'The Lost Message of Paul' by Steve Chalke, 2019. 'Has the Church misunderstood the Apostle Paul?'
Merry Vole
Shipmate
in Purgatory
Chalke says Paul’s words “have been used to justify some of the most inhuman, brutal and repressive episodes in human history: to sanction crusades and inquisitions, to approve witch-hunts across Europe and North America, to portray African people as cursed of God and therefore to justify the enslavement of millions, to legitimise apartheid as well as anti-Semitism, to keep women subservient to men, to incite Islamophobia, to oppress gay people, to abuse the environment and more.”
He says the modern gospel is often something like “Turn from your sin and place your faith in Christ who died in your place on the cross”, “Believe and you will be saved! But because God is love, we are granted free will , which means that if you turn your back on God, your wish will be granted and beyond death you will spend eternity in hell!”.
Chalke acknowledges the help of various scholars in writing this book and he is not claiming that all his ideas are original but I think he is arguing for a gospel message of love with no embarrassing bits.
I have no literary skills so this post is a bit disjointed. It's also too long (but Paul did write maybe half the New Testament!) but I'll try and give an abstract of what I think Chalke has to say and I hope some Shipmates will be interested.
Chalke says the big question is “are we saved by grace -undeserved love -demonstrated in the faithfulness of Christ. Or are we saved by our ability to make a rational ‘decision’ which we call ‘faith’? Whatever the answer is -it can’t be both.”
Following his Damascus road experience Paul is convinced that the Jewish Messiah has come and redeemed the whole world not just the Jewish people.
Rom 3.28 : ‘we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law’.
As a first-century Second Temple Jew Paul would have understood that the Jewish people were already and always ‘saved’, ‘justified’ -because they were chosen. Judaism was always a religion of grace -not ‘works’.
So, in Rom 3.28, faith -pistis - should be understood as faithfulness. Because otherwise ‘faith’ boils down to our ability to ‘believe’.
Similarly, the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5) ‘is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness (=pistis), gentleness and self-control.’
“Faithfulness in the sense of faithful obedience, loyalty etc”.
Rom 3.22 : ‘This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ (pistis Christou) to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile,’.
Pistis Christou should be translated as the ‘faith of Jesus Christ’ or ‘faithfulness of Christ’. And ‘to all who believe’ means ‘to all you church members whether you are a Jew or a Gentile’.
What this all means is that "we don’t have to worry about the amount or quality of our faith’". It’s all about God’s faithfulness.
Rom 1:18 ‘For the wrath of God is being revealed...’ -should be understood as ‘God’s anguished, passionate frustration’ because he is love. (1 John 4.8). Not anger.
Rom 1.24-28 ‘God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity… etc’ can be understood as “God simply lets them go the way they have chosen and weeps as they punish themselves by their short-sighted and wrong decisions. They reap what they have sown. But none of his means God gives up on them.”.
What Chalke seems to be suggesting here is that it’s not that certain acts are or are not ‘sinful’ but that if harm and unhappiness result from them then God is sad because he wants the best for us. And this parallels 'Don’t commit adultery' in the Ten Commandments.
There is no ‘original sin’ (the ‘T’ of TULIP). ‘Adam and Eve’ is a myth packed with wisdom; there was, in Eden, immaturity, the loss of innocence, and a journey into moral responsibility.
The cross “speaks not of anger but of love.” “ The thought that on the cross Jesus is somehow placating God’s anger is completely foreign to Paul.” “Inadequate and erroneous theology leads to distorted understandings of God and humanity, and inevitably results in immature engagement in community and wider society”.
“Hell has no place in Paul’s message. He never uses the term once in any of his writings.” The God of love does not have ‘a much darker side’.
Col 1.19-20 ‘God was pleased… to reconcile to himself all things….’. ‘All things’ echoes ‘all people/all men’ in Rom 5.12 etc, and God wants to have mercy on all (Rom 11.28-29).
1 Tim 4.10: ‘…we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Saviour of all people, and especially of those who believe’. The second clause here is simply emphasising that salvation is primarily about the here and now.
1 Cor 15.22 ‘For as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ..’. ; ‘all’ means.. -everyone!
Chalke says he is not a universalist – but then seems to qualify this (referencing Barth) by saying something like ‘at least not an old-style universalist’. He says "We are all in.".
2 Cor 5.10 ‘We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ,’: “God’s judgement, (ie justice) is always grace-filled, always restorative but never retributive.”
1 Cor 5.5 ‘hand this (sexually immoral) man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh’. This means leave him alone to reap what he has sown.
1 Cor 3.10-15 ‘..the fire will test the quality of each person’s work.’ -the purging fire is cleansing -a metaphor for Christ.
‘Heaven’ ?: Rom 8.18-21 ‘.. creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay.’ Heaven is not somewhere ‘up there’ or where you go in the next life, but rather the Kingdom of God, the transformation of this earth.
‘Second coming’? ‘Parousia’ should be understood as “the moment when the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of earth would at last be fully integrated.” (Also, there will be no 'rapture').
