Sunday, February 29, 2004

Making Connections: The Material Expression of Friendship in the New Testament

Making Connections: The Material Expression of Friendship in the New Testament

Luke Timothy Johnson. Interpretation. Richmond: Apr 2004.Vol.58, Iss. 2; pg. 158, 14 pgs Copyright Interpretation Apr 2004

From Luke to James, the writers of the New Testament transformed the Greco-Roman ideal of friendship into a communal ethos. This koinonia was characterized above all by the sharing of material possessions.
Regarding friendship in the New Testament, this essay makes three kinds of connections. The first is the connection between the explicit and the implicit, between denotation and connotation. Although rarely discussed explicitly, friendship (philia) is actually a prominent theme in the canonical compositions. But to recognize its prominence, readers need to grasp the connections that ancient readers would automatically make when they heard certain words and phrases by placing the New Testament's language within the context of the ancient Greco-Roman topos on friendship.
The second connection is between what is said and what is done, between discourse and practice. Here, body language comes into play. The ancient ideal of friendship was not simply about sharing ideas or feelings. It involved the real sharing of life through specific practices. The New Testament shows us a range of such practices and how such koinonia was an ideal expression of friendship.
The third connection is the one that the first Christians formed among themselves on the basis of the material expression of friendship. They formed a web of associations involving shared beliefs, commitments, and practices critical to their survival as an intentional community in a hostile environment. Such associations enabled the early Christian communities to be recognized as remarkable realizations of the ancient ideal of a polis of persons that had an inner spirit of philia.
COMMON CONCEPTIONS OF FRIENDSHIP
Greco-Roman moral discourse frequently made use of rhetorical topoi when addressing a particular subject. The topos (literally, "place") is not a literary genre but a loose collection of associated thoughts clustered around a specific theme or "topic" that expressed, often in proverbs and maxims, the shared wisdom of the culture. These topoi could be gathered into anthologies to serve as repositories for the rhetorician, whether as speaker or as writer. We frequently find them woven into moral treatises. The same points are made concerning a vice like envy, for example, in moral discourses ranging from Plato through the Testament of Simeon through Plutarch to the sermons of Basil the Great. The whole point was the commonalty: they occasioned from the hearer or reader instant recognition and authority because of the shared cultural values they conveyed.
As clusters of associated thoughts, moreover, such topoi engendered associative thinking in the hearer or reader. The maxims and proverbs were so well-known that hearing half of one would trigger a memory of the remainder, just as in English, hearing "a stitch in time" immediately summons "saves nine." And likewise the reverse: reading an author's aside to "saving nine," we would catch an allusion to the proverb concerning "a stitch in time" and recognize, further, that the topic was prudence.
This associative character of Greco-Roman moral discourse through the use of topoi is critical to our ability to recognize the theme of friendship in the New Testament, for if we look only at the explicit occurrence of the term, we find little evidence of its presence. The noun philia ("friendship") occurs only in James 4:4. The verb philein ("to be friends with") tends to be used in rough equivalence with agapan.1 Should we then conclude that friendship was not an important aspect of early Christian self-understanding, or that Christians rejected the Greco-Roman ideal in favor of a different understanding of love? Such conclusions based on the incidence of explicit terms would be premature for two reasons. The first is the intriguing evidence that at least some Christians referred to each other as "friends."2 The second is that the presence of common conceptions about friendship shows that friendship is a pervasive theme in the New Testament even when the term itself is not used. The themes commonly associated with friendship occur so frequently that ancient readers or hearers would have understood them within that context.
It would have been odd, in fact, if the language of friendship had not been part of the earliest Christian lexicon. The topos on friendship (peri philias) contained Greco-Roman culture's best thought concerning humans in intentional relationships. The ideals of friendship came into play at all societal levels: within the bond of the family in the natural kinship system, within an association of like-minded individuals, within the internal life of the polis, and within the harmonious relations between city-states. From Plato and Aristotle through Cicero and Seneca to Dio Chrysostom and Plutarch, we find the same conceptions and connections. Friends are one soul (miapsyche). The friend is another self (hophilos allas autos). Friends are in harmony (homonoia) and have the same opinion (gnome). Friendship is fellowship (philia koinonia) and "life together" (symbios). Therefore, friends are "partners" (koinonoi), hold all things in common (tois philois panta koina), and "being of one accord" (epi to auto). Like brothers in a family, friends are in a relationship of equality and reciprocity (philotes isotes); a model for friendship is therefore found in the mutuality of brothers (Philadelphia). Cicero's definition is classic: "Friendship is nothing else than an accord in all things, human and divine, conjoined with mutual goodwill and affection" (de amicitia 6.20).
The ancient ideal of friendship was not simply a matter of acquaintance or even casual affection. It involved a serious and mutual commitment of mind and resources. Three aspects in particular were stressed. The first is that friendship involves unity and equality, which is often expressed in terms of reciprocity. The second is that friendship is inclusive. It is not simply a matter of sharing the same vision. It extends to the full sharing of all things, spiritual and material. Here is where body language is significant: true friendship means active participation, sharing, and help between partners. The third is that friendship involves genuine obligation. This is wonderfully expressed in Jesus' brief example:
Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him'; and he will answer from within, 'Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and the children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything'? I tell you. Though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him whatever he needs (Luke 11:5-8).3
Friendship implies a claim: it means providing hospitality as well as sharing one's possessions. Luke's example demonstrates his familiarity with the commonplace understandings of friendship in Hellenistic culture. Luke is likewise aware of the political aspects of friendship when he remarks in his passion account (Luke 23:12) that, after the reciprocal sending of Jesus back and forth between the rulers, Pilate and Herod "became friends" (egenonto philoi), whereas before they had been at enmity (en ecthrd). Herod and Pilate did not become affectionate; instead, they entered into a political collaboration.
Once we appreciate the network of associations contained in the ancient topos on friendship, we have a new sensitivity to the presence of this theme in New Testament passages that never explicitly mention friendship. It would be astonishing, indeed, if a first century Mediterranean community that spoke of itself as an ekklesia ("public assembly") or synagoge ("gathering") and that used fictive kinship language of "brother" (adelphos) and "sister" (adelphe) for members of that community would have managed altogether to avoid friendship language in its moral discourse. When we know the connections that ancient readers would instinctively and automatically make, we gain a keener sense of how to connect language about "brothers and sisters" (adelphoi/adelphai), "being one spirit" (hen pneuma), "having the same mind" (he haute gnome), "being of one accord" (epi to auto), "having fellowship" (koinonia), "having all things in common" (panta koina), and "reciprocity" (isotes) to the theme of friendship (philia).
The following discussion surveys the main places in the New Testament where friendship themes are critical to the full interpretation of the passage. More importantly, each passage demonstrates that friendship is more than merely verbal; it expresses itself in body language through various forms of sharing.
THE JERUSALEM CHURCH IN ACTS
The Book of Acts presents the best example in its description of the first Jerusalem community. Luke observes in Acts 2:42 that the community gathered by Peter's preaching "devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers." Already an ancient reader would be alerted to the theme of friendship, but Luke's expanded description makes that association unavoidable: "All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distributed the proceeds to all, as any had need" (2:44-45). In his second description of the community (4:32-37), Luke further underscores the friendship theme: "Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common" (4:32).
Interpreters have long observed that Luke's description of the first community is thoroughly Greek in character and echoes the language not of scripture but of the Greco-Roman philosophers. By saying that the believers were "one soul," held "all things in common" and called nothing "their own," Luke described them as friends. In particular, Luke's depiction resembles the Utopian portrayals of the ideal philosophical community, such as that imagined by Plato in his Laws and that ascribed to the earliest followers of Pythagoras at Crotona in the Lives of Pythagoras by Iamblichus and Porphyry. The first believers were not simply "friendly"; they realized the ideal sharing that philosophers considered the essence of true friendship. Remarkably, they accomplished this, according to Luke, neither through a mechanical dividing up of their possessions nor through a casual accessibility to what each one owned, but through a form of sharing that was at once radical ("no one called anything he possessed as his own") and prudential ("distribution was made to each as any had need").
The story of Ananias and Sapphira that follows Luke's second description (Acts 5:1-11) clarifies several aspects of the Christian practice of sharing possessions. The first is the fundamentally voluntary character of such practice. Peter makes clear that Ananias was not required to sell his possessions or to give the proceeds to the community (5:4). This community of goods is therefore not the expression of a legislator's decree but the manifestation of a genuine unanimity of spirit. The sin of the couple was their deceit, which Peter interprets as "lying to the Holy Spirit" (5:3). They had conspired to tempt the Spirit of the Lord (5:9). Here is the second distinctive feature of this Utopian community. Unity is based not in their "having the same opinion" but in their having been given the same Holy Spirit (2:38; 4:31). The third distinctive dimension is that sharing involved some in the community giving up what was their own in order that others might have something. We are told three times that individuals sold land or houses and gave the proceeds to the community (4:34,37; 5:1). Fourth, the sharing of possessions expresses not only their spiritual unity with each other (their "friendship") but also their recognition of the apostles' authority, since it is "at their feet" that the possessions are laid for subsequent distribution (4:34, 37, 5:1). Finally, Luke provides a biblical nuance to his description by suggesting that this community of friends is also the "restored people" that fulfills the expectation of Torah. Thus the note that "there was not a needy person among them" (4:34) echoes the promise of Deut 15:4 that there would be no needy in the land when God's commands were perfectly obeyed.
Luke's depiction of the first community is certainly impressive, but is it too good to be true? Is it simply a rhetorically masterful melding of Jewish and Greco-Roman motifs serving the apologetic function of stating that God fulfilled in this restored people what others longed for? Does it tell us simply what Luke and his readers saw as an ideal realized momentarily in a golden moment of founding, but without real pertinence to actual communities? Or does Luke's portrayal actually contain-in idealized fashion, to be sure-a summary of a spirit of friendship expressed through the act of sharing possessions that was widespread among the earliest Christian communities?
Before seeking an answer in other compositions, we note that Acts reports two additional instances of sharing possessions, this time between communities. In the first, the believers in Antioch gathered funds "each according to his ability" for the relief of the brethren in judea (Acts 11:29) and sent this "service" (diakonia) through the hands of Paul and Barnabas (11:30; 12:25). In the second, Paul declares before the procurator Felix that he had come to Jerusalem "to bring to my nation alms and offerings" (Acts 24:17). Luke neither uses the language of friendship in these cases nor explicitly links Paul's "alms and offerings" to the collection for the saints in Jerusalem that we know Paul raised (see below). Rather than diminishing the significance of the ideal of friendship, however, these unadorned reports enhance it, suggesting that more than a literary theme was at work. Luke's idealized portrait had a substantial and sustained practice underlying it.
PAUL AND THE PHILIPPIAN CHURCH
Paul the apostle provides two impressive examples of the ideal of friendship expressed in the act of sharing possessions: his effort to raise funds for the church in Jerusalem from his Gentile communities (see below) and the practices of friendship revealed by his letter to the Philippians. Another example of sharing possessions within a community is Paul's discussion of the care of widows in 1 Tim 5:3-16. In that case, however, the language associated with friendship is not present.
In Philippians, Paul writes from prison to a church disturbed by envy and rivalry (1:15; 2:14; 4:2-3). Like Luke's depiction of the Jerusalem church in Acts, Paul does not explicitly use the words for friendship or friends. Yet his language throughout the letter-disguised by English translations but clear in the Greek-alludes to all the aforementioned associations with Greco-Roman moral discourse.
Paul uses forms of the term "fellowship" (koinonia) in 1:5; 2:1; 3:10; and 4:15. For Greek readers, "fellowship" automatically connoted "friendship" (philia). he employs "equal" (isos) twice, once of Jesus with respect to God (2:6) and once of Timothy with respect to Paul himself (2:20). Paul also makes use of the syn-prefix more frequently here than in any other letter. The prefix means "with" or "together," and Paul attaches it to verbs such as "struggle" (1:27; 4:3), "rejoice" (2:17, 18), "be formed" (3:10), "receive" (4:3), and even "share" (synkoinonein, 4:14). Their actions are actions undertaken together. Paul also attaches the prefix to nouns such as "sharer" (synkoinonos, 1:5), "soul" (2:2), "worker" (2:25; 4:3), "soldier" (2:25), "imitator" (3:17), "form" (3:21), and "yoke" (4:3). The full effect of this constant "yoking" might be felt if each translated instance were preceded by "fellow." If friendship in the Greek world is proverbially "life together" (symbios), Paul could hardly find a more effective way to communicate to the Philippians that they were to be a community of friends.
