just six decades of European settlement, New Zealand settler society had quickly developed and organised highly functioning social and political institutions. In the eyes of the emerging settler nation and wider colonial imagination, factors such as the development of political and legal structures based off the Westminster system, nearuniversal primary school education, giving women the vote, developing transport links across a geographically diverse country, building an agricultural economy supplying Britain, and even supporting a basic pension scheme gave the young colony an attitude and reputation of progressivity and equality.5 James Belich refers to this phase as the “second type” of European colonisation in Aotearoa—what he terms “recolonisation”—the making of a new society in search of a “better Britain.”6 The remarkable and disruptive rate of European population growth and development in the late nineteenth century, in Belich’s approximation, created an unstable collective settler identity that marked the transition into the twentieth century. The result, however, was a re-narration of New Zealand as a nation for its own end; “from embryonic superpower to the world’s social laboratory.”7 New Zealand society saw itself as “co-owners of the British empire” rather than “subjects of it.”8 Thus, New Zealand was to be like Britain, but a better Britain “without the mistakes.”9 Archer was attracted to New Zealand for its radical reputation and egalitarian social policies. In England, the undeniable figure in his life had been that of John Clifford. Clifford was a personal friend and mentor for Archer who wrote him a glowing commendation to the Union in New Zealand.10 Despite success in England, Archer left his position at Zion Chapel in Grimsby eager to study the economic and social conditions of New Zealand.11 Napier provided him a chance to do so as he took to various ministerial and political platforms to discuss the socialism he inherited under Clifford. During his time at Napier Baptist, Archer preached widely on social topics, delivering a six-week lecture series on Christian socialism

Clifford, A Handful of Grain, 71.

Martin Sutherland, Conflict and Connection: Baptist Identity in New Zealand (Auckland: Archer, 2011), 81–94.

5 Michael King, The Penguin History of New Zealand (Auckland: Penguin, 2003), 283.

6 James Belich, Paradise Reforged: A History of the New Zealanders from the 1800s to the Year 2000 (Auckland: Penguin, 2001), 29–30.

7 Belich, Paradise Reforged, 77. This process of European settlement and recolonisation is occurring at the simultaneous dispossession and struggle for identity and resistance of Māori who continued to resist the domination of British settler society throughout this epoch in which the myth of their decline was most persistent. See also Ranginui Walker, Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou: Struggle Without End (Auckland: Penguin, 1990), 186–210.

8 James Belich, “How Much Did Institutions Matter? Cloning Britain in New Zealand,” in Exclusionary Empire: English Liberty Overseas, 1600-1900, ed. Jack P. Green (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 249.

9 Belich, “How Much Did Institutions Matter?” 250.

10 For Archer’s various commendations see New Zealand Baptist, June 1908, 114.

11 Wood, “John Kendrick Archer,” 5.

3 4

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research in 1910.12 In 1913, he became editor of the United Labour Leader and increasingly involved with the Social Democratic Party which was later absorbed into the founding of the New Zealand Labour Party in 1916. 13 Though enthusiastic for the potential of radical social reform in New Zealand, Archer did experience frustration with the political scene later in life.

Influencing many socialist political movements during this period was a strong postmillennial eschatology—a commonly held assumption that the gradual progression of Western civilisation towards equality and freedom would inaugurate the return of Jesus Christ. Though it was not unanimous, a stream of interest regarding socialism, as a means for a social understanding of the gospel being realised amidst the political and economic structures of society, ran through the Baptist Union of New Zealand, and certainly in wider Baptist circles abroad.14 As early as 1890 the denominational periodical, the New Zealand Baptist, raised the “labour question” as one of its most pressing concerns, albeit presenting the issue with a rather cautious stance.15 By the turn of the century, a progressive eschatological atmosphere was palpable: “The days are hastening now towards the establishment of the Kingdom of God amongst men.… His authority extends to every province of human energy. To make that authority effective and supreme is the duty of the true Christian, who must live in the world and not apart from it; in the world, but not of it; a force to leaven and purify.”16 This type of language and theological thinking was hardly unusual during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, though more commonly associated with liberal Protestantism in America. As the American Baptist Walter Rauschenbusch wrote in his influential Christianity and the Social Crisis, at the core of this understanding of the gospel “is not a matter of getting individuals into heaven but of transforming the life of earth into the harmony of heaven.”17 Though Archer read figures like Rauschenbusch, he was primarily influenced by British Baptist and socialist thinkers, specifically organisations who advocated for non-revolutionary socialism, such as the Fabian Society of which he was a member.18 Prominent Baptists such as Clifford, while somewhat paralleling the social gospel movement in North America, held to their own distinct and generative form of Christian socialism.19 The level of public engagement within British nonconformity during this time achieved a remarkable amount of social and political influence, one pertinent example being the tax strikes against the Educational Act of 1902 led by Clifford which Archer himself participated in.20

Wood, “John Kendrick Archer,” 8.

Gustafson, “Archer, John Kendrick,” 16–17.

14 John Tucker, A Braided River: New Zealand Baptists and Public Issues 1882-2000 (Bern: Peter Lang, 2013), 23.

15 “The Question of the Hour,” New Zealand Baptist, May 1890, 65. See also: Laurie Guy, Shaping Godzone: Public Issues and Church Voices in New Zealand 1840-2000 (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2011), 198.

16 A. S. Adams, “The Relation of the Church to the Social Problems of the Age,” New Zealand Baptist Handbook: 1906-1907, 10-11.

17 Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis (New York: Macmillan, 1907), 65.

18 For a treatment of Archer’s ideological influences see: Sutherland, “Pulpit or Podium?” 26–46.

19 Matthew Tennant, “Modern Implications of John Clifford’s Theological Understanding of Socialism,” in Baptists and the World: Renewing the Vision: Papers from the Baptist Historical Society Conference, Prague, Czech Republic, July 2008, eds. John H. Y. Briggs and Anthony R. Cross (Oxford: Regents Park, 2011), 96–101.

20 David Bebbington, Baptists Throughout the Centuries: A History of a Global People, 2nd ed. (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2018), 134; Wood, “John Kendrick Archer,” 4–5. See also: David Bebbington, The Nonconformist Conscience: Chapel and Politics 1870-1914 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982), 127–152. Wood records that Archer had a number of books seized which he then bought back at auction.

Wood, “John Kendrick Archer,” 4–5.

12 13

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research This period in early twentieth century Aotearoa also saw the emergence of party politics and the rise of unionism. By 1912, the Liberal government, the first organised political party in New Zealand, after a period of decline was replaced by the newly formed Reform Party. Amidst this shift in power was the rise of the New Zealand Labour Party. New Zealand’s population was experiencing an increasing disparity between social and economic strata, the cost of living was increasing, and there was a shortage of housing and affordable rental properties.21 The Liberal government was increasingly pushed to the centre and Labour’s approach spoke more fruitfully to those interested in socialism.22 The rise of unionism culminated in the 1913 Great Strike, which lasted until early 1914, bringing New Zealand’s economy to a near halt. 23 Policies of redistribution and egalitarianism became an attractive option amidst wealth inequality and high costs of living.

The Labour Party contained a vocal minority, which included Archer, who were inspired by religious and Christian ideals.24 Archer was particularly involved in the formation of the New Zealand Labour Party, though his failure to be elected to the House of Representatives diminished his influence in the party later on. Such was his standing in these early years of Labour’s development, his commitment to the party was noted numerous times in Parliamentary tributes given in the Legislative Council after his death. Then-leader of the Council, David Wilson, commented: “There have been quite a large number of ministers of the Gospel who have been associated with the Labour party, but I think it would be true to say that there was never one in the Labour movement or out of it who was so highly respected and widely known as the late Reverend J. K. Archer.”25 This forging of political and party identity can be seen within the wider ecosystem of societal identity seeking the emergence of a supposedly utopian colonial nation.

J. K. ARCHER AMIDST THE WAR YEARS As alluded to, the years at home in New Zealand society during the First World War were marked by a variety of different social and economic issues. Despite relatively sedated economic movement during the period of 1900-1914, New Zealand society was undergoing dramatic change regarding the influx of European settlers and processes of industrialisation. Along with this change came a gradual rise in the cost of living, unemployment—which peaked in 1908-1909—and a shortage of affordable rental accommodation, especially in the big cities.26 The Great War exasperated these conditions. Within the first year of the War, the cost of food for an average family rose by 16.5%, roughly the same inflation that occurred over 20 years prior.27 In the end, between July 1914 and July 1919, the cost of rent, food, fuel, and

Barry Gustafson, Labour’s Path to Political Independence: Origins and Establishment of the New Zealand Labour Party 1900-19 (Auckland: Auckland University Press/Oxford University Press, 1980), 96–101.

22 King, Penguin History, 307, 322.

23 James Watson, “The Continuation of Politics: Parliamentarians and the Great War,” in New Zealand Society at War 1914-1918, ed.

Steven Loveridge (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2016), 52.

24 Gustafson, Labour’s Path to Political Independence, 120–131.

25 New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, vol. 281, 1948, 978.

26 Gustafson, Labour’s Path to Political Independence, 96.

27 Steven Loveridge and James Watson, “Economic Mobilisation: New Zealand Business and the Great War,” in New Zealand Society at War 1914-1918, ed. Steven Loveridge (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2016), 166.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research electricity combined rose by one third in the four main urban centres of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin.28 Meeting the required industrial outputs put a strain on women, children, and older men, given that younger men were being sent to Europe.29 War profiteering was another area of concern and societal angst.30 These concerns and social inequalities would come into sharp focus in Archer’s 1918 presidential address, “Covetousness,” which we shall examine later.

Archer himself was undergoing a turbulent time in his life and career. Within the space of just a few years, Archer and his family moved across the country into various pastoral and chaplaincy settings, a period of life N. R. Wood calls “the broken years.”31 In late 1913, to his congregation’s disappointment, he completed his time at Napier Baptist to receive a call at Esk Street Baptist in Invercargill. By early 1916, Archer finished at Esk Street to take up the prominent pastorate of Vivian Street Baptist Church in Wellington where he would remain for only seventeen months before, once again, moving on to become an army chaplain at Tauherenikau military camp. This period of unsettlement finally ended after the War in 1919 when he became the pastor of Sydenham Baptist in Christchurch, a position in which he would remain until his formal retirement from pastoral ministry in 1932.

Throughout this time, Archer was actively preaching and teaching, often with special attention to both prophetic and apocalyptic literature in the Bible, as well as being politically active. At Esk Street, Archer preached on “Armageddon” and at Vivian Street ran a series of addresses on the book of Revelation during the mid-week prayer meeting.32 In Invercargill, Archer served as president of the local Workers Educational Association and was elected to the Borough Council. Amidst his chaplaincy at Tauherenikau he delivered his forceful sermon “Covetousness.” The decision to eventually settle in Christchurch was partly influenced by the terms of call, including space for Archer to pursue a political career while being a minister. The congregation at Sydenham—which eventually became Colombo Street Baptist—happily agreed.

The Maturing of a Public Theological Vision Martin Sutherland argues that the period during the years of World War I represents a sort of “midlife crisis” in which Archer is wrestling between his commitments to pastoral ministry and political office. Sutherland contends that after 1918, Archer’s political career becomes his primary focus born from frustration in finding New Zealand Baptists less politically active than the free church in England.33 “Had he stayed in Britain,” Sutherland writes, “it is possible Archer would have continued to direct his energies into the Church’s radical activities.”34 But instead, Sutherland argues that Archer turns primarily towards politics to practise his vision of Christian socialism, “resolving his personal struggle by choosing the podium above the pulpit.”35 This is too simplistic a reading; while Archer became more involved in national politics, he

Gustafson, Labour’s Path to Political Independence, 96.

Loveridge and Watson, “Economic Mobilisation,” 166.

30 Loveridge and Watson, “Economic Mobilisation,” 167.

31 See Wood, “John Kendrick Archer,” 10–15.

32 Wood, “John Kendrick Archer,” 10–11.

33 Sutherland, Conflict and Connection, 108–112.

34 Sutherland, “Pulpit or Podium?” 43.

35 Sutherland, Conflict and Connection, 112.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research did so as a committed minister of a local church and of the Baptist Union. Furthermore, his blending of political and pastoral offices was not without precedent within Archer’s own career in England.

Certainly, Archer’s political activity increased after World War I. In 1919, he stood unsuccessfully as the Labour candidate for the House of Representatives in Invercargill, a position he would attempt twice more in 1922 and 1928 in Christchurch, and another occasion still in 1931 in Kaiapoi. Though this parliamentary avenue failed Archer, from 1925 he was elected for three consecutive terms as Mayor of Christchurch, marking him as the first Labour mayor of a major New Zealand city.36 In 1929, after serving various stints as vice-president, Archer became the president of the New Zealand Labour Party. Yet throughout nearly all this time, Archer actively served his denomination, whether in his pastoring of Colombo Street Baptist, his extensive involvement with the Canterbury Westland Baptist Association, or his activity with the executive council of the Baptist Union. Wood maintains that Archer’s ministry in Christchurch “had two sides to the observer, one church, the other political. Archer saw these two sides as equal applications of the gospel of Christ, with the Church taking priority.” 37 Members of Colombo Street Baptist understood his political and ministerial careers as complementary, not competitive. When Archer decided not to run for another term as Mayor, one member noted: “our church has really benefitted from our Pastor holding the dual office. The addresses on Sundays have been practical and inspiring.” 38 When Archer completed his pastorate at Colombo Street after 13 years, then-Mayor of Christchurch, Dan Sullivan, a Roman Catholic, paid similar tributes, commenting on Archer’s fervent commitment to the churches he served and his genuine desire to work for church purposes. Sullivan remarked, “Mr. Archer has been a good member of the Labour party and a courageous fighter throughout his career, and I am convinced that his politics and fearless outlook are due to his religious convictions.”39 Archer remained a pastor who was as committed to the pulpit as he was to the political podium. For Archer it was not a choice of pulpit or podium, but pulpit and podium.

Furthermore, this increase in political activity after 1918 should not be seen as some sort of departure from Archer’s earlier life but rather as a relatively predictable progression right from his earliest years in pastoral ministry. In England, Archer was actively involved in public, political, and civic life while serving as a pastor. For example, almost immediately after his appointment at Zion, Grimsby, Archer became involved in a number of disputes over the temperance cause. This conflict culminated in somewhat of a feud between Archer and the local councillor running for mayoralty, Francis Evison, who owned a local public house. Archer very publicly denounced Evison’s (later successful) candidacy in a letter to the local newspaper as “a disgrace and a scandal to the town.”40 The rivalry ended in a successful lawsuit from Evison for libel. Archer held political office in Grimsby, too, being elected as the Labour candidate to the Grimsby Board of Poor Law Guardians in 1907, a locally elected board that managed social welfare, which he Peter Franks and Jim McAloon, The New Zealand Labour Party: 1916-2016 (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2016), 85.

Wood, “John Kendrick Archer,” 15. While Wood writes primarily for the purposes of denominational history, it is nonetheless not clear that Archer’s political positions were fundamentally born out of a frustration at the churches.

38 Quoted in Wood, “John Kendrick Archer,” 19.

39 Wood, “John Kendrick Archer,” 21.

40 E. Harrison, “Manuscript Detailing Archer’s Ministry at Grimsby,” received by the New Zealand Baptist Historical Society in 1977: J. K. Archer files, MA188, New Zealand Baptist Archive, 13-15.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research remained on until he left for Napier.41 Sutherland himself admits that the “picture we have of Archer at Grimsby is of an activist pursuing several causes at any one time in addition to his pastoral duties.”42 Of the recommendations which Archer received upon arriving to Aotearoa, the reference from the Mayor of Grimsby is indicative of his standing and reputation in the local community.43 It is not clear that after World War I, Archer makes a dramatic career shift into politics, leaving behind his commitment to church work such that, by 1918, “secular politics had become the preferred channel for his socialist Gospel.”44 Sutherland’s claim that Archer gave up his pastoral duties for the sake of political platform does not account for Archer’s ongoing commitment to the Baptist church. Instead, the two remain intertwined in a more complex way, as they had before and after Archer’s arrival to New Zealand. It is not clear whether Archer’s political positions were fundamentally born out of a frustration at the state of the Baptist Union and free church tradition in New Zealand however much he might have experienced irritations. The increase in political activity that occurred after the First World War is more likely a consequence of a developing and maturing career. Regarding motives, Archer’s “intervention in the public square” was born out of an insistence about the public foundation of the Christian life.45 More specifically, it arose out of a dynamic reading of the Bible, a feature which is amply demonstrated in his preaching.

Archer’s public theological creed is evidenced in an analysis of the development of his preaching during this time which reached maturation on the far side of the Great War. UNION SERMON AND OTHER ADDRESSES: “JESUS ONLY” AND “COVETOUSNESS” Archer’s preaching serves as an insight into the way his political understandings were intertwined with his reading of the Bible and understanding of Christianity. Indeed, the extent to which Archer merged the political and theological so closely in both vocation and ideology throughout his life remains noteworthy.

Archer’s parliamentary addresses were replete with biblical allusions and references to the Christian gospel.46 To make most of his points, whether in the pulpit or in parliament, Archer remained insistent that it was only a reading of the Bible which would enable real social change and progress. To one Baptist assembly, upon rhetorically inquiring whether the congregation knew the solutions to all society’s ills, Archer thrust his Bible onto the pulpit of Vivian Street Church and proclaimed, “Here it is!” 47 Archer, in both political and ministerial office, constantly referenced the Bible to make his political claims.

Harrison, “Manuscript,” 93–96.

Sutherland, “Pulpit or Podium?” 37.

43 New Zealand Baptist, June 1908, 114.

44 Sutherland, Conflict and Connection, 110.

45 Barry Gustafson, “Intervention in the Public Square: Baptists and Politics in New Zealand, 1916-19,” Bulletin of the New Zealand Baptist Historical Society 8 (1980): 2–7.

46 E.g., New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, vol. 260, 1941, 639-641, where Archer draws on the Genesis creation story, Jesus’ response to his disciples’ invocation of Elijah in Luke 9:51-56, and Jesus’ words on the cross in Luke 23:34 all in response to a debate on the morality of capital punishment.

47 G. T. Beilby, A Handful of Grain: The Centenary History of the Baptist Union of N.Z., vol. 3 (Wellington: New Zealand Baptist Historical Society, 1984), 101.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research Few sermons reflect this dynamic as well as two addresses delivered at the annual Assembly of the Baptist Union of New Zealand: “Jesus Only” in 1910 and “Covetousness” in 1918. Rather than representing a disillusionment with the church, these two addresses represent a thickening of Archer’s understanding of Christian socialism and public theology. Where “Jesus Only” is vague and idealistic, “Covetousness” is confident and direct. The turbulent time between the two sermons thus represents a maturing of Archer’s thought. This development is anticipated by his New Year’s message as president of the Baptist Union in between 1917 and 1918.

“Jesus Only” “Jesus Only” was delivered as the Union Sermon at the Assembly in 1910. The sermon follows an exposition of Matthew 17:8. Just as the Apostles “looked up” to see the transfigured Jesus, Archer implores the national Assembly to see “Jesus only” in all their dealings across society. He preached that “Jesus only must be our motto, our ideal, our standard of measurement, our goal,” arguing that “Jesus only is sufficient for reconciliation, cleansing, guidance, … to science … to economics … or to theology.” 48 Archer had a particular idea of political reform based on a redistribution of wealth and socialistic economics. He made no pretences regarding his agenda, explicitly denoting this form of political action as a divine imperative by boldly claiming that “socialism is merely an attempt to place Jesus on the throne of society.”49 While it could be easy to dismiss this as simple cultural captivity, Archer ties his socialism to a sustained reading of the Bible. It is not that he is merely making theological claims and then making social claims. Rather, Archer makes theological claims about the nature of the public space, the unfolding history of the world, and the observable “progress” of humankind. Christ’s lordship is understood as lordship in contemporary, legislative terms and in modern politics. “Jesus, Jesus only, was [to the lame man at Bethesda] his legislative authority. He only is ours.”50 Thus, “we must claim all life for Jesus, home life, business life, political life, and recreative life, as well as religious. We must destroy the distinction between sacred and secular by making all life sacred.”51 Yet, there can be no doubt that cultural and theological currents were shaping Archer’s beliefs, particularly a pre-War progressivist eschatology. As has already been examined, theological currents such as postmillennialism were prominent in the time and, although he never lost a certain kind of eschatological flair, Archer himself reflected with retroactively misguided optimism in “Jesus Only.” Archer is relatively dismissive regarding a number of contemporary social issues: “Legalised slavery is virtually dead. Legalised disability for womanhood is dying. Arbitration is replacing war. The drink traffic is doomed. … Jesus, rightly understood, interpreted, applied, is the solution of all social, national and international problems.”52 Archer is less specific regarding how this Christocentric social ethic should be “rightly understood” and applied.

Social issues, and their remedy, are only vaguely treated. By 1918 in “Covetousness,” Archer develops a far J. K. Archer, “Jesus Only,” New Zealand Baptist, January 1911, 11.

Archer, “Jesus Only,” 11.

50 Archer, “Jesus Only,” 12.

51 Archer, “Jesus Only,” 13.

52 Archer, “Jesus Only,” 11, 13.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research clearer and more specific picture. The period between “Jesus Only” and “Covetousness” represents a period of growth for Archer in which he turns his ideals towards concrete social issues around him, more carefully applying his theological understanding of the public and the political.

“Covetousness” “Covetousness” was a homiletical bombshell in its time. As a pamphlet, it was distributed well beyond the Baptist Assembly to which it was delivered.53 Wood writes of the sermon as “one of the most outspoken presidential addresses” ever delivered, arguing that “[i]n some respects, the address ranks as one of the greatest ever given by any president of the Union.”54 It remains a powerful example not only of Archer’s breadth of public theological thinking—representing for him somewhat of a manifesto—but also of the political and theological streams of the early twentieth century activistic Baptist tradition and identity.

“Covetousness” is an extensive reflection on a variety of social issues which Archer confronts.55 From a reading of Colossians, Archer defines covetousness at its core as a “desire for more … more than others possess.”56 Archer applies this definition of greed throughout the sermon to an astonishing range of issues including war profiteering, imperialism, land ownership, international mission, wealth inequality, the labour question, local ministers’ wages, and parliamentary power. Archer first reflects on geopolitical conflicts regarding the First World War. Despite tracing the origins of the conflict on the German Kaiser’s desire for expansion and growth, Archer refuses to let this become a scapegoat for Britain and her colony’s economic self-interests: Let not us Britishers, however, wrap ourselves in a cloak of hypocrisy, and talk as if we are free from this Satanic spirit.… [The war profits] are outrageous. Not a farthing of them is justifiable. In England they are estimated to total anything up to £750,000,000 a year. In New Zealand they seem to be proportionately as great.… No wonder the Hon. W. D. Mackenzie, Minister of Agriculture, himself a farmer, speaks of our ‘sordid commercialism.’ In its presence we have little right to throw stones of criticism at Germany’s self-seeking. Fundamentally, competitive commercialism is the same all the world over.… It is the most un-Christian thing on the face of the earth. Before the war it was discredited. Now it is irrevocably disgraced.57 Refusing to justify Britain’s actions—actions which he clearly sees both his own and the Assembly’s complicity in—Archer turns to examine the conditions of British and European rule in Ireland and Africa respectively. The minority colonial rule in both these places, Archer contends, “are the fruits of covetousness, and exceedingly bitter to the taste.”58 Of the ongoing scramble for Africa, he reports: Landgrabbers, mostly white folk, are dividing up that giant continent without proper consideration of the rights of the natives. They are crowding the natives on to clearly defined reserves, small compared to the number of natives, and in constant danger of being reduced. The continental

For example, it appears often throughout Barry Gustafson’s account of Labour’s origins. See: Gustafson, Labour’s Path to Political Independence.

