Preamble
There is a story told by Ralph Woods writing in First Things:
An evangelical reporter is said to have asked Karl Barth, when he was visiting the USA in 1962, whether he had ever been saved. “Yes,” Barth is rumoured to have replied. “Then tell us about your salvation experience,” the reporter eagerly requested. “It happened in a.d. 34, when Jesus was crucified, and God raised him from the dead.”
What do you think of his answer? Should it have been about the time he made a ‘decision for Christ’? Or do you agree with his answer being about what Jesus has done? The question exposes a very real debate and tension between the objective work of Christ, and our subjective existential response.
One more question. Do you think Paul knew he was a sinner in need of salvation before he encountered Christ on the road to Damascus? Another way to frame this is, more generally, do you think Paul knew about the plight of humankind before he knew what the solution was? Again, this is another tension framing the discussion to follow.
The paper attached below is ostensibly about Paul’s concept of participation and about how to respond to the challenges a biblical scholar (E. P. Sanders) makes on this topic. On a personal level, the exercise helped me work through the relationship between the objective, unconditional, saving work of Christ, and our subjective, existential recognition of it. These two things aren’t in competition with each other – instead one forms the other. In this paper, I develop a model of this relationship based on the thought of Karl Barth, Douglas Campbell and Susan Eastman.
Abstract
E.P. Sanders, in his influential book Paul and Palestinian Judaism, said that ‘participation’ was the heart of Paul’s thought. He also said that, as moderns, we do not understand the concept of participation. Thus, Sanders posed a challenge that has been an ongoing debate in biblical and theological studies. In this paper I formulate a response to Sanders’ challenge. I argue that participation requires (a) an objective soteriology that calls forth an existential response, and (b) that this is done through the second-personal intersubjective fellowship of the Holy Spirit. I also attempt to explain why participation has been such an elusive concept in modern theology.
Paper Summary
Incorporation in the body of Christ is the heart of Paul’s theology.
E. P. Sanders
We seem to lack a category of ‘reality’ – real participation in Christ. … What Paul concretely thought [about participation] cannot be directly appropriated by Christians today.
E. P. Sanders
Is Paul’s understanding of the concept of participation a mystery to modern people? According to E. P. Sanders, it is. This would not be too much of a problem except for one other assertion from Sanders: that participation is the heart of Paul’s thought. String those two assertions together and one has the disturbing conclusion that the modern person, and therefore presumably today’s church, is unable to understand Paul. No wonder that these assertions have ignited much biblical and theological debate. And there may be a certain amount of truth to Sanders’ claims; Paul certainly is an enigma. Nevertheless, I will attempt to formulate the beginning of an answer to Sanders.
I intend sketch a model of participation that reinforces one insight of Sanders’ thinking; that Paul’s thought ran from solution to problem. I have condensed the attached paper and outline the development of this model through the following steps:
- First, I will briefly outline some of Sanders’ key insights, questions, and assumptions.
- Then I will show that Sanders has really adopted a problem-solution soteriology, and the implications of this.
- Then I will develop a model consistent with a solution-problem schema that I believe answers Sanders’ challenges, and includes a dimension that is missing in the choices that Sanders presents. This dimension, which bridges and transcends the objective and subjective, is the ingredient that starts to illustrate the concept of participation.
- In concluding, I will offer some thoughts on why Sanders could not have constructed such a model based on his assumptions and methodology and why participation seems so elusive.
So, let me begin by quickly summarising some insights and challenges in Sanders’ interpretation of Paul.
The first insight, as I mentioned, is that “Paul’s thought did not run from plight (or problem) to solution, but from solution to plight.” This insight, derived from scriptural passages such as Phil 3 which show that Paul did not think he had a problem from which he needed to be rescued, has implications that I will explore soon.