This becomes even more apparent in Paul's introduction of the "Christ-Hymn" in Phil 2:1-4, which employs a variety of expressions that connote friendship in Hellenistic culture:
So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any incentive of love, any participation in the Spirit (literally, "fellowship of spirit" [ koinonia pneumatos] ), any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind (literally, "that you think the same thing" [hina to auto phronete]), having the same love (ten auten agapen), being in full accord and of one mind (literally, being "souls together," [sympsychoi] and "thinking the one thing" [?? henphronountes]).
Paul articulates this request in two ways. The first is to contrast such "thinking together" and "fellowship of spirit" with the attitudes considered in antiquity to be the opposite of friendship, namely those associated with the vice of envy: "not according to a contentious attitude (eritheia) or conceit" (kenodoxia, 2:3). Competition and arrogance are the attitudes that destroy genuine friendship. The second way Paul spells out the ideal of friendship is to advocate a humility (tapeinophrosyne) that considers others more than the self (2:3) and looks to "the things of others" (ta heteron) rather than "the things of themselves" (ta heauton, 2:4). It is this way of "thinking" (phronein) that Paul says the Philippians should have "among them" as it was in Christ Jesus (toutophroneite en hymin ho kai en Christp Iesou, 2:5), and then elaborates that way of thinking or reckoning.4
No Greek reader could have missed that Paul was talking about friendship. Moreover, no alert Greek reader would have missed that Paul's way of characterizing the ideal was distinctive, even paradoxical. First, the koinonia of the Philippians was grounded in the Holy Spirit rather than in themselves.5 This fellowship gives rise to like-mindedness rather than similarity in outlook that establishes fellowship. second, the recommendation of an attitude of humility would have shocked educated Greek readers. Lowly-mindedness was fit for slaves, not for the noble. It could be understood positively only in light of the experience of the crucified and raised Messiah Jesus. Third, the Philippians have a "fellowship in the Good News" (1:5) that "bound them together from the beginning" (4:15). They have labored together in its proclamation (2:22; 4:3) and are called to live "a life worthy of the Gospel of Christ" (1:27). Fourth, again Jesus' distinctive example manifests itself in service to others even to the point of giving up one's life. Paul offers the Philippians not only the example of Jesus (2:6-11) but also of Paul himself (2:17; 3:2-16), Timothy (2:19-24), and Epaphroditus (2:25-30). Paul concludes this series of examples: "Become fellow-imitators of me, brethren, and pay attention to those who walk according to the model you have in us" (3:17). Finally, such fellowship, because it is based in the Spirit whose work is to shape them into the form of Christ (3:20), necessarily involves suffering.6
Clearly, Paul's use of friendship language in Philippians is creative. His Greek-speaking readers in the Roman colony of Philippians were being led from the familiar territory of the Hellenistic ideal of life together to a new land in which the ideal of fellowship was profoundly reshaped by the experience of Christ. Yet the ideal of koinonia itself remains powerful. It continues to call for like-mindedness. It continues to counter the self-aggrandizing attitudes of envy, rivalry, and arrogance. Most of all, Paul's readers would have recognized that friendship in Christ continued to require a genuine sharing of possessions.
The concrete expression of friendship is expressed by Paul's willingness to send his trusted co-workers Timothy and Epaphroditus to the congregation and in their willingness to reciprocate with hospitality (2:19-30), But the Philippians have shown their friendship with Paul particularly through their financial support. Paul reminds them: "You Philippians yourselves know that in the beginning of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving except you only" (4:15). Here, the "giving and receiving" expresses perfectly the reciprocity involved in koinonia. For the Philippians, this was not merely an exchange of affection. It meant material assistance in fulfillment of the axiom, tois philois panta koina ("friends hold all things in common"). Paul continues: "Even in Thessalonica you sent me help once and again."7 The fact that the Philippian church had thus supported Paul is attested also in Paul's aside in 2 Cor 11:9: "while I was with you [Corinthians] and was in want, I did not burden anyone, for my needs were supplied by the brethren who came from Macedonia." In effect, the Philippian church shared its possessions not only with Paul but with the Corinthian community, enabling Paul to boast to the Corinthians that he had not exercised his right to demand support for preaching the gospel (cf. Gal 6:6) but preached to them free of charge (1 Cor 9:15-18). The Philippians, moreover, continued to share their possessions with Paul as an expression of their fellowship. Paul has received from Epaphroditus the gifts they have now sent to him in prison (4:10-13), and he prays that God will likewise reward them: "My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus" (Phil 4:18-19).
PAUL'S COLLECTION
The time and energy (and frustration) expended by Paul in his effort to raise funds from his Gentile churches for the saints in Jerusalem reveal that the ideal of fellowship expressed through the sharing of possessions extended beyond single communities and served to bond multiple communities together. The use of friendship language in Paul's discussions of the collection is not extensive but is significant nevertheless.
So far as we know, Paul first mentions the collection in his letter to the churches that he had founded throughout the region of Galatia. That letter also contains a telling bit of evidence concerning the ideal of friendship within the life of those churches. Among his instructions at the end of the letter is the injunction that believers are to "bear one another's burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ" (6:2). In 6:6, he declares, "Let him who is taught the word share all good things with him who teaches." Here we see the notion of reciprocity (isotes) to which Paul will return when speaking of the collection: the gift of spiritual goods (teaching) should obligate those who are taught to share material goods (possessions). Paul seems to have material possessions in mind, based not only on the logic of the topos but also on the language of sowing and reaping in the subseqent verses (w. 7-9). One may read the flesh/spirit language here in terms of Paul's earlier discussion of moral attitudes (5:13-26), but it is also possible to read it as referring to the spiritual goods of teaching and the fleshly goods of possessions. Such a reading is supported by Paul's language in 2 Corinthians and Romans and by his conclusion here in Gal 6:10: "So, then, as we have the opportunity, let us do good to all, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith." Paul may even be alluding to the collection for the saints, for he refers elsewhere to the instructions he gave concerning the collection "to the churches of Galatia," and in his extant letters this is the only passage that would fit ( 1 Cor 16:1 ).
Paul mentions the collection for the saints also in the context of koinonia. he notes that the Jerusalem "pillars" (James, Cephas, and John) "recognized the grace that had been given to me," and the expression of this meeting of minds-Paul and Barnabas would go to the uncircumcised and the "pillars" to the circumcised-was that "they extended to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship" (dexias koindnias, 2:9-10). Note once more that koinonia involves being of "one mind." That the pillars should then ask that Paul "remember the poor" (by financial support) and that Paul should declare himself "already eager to do that same thing" simply extends the common understanding of koinônia. The Gentiles should share possessions with those who have given them the spiritual goods of the good news. Though not spelled out in Galatians, it will be in other passages.
In 1 Cor 16:1-4, Paul uses no explicit friendship language with regard to the collection. His double use of logeia provides the name we give to his endeavor (16:1-2). he sets up the procedure to be followed but engages in no motivational rhetoric (w. 2-4). Presumably, this is because at the time of writing he is confident of the Corinthian church's cooperation in his effort. Certainly, the number of "friendship" themes indicated in his response to the Corinthians should have provided motivation enough: the entire letter can be read as an effort to secure their koinonia with Jesus Christ (1:9) and to keep them from becoming factious (schismata) by encouraging them to "all say the same thing" and be "of the same mind" and "of the same opinion" (1:10).
Moreover, Paul had provided them the example of someone choosing to give up rightful gain for the sake of others (9:1-27). The language he uses in that connection is striking. As in Gal 6:6-10, we encounter the motifs of sowing and harvesting of flesh and spirit: "If we have sown spiritual good (ta pneumatika) among you, is it too much if we reap your material benefits (hymon ta sarkika)" (1 Cor 9:11)? This reciprocity, Paul says, is a matter of obligation: "If others share this rightful claim upon you, do we not still more" (v. 12)? Paul declares that he relinquishes the right to financial support so that he may encounter no obstacle to saving others: "I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings!"8 Even in this letter, then, the assumptions concerning fellowship and the sharing of possessions are the same ones associated with ancient friendship.
In 2 Cor 8-9, Paul is clearly scrambling to convince the reluctant Corinthians to take part in the collection. Their resistance is connected at least in part to Paul's apparent slipperiness in matters financial (11:7-11; 12:16-18). Is he in danger of severe embarrassment if the Corinthians do not meet their pledge (9:1-5)? How can he carry out this great act of reconciliation among churches if he cannot reach reconciliation with his own community? In his fervent exhortation, we may detect several allusions to themes of friendship now familiar. he speaks of the "gift and the fellowship of service to the saints" (charts kai koinonia tes diakonias eis tous hagious, 8:4). he refers to his delegate Titus as "my partner and fellow-laborer for you" (koinônos emos kai eis hymas synergos). he again uses the language of sowing and harvesting: "He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully" (9:6).
Paul appeals most to that aspect of friendship that involves equality or reciprocity. "Friendship is equality" (philetës isotës) runs the proverb.9 But unless things are divided absolutely equally-which is virtually impossible-some imbalance always remains. The real spirit of friendship, therefore, seeks that functional equality that is found in reciprocity, a proportional balance through an exchange of different kinds of goods, or an exchange of the same goods at different times.10 This is exactly what Paul wants the Corinthians to appreciate when he says, "I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of equality (ex isotetos) your abundance at the present time should supply their want, so that their abundance may supply your want, that there may be equality" (isotes, 2 Cor 8:14). Jesus offers the radical example of this sort of exchange: "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich" (8:9). The same note of reciprocity is struck in 9:12-15.
Paul speaks of the collection once more at the end of his letter to the Romans, when he is on his way to Jerusalem "with a service for the saints" (Rom 15:25). he reports that believers in both Macedonia and Achaia were pleased to "make a certain fellowship with the poor among the saints in Jerusalem" (15:26). he adds that it was also "their obligation to them" (v. 27). Why were they obliged? Because of the logic of friendship in antiquity: "for if they made fellowship with the Gentiles by means of their spiritual things, they are obliged also to be of service to them with their material things" (v. 27). he did not add, but could have, that it was a matter of reciprocity. The mandate of spiritual sharing is material sharing, for friends hold all things in common.
JOHN'S COMMUNITY OF FRIENDS
There is an intriguing, if fragmentary and allusive, use of friendship language in the Johannine literature. In the Fourth Gospel's Farewell Discourse, Jesus refers to his follows as his friends:
Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends (philoi). You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my father I have made known to you (John 15:13-15).
Here the dominant feature of philia is the shared outlook: the disciples do what Jesus commands, but not as servants, because they know what Jesus is about. This usage perhaps throws some light on the odd dialogue in John's final chapter, in which the verbs agapan and philein alternate in Jesus's questioning of Peter's devotion (John 21:15-17). After Peter had twice answered Jesus' question whether he "loved him" (agapeis mou) with "I love you as a friend" (philo se), Jesus casts the question in the same terms: "Do you love me as a friend?" (phileis me). Peter answers consistently, adding the key element in ancient friendship, that friends share the same outlook: "Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you as a friend" (hotiphild se, 21:17).
In the small letter known as 3 John, from the Elder to Gaius, the leader of a house church, we find evidence that some in the Johannine church had taken "friend" as a form of self-identification. The letter closes: "Peace be with you. The friends (hoi philoi) greet you. Greet the friends (tousphilous) by name" (v. 15). This group unity is expressed materially by the mutual sharing of possessions. Delegates rely for support in their travels on no one but "the brethren" (w. 4-7). This sharing of possessions expresses a spiritual reality as well: "We are obliged to accept such as these, so that we might become fellow-workers (synergoi) in the truth" (v. 8).