54 Wood, “John Kendrick Archer,” 13–14.

55 J. K. Archer, “Covetousness,” New Zealand Baptist, December 1918, 184–9.

56 Archer, “Covetousness,” 184.

57 Archer, “Covetousness,” 185.

58 Archer, “Covetousness,” 186.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research railways, the one already running from the Cape to Cairo, and another contemplated from East to West, open up vast territories for white men to exploit, at the expense of black.59 Quoting the editor of the International Review of Missions, Archer implored the Assembly with the message that mission work must proclaim Jesus Christ “as Lord of the whole life.” 60 Social, economic, and imperial reform is nothing short of an issue of the gospel: “Regeneration implies, includes, and impels the reconstruction of society.”61 Archer then turns to the social conditions of New Zealand in a fiery denouncement of land acquisition, property holding, wealth inequality, and working conditions. First, he compares the European settlement and acquisition of land in New Zealand to the actions of previous British tyrants: After William of Normandy had conquered England, he boldly claimed that all the land belonged to him … Vicious old Henry VIII suppressed the English monasteries, and thereby got a possession of a fifth, if not a third, of all the land in England.… The origins of land monopoly in New Zealand are scarcely less discreditable.… By force or guile we have taken 63,000,000 acres … from the Maoris [sic]. A lot of it was got for nothing, and a lot more for next-to-nothing.62 Here, Archer’s socialistic vision of government is his main agenda. He calls for the redistribution of wealth in an attempt to end poverty and the centralisation of property in order to break the hold of elite landowners.

Whatever the validity of such a view, Archer is explicit in calling the Assembly to political action. “Prayer will not produce the change,” he preached, “Votes alone will deal with them. Politicians laugh at prayers; but they tremble at votes.”63 However, Archer fundamentally sees the addressing of these social problems as an issue of discipleship. Despite demonstrating clear political agendas in “Covetousness,” the impetus and energy for such action is theological. Archer, through an exposition of Colossians 3:5, reflects on the purging of sin from the life of the church as an act of participation in the life and death of Christ. He ties the sacrifice of Jesus to the reality of a new life free from death and greed, such that Jesus’ death and resurrection are to be understood as “moral and spiritual experiences as well as historic facts.”64 Through the resurrection, we are given new life, “a life so new that covetousness has no place in it … covetousness may be slain, and should be. It may be slain instantly, and forever.”65 This represents an evolution in Archer’s public theological thought. In 1910, “Jesus Only” hinted at the way the gospel must be “rightly applied” to the issues of the day. After the turbulent period of the Great War, “Covetousness” emerges more confident. It is pertinent to note that “Covetousness” was delivered a month before Armistice. Despite the war fatigue that must have surely been present in the 1918 Assembly, Archer is uncompromising. By presenting a wide sweep of the various local and international consequences of covetousness, Archer once again calls for political action as a theological imperative. This time, however,

Archer, “Covetousness,” 186.

Archer, “Covetousness,” 186.

61 Archer, “Covetousness,” 186.

62 Archer, “Covetousness,” 186–187.

63 Archer, “Covetousness,” 189.

64 Archer, “Covetousness,” 188.

65 Archer, “Covetousness,” 188.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research he is clearer regarding what that precisely entails; a prophetic witness to the death and life of Jesus Christ concretely applied in political and social action.

Between the Pulpit and the Podium The force of “Covetousness” was anticipated by Archer’s New Year message to the churches in the New Zealand Baptist as president of the Baptist Union in 1918. In this address, Archer expressly calls for the reinvigoration of social action within the life of local congregations with a prophetic and eschatological urgency. Reflecting on the Apostle Paul’s words to be “ready,” Archer implores the churches to prepare with determination and steadfastness for the year ahead. The very reputation and potency of the church depended on it; reflecting on the perception of religious life from the soldiers he was ministering with, Archer argues that popular opinion “is not merely out of touch with the Churches but is positively full of wrath and resentment against the Churches.”66 He reasons that there is a “deeply held belief that the Churches are not Christian and are not representing Christ in the life of the community.”67 Instead “they are splitting theological hairs, emphasising ecclesiastical differences, winking at and even indulging in economic sins, instead of setting up the kingdom of God.”68 Archer then calls for a prophetic response on the part of Baptists: As Baptists we ought to be more ready than the members of any other Church. Our ancestors were in the true line of prophetic and apostolic succession. Would to God that all of us were prophets, not foretellers so much as forthtellers, men and women who live in touch with God and interpret Him to the age!… We require to dream Spirit-prompted apocalypses of our own, and then strive to get them actualised.… Not gazing into the sky, but working away at the earth, helping Him to re-create it is our chief business.69 Archer makes a connection to the biblical prophets, insisting that rather than studying them as static figures of history their critiques of economic injustice must be brought into the contemporary public square. In another later address reflecting on Baptist identity, Archer understands his own tradition as one with a rich prophetic heritage based on the total lordship of Christ. For Baptists, “the Christian Gospel has its social implications and applications, and to evade these is to deny our Lord.”70 The example of these various messages and sermons demonstrates Archer’s lasting concern to situate public and political witness amidst a social reading of the Bible. Furthermore, these manuscripts demonstrate that the period during the Great War, rather than fundamentally upending Archer’s public theological vision, developed and furthered it. By the end of 1918, Archer was more confident to enter the political world partly because he had specified and narrowed down on his calling and purpose. Archer’s life could accurately be read as an active attempt to live between the sacred and the secular; his pastoral and political callings irrevocably intertwined. Indeed, later, during a speech in the Legislative Council, Archer commented on his “peculiar position”: “When I speak here [in parliament] my friends tell me I am preaching J. K. Archer, “President’s New Year Message,” New Zealand Baptist, January 1918, 4.

Archer, “President’s New Year Message,” 4.

68 Archer, “President’s New Year Message,” 4.

69 Archer, “President’s New Year Message,” 4.

70 J. K. Archer, “The Distinctive Message and Mission of the Baptists,” address given to the Christchurch Minister’s Association, 1931: J. K. Archer files, MA188, New Zealand Baptist Archive, 5.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research sermons. When I preach in the pulpit, they tell me I am talking politics. I really do not know which is right.”71 As Barry Gustafson writes in his account of Archer, “there was no conflict between his political and religious activities; both were the same sacred vocation.”72 The pull, and union, between the pulpit and the podium remained at the generative centre of Archer’s calling, rather than as a source of contradiction.

POLITICAL ACTION, BAPTIST IDENTITY, AND PUBLIC THEOLOGY Archer offers a unique ministerial vision which takes seriously an understanding of Christian faith that is innately public. In this way, a public theology cannot be conceived of by simply translating Christian insights to a wider, secular public square. Instead, Archer imagines the wider secular public as a place in which Christ’s kingdom is already present, arguing for a theological understanding of political and social action through his own particular means of socialism. Archer therefore represents an understudied Baptist dynamic that imagines political action and social engagement for the church as key places of eschatological anticipation. Furthermore, in his practice, Archer understood this engagement with the public as innately tied to the pastoral office. Archer pursued his ministerial vocation in the confines of such an eschatological public through the medium of political and social action.

As Paul Fiddes has argued, at the heart of a Baptist theology lies the immediate rule of Jesus Christ over the life of the local congregation, a rule which seeks God’s eschatological purposes in and for this local community.73 Simon Woodman writes in his analysis of Baptist eschatology and nonviolence: “From their theologically driven and politically enacted rejection of Christendom, to their commitment to scripture as the revelation of Christ to each gathered community, Baptists were deeply motivated to play their part in inaugurating the kingdom of Christ that they believed was coming into being in their midst.” 74 Thus, as Martin Sutherland argues, the Baptist community “is rightly concerned with how it is to live in its real time context. Gathered in Christ’s name it seeks to harmonises its own with his story and, thus, with the Kingdom of God.”75 Archer constantly appealed to this prophetic calling. “Supremely,” he pronounced, “we need to study not what Amos, Isaiah, Ezekiel and John the Evangelist said and did when they were alive; but what they would say and do if they were alive now.”76 Archer’s vision of Christian socialism and political engagement can rightly be understood as an attempt to live in active anticipation of God’s eschatological purposes in “its real time context.” His ongoing commitment to the local church, at least implicitly, reflects a peculiarly Baptistic disposition.

Baptist identity within the study of public theology remains an underexamined opportunity. Archer, and other public Baptist leaders, such as J. J. North or John Clifford, provide historical examples of Baptists

New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, vol. 264, 1944, 415–16.

Gustafson, “Archer,” 17.

73 See Paul S. Fiddes, Tracks and Traces: Baptist Identity in Church and Theology (Eugene: Wipf and Stock/Milton Keyes: Paternoster, 2003), 85–86.

74 Simon P. Woodman, “There’s a New World Coming Baptists, Violence, and the End of the World,” Baptist Quarterly 50 (2019): 140.

75 Martin Sutherland, “Gathering, Sacrament and Baptist Theological Method,” Pacific Journal of Baptist Research 3 (2007): 41–57, 55.

76 Archer, “President’s New Year Message,” 4.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research who engaged in the public square in provocative and interesting ways.77 His work is a form of public and political theology before they were formally established as disciplines. It offers a fruitful resource for the development of contemporary Baptist public theology. Political action and witness, far from being a distraction from the “real” task of the church, is a participation in the eschatological preparation of society for the return of Jesus Christ. In line with this call for political holiness, public theology and Christian political action are not simply a useful contribution to the common good—though they are not less than this—but rather an eschatologically orientated participation in the mission of God. How precisely Baptists have embodied this remains an ongoing question of inquiry. In the example of J. K. Archer, public theology is found within the union of the pulpit and the podium. He understood his political calling as inherent to his pastoral vocation.

CONCLUSION This article has sought to give due attention to a underexamined figure within New Zealand and Baptist history. Limitations of space mandate that only brief vignettes be offered. First, I have situated Archer within the societal and denominational contexts into which he arrived at Napier Baptist in 1908. This arrival was to inaugurate a remarkable political and ministerial career in New Zealand, spanning a number of decades and contexts. I have argued that the period in Archer’s life between 1910 and 1918, rather than being some sort of crisis that resulted in a disillusionment with the church, is best understood as a maturation of his public theological creed. The fruits of this development are particularly observable in his preaching, “Jesus Only” and “Covetousness” revealing an increasingly thick and generative understanding of public and political action as inherent to the church’s mission and embodiment. This pastoral understanding of public theology offers exciting opportunities for understanding Baptist identity and its relationship to political witness and action.

For an account of J. J. North’s preaching, see: John Tucker, “The Ancient Word in the Modern World: The Preaching of J.J. North,” in Sacred Histories in Secular New Zealand, eds. Geoff Troughton and Stuart Lange (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2016), 139–53.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research

A CASE FOR MONO-ETHNIC CHURCHES1 Ian Hussey Director of Postgraduate Studies, Malyon Theological College INTRODUCTION In an increasingly globalised world, many Western churches have either become ethnically diverse or find themselves geographically located in ethnically diverse communities. Further, many Christians in Australia find themselves in ethnically diverse frontlines.2 Because of this growth in ethnic diversity, many churches are more ethnically diverse than they were a generation ago. Coinciding with this “natural” change has been a growing push for churches to be deliberately ethnically diverse, or what some would call “multicultural.”

Definitions vary significantly in this area. For the purpose of this paper, “multi-ethnic” refers to churches where no more than 80% of the congregation comes from the same ethnic group. 3 The term “multicultural” is reserved for churches that have embraced the ethnic and cultural diversity of their congregations and manifest that diversity in their operations. Hence it is possible for a church to be ethnically diverse but not multicultural if it continues to operate in a mono-cultural manner.

In contrast to the multi-ethnic or multicultural church is the mono-ethnic church. Using DeYoung’s definition this means that the congregation is made up of over 80% of people who belong to the same ethnic group and that the church operates from a mono-cultural paradigm. Most churches in Australia are mono-cultural Anglo churches. Any ethnic diversity in these churches is often explained by the presence of skilled migrants. These migrants deliberately choose to come to Australia and often want their children to grow up in an English-speaking church. Although some skilled migrants to Australia prefer churches aligned to their ethnic backgrounds, many are quite happy to embrace the mono-cultural Anglo approach.

However, at various times in its history, Australia has welcomed refugees to its shores as well. These migrants generally do not wish to leave their homeland but are forced to do so by some geopolitical or socioeconomic scenario. Although they are generally very thankful to be in Australia, their commitment to embracing the Australian culture is often tempered by the grief of having to leave their homeland. Frequently these refugees have little or no English and struggle to feel at home in English-speaking churches.

Understandably, these people wish to maintain their language and culture and they often do this by joining with, or forming, non-Anglo mono-ethnic churches, even if they attend an Anglo church as well. These churches not only provide worship services in their mother tongue but are a crucial social context which is

My thanks to Rev. Emil Rahimov and Rev. Dr Greg Peckman who have been my conversation partners on the question of mono ethnic churches and so have contributed many ideas to this paper.

2 “Your frontline is the place where you spend much of your time, where you meet people who don’t know Jesus.” London Institute of Contemporary Christianity, Life on the Frontline Leader's Guide (London: London Institute of Contemporary Christianity), 8.

Frontlines are places like workplaces, social groups, schools and unsaved family members.

3 Curtiss Paul DeYoung, United by Faith: The Multiracial Congregation as an Answer to the Problem of Race (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 2.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research accepting and supportive in what is sometimes a disorienting and, sadly, sometimes hostile environment. It is these churches that are the focus of this paper.

In the last 20 years there has been much interest in multicultural churches and their development.4 Much of this scholarship has emerged from the American context, which continues to be influenced by the legacy of slavery5, segregation and large-scale Latino migration—factors that are not relevant to the Australian context. According to Hardison, the vast majority of this scholarship has supported the case for multicultural churches and what he calls the development of the “multi-ethnic mandate” which says that all churches should strive to become as ethnically diverse as their surroundings.6 In the multi-ethnic Australian context, this mandate has serious implications for both Anglo and non-Anglo mono-ethnic churches. It means that mono-ethnic churches are operating outside of the will of God for church life. This article seeks to bring a more nuanced and contextual perspective to mono-ethnic churches through a multidisciplinary methodology utilising theology, history and social science.

In raising this topic, I realise that I might be accused of being against multiculturalism. However, that is not the case. When I was the senior pastor of a church, I pushed hard for cultural diversity in the congregation. My wife and I have taught conversational English to migrants on and off for over 20 years.

When we moved home and were looking for a new church, we deliberately chose an ethnically diverse congregation. In fact, the church we chose had over 60% of the congregation from non-majority ethnicities.

It was one of the most ethnically diverse churches in Australia, and we loved it! Far from disliking multiethnic congregations, I have greatly enjoyed them and would recommend them to others as well. However, as will be discussed below, the issue of mono-ethnic churches is a contextual and complex one.

DEBUNKING THE MULTICULTURAL MANDATE Hardison does a fine job in summarising the arguments for multicultural churches: The OT instructs Israel to welcome foreigners (Exod 22:21), and hospitality toward outsiders is a theme in the NT (Luke 10:25-37; 3 John 5-8). When Christ came as the Messiah for the Jews, he ministered across ethnic lines. His house will be a place of prayer “for all nations” (Mark 11:17), and his Gospel is now for all nations (Matt 28:20). Jesus also prayed that the church would be unified, which is a powerful witness to the watching world that Jesus was sent from the Father (John 17:21-23; cf. 13:34-35). Paul repeatedly affirms that Jews and Gentiles form “one new man” in Christ because the “dividing wall of hostility” has been abolished through the cross (Eph 2:1122), and the “mystery” of the Gospel has now been revealed in Christ (Eph 3:1-6). Jew/Gentile equality is also seen in the fact they are baptized by the same Spirit (1 Cor 12:14). Hence, the distinctions between Jews and Gentiles are gone; they are now one (Gal 3:28; Col 3:11). As a result, the NT shows the importance of Jews and Gentiles experiencing table fellowship,

See for example Mark DeYmaz, Building a Healthy Multi-Ethnic Church (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007); George Yancey, One Body, One Spirit: Principles of Successful Multiracial Churches (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003); Rodney M Woo, The Color of Church: A Biblical and Practical Paradigm for Multiracial Churches (Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2009); David Stevens, God's New Humanity: Biblical Theology of Multiethnicity for the Church (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2012).

5 This is not to imply that Australia does not also have a history of slavery: https://theconversation.com/was-there-slavery-inaustralia-yes-it-shouldnt-even-be-up-for-debate-140544.

6 Richard Hardison, "A Theological Critique of the Multi-Ethnic Church Movement: 2000-2013" (Unpublished PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2015) 4. https://repository.sbts.edu/handle/10392/4853.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research overcoming their cultural differences. When Peter allowed the church in Galatia to move in a homogeneous direction, Paul rebuked him for denying the “gospel” (Gal 2:11-14).

In addition, Paul’s sending church in Antioch displays multi-ethnic leadership (Acts 13:1-2). The church at Jerusalem even created seven new leadership positions to overcome a rift in the church that could be traced back to ethnic differences. The churches in Rome, Corinth and Ephesus were also multi-ethnic. Finally, John’s description of the heavenly assembly is certainly multiethnic, for the innumerable crowd surrounding Christ’s throne was “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Rev 7:9), and the heartbeat of every Christian should be that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matt 6:10). Hence, those who favor the multiethnic mandate poignantly ask, “If the kingdom of heaven is not segregated, then why on earth is your local church?7 In response to this evidence, Hardison asks five questions about the application of these texts to the US context:8 1. What is the relationship between the local church and the universal church, and which is in view in a particular passage?

2. To what extent do first-century Jew/Gentile relations correspond to ethnic distinctions in the United States today?

3. How does the NT concern for table fellowship between Jews and Gentiles influence this debate?

4. When the NT presents a church as multi-ethnic, should the interpreter treat this picture as descriptive or prescriptive?

5. How is the atonement related to racial reconciliation?

In answering these questions, Hardison reaches these conclusions about the mandate for all churches to be multi-ethnic:9 • • • • •

•

• •

Yes, Babel and Pentecost may be related, but Pentecost should lead Christians to contextualize the Gospel more, not less.

Yes, Scripture commands believers to show hospitality to the foreigner, but hospitality can take many forms.

Yes, Jesus said it would be a powerful evangelistic witness when Christians love one another, but such love does not have to be across ethnic lines to be meaningful.

Yes, Scripture teaches the oneness of the church, but such unity is often expressed beyond the congregational level.

Yes, Jews and Gentiles are now one in Christ, but this new reality is primarily the result of a covenantal shift happening in redemption history—not the result of the need to achieve ethnic diversity in the local church.

Yes, the atonement destroyed the wall of hostility that separated Jews and Gentiles (Eph 2:11-21), but Paul’s “wall” is neither racism nor a homogeneous worship environment—but the Mosaic Law. Yes, heaven is multi-ethnic, but we are not in heaven yet.

Yes, the church at Antioch was probably multi-ethnic, but their diverse leadership was the necessary by-product of first-generation missionary activity in the area.

As one who has been previously convinced of the theological mandate for all churches to strive to

be multicultural, I find Hardison’s argument that Scripture does not mandate churches to be multi-ethnic quite robust. Even if not all of his arguments are thoroughly convincing, they at least bring into question the suggestion that every church must be multicultural or multi-ethnic. He does not let white mono-cultural

7 8 9

Hardison, "A Theological Critique," 14–16.

Hardison, "A Theological Critique," 16.

Hardison, "A Theological Critique," 16–17.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research churches in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods off the hook, though, and concludes that they should be working towards being more ethnically diverse: “If the reader agrees that Scripture does not require

churches to be multi-ethnic, perhaps there is still an ache in his or her heart that longs for it anyway. If that groaning persists, be glad. I believe the instinct is right.”10 I encourage those who remain convinced of the universality of a multi-ethnic mandate to read Hardison’s thesis in full.

However, as a first step towards a more nuanced and contextually appropriate approach to the monoethnic church, whether it be Anglo or non-Anglo, Hardison’s work at least suggests they are not necessarily operating in an unbiblical manner. But what can we conclude when we look at mono-ethnic churches through the lens of church health?

ARE MULTICULTURAL CHURCHES HEALTHIER? One of the hypotheses of the multicultural church movement is that multicultural churches are healthier.

Based on the 2011 Australian National Church Life Survey (NCLS), Duncum, Pepper, Hancock and Powell have compared the vitality of Anglo mono-ethnic, non-Anglo mono-ethnic and multicultural churches based on the NCLS’s well-developed model of church vitality.11 They defined non-Anglo mono-ethnic churches as those with at least 60% of their attenders who were born in a particular non-English-speaking country or set of countries. There were 44 mono-cultural non-Anglo churches in the dataset. Mono-cultural Anglo churches (n = 2,147) were those churches in which at least 80% of attendees were born in an Englishspeaking country. The remaining churches were classified as multicultural (n = 623), defined as being comprised of at least two cultural groups.

The NCLS model of church vitality is based on nine core qualities:12 Core quality

Core quality headline indicator

Alive and growing Faith

I have experienced much growth in faith at my church

Vital and nurturing Worship

I always/usually experience inspiration during the service here

Strong and growing sense of I have a strong & growing sense of belonging here Belonging Clear and owned Vision

I am strongly committed to the vision, goals & direction here Our leaders encourage us to a great extent to use our gifts here

Hardison, "A Theological Critique," 193.

Ian Duncum et al., "A Comparison of the Vitality of Monocultural and Multicultural Churches," NCLS Occasional Paper 24 (2014).

The NCLS research is largely based on church attender’s self-perception and so is somewhat subjective. However, it is still a very sound basis for reflection.

12 Duncum et al., "A Comparison of the Vitality," 5.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research Inspiring

and

empowering

Leadership Openness to imaginative and I strongly agree our church is always ready to try new things flexible Innovation Practical and diverse Service

I have helped others informally in at least three of a number of listed ways (Secondary indicator: I regularly take part in community service, social justice or welfare activities of this church)

Willing and effective Faith-sharing I invited someone to church here in the last year (Secondary indicator: I regularly take part in evangelistic or outreach activities of this church) (Secondary indicator: I feel at ease talking about my faith and look for opportunities to do so) Intentional

and

welcoming Certain I would follow up someone drifting away from church

Inclusion The model also includes three attendance measures: •

Newcomers – the percentage of the congregation who joined the church in the last five years and who never previously attended or have not attended church for a long period.

• Young adult retention – the percentage of the congregation who are 15-19 years old and who have been attending for more than five years.

• Attendance change – percentage change in the size of the congregation over the previous five years.13 The analyses by Duncum et al. were conducted for young adult retention and newcomers, but not for attendance change due to a lack of longitudinal data.

The research revealed that mono-cultural non-Anglo churches performed better than mono-cultural Anglo churches across all core qualities, except that Anglo churches performed better on informal helping and no differently on participation in community service/justice/welfare activities and vision. The monocultural non-Anglo churches also performed better than multicultural churches in all the core qualities, except for informal helping and participation in the church’s outreach/evangelistic activities.14 However, the multicultural churches performed better than Anglo mono-cultural churches in most areas, except for service and participating in the evangelistic/outreach activities of their church where Anglo churches performed better.

Ruth Powell et al., Enriching Church Life, 2nd ed. (Adelaide: Mirrabooka Press & NCLS Research, 2012). Of course, such growth measures do not reflect the witness borne by a church to the character God and the kingdom either corporately or individually.

14 Duncum et al., "A Comparison of the Vitality," 5–6.

13

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research Mono-cultural non-Anglo churches were found to be particularly strong in three areas: 1. Worship (46% of attendees always experienced inspiration in worship, compared with 28% of attendees at Anglo churches and 35% of attendees at multicultural churches).

2. Faith-sharing (e.g. 52% of attendees had invited someone to church in the last year, compared with 35% and 37% of attendees at Anglo and multicultural churches respectively).

3. Inclusion (24% of attendees said they would certainly follow up a drifter from church, compared with 9% and 13% of attendees at Anglo and multicultural churches respectively).15 Mono-cultural non-Anglo churches were also strong in the area of sense of belonging — 60% of participants identified that their sense of belonging was strong and growing, compared to 51% for multicultural churches and 50% for Anglo churches.

These strengths are not surprising. One can understand that in the midst of the unsettling consequences of unwilling migration, worship services in your mother tongue would be highly inspiring.

Given the dislocation associated with migration, it is relatively easy for Christians to reach out to others within their ethnic minority who do not go to church. They can offer them a very attractive “homeland” experience and a powerful sense of belonging in a strange land. The strong sense of community in nonAnglo mono-ethnic churches makes the follow-up of those who are drifting away not unexpected.