The next insight is that participation, rather than the juridical, is the heart of Paul’s thought. Although Sanders recognises the close relationship between the two Pauline ideas, Sanders sees a difference between ‘mystical’ terminology (such as ‘in Christ’) and juridical or legal terminology such as reconciliation. Sanders argues that we have mistakenly taken the juridical as the centre of Paul’s thought because the language of the law court is easier for modern readers to understand.
Now to some of Sander’s questions and challenges. Having identified participation as the heart of Paul’s thought, Sanders offers two options for participation, neither of which he thinks captures Paul’s thought. These two options are (on the left), an objective soteriology in which participation is a ‘magical transference: a cosmic event of Christ apart from human will’; and on the right, a subjective participation which is a ‘revised self-understanding’:
Although he posits the objective soteriology as one possible way of understanding participation, Sanders immediately dismisses it as an option. According to Sanders, “there is no magical transfer,” or “soteriological event … taking place apart from [the human] will.” He briefly considers the possibility that all will be saved, on the basis of Paul’s Adam/Christ schema, but concludes that Paul was “carried away by the force of his analogy and argued for more than he intended.”
Having dismissed the objective understanding of participation, Sanders is also unhappy with the existential option located in the individual – what Bultmann called a revised self-understanding. Sanders agrees that accepting the gospel does result in a revised self-understanding, but tentatively attributes this to the “individual and internal consequences of Paul’s theology, rather than the exhaustive interpretation of it.”
Having dismissed objective participation, existential participation must inevitably become a condition of salvation rather than its result. Sanders indeed endorses the concept of “salvation through participation.” In doing this, I suggest that Sanders has reverted to a problem-solution epistemology and soteriology. This soteriology, I propose, is not able to explain the assumptions of Paul’s theology: namely that “Christians really are being changed” and “transformed, ” so that “real change is at work in the world and that Christians are participating in it.” The solution-problem model that I will sketch does offer an explanation for these. But first, I will turn to the implications of a problem-solution epistemology and soteriology.
In a problem-solution soteriology, the conditions pre-existing the ‘solution’ are meant to be objectively available to all. What is objectively true is not the saving work of Christ (as this is not yet true for the individual) but the pre-existing conditions that should lead one to seek salvation:
Although Campbell has identified over fifty intrinsic, systematic, and empirical difficulties with the model derived from its “forward, prospective, or a priori” movement, I will only make only four observations.
The first is that the problem defines the solution. Truth criteria is defined by the problem, and this truth criteria is derived from the world and used to judge the solution. The ‘objective’ set of truth criteria are contained in the world apart from the solution as they are meant to lead, or provide tension, to seek the solution. It follows then, as Campbell claims, that in this forward system “we place another truth criterion over the top of God to judge God.”
The second observation is one of “incompatible epistemologies.” The “problem” becomes the ‘objective’ knowledge, and this “general, atemporal, philosophical, and rational conception of knowledge” must be available to all through “objective philosophical reasoning.” Everyone can and should know the problem based on this understanding. However, not everyone can know the solution because the conception of knowledge in the witness of scripture is “particular, historical, revelatory, and interpersonal,” which is a very different way of knowing to the first phase.
Thirdly, implied by the model of “solution seeking” is individualism, rationalism, and self-interest. The individual, detecting the problem rationally, seeks to be ‘saved’ motivated by self-interest. As the problem defines the solution, these properties must remain in the saved state.
Finally, as the solution is subjective and existential, the model is also inherently conditional and contractual: “It … requires the fulfilment of some criterion for the appropriation of salvation, and [because] it presupposes the centrality of individual action, it is an essentially voluntarist model.”
Barth also warns that an existential soteriology such as this has instrumentalism hidden within it. Salvation rather than Christ is the end; and Christ becomes the means or instrument of salvation.
Can the concept of participation exist in such a model – a problem-solution, conditional model where salvation is achieved by participation?