It is entirely consistent that the power conflict between the Elder and Diotrephes-who "loves to be in first place"-should be played out materially in terms of the extension or refusal of hospitality to the respective leaders' delegates, for if "friends hold all things in common," enemies can make no claim in that sharing. Thus Diotrephes refuses hospitality to the Elder's delegates and excommunicates those who want to accept them (v. 10). We are not surprised that the Elder recommends the same practice to his loyal followers in turn: "If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into the house or give him any greeting" (2 John 10). The explanation added by the Elder takes us to the heart of the ancient understanding of friendship as the sharing of all things, spiritual and material: "for he who greets him shares his wicked work." just as sharing hospitality with true friends means becoming a "fellow-worker in the truth" (3 John 8), so does sharing space with the wicked mean "sharing their wicked works" (2 John 10).
The First Letter of John does not explicitly speak of friendship. Nonetheless, it is legitimate to wonder, especially in light of 2 and 3 John, whether John's language about fellowship (koinonia) might bear some trace of the commonplace understandings. Thus, if this community calls itself "the friends," as we read in 3 John, then the opening of 1 John would have considerable evocative power: "What we have seen and heard we announce also to you, so that you might have fellowship (koinonia) with us. And our fellowship (koinonia) is with the father and with his son Jesus Christ" (1 John 1:3). But this fellowship has its conditions, namely, walking in the truth and in the light (v. 7). To act against the truth is to lose this fellowship (v. 10). From this, we can appreciate 3:16-18. Although it speaks of "Jove" (agape) rather than "friendship" (philia), we recognize that the example of Jesus given in v. 16 ("In this we have come to know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for one another") was articulated in John's Gospel precisely in terms of laying down one's life for one's friends (John 15:13). And we see as well that "loving in deed and truth" (1 John 3:18) is expressed-as it always would be in friendship discourse-in terms of the sharing of material possessions: "If anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?" (v. 17).
FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD IN JAMES
In the Letter of James, we find a final impressive example of the use of friendship language and, more significantly, the influence of Greco-Roman moral discourse about friendship. The actual occurrence of the terms is spare. In 2:23, Abraham is designated as "friend of God" (philos theou). In 4:4, "friendship with the world" (philia ton kosmou) is declared as "enmity with God" (echthra ton theou), so that anyone who even wishes to be a "friend of the world" is established as an "enemy of God." It is precisely the cryptic character of these notices, however, that draws us into the complex cultural associations concerning friendship in antiquity.
Thus, if being friends means being of "one mind," then the friend of the world must measure reality in the same way as the world. But in James, "world" (kosmos) is consistently portrayed as opposed to God (1:27; 2:5; 3:6). And the prophetic indictment within which James 4:4 is placed elaborates that outlook in terms of a "wisdom from below" that is "earthly, unspiritual, devilish" (3:15) in contrast to God's "wisdom from above," which is pure, peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, without uncertainty or insincerity" (v. 17). For James, friendship involves a deep commitment to a view of reality. One cannot, therefore, be friends with everyone because God and the world are diametrically opposed.
James goes on to expound this wisdom from below in terms of the Hellenistic topos, periphthonou ("On Envy"). Envy regards the world in terms of an equation between being and having. To be more is to have more. But if another has more than me, then I am diminished. And since the world is a place of limited resources, a closed system, all humans are in bitter competition. The logic of envy leads to battles, wars, and murder (4:1-3). Arrogance is the aggressive form of envy that seeks the assertion of the self through domination over others. What is the material expression of such "friendship with the world" in James? It is the heedless pursuit of profit (4:13-17) to be sure, but it is also the oppression of the poor through litigation (2:6) or straightforward and murderous refusal to pay the laborers in the field (5:1-6).
Turning away from this friendship with the world, readers must refuse to follow the spirit of envy and arrogance and submit themselves to God in lowly-mindedness (4:7-10). James offers Abraham as the example of such obedient faith. Abraham was a "friend of God" (2:23) because he saw reality by God's own measure and acted accordingly. he understood that God is the giver of all good gifts (1:17), who gives to everyone without grudging (1:5) and to the lowly "gives more gift" (4:6). When called to sacrifice the gift of his son Isaac, Abraham obeyed in confidence that the God who gave that gift could give still more. The material expression of "friendship with God," therefore, is the open-handed sharing of possessions, not envious grasping of them. Abraham-famous in Jewish lore for his hospitality-is here linked with Rahab, who "received the messengers" as an expression of her faith (2:25)." The friend of God will not discriminate against the poor in the assembly but recognize that God has made them rich in faith (2:1-5). The friend will share possessions with the "brothers and sisters" who are in need: "If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says, 'Go in peace, be warmed and filled,' what does it profit?" (2:16). Similarly, the friend of God will form a community of solidarity with the sick (5:13-16) and will practice the mutual correction that is the mark of the true friend in contrast to the flatterer.12
FRIENDSHIP AND THE FORMATION OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY
Research of recent decades has demonstrated that the New Testament's ostensible rejection of philosophy (1 Cor 1:18-25; Col 2:8) simplifies a more complex response to the pervasive moral discourse of the Hellenistic world, and that the use of insights of Greco-Roman moralists are an important (if not always conscious) aspect of early Christianity's development. In this essay, we have seen that a grasp of the common cultural assumptions concerning friendship as they were elaborated by philosophers from Pythagoras to Plutarch enables present-day readers to make connections between ideas and practices that might otherwise seem obscure. Knowing what sort of language was proverbially associated with friendship allows us to detect that theme even when the words for friendship do not appear. And knowing that the material expression for friendship was the sharing of possessions, we are able to recognize this connection not only in Luke's idealized portrait of the Jerusalem church in Acts but also in the actual practice of first-generation Christian communities. In Acts, Philippians, Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans, John, 1, 2, and 3 John, and James, we can detect the connection between the ideal of friendship as koinonia and the material expression of that friendship in the actual practice of sharing possessions. The koinonia of material possessions in patterns of sharing and exchange reinforced the koinonia of common belief and the koinonia of persons in different communities that we recognize in the New Testament.
Recognizing these connections, in turn, enables present-day readers to appreciate a possibly critical dimension of Christianity's development from separate congregations to a coherent and organic "church" within a remarkably short timespan. Patterns of sharing material possessions within communities, and especially patterns of exchange of possessions among communities, undoubtedly reinforced the sense that all these congregations belonged to the same "brotherhood." But since the ideals of friendship stood in a continuum with those of the political order, such practices of sharing and exchange also identified Christians to themselves and to others not only as the most successful of all ancient experiments in friendship but increasingly as a city of God, a polis theou (Heb 12:22) that could make a credible and even transforming contribution to the whole world.
[Sidebar] Turning away from this friendship with the world, readers must refuse to follow the spirit of envy and arrogance and submit themselves to God in lowly-mindedness.
[Sidebar] [T]he mandate of spiritual sharing is material sharing, for friends hold all things in common.
[Footnote] 1 "To love"; see Matt 10:37; 23:6; John 5:20; 12:25; 16:27; 1 Cor 16:22; Rev 3:19; 22:15. Philos ("friend") appears mainly in the sense of "associate" (Matt 11:19; Luke 7:6, 34; 12:4; 14:10-12; 15:6,9,29; 16:9; 23:12; Acts 10:24; 19:31). Only occasionally do the three terms occur in contexts that suggest the Greco-Roman understanding of friendship (Luke 11:5-8; John 15:13-19; James 2:23; 4:4). 2 Philoi; see Tit 3:15; Acts 27:3; John 15:14; 3 John 15. 3 All translations are the author's. 4 See how the hegeomai ("reckon") of 2:6 deliberately echoes the "reckon" of 2:3 by showing the "lowliness of spirit" shown by the obedience of Jesus (2:8). 5 Phil 1:19, 27; 2:1; 3:3; 4:23. 6 Phil 1:7; 12, 16, 29-30; 3:10. 7 Literally, "you sent once and twice for my need" (eis ten chreian moi, 4:16). 8 hina synkoinonos autou genomai (9:23; 1:9). 9 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 8.10; Aristotle, Eth. nie. 8.5.5. 10 Aristotle, Politics 1282B; 1301-1302A. 11 See Aboth de Rabbi Nathan 7. 12 James 5:19-20. see Plutarch, How to Tell a Friend from a Flatterer 5 [Mar. 51C].
[Author Affiliation] LUKE TIMOTHY JOHNSON Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins Candler School of Theology

Interpreting Romans: The New Perspective and Beyond

Interpreting Romans: The New Perspective and Beyond

Brendan Byrne S J. Interpretation. Richmond: Jul 2004.Vol.58, Iss. 3; pg. 241, 12 pgs Copyright Interpretation Jul 2004

Because Paul could never address any problem without relating it to theology, Romans will never lack interpreters or debate. In this essay, the so-called "New Perspective on Paul," which has sparked much recent discussion, is measured against the theology of Paul's central letter.
The place of Romans at the center of theological debate has never been in question since Martin Luther recaptured the Pauline insights of Augustine and made them the heart of the Reformation. No other biblical document touches on so many of the great theological issues, and for that reason no other raises such intense theological passion.
Thirty years ago when one taught Romans in an ecumenical faculty, the legacy of the Reformation divide between Catholic and Protestant interpretation was still very strong. One trod warily around issues such as justification and predestination. Now that all seems very dated. In 1977, the publication of E. P. Sanders' Paul and Palestinian Judaism1 shook the hitherto dominant Lutheran tradition of Pauline interpretation to its foundations. Two decades later, we can justifiably talk about a paradigm shift in Pauline studies. In the phrase coined by James D. G. Dunn, we must reckon with a totally "new perspective,"2 one in which concern for the relationship between Christianity and Judaism has replaced intraChristian controversy as the primary context for the interpretation of Romans.
Since the New Perspective (henceforth NP) has to do with Paul's relationship to Judaism, its concerns arise principally in respect to those letters-Romans and Galatians-where this relationship is central. The insights and concerns of the NP hover over the interpretation of every section of Romans. This survey of recent interpretation of Paul's epistle is chiefly a dialogue with the NP, the principal features of which I shall list and review against my own essentially theocentric understanding. It is, of course, no secret that the introduction of the NP in Pauline studies has not gone without challenge. A large section of Protestant scholarship, notably on the Evangelical wing, has mounted a firm resistance to aspects of the NP and sometimes to the total package;3 at stake for many-understandably-is the heart of the Reformation. More recently, a new development ("Beyond the New Perspective"; "Post- 'New Perspective' Perspective"), without simply reasserting the Reformation interpretation, has challenged Sanders' survey of ancient Judaism and sought to gain a more nuanced view of both the continuities and discontinuities between Paul and representatives of his ancestral faith.4 Before addressing the NP expressly, however, I would like to mention two earlier developments in the interpretation of Romans that have to some extent prepared the way for it.
THE 1970'S "ROMANS DEBATE"
For centuries, especially in the wake of Melanchthon, Romans was regarded primarily as a systematic exposition of Pauline theology, that is, as a stately procession of theological themes (e.g., justification, sanctification, law, spirit) embedded in a theological treatise cast in the form of a letter. Already in the mid-nineteenth century, Ferdinand Christian Baur had insisted that Romans be regarded not as an exercise in dogmatics but as a protest on Paul's part against Jewish particularism.5 Few accept Baur's historical explanation today. But the tendency Baur set in motion-to account for the content of Romans in the light of the circumstances of Paul and his addressees, specifically the relationships between Christian communities adopting differing attitudes to the practice of the Jewish Torah-has steadily gained ground. Most now agree that Romans is a real letter written by Paul on a particular occasion to address a particular set of circumstances and concerns. There is far less agreement on the more precise delineation of those circumstances and concerns-the subject of the "Romans Debate" of the late 1970's.6 Faced with a multitude of competing suggestions, many scholars despair of fixing upon any one purpose and prefer to speak of "reasons" rather than a reason for Romans.7
It should also be noted that under the influence of the renewed literary approach in biblical studies and specifically of rhetorical criticism, interest in the historical circumstances behind the letter has yielded to some degree to the view that the letter is a literaryrhetorical whole designed to create certain effects in its readers, both actual and implied.8 This approach to Romans has swung the interpretive pendulum back in the direction of recognizing that the letter, though addressed to concrete circumstances, does offer a unified and structured exposition of the gospel and of its consequences for the life of communities of believers.9 Moreover, Romans is unique among Paul's letters in that it was written to a community he had not himself founded but whose sympathy and support he wanted to gain in view of his projected missionary endeavors in the West (15:22-24). The hesitancy and defensiveness palpable at one point in the letter's introduction (1:8-15)10 shows that he cannot take for granted that all members of the community are well disposed toward him. There is a large element of apologetic in the letter as a whole: a defense of the gospel as he proclaims it to the nations of the world (1:16), a defense against any sense that this implies hostility towards Israel (9:1-5; 10:1; 11:1), a defense ultimately of the vision of God that emerges from this presentation of the gospel.