In terms of newcomers, 11% of mono-cultural non-Anglo attendees were not attending any church five years earlier compared to 7.2% for multicultural churches and 6.6% for mono-cultural Anglo churches.

Similarly, mono-cultural non-Anglo churches were strongest at retaining young adults (3.3%), compared to 2.3% in multicultural churches and 2.0% in mono-cultural Anglo churches.

Mono-cultural non-Anglo churches also have higher percentages of young adults attending the same church as their parents. This would seem to confirm anecdotal evidence that second-generation migrants are less inclined to reject the mono-cultural church of their parents than some have expected. It is suggested that as a result of thankfulness and loyalty to their parents, that Australian-born children of migrants remain committed to the church of their parents even though it is largely irrelevant to them. It is the third generation who are more likely to move away from the ethnic churches of their grandparents. As DeYmaz says: it has been my experience in discussing this very thing with ethnic pastors that virtually all agree (despite what they and their congregants might otherwise desire): 1.0s16 will have “two feet in” the ethnic-specific church; 2.0s will likely have “one foot in and one foot out;” and third generation offspring will in most cases have “two feet out.”17 However, it should be noted the statistical variance around young adult retention in non-Anglo monocultural churches is quite large — some churches are doing much better than others in this area.18 The research conclusions are not definitive for a number of reasons apart from the relatively small sample size of non-Anglo mono-cultural churches. The results from the mono-cultural non-Anglo churches may be explained by their stronger evangelical persuasion than the other types of churches, rather than just

Duncum et al., "A Comparison of the Vitality," 6.

“1.0” refers to first generation migrants, “2.0” to second generation migrants.

17 DeYmaz quoted in Duncum et al., "A Comparison of the Vitality," 7.

18 Duncum et al., "A Comparison of the Vitality," 7–8.

15 16

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research their mono-cultural nature.19 In addition, there were too few non-Anglo churches outside urban areas to test for the effect of location on the comparisons.

However, the research is strongly suggestive. It would appear that in terms of the well-developed NCLS measures of church vitality that non-Anglo mono-cultural churches are healthier than both Anglo mono-cultural churches and multicultural churches. This adds strength to the argument that not all churches must be multicultural to be healthy. A notion supported by the Homogenous Unit Principle.

THE PROBLEM OF THE HOMOGENOUS UNIT PRINCIPLE Ever since McGavran introduced the Homogeneous Unit Principle (HUP) it has been controversial. Simply put, the principle is that “[People] like to become Christians without crossing racial, linguistic or class barriers.”20 It is essentially an application of the principle of gospel contextualisation to local churches.

Contextualization, a term that emerged in the missionary movement in the 1970s, concerns the relationship between Gospel, church, and culture.21 It incorporated words such as “adaptation,” “accommodation,” and “indigenization.” It remains a core strategy of most cross-cultural missionary endeavours as the missionaries learn the language of those they are trying to reach, translate the Scriptures into their dialect and seek to foster churches that are contextually appropriate.

Although emerging from missionary experience, the Church Growth Movement applied the HUP to Western churches. The principle has been widely used in Australia. It has resulted in churches intentionally “targeting” certain demographic segments and designing their operations to focus on meeting the cultural needs of that particular segment. One manifestation of this is church plants that focus on a particular demographic.

However, the outworking of the HUP can also be seen in the relative health of mono-ethnic churches, whether they be Anglo or non-Anglo, as discussed in the previous section. It also questions the potential effectiveness of multicultural churches because they seem to deliberately ignore the advantages of exercising one’s religious life in one’s own culture and language.

Wagner argues for the HUP based on the fundamental Christian ethic of love and can be interpreted as follows:22 • • •

Love admires creation — homogeneous churches celebrate cultural diversity.

Love protects human dignity — homogeneous churches accept people as they are. Only a lack of love will insist that the price of God’s grace is to abandon culture.23 Love respects peoplehood — homogenous churches recognise that “group identity is powerful and will affect the way in which most people hear the Gospel.”24

Duncum et al., "A Comparison of the Vitality," 6.

Donald Anderson McGavran, Understanding Church Growth (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1970), 198.

21 Darrell L Whiteman, "Contextualization: The Theory, the Gap, the Challenge," International Bulletin of Missionary Research 21, no. 1 (1997): 2.

22 C. Peter Wagner, "How Ethical Is the Homogeneous Unit Principle?," Occasional Bulletin of Missionary Research 2 (1978): 12–22.

23 Wagner, "How Ethical Is the Homogeneous Unit Principle?," 14.

24 Wagner, "How Ethical Is the Homogeneous Unit Principle?," 16.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research •

Love throbs with a passion for the lost — homogeneous churches feel compelled to be sure that the Gospel is not just preached but also heard.25 • Love constructs no arbitrary barriers to the Gospel — just as the Council of Jerusalem concluded that Gentiles did not need to abandon their culture in order to be believers, homogeneous churches acknowledge the same reality.

• Love seeks theological integrity — contextualised theology is dependent upon independent homogeneous unit churches for authentic development.26 Wagner concludes that peoplehood (group identity), cultural integrity, and the church as a “place to feel at home” can be maintained in the intra-congregational sphere but that tangible expressions of brotherhood and interdependence should be expressed in the wider inter-congregational sphere. In other words, homogeneous churches are fine as long as they belong to a diverse association of churches. People should be free to join heterogeneous churches if they so desire, but they should not be forced to as long as the unity of Christ is expressed in the inter-congregational sphere.27 However, others are not convinced of Wagner’s conclusions regarding the value of the HUP. Although conceding that people generally prefer to become Christians without having to cross the barriers between one context and another, Padilla28 rejects the application of the HUP to local churches. Quoting Ignatius (“Where Jesus Christ is, there is the whole Church”) he rejects Wagner’s intra/inter congregational argument and concludes that each local congregation should manifest both the unity and the diversity of the body of Christ.

Padilla is wrong, however, in concluding that HUP’s “advocates have taken as their starting point a sociological observation and developed a missionary strategy; only then, a posteriori, have they made the attempt to find biblical support.”29 Contextualisation clearly has a biblical basis.30 He is right, though, in recognising the sociological support for the principle. Even ardent multicultural church advocate

DeYmaz concedes, “undeniably, churches do grow fastest when they’re homogeneous.”31 As a result, more recent scholars have concluded that the HUP has a place in cross-cultural mission, but not in established churches. For example, DeYmaz argues that McGavran’s primary intention for the HUP was never church growth but cross-cultural evangelism and discipleship.32 He then proposes a model of church that involves homogenous churches targeting specific ethnic groups but also an intentional process of “graduated inclusion” guiding mature believers into a multicultural congregation.

To conclude, the problem with the Homogeneous Unit Principle is that it appears to work! For those of us who warm to the idyllic concept of multicultural church it is an “inconvenient truth.” However, its apparent functionality and theological foundation in contextualisation also lends credibility to the existence of mono-cultural churches. Even if mono-cultural churches are only transitionary as DeYmaz has

Wagner, "How Ethical Is the Homogeneous Unit Principle?," 14–15.

Wagner, "How Ethical Is the Homogeneous Unit Principle?," 17.

27 Wagner, "How Ethical Is the Homogeneous Unit Principle?," 18.

28 C. Rene Padilla, "The Unity of the Church and the Homogeneous Unit Principle," International Bulletin of Missionary Research 6 (1982): 23–30.

29 Padilla, "The Unity of the Church and the Homogeneous Unit Principle" 29.

30 David J. Hesselgrave, Contextualization: Meanings, Methods, and Models (Pasadena:William Carey Library, 2013).

31 Mark DeYmaz, Should Pastors Accept or Reject the Hup? (Little Rock: The Mosaix Global Network, 2012), 9.

32 DeYmaz, Should Pastors Accept or Reject the Hup? 11.

25 26

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research advocated, there is a recognition of their place and value in multi-ethnic contexts. A case study from church history affirms this conclusion.

THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE GERMAN BAPTISTS Finally, we turn to the discipline of church history. There are numerous examples of mono-cultural churches flourishing in largely homogeneous contexts in cross-cultural mission textbooks.33 However, there are also examples of where non-Anglo mono-cultural churches have flourished in Australia. One such example is the curious case of the German Baptists in Queensland. During the last decades of the 19 th century, over 15,000 Germans migrated to Queensland largely for economic, not religious reasons. 34 Some of these migrants were Baptists, and they settled and formed a number of churches in the farmlands to the West of Brisbane. A number of these mono-ethnic German-speaking churches experienced extraordinary growth.

There is a photograph taken in 1905 of over 50 candidates for baptism, all dressed in white, lined up outside the Kalbar Baptist Church. Another church at Normanby Reserve grew from five to 60 in about four years.35 A large group of German Baptists moved to Zillman’s Waterholes in the West Moreton area in 1869.

However, they were replaced with so many new converts that within two years it was necessary to build a church to house the flourishing congregation. Only 30 German Baptists arrived at Tarampa, but by 1877 the membership was 300.36 English speaking Baptists, when visiting the German Baptist churches, remarked on the intensity of the spiritual life they observed. In analysing the revival-like growth of these churches, Parker suggests that the migration to a strange land coupled with the relative isolation of their existence must have given intensity to their Christian fellowship.37 One Rev. Samuel Blum who visited Queensland from the USA in 1900 commented: We believe that there is a great deal of genuine piety in the hearts of German Baptists. They hold a sharp separation from the world. The candidates for baptism are examined very carefully, and church discipline is frequent. In missionary enterprises they are up-to-date, but in doctrine they are as old fashion as the first church in Jerusalem. In contribution they are liberal, and firmly believe on the expansion of the Lord’s kingdom, even if their views of political expansion are narrow. It will take some time before they accept views of some doctrines, which are common in our English Baptist churches. We must take the German as he is.38 Despite his somewhat politically incorrect posture, it is clear that Blum is describing an extraordinarily vital collection of churches. By the 1920s the German Baptist churches were losing their identity as a separate community especially as a consequence of World War I at which time many of the churches became English speaking and generally Anglicised themselves. However, some of the churches continue to this day Hesselgrave, Contextualization.

David Parker, "German Baptist Churches of South-East Queensland and Revival," International Conference of Baptist Studies VII (2015): 3.

35 Parker quoting a letter in the collection of the Baptist Church Archives, Queensland.

36 Richard Scanlan and David Parker, Tarampa Baptist Church (Brisbane: Baptist historical Society of Queensland, 2000), 7.

37 Parker, "German Baptist Churches of South-East Queensland and Revival," 7.

38 Queensland Baptist Magazine, August 1901, 108 as reported cited in Parker, "German Baptist Churches of South-East Queensland and Revival," 8.

33 34

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research as English-speaking congregations. They stand as a remarkable testimony to the effectiveness of non-Anglo mono cultural churches and appear to be a manifestation of the findings suggested by the NCLS and the validity of the HUP. CONCLUSION: IT’S NOT THAT SIMPLE As one who has in the past strongly advocated that, if only for the sake of their children, non-Anglo monoethnic churches should move to be multicultural churches utilising the English language, I am now more inclined to say, “it’s not that simple.” The factors discussed in this article highlight that to merely think of non-Anglo mono-ethnic churches as something to be tolerated in the short term, is unnecessarily simplistic (especially if espoused by a person who worships in an Anglo mono-ethnic church.) As much as I love being in a multicultural church, and as much as I am committed to the theological impulse that drives multicultural worship, I must accept that there is no such thing as the multi-ethnic or multicultural church mandate.

Further, the empirical, sociological and historical evidence cited in this paper means that I cannot be as definitive about mono-ethnic churches as I would like to be.

This awareness should drive church leaders towards a more compassionate and understanding attitude towards those who embrace non-Anglo mono-ethnic churches. And it certainly should not give permission for Anglo mono-cultural churches to justify their mono-cultural make up when they are situated in ethnically diverse communities. Majority culture churches should acknowledge that there is a difference between the responsibilities that can legitimately be laid on a majority culture or host society and what is required of, or possible, for minority cultures and immigrant groups. Although some non-Anglo monoethnic churches can, and should, make the transition to English-speaking multicultural churches, this may not be the destiny of them all. Some of the non-Anglo mono-ethnic churches will flourish and grow and achieve much for the kingdom within their distinct ethnic communities. Their mono-ethnic ministry should be celebrated and their part in the collective diversity of an association of churches honoured. Some of these churches will continue to flourish to the second and third generation. As such they may outlive some of the Anglo mono-ethnic churches that judge them.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research

THE EQUIPPING PASTOR: A BIBLICAL MODEL FOR BAPTIST CHURCHES TODAY David Devine Baptist Union of Victoria’s Church Health and Capacity Building Team There are many challenges facing those called to serve as pastors in Baptist churches today. The following examples from my consulting with Australian Baptist churches over the past few years illustrate this: • • •

a church of 200 people polarised between those who esteemed the pastor as their divinely anointed mission leader and those who criticised him for failing to provide adequate personal care and follow the direction of the Church Board; a church of 45 remove its pastor for failing to collaborate with the elders as co-leaders of the church; a church of 120 withdraw its call of their long-term pastor because she focussed on preaching at the expense of visitation and development of new leaders; several experienced effective Pastors resign from their positions due to stress. (It should be noted that these examples pre-date the Coronavirus pandemic, which anecdotal evidence indicates has exacerbated the tensions and stress discussed in this paper.)

A survey conducted for Australian Baptist Ministries in 2019 found that 90% of pastors surveyed reported having a strong sense of calling and purpose and 80% regarded themselves as being highly effective. 1 However, 21% were in the high end of emotional exhaustion, with 25% having sought treatment for mental health issues in the preceding two years.2 Some pastoral ill-health is due to deficiencies in self-care. For example, on average, respondents work 32% more hours than they are expected or contracted to work.3 The role the pastor is expected or chooses to play within the congregation is also a factor. The survey found a mismatch between what Pastors consider they should do, as an expression of their calling, and what they actually do in response to congregational expectations and needs. The principal areas in which pastors considered they were not doing enough were training, vision-casting, being a role model and evangelism.

They considered that they were spending too much time on administration, visitation/counselling, teaching and worship leading.4 Further, as one Baptist consultant observes, pastoral stress is a common part of collateral damage from church dysfunctions, including factionalism and inward focus, because “it is in the relationship between the pastor and the church where either health is fostered, or disease arises.”5 Beasley-Murray writes that “in recent years the question of “authority” has become a central issue in Baptist churches.”6 He notes that in the past, Baptist pastors were regarded as “paid servants of the church”; whereas recently a recognition of a pastor’s calling to “lead the people of God” has arisen. He links this trend to the impact of

Sam Sterland, Leadership Sustainability and Related Issues for Baptist Pastoral Staff in Australia (Sydney: NCLS Research, 2019), 3, 29.

Sterland, Leadership, 3.

3 Sterland, Leadership, 36.

4 Sterland, Leadership, 50 5 Ian G. Duncum, The Impact of Church Consultancy: Explore the Impact of One Model of Church Consultancy on Church Health and Church Growth in NSW/ACT Baptist Churches (Euge, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2019), 8–9.

6 Paul Beasley-Murray, Radical Believers: The Baptist Way of Being Church (Oxford: Baptist Union of Great Britain, 2006), 82.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research the Church Growth and Charismatic movements.7 However, this issue is not new. Manley reports conflicting views regarding pastoral authority among Australian Baptists in the 19th Century. Some asserted that authority was granted upon ordination or appointment; while others contended that pastors had no authority apart from that earned through gaining the respect of the congregation.8 In addition to conflict regarding pastoral authority, Manley recounts conflict about pastoral activities.

For example, he cites the 1870 case of Charles Clark, whose preaching drew large crowds, yet who resigned following criticism for his lacking in visitation.9 Manley, notes that a “Minister was expected to be competent in a great variety of skills,” quoting from the Southern Baptist: “He [sic] must be lawyer, money-lender, friend, counsellor and guide, and always be cheerful. He is sought by the sick, the sorrowing, the sinful and the starving, and he must always be ready for service. In his preaching he must be interesting or he is doomed. He must be sound in the faith… If he is not sound, there will be the sound of war in the camp!”10 Stress and conflict related to the pastors’ place and activity are not confined to Baptist churches.

Various authors address these issues in the context of the wider Church and identify a number of relevant factors. For example, Pneuman names “structural ambiguity” as a source of church conflict, with no clear guidelines about the roles and responsibilities of clergy, laity or committees. “No one is sure who is to do what; therefore, people challenge anything anybody tries to do.”11 Brubaker notes that such conflict is common between paid staff and volunteers, “regardless of congregational polity.”12 When the pastor is viewed as the “steward who is responsible for the performance of paid staff and volunteers” and yet is accountable to those volunteers as members of a Church board or membership, it is unclear who works for whom.13 Gibbs sees unbalanced expectations of pastors as a consequence of the professionalizing of ministry.14 Since congregants are paying the pastor, they expect him/her to perform a variety of tasks for them, serving as a “general practitioner rather than specialist.”15 The Pastor is expected to be not only pastor and preacher but also a priestly liturgist, children’s friend, biblical interpreter, business administrator, programme organiser, moral guide, denominational servant, ecclesiastical representative, ecumenical advocate, community organizer, social activist, gospel evangelist, prophetic voice and increasingly a media personality as well. It is unsurprising that with such an open-ended and unstructured role, a significant proportion of ministers face disillusion and burnout at some stage in their ministry.16 In some contemporary models, the senior pastor is the primary leader of the church, with the underlying premise that “congregations will succeed or fail in the long term based on effective pastoral Beasley-Murray, Radical Believers, 83.

Ken R Manley, From Woolloomooloo to `Eternity’: A History of Australian Baptists, Volume 1: Growing an Australian Church (1831-1914) (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2006), 325–26. He cites several statements from Australian Baptists in the late 19th Century.

9 Manley, Woolloomooloo, 76–77.

10 Southern Baptist, 17 August 1911, 535–36. Cited in Manley, Woolloomooloo, 325.

11 Roy W. Pneuman, Nine Common Sources of Conflict in Congregations, in Conflict Management in Congregations (Bethesda: Alban Institute, 2001), 46. Similarly, David R. Brubaker, Promise and Peril: Understanding and Managing Change and Conflict in Congregations (Bethesda: Alban Institute, 2009), 40, found that “many power struggles within a congregation are fights over who has the right to exercise authority in a given situation.”

12 Brubaker, Promise, 73.

13 Roger Heuser and Norman Shawchuck, Leading the Congregation (Nashville: Abingdon, 2010), 194–95.

14 Eddie Gibbs, The Rebirth of the Church (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2013), 121, 235.

15 Scot McKnight, Pastor Paul: Nurturing a Culture of Christoformity in the Church (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2019), 2.

16 Derek Tidball, Ministry by the Book: New Testament Patterns for Pastoral Leadership (Nottingham: Apollos, 2008), 239. Similarly, John R. W Stott, The Living Church: Convictions of a Lifelong Pastor (Nottingham: Intervarsity Press, 2007), 79.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research leadership more than any other human factor.”17 Such views create disproportionate focus on pastoral performance, which is often conflated with church growth. This pressures pastors to pursue satisfaction of congregational expectations rather than their divine calling, with resultant anxiety and/or acedia. 18 Pastors are tempted to over-function, taking on more responsibilities and working excessive hours. This contributes to the burnout discussed above and also reduces congregational vitality, as members respond by underfunctioning, becoming passively dependent upon the pastor. So Hirsch contends that within churches “emphasising pulpit ministry,” only about 5% of the congregation is active in ministry, with congregants operating in a receptive/consumptive mode.19 In addition to this unbalanced focus on the pastor, there is a psychological dynamic that contributes to conflict centring on pastors. Congregants, across denominations, often confer a mythic status on pastors as “the larger-than-life holy one of God” who fulfils a need for a parental or saviour figure. When pastors inevitably disappoint, conflict arises.20 Brubaker discusses Pastors’ symbolic role in terms of Family Systems Theory’s “identified patient” and notes the “tendency of congregational systems to blame all crashes on ‘pilot-error.’”21 Another factor contributing to pastoral conflict and stress is failure to adapt ministry to the dynamics of church size.22 Keller observes that there is a “size culture that profoundly affects how decisions are made, how relationships flow, how effectiveness is evaluated, and what ministers, staff and lay-leaders do.”23 THE ADDITIONAL COMPLEXITY OF BAPTIST ECCLESIOLOGY While these various factors apply across denominations, they are exacerbated by some features of Baptist ecclesiology. Baptist origins are disputed, but it is generally agreed that Baptists emerged from the confluence of European Anabaptist and English Separatist streams in the early 17th Century.24 John Smyth is commonly credited with establishing the first Baptist church.25 He defined a church as “two, three or more saints joined together by covenant with God and themselves.”26 This definition was based on Matthew 18:20, an oft-cited text in Baptist ecclesiology.27 For Baptists, the constitutive element of “church” is not an episcopate nor sacrament, but the

John Edmund Kaiser, Winning on Purpose: How to Organize Congregations to Succeed in Their Mission (Nashville: Abingdon, 2006), 95– 97,108.

18 Heuser and Shawchuck, Leading, 9–10, 106.

19 Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2006), 43.

20 Warner White, Should I leave? A Letter from One Priest to Another, in Lott, Conflict, 68-69.

21 Brubaker, Promise, 10–11.

22 Roy Oswald, How to Minister Effectively in Family, Pastoral, Program, and Corporate Sized Churches (Bethesda: Alban Institute, 1991), 1.

23 Timothy Keller, Leadership and Church Size Dynamics: How Strategy Changes with Growth (New York: Redeemer, 2006), 1.

24 Brian Winslade, A New Kind of Baptist Church (Sydney: Morling Press, 2010), 22–23.

25 Winslade, New, 24. However, some dispute that Smyth is fully representative of the Separatist movement and that the subsequent Baptist movement is continuous with Smyth. For example, Kevin J, Bidwell, The Church as the Image of the Trinity: A Critical Evaluation of Miroslav Volf’s Ecclesial Model (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2011), 63–65.

26 John Smyth, Principles and Inferences Concerning the Visible Church (1607). Cited in Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 135.

27 Manley, Woolloomooloo, 255.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research obedient faith of those who gather in Christ’s name, confessing the Lordship of Christ. 28 Through faith in Christ, believers are joined to Christ and to one another. This shared unmediated relationship with Christ forms the “priesthood of all believers” (1 Pet 2:4-9) – a central Baptist principle.29 Beasley-Murray explains, “In spiritual terms we are all equal before God. No one group has a greater claim on the Holy Spirit than another.”30 This ecclesiology rejects any conception of the pastor as priestly mediator.

The understanding that every believer has unmediated access to Christ underlies the Baptist concept of “soul competency.” “If all Christians are priests unto God, with equal and open access to him [sic]… then each Christian is able to discern the Word and will of God for him/herself. There is no need for the Church to arbitrarily dictate or control interpretation and belief.”31 The corporate implication of this is that all members are equally competent to participate in congregational discernment. As they share together, they discern the “mind of Christ”, without giving privileged status to the contributions of either congregational leaders, including Pastors, or external authorities. Each local church, in its Members’ meeting, is held to be autonomous and authoritative under Christ. “The church of Christ has power delegated to themselves of announcing the word, administering the sacraments, appointing ministers, disclaiming them, and also excommunicating; but the last appeal is to the brethren or body of the church.”32 While Baptists have always appointed leaders to serve the church in various roles, such leadership has never been considered absolute; for leaders are accountable to the Body that appointed them, with the members together holding ultimate authority under Christ.33 For Baptists, believers’ equal unmediated access to Christ also equips them to serve within and beyond the church. As part of expressing their faith together, members seek to serve one another. In Volf’s terms, the polycentric structure of the church gives rise to “symmetrical reciprocity” as members use their God-given capacities for mutual service.34 Within this, Baptists have always recognized that some are called to serve in various leadership roles, but no special authority or privileges have been attached to this recognition.35 There are no functions that are the preserve of some.

THE PLACE AND PURPOSE OF THE PASTOR: AN EXPOSITION OF EPHESIANS 4:11-16 What then is the place and role of the pastor in a Baptist church? Baptists will seek to answer this with

Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, An Introduction to Ecclesiology: Ecumenical, Historical and Global Perspectives (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2002), 63.