I tentatively suggest that the answer is no, because of the pitfalls already outlined. Such a model asks the individual to participate in what is true, but the only truth objectively available is the problem. It asks the individual to participate in a possibility, and to assess this possibility as if there is a neutral position to evaluate the Truth of God. And the saving work of Christ remains unreal and abstract until the decision to participate makes it real and concrete. We end up, I suggest, in a position that we ask people to make a decision which they are unable to make:
As Campbell says, we cannot just “believe things in order to be saved” as we “simply cannot decide to believe that certain things are true.” “Things have to impress us as true,” that is, “we assent to truth.” Truth is mediated and witnessed to – a person cannot reason themselves to Jesus based on rational first principles apart from Jesus.
Which brings me to the starting point for slide an alternative model of participation, based on Solution-Problem epistemology and soteriology whose starting point is Jesus.
As you can see in this model, the objective reality and starting point is not the problem or even a solution, but the revelation of God, Jesus, who is not a mere means to an end. The concept of solution implies a problem, yet Jesus is revealed to humanity before we know there is a problem.
Jesus then, is the ultimate criteria of truth. As there are no higher truths that we can appeal to in order to authenticate this truth, this revelation must be self-authenticating. It is not something neutral and capable of being grounded in general possibilities otherwise known to us through rational reflection. According to Barth, “the truth is never something that is accessible to us except as mediated by Jesus Christ.”
If people do not have the capability to understand our need for salvation apart from Jesus, we are also incapable of taking any action conditional for our salvation. We need to be “rescued first, and then taught to think about God and behave correctly.” God, through love, initiates this rescue while we were enemies of God, and as such, it is unconditional.
God’s action in Christ is therefore not only objectively revelational, but objectively saving. This rescue is also not a response to a problem. Christ is much more than a solution to sin. As Colossians says, He is ‘the firstborn of all creation’ and ‘all things have been created through him and for him’ (Col 1:16). Humanity’s rescue then, is part of God’s creative purpose and plan for humanity and the cosmos, “established before the foundation of the world,” to “sum up the whole cosmos in Christ.”
God takes the initiative in our salvation, and this action of Christ establishes our objective participation in Christ. Jesus creates a new humanity through his life, death and resurrection. By fulfilling the covenant between God and humanity, Jesus objectively establishes, constitutes, and defines human being and identity. Barth calls this objective form of participation in which we participate through being human, de jure participation.
In the above, we can see a departure point to Sanders – the objective participation is not dismissed – it is the starting point.
But there is also a subjective form of participation (called de facto participation) which is grounded by the objective: the objective provides a “telos” for the subjective:
For Barth, subjective participation cannot happen without objective participation. Our self-understanding is only possible through understanding our identity in the objective action of Christ.
Again, you can see a departure from Sanders – that there is a relationship between the objective and the subjective, not a choice. This relationship is clearly important. The nature of this relationship is the missing ingredient and is what I want to explore now.
Let us return to Sanders options:
The assumption built into these two poles is that participation is located either apart from the human will, or it is located in the individual. In the discussion so far, this objective-subjective duality has remained intact as I have shown that both are required and there is a relationship between them. When you look at those options, what do you think is missing? Here’s a little hint:
No, this is not the coronavirus, it is a network. Networks are not just about individuals, but the relationships between them. Missing from both options is the interpersonal and relational – which does not fit into the cosmic event, or the individualistic, revised self-understanding. So, I want to introduce the concept of the second-personal slide – the field of study in which scholars have become aware of the profoundly interactive and relational formation of the person. [This field of study draws on our formation as infants, hence the feature photo of the interaction between mother and baby.]
According to Susan Eastman, the second-person stands in distinction to “first-person, self-referential modes of knowledge or third-person, objectifying and distancing modes of knowledge.” Thus, the third-personal loosely relates to the objective category, and the first-personal relates to the subjective, existential dimension. What appears now in our model is a new category that links the subjective and the objective: the second-personal:
Barth and Campbell also link the objective and the subjective through the action of the Spirit. Barth considers that it is the Holy Spirit who is the “teleological power of th[e] transition” from de jure participation to de facto participation. Similarly, Campbell contends that it is the Spirit that “‘maps’ or ‘moulds’ people [the subject] onto Christ’s prototypical trajectory [the objective].”