ROMANS AS "THEODICY": THE "RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD"
This last point touches upon something increasingly recognized as central to Romans: that it is from beginning to end a theodicy, a justification of God.11 To assert this may come as a surprise to those more accustomed to regarding the "justification" of which the letter speaks as moving, so to speak, in the opposite direction, that is, of having to do with God's gracious justification of human beings through faith. The justification of believers is indeed a major theme of the letter (e.g., 3:21-26), but, as Ernst Käsemann in particular has insisted,12 the multiple references to "the righteousness of God" in Romans (1:17; 3:5; 3:21, 22, 26; 10:3 [twice]; elsewhere only 2 Cor 5:21) must have primarily a subjective reference, that is, to God's own righteousness-to the perception of God as righteous or as having acted in a way demonstrating righteousness. The Lutheran tradition, especially as represented by Bultmann,13 has tended to interpret the phrase "the righteousness of God" objectively: that is, as referring not to God's own righteousness but to the righteous status that God graciously deigns to confer upon the believer in view of the saving work of Christ-a sense given clear expression in Phil 3:9, where Paul writes, "and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith" (cf. also 1 Cor 1:30). But it is doubtful whether the objective sense made explicit in Phil 3:9 should be allowed to determine instances of the phrase in Romans, where a (subjective) reference to God's own righteousness appears more appropriate.14
This means that the question Paul raises in a variety of formulations in Rom 3:3-8 (i.e., is God righteous ["faithful,""truthful,""just"]?) runs throughout the letter. It is an issue that can be stated both positively and negatively. To take the negative first: within the bleak worldview that Paul shares with apocalyptic Judaism and early Christianity, the gospel as he proclaims it unashamedly lumps Israel along with the Gentile world in the sinful mass of humankind (3:9). As the first major section of the letter (1:18-3:20) seeks to show, Jewish privileges such as possession of the Torah and circumcision have all been undercut, in respect to the righteousness required for eschatological justification, by the more powerful force of sin (3:10-20). Does this failure of Israel imply a concomitant failure on the part of Israel's covenant partner, God? No, says Paul-and here we turn to the positive: in Christ's death upon the cross, God has supremely displayed faithfulness-righteousness-to Israel (3:21-26). In the shedding of his blood, Christ has become the means of atonement (3:25) for all who in faith acknowledge their sinfulness and need of such justifying. God displays the divine righteousness precisely in the act of justifying people through faith (3:26), thus opening up for believers the hope of salvation on the basis of being righteous through faith (5:1-2).15 The only catch (and for Israel it is a big catch!) is that this is something that God is doing not simply in covenant fidelity to Israel but in faithfulness as Creator to the entire world. Since "all [= Jews and Gentiles] have sinned" (3:23a), all believers [Gentile and Jewish] are "being justified through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (3:24)-something that erodes the special status of Israel as "holy nation" set apart from the sinful rest of humankind and excludes all attempts henceforth to reclaim that status through performance of the "works of the Torah" (3:27-30).
The question of God's faithfulness (righteousness) resurfaces in Romans 9-11. Here the "presenting issue" is not so much Israel's sinfulness (though that is presupposed in 2:13:20) as the twin phenomenon that confronted all first-generation believers: the failure of Israel, save for a tiny minority, to respond positively to Jesus as the Messiah and, in sharp contrast, the positive response to the gospel from large numbers of Gentiles. Where, again, is God's faithfulness to Israel if, despite all the promises contained in the Scriptures, things have gone so appallingly wrong in the messianic age that was supposed to fulfill those promises? As is well known, Paul draws a very long bow in addressing this issue, looking at it from a variety of points of view (God's elective way of acting in 9:6-29; the human reasons for Israel's failure in 9:30-10:21) before finally insisting that God has not abandoned Israel but will see to its eventual inclusion in the community of salvation, but in a way that totally reverses previous expectations (11:25-36).
Though not focused upon the fate of Israel, the sense of God's faithfulness also drives the argument in Romans 5-8. This section of the letter confronts the difficult situation believers find themselves in at the present time: "right with God" (justified) on the basis of faith, yet only "on the way" to salvation, enduring in their bodily existence the negative factors of the present age: temptation, suffering, and death.16 In the face of these trials, the overall theme of the section is an assertion of hope-hope that the God who has already intervened at such cost (the death of the Son) to bring about a situation of righteousness will not fail to bring believers to the fullness of salvation (5:5-10; 8:31-39). The replacement of the law by the Spirit enables believers to live out the gift of righteousness (6:1-8:13) and so remain within the unfolding divine design to make all things work for good for those who love God (8:28), those caught up in the inexorable working out of God's saving purpose (8:29-30).17
The renewed appreciation of Paul's focus upon the problem of Israel, and the concern with theodicy that goes with it, has only served to bring out the theocentricity of the letter. Romans is indeed a self-presentation of Paul, a defense of his attitudes and strategy. But behind Paul's concern is the defiant proclamation of the faithfulness of God. God has not been unfaithful to Israel (3:21-4:25). God will not be unfaithful to Israel (9:6-11:36). And God will faithfully see to it that believers who live out the righteousness granted them in Christ will be rescued from the conditions of the present age to share, in union with Christ, the full freedom of the children of God (5:1-8:39).
ROMANS AND THE NEW PERSPECTIVE ON PAUL
Presented below are what I consider to be the chief features of the NP on Paul and my assessment of its insights and tenets as verified in his letter to Rome. The NP is not, of course, a homogenous phenomenon; not all the features listed below apply to all varieties in equal degree. But I think the list offers a composite picture sufficient for a survey of this kind.18
1. On the negative side, there is a sustained critique of the Lutheran tradition of interpretation, with its classic antithesis of gospel and law.19
2. Likewise rejected is the view of Judaism that the Lutheran tradition has, since the Reformation, tended to promote: that Judaism is a religion of legalism and works-righteousness in which one gains salvation by perfect obedience of the law.20 Luther falsely projected upon judaism the pattern of religion he found objectionable in the Catholicism of his time.
3. More positively, the plank upon which all varieties of the NP rest is the very different view of Judaism emanating from Sanders's survey of the pattern of Jewish religion in the second Temple era.21 That survey shows Judaism of the time to be a religion of grace no less than Christianity; Israel's election to the covenant and to salvation precedes all obedience to law; the latter is not a condition of "getting into" the covenant but of living out and staying within the covenant community; the law itself provides means for the operation of God's mercy and forgiveness so that, despite human failure and sinfulness, status within the covenant community of salvation can be preserved.
4. Certain distinctive practices (circumcision, food laws, Sabbath) possessed great symbolic power as affirming and demarcating the identity of the Jewish people, living within a vast sea of other cultures frequently hostile to it. Jews did not carefully observe these practices in order to earn salvation, but to maintain, in a sociological sense, their sense of identity and privilege. It is to these practices in particular that the Pauline phrase "works of the law" refers.22
5. When Paul sets the way of faith over against "works of the law" (Rom 3:27-28; Gal 2:16; 3:1-13), he is not targeting a legalistic quest for righteousness through practice of the law, nor-to use the language of later theological discussion-is he pitting God's sovereign grace over against human effort. Rather, in the interests of his Gentile mission, he is targeting an inflated sense of Jewish identity ("boasting"), expressed especially in observance of these ritual practices, while failing to recognize that the time has come for the realization of God's gracious designs for the Gentile world in accordance with the promises to Abraham.23
6. Along these lines, the NP stresses the continuities between Paul and his ancestral religion-seeing him, as far as is possible, within the broad range of second Temple Judaism rather than as a "convert" from it to another, basically critical religion.24
7. In line with the tendency emerging from the earlier "Romans Debate," the NP stresses the occasional nature of Paul's letters, including the densely theological letter to Rome. The long theological sequences arise not out of dogmatic concerns per se but from the need to justify the terms upon which Gentile converts should be admitted as such (as Gentiles) to full participation in the community of faith alongside Jewish believers.25
8. The NP shows the influence of social science criticism and sociology in its stress upon identity, as well as upon the significance that commensality and other ritual practices assume when hitherto diverse communities (Jews and non-Jews) live and associate together in a new common allegiance.26
9. The NP recognizes that believers of Gentile origin are the primary addressees of Paul's letters, including Romans, and that when Paul addresses Jewish issues, especially that of the Torah, he does so for their benefit and with their concerns chiefly in mind. Any anti-Jewish sounding polemic principally targets fellow Christian missionaries who would seek to impose upon Gentile converts practices that were never intended for them. When, as in Rom 11:13-32, Paul speaks to Gentile believers about the Israel that has not come to faith in Jesus as Messiah, his intent is to evoke sympathy, understanding, and respect, and to counter any suggestion that Israel has fallen out of God's saving purpose.27
10. The NP sees itself as promoting a more ethically responsible interpretation of Paul in a post-Holocaust world conscious of how caricatures of Jews and Judaism arising out of traditional biblical interpretations have fostered anti-Semitism.28
Setting aside for a moment the question of Lutheranism (Features 1 and 2), let us examine the plank upon which all varieties of the NP rest: the view of Judaism emanating from Sanders's examination of Jewish patterns of religion in the Second Temple era. This, of course, is something to be decided apart from Romans, though it bears essentially upon the interpretation of the letter. Sanders's analysis of the evidence has been subjected to much criticism-and not only by those anxious to preserve at all costs the classical Reformation heritage.29 Other readings of the evidence would apportion a far greater significance to the keeping of the Torah in regard to the attainment of salvation. It may not be a condition of "getting in" the covenant community of salvation. But, if it is a condition of "staying in," then it does become an essential factor.30 In a tradition going back to Deuteronomy, covenant and Torah cannot be separated; both are a matter of life or death (Deut 30:15-20).31 Statements in the Psalms of Solomon, the Fourth Book of Ezra, and the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch (2 Baruch) express a strong link between attaining or preserving righteousness through the practice of the law and so attaining, from the perspective of apocalyptic Judaism, eternal life.32 At least certain strands of the Judaism of the time were far more "nomistic" in this sense than Sanders has allowed.
If this is the case, then there is a genuine historical context for what appears to be an opposition in Romans between righteousness by faith and a quest for righteousness through performance of the law (cf. 3:27-28; 9:30-10:13; cf. Gal 3:11-12). This does not mean that the Judaism of the time was not a religion where grace and covenant relationship had priority, but it does allow for it to have included circles, especially those strongly influenced by apocalypticism, in which the practice of the Torah was seen not only as a way of life but a way to life.
In regard to the kind of Jewish nomistic aspiration that Paul, according to this reading, is setting over against faith in Romans, we have to distinguish between a "hard" and a "soft" Lutheran understanding.33 The hard Lutheran understanding, seen especially in Bultmann-also Käsemann and Hübner34-has Paul opposing (purported) Jewish legalism by insisting that even the very attempt to keep the law is already sin, because it is done in a self-regarding way, neglectful of the sovereignty of God. This is Bultmann's understanding of the "desire" that Paul's sees to be elicited with fatal consequences from the "commandment" (law) in Rom 7:7-12. Such interpreters never seem to have asked themselves how any Jew, including one radicalized by faith in the crucified Messiah such as Paul, could ever have found keeping the Torah something worthy of blame (cf. Deut 30:15-20)! Stephen Westerholm has proposed a more moderate Lutheran understanding that preserves the Reformer's unique insights into Paul while avoiding caricature of Judaism.35 What Paul sees to be excluded by faith need not necessarily involve a self-regarding attitude that seeks to establish a claim on God based on merit ("hard legalism"). It may simply represent a quest for righteousness that, in Paul's view, the gospel has exposed as wrong-headed and doomed, since it bypasses the divine verdict upon human behavior, attested in Scripture (Rom 3:10-19; Gal 3:22) and implied in the crucified Messiah (3:23; 5:12d; 9:31-33)-a negative verdict that is, by the same token, inseparable from a divine offer of righteousness on a wholly new basis, that of faith (3:21-26; 9:30-10:4).36
On this understanding, the reiterated "all have sinned" in Romans (3:23; 5:12d; cf. 3:9b; 11:32; Gal 3:22) refers to a factual sinning pervasive in the human race as a whole and symptomatic of a deeper illness, the human propensity to chafe and rebel against God ("desire"), which Luther so subtly discerned. In Paul's view, possession of the law did not insulate Israel against this plight (Rom 2:1-29; 3:9-20). On the contrary, the law, though good in itself, served the purpose of intensifying sin so that there (in Israel) where sin abounded, grace might abound all the more (Rom 5:20; cf. 7:13).37 The true antithesis is not between gospel and law but between grace and sin, since law plays a role, albeit a negative one, in the exposure and overthrow of sin.