29 Volf, After, 224, contends that the Free Church pioneers applied this doctrine more fully than Luther.

30 Beasley-Murray, Radical Believers, 79.

31 Winslade, New, 36.

32 John Smyth, Short Confession Faith in XX Articles, #13. Cited in Daryl C Cornett, “Baptist Ecclesiology: A Faithful Application of New Testament Principles,” Journal for Baptist Theology and Ministry 2 (2004), 28. Note re autonomy, Thomas Helwys, A Declaration of Faith of English People Remaining at Amsterdam in Holland (1611), #12: “…no church ought to challenge any prerogative over any other.” Cited in Cornett, Baptist, 28.

33 Beasley-Murray, Radical Believers, 86, 118. The Baptist Union of Victoria’s Sample Church Constitution states: “5.1 The church, through the church meeting, has final authority in deciding every matter which affects the church's life” (May 2020 https://www.buv.com.au/resources/constitutions).

34 Volf, After, 217.

35 Manley, Woolloomooloo, 340, cites a Baptist statement from 1918 that ordination “conveys no authority, confers no privilege – contributes nothing.”

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research reference to Scripture, for they hold that Scripture outweighs any creed or tradition.36 The noun “pastor” (poimen) was commonly used in the LXX to refer to shepherds (Gen 46:32) and sometimes, metaphorically, leaders (Zech 10:3). There are some similar uses in the New Testament (Lk 2:8; Mk 14:27). The term was used of Jesus (Jn 10:11; Heb 13:20; 1 Pet 2:25; 5:4). Though the verbal form is sometimes applied to leaders’ tasks (Acts 20:28-29; 1 Pet 5:2), the noun is used only once to describe Church leaders (Eph 4:11). That passage focuses on function. It is unlikely, then, that “pastor” was an office, but rather it was a function that some members performed within the church.37 Taking Jesus as the archetype, the pastoral function may have involved “knowing people intimately (Jn 10:3,14), leading them (10:4), protecting them from `wolves’ (10:7-10, 11-13), and loving them sacrificially (10:11-13,15).”38 Thus, Jesus’ commissioning of Peter highlights the teaching and caring aspects of shepherding God’s flock (Jn 21:1517).

In Ephesians 4:11-16, Paul describes how this Pastoral function operates within a church. The pericope is book-ended by references to the gifting and ministry of all believers (vv7, 16), leading some to conclude that the list of roles in v.11 applies to all believers rather than categories of individuals who are given to serve the church in particular ways.39 However, the latter reading is better because the emphasis is on what some do for the body, rather than what the whole Body does. “Christ supplies the church with gifted ministers.”40 The five ministries listed do not represent all ministries, as there are many other ways in which believers are gifted for service.41 Nor do these ministries represent all categories of leaders, for they describe functions rather than offices.42 These functions are all related to the Word, which reflects Paul’s immediate concern with false teaching and the church growing in “the Faith” (vv13-15). “Those listed are ministers of the Word through whom the gospel is revealed, declared and taught.”43 Apostles and prophets play a foundational role, bearing witness to and revealing God’s plan for the Church and individuals (Eph 2:20; 3:5) and thus opening up new territory for Christ and new insights for Christians.44 Evangelists usually go out from churches to proclaim the gospel of Christ (Eph 6:15). “The evangelists would win converts to the faith, the apostles would establish churches, and the prophets would fill in needed revelation for the perfection of the saints. Some of these functions seem to have overlapped.”45 Pastors and teachers serve within the church. Because one article is used for both categories, there has been debate about whether Paul is referring to one or two gifts. Hoehner cites a study of this grammatical structure suggesting that the first noun is a subset of the second, so “all pastors are to be teachers, though Helwys, Declaration, #23, “The Old and New Testaments…contain the Holy Word of God, which only is our direction in all things whatsoever.”

37 Harold W Hoehner, Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 544.

38 Clinton E Arnold, Ephesians, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 261.

39 For example, Alan Hirsch and Tim Catchim, The Permanent Revolution (San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 2012), 21; and Gibbs, Rebirth, 235.

40 Peter T O’Brien, The Letter to the Ephesians (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1999), 297.

41 Hoehner, Ephesians, 539, notes that there are overlaps as well as omissions between the lists of gifts in Ephesians 4, 1 Corinthians 12, and Romans 12.

42 Arnold, Ephesians, 256, notes there is no reference to the overseers/elders of Acts 20 or Deacons (1 Tim 3).

43 O’Brien, Letter, 298.

44 Hoehner, Ephesians, 542.

45 Hoehner, Ephesians, 543.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research not all teachers are to be pastors.”46 He comments, “Teaching includes instruction in doctrine and its application to daily life but the teacher may not have all the administrative and shepherding responsibilities of the pastor.”47 In v.12 Paul describes how the pastors and teachers serve the Church.48 The relationship between this verse’s three prepositional phrases is debated. Some take them as coordinated, with Paul writing that pastors serve three purposes: equipping the saints, the work of ministry, and the edification of the body. 49 Others note that the phrases are not syntactically parallel and highlight Paul’s focus on the gifting of all believers for service (vv. 7&16). They read the phrases as building on each other, so pastors equip the saints for the work of ministry to edify the body.50 The latter reading, which is the one adopted in this paper, understands responsibility for ministry and the resultant growth and health of the church to be shared between Pastors and the other members.

So, what does it mean for pastors to “equip” (katartismos) the saints? The prepositional noun is used only here in the New Testament, though the cognate verb is common, with meanings including repairing (Matt 4:21), making complete (1 Thess 3:10) and training (Lk 6:40).51 Before New Testament times, the term was used extensively in a medical text describing the setting of bones.52 This meaning fits well with the physiological metaphors in Ephesians 4. Thus, Pastors help members to be well set in relationship with God and one another so that all can contribute to the health and growth of the Body as God directs and enables each of them.

Pastoral ministry is primarily about helping congregants to discern God’s will, respond in obedient faith and to relate to one another in love. “Lay persons are not assistants to the pastor, to help him [sic] do his work. Rather, the pastor is to be their assistant; he [sic] is to help equip them for the ministry to which God has called them.”53 This accords with the priesthood and ministry of all believers discussed earlier. It recognises that congregational leadership occurs within an organic relational system rather than a hierarchical institution in which leaders determine God’s will and seek to assert their way. When it is recognized that Christ is the head of the body and that every member is in unmediated relationship with him, the equipping pastor works like a spiritual director, helping people to discern God’s calling and leading and to respond to that in collaboration with their fellow believers. 54 “Leaders who are committed to empowering the members for ministry will create the structures and processes that will help the members respond to God’s call and acquire the necessary ministry skills (and relational qualities) to actualize their

Hoehner, Ephesians, 544. Daniel B Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 284.

Hoehner, Ephesians, 545. Here “administrative” refers to overseeing the life of the flock for its wellbeing and functioning (1 Thess 5:12; Rom 12:8).

48 This paper will refer to pastors only, since that is the usual title used in Baptist churches. It will be contended that teaching is a major component of the Pastoral role.

49 For example, R. Alastair Campbell, “The Elders: Seniority Within Earliest Christianity,” in Studies of the NT and Its World, ed. John Riches (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2004), 110.

50 Frank Thielman, Ephesians (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010), 278.

51 Arnold, Ephesians, 263.

52 Apollonius Citiensis’ commentary on Hippocrates’ De Articulis cited in Hoehner, Ephesians, 549.

53 R. Paul Stevens and Phil Collins, The Equipping Pastor: A Systems Approach to Congregational Leadership (Bethesda: Alban Institute, 1993), 89.

54 Stevens and Collins, Equipping, xiv.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research spiritual gifts.”55 As members use their gifts in faith and love, the church is built up in relation to Christ and one another.

In Eph 4:13-16, Paul expands on this. The “building up of the body” refers not to the expansion of the church through mission, but to its internal development. Further, this goal is applied to “all” (pantes) the saints rather than some (4:13). So Tidball comments: “Paul has a concern for individuals… However, his greater ambition is for the church as a whole… His vision is essentially to see the body of Christ transformed. In this respect, Paul mounts a profound challenge to the individualism that characterises our Western church and culture today.”56 One implication of this is that while pastors are called to serve the church by equipping members for ministry, they are not servants of each individual member and responsible for their personal growth. The pastor will care for individuals, but in the context of his or her call to serve the church as a whole with the aim of supporting its corporate growth.

Paul uses three parallel prepositional phrases to describe this goal from different angles (4:13). In summary, the goal is union with Christ in all his fullness. First, Paul describes the church as arriving at “the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.” This refers to sharing “a common set of doctrines and a common experience of knowing Christ on whom those doctrines are focussed.” 57 The second aspect of congregational growth is becoming “a mature person”. The emphasis here is on attaining adulthood rather than perfection and it likely stands in contrast to the infantile instability that false teaching produces (4:14).58 The singular noun depicts unity in Christ as opposed to the plural “infants” (4:14). Thus in 4:13, maturity is corporate rather than individual.59 The nature of this maturity is described in the third preposition – “the measure of Christ’s full stature”. This refers to the body of Christ becoming Christlike, with all of the members together aligned with the head.60 In 4:15, Paul writes that this Christlike maturity and unity is developed as believers confess the truth of Christ to one another in love, in contrast to false teaching of 4:14.61 The more a church’s beliefs and behaviours are aligned with Christ, the more it is seen to be not simply a body of Christians, but the body of Christ, deriving its life and shape from its head.62 Paul concludes in 4:16 with the observation that while the church derives its life from Christ, it is not a passive recipient, for each member participates in its growth. Notably Paul does not limit this work of edification to those listed in v11, but to all members together. The leaders equip the members to serve in order to build up the body. The term often translated “tendons” or “ligaments” (haphe) is better read as

Israel Galindo, The Hidden Lives of Congregations: Discerning Church Dynamics (Herndon: Alban Institute, 2004), 194.

Tidball, Ministry, 109.

57 Thielman, Ephesians, 281.This unity echoes Eph 4:1-6. Hoehner, Ephesians, 554, notes that while “the faith” is static, “knowledge” is dynamic.

58 O’Brien, Letter, 307.

59 Hoehner, Ephesians, 555.

60 Arnold, Ephesians, 266.

61 O’Brien, Letter, 311. He comments, “The Apostle is not exhorting his readers to truthfulness in general or speaking honestly with one another, however appropriate or important this may be. Rather he wants all of them to be members of a “confessing church”, with the content of their testimony to be … the gospel of their salvation (1:13).”

62 Stevens and Collins, Equipping, 99. They state that “Pauline Ecclesiology is nothing other than a Christology. It is an organic systemic unity that finds its life in the Head, Jesus.”

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research “connections”, referring to interactions between members.63 As members use their gifts to share truth and love in relationship with one another, they serve as “channels for focussing divine power in the life of the church.”64 So, acting in faith and love, the church grows in dependence upon Christ and interdependence with one another. “This has,” Stevens and Collins maintain, “implications for the equipping pastor, whose primary responsibility is to facilitate and deepen the dependence – indeed the interdependence – of the members of the church and the Head. To do this a pastor must lead the process by which people find their maturity in their life together in Christ.”65 The ecclesiology of Ephesians 4 accords well with the Baptist principles of the priesthood and ministry of all believers. Paul’s model of pastors serving the church by equipping members though biblical teaching and spiritual direction and facilitating interdependent service addresses a number of the issues identified in the discussion of pastoral stress and congregational conflict above. Nevertheless, before suggesting how this model of pastoral ministry might be applied in some contemporary contexts, it is important to determine if the model is consistent with New Testament teaching on pastoral leadership more broadly.

A SURVEY OF LEADERSHIP IN THE NEW TESTAMENT The following survey of teaching on leadership is limited to the New Testament because there is a significant difference between the two Testaments regarding how God relates to God’s people and therefore the role leaders play. The promised “New Covenant” (Jer 31:31-34; Joel 2:28-29) was inaugurated through Christ (Matt 26:28; Acts 2:16-21, 32). This opened direct relationship with God and ministry in the Spirit to all believers, with the church being fraternal rather than hierarchical.66 Within this fraternity, leaders no longer serve as mediators telling believers God’s will (Matt 23:8-12), nor as elite Spirit-endowed heroes representing the church,67 but as equippers who encourage and empower their fellow believers to discern and follow God’s leading. This delegitimises approaches to church leadership that are hierarchical, mediatory or authoritarian.68 A popular example of such an approach is the “Carver Model” that identifies the senior pastor as a church’s “primary leader” whose function is to provide the church’s vision and direction. 69 Ecclesial structures that posit one or more leaders between the head and body do not reflect the New Covenant.

This is not to say that the Church lacks structure or leaders, for we see both in the New Testament church from its beginning. There was the initial apostolic leadership (Acts 2:42) and the emergence of “elders” (Acts 14:23), along with a general recognition of leadership functioning within the church (Rom Thielman, Ephesians, 287.

O’Brien, Letter, 315. Stevens and Collins, Equipping, 35, comment that “A systems approach to spiritual gifts suggests that we do not have gifts in ourselves, but only in relationships.”

65 Stevens and Collins, Equipping, 41.

66 Tidball, Ministry, 88-90. He notes the frequent use of “adelphoi” in Acts.

67 Heuser and Shawchuck, Leading, 121, refer to the OT model of heroic leadership (eg. Moses, Elijah, David, Nehemiah) reinforcing a “divide between leaders and followers.”

68 Tidball, Ministry, 238. See Mark 10:42-43 (“not so with you”) and 1 Peter 5:3.

69 Kaiser, Winning, 108, and Galindo, Hidden, 140. It is notable that Kaiser cites a list of OT leaders as examples.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research 12:8; 1 Thess 5:12). However, notably there is no reference to priesthood other than that shared by all believers (1Pet 2:9) and Christ as sole mediator (1Tim 2:5; Heb 9:15).70 Rather than a priestly function, the early church leaders served as parental or patron figures within churches that were essentially extended households.71 There is a “rich diversity of leadership words in the New Testament,”72 and Jesus did not “institute the church with given structures and mandated forms of leadership.”73 Rather the communities formed around Christ and then created and adapted institutional structures to meet the needs of their evolving communal life and mission (e.g. Acts 6:1-6).74 Lacking an organizational blueprint, at least some of the offices were adopted from Jewish synagogues and Greco-Roman households and councils.75 Volf concludes, “The New Testament does not contain any unified, theologically reflected view of church organisation, but rather only the various witnesses concerning the manner in which the early churches regulated their own lives within various cultural spheres.”76 Given this, it is not surprising that there is diversity in denominational ecclesiologies and debate about the titles and functions of leaders. It is noted here that while Paul appointed “elders” in each church (Acts 14:23), he addressed the “overseers and deacons” in Philippi (Phil 1:1) and enunciated the qualities required for those two roles, rather than elders, in the Ephesian church (1 Tim 3:1-10).77 While 1 Timothy contains the words “overseer”, “elder” and “deacon”, there is no reference to a three-fold polity.78 In Acts 20:17,28 and Titus 1:5-7, the titles “elders” and “overseers” are applied to the same people and Peter referred to elders “serving as overseers” (1Pet 5:1-2). Hence some equate the terms.79 However, it should be noted that in addition to the caring, guarding and teaching work linked with overseers (Acts 20:28-31; 1 Pet 5:1—2; Titus 1:7-9), elders also carried out administrative tasks that may be associated more with deacons (Acts 11:30).80 So it seems that while the “overseers” were “elders”, not all elders were overseers, for some elders served as deacons.81 It is best to take “elder” as a term of status rather than function, a recognition of seniority and respect, perhaps related to age and/or character.82 “The term ‘elders’ is probably a covering for both overseers and deacons.”83 It may be clearer to read “elder” as synonymous with “leader”.

1 Timothy 5:17 says that elders are responsible for directing the affairs of the church and preaching The priestly ministry in Rom 15:16 refers to mission to those outside the Church.

Tidball, Ministry, 94-95. Charles A Wanamaker, The Epistles to the Thessalonians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, The New International Greek Text Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 193.

72 Stevens and Collins, Equipping, 88.

73 Kevin Giles, Patterns of Ministry Among the First Christians, 2nd ed. rev. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2017), 18.

74 Winslade, New, 14, comments that “polity serves the purpose of the church.”

75 J. Ramsey Michaels, 1 Peter, Word Biblical Commentary (Waco: Word, 1998), 279.

76 Volf, After, 245.

77 Giles, Patterns, 58.

78 Giles, Patterns, 111.

79 Benjamin L Merkle, The Elder and Overseer: One Office in the Early Church, Studies in Biblical Literature, vol 57 (New York: Peter Lang, 2003), 140.

80 Darrell L. Bock, Acts, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, Academic, 2007), 418, comments that these Elders worked alongside the Apostles taking care of administrative and daily matters. Ben Witherington III, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio- Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 374, sees a possible allusion to those chosen in Acts 6:1-6. Ben Witherington III, Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 382, suggests that as deacon, Phoebe led some sort of practical charitable work (Rom 16:1- 2).

81 Gordon D. Fee, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, New International Biblical Commentary, (Massachusetts: Hendrickson, 1984), 174.

82 Campbell, Elders, 246. Similarly, Merkle, Elder, 156 83 Fee, Timothy, 22.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research and teaching. The former can mean “managing” or “caring for”84 and earlier was applied to “leaders” (Rom 12:8; 1Thess 5:12). It is likely that both overseers and deacons did such work, for it is a quality required of both in regard to how they function within their families (1 Tim 3:4, 12). The point being that since, as noted earlier, the churches were mostly extended households and familial in nature, those to be entrusted with leadership in churches should have demonstrated capacity to lead well within their families. Together these leaders are to care for the wellbeing of the church family.

Preaching and teaching were done only by some elders and it seems there was remuneration for this (1 Tim 5:18). Since the ability to teach is required of overseers (1 Tim 3:2), but not of deacons, it may suggest that the overseers were “teaching elders” (1 Tim 3:2; 5:17).85 This teaching consisted of “encouraging others by sound doctrine and refuting those who oppose it” (Titus 1:7-9; cf. 2 Tim 2:24-26; Acts 20:27-31). It involved “preserving, transmitting, expounding, interpreting, and applying the apostolic gospel and tradition along with the Jewish Scripture.”86 The aim was not only to transfer information about a shared set of beliefs so as to deepen believers’ understanding of the faith, but to encourage application to life resulting in transformed behaviour leading to growth into maturity in Christ (Col 1:28). So, commenting on Paul as teacher, Tidball writes: “His aim was to strengthen believers, providing them with further knowledge about their identity and salvation, give them a greater appreciation of and confidence in Christ and his work, encourage their unity as a reflection of the gospel of reconciliation and instruct them in ethical living.”87 As discussed earlier, this growth into maturity is not only personal, but is primarily corporate, with the church to be transformed into Christlikeness in its relationships, values and actions. To be true to its identity and calling in Christ, the church needs to be as true to Scripture in its decision-making and operations as it is in its doctrinal statements and proclamations. So, Tidball affirms Quicke’s call for the recognition and practice of preaching as a crucial component of church leadership.88 If leadership and preaching are disconnected in the church, leadership will become humanistic, dispense with the Holy Spirit, will distort theology and flatten spiritual paradoxes and encourage pride. The separation will take its toll on preaching as well, for leadership brings a realism to preaching and is ruthlessly honest about the need for change.89 The contemporary role of pastor is usually equated with the overseer, 90 with an emphasis on preaching/teaching and care as discussed above. So, Stott concludes, “Pastors are called essentially to a teaching ministry.”91 More broadly, emphasising the application of teaching, Tidball writes, “Pastoral work is simply bringing to full flower the bud of the gospel.”92 Within the nascent Church this teaching was delivered through congregational preaching (1 Tim

Fee, Timothy, 128.

Merkle, Elder, 160.

86 Andrew T. Lincoln, Ephesians, Word Bible Commentary, vol 42 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990), 251. See Matthew 13:52.

87 Tidball, Ministry, 131.

88 Tidball, Ministry, 167.

89 Michael Quicke, 360-Degree Leadership: Preaching to Transform Congregations (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), 62ff. Cited in Tidball, Ministry, 166–67.

90 Giles, Patterns, 70. Campbell, Elders, 258.

91 Stott, Living, 80.

92 Derek Tidball, Skilful Shepherds: Explorations in Pastoral Theology, 2nd edn. (Leicester: Apollos, 1997), 100. Cited in Tidball, Ministry, 134.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research 4:13), house-to-house visitation (Acts 20:20), personal instruction (Acts 18:26; 2 Tim 2:2) and epistles (2 Pet 3:15-16). However, given the aim of application and growth and the relational context of ministry (Eph 4:11-16), it is not surprising that the pastor-teachers’ personal experience and example played an integral part in their ministry.93 Both Peter (1 Pet 5:3) and Paul (1 Cor 4:16; 11:1; 1 Tim 4:12) identify modelling as a core aspect of leadership. Tidball notes that “imitation of respected people…was the way in which character developed and maturity was reached.”94 Paul did not seek imitation of his personality or circumstances (1 Cor 7:7; 9:319), but of his character, faith and sacrificial service (1 Cor 4:9-13; Phil 3:17-4:1). He provided an embodied example of living out the faith that he taught, so that others might follow in it. Paul’s aim in this was not only personal transformation, but growth in corporate Christlikeness—the creation of a church culture reflecting Christ. Leaders play a central role in the development of group culture not only by promulgating shared beliefs, but by exemplifying values and embodying vision.95 “Leaders embody the future that the group holds in view. They function as a prophetic sign of that reality.”96 So, McKnight comments that “the pastor inevitably is understood to display what true godliness in the way of Christ is like.” 97 This is why, against the threat of false teachers, Paul emphasised that leaders must have exemplary character (1 Tim 3:213; 4:16). It also shows the need for leaders to relate closely with those they serve, because people need to witness what the leader wants them to imitate (2 Tim 3:10). So, McKnight concludes, “A pastor is a leader who…nurtures a Christlike culture, seeking wisdom from appropriate sources and inspiring and motivating congregants by vision, preaching, teaching and example to participate in that culture.”98 A key and distinctive component of Jesus’ teaching and example of leadership was servanthood (Mk 10:42-45; Jn 13:4-20). In marked contrast to Gentile leaders, who exercised authority over people, Jesus exemplified sacrifice for people (Jn 10:11-18). Just as following Christ involves self-denial (Mk 8:34-35), so Christlike leadership is cruciform.99 For the leader who is primarily a servant, all expressions of authority are to be directed to serving the needs and interests of others.100 So Tidball cautions, “Pastorally, we can be over-directive… Organisationally, we can drive a strong programme and manipulate people’s commitment to ‘our programme’. Even in the pulpit … we can assume an authority beyond what either the Holy Spirit or the text of Scripture warrants… So, as servants of Jesus, we need constantly to be on our guard against the spirit of authoritarianism and status-seeking.”101 Most New Testament references to “authority” (exousia) relate to Christ, with the recognition that “all authority in heaven and on earth” has been given to him (Matt 28:18). His followers are sent into mission under his authority (Matt 28:19; 2 Cor 5:20); teach under his authority (Matt 28:20; 1 Thess 4:2) and confront the demonic and illness with his authority (Lk 9:1-2; James 5:14). However, there is no reference to one McKnight, Pastor, 127, “The pastor is first and foremost a witness.”

Tidball, Ministry, 118.

95 Gibbs, Rebirth, 236.

96 Eddie Gibbs, Leadership Next: Changing Leaders in a Changing Culture (Leicester: Intervarsity Press, 2005), 134.

97 McKnight, Pastor, 14.

98 McKnight, Pastor, 26.

99 Tidball, Ministry, 50.

100 Heuser and Shawchuck, Leading, 27.

101 Tidball, Ministry, 52.

93 94

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research Christian having authority over another.

So, is any authority given to church leaders? Paul refers to “the authority the Lord gave us for building you up rather than pulling you down” (2Cor 10:8; 13:10). This “building-up” is explicated in Ephesians 4:11-13, which describes how leaders serve the church that is headed by Christ (Eph 4:15). As noted earlier, rather than controlling members, such leadership is to equip them to serve as God empowers them.102 So, Greenleaf writes that the test of servant- leadership is whether those served grow as persons. “Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?”103 In terms of Ephesians 4, we would add, do they become more faithful to Christ and loving toward one another?