‘Salvation’ : “…as a leftover of the historic Lutheran and Calvinistic way of seeing things as much as of medieval Catholicism being ‘saved’ has been shrunk, for many, to little more than the hope of life beyond death”.
Rom 1.16 ‘… the gospel…is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.’
'Salvation': “the multi-dimensional offer of well-being is about life after birth, not just life beyond death.”
– “ the now-and-not-yetness of God’s kingdom”.
He says the modern gospel is often something like “Turn from your sin and place your faith in Christ who died in your place on the cross”, “Believe and you will be saved! But because God is love, we are granted free will , which means that if you turn your back on God, your wish will be granted and beyond death you will spend eternity in hell!”.
Chalke acknowledges the help of various scholars in writing this book and he is not claiming that all his ideas are original but I think he is arguing for a gospel message of love with no embarrassing bits.
I have no literary skills so this post is a bit disjointed. It's also too long (but Paul did write maybe half the New Testament!) but I'll try and give an abstract of what I think Chalke has to say and I hope some Shipmates will be interested.
Chalke says the big question is “are we saved by grace -undeserved love -demonstrated in the faithfulness of Christ. Or are we saved by our ability to make a rational ‘decision’ which we call ‘faith’? Whatever the answer is -it can’t be both.”
Following his Damascus road experience Paul is convinced that the Jewish Messiah has come and redeemed the whole world not just the Jewish people.
Rom 3.28 : ‘we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law’.
As a first-century Second Temple Jew Paul would have understood that the Jewish people were already and always ‘saved’, ‘justified’ -because they were chosen. Judaism was always a religion of grace -not ‘works’.
So, in Rom 3.28, faith -pistis - should be understood as faithfulness. Because otherwise ‘faith’ boils down to our ability to ‘believe’.
Similarly, the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5) ‘is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness (=pistis), gentleness and self-control.’
“Faithfulness in the sense of faithful obedience, loyalty etc”.
Rom 3.22 : ‘This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ (pistis Christou) to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile,’.
Pistis Christou should be translated as the ‘faith of Jesus Christ’ or ‘faithfulness of Christ’. And ‘to all who believe’ means ‘to all you church members whether you are a Jew or a Gentile’.
What this all means is that "we don’t have to worry about the amount or quality of our faith’". It’s all about God’s faithfulness.
Rom 1:18 ‘For the wrath of God is being revealed...’ -should be understood as ‘God’s anguished, passionate frustration’ because he is love. (1 John 4.8). Not anger.
Rom 1.24-28 ‘God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity… etc’ can be understood as “God simply lets them go the way they have chosen and weeps as they punish themselves by their short-sighted and wrong decisions. They reap what they have sown. But none of his means God gives up on them.”.
What Chalke seems to be suggesting here is that it’s not that certain acts are or are not ‘sinful’ but that if harm and unhappiness result from them then God is sad because he wants the best for us. And this parallels 'Don’t commit adultery' in the Ten Commandments.
There is no ‘original sin’ (the ‘T’ of TULIP). ‘Adam and Eve’ is a myth packed with wisdom; there was, in Eden, immaturity, the loss of innocence, and a journey into moral responsibility.
The cross “speaks not of anger but of love.” “ The thought that on the cross Jesus is somehow placating God’s anger is completely foreign to Paul.” “Inadequate and erroneous theology leads to distorted understandings of God and humanity, and inevitably results in immature engagement in community and wider society”.
“Hell has no place in Paul’s message. He never uses the term once in any of his writings.” The God of love does not have ‘a much darker side’.
Col 1.19-20 ‘God was pleased… to reconcile to himself all things….’. ‘All things’ echoes ‘all people/all men’ in Rom 5.12 etc, and God wants to have mercy on all (Rom 11.28-29).
1 Tim 4.10: ‘…we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Saviour of all people, and especially of those who believe’. The second clause here is simply emphasising that salvation is primarily about the here and now.
1 Cor 15.22 ‘For as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ..’. ; ‘all’ means.. -everyone!
Chalke says he is not a universalist – but then seems to qualify this (referencing Barth) by saying something like ‘at least not an old-style universalist’. He says "We are all in.".
2 Cor 5.10 ‘We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ,’: “God’s judgement, (ie justice) is always grace-filled, always restorative but never retributive.”
1 Cor 5.5 ‘hand this (sexually immoral) man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh’. This means leave him alone to reap what he has sown.
1 Cor 3.10-15 ‘..the fire will test the quality of each person’s work.’ -the purging fire is cleansing -a metaphor for Christ.
‘Heaven’ ?: Rom 8.18-21 ‘.. creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay.’ Heaven is not somewhere ‘up there’ or where you go in the next life, but rather the Kingdom of God, the transformation of this earth.
‘Second coming’? ‘Parousia’ should be understood as “the moment when the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of earth would at last be fully integrated.” (Also, there will be no 'rapture').
‘Salvation’ : “…as a leftover of the historic Lutheran and Calvinistic way of seeing things as much as of medieval Catholicism being ‘saved’ has been shrunk, for many, to little more than the hope of life beyond death”.