Hence the NP's sweeping condemnation of the Lutheran tradition needs qualification. Luther and his Bultmannian successors were certainly wrong in their caricature of Judaism and wrong in attributing to Paul an understanding of sin's essence as keeping the law "too well." The tradition is not, however, wrong in its sense of the radicality with which Paul views the human plight ante Christum and the similar radicality of the divine action to redeem it. The tradition rightly perceived the essential theocentricity of Paul's thought, according to which "God accomplishes his [sic] (ultimately benevolent) purposes independently of human designs or activity and that, given the recalcitrance of the human heart, divine deliverance must be rooted in divine goodness and faithfulness, not in the merits of the delivered."38
If this is so, then equally due for nuancing is the NP's claim that in targeting "boasting" in "works of the law" (3:20, 27, 28; also, in the shortened phrase ex ergon 4:2; 9:11, 32; 11:6) Paul was primarily excluding an inflated sense of Jewish identity expressed especially in the prizing and observance of "identity markers," observances such as circumcision, food laws and keeping the Sabbath (cf. Features 4 and 5).39 In several contexts (Rom 2:17, 23; 3:27), Paul's references to "boasting" may at first sight suggest such an attitude, but other instances argue that "boast" has more to do with what one relies upon for salvation than an attitude toward others. One "boasts" in that upon which one's hope for salvation rests: whether that be (observance of) the "works of the law" or God's faithfulness and the righteousness graciously conferred upon believers-the only grounds for boasting in Paul's eyes (Rom 5:2, 3, 11; 8:10). What is wrong with going the way of "works of the law" is not primarily a national pride that refuses to recognize God's design to include the nations of the world within the promises of salvation. What is wrong is a refusal to admit what Paul has been at pains to show in Rom 2:1-3:20, that the way of the Torah has been undercut by Israel's being mired (despite possession of the Torah) in the sinful mass of humankind. Faith acknowledges all this to be the case, which is why faith and attempting to pursue the "works of the law" remain diametrically opposed for Paul.
Paul is, of course, at pains in Romans to show that he is not hostile to his own people (9:1-4; 10:1; 11:1). This concern, however, sits in some tension with an inevitable discontinuity between the way of the Torah and that of the gospel (cf. Feature 6). Some varieties of the NP see Paul as having no quarrel with the law as far as Jews are concerned; it is their accompaniment to salvation. Christ has come to activate the blessings promised to Abraham on behalf of the nations of the world and functions solely in regard to them. Paul faults Israel for failing to recognize that the time for the promised blessings to flow to the nations has come.40 But Paul's statements in Romans about the negative working of the law (3:30b; 4:15; 5:20a; 6:14, 15; 7:5; 7:7-13; 8:3) and his insistence upon the universal requirement of faith (1:16; 10:11-13) would seem to rule out any such "dual track" way to salvation-one for Jews (Torah), one for Gentiles (faith in Messiah Jesus).41 It is hard to see that his strictures against pursuing the way of the law refer simply to its imposition upon Gentile converts (cf. Features 7-9) and have no relevance for Christian Jews such as Peter and himself (cf. Gal 2:11-21). Paul would presumably countenance Christian Jews continuing to live according to the law's requirements in a customary sense. Where he appears to have drawn the line (cf. Gal 2:11-3:29) is where practice of the law retained the symbolic division between "holy nation" and "unclean rest."
What Paul had to show in Romans as a key element of his "apology" for the gospel (1:16a) was that the discontinuity it appeared to promote was in fact "continuous" with God's salvific design as proclaimed in the Scriptures. Paul does this in various ways in those sections of the letter made up almost entirely of citation and argument from Scripture: 3:10-19; 4:1-25; 9:6-11:36; 15:8-12.42 What it all amounts to can be be summed up as a privileging of the universalist covenant/promise made to Abraham over the particularist ("Israel only") covenant given to Moses at Sinai.43 Paul achieves this by depicting Abraham as primarily a person of faith, who on the basis of being "reckoned" righteous on this ground, received for himself and for a limitless progeny of believers the promise upon which hung the messianic blessings (4:1-23). Introducing this reading of Abraham, Paul claims in fact to be "upholding" rather than "doing away with" the law (Rom 3:31). The claim is daring in view of all that Paul has been saying about faith's exclusion of the way of the law and of all that he will continue to say about the negative effects of the law's working (4:15b; 5:20a; 6:14, 15; 7:5; 7:7-13; 7:14-25; 8:3). But Paul is exploiting for hermeneutical purposes the ambiguity to be found in nomos, where in addition to referring strictly to the legal code handed down to Moses on Sinai, it can refer to the central part of Scripture (the Pentateuch) and indeed to the entire scriptural witness.44 In the latter capacity, the nomos, since it witnesses to Israel's sinfulness (3:10-20), declares the failure of its own project as a way of life imposed by God in the shape of the Mosaic law.45 At the same time, again as Scripture,46 it points to God's eschatological dealing in Christ with human sinfulness-both that of Israel and that of the wider Gentile world-in order to activate for all believers the blessings of salvation.
This still leaves Paul with an immense problem on his hands: to account for the role of the Sinai covenant and the law in the overall schema of salvation. He attempts this in Romans 5-8. After coming perilously close to identifying the law with sin (cf. 7:7), he distinguishes between the law, in itself "holy, just and good" (v. 12), and the fatal effects that it has when, as a purely external code, it confronts a human situation ("flesh") still caught in the grip of sin. The interpretation of Rom 7:7-25, especially vv. 14-25, remains controversial.47 Most interpreters would agree, however, that, whether it refers to a "pre-Christian" or "Christian" stage of religious existence, it does describe a person confronted by the requirements of the law apart from or in abstraction from the grace of Christ-more specifically, the gift of the Spirit.48 The full radicality of Paul's vision emerges when, as appears to be the case, he sees this negative working of the law as part of the divine economy of salvation. The law, though good in itself, served the purpose of intensifying sin so that there (in Israel!) where sin abounded, grace might abound all the more (Rom 5:20; cf. 7:13) and sin might effectively be dealt with (8:3-4).49
It is hard to square a strong emphasis upon continuity with such radical statements as these. When Paul says that "Christ is the end (telos) of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes" (10:4), telos may have its more usual sense of "goal," but the law's role remains negative, and the note of termination ("end") is also implicit.50 The appearance of Messiah Jesus has simply and on a universal scale (Jew as well as Gentile) put an end to the quest for righteousness through (works of) the law. In a way that may be less than convincing for modern interpretation, Paul appears to find sufficient continuity in that the gift of the Spirit fulfills the divine pledge to place "my law" (Jer 31:33), "my Spirit" (Ezek 36:26-27), within the hearts of the eschatological people of God. The combined witness of these prophetic texts shows that the Spirit51 has replaced the Mosaic law as the principle of life-both as energizer of moral life and as pledge, on that account, of eternal life.52 Contrary to the overall tendency of the NP, the continuity with respect to law is for Paul "metaphorical" only (Spirit as "law"); real continuity lies in the witness of Scripture.
One cannot, of course, quarrel with the desire of the NP to interpret Paul in an ethically responsible way, especially in regard to Christian attitudes and behavior toward Jews and Judaism (Feature 10). This is not achieved, however, by minimizing the radicality of Paul's critique of the total human situation prior to the grace of Christ. Nonetheless, the NP has been most salutary in insisting that Paul's critique of Israel must be seen as Romans 9-11 shows he would want it to be seen: as that of a prophet standing within-rather than outside-his people (11:1) and as mounted on behalf of his people against Gentile believers too prone to dismiss Israel's abiding status as "beloved because of the fathers" (11:28).
CONTRIBUTION FROM JEWISH SCHOLARS
A very significant development has been the entrance of Jewish scholars into Pauline studies, and specifically the interpretation of Paul's letter to Rome. Alan Segal has made distinctive contributions in the area of understanding Paul's "conversion," mysticism, and christology,53 while the culture critic Daniel Boyarin has found in Paul a refiguration of Jewish monotheism issuing in a concept of the oneness of humankind.54 Most intensively concerned with Paul has been Mark Nanos, who has argued that Romans must principally be understood as a summons to Gentile believers in Rome to a law-respectful rather than a law-free attitude and to submission to the synagogue authorities (13:1-7).55
CONCLUSION
It is unlikely that Romans will ever shift from the central position it occupies in Christian theology. It was Paul's genius-and perhaps his burden-that he could never address any problem, no matter how practical and in itself untheoretical, without relating it to theology. Paul's writings in every sentence distill a vision of God and God's action in Christ. Reference to the gospel remains the essential criterion. So long as this is perceived to be the case, Romans will never lack interpreters-or debate!