It is noteworthy that in Ephesians 4:11 Paul refers to several leadership roles, with no individual performing them all – “some to be apostles…some evangelists, some pastors and teachers”. Typically in the New Testament, leadership is a shared responsibility, with a plurality of elders appointed in churches (Acts 14:23) and the apostolic mission involving teams of “co-workers” (Acts 11:25-26; 15:39-40). Contrary to this, some argue that Titus and Timothy served as solo overseers, providing a model for singular congregational oversight by pastors today.104 However, rather than serving as overseers in a particular church, they both acted as Paul’s itinerant envoys (1Thess 3:1-10; 1Cor 16:10-11; Phil 2:19-22; 2Cor 7:616), exercising temporary ministries alongside local leaders.105 Fee concludes: “It is a mistaken notion to view Timothy or Titus as model pastors for a local church.”106 In Ephesians 4, “leadership is a gift given by God to the church and not merely to the Pastor.”107 Pastors serve alongside other leaders in equipping the members to serve together as God leads and empowers them. This understanding that pastors are to share leadership with others and seek to empower rather than control members is a corrective to the pastor-centric approaches that contribute to the overfunctioning and role ambiguity discussed earlier.

In summary, this survey of New Testament teaching finds that pastors serve collaboratively with other leaders with the aim of edifying fraternal relationships within the church and strengthening believers’ unmediated relationships with Christ. For pastors, teaching the Faith through didactic proclamation and personal example is a major component of this ministry. Pastors also care for the wellbeing and unity of congregations, overseeing them as shepherds do flocks and parents families. In so doing, pastors help create relational systems and corporate cultures that express faith in God and mutual love.

Paul’s presentation in Ephesians 4 is consistent with this broader teaching. Though the caring activity of pastors is not explicit in Ephesians 4, it is implied in the call for love and the emphasis on the building of

Neil Cole and Phil Helfer, Church Transfusion (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012), 117 and 129, comment: “In the kingdom we are simply to connect people to Christ’s authority and rulership, not submit them to our own….Authority is not delegated downward in the Kingdom; it is distributed outward…The true missional objective of virtually every person in Christ’s body is: listen to Jesus and do what He says.”

103 Robert K. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness (New York: Paulist Press, 2005), 13-14. Cited in Heuser and Shawchuck, Leading, 27.

104 Campbell, Elders, 243, 258.

105 Tidball, Ministry, 150.

106 Fee, Timothy, 21.

107 Stevens and Collins, Equipping, 88.

102

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research relationships aligned with Christ (vv15-16). In part, pastors equip the saints for ministry and growth by addressing personal and relational issues that inhibit loving connections within the body. “As relationship shepherds, equippers should be able to discern dysfunctional relationships: this involves taking appropriate actions to deal with over- and under-functioning, addictions, triangles, and the domination of the weak.”108 Pastors are not called primarily to comfort or satisfy people, but to equip believers for growing faith and service; not simply meeting people’s needs, but encouraging them to mature in Christ.109 It should be noted that Ephesians 4 focusses on developing the internal life of the Body. 110 Other New Testament passages refer to believers on mission in the world (Acts 1:8; 2 Cor 5:20) and provide metaphors depicting the church’s corporate mission (Matt 5:14-16; 1 Pet 2:9-10). Instead of expecting pastors to lead this mission in addition to their equipping work, churches should recognize and empower their gifted apostles and evangelists to complement the leadership of pastors (Eph 4:11). With others providing the diaconal ministries of administration and patronage discussed earlier, this would be closer to the biblical plurality of leadership than the emphasis on pastor-centric leadership and ministry that is common in contemporary churches. A more collegial and complementary model of church leadership would alleviate the pastoral over-functioning, stress and conflict highlighted in the survey cited earlier. It would release pastors to focus on their primary vocation of equipping the saints for ministry through teaching and modelling the faith and fostering loving relationships that facilitate edifying service.

In regard to the reflection on pastoral activities reported in the survey, the biblical material discussed above suggests that pastors are right to resist investing so much of their time in administration and worship leading and to give more emphasis to training (equipping) and serving as models. They should maintain a strong commitment to teaching the faith and visitation, particularly were the latter involves encouraging people to live out the faith in loving fellowship and shared ministry. Pastors should resist temptation or pressure to take on prime responsibility for the development of the church’s vision and goals and instead encourage a shared participation in this that reflects the New Covenantal dynamic of the whole body being in relationship with Christ and discerning his will together.

PASTORAL MINISTRY IN CONTEMPORARY BAPTIST CHURCHES This model of pastoral ministry, with pastors serving among rather than over the congregation, and an emphasis on encouraging believers to develop their relationship with God and participate in serving one another, fits well with the Baptist principles of the priesthood and ministry of all believers. But what might it look like practically in contemporary Baptist churches of various sizes?

As discussed above, teaching the faith is a major component of the pastoral vocation. Regardless of church size, the pastor is called to expound the biblical basis of the beliefs that are central to a church’s Stevens and Collins, Equipping, 37.

Duncum, Impact, 26-27.

110 Stevens and Collins, Equipping, 105, observe: “In Pauline thought, Christ does not use his body to get his work done on earth…

The metaphor is inward looking… It is concerned with the structure and interrelationships within the church rather than how the church relates to the world.”

108 109

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research identity and shared life. This teaching will adopt various modes including preaching, group-work and personal instruction. As part of “equipping the saints”, such teaching seeks to create a context that is conducive to believers, individually and corporately, growing in relationship with God and one another. So, pastors should approach preaching and other teaching as strategic opportunities to lead the formation of faith and the fostering of Christlike love. Equipping pastors will not only expound Scripture, but will encourage its application in the life of individuals and the congregation. While “proclaiming the whole will of God” (Acts 20:27), the strategic pastor will give particular focus to grace-based relationship with God; the Spirit’s leading and enabling for service; following Jesus into life and mission; the corporate nature of the Faith and what it means to be an active member of the Church; and the practicalities of loving others.

Such teaching builds up the body in truth and love.

A key aspect of pastoral leadership and teaching is modelling faith and love. In smaller churches members interact personally with the pastor and thus experience the pastor’s example directly. In such churches, pastors should invest time in cultivating relationships with members through participation in the various activities of members’ and the church’s life, because it is a feature of small churches that faith is shaped primarily through personal relationships marked by trust and intimacy.111 As the pastor personifies faith and love in the course of shared life, he or she exerts influence on members (Acts 20:18; 1 Cor 11:1).

In large churches members may have little personal interaction with the Pastor, with knowledge being limited to “a projected image, the persona of the pastor as presented in sermons and various leadership roles.”112 Through sharing personal stories and overtly undertaking activities reflecting the church’s beliefs, values and mission, pastors of large churches serve as personified symbols for others to follow. For example, in my previous church, the senior pastor’s position description included serving as the “public face” of the church with the goal of raising its profile in the local community. As part of that, I made it a priority to develop relationships with community leaders, engage in local events and appear regularly in local media.

This modelled to the church a commitment to community outreach and service that inspired and encouraged others to act in similar ways.

The impact of church size on pastoral practice is not simply a matter of scale, but of sociological dynamics. Rothauge’s work on joining churches of various sizes has been extended to describe how church size affects congregational life, including pastoral leadership.113 Galindo has summarised this with reference to forces of togetherness and separateness.114 He describes smaller churches (less than 150 members) as “high-touch” and larger churches as “high-organisation”. He observes that the former value intimate relationships and such churches need “both to love their pastor and to feel loved by the pastor in return.”

Whereas, “high-organisation” churches function on a more contractual relationship between members and with the Pastor, valuing competence and effectiveness in achieving the church’s vision and goals.

This difference determines how pastors best engage with churches. In “high-touch” churches, “Pastors Galindo, Hidden, 92 McKnight, Pastor, 14.

113 Arlin J. Rothauge, Sizing Up a Congregation for New Member Ministry (New York: The Episcopal Church Centre, 1982). Cited in Oswald, Minister, 1.

114 Galindo, Hidden, 25.

111 112

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research pastor people,”115 delivering care and teaching directly to congregants in relational settings. However, in “high-organisation” churches, pastors must adopt more systemic approaches, engaging with the congregation through leadership structures and programmes.116 Such pastors serve as “shepherds of systems”, with a focus on establishing and supporting various sub-systems within the life of the church.117 In “high-touch” churches, the challenge for the pastor is to be acknowledged as more than the “family chaplain” addressing personal and communal needs, but as someone like a spiritual director using pastoral conversations and presentations to encourage individuals and the congregation to continue growing in Christ and Christlikeness.118 In “high-organisation” churches, the focus on systems and need to function through organised structures challenges the organic participatory model of church outlined in Ephesians 4. A large church can become bureaucratic and hierarchical with discernment and control confined to an elite Leadership, including the pastor, undermining the dynamics of the priesthood and ministry of all believers.119 However, pastors can overcome this and fulfil their equipping vocation. For example, pastors can intentionally broaden participation in discerning church vision by teaching about the New Covenant and spiritual gifting so that all members are seen as potential “ears” through which the body may hear God and then providing forums in which all members are given a voice. In very large churches, such forums could engage small group discussions rather than congregational gatherings to encourage wide participation.

In my previous church, members were regularly invited to share ministry and mission ideas with the pastors and other leaders. If these ideas were compatible with the congregationally-agreed church vision and values, they were presented to the congregation to see if a sufficient number of volunteers were willing to support implementing the initiative. There was an understanding that pastors and other leaders were not responsible to cover any shortfall. This approach resulted in a number of programmes and events being launched (e.g. single parent’s support group, community dinner, “Kids Hope’’ mentoring). These initiatives were “grassroots” responses to God’s leading rather than “top-down” plans. They proved to be missionally fruitful and strengthened the faith and interpersonal relationships of those serving. As pastor, my part was to foster the culture which facilitated the initial discernment and then support those involved to maintain a vital relationship with God and to resolve any interpersonal or operational problems so as to enable people to serve together well. This empowering model resulted in a relatively large proportion of members actively participating in the church’s life and mission.

Critical to this approach is the pastor shifting from directing members of the body to pursue his or her agenda to directing members to Christ so as to discern and follow his will for them. This requires pastors see themselves as supporting members to carry out their ministries rather than viewing members as extensions of the pastor to be mobilised in support of the pastor’s ministry. In part, this calls for humility

McKnight, Pastor, 3.

Keller, Leadership, 3.

117 Stevens and Collins, Equipping, 76.

118 McKnight, Pastor, 9.

119 Winslade, New, 185, quotes Helwys’ 1611 declaration that “a church ought not to consist of such a multitude as cannot have a particular knowledge of another:” 115 116

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research that allows others to do things differently from how the pastor would do them, acknowledging that they bring different gifting, perception and personality to tasks.120 For example, as senior pastor I worked with three youth pastors across a decade and while the church gave each of them similar goals, they adopted differing approaches in pursuing those goals. As their leader, I understood my task to entail holding them accountable for outcomes while supporting them as they expressed their faith, gifts and callings. I adopted a similar approach to working with the volunteer leaders whom the church entrusted with authority to lead various aspects of the church’s life and mission. This reflects the truth that Christ is the head of his body and that leadership within the body is vested in a plurality of leaders. Stevens and Collins sum up the role of an equipping pastor within the congregational system: The spirit of plural leadership is destroyed when the pastor puts him or herself in the centre of the group as the leader among advisers, the visionary goal-setter, and the solo helmsperson. To nurture this (lay leadership) sub-system, a pastor-equipper must take lay leaders seriously and allow them to lead!... Equipping is not delegating the pastor’s ministry and leadership. Equipping involves releasing the ministry and leadership of the people.121 In “high-organisation” churches, that value competence and effectiveness, pastors need to champion such an understanding of leadership, church and ministry through teaching and modelling and to promote the development of a congregational culture and systems that support such practice.

While in larger churches there are usually sufficient people resources to allow pastors to focus on tasks related to their vocation; in smaller churches there is often limited capacity to cover what needs to be done to simply keep church life going, so that pastors feel obligated to devote time to tasks that may distract from their call and gifting. Part of the solution to this is pastors and congregants accepting volunteers doing these tasks, even if they do them differently and less competently than the pastor could. Additionally, a lack of capacity may be addressed by churches co-operating with neighbouring churches, either sharing members who have the required abilities or even merging to benefit from economies of scale and synergies from combining resources. Given the emphasis on autonomy in Baptist ecclesiology, such initiatives usually need to be led by pastors who may not be as constrained as others by the togetherness force at work in many small churches.

CONCLUSION This paper began with noting issues of stress and conflict related to the place and role of pastors within local churches. Various factors were identified as contributing to this. While these apply across denominations, it was contended that some features of Baptist ecclesiology may exacerbate this. The priesthood and ministry of all believers give rise to a polycentric church structure, with all members being deemed competent to discern truth and God’s guidance and to serve as gifted and led by God, with no ministry tasks restricted to pastors. What then is the role of the pastor? It is proposed that pastors are given Brandon J. O’Brien, The Strategically Small Church (Minnesota: Bethany, 2010), espouses “high- accountability/low control leadership.”

121 Stevens and Collins, Equipping, 89.

120

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research to the body to equip members for ministry (Eph 4:11). This entails helping members to be in healthy relationship with Christ and one another, so that as they respond to Christ in faith and serve one another in love, they all contribute to the church growing in Christlikeness. This model of pastoral leadership accords with Baptist ecclesiology and with New Testament teaching on leadership. It was noted that pastors serve alongside other leaders, with a particular focus on teaching and modelling the faith as part of overseeing and caring for the growth and wellbeing of individuals and the congregation as a whole. Finally, the impact of church size on pastoral practice was discussed, with recognition that pastors of smaller churches must serve relationally; while in larger churches a more systemic approach is required.

It is the contention of this paper that as pastors and churches adopt an approach to ecclesiology and pastoral leadership in line with that described in Ephesians 4, there will be some resolution of the prevailing structural and functional ambiguities and resultant pastoral stress and pastor-centred conflict. Along with this, there will be an increase in church vitality as pastors are released to give more attention to their primary vocation of equipping the saints for ministry and so more church members grow in relationship with God and one another reflecting faith and love in Christ.

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.

Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. (Eph 4:14-16 NIV)

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AN ANTITHESIS TO A SPIRIT–LESS CONFORMATION OF HUMANITY TO THE IMAGE OF THE SON: READING ROMANS 8:28–30 WITH THIRD ARTICLE THEOLOGY Jeremy Tattersall Laidlaw College, Auckland INTRODUCTION Romans 8:28–30 (along with much of the rest of the chapter) has drawn immense attention and study throughout Christian thought and its history. Much good has come out of the study of this beautiful text.

Christian interpreters have offered many good and beneficial perspectives concerning it. However, it is very possible that the general kind of interpretation of the relationship between the nature of the Son’s image and the nature of believers’ “conformation” to that image in 8:29 lacks a key theological element.

It is the contention of this theological interpretation that an understanding of believers’ conformation to the image of the Son in Rom 8:28–30 without specific attention to the Spirit’s role in the life of Christ and the image of God in humanity is deficient. Put in a more positive light, Third Article Theology (viewing the text through Spirit) provides the ability to see the church’s conformation to the image of the Son in Rom 8:28–30 in a more relational and holistic way, due to it being the Spirit who theologically enables this transformation to take place. This interpretive methodology can lead to a more beneficial understanding of what believers’ conformation to the image of the Son, all things working together for good, and glorification mean (8:28–30).

Of course, it is likely Paul did not intend the specific interpretation of his words in Rom 8:28–30 that this essay posits theologically. However, it is not the goal of theological interpretation to merely understand what Paul intended. The goal of theological interpretation is to “look along” the text of Scripture, taking its “hermeneutical cues … from Nicaea or Chalcedon” and being informed by other extra-biblical Christian texts and interpretations.1 Despite having said this, it is also the contention of this essay that the theological assertions being made are in general alignment with Paul’s theology—especially apropos of themes such as Paul’s own Adam Christology in Romans 5.

VARIOUS INTERPRETATIONS Christian interpreters have offered their perspective on 8:28–30 throughout history. For the purposes of this essay, a select few interpretations will be engaged with. These interpretations are assembled and discussed below according to whether they interpret 8:28–30 with specific reference to the Spirit or not.2 1 2

Myk Habets, “Theological Theological Interpretation of Scripture,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 23 (2021): 15.

Interpretations of 8:29 are the specific focus.

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Without the Spirit The Reformer John Calvin did not explicitly connect the Spirit with 8:28–30.3 He wrote that the correct interpretation of 8:29 involves understanding two decrees. God determines who will “bear the image of Christ” so that “he might teach us that there is in Christ a living and conspicuous exemplar, which is exhibited to God’s children for imitation.”4 This decree is “inseparable from the other decree, which determines that we are to bear the cross.”5 For Calvin, Christ is “given to us as a pattern” for us to follow who become part of the family which Christ sustains.6 The emphasis is on the present experience of believers. Calvin did not link the conformation process to the Spirit specifically but attributes it to God generally.

Writing in contemporary time, Douglas Moo believes that in these three verses Paul has “moved away from his focus on the Spirit.”7 For him, the main point of 8:28 is best exemplified in the translation “all things work for good on behalf of believers,” with this “good” being linked with the eschatologically complete conformity “to the image of Christ and the glory that will then be ours.”8 Moo believes this is according to God’s purpose that “believers should become like Christ and share in his glory,” which is never in doubt.9 Moving on, Moo believes 8:29–30 is a specific support of God’s “purpose” rather than the whole verse or another part of it.10 He posits that the conformation of believers to the image of the Son occurs eschatologically with God “predestining us to future glory, that glory which Christ already enjoys,” and which will characterize the family of God.11 This ties in closely with 8:30 where he believes Paul is “looking at the believer’s glorification from the standpoint of God.”12 Once again, this interpretation does not involve specific attention to the Spirit.

With the Spirit Quite differently to these interpreters, Abraham Kuyper interprets 8:29 with the conviction that the Spirit’s work and person is inseparable from Christlikeness. Speaking of this in relation to sanctification, he writes that it is because of the Spirit’s presence in believers that “we become more and more conformable to the image of God” which is “Christ’s image.”13 For Kuyper, in this whole process, the “indwelling Spirit is the actual Worker.”14

Chrysostom did not either. See Chrysostom, Homilies on the Epistle to the Romans (NPNF1 11:452–453).

John Calvin, Commentary on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, trans. John Owen (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 318.

5 Calvin, Romans, 318.

6 Calvin, Romans, 318–319.

7 Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 528. See also Mark J. Keown, “Notes of Hope in the Face of Suffering (Rom 8:18-39),” Stimulus (2020): 23–24. On the surface at least, this claim is undeniable.

8 Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, 529.

9 Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, 531.

10 Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, 531.

11 Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, 534–35.

12 Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, 536.

13 Abraham Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit (New York; London: Funk & Wagnalls, 1900), 548–49.

14 Kuyper, The Work of the Holy Spirit, 458.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research More recently, James Dunn also presents an interpretation with a more specific reference to the Spirit.

Apropos of 8:28, similarly to Moo, he believes that “everything contributes toward good” has an eschatological emphasis—the result for those who have common faith.15 Progressing on to 8:29, Dunn differs from Moo by emphasizing the Jewish understanding of a relational knowing as part of God’s “divine purpose whose outworking was already clearly envisaged from the beginning.”16 Concerning the conformation of believers to the image of the Son, Dunn believes the emphasis to once again be on the eschatological result but acknowledges that “a process is involved.” 17 He also believes that an Adam Christology is present here, with Christ being “the image of God which Adam was intended to be,” though with the resurrected Christ specifically in view.18 This image is “shared by all who have received and are led by the Spirit (vv14–17).”19 Dunn implicitly connects conformation to the image of the Son with being led by the Spirit.

Lastly, concerning 8:30, Dunn believes the glorification of believers is the climax of 8:18–30. For him, Paul is communicating that “from the perspective of the end it will be evident that history has been the stage for the unfolding of God’s purpose, the purpose of the Creator fulfilling his original intention in creating” which involves humanity sharing in the glory of God.20

Evaluating the Options The above scholars’ contributions are beneficial interpretations of Paul’s words in Rom 8:28–30. For the purposes of this theological interpretation, Dunn and Kuyper offer the most fruitful interpretations of the text for two reasons. Firstly, Dunn makes the necessary link between Paul’s view of Adam Christology in relation to the image of God. This is faithful to the wider context of Romans, especially 5:12–21. Secondly, Dunn and Kuyper make specific reference to the presence and work of the Spirit in the lives of believers in the conformation process in 8:29.21 In doing this, they avoid the mistake of scholars who exclude discussion of the Spirit from 8:28–30, who has been a key focus up until this point in the whole chapter.

While noting the beneficial nature of these interpretations, it is the contention of this essay that they are all perhaps missing something or do not go far enough.22 Namely, these interpretations are missing a satisfactory understanding of how believers are conformed to the image of the Son and what this means theologically and ontologically. Left alone, this kind of interpretation makes believers’ conformation to the image of the Son something closer to a static character change than a dynamic interaction with the triune God—a true ontological change.

James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1 - 8, vol. 38A of Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas, TX: Word Books, 2008), 481.

Dunn, Romans 1-8, 482.

17 Dunn, Romans 1-8, 483.

18 Dunn, Romans 1-8, 483, 495.

19 Dunn, Romans 1-8, 485.

20 Dunn, Romans 1-8, 486, 495. Wright agrees with this. See N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: Romans (London: SPCK, 2004), 156.

21 Keown’s work is similarly promising. Mark J. Keown, Romans and the Mission of God (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, forthcoming, 2021), np.

22 Dunn is writing a Bible commentary on the text specifically, so his attention to the Spirit in these verses does not go as far as the contention of this theological interpretation.

15 16

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research The above understandings of Rom 8:28–30 are valid, orthodox, and beneficial to the church’s theology. However, if left to be the sole views of believers’ conformation to the image of the Son, they lead to a static and un-relational understanding of the process of transformation and the reality and experience of the “large family” in 8:29. This is certainly not the experience Christ had in his relationship with the Father and the Spirit (John 14:1–31).23 Furthermore, regarding God’s action in the world, it seems biblical to understand the Son and the Spirit as the “two hands of God,” which leads to the theological conclusion that Paul’s words in Rom 8:28–30 must indeed theologically concern specific members of the Trinity rather than simply the triune God “generally.”24 This theological interpretation does not view the above interpretations in a harshly negative light, but does contend much more can and should be theologically affirmed.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF THIRD ARTICLE THEOLOGY Even though the Spirit is not mentioned in direct connection with the conformation of believers to the image of the Son in 8:28–30, it is the contention of this essay that this connection is a theological reality and therefore aids in interpreting this part of Scripture (which does not go against the Spirit-filled context of the preceding verses in Rom 8). This connection can be arrived at through Third Article Theology (TAT).

Third Article Theology is firstly an approach, a methodology rather than a system of content. It is theology done “from the perspective of the Spirit.”25 TAT is a theological method which “starts with the Holy Spirit,” looking “through the Spirit,” complementing other article theologies, and is rooted in the “life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”26 A theological interpretation of Rom 8:28–30, utilizing the lens of TAT may provide a fuller understanding of the theological reality regarding how believers are conformed to the image of the Son. Furthermore, it is a staple of orthodoxy that opera trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt—the external works of the Trinity are always one and undivided. With concern to the Son specifically, “wherever the Father’s Son is revealed to be savingly at work, there too the Spirit is working.”27 This last aspect leads directly to the contribution of Spirit Christology, which is vital for interpreting the image of the Son from a TAT perspective.

In Carson’s words, “The love relationships within the Trinity … are logically prior to the love of God for the world.” D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John, Pillar New Testament Commentary (Leicester: IVP, 1991), 509.

24 Myk Habets, The Anointed Son: A Trinitarian Spirit Christology, Princeton Theological Monograph Series 129 (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2010), 65.

25 David Coffey, “The Method of Third Article Theology,” in Third Article Theology: A Pneumatological Dogmatics, ed. Myk Habets (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016), 27.

26 Myk Habets, “Prolegomenon: On Starting with the Spirit,” in Third Article Theology: A Pneumatological Dogmatics (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016), 14–18.