We can see from this analysis that the second-personal is a category between the objective (third-person) and the subjective (first-person), and that the Spirit also works in the “space” linking the objective and subjective. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that the Spirit works in this interpersonal dimension.
This assumption is what Eastman confirms in her reading of Paul. Most of Paul’s language about the Spirit, is related to the Spirit’s work “in and among people, in the midst of the community: The site of “spiritual experience” is not in private, inward sensations or thoughts, but in the relational bonds between members of Christ’s body.”
But these aren’t discrete, separate boxes like I’ve shown above – let me bring up final model so you can see where I am headed:
Eastman’s analysis of Pauline texts also suggests that for Paul, “the self is never on its own but always socially and cosmically constructed in relationship to external realities that operate internally as well.” Such an understanding means that the first, second and third personal dimensions are not discretely separated – but that there is a tightly integrated and overlapping relationship between the cosmic and internal self. The model you see now shows this overlapping and integrated nature of the first, second and third personal as a continuum from the objective to the subjective, the cosmic and the self.
The final step in this model’s development is to include the assertion that this activity of the Spirit can be called ‘participation’. According to Eastman, the Spirit “mediat[es] the experience of union with Christ,” and “generates and sustains a mutually participatory bond of love between believers and God, as well as between persons “in Christ.” Campbell’s understanding of the Spirit’s work in mapping us on to Christ also tightly links participation and pneumatology. Our final model therefore has participation as a descriptor of the second-personal work of the Spirit.
I propose that this model offers some response to Sanders’ challenge and shows how “Christians really are being changed” and “that a real change was at work in the world and that Christians were participating in it.” With its second-person dynamics, my model offers at least a partial explanation to this transformation of the individual and transformation of the world. Contemporary fields of study continue to investigate how second-person participatory dynamics shape and transform a person. The group (with its web of relationships) nurtures and transforms the individual in a way that the individual cannot do for themselves. In the other direction, modern theories of complexity show how a collective body can act in ways that change the environment beyond the sum of the individuals involved. These two transformational dynamics can happen simultaneously.
In concluding, I suggest that Sanders could not have arrived at the networked, interpersonal, pneumatological nature of participation outlined in this model, even though he has the insight of solution-problem. One has to assume an objective soteriology in order to explore the relationship of the objective to the subjective, and consequently arrive at the second-personal, participatory dynamics of the Spirit.
I propose the following reasons for the elusiveness of the meaning of participation in Sanders’ work.
- First: Sanders’ methods, as a biblical scholar rather than a dogmatic theologian, may not allow him to create a theological structure or fabric to make sense of Paul.
- Second: Sanders’ methodological lens, the ‘pattern of religion’, investigated “how a religion is understood to admit and retain members.” Although Sanders was not happy with the connotations, he does admit that ‘pattern of religion’ has close parallels with ‘soteriology’. The questions that Sanders was asking of Paul were about how one gets in and stays in, that is, how one is saved, rather than how one participates. I propose that the question ‘How is one saved?’ is different to ‘What does it mean to be in Christ?’ and will therefore deliver different answers. Sanders’ approach in his book was to answer the first question, not the second.
- Third: Sanders did not have access the language or theories on second-personal formation that we have today.
And finally, in keeping with a great deal of Pauline biblical studies, Sanders does not include Ephesians and Colossians in his data. These letters give a clear account of Christ reconciling the world to himself. According to van Driel, these letters “expound an understanding of the incarnation … as not simply a response to human sin, but as motivated by considerations that go deeper than the need to deal with the sin problem.” If Sanders included Ephesians and Colossians, there is a possibility that he may have moved beyond applying solution-problem to Paul’s experience, to understanding participation in Christ as Paul’s deepest theological conviction.