[Footnote] 1 E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia: Fortress; London: SCM, 1977). 2 See esp. J. D. G. Dunn, "The New Perspective on Paul," BJRL 65 (1983) 95-122; idem, Romans 1-8, WBC (Dallas: Word Books, 1988) lxiii-lxxii; idem, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) 33540; D. J. Moo, "Paul and the Law in the Last Ten Years," SJT 40 (1987) 287-307; J. M. G. Barclay, "Paul and the Law: Observations on Some Recent Debates," Themelios 12 (1986-87) 5-15; M. B. Thompson, The New Perspective on Paul (Cambridge: Grove Books, 2002); see further the website devoted to the New Perspective entitled "The Paul Page" (
www.angelfire.com/mi2/paulpage). 3 Again, the literature is already vast. The leader of the challenge is Seyoon Kim: see especially his Paul and the New Perspective: Second Thoughts on the Origin of Paul's Gospel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002); see also justification and Variegated Nomism. Volume 1: The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism, ed. D. A. Carson, P. T. O'Brien, and M. A. Seifrid, WUNT 2/140 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001). 4 Two Finnish scholars are significant here: Timo Laato, Paul and Judaism: An Anthropological Approach, trans. T. McElwain (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995); Timo Eskola, Theodicy and Predestination in Pauline Soteriology, WUNT 2/100 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998); see also, C. H. Talbert, "Paul, Judaism and the Revisionists," CBQ 63 (2001) 1-22; B. Byrne, "Interpreting Romans Theologically in a Post-'New Perspective" Perspective," HTR 94 (2001) 22741. 5 See R. Morgan, "Tübingen School," in A Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, ed. R. J. Coggins and J. L. Houlden (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990) 710-13. 6 For leading contributions, see the collection edited by Karl Donfried, The Romans Debate: Revised and Expanded Edition (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1991). 7 See esp. A. J. M. Wedderburn, The Reasons for Romans (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988). 8 For this approach, see J.-N. Aletti, Comment Dieu est-il juste? Clefs pour interpreter l'épître aux Romains (Paris: Seuil, 1991); J. P. Heil, Paul's Letter to the Romans: A Reader-Response Commentary (New York: Paulist, 1987); F. Siegert, Argumentation bei Paulus: Gezeigt an Rom 9-11, WUNT 34 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1985); B. Byrne, Romans, Sacra Pagina 6 (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1996). 9 Cf. D. E. Aune, The New Testament against Its Literary Environment (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987) 158-225. In his Theology of Paul the Apostle, Dunn uses Romans as a "template" for an exposition of Paul's whole theology (p. xvi). 10 Cf. Byrne, Romans, 48. 11 See esp. Eskola, Theodicy and Predestination. 12 E. Käsemann, "The 'Righteousness of God' in Paul," in New Testament Questions of Today (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969) 168-82. 13 R. Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, 2 vols. (London: SCM, 1952-55) 1:270-74. 14 Cf. J. A. Fitzmyer, Romans, AB 33 (New York: Doubleday, 1993) 262-63. I have argued that Paul in Romans exploits the possibility that "righteousness of God" can have an ambiguous, "bi-polar" sense: God's own righteousness and the righteousness graciously found in believers (Byrne, Romans, 123-24). 15 For the details of this exposition of Rom 3:21-26, see Byrne, Romans, 122-35. 16 Dunn helpfully refers to this situation as the "overlap" of the ages (Theology of Paul, 464). 17 Cf. B. Byrne, "Living Out the Righteousness of God: The Contribution of Rom 6:1-8:13 to an Understanding of Paul's Ethical Presuppositions," CBQ 43 (1981) 557-81; idem, Romans, 163-64, 187-88, 239-41. 18 The list expands the six points listed in my "Interpreting Romans Theologically," 228-29. The expanded list is considerably indebted to a paper by F. Watson, "Not the New Perspective," appearing on the website "The Paul Page" (see n. 2 above). 19 F. Watson, Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles: A Sociological Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1986) 1-22 (Watson has changed his mind since then). 20 Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism 33-59. 21 Ibid., 81-428. 22 Dunn, Theology of Paul 354-59; N. T. Wright, "Romans," in MB 10:433-770, esp. 460-61. 23 Cf. Dunn, Theology of Paul, 118-19, 145, 363, 368-69; Wright, "Romans," 480. 24 Cf. Dunn, Theology of Paul, 137-61. The stress upon continuity is less pronounced in Sanders's own work. 25 Here, again, Sanders stands apart in that he sees Romans occasioned not by the situation in Rome but more by Paul's concern with the "Jew-Gentile" problem (Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 488). 26 Watson, Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles; Dunn, Theology of Paul, 358. 27 Cf. S. K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews and Gentiles (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994) 21-41. The full extent of this tendency can be seen in the work of Mark Nanos: The Mystery of Romans: The Jewish Context of Paul's Letter (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1996); idem, "The Jewish Context of the Gentile Audience Addressed in Paul's Letter to the Romans," CBQ 61 (1999) 283-304. 28 See the collection edited by Christina Grenhold and Daniel Patte, Reading Israel in Romans: Legimitacy and Plausibility of Divergent Interpretation, Romans through History and Culture Series (Harrisburg, Pa: Trinity Press International, 2000), esp. the response by Patte, "A Post-Holocaust Biblical Critic Responds," 225-45. 29 See esp. Carson, O'Brien, and Seifrid, Justification and Variegated Nomism; Friedrich Avemarie, Tora und Leben: Untersuchungen zur Heilsbedeutung der Tora in der frühen rabbinischen Literatur (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996); Mark A. Elliott, The Survivors of Israel: A Reconsideration of the Theology of Pre-Christian Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000); Simon J. Gathercole, Where is Boasting? Early Jewish Soteriology and Paul's Response in Romans 1-5 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002) 37-111, 112-135; Talbert, "Paul, Judaism and the Revisionists," 1-22. 30 Cf. B. J. Byrne, "Sons of God" - "Seed of Abraham", AnBib 83 (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1979) 230-31. 31 Cf. Watson, "Not the New Perspective," 10. 32 Cf. Pss. Sol. 9:4-5; 14:1-10; 15:6-13; 4 Ezra 8:33-36, 51-62; 9:7-13; 2 Apoc Bar 44:12-15; 51:1-6. 33 The distinction comes from S. Westerholm, Israel's Law and the Church's Faith: Paul and His Recent Interpreters (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988) 132. 34 Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament 1:264, 315; E. Käsemann, Commentary on Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 198) 89-90; H. Hübner, Law in Paul's Thought (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1984) 113-24. 35 See esp. Westerholm, Israel's Law, 132-34, 169-73; idem, "Paul and the Law in Romans 9-11," in Paul and the Mosaic Law: The Third Durham-Tübingen Research Symposium on Earliest Christianity and Judaism (Durham, September, 1994), ed. J. D. G. Dunn, WUNT 89 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1996) 214-37. 36 For further elaboration, see Byrne, Romans, 310-13. 37 Cf. N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991) 196-97; idem, "Romans," 566. 38 Westerholm, "Paul and the Law in Romans 9-11," 236. 39 See Dunn, Theology of Paul, 118-19, 145, 363; also Wright, "The Law in Romans 2," in Paul and the Mosaic Law, 131-50, esp. 139. 40 So L. Gaston, Paul and the Torah (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1987), esp. 15-34, 80-99, 135-50. 41 See R. Hvalvik, "A 'Sonderweg' for Israel: A Critical Examination of a Current Interpretation of Romans," JSNT 38 (1980) 87-107. 42 On scriptural citation and allusion in Paul, see R. M. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). 43 D. J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996) 27; B. Byrne, "The Problem of Nomos and the Relationship with Judaism in Romans," CBQ 62 (2000) 294-309, esp. 307-8. 44 Cf. Byrne, "The Problem of Nomos," 306-7. 45 Cf. Watson, "Not the New Perspective," 13. 46 See especially, e.g., Hab 2:4 (cited Rom 1:17; Gal 3:11); Gen 15:6 (Rom 4:3, 9; Gal 3:6); Isa 28:16 (Rom 9:33; 10:11); Joel 3:5 (Rom 10:13). 47 The best discussion remains that of John Ziesler, Paul's Letter to the Romans (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1989) 191-95. 48 Cf. Moo, Romans, 442-51. 49 Cf. references in n. 37 above. 50 See further Byrne, Romans, 315. 51 "The nomos of the Spirit of life" (Rom 8:2a) is equivalent to "'the law' in the shape of the life-giving Spirit." 52 See further Byrne, "The Problem of Nomos" 305-6. 53 A. Segal, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). 54 D. Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). 55 Nanos, The Mystery of Romans.
[Author Affiliation] BRENDAN BYRNE, S. J. Professor of New Testament Jesuit Theological College

"I was only a little angry": Divine Violence in the Prophets

"I was only a little angry": Divine Violence in the Prophets

Terence E Fretheim. Interpretation. Richmond: Oct 2004.Vol.58, Iss. 4; pg. 365, 11 pgs
Copyright Interpretation Oct 2004


A biblical understanding of God's relationship with Israel and the world helps us interpret passages in the prophetic literature that link God and violence. With tears, lament, and regret, God takes into the divine self the violent effects of sinful human activities and thereby makes possible a non-violent future for God's people.
I was only a little angry; they made the disaster worse." This seemingly minor quotation from Zech 1:15, which witnesses to the excessive actions of divine agents, may provide a helpful angle on the interpretation of violence in the prophets. After some introductory comments, I consider these basic claims: God's relationship with Israel is genuine; God acts in Israel and in the world in and through agents; God's agents of judgment commonly exceed their mandate; God's response to the consequent disasters includes tears, lament, and regret.
Prophetic literature is filled with violent speech and action, both human and divine. But let it be said immediately: if there were no human violence, there would be no divine violence.1 Genesis 6:11-13 announces a pattern regarding divine and human violence that will persist throughout the canon: "I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them." A more specific form of human violence, namely war-including its anticipation, execution, and aftermath-provides the context within which most of the prophetic literature was written. Another particular form of violence-the oppression of the poor and needy-will often be associated by the prophets with the outbreak of war (e.g., Isa 10:1-5; Mic 2:1-3; Ezek 22:29-31). Violence brings violence in its wake. Inasmuch as the prophets are not deists, the God of whom they speak will be involved in the violence associated with oppression and war. Trying to sort out the nature of that divine involvement is our most basic task.
Divine violence has often been troubling to biblical commentators-and for good reason. One need only note the devastating effect of God's judgment on children, women, and the environment (e.g., Lam 2:19-21; 4:4, 10; 5:11). Such texts have led to various attempts to "shelve" the topic of divine violence: spiritualizing it ("put on the whole armor of God"), reducing it to the mysterious ways of God (though the texts have a remarkably "plain sense"), "projections" of human behaviors, or even cutting these texts out of the Bible, whether practically (as in lectionaries) or actually.
This concern about divine violence in the Old Testament has intensified in recent years.2 Reasons for this development include the following: the cumulative violence over the course of the 20th century with increasingly lethal weapons, more recent experiences (9/11, terrorist activities), and the spread of interreligious conflict-all of it available in the media on a daily basis.3 Also to be noted is the increasing realization that the Bible's violence has played a part in the spread of the world's violence. Altogether too often the actions of the God of the Bible have been claimed as justification for the violence, from the crusades to slavery to the denigration of women.4 One may claim that the Bible has not been properly used when this occurs, but at the least readers must admit that the Bible has not provided safeguards for preventing such interpretations and should also consider whether some of its violence is "out of bounds."5
Some interpreters may think that voicing such probing questions about the violence of God is inappropriate. Such questioning, however, has long been integral to the Judeo-Christian tradition, and has roots deep within the biblical texts. One need only note questions raised by Abraham (Gen 18:25) and Moses (Exod 32:1-14) regarding divine violence. Habakkuk is a prophetic example. In Hab 1:2-4, the prophet complains to God about the violence Israel has had to endure, to which God responds with an oracle of judgment (vv. 5-11). God is "rousing" the Babylonians, who will "come for violence." Habakkuk's second complaint (w. 12-17) "attacks God's announced solution to injustice as being more unjust than the original problem."6 Given Babylon's violent ways and means, how can God use such a people as divine agents to overcome the wicked? God is too pure and holy to use such agents for divine purposes! We return to this issue below.
Let it be clearly said that the prophets and their God often promote non-violence. The eschatological reflections of the prophets are marked by visions of peace and non-violence, extending even to the animal world (e.g., Isa 2:2-4; 65:17-25); such texts demonstrate that Israel considered violence to be an intruder in God's world. Moreover, some texts witness that God makes every effort to stop the violence, but is not successful in doing so; people can make choices that successfully resist the will of God. For example, in the face of the post-597 B.C.E. Babylonian threat, God calls Jeremiah to bring a word that is intended to reduce the violence: Israel is to submit to Babylon's hegemony (Jer 38:17-18). Demonstrating a political realism, God announces that if Israel would not rebel, its future would take a less violent course. Israel's own use of violence would lead to its experience of even greater violence. God, too, has a stake in Israel's decision: a positive response would lessen God's association with violence.
VIOLENCE AND RELATIONSHIP
A key factor that must inform considerations of biblical violence is the centrality of relationship for Israelite theological reflection.7 For the Old Testament, relationships are constitutive of life itself; through relationships all things are woven together like a spider web. Interrelatedness is a basic characteristic not only of the God-Israel (and God-world) relationship but also of the very nature of the created order. Human sin ripples out and affects the entire creation (see the linkage between human violence and the nonhuman in Hos 4:1-3). To live in a relational world inevitably means that every creature will be affected by every other; each individual is involved in the plight of all. Violence perpetrated anywhere reverberates everywhere through this relational structure of life, leading to even further violence. Because Israel understood that God is related to, and indeed deeply engaged in the affairs of this world, even the Creator will be affected by and caught up in every act of violence. Though there may be non-violent breakthroughs, an avoidance of interrelational violence is simply not possible for either Israel or God.8 The Bible tells it like it is.
This understanding of relationship places a key question on the table: What does it mean for God to be a faithful member of this relationship with Israel (and the world) in the midst of all its violence? I make a claim at this point and return to it below. God so enters into these relationships that God is not the only one with something important to do and the power with which to do it. Creatures in relationship with this kind of God have been given genuine power (e.g., Gen 1:28), and God so honors this relationship-indeed is unchangeably faithful to it-that God will be self-limiting in the exercise of divine power within such relationships.9 This divine self-limitation, necessary for the genuine freedom of creatures within the relationship, is a key factor in understanding violence. Israel's (and the world's) long story of successful resistance to God's will for non-violence has had deep effects on every aspect of life and the resultant violent reality complicates God's working possibilities in the world. Because of God's committed relationship to the world, no resolution will be simple, no "quick fix" available, even for God. The enemies of God cannot be overcome with a flick of the wrist. One might wish that God would force compliance and stop the violence, but, because of the genuine relationship, God's efforts to that end will entail constraint and restraint in the use of power. And so, with continued resistance to the will of God for non-violence, laments will continue and suffering will go on for both the world and God.