27 Laytham, “‘But If . . . by the Spirit of God,’” Journal of Theological Interpretation 12 (2018): 26.

23

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Spirit Christology It is not the purpose of this essay to establish Christ’s divinity or humanity. It is clear Jesus’ “human life was the human life of God.”28 However, it is important to briefly discuss the achievements of Spirit Christology in understanding how the two natures of Christ coexist in unity because these achievements have a theological bearing on how Romans 8:28–30 can be more fully interpreted.29 Coffey describes Spirit Christology well when he writes, “[Spirit Christology] assigns a key role to the Holy Spirit in the incarnation itself … This role is that the Spirit having participated with the Father and the Son in the creation of the sacred humanity, sanctifies it and unites it in person with the preexistent Son.”30 Spirit Christology is important because since “Spirit and Jesus are intimately related, we would do violence to split them apart either in our conceptions or our theology.”31 This approach is intentionally complementary to Logos Christology. It seeks to understand Christ and his work “from the perspective of the Holy Spirit.”32 Therefore, as will be evident below, Spirit Christology has a bearing on the way believers are conformed to the image of the Son because Christ is who he is in connection to the work and person of the Spirit.

A Chalcedonian Spirit Christology Therefore, a Chalcedonian Spirit Christology has something to add to this discussion. Liston makes two significant propositions by which this relationship between the Son and the Spirit in the Incarnation can be understood well theologically. Firstly, Jesus is “uniquely the person of the Son and fully and uniquely anointed by the Spirit.”33 Jesus’ person cannot be fully understood without his relationship to the Spirit.

Secondly, in the person of Jesus the “identity and missions of the Son and the Spirit are logically and chronologically synchronous (without priority), distinct (without confusion), and interdependent (without separation).”34 Without this understanding, either the Spirit or the Son’s role in the Incarnation is theologically lacking and therefore understandings of both are unsatisfactory. It is the Spirit’s work that enables Jesus to be both fully God and fully human. Without the above logical affirmations of synchronicity, distinctness, and interdependence, the divine and human natures in the person of Jesus do not make theological sense as truly being united.35 A Jesus without the Spirit is not truly human. This significantly links with interpreting the image of the Son in relation to the image of God in Rom 8:29.

Gerald O’Collins, Christology: A Biblical, Historical and Systematic Study of Jesus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 232.

Spirit Christology (though chronologically subsequent) is discussed before the image of God because Christology is the heart of theology. Habets, The Anointed Son, 10.

30 Coffey, “The Method of Third Article Theology,” 27.

31 Habets, The Anointed Son, 5.

32 Habets, The Anointed Son, 5.

33 Greg Liston, “A ‘Chalcedonian’ Spirit Christology,” Irish Theological Quarterly 81 (2016): 76. See also Mark Cortez, “Idols, Images, and a Spirit-Ed Anthropology: A Pneumatological Account of the Imago Dei,” in Third Article Theology: A Pneumatological Dogmatics (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016), 279.

34 Liston, “A ‘Chalcedonian’ Spirit Christology,” 80.

35 Liston, “A ‘Chalcedonian’ Spirit Christology,” 84, 88–89.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research The Image of God It seems best to understand this language and theology of the image of the Son (in 8:29) in relation to the original image of God in the creation narratives. Upon its creation, this human image of God was declared “very good” (Gen 1:31). Humanity was meant to be the collective image through which “God manifests his presence.”36 However, humanity did not live out this image faithfully, with “pride and striving to manipulate both God and others” being “the primary cause of human downfall and evil.”37 Linked closely with this, one theological way of understanding what humanity lost in its fall in Gen 3 is right relationship with God. Sin is perhaps primarily “the violation of a relationship, that between God the Creator and his human creatures.”38 Human beings are not genuinely human due to their relationality with each other, although “none of us is an independent person.”39 Rather, humanity finds its identity in relationship to God who determines humans as relational beings.40 This relationship is inherently pneumatological, it is “essential to the very meaning of the image” of God.41 Within Scripture, humans are pictured as unitary beings.42 There is language in reference to body and soul, but these are not understood as being independent entities. Instead, analogous to the “two natures of Christ,” what makes people human is the soul and body being “animated and held perpetually together by the Holy Spirit.”43 This image of God should not be understood without reference to the Spirit.

Briefly looking ahead, Paul employs eikōn for “image of the Son” in 8:29, the same word used to describe the “image” of God in the LXX version of Gen 1:26–27.44 Linking this back to Spirit Christology, it seems theologically clear the “image of God is fully recovered in Christ.”45 The “image of Christ is the only way in which human beings are enabled to recognize their created destiny as the image of God.”46 It is evident from Paul’s wider thought that he would agree with this claim that Jesus (the incarnate Son) is the image of God, because he made the claim himself in various letters (2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15). A Third Article Theology approach to the image of God supports the idea that this relationship is only possible through the Spirit, which Jesus’s person and ministry exemplify.

A Third Article Theology Conclusion Concerning Jesus’ Person Therefore, it can be theologically affirmed that Christ was genuinely and perfectly human because he (1) was incarnated by the Spirit, (2) lived by the power of the Spirit, and (3) was in right relationship with God

Cortez, “Idols, Images, and a Spirit-Ed Anthropology,” 281.

James D. G. Dunn, “Spirit-Speech: Reflections on Romans 8:12-27,” in Romans and the People of God, ed. N. T. Wright and Sven K. Soderlund (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 91.

38 Christoph Schwöbel, “Human Being as Relational Being: Twelve Theses for a Christian Anthropology,” in Persons, Divine and Human: King’s College Essays in Theological Anthropology, ed. Colin E. Gunton and Christoph Schwöbel (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991), 141–65..

39 Cornelius Plantinga, Engaging God’s World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 40.

40 Myk Habets, “The Turn to Relationality: Twelve Thesis for a Christian Anthropology” (No Date): 5–6.

41 Cortez, “Idols, Images, and a Spirit-Ed Anthropology,” 282.

42 Myk Habets, “Naked but Not Disembodied: A Case for Anthropological Duality,” Pacific Journal of Baptist Research 4 (2008): 48.

43 Habets, “Naked but Not Disembodied,” 50.

44 Alfred Rahlfs, ed., Septuagint with Logos Morphology, Electronic. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1979). This is not to say the theological connection is based on this same word being used, but it provides evidence for the theological link being claimed here.

45 Anthony C. Thiselton, Discovering Romans: Content, Interpretation, Reception (London: SPCK, 2016), 182.

46 Habets, “The Turn to Relationality,” 9.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research through the Spirit. Christ could not be genuinely human, in right relationship with God, without the power and close relationship to the Spirit. Consequently, Christ can be rightly claimed to be the perfect image of God.47 THROUGH THE SPIRIT: THEOLOGICALLY INTERPRETING ROMANS 8:28–30 Putting much of the above wider theological themes and conclusions to use in interpreting Romans 8:2830, it is clear there is much more to be seen and affirmed here than one might first conclude. Utilizing Kuyper’s assertion of the Spirit’s vital role in the sanctification of the humanity; Dunn’s assertion of the link between the image of the Son and the image of God; TAT’s perspective on both the image of God and Christology; and Paul’s wider thought enable a theological interpretation of Rom 8:28–30 to come to life with significant implications.

Context Immediately Prior Paul has spent much of Romans 8 writing of the Spirit’s relationship to believers’ present lives, and experiences of suffering, hope, and future glory (8:1–25). Leading into 8:28–30, Paul mentions the Spirit’s role in our weakness and intercession on our behalf (8:26–27). These words obviously have the Spirit in view, but Spirit Christology has something relevant to add to the meaning and purpose in believers’ experience of weakness.

Jesus’s person and life were permeated by the power of the Spirit. Even in the dark moment in the garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:32–42; Matt 26:36-46),48 not to mention hanging on the cross itself), Jesus persevered with the mandate purposed by both himself and the Father (John 3:14–18), which undeniably involved both joy and suffering. This was all for a purpose, achieved through the Spirit’s power in the Son’s Incarnation. Therefore, believers can be genuinely assured that although we experience suffering, the Spirit is there with us and there is even a purpose for enduring such an ordeal which the Spirit enables us to live through in our weakness.

Context Immediately After Following 8:28–30, Paul goes on to affirm the confidence believers have in God’s love (8:31–39). Despite the suffering of the present experience, he communicates his own strong conviction that no matter what happens, believers’ union with Christ ensures nothing will separate them from this love. Neither general creation nor spiritual powers are exceptions to this claim. Once again, parallels to Jesus’ own life can be drawn in interpreting this (John 14:20–31).

Cortez, “Idols, Images, and a Spirit-Ed Anthropology,” 267.

Luke’s account in 22:43–44 would perhaps make an even stronger point. However, as Metzger explains, it is likely not original.

Bruce Manning Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, Second Edition, 4th Rev. (London; New York: United Bible Societies, 1994), 151.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research Romans 8:28–30 Putting this theological interpretation together apropos of Rom 8:28–30, all things do indeed work together for the good of those who love God, because of the Spirit. The Spirit is inseparable from this reality, for without the Spirit of God one cannot truly love God and be united with Christ (Rom 8:9–10; 1 John 4:7– 16). Furthermore, it is the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead, and the same Spirit works for the good of believers to the same resurrected end (Rom 8:11; 1 Cor 15:12–57). In a similar fashion to Jesus’ own life, the purpose of God calling believers involves both suffering and joy. This enables believers to realize that there is even purpose in the details and suffering of their existential reality. The Spirit cannot be separated from the good outworked in the lives of both Jesus’ and his body (12:1–14; Gal 5:13–26; Rom 8:1–17).

Romans 8:29 is the key verse in this theological interpretation, due to the ὅτι (the “marker of cause or reason”) denoting the reason Paul can state what he does in 8:28.49 The good that Paul envisages is possibly this transformation into the image of Christ.50 If believers are being conformed to the image of the incarnate Son, then the statements concerning good and glorification for believers are almost certainly best interpreted through a Third Article Theology perspective on Christology and the image of God. As Cortez states, if “the imago is thoroughly christological, and if Jesus cannot be understood apart from the Spirit, then the imago should be thoroughly pneumatological.”51 As believers with the Spirit, we are already in some sense conformed to the image of the Son, due to the reality that to be in right relationship with God requires a Spirit-ed restoration of relationship.

The Son is the firstborn within a large family (8:29). If Jesus was the truly exemplary (not merely functional but also ontological) portrayal of the image of God, by the perfect relationship he had with the Father through the Spirit, then for humanity to be conformed to his image is for them to likewise be in right relationship with the Father through the Spirit. It is by the Spirit that Jesus and believers are enabled to be truly human. Therefore, if believers are to be Jesus’ siblings by being conformed to his image (the perfect image of God), then it is a necessity that they too share a right relationship to the Father beside the Son through the Spirit. The full Spirit-empowered experiential reality of this theological truth may not be the current experience of believers, but its fulfilment is not in doubt—which leads directly to Paul’s words in 8:30. The church is being conformed to the image of Christ by the Spirit as the church “suffers and obeys, or better, as she suffers in obedience” (John 15:1–25).52 This is why believers need the Spirit’s help in weakness and enduring creation’s groans (Rom 8:18– 26) as Christ lived and endured through the Spirit; it is through “our Christlike suffering and obedience that we are moulded and conformed to Christ’s image.”53 Things working together for good towards conformation to the image of the Son (8:28–29) occurs not because of a triumphalist reality, but because of the power of the Spirit to obediently endure both the joys and sufferings of life.

Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, eds., Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains, 2nd ed. (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996), 780.

50 David A. DeSilva, Transformation: The Heart of Paul’s Gospel, ed. Michael F Bird (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014), 14.

51 Cortez, “Idols, Images, and a Spirit-Ed Anthropology,” 281.

52 Greg Liston, The Anointed Church: Toward a Third Article Ecclesiology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2015), 147.

53 Greg Liston, “The Church’s Journey through Time: Toward a Spirit Eschatology,” Pneuma 41 (2019): 432.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research Those whom God has predestined to this conformation are those he has also glorified (Rom 8:30).

This glorification (an aorist) should not be interpreted to mean an already accomplished reality. Paul is viewing this process (or event) “from its end point and completion” which he mentioned earlier in 8:17. 54 Elsewhere in his letters, Paul states that believers “are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:18).55 Although humanity failed to give God glory (Rom 1:21), God bestows the glory intended for humanity (Ps 8:5; Heb 2:8–10) on believers in Christ through the Spirit.56 Summarizing the reality described in Rom 8:28–30 in trinitarian terms, the Father restores humanity to the image of God by sending the Son by the power of the Spirit to vicariously reunite humanity with divinity. This reunion enables the Spirit to dwell in humanity who can now, as the collective image of God, participate in the love and community of the triune God, glorifying the Father by the power of the Spirit alongside the Son.57 As siblings of Christ (8:29,) in right relationship with the Father by the Spirit, believers experience and live out the love of the trinity (and the Father’s work) by the power of the Spirit in the image of the firstborn Son.58 All things do work for the good of those who love God (8:28) because the Spirit conforms believers to the image of the self-sacrificial Son (8:29) and the Father gives them the glory (8:30) of the true image of God—constituting a truly relational and loving family (8:29). Believers’ image bearing lives are theologically permeated by the Spirit whether they are aware of it in their experiences of suffering and joy or not.

Hopefully a theological interpretation such as this heightens an awareness of this beautiful reality.

CONCLUSION This theological interpretation of Rom 8:28–30 has posited that the Spirit conforms believers to the image of the Son. It is the Spirit who effectively sees that all things work together for the good of believers. It is the Spirit through whom believers are called, justified, and glorified, by enabling the Incarnation of the Son. This claim is not only valid, but theologically necessary. A Third Article Theological interpretation of Rom 8:28–30 enables a greater understanding of the theological reality of the Spirit’s role in the church’s transformation and future glorification than might otherwise be able to be affirmed and understood. An understanding of the church’s relationship to the likeness and “image” of Christ without reference to the Spirit, though not necessarily wrong, is a deficient one.

Dunn, Romans 1-8, 485–486.

We will one day be vessels of glory, but for now the church are vessels of clay formed by the Spirit (2 Cor 4:7). Frank D. Macchia, The Spirit-Baptized Church: A Dogmatic Inquiry (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2021), §Introduction: Beyond Machines of Salvation.

For a discussion justifying interpreting 2 Cor 3:18 referring to the Spirit see Murray J. Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 317–18.

56 Dunn, Romans 1-8, 485.

57 See Myk Habets, “Spirit, Selfhood, and Salvation,” in Being Saved: Explorations in Soteriology and Human Persons, ed. Mark Hamilton, Mark Cortez, and Josh Farris (London: SCM Press, 2018), 143–56.

58 Gregory J. Liston, “Where the Love of Christ Is Found: Toward a Third Article Ecclesiology,” in Third Article Theology: A Pneumatological Dogmatics (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016), 337–39.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research

REVIEWS Joseph McDonald (Ed.), Exploring Moral Injury in Sacred Texts. Studies in Religion and

Theology. London: Jessica Kingsley, 2017. (214 pp.) [ISBN 9781785927560] Darren Cronshaw Moral injury (MI) eventuates from violating moral convictions. Whereas Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is founded on fear, MI is driven by and leads to shame and guilt, and then to self-harming, selfhandicapping, self-medicating behaviours. Recovery from moral injury cannot rely on therapy and medication alone. Community support and practices such as forgiveness and making amends helps foster moral repair. These are traditionally the sphere of faith communities and religious practices and texts. So, what can religions and their Scriptures offer for the journey of moral repair for soldiers and others when morally injured?

Exploring Moral Injury in Sacred Texts offers a model of reading the texts of religious traditions and gleaning insight about the dynamics of moral injury and how religions may point in healing directions. A large part of its value is how it draws on traditions of Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, and US civil

religion. The contributors never suggest any list of easy steps to shortcut recovery, but they identify and offer thoughtful exegesis of passages that are relevant to those who have suffered moral injury and are on a journey to moral recovery.

The texts include narratives of war, murder, rape, slavery, toxic leadership, and betrayal and how these injurious events affect individuals and groups. For example, Professor of Judaic Studies David Blumenthal offers a Jewish view of soul repair and explores King David and his abusive use of power and sex with Bathsheba. He explains his subsequent suicidal ideation but also his repair and rejoining life.

Similarly, Old Testament scholars Nancy Bowen and Brad Kelle both offer reflections on the Hebrew Bible. Bowen exegetes Sodom and Lot and how MI can produce dehumanization and further MI. Yet then, good acts of character can foster moral repair as in the story of Ruth. Kelle examines rituals of acquiring and sharing enemy goods after battle—with non-combatants as well as combatants (thus communalizing responsibility warfare) and as temple offerings (thus reframing military action in a broader cosmic narrative).

Amir Hussain explores an incident of Muhammad’s life, inspired by Joseph and his brothers, both stories which point beyond violence and vengeance. Hussain faces contemporary rhetoric of Islamophobia, compares Qur’anic references to war and violence with Islam’s sister traditions of Judaism and Christianity, and guides a path from moral injury through forgiveness to peace.

Theological ethicist Daniel Maguire explores civil religion and moral wounds particularly in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address and its sanctification of warfare and its call for citizens to bring healing. He appeals for greater attention to that call for healing and questions the US soldier’s enlistment oath and its removal of the right to selective conscientious objection.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research Peace and Justice Studies scholar Kelly Denton-Borhang integrates a reading of the gospels alongside a critique of civil religion’s clichéd conceptualizing of soldiers’ deaths as analogous to Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice. She sensitively but boldly advocates looking at how wartime killing is fed by structural violence (including the economics of the military complex) and deeper cultural violence (including religion and assumptions of cultural supremacy and contesting the idea of moral injury).

Michael Yanell, PhD student and veteran US Army Sergeant Explosive Ordnance Disposal specialist, reads “the man out of the tombs” who Jesus meets in Mark 5 as a symbol of Palestinian occupation and literally as a Roman military veteran with moral injuries. Unique among the volume’s writers, Yannell draws on his experience of veteran suffering to explain the man’s confused identities, isolation and self-harm. The story illustrates the beginning and trajectory of a path to healing from MI with divine assistance.

Considering Peter’s denial and Judas’ betrayal, New Testament scholar Warren Carter suggests Jesus was willing to forgive both of their guilt and shame. Yet he asks why Peter went on to be a key leader in the church, while Judas was withdrawn from his community and hung himself?

John Thompson reflects on Buddhism’s story of Aṅgulimāla, a murderous outlaw who suffered MI both being betrayed by authority and choosing gruesome violence. Yet after encountering Buddha and doing reparative community work, he transforms into an ascetic monk.

A limitation of this list of writers is they are all academics and all work in the United States. Reflective

practice from practicing caregivers and more military leaders, and further exegesis from people from other national and cultural contexts, would broaden the engagement and relevance of this kind of study.

Rita Brock, previous Director of the Soul Repair Center at Brite Divinity School and currently Senior Vice President for Moral Injury Programs at Volunteers of America, offers a Foreword that positions the importance of these textual studies in the context of communities that seek to offer moral repair to soldiers and others outside the military.

Joseph McDonald, adjunct faculty at Texas Christian University, edited the volume and introduced how textual studies can mutually inform moral injury. Following Shay’s seminal work on moral injury as seen in ancient literature from Achilles in Vietnam (1994) and Odysseus in America (2002), McDonald has invited religious scholars to delve into their texts with the lens of moral injury. Whether the agency of any MI is from a betrayal of “what’s right” by an authority (as Shay defines MI) or from a personal violation of one’s moral code (following Litz and colleagues), the writers of Exploring Moral injury in Sacred Texts maintain that Scriptures and classical texts are allies in healing. For those who are familiar with the texts, they broaden understanding in the context of MI. For those unfamiliar with certain traditions, they illuminate the healing utility of fresh readings of diverse Scriptures. Moreover, contemporary psychological understanding of

moral injury can illuminate and offer fresh readings or ancient sacred texts.

Exploring Moral Injury in Sacred Texts is an important resource for chaplains and caregivers, for textual scholars interested in the relevance of their traditions for contemporary moral dilemmas, and for those who have suffered moral injury from across religious traditions. It is an important addition to the growing body of literature on moral injury. It is also an original foundation for what will hopefully be a growing field of

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research research on the use of sacred texts in moral injury treatment from scholars of religion and pastoral theologians, and reflective practice from caregivers and military personnel themselves.

John M. G. Barclay, Paul and the Power of Grace. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2020. (xviii + 184) [ISBN 9780802874610] Jonathan R. Robinson John Barclay is Lightfoot Professor of Divinity at Durham University. He is an authority on the SecondTemple Jewish Background of the New Testament and possibly the most widely respected Pauline scholar of the current time after his book, Paul and the Gift (Eerdmans, 2015). That last work is probably the most important book in Pauline studies since E. P Sanders’ Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Fortress, 1977), although time is yet to tell if it will have such an enduring impact. Paul and the Gift is an imposing and detailed tome of nearly 700 pages and designed to engage numerous complex scholarly debates. This more recent work, Paul and the Power of Grace, is a much-condensed and more accessible version of the earlier book, but with additional chapters responding to questions and concerns raised by respondents. It should be said at the outset, that this book is a model of clarity, accessibility, scholarly care, and economy. It absolutely succeeds in its intention and is highly readable.

Chapters 1-9 of Paul and the Power of Grace contain a precis of the argument of Paul and the Gift. The first two chapters discuss the anthropology of and possible implications of the idea of gift, a concept found throughout human societies. Barclay clearly explicates six different ways in which gift/grace could be understood to be “perfected.” The concept of gift may reach perfection in some combination of or emphasis on superabundance, singularity, priority, incongruity, efficacy, and non-circularity (pp.13-16).

Barclay argues that a failure to clarify these different possible approaches to gift has fueled many theological and exegetical disagreements (p. 17). He rightly observes that non-circularity of gift is the most widespread present-day conception of a perfect gift, that is, one with no response expected or required. However, as he argues in the next chapter, this view of gift is simply not apparent in ancient texts. Therefore, reading Paul as if he has a modern conception of gift may considerably mislead the interpreter.

The third chapter discusses four different Second Temple texts, each of which illustrates a different understanding of gift at work in the Jewish environment. The Wisdom of Solomon “expresses an emphatic theology of grace” marked by priority (God gives first) and superabundance (God gives abundantly) but not by incongruity, because God only gives to the worthy (p. 31). Philo of Alexandria “thinks that God’s gifts are singular, abundant, and prior” but not undeserved, or incongruous (p. 32). The Hodayot (hymns) of Qumran give “probably the most negative picture of the human condition in Jewish literature of the time.” God brings the elect into an undeserved righteousness and destiny despite their initial worthlessness, and thus grace is perfected in incongruity (pp. 33-4). His final example is the dialogue from 4 Ezra between Ezra and the angel Uriel. While Ezra pleads for incongruous grace, mercy given to the unrighteous, for Uriel this would “compromise justice” and is “ultimately unsatisfactory as a view of the world” (p. 36).

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research Barclay thus effectively demonstrates the need for a nuanced approach to Jewish thought about gift and grace. Early Jews were diverse in the way they perfected grace, and so when reading Paul, in context as a Jew, one particular model of grace cannot be assumed.

Chapters 4-6 are structured as a commentary on grace in Galatians. Arguing that the letter is a response to the influence of Messianic-Jews on the gentile congregation in Galatia, in particular, their insistence on circumcision both in regard to Mosaic law and to the patriarchal narratives of Abraham, Barclay demonstrates how Paul’s theological response to each aspect of this controversy is set in the language of “gift” (pp.40-41). One of the key exegetical moves Barclay makes is his interpretation of the verb dikaioō, usually translated justify, as not describing a change in condition but, in view of its normal meaning in Greek, as describing a judgement of worth (p.48). Thus, worth does not come through being circumcised but is a result of the gift of Christ, a gift that is effective not because of the worth of the recipient, but because of the incongruous worth of the gift. In light of this gift, all other possible factors of worth, the law of Moses, gender, race, or legal status as slave or free (cf. Gal 3:15) are radically relativized and only have value in as far as they contribute to the purposes of Christ (p50). He concludes that “this unconditioned gift, given in Christ, cannot be mapped onto prior configurations of worth, it subverts old cultural norms, it refounds individual subjectivity, it justifies new patterns of mission, it reconfigures history, it retunes the voice of scripture, and it creates new communities on the landscape of the Roman Empire” (p. 73).

In a similar vein, chapters 7-9 provide a commentary on Romans. Barclay traces several ways that Paul’s thought has developed from the letter to the Galatians. Whereas in Galatians God’s gift is given “irrespective of worth,” in Romans Paul articulates that it is given “in the absence of worth” (p. 76). In addition to this amplification of the incongruity of God’s grace, Barclay also highlights other developments, including the “efficacy” and “superabundance” of God’s grace in Romans (p. 76). As a result, “God’s incongruous grace creates congruity” (p. 81). That is, the grace of God, while “unconditioned” (given without regard to worth) is not “unconditional,” it has an expected outcome in the transformation of the receiver (p. 87). Importantly, “What grace conveys is not a thing but a person” (p. 90) this gift generates a new relationship, which generates an obligation to act out the new life given through participation in Christ (p. 93). Importantly, even the ability to live this new life and to trust in Christ is itself part of the gift of Christ. In chapter 9, Barclay examines Romans 9-11 and shows that these difficult chapters are united by a “consistent narrative pattern,” that is, “the incongruity of divine election, the absence of fit between divine mercy and the worth of its recipients” (p112).

For those familiar with Paul and the Gift, these chapters will contain little new. However, my short summary here cannot do justice to just how scintillating and nuanced Barclay’s exegesis is, even in condensed form. He compresses the insights from a much larger work into these chapters, and so these commentaries are exceedingly rich. Whilst cleaving strictly to the theme of grace, Barclay nonetheless touches on many other issues of import with economy and skill. While their purpose is to convey the thesis of the book regarding the central place of the incongruous, unconditioned, but not unconditional grace of

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research God in Paul’s thought, they could also serve a as useful commentary for preaching or study. Barclay also displays a talent for pithy and arresting phrases, and where the subject matter reoccurs, he seems to work hard, and successfully so, to couch it in fresh language and to keep the reader’s attention and imagination engaged.

The remaining chapters move to more original material, developing the argument beyond the original scope of Paul and the Gift. In chapter 10, Barclay seeks to demonstrate how Paul’s conception of God’s grace functions as “the grammar of his theology” (p. 114) elsewhere in the undisputed Pauline letters. He argues that, despite the change in terminology, in the Corinthian correspondence and Philippians, the underlying pattern of Paul’s theology is “recognizably the same” as that of Galatians and Romans (p. 119).

In the Corinthian correspondence, incongruous grace is reflected in incongruous power in weakness (cf. 1 Cor 1:18-23; 2 Cor 13:4) and “undermines the human capital in which believers take confidence” so that they can only trust in the gift of Christ (p.119). In the letter to the Philippians, “Christ participates in the human condition all the way to death, in order that others may participate in his condition, all the way to eternal life,” and “this reconstituted self is and always will be the product of a gift” (p.123).

Chapter 11 expands the discussion by outlining some ethical implications of Paul’s theology of grace within Pauline church communities. These ethical practices are a “return-gift to God” but also a “forward transfer of grace” whereby others benefit from what God has given us (p. 125). This can be seen in Paul’s discussion of the use of individual “gifts” in the body of Christ for the sake of the community (1 Cor 12; Rom 12; cf. Eph 4; p.126) as well as in the honour given to those who conventional society would consider of lesser worth (p. 128). In the “one another” language found in Paul’s letters, Barclay argues we see an ideal of a reciprocal support network operating within Christians communities, which function to both support the community and also to enable the community to give back to God who is the source of that gift-dynamic” (p. 132). And in the collection gift for Jerusalem, a “circle” of grace is exposed as grace comes first from God in Christ, is at work “through and among believers,” and returns to God in thanksgiving (2 Cor 9:12-15; p. 133).

Chapter 12 helps situate Barclay’s thesis in regard to other perspectives on Paul: Protestant, Catholic, the New Perspective on Paul, and the Paul within Judaism School. This chapter is particularly helpful for those who are not professional Pauline scholars. His summaries of the other approaches are balanced and sympathetic, rather than agonistic. Barclay, rightly in my view, presents his thesis as a mediating way, with commonalities and constructive critique for all the schools mentioned. Perhaps one other important school of thought missing from the discussion would be the Apocalyptic Paul perspective. This is treated in a footnote that refers the reader to his discussion in Paul and the Gift (fn.5 p. 139). You cannot cover everything in a book this size, but given the influence of J. Louis Martyn and others on the theological reception of Paul (especially among Barthians), this would have been helpful to include. Notwithstanding, this chapter demonstrates why Barclay has become such a significant figure in Pauline studies. In his work, he appears to have listened to and learned from each school of thought and critiques them without disregarding or negating their contribution.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research The final chapter reflects on how Paul’s vision of grace, as described by Barclay, might connect with contemporary culture and church. Here Barclay offers three brief sketches of “theological interpretation” that takes inspiration from Paul’s letters “in their historical context” but also utilize “a necessary freedom to rethink his theology for new contexts” (p. 151). He argues that Paul’s theology of grace is “a rich resource for Christians in challenging racism, gender prejudice, and all forms of negative stereotype” (p. 152). He argues that the “indiscriminate grace of God in Christ” is a superior foundation for human rights than the Imago Dei, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or the American Declaration of Independence (pp. 153-4). He also suggests Paul’s theology of grace could address the crisis of self-worth, mental health and self-esteem in Western culture (p. 154). It is not just a matter of theoretically locating our self-worth in the unconditioned love of God, but also enacting Paul’s “social vision of community in which each person honors and affirms the other” (p. 155). Finally, he argues that our Western perfection of gift as non-circular has rendered our approach to charity as “patronizing, demeaning and disempowering” (p. 157). Against this he argues Paul’s ethic of “reciprocity and interdependency” (p. 157) has currency both inside and outside of church situations: “everyone has something to give to others, and one should expect to give not to the poor but with them” (p. 158, emphasis original). He concludes that “one of Paul’s greatest contributions to our contemporary world must be his theology of grace” (p. 159).

While Pauline scholars will still need to refer to Paul and the Gift for their work, for most others Paul and the Power of Grace is an excellent volume that will be a wonderful resource for undergraduate study, sermon preparation, theological engagement with Paul, and personal interest. It is highly recommended.

Willie James Jennings, After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2020. (165 pp.) [ISBN: 9780802878441] A. D. Clark-Howard Willie Jennings has begun to solidify his legacy as one of the most significant and important prophetic voices in the theological guild, examining the entanglements of race, colonialism, Christian theology, and its twenty-first-century performances. His latest text, After Whiteness—part treatise, part memoir, part poetry—both recapitulates and condenses some of his previous work on the relationship of the theological academy and the modern racial condition entrenched by centuries of European colonialism, while also, albeit tentatively, offering a more constructive and concrete vision for theological education. Though it is always difficult to make such claims so close to any historical moment, this text, if taken seriously, promises to upend and remake theological education into the future. It demands a wide readership across all spectrums and subdisciplines within the theological academy and by all theological educators.

Jennings’ main claim in the text is that “the formation that attends theological education and, more broadly, Western education is troubled—in fact, deeply distorted” (p. 5). Formation lies at the heart of the educational exercise; as Jennings’ neatly surmises: “Education and theological education kill the lie that people don’t change” (p. 5). Yet the change wrought by much theological education in the West is

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research deformed. In a rather sweeping categorisation in terms of intersectionality, Jennings argues that the formative which “propels the curricular, pedagogical, and formational energies of Western education, and especially theological education” is that of “a white self-sufficient man, his self-sufficiency defined by possession, control, and mastery” (p. 6). White, self-sufficient masculinity makes up the method, mode, and end of formation in the theological academy, a colonial telos aimed towards isolation, mastery, and control with deep roots in the history of Western Christianity and European imperialism. Jennings draws an analysis of the formational power of white self-sufficient masculinity in contrast with an image of Jesus amidst the crowds; diverse people brought together to dwell within the body which Christ himself offers. Such a reorientation in theological education is an orientation toward love and belonging, a bold vision of a thick life together characterised by the formation of “erotic souls” drawn into authentic connection with one another. “Theological education must capture its central work—to form us in the art of cultivating belonging” (p. 10).

The book is structured in five chapters, a prologue and brief epilogue. The prologue (“Secrets”) introduces the text, provides definitions of critical terms utilised by Jennings, and plunges the reader into the mix of personal storytelling, poetry, and decolonial analysis, which is to follow. Chapter one (“Fragments”) describes the way in which knowledge and skill is detached and rearranged towards the colonial ends of mastery and control in the intellectual instincts of Western theology. Such a model of arranging fragments is a way to detach from and control the other, as Jennings writes, “born of a tragic history of Christians who came not to learn anything from indigenous peoples but only to instruct them, and to exorcize and eradicate anything and everything that seemed strange and therefore anti-Christian” (p.

37). Chapter two (“Designs”) examines the “form of attention cultivated through brutality,” a design of intellectual life that should instead be met through affection and desire (p. 59). Intellectual attention drawn around the cultural aesthetic of whiteness resists the gathering of diverse peoples around Jesus, God enfleshed whose life is given for many. Chapter three (“Buildings”) explores institutionalism and leadership, both, in Jennings’ analysis, descendants of the plantation structure of slave and master. Leadership in the guild and in the church is judged by its cold bravado, an ability to “control the space and master the small worlds” (p. 86). Building, like education, is a gift from God, but entangled with white masculinity, it is a building toward death. Chapter four (“Motions”) is more constructive. Jennings sketches out three areas in which a new image of formation and theological education can be imagined: “an assimilation, an inwardness, and a revolution that help us form an erotic soul,” a theological culture formed towards communion (p. 134). Colonial designs of whiteness, control, and destruction can be replaced by practices of mutual exchange, contemplation, and eschatological renewal. Chapter five (“Eros”) solidifies this new picture of theological education. Communion is the goal of theological education, a communion thwarted by whiteness. Nonetheless, such an image offers the theological academy an exciting, though uncharted, future.

Jennings’ text is rich with personal insight and keen observation from his own experiences working as dean at Duke Divinity School. As his previous work has suggested, the problems late modernity poses

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research for theology of intellectual fragmentation and passé exclusivist truth claims are only a (possibly inconsequential) slice of the whole picture. Pressing deeper into the issues of our current cultural moment, especially from the underside of history, reveals a wider, more profound, centuries-long endeavour of conquest and power in the formation of race, whiteness, and coloniality within the ongoing legacies of European empires. Such legacies formulate and shape the way theological education exists today, pressing all peoples into a mould formed at the site of the colonial project and its fusion with Christianity. A “pedagogy of the plantation” functions as the main educational and formational reflex of theological education in the West, modelled off the mastery of the racial paterfamilias of colonial history (p. 82). One’s positionality in reading these histories and their modern manifestations will account for its experience. For readers of colour, many stories recounted by Jennings will no doubt feel familiar and easily identifiable. For myself, however, as a white scholar in theology, it is an indispensable demonstration that while the old hegemonies may sometimes seem fragile, they are nonetheless thoroughly entrenched within our institutional and pedagogical structures.

Part of Jennings’ project can also be understood as a reminder to the theological academy of the voices it has left behind in the past. In the prologue, Jennings references a text lost (or, rather, ignored) to history on Christian feminism and theological education as an important inspiration for his own. Produced in the 1980s by the Mud Flower Collective, a group of female and ethnically diverse scholars working in religious and theological education, God’s Fierce Whimsy reflects in their own contexts on many of the poignant issues of race and gender Jennings raises today. (I am grateful to my colleague Jaimee van Gemerden who drew my attention to the Mud Flower Collective, and their influence over After Whiteness, and is seeking to explore their collective methodology for theological education and research today.)

Furthermore, the title After Whiteness references Alasdair MacIntyre’s influential After Virtue, indicative of Jennings’ intended scope and critique. The implicit message of After Whiteness might be understood as thus: current diagnoses of the issues befalling theological education, and theological study more generally, have been looking in the wrong place. The main questions to be asking—questions which attend to the destructive effects of modern colonialism’s impact on Christian intellectual discourse and pedagogy—are obfuscated by the theological guild’s ongoing polemic against late modernity and its various splintering of religion, ontology, and morality, etc. Instead, it is the devastating performative effects of whiteness joined to Christian formation which lies at the heart of many of our deepest problems.

The mix of memoir, study, and poetry is both enigmatic and provocative. The book is also short, just over 150 pages in a small book format. Yet, a detailed investigation of the relationship between Christian theology, race, and European colonialism is not Jennings’ purpose in writing here, and indeed one ought to seek out Jennings’ magisterial and lengthier The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race for such a project. However, the rejection of more typical forms of analytical writing and detail here seem to be part of the point. After Whiteness inhabits, in its very form and function, the type of decolonial theological discourse it seeks to explore. It is a plea to those of us who inhabit white, masculine positionalities to move towards the other and enter the destabilising process of encountering, in love, that

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research which is foreign—a project that, at least in Jennings’ mind, invites an extravagance of language and form in writing. Such a process offers redemption, “to imagine new conversations that open up a shared exploration into the desire for communion that is intended to vivify theological education” (p. 157). Such practice is a “practice aimed at eternity,” one that longs for the beauty and multiplicity of God’s own eschaton (p. 157). Thus, there is something deeply pastoral in the wisdom and experiences Jennings offers as he reflects over his career.

After Whiteness is quite simply a ground-breaking text. While not a radical departure or invention from Jennings’ earlier work, it condenses and applies much of his previous work on theology, race, and colonialism into a short format, accessible, and thoroughly disturbing tour de force. While, as I have already mentioned, it deserves to be read alongside Jennings’ lengthier Christian Imagination, it is also sharper in focus than his previous opus and rid of the last vestiges of any sort of post-racial optimism present within the previous book’s Obama context. There is no-one involved in theological education today—scholars, students, administrators, and so on—who should not read After Whiteness and reflect on its urgent message.

Though readable in an afternoon, it invites meditative attention and multiple re-readings. Jennings’ latest book is a profound, haunting examination of theological education as it is and yet theological education as it could be.

Viorel Coman, Dumitru Stăniloae’s Trinitarian Ecclesiology: Orthodoxy and the Filioque.

(London: Lexington/Fortress Academic, 2019. (310 pp.) [ISBN 9781978703780] Jordan Jones Viorel Coman’s Dumitru Stăniloae’s Trinitarian Ecclesiology: Orthodoxy and the Filioque consists of six chapters with the goal of demonstrating Stăniloae’s relevance for Trinitarian theology for the debates about the filioque and the broader practical implications for the ecclesiology of Western and Eastern Trinitarian theologies. “The monograph,” Coman reveals, “[gives] priority to Stăniloae’s ecclesiological synthesis between Christology and pneumatology” (p. 263). With the first chapter giving necessary background information to help contextualise the Orthodox Church and Stăniloae, including his influence on and the influence on him of the Neo-patristic movement, Western theology, and Trinitarian theology.

Chapter 2 is less bibliographical in its overview of “Stăniloae’s Early Approach (1964-1978) to the Filioque.” In it, Coman profitably appropriates Kallistos Ware’s labels of “hawks” and “doves” to differentiate those scholars who perceived the filioque to have severe repercussions on Western theology, namely in ecclesiology, and those who saw the debate as insignificant and speculative (p. 25). After analysing the hawks and doves of the East and the West, respectively, Coman explores Stăniloae’s engagement with the filioque. After initially indicating that Stăniloae’s scholarship was silent on the topic for over 20 years until 1964, Coman explores how Stăniloae’s subsequent reaction to the filioque was a reflection of his Orthodox influences, primarily Photius, the three Byzantine theologians—Gregory II of Cyprus, Gregory

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research Palamas, and Joseph Bryennios, and his contemporaries—Vladimir Lossky and Nikos Nissiotis (pp. 34-6).

The chapter concludes with the three primary problems that Stăniloae accused the filioque of having on ecclesiology and soteriology. Coman critiques fairly both sides, with him perceptively noting that discourses on the Trinity being a model for the church logically entail Trinitarian doctrine having ecclesiological implications and him irenically challenging the “regrettable caricatures” of Christomonism and pneumatomonism (ibid., p. 51). His conclusion to the chapter helpfully specifies his “spectrum” of hawks and doves within Orthodoxy: Lossky—Stăniloae—Nissiotis—Zizioulas—Ware—Evdokimov—Bulgakov (p. 53). However, Coman claims that Stăniloae was the only hawk whose position on the issue changed over time (p. 54).

Chapter 3 concerns “Stăniloae’s Approach to the Filioque in an Ecumenical Context” which explores his “methodology of conversation” for the rest of his career (p. 62). Coman demonstrates that Stăniloae held in tension in his later years “Orthodoxy’s task of departing from the Western scholastic and neoscholastic influences (the goal of the Neo-Patristic synthesis) … with Orthodoxy’s task of letting itself be enriched by the spiritual and theological values of others Christian traditions (the goal of “open sobornicity”)” (p. 62). Coman offers in this chapter unique insight into how open sobornicity is both an idea within Stăniloae’s thought and an implemented methodology within his engagement in “the Trinitarian debates on the filioque and its subsidiary aspects … [as witnessed by]: (i) the very positive evaluation of the role of cataphatic theology for the doctrine of the Trinity; (ii) the incorporation of Augustine’s motif of the Holy Spirit as the love between the Father and the Son; and (iii) Stăniloae’s willingness to read back from the economic Trinity into the immanent Trinity”(ps. 65, 76). The final section is devoted to Stăniloae’s approach to the filioque from 1978 to 1993 where dialogue on the filioque at numerous “ecumenical meetings and international theological conferences … in a more cordial context” led to him becoming ecumenical over polemical (p. 76). Thus, Stăniloae’s later posture to Trinitarian dialogue is pithily summarised in Coman’s précis: “No longer a hawk[,] not yet a dove” (p. 87).

Chapter 4, “The “Holy Grail” of Twentieth-Century Christian Theology”, explores numerous ecclesiological syntheses between Christology and Pneumatology within the works of selected “influential Orthodox and Roman Catholic theologians: [Florovsky, Lossky, and Zizioulas], on the Orthodox side; [Congar and Kasper], on the Roman Catholic side” (p. 96). The selection of these theologians was, Coman notes, “guided by the criterion of ethnic and cultural diversity” although he acknowledges that other significant theologians with their corresponding ecclesiological syntheses “[deserved] attention” too (p. 96).

However, he does not specify why Roman Catholic scholars were selected over Protestant ones to represent the Western tradition, despite him mentioning relevant and reputable Roman Catholic and Protestant scholars in the previous chapters. Nonetheless, Coman’s choice of conversation partners is effective in situating Stăniloae in the contexts of Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, and wider Trinitarian scholarship, including Spirit Christology. He also helpfully offers his parameters for ecclesiological syntheses between Christology and pneumatology, noting that such projects attempt to “harmonize Ignatius of Antioch’s statement, ubi Christus, ibi ecclesia (wherever Christ is, there is the church) with Irenaeus of Lyon’s assertion,

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research ubi Spiritus Sanctus, ibi ecclesia (wherever the Holy Spirit is, there is the Church,” to the extent that none of the two main pillars of the Church takes precedence over the other” (p. 95). Accordingly, Coman welcomes Congar and Kasper’s Trinitarian insight for ecclesiology that “Christology is conditioned by the Holy Spirit (pneumatological Christology) to the same extent that the Spirit is conditioned by Christ (Christological pneumatology)” (p. 123).

Chapter 5 covers “Stăniloae’s Early Ecclesiology (1938-1964): A Christological Approach to the Church.”

In section one, Stăniloae identifies the Church as the extension of Christ (Christus prolongatus) or the Incarnation continued (incarnatio continua), “the closing act of Christ’s soteriological work,” the Body of Christ or “Mystical Body” and totus Christus in union with and under the authority of Christ, the Head (p.

145). Alongside these Christocentric tropes, Stăniloae also began describing “the Trinity [as] not only a model for the life of the Church but also its source and ultimate aim or climax” (p. 144). In section two, Coman contextualises the church’s sacramentality with commentary on Roman Catholicism before turning to Stăniloae’s sacramental theology of “The Created World: The First Sacrament” (pp. 151-2), “Christ: The New Sacrament” (pp. 152-3), and “The Church of Christ: The Third Sacrament” (pp. 153-6). After exploring the paradox of the Church as “Condition of the Sacraments” or “Result of the Sacraments”, Coman comments that for Stăniloae “the basis of the Church’s existence and its source of life remains Christ, for the Church is not a self-sufficient reality that exists in circularity (Church-sacraments; sacraments-Church); but its existence and vigour ultimately depend upon Christ” (p. 158). Coman concludes the chapter with criticism of the absent synthesis between Christology and pneumatology in Stăniloae’s early ecclesiology when he “drastically criticized Western theology for its forgetfulness of the role of the Holy Spirit while his own doctrine of the Church before 1964 was equally grounded in Christology. References to the Holy Spirit appear only sporadically in his early publications on the doctrine of the Church” (p. 159).

Chapter 6, which accounts for a third of the book’s pages, is titled “The Church in Light of the Mystery of the Trinity: Stăniloae’s Late Ecclesiology (1964-1993).” It has four sections. In the first section on the topic of Stăniloae’s mature theology of “The Trinity: Structure of Supreme Love”, Coman identifies Stăniloae’s simultaneous apophatic and cataphatic attitudes, through acknowledging the “The Trinity as a Mystery” yet also constructively incorporating “the paradigm[s] of love and communion into his Trinitarian theology” of God immanently and economically (p. 171). After identifying Stăniloae’s appreciation for the fittingness of a loving God in three persons, Coman examines the “Dynamics of the Trinitarian Loving Communion” moving from Father to Son to Holy Spirit (pp. 173-6) and “The Mystery of Unity in Diversity” within the Trinity through treating the topics of “The Monarchy of the Father,” “The Unity of Essence,” “Perichoresis and Intersubjectivity,” and “Divine Energies” (pp. 176-83). Section 2 concerns “two definitions of the Church [that] could serve as a guide through Stăniloae’s Trinitarian ecclesiology”: the Church as an “icon” of the Trinity and the Church as participant in the katabatic and anabatic movements of the Triune God of love (p. 184). Although Coman acknowledges, and potentially overstates, the point that “both definitions are interrelated, for the Church as an icon of the Trinity implies the idea that it partakes of the Trinitarian communion and vice-versa” (ibid.).

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research The third section revolves around “Stăniloae’s concern to anchor the ecclesiological synthesis between Christology and pneumatology in the indissoluble union that eternally exists between the Son and the Holy Spirit” (p. 217). That is, his synthesis was characterised by beliefs in “(i) the irreducibility of the Spirit to the Son and the affirmation of his equal importance with the Logos; and (ii) the inseparability of the Son from the Spirit” economically (p. 197). Notably, Stăniloae’s synthesis relied on “relations of reciprocity” instead of “relations of opposition,” which distanced him from Lossky and Zizioulas and “placed him closer to … Congar” (p. 197) Coman’s primary reservation about Stăniloae’s synthesis is that the indissoluble union marked by reciprocity “[risks] confusing the work of Christ with the work of the Spirit” (p. 197). The final section provides Stăniloae’s evaluation of two noteworthy ecclesiological models from recent Orthodox memory: the ecclesiology of sobornost associated with Khomiakov and Afanasiev’s Eucharistic ecclesiology.

Stăniloae responded positively overall to Khomiakov, according to Coman, but was “more critical” of Afanasiev, i.e. critiquing his emphasis on the Eucharist while neglecting the church’s wider activities and identity as a “sacramental community” (p. 246).

I commend Coman for his thorough analysis of Stăniloae’s corpus and extensive engagement with Orthodox and Roman Catholic theologians in order to present systematically the relevance of Stăniloae’s contributions for robust contemporary Trinitarian ecclesiologies. However, I hope to see him develop in the future a “more critical approach to [Stăniloae’s] theology” that builds on his legacy (p. 267).

Michael J. Gorman, Abide and Go: Missional Theosis in the Gospel of John. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018. (258 pp.) [ISBN 9781532615450] Kenneth M. Keyte In his book Abide and Go, Michael Gorman proposes a theotic-missional reading of John by which the narrative pattern of abide and go is made obvious to the reader. Gorman explains what a theotic-missional reading involves (Ch. 1); identifies the narrative missional pattern of abide and go (Chs. 2-3); exegetes John’s gospel theotically and missionally (Chs. 3-6); then reflects hermeneutically on contemporary missional theosis (Ch. 7).