GOD'S USE OF AGENTS
God works through various human and nonhuman agents to get things done in the world. God acts directly, but always through means. The variety of means that God uses is impressive. God works through already existing creatures to bring about new creations (Gen 1:11), through human language to call the prophets (Isa 6:8-13), through nonhuman agents at the Red Sea (the nonhuman is the savior of the human!), through sacrificial rituals to mediate forgiveness of sin, through non-Israelite kings and armies to effect both judgment and salvation, and through the created moral order. The latter two are interrelated and particularly pertinent for this discussion.
1. God's Use of Human Agents. God's use of human agents is amply demonstrated in texts such as Jer 50:25 ("the weapons of his wrath"), Isa 10:5 ("Assyria, the rod of my anger"), and Isa 45:1 (God's "anointed," Cyrus of Persia). God's word regarding the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon in Jer 27:8 puts the matter in a nutshell, "I have completed its destruction by his hand." Remarkably, God refers to Nebuchadrezzar as "my servant" in Jeremiah (25:9; 27:6; 43:10). Others whom God designates "my servant" in Jeremiah are David, the prophets, and Israel!10 As with these other agents, in some sense God has chosen to be dependent on Nebuchadrezzar and his armies in carrying out that judgment.11 The latter will certainly act as armies in that world are known to act, and God knows of potential problems from experience with conquerors such as these. This portrayal of God constitutes a kind of extreme realism regarding what may happen to the people. Once these armies begin their onslaught, the people will no doubt experience their pillaging, burning, and raping. Exilic readers of these texts will recall that they were real agents indeed.12
The frequency with which words of violence have both God and Babylon/Nebuchadrezzar as their subjects is remarkable, especially in Jeremiah. And so, God in judgment will not "pity, spare, or have compassion" (Jer 13:14), because that is what the Babylonians, the agents of divine judgment, will not do (Jer 21:7). God will dash in pieces, destroy, scatter, and strike down (Jer 13:14, 24; 21:6), precisely because that is what Babylon, the chosen divine agent, will do (Jer 48:12; 36:29; 52:8; 21:7).13 Such harsh words are used with God as subject because they depict the actions of those in and through whom God mediates judgment. The portrayal of God's violent action is conformed to the means that God uses.
For these reasons, interpreters must not diminish the distinction between God and God's agents or discount the power of these human armies.14 Both God and human beings are effective agents; God's activity is not all-determining. God neither 'lets go' of the creation nor retains all power. God makes free choices, but those choices are constrained by relationships God has established. One might fault God's choice of agents, but God uses the means available in that time and place to accomplish the divine purposes and, true to the nature of the relationship, does not perfect them before involving them. Hence, God's actions through them will always have mixed results, and God will not necessarily confer a positive value on the violent means in and through which God works (see below). This decision to work through such means is a risky move for God because God thereby becomes associated with the agent's activity. God thereby implicitly accepts any "guilt by association" that may accrue to the divine reputation.
This issue is made more complex by still another reality. One characteristic of communal judgment is that no clean distinction can be made between the righteous and the wicked (hence Abraham's questions in Gen 18:25). Because life is so interrelated, the righteous and the innocent (e.g., children) are often caught up in the judgmental effects of other people's sins. In other words, they will undergo the experience of judgment in ways that are often devastating to their life and health.15
In sum, consideration of God's work through human agents must steer between two ditches. God neither remains ensconced in heaven watching the world go by nor micro-manages the world to control its moves so that creaturely agency counts for nothing. Readers may find more than one place to stand between these two ditches, for the biblical texts do not always provide clear direction, but neither ditch will do. To all external observation, God is not involved in these military and political activities, but the texts confess that God's will is somehow at work even in and through violence on behalf of God's salvific purposes.
2. God Acts in and through the Moral Order. While interpreters cannot fully account for how God acts in the world, some aspects of the "how" may be evident in terms of the created moral order-a complex, loose causal weave of act and consequence. The basic purpose of the moral order is that sin/evil not go unchecked and that God's good order of creation (=righteousness) can be (re)established.16 And so, with respect to our topic: that sins have consequences, including the sins of violence, is a working out of the moral order, and can be named the judgment of God.17 God is to some degree subject to this just order (so Abraham's question in Gen 18:25 assumes, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?"); God has built this self-limitation into the very structures of creation for the sake of a genuine relationship with it. At the same time, the looseness of the causal weave allows God to be at work in the "system" without violating or (temporarily) suspending it. One possible example of such divine work is Jer 51:11: God "stirred up the spirit of the kings of the Medes."18
Just how God relates to the movement from sin to consequence is not easy to sort out.19 But, generally speaking, the relationship between sin and consequence is conceived in intrinsic rather than forensic terms; that is, consequences grow out of the deed itself.20 At the same time, Israel insists that God mediates the consequences of sin.21 The point is illustrated by Ezek 22:31, wherein God declares: "I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath." What that entails is immediately stated: "I have returned (natan) their conduct upon their heads"22
This moral order, however, does not function in any mechanistic, precise, or inevitable way; it is not a tight causal weave. And so it may be that the wicked will prosper (Jer 12:1), at least for a time, and those who are innocent will get caught up in the effects of the sins of others. Ecclesiastes 9:11 ("time and chance happen to them all") introduces an element of randomness in relating human deeds to their effects.
Several matters of translation and interpretation come together in thinking through this issue. Sometimes the Hebrew word ra'â refers to the evil/wickedness of the people, sometimes to the effects of their wickedness, commonly translated "disaster."23 In other words, the people's ra'â will issue in their ra'â.24 This verbal linkage makes it clear that the judgment experienced by the Israelites flows out of their own wickedness, rather than from some divinely imposed retribution. While this understanding could be expressed in language such as "you reap what you sow" (cf. Obad 15-16), God usually remains explicitly linked to the connection between sin and consequence.
In sum, Israel's sin generates effects in a snowballing, act-consequence pattern. At the same time, God is active in the interplay of sinful actions and their effects and "third parties" are used by God as agents for that judgment. Both divine and creaturely factors are interwoven to produce the judgmental result. In modern terms, our own sin and the sins of our forebears press in upon us, but no less the hand of God. For history is our judgment and God enables history, carrying the world along, not in mechanistic ways, but with a personal attentiveness in view of the relationship. God's salvific will remains intact in everything, and God's gracious concern is always for the best; but in a given situation the best that God may be able to offer is burning the chaff to fertilize the field for a new crop.
3. Violence in judgment and salvation. The use of violence in the prophets is never an end in itself; it has a twofold purpose: judgment and salvation. So, for example, God uses the violence of the Persians under King Cyrus as judgment against the enslaving Babylonians as a means to bring salvation to the exiles (e.g., Isa 45:1-8; 47:1-15). In other words, God uses violence both to save Israel from the effects of other people's sins (cf. Israel in Egypt; Exod 15:1-3) and to save God's people from the effects of their own sins.25
These two ways of speaking of God's use of violence may be reduced to one. That is, God's use of violence, inevitable in a violent world, is intended to subvert human violence in order to bring the creation along to a point where violence is no more. Walter Brueggemann says it well: "It is likely that the violence assigned to Yahweh is to be understood as counterviolence, which functions primarily as a critical principle in order to undermine and destabilize other violence." And so God's violence is "not blind or unbridled violence," but purposeful in the service of a non-violent end.26
EXCEEDING THE DIVINE MANDATE
A remarkable number of prophetic texts speak of divine judgment on those nations that have been agents of God (Jer 25:12-14; 27:6-7; 50-51; Isa 10:12-19; 47:1-15; Zech 1:15). In effect, Babylon and other agents exceeded their mandate, going beyond their proper judgmental activities in vaunting their own strength at the expense of Israel and in making the land an "everlasting waste" (Jer 25:14).27 Such texts (cf. the oracles against the nations) assume that moral standards are known by the nations, to which they are held accountable. The exercise of divine wrath against their excessiveness shows that the nations were not puppets in the hand of God. They retained the power to make decisions and execute policies that flew in the face of the will of God; the God active in these events is not "irresistible."28 God risks what the nations will do with the mandate they have been given. One element of that risk is that God's name will become associated with their excessive violence.29
I take a closer look at one of these texts, namely, Zech 1:7-17. The angel of the Lord presses a lament before God: "O Lord of hosts, how long will you withhold mercy from Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, with which you have been angry these seventy years?" (v. 12). The duration of the suffering and the seeming absence of mercy are a dual focus. God's "gracious and comforting" reply is striking: "And I am extremely angry with the nations that are at ease; for while I was only a little angry, they made the disaster worse." This text stands in the tradition of other texts that speak of nations overreaching-an "improper exercise of power toward the object of God's anger, Israel."30
Petersen speaks of the angel's "displeasure with the one in control, Yahweh,"31 but the point of the text is that God is not in control of these nations. They exceeded the divine mandate in their violence! God was not that angry! And so, the angel's lament (v. 12), "how long will you [God] withhold mercy," has not taken into account a key element: the exercise of power by the nations went beyond God's will for Israel and that misuse of human power complicated God's merciful activity on behalf of Israel. In other words, the "how long?" is not simply up to God, as if God were the only agent at work and could at any time push a button and "fix" matters. The nations have made God's possibilities more complex and hence God's way into the future is not reduced to a simple divine decision to act. Because of God's committed relationship to the world, no resolution will be simple, even for God.
This perspective is testimony to a fundamentally relational understanding of the ways in which God acts in the world. There is an ordered freedom in the creation wherein God leaves room for genuine human decisions as they exercise their God-given power. Even more, God gives them responsibilities in such a way that commits God to a certain kind of relationship with them. God does not micro-manage their activity, intervening to make sure every little thing is done correctly. They overdid it! These texts are testimony to a divine sovereignty that gives power over to the created for the sake of a relationship of integrity. At the same time, this way of relating to people reveals a divine vulnerability, for God opens the divine self up to hurt should things go wrong. And things do go violently wrong, despite God's best efforts.
DIVINE ANGER, GRIEF, AND REGRET
What is God's response to this devastating violence visited upon Israel by the overreaching divine agents? Divine anger is kindled toward these agents certainly, but God's response is also one of grief and regret regarding what Israel has had to undergo. Anger, grief, and regret go together for Israel's God and cannot be properly understood apart from each other. I consider each in turn.
God's anger is usually associated with God's judgment.32 The category of relatedness is basic to the discussion. God is deeply engaged in this relationship and is passionate about what happens to it.33 God's anger is a sign that the relationship to Israel is being taken seriously, since apathy is not productive of anger. That God's anger is "provoked" (e.g., Jer 7:18; 8:19) reveals that God is moved by what people do and shows that anger is a divine response and not a divine attribute. God's anger is contingent; if there were no sin, there would be no divine anger.
The wrath of God is often imaged in impersonal terms: it goes forth, whirls like a tempest, and bursts upon the head of the wicked (e.g., Jer 23:19). This characterization of wrath is true to the understanding of moral order; human wickedness triggers negative effects in the interrelated social and cosmic orders, which are then linked to God and named as wrath. At the same time, this wrath is named in personal terms: "the anger of the Lord" (Jer 23:20). God's personal anger is a "seeing to" the movement from act to consequence that is the moral order. Abraham Heschel helps capture some of what is at stake in the prophetic witness to the divine anger:
"The wrath of God is a lamentation.... [God] is personally affected by what [people do to people]. [God] is a God of pathos. This is one of the meanings of the anger of God: the end of indifference! ... [Our] sense of injustice is a poor analogy to God's sense of injustice ... Is it a sign of cruelty that God's anger is aroused when the rights of the poor are violated, when widows and orphans are oppressed?"34
Heschel links divine wrath with divine lament, reflecting a deeply relational understanding of God. To speak of tears and anger together is not contradictory (see Jer 8:19c in context; 9:10 with 9:11; 9:17-19 with 9:22). Rather, these emotions are held together in God, as they commonly are in people who have suffered the brokenness of intimate relationships. The internal side of God's external word and deed of wrath is profound grief. And the prophets put both on public display. God's mediation of judgment is viewed basically in terms of a breakdown in a personal relationship with its associated effects-anger, pain, and suffering-on both parties to the relationship. God's judgment is not proclaimed joyously, but reluctantly and with great anguish, not satisfaction. In effect, readers are invited to look back and see that they have been visited not with the strict and icy indifference of a judge, but with the pain and anger of one whose intimacy has been spurned.35 This interweaving of divine anger and divine sorrow continues into the post-judgment time and Israel's experience of violence (e.g., Jer 4:19-26; 8:18-9:1; 9:10-11, 17-19). Not only are the tears of the people voiced (e.g., Jer 14:19-22), so also are the tears of the prophet and the tears of God. Readers can thereby see that God does not remain unaffected by the violence Israel has lived through.36
That divine anger and divine tears go together has considerable theological import. Without the intermittent references to divine tears, God would be much more distant and unmoved. Anger accompanied by weeping, while still anger, is different-in motivation and in the understanding of the relationship at stake. God's harsh words of judgment are not matched by an inner harshness. The prophet's strategy is to portray the kind of God with whom Israel has to do, namely, a God for whom anger/judgment is neither the first word nor the last. A word about such a God can be productive of hope. While God may give the people up to the effects of their sinfulness, God does not finally give up on them. In other terms, the circumstantial will of God in judgment is always in the service of the ultimate will of God to save.37 To that end, God can use judgmental effects for a variety of positive purposes (refining, cleansing, insight, discipline).