I began reading Abide and Go prior to the Covid pandemic but had to put it aside to concentrate on pastoring a church through these exceptional socially restrictive times. I completed the book after the initial restrictions had eased in New Zealand. Yet despite these restrictions, most churches found ways to continue patterns of abiding together and going into the world through innovative use of online social media. The church’s resilience in overcoming these barriers made clear to me the priority of the theotic-missional pattern of abide and go that Michael Gorman exegetes from John’s gospel.

Gorman offers three pairs of general and contextual questions for a missional reading of scripture.

(1) What does the text say about the missio Dei? And what does the text say about the missio Dei here and now?

(2) What does the text say about the condition of humanity and the world, about the need for God’s saving

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research mission? And what does the text say about the specific condition and need of humanity and the world here and now, in our context? (3) What does this text say about the nature and mission of God’s people as participants in the missio Dei? And what does the text say to us about the call of God on us to participate in the missio Dei here and now? (p. 6) Gorman offers two further questions for a theotic reading of scripture. (1) Who is the God in whose life and mission we participate, and what is this God like? (2) How do we participate in the life of this God? (p. 21). Gorman explains the title of his book “Abide and go” as the theological paradox of John’s gospel that unites spirituality (“abide”) and mission (“go”). He calls their marriage “missional theosis” (p. 9). In other words, a disciple of Jesus becomes like God by participating in the mission of God. Gorman concludes that the structure, theme and content of the first half of John’s gospel (Chapters 1-12) bears witness to a missional Jesus who has come to bring the love, light, and abundant life of God into the world. A primary aspect of Jesus’ mission in the world is being the agent of spiritual rebirth to create an extended family of God, who are swept up into the life and love of God. The mission is also cruciform, as it participates in the paradoxically life-giving death of Jesus (p. 69).

Gorman shifts from overview mode to a tighter theotic-missional reading of the second half of John.

Perichoresis—the mutual indwelling within God particularly between Father and Son (in John) but also involving the Spirit—is the theological starting point for human participation in the life of God (p. 72).

Gorman notes that in John, perichoresis is at the very core of the Gospel’s good news, that is, Jesus and the community of disciples are the dwelling place of God. Consequently, the ultimate purpose of believers’ participation in God’s own unity and indwelling is to missionally demonstrate God’s love for the world in Jesus. Gorman concludes that, for John, there is no participation in God without mission, and no mission without participation in God: mission and spirituality are inseparable (p.73-74).

Gorman’s theotic-missional exegesis of John 15 is the most obvious example of the narrative pattern of abide and go. Gorman calls it the metaphor of a mobile vine since the verbs “do” and “depart” that John uses, have to do with acting and moving. “Although healthy vines and branches naturally grow and bear fruit, they do not naturally move from place to place. The disciples, however, have been appointed to go, to depart (15:16). They constitute, in other words, a mobile vine, a community of centripetally oriented love that shares that love centrifugally as they move out from themselves, all the while abiding in the vine, the very source of their life, love and power to do” (pp. 101-2).

In contrast, the theotic-narrative pattern of abide and go is implicit rather than explicit in John’s narratives of enemy-love. Gorman cites examples of the Johanine narrative portraying Jesus as practicing enemy-love and implicitly teaching his disciples to go and do the same. Jesus washing the feet of his enemy (John 13), his rejection of violence toward enemies (John 18:10-11), and his offering of shalom and the Spirit (John 20:21-23), and rehabilitation of Peter (21:15-19), are all examples of an implicit pattern of abide and go.

In Gorman’s prior works, he identified narrative patterns of cruciformity in Paul’s letters. In Abide and Go he has used his expert eye for narrative patterns to identify the pattern of abide and go throughout

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research John’s gospel. His work is particularly helpful for practitioners as it assists them to understand that spiritual practices intended for helping people abide in Christ are inseparable from missional activities for expressing the love of Jesus in the world. Whenever we interconnect spiritual practices with mission endeavours we can expect to become more Christ-like as a result. Whenever we decouple theosis from mission we should not be surprised if little transformation occurs.

However, an area of Gorman’s work that I found somewhat underwhelming was his lack of direct application of the missional hermeneutic he introduced at the start. After introducing the method, Gorman finally returns to answer the three general questions from John in overview fashion in his final chapter (p.

182-184). He then steps back into today’s world by citing several contemporary examples of communities practicing patterns of abide and go. As helpful as these are, I wonder how much more might have been gleaned from the chapters of John’s gospel if Gorman had asked and answered his six missional questions all the way through his exegesis of John?

Nevertheless, especially in our present contemporary church context where our usual patterns of abide and go have been severely disrupted by social restrictions, Gorman’s work on missional theosis / abide and go, raises the priority of developing practices for abiding and going into our Covid and postCovid world.

Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive

Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020. (425 pp.) [ISBN 9781433556333] Stanley S. Maclean In The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by church historian Carl Trueman we have another diagnosis of the ills of modern (American) society, and one for a Christian readership. For Trueman, the cause of these ills is the common understanding of what it means to be an individual self. Specifically, it is the sexualizing of individual self-identity that is epitomized in the claim heard nowadays: “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” (p. 19). Trueman wants to know why such a claim is treated with respect and sympathy today when it would have been derided as nonsensical just a few generations ago. Naturally, he looks for an explanation in the sexual revolution of the 1960s. But he believes the explanation is to be located centuries earlier, in the “revolution of the self” that began in the 1700s with the thoughts of Jean-Jacque Rousseau especially.

Rousseau, he feels, sowed the seeds for the modern “construction of selfhood and human authenticity” (p.

125).

The book is divided into four parts. Part one examines the “Architecture of the Revolution”; part two the “Foundations of the Revolution”; part three the ‘sexualization of the Revolution”; while last part deals with the “Triumphs of the Revolution.” In the first part, Trueman utilizes the conceptual categories of the philosopher Charles Taylor, the ethicist Alasdair MacIntyre, and the sociologist Philip Rieff to get a

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research handle on the “pathologies of this present age” (p. 102). Trueman borrows Taylor’s concept of the ‘social imaginary” as well as his theory of how the notion of the “expressive self” emerged in modern society. He finds MacIntyre’s concept of “emotivism” indispensable for understanding why serious debates today on sexual ethics and sexual identity are impossible. Rieff is the least familiar intellectual of the three, but Trueman marshals his concepts—“the triumph of the therapeutic”, “psychological man”, “the anticulture” and “deathworks” (p. 26) in his diagnosis of the sickness of contemporary culture in parts two and three.

As indicated already, the “foundations” of the revolution of the self, for Trueman, were being put down in the eighteenth century, beginning with Rousseau. In him the “essential dynamics of the modern understanding of the self are… already in place” (p. 129). But Trueman believes that the English Romantic poets of the 1800s— in particular Wordsworth, Shelley, and Blake—fortified and propagated this understanding of the self. In particular, their disdain for monogamy and traditional marriage paved the way for the modern politicising of sex and the redefinition of marriage.

The foundations of the revolution were completed when Nietzsche, Marx, and Darwin convinced many, in their different idioms, that human nature is malleable, that there is no human substance created in the image of God. “All three … provided conceptual justification for rejecting the notion of human nature and thus paved the way for the plausibility of the idea that human beings are plastic creatures with no fixed identity… (166).” The “revolution of self,” after all, rests on the assumption that one can “make and remake personal identity” at will, while transgenderism is just the most radical outgrowth so far of this assumption.

Freud, of course, is the figure who ultimately sexualizes the new understanding of self-identity that was taking place in his day. Indeed, Trueman believes that Freud is the pivotal figure in his sweeping narrative of the triumph of the self. “Freud’s fingerprints are all over the Western culture of the last century, from university lecture halls to art galleries to television commercials” (p. 203). While Rosseau and the Romantics psychologized the self, Freud was instrumental not only in sexualizing the self but also in turning sexuality into an identity. It does not matter that Freud’s psychological theories have been discredited. His lasting legacy is the belief that ‘sex…is the real key to human existence” (p. 204).

The revolution of the self was completed when sex was “politicized” by representatives of the New Left, specifically Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse, when they married the “political concerns of Marxism with psycho-analytical claims of Freud” (p. 230). After them, the need for liberation from economic oppression expanded into the need for liberation from sexual repression. The mainstreaming in society of the “erotic,” the “therapeutic,” and lately “transgenderism” are proofs, for Trueman, that the revolution of the self that began with Rousseau and the Romantics has finally “triumphed.” Those phenomena are really only symptoms of a pathological “social imaginary” that has captivated all of us.

Genealogies of modernity have become fashionable, and this one by Trueman has to be one of the most engaging and accessible; and it is doubtless the only one that devotes so much space to sex—and perhaps too much. Although the narrative tends to fall apart near the end of the book, the author adroitly holds it together. To his credit, Trueman also avoids a polemical tone and resists fanning the flames of the

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research “culture war.” “The revolution of the self,” he concludes, “is now the revolution of us all” (p. 381). Still, in the “Concluding Unscientific Prologue,” he helpfully suggests ways for people, and the church, to deal with this revolution.

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self certainly fills a gap in our knowledge of the modern identity, but its scope is too narrow to give anything close to a complete picture. To get that, one needs to study other works of the same genre, beginning with those that Trueman draws upon, especially Taylors’s Sources of the Self and his Malaise of Modernity.

Douglas A. Campbell, Pauline Dogmatics: The Triumph of God’s Love. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2020. (xii + 795 pp.) [ISBN 9780802875648] Jonathan R. Robinson Douglas Campbell is a prolific and innovative Pauline scholar who achieved some prominence in the field, particularly for his tome The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Eerdmans, 2009).

He is also a New Zealander, a graduate and later faculty member of the University of Otago, and now a professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School in the USA. Hence, he is well known in the “Pacific” context, although not personally to this reviewer.

This new book, while building on his previous work on Paul, is not a Pauline theology (in the vein of James Dunn’s Theology of Paul the Apostle (T&T Clark, 2003)) but is very much an exposition of Campbell’s own theology. Indeed, it is as much in tribute to Karl Barth (hence the “dogmatics” of the title) as it is to Paul, although Campbell’s understanding of Paul is the bedrock of the volume. However, the author’s understanding of Paul is not the only foundation on which Campbell builds his theological edifice, drawing deeply on Barth as well as Stanley Hauerwas and many other theological resources both ancient and modern. Campbell also brings insights from a wide variety of other domains, including psychology, physics, and his own life experience, to inform this constructive work of theology. The wide variety of different disciplines Campbell interacts with are a stimulating feature of this book.

There is something a little strange, then, from the start, with a systematic theology which embraces a wide range of theological and influences as well as theories from the natural sciences, but only focuses on one voice in the canonical Biblical witness. This is not something Campbell ever tries to justify, even as there is a very clear sense that he offers this as a Christian theology, without need for further reflection on the Gospels, or the Old Testament, or indeed the remainder of the New Testament. He will very occasionally cite the Gospels or other parts of the Bible, but the exegetical focus never moves away from Paul’s letters (working with a 10-letter corpus. The Pastoral Epistles, he argues, are the product of a faithful Pauline disciple, pp. 5, 720-40). This is especially apparent in his discussion of “covenant” which seems to rely far more on analogy to Campbell’s own experience of parenting than the concept as employed in the Bible or ancient Judaism (pp. 175-77). Other times, his argument would have been considerably

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research strengthened by non-Pauline biblical texts which state in stronger terms, things which Campbell found implicit in Paul. A particular glaring example of this would be the gospel tradition about Jesus saying there is no marriage at the resurrection (Mark 12:25; Matt 22:30; Luke 20:35) in Campbell’s discussion of marriage as an interim order (p. 607).

This book is extremely readable. Campbell manages this in part by not burdening his main text with many references or discussions of other work. The argument of each chapter is followed by a list of main theses from the chapter (essentially bullet points of the chapter content), then short discussion of key scriptural references, key secondary readings, and further reading recommendations before the chapter’s bibliography. This layout probably reflects Campbell’s approach to teaching (anecdotes of conversations or reactions of students to his teaching pepper the text), and it has to be said it is a very effective way of presenting the work. Not only does it make the main text highly readable, but the these summaries make it easy to quickly review any chapter, and the smaller chapter-specific bibliographies make them significantly more likely to be read. On the other hand, Campbell’s conversational style occasionally indulges (apparent) hyperbole, and unfortunately, this can occasionally confuse the reader as to whether they have encountered an error of overstatement or just a figure of speech.

The twenty-nine chapters of the book are arranged in four unequal divisions. The first part, “Resurrection”, moves in eight chapters from the revelation of God in Christ as the starting point of theology to election, the divine plan “that everyone should bear the image of the risen Jesus and should live in communion with him” (p.186). Part two, “Formation”, examines in six chapters how the theology of election to divine communion should manifest itself in the lives of individuals and the Christian community.

Part three, “Mission”, takes four chapters to consider the Pauline way of engaging beyond the church with those culturally different to ourselves. The final part, “Navigation”, spends four chapters laying the groundwork for a general approach to ethical questions before applying this approach to gender and sexuality issues over three chapters and then two on the question of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. The ninth chapter of this section briefly discusses the pastoral epistles (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) as an example of Pauline ethical navigation at work in the generation after Paul. The focus of the latter three sections give some credence to Campbell’s claim that the book is not just a dogmatics but also “a manual of Pauline church planting” (p. 741). Indeed, for this reader Campbell was at his best when most practical, showing great sensitivity and genuine insight into difficult pastoral and missional issues.

One great strength of Campbell’s work here is its relevance to the current cultural moment of the Western church as it struggles to engage a rapidly changing society without and the polarizing differences within. Campbell accurately observes that “In any authentic missional situation Christians will probably end up taking heat from both sides [i.e. parent culture of missionaries and culture of converts]” (p. 499). He brings pertinent examples not just from Paul but also from the history of Protestant and Catholic mission.

Campbell clearly argues that “a navigation into difference is a fundamental feature of Pauline mission” (p.

506). As the church encounters new cultures, it must adapt and contextualize. Rather than something to be avoided, “we must embrace contextualization, with all its creativity and risks and resulting offensive

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research diversifications, as fully as we can. This all seems to be part of God’s great plan” (p. 504). For those in engaged in missional theology, this might sound rather obvious, but the location (academic biblical studies), creativity, and rigour of Campbell’s argument on this point will be of interest and worth engaging.

The concentration on the Pauline text is variable from chapter to chapter and sometimes hardly discernable. Some chapters seem to be crying out for discussion related to Paul’s writings but simply do not connect. For example, chapter 9 discusses possible approaches to received traditions without connecting with Paul’s own talk of law/Torah. In fact, the discussion about Paul and Torah does eventuate, but not until chapters 27 and 28, near the end of the book. For me, this meant Campbell’s basic account of Pauline theology was frustratingly incomplete, making it hard to evaluate the book as it progressed. Even when Paul’s texts are being discussed in more detail, the exegesis tends to be cursory and relies, to some extent, on Campbell’s earlier works having been digested and found convincing.

Rather than a strictly exegetical argument, the book builds a theological argument using selected moments in which Campbell discerns that Paul is correct, against those moments when Paul is deemed less correct, accommodated to his milieu, or altogether wrong. Many before have tried to discover a consistent system behind Paul’s thought, while others have labelled Paul hopelessly inconsistent, Campbell finds that Paul’s theology is inherently unstable and inconsistent as apocalyptic/ infralapsarian aspects of Paul’s thought are sometimes contradicted by foundationalist/ supralapsarian aspects. Thus, Campbell works towards a theology which is more Pauline than Paul himself, producing a theology that Paul would agree with—if he had the advantage of the perspective of a well-read 21st century biblical scholar, like Douglas Campbell. While Campbell’s intention is unusual, not fitting comfortably in either biblical studies nor systematic theology, I do not think this is an invalid or uninteresting exercise.

It does, however, further raise the question of the role of scripture in Campbell’s theology. Campbell treats Paul’s writings in an “essentially historical” manner “to reconstruct his thinking in his own context” (p. 627). The revelation on which Pauline Dogmatics is built is the revelation to Paul as Campbell reconstructs it. The status of the scriptural text is only as a witness to Paul’s experience and theology of that revelation.

“But,” as Campbell admits, “this is not the way Paul used scripture” (p. 627). Unfortunately, Campbell never clearly articulates a theology of scripture. In a short section on hermeneutics beyond historical readings, Campbell seems only concerned to “convince the many Jews or Christians who think that these texts as Scripture are relevant in some sense” (p.628). It might appear that hermeneutics is simply a practical discipline to generate the desired outcome rather than a sincere attempt to hear something true, challenging, or new from the scripture.

Perhaps the best clue to Campbell’s theology of scripture is his methodology of Sachkritik (sense/subject interpretation), demythologization, and amplification (p. 7–8). The scriptures, or at least Paul’s writings, contain insights, but these have to be extracted, adapted and developed. They testify to revelation, but not reliably. The remainder of the review will discuss this methodology and examples of its results in Campbell’s volume.

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research For Campbell, “Sachkritik will mean pressing Paul’s Trinitarian and Christocentric claims over against any instructions that do not seem to be grounded particularly securely in those realities–places, that is, where Paul must interpret Paul” (p7). The key starting point for this Pauline theology is God’s apocalyptic revelation of God’s self in Jesus Christ (p. 20–22). This is a revelation that stands without any external proof or warrant, and to desire or claim otherwise is epistemic “idolatry” or “foundationalism” (p. 37). The distinction between revelation and foundationalism does a great deal of theological work in the book.

Anything that can be labelled foundationalist, either in Paul or in any other school of thought, is summarily dismissed.

The first major section sets out Campbell’s understanding of this revelation, a Trinitarian God of love who desires to bring all creation into communion, and has overcome the problem of sin and death through the resurrection, and has unconditionally and irrevocably elected everyone to “the ultimate destiny of eternal communion” (p. 175). Through much of this section, Campbell seems to be pointing towards universal salvation, but never quite makes it clear. It is not until chapter 18 that he finally states that Paul is a universalist “implicitly” and that to fail to infer this is to unleash “horrible internal contradictions” (436).

His argument, when he finally gets to it, is a strong one: without universal salvation, Christ’s work is inferior to Adam’s, who brought about universal death (1 Cor 15:22; Rom 5:15-17, p. 429-32, 436-37). Here then, is Campbell’s Sachkritik at work, as the universalism he finds to be implicit in Paul’s Christology corrects our reading of Paul’s explicit statements about judgement. They are to be read as describing “evaluative” and not “punitive” judgement (e.g. Rom 14:10-12; 1 Cor 3:13-17; p. 420). For this argument to be fully convincing a more canonical approach would be helpful, again, especially one dealing with Jesus’ overt statements about punishment in the Gospels.

Campbell’s demythologization is easier to describe and is perhaps less fundamental to the project. Rather than stripping Paul of “mythological” elements, à la Bultmann, Campbell’s demythologization is the “modern person informed by modern science” needing to “update Paul a little . . . without losing our grasp on those central truths about God” (p. 8). For example, Campbell finds that Paul’s “commitment to an intermediate state [that is, between death and resurrection] necessarily commits him to the concession that human existence with Jesus is possible without a body.” This potentially allows gnostic readers to override “Paul’s explicit commitments to embodied human existence”, employing a “Sachkritik” of their own (p.

155). To solve this Pauline contradiction Campbell applies Einstein’s theory of relativity, to argue that we are working with a “false conception of time” (p. 156) and that God, being outside of time, does not wait to resurrection our bodies but brings the dead into “another time, in the sense of another dimension” where, “they dwell with their new bodies, which are of course present to them but unrealized for us, because we live in the space time continuum that has ‘not yet’ been transformed as a whole” (p. 159). Thus, the need for an intermediate state is eliminated. The theory of relativity comes in useful for Campbell again, when later discussing how Jesus is somehow present in the history of Israel (1 Cor 10:1-4) and the question of how all Israel will be saved (Rom 11:26, p. 510-11).

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research Amplification is Campbell’s term for moving “beyond the strict boundaries of [Paul’s] original conceptuality, but . . . in a way that is in direct continuity with it” (p.8). In other words, Campbell seeks to establish the trajectory of Paul’s most important insights, how they have developed in church history and how they might be further developed today. For example, 1 Cor 8:6 where Jesus is incorporated into the Israelite Shema and titled “Lord” forms a trajectory with later Christian creeds affirming the Trinity. Paul did not have “a full-fledged doctrine of the trinity” but the details and implications of such teaching are “all implicit in the claim that Jesus is Lord” (p. 25). Campbell builds further on these insights to establish that the relationality of the Trinity is the goal of existence: “God is a personal God and desires to commune with us as persons” (p. 194).

Thus, for Campbell, the creation story and its subsequent fall should not be the beginning of our Christian gospel. This would be to suggest that the revelation of Jesus is the solution to our sin problem, rather than God’s intention all along. Instead, the gospel needs to be told as a retrospective story, beginning with the end, that is, Jesus saving work to bring us into communion with God (p. 82). This narrative move not only allows a retrospective interpretation of creation, Israel, etc., in the light of Christ, but also effectively relativizes anything which does not belong to the core storyline of humanity being brought into Trinitarian communion. Thus, creation itself becomes a “temporary ordering structure”, or even a “temporary, emergency measure” and no part of it is necessary to “God’s original and perfect design” to elect us in Christ (p. 581-82). Likewise, the law of Moses is itself an interim arrangement that is entirely negotiable on cultural grounds (p. 583).

Pushing this trajectory, Campbell engages the language of supra- and infralapsarianism.

Infralapsarianism (whereby God’s election is a consequence of the Fall) is, for Campbell, a form of foundationalism whereby the temporary ordering structures of creation are treated as immutable.

Conversely, supralapsarianism (whereby God’s election precedes the Fall) affirms that, “Trinitarian communion is God’s plan for us, which was established ‘before the foundation of the world’ (Eph 1:4) and is the only form or structure (if these terms are even appropriate) that is nonnegotiable” (p. 603). Campbell then categorizes the patriarchy and heteronormativity found in the creation accounts and Paul’s writings as being temporary, cultural, and therefore potentially negotiable (p. 635-42). Practically, this then enables a relational account of marriage that “has no objections to adults of any sexual orientation or gender construction covenanting with one another in marriage” (p. 641).

For many, Campbell’s conclusions will seem radical. It is important to state that my summary in a review like this cannot do justice to Campbell’s extensive, nuanced, and extended argumentation. He maintains an impressive theological consistency throughout, and while one can disagree with his starting points, his internal logic is hard to fault. Not only that, but he effectively demonstrates how theological starting points, when followed consistently, can have radical practical outcomes. Reading Pauline Dogmatics, then, is a useful exercise in biblical-theological method, whether or not you agree with where he starts or ends up. In particular, Campbell’s at times ruthless, parsing of Paul’s theology is a refreshing change from more biblicist approaches that assume a seamless system can be constructed from Paul’s diachronic and ad

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Pacific Journal of Theological Research hoc letters. Campbell dares to critique Paul with Paul and, by accepting the possibility of inconsistency and instability (something that most of us can relate to personally), nonetheless finds Paul a rich resource for doing theology and encountering and understanding God’s revelation of electing love in Jesus Christ.

This is a hard book to sum up. Its length limits those to whom it could be usefully recommended. I think this tome would have been better as several smaller books. For example, one book making an argument for universalism, another outlining a Pauline approach to missional contextualization, another on sexuality, and another on the question of Jewish-Christian relations. Campbell has pertinent insights and compelling arguments to bring in all these areas, but by presenting the whole thing as a single “dogmatics” the whole does not quite equal the sum of its parts. As a dogmatic work, too many basic questions (e.g., a theology of scripture) are not even broached. Likewise, its failure to engage the whole canon of scripture is a significant shortcoming. That said, this is a book I will come back to. Each chapter makes an interesting and frequently novel argument. It is a useful reference work, and there are plenty of thought-provoking insights and possibilities for further research and development. In the end, Campbell’s wit, enthusiasm, originality, and erudition shine through and make this experiment in Pauline theology well worth wrestling with.

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