The ethical implications of this understanding are considerable: if there were no divine anger at sin/evil, then human anger toward that which is oppressive and abusive would not carry the same weight. At the same time, if there were no sorrow associated with divine anger, then human anger would be given a freer range regarding harshness.
Finally, I look at regret. God's response to Israel's suffering at the hands of overreaching agents is remarkably stated in Jer 42:10, "I am sorry for the disaster that I have brought upon you." For God to say, "I am sorry," regarding God's own actions is a striking admission.38 How are we to understand this divine lament? The divine response is not prompted by anything that the people have done; this move is made entirely at the divine initiative. The text certainly does not mean that God regrets that the judgment occurred at all; all prophets witness to the appropriateness of God's judgment against Israel. The text could mean that the past stance of God toward Israel has now changed in view of events; God is now open to a future for this people other than judgment.39 Yet, God has always had a salvific future in mind for this people. The point could be softer, namely, that God is sorry about all the pain that this community has had to experience. This is certainly the case, but the issue seems more complex.
It seems to me that this statement of God carries with it the sense of genuine regret, in the sense that the judgment and its painful effects proved to be more severe than God had intended, or even thought they would be.40 This direction for interpretation seems especially apt in view of the excessiveness of Babylon noted above. Yet, God does not remove the divine self from responsibility for the choice of means that resulted in an imperfect execution of the mandate. God, who does not foreknow absolutely just what and how the means chosen will speak and act, accepts some responsibility for what has happened.41 This text reveals something of the inner life of the God who uses agents who cannot be divinely controlled and is deeply pained at the results. God, however, is not bereft of resources to act in the midst of suffering. Indeed, suffering becomes a vehicle for divine action. God does not relate to suffering as a mechanic does to a car, seeking to "fix it" from the outside. God enters deeply into the suffering human situation and works the necessary healing from within.42 For God to so enter into the situation means that mourning will not be the last word (see Jer 31:13-17).
That God would become involved in such human cruelties as war is finally not a matter of despair, but of hope. God does not simply give people up to violence. God chooses to become involved in violence in order to bring about good purposes; thereby God may prevent an even greater evil. The tears of the people are fully recognized; their desperate situation is named for what it is. But because of the anguish of God, their tears will one day no longer flow. By so participating in their messy stories, God's own self thereby takes the road of suffering and death. Through such involvement, God takes into the divine self the violent effects of sinful human activities and thereby makes possible a non-violent future for God's people.
[Footnote] 1 For a survey of the issue of violence in the Old Testament, see T. E. Fretheim, "God and Violence in the Old Testament," VVW 24 (2004) 18-28. 2 Among more recent scholarly efforts that raise serious questions regarding the Bible's violence and God's common association with it, see J. J. Collins, "The Zeal of Phinehas: the Bible and the Legitimation of Violence," JBL 122 (2003) 3-21, and the literature cited therein. Others have been particularly pointed in their critique of those texts wherein God's violence is associated with female imagery. see, e.g., R. J. Weems, Battered Love: Marriage, Sex, and Violence in the Hebrew Prophets (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995); among many articles one might cite, that of Diane Jacobson offers a well-balanced approach ("Hosea 2: A case Study on Biblical Authority," CTM 23 [1996] 165-172). I have worked with this issue in several publications, especially "Is the Biblical Portrayal of God Always Trustworthy?" in T. Fretheim and K. Froehlich, The Bible as Word of God in a Postmodern Age (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998) 97-111 (reprinted: Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2002). 3 For a review of seven recent books on the topic, see S. J. Stein, "The Web of Religion and Violence," RSR 28 (2002)103-108. 4 E. Zenger, A God of Vengeance? Understanding the Psalms of Divine Wrath, trans. L. Maloney (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1996) 84: "[T] he history of the impact and reception of an individual text in the annals of Judaism and Christianity must also be taken into consideration when we reflect on its revelatory character... [some texts] can have been received in such a destructive way that the very knowledge of this negative history of reception becomes a constitutive part of the revelatory dimension of these texts." 5 See Fretheim, "God and Violence," for efforts to make some distinctions regarding the appropriateness of the Bible's ascription of violence to God. 6 J. J. M. Roberts, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1991) 81. 7 For a sophisticated effort to speak of relationship as key to understanding violence and its effects, see M. Suchocki, Fall to Violence: Original Sin in Relational Theology (New York: Continuum, 1994). For a fuller explication of the category of relationship, see T. E. Fretheim, "Divine Dependence on the Human: An Old Testament Perspective," ExAud 13 (1997) 1-13; "Old Testament Foundations for an Environmental Theology," in Currents in Biblical and Theological Dialogue, ed. J. K. Stafford (Winnipeg: St. John's College, 2002) 58-68. 8 The violent events of Sept. 11 are a superb demonstration of this reality; every human being has been deeply affected by the violence of a few, not least through intensified forms of anxiety. No matter how personally we may be in control of our own violent tendencies, we are personally often invaded by a horrendous amount of violence, and that will have deep effects individually and communally. 9 See, e.g., T. E. Fretheim, The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) 71-78, for a more extensive treatment. 10 The New Testament also will speak of civil authorities as executors of the divine wrath (Rom 13:4; 1 Pet 2:13-14). In a modern context, one might consider the allied armies as an instrument of divine wrath in the defeat of Hitler; recall also the excessive military activity (e.g., the saturation bombing of Dresden) and the devastating effect of the war on children and other non-combatants. 11 Exodus 3:8-10, where both God and Moses (often called "my servant") bring Israel out of Egypt, could function as a paradigm for such considerations. On issues of divine dependence, see Fretheim, "Divine Dependence"; idem, "Creator, Creature, and Co-creation in Genesis 1-2," in All Things New: Essays in Honor of Roy A. Harrisville, ed. by A. Hultgren, et al. WW Supplement I (1992) 11-20. 12 Jeremiah also makes this witness when he describes the actual destruction of Jerusalem (Jeremiah 39; 52) in terms that hardly mention God. 13 For a listing of these correspondences, see Fretheim, Jeremiah (Macon: Smyth & Helwys, 2002) 36. see also p. 40 for a listing of the use of parallels in the violent speech of God and Jeremiah. For detail on this problematic language, see T. E. Fretheim, "The Character of God in Jeremiah," in Character and Scripture: Moral Formation, Community, and Biblical Interpretation, ed. W. P. Brown (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002) 211-230. 14 A surprisingly common scholarly claim is that God acts in an unmediated way. For example, W. Brueggemann (A Commentary on Jeremiah: Exile and Homecoming [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998]) often makes such claims: "The army may be Babylonian, but the real agent is Yahweh" (54, 70, 176, etc.). 15 It remains a lively question whether it is helpful to continue to speak of "judgment" when its effects are so all encompassing, but the biblical texts do so. 16 See H. H. Schmid, "Creation, Righteousness, and Salvation: 'Creation Theology' as the Broad Horizon of Biblical Theology," in Creation in the Old Testament, ed. B. W. Anderson (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) 102-117. 17 Though the language of judgment is commonly associated with the court of law, juristic categories do not fully comprehend the workings of divine judgment. 18 see also Isa 13:17; 41:25; 45:13; Ezek 23:22; Joel 4:7. 19 For a recent effort, see G. Tucker, "Sin and 'Judgment' in the Prophets," in Problems in Biblical Theology: Essays in Honor of Rolf Knierim, ed. H. Sun, et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997) 373-388. 20 G. von Rad (Old Testament Theology, vol. I, Irans. D.M.G. Stalker [New York: Harper & Row, 1962]) speaks of a "synthetic view of life" (265) in which the consequence "is not a new action which comes upon the person concerned from somewhere else; it is rather the last ripple of the act itself which attaches to its agent almost as something material. Hebrew in fact does not even have a word for punishment" (385). The common translation of paqad, "visit," as "punish" is problematic. Notably, God's actions in history are here grounded in an understanding of God as Creator. 21 Interpreters have used different formulations: God midwifes, facilitates, sees to, puts in force, or completes the connection between sin and consequence. Sometimes God as subject stands in a prominent position (Jer 19:7-9); elsewhere, God's stance is more passive (Hos 4:1-3), even withdrawn (Isa 64:6-7). 22 There are over fifty such texts in the Old Testament that link wrath with such formulations (e.g., Ps 7:12-16; Isa 59:17-18; 64:5-9; Jer 6:11, 19; 7:18-20; 21:12-14; 44:7-8; 50:24-25; Lam 3:64-66). 23 The word 'awdn, "iniquity," is also used in both senses in the Old Testament. 24 This understanding of ra'a issuing in ma may be observed in several formulations. For example, God brings disaster (ra'â), which is "the fruit of their schemes" (6:19; see Hos 8:7; 10:13). Or, "I will pour out their wickedness upon them" (14:16). 25 Salvation is thus more comprehensive than commonly conceived. For detail, see T. Fretheim, "Salvation in the Bible vs. Salvation in the Church," WW13 (1993) 363-72. 26 W. Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997) 244. 27 The relationship of God to Babylon changes in view of Babylon's own conduct as the agent of judgment. When Babylon engages in excessively destructive behaviors, it opens itself up to reaping what it has sown (Jer 50:29; 51:24). God turns against God's own agent on the basis of issues of justice, a divine pattern also evident with respect to Israel (see Exod 22:21-24). If God were not to change in view of changing circumstances, God would be unfaithful to God's own commitments. 28 Contrary to Brueggemann, Jeremiah, 222. 29 See J. Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence (Downer's Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1998). 30 D. L. Petersen, Haggai and Zechariah 1-8 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984) 154. While Babylon is no longer the issue at this juncture, it may well continue to be among the nations indicted because of the long-term effects of its policies, leading to "the continued degradation of the Israelite community" (155). 31 Ibid., 155. 32 For details, see T. Fretheim, "Theological Reflections on the Wrath of God in the Old Testament," HBT 24 (2002) 1-26. 33 For an excellent treatment of divine anger, see A. Heschel, The Prophets (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1962) 279-306. 34 Ibid., 284-85. 35 see T. Fretheim, The Suffering of God, 107-126. 36 On the role of emotions in Old Testament God-talk, see J. E. Lapsley, "Feeling our Way: Love for God in Deuteronomy," CBQ 65 (2003) 350-369. 37 See T. Fretheim, "Will of God in the OT," ABD, VI, 914-920. 38 The translation of niham is difficult (NRSV, "be sorry"; NAB, "regret"; NIV/NAB, "grieve"). Each of these translations carry the sense of a pained divine response to God's own past actions. 39 W. McKane, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark: 1986) 1033. 40 For the idea that God thought something would occur, but did not, see Jer 3:7, 19-20. 41 On the issue of less than absolute divine foreknowledge, see T. Fretheim, The Suffering of God, 45-69. 42 See the paradigmatic Exod 3:7, "I know their sufferings," in this connection.


[Author Affiliation] TERENCE E. FRETHEIM Elva B. Lovell Professor of Old Testament Luther Seminary