Rom 1.16 ‘… the gospel…is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.’
'Salvation': “the multi-dimensional offer of well-being is about life after birth, not just life beyond death.”
– “ the now-and-not-yetness of God’s kingdom”.
Comments
I completely agree with him. His take on Barth; universalism through the faith of Christ.
Just two more thoughts: Faith is a gift and not a result of a rational (whatever that means) we make, and the key, for me, of the truth of anyone's personal beliefs is reflected, and can only be seen when they display the Fruits of the Spirit. Grace is all.
The Kingdom of God is here and now and within and without us.
Lord have mercy, we all fall short. But one day (says the Hope that is within us and we share with others, occasionally having to use words) we will see Him 'face to face'.
If faith is not a gift how does one avoid the idea of earning God's favour? Surely it is fundamental to pretty much all strands of Christianity that all good things are ultimately gifts from God.
If the implications of 'withholding' are unacceptable then why not universalism?
What else is it though? It's not something you can manufacture.
It's why I'm inclined towards universalism. The logical alternative is a horrific form of Calvinism where God blames us for what *he* didn’t do.
Pretty much universalism combined with "did you follow your conscience?"
Not at all thought through. So many bits of the theology of redemption that set my teeth on edge.
If you're going to be universalist, why muddy it with "did you follow your conscience"? Surely most of us fail to follow our consciences much of the time!
Well... it depends how you see the sovereignty of God. If you have a strong belief in free will and countenance the idea that God might limit his sovereignty, then there are other alternatives. Though personally I'm not convinced they are necessarily "nicer" than Calvinism.
I'm working on the assumption that Faith is not something that a person can generate for themselves (which is what I have observed in life - you cannot make yourself believe things). Whether it's the gift of God or something else isn't really relevant - the point is it's not something under individual control, so free will doesn't come into it. Whatever choices I may be able to make, whether to have Faith or not is not one of them.
We all recognise in ourselves the man who cried out to Jesus "I believe! Help me with my unbelief!" - or maybe "I have faith! Give me faith!". God honours the faith we have, which if all our own effort is insufficient to save, with the gift of the power and strength to follow Christ and hence saving faith. God takes the smallest seed of our feeble faith and nurtures it into a great tree that's a blessing to all. The offer of the gift of faith that leads to salvation is there for all. But, can that be accepted by someone who refuses to recognise their need of it?
I have argued about this my whole life, as obviously some people believe that beliefs are freely chosen. There are the old chestnuts, e.g., can you choose to be an atheist? Can you believe that Berlin is the capital of France? But then I came to see faith as emotional rather than rational, and equally my emotions and feelings are not freely chosen.
As I say, I tend towards universalism. I don't believe "saving faith" is a thing. I don't believe God condemns atheists for following their convictions that he doesn't exist. Not when he does so little to demonstrate that he does.
Nor do I see God nurturing people's weak faith into anything stronger. I see people losing what faith they ever had all the time though. I have a feeling it's happening to me.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44360/the-collar
Yet, somehow, there is comfort (?) in the penultimate line - the word *Child*...
Yes, a magnificent poem.
Which is why I said "pretty much."
They're I suppose not consciously chosen in that the believers think they're true, but they're clearly not objective responses to objective evidence. And no doubt some of our opposite beliefs are based a bit more on a choice to be a certain sort of person than we're comfortable acknowledging.
I generally hold to 'by their fruits shall ye know them', and it is imo more reliable a test than belief per se.
/pedant alert
But yes, “nice” may not be the best word, if for no other reason than past discussions on the Ship have shown that it can have very different connotations depending on where and how used.
I see this as a contradiction. What happens to all those who do not have faith in Christ.
You're right, and 'good' is of course a better term wrt the Gospels than 'kind'. I'm also reminded of the dialogue about Aslan's tameness vs goodness.
I think for me this is a more important angle - I appreciate that for some people getting to 'God is love' is enough of a marathon due to upbringing etc. But we should be thinking about who in the Gospels is being comforted, who is being corrected etc. Look at the reaction of many US Christians to student debt forgiveness for instance. You can't get to the Sermon on the Mount without Jubilee.
Rowan Williams has a really good book on misunderstanding Paul, I forget the title but I believe it has an optional accompanying Lent course? I'm sure Chalke's book is good but I don't see how he's reinventing the wheel.
Of course, there's the question of whether that initial "*if* salvation is by faith alone", and if faith is not directly related to salvation then maybe we're going to be looking at things completely differently anyway.
He is IMHO a welcome breath of fresh air in English church circles generally.
Tom Wrights (Durham) New Perspective On Paul?
(although I'm sure the case is that itself drew on earlier works).
That was 20 years ago, and in the Bush/Blair era rather than the Biden/Boris era. So a lot of the culturally related aspects (e.g. which bits of the bible are currently explicitly being ignored by which groups) are going to be different.
__ETA in response to Bishops Finger
I'd say Chalk and Evangelicalism(TM) have long diverged (both having moved).
Rather to my surprise as it's about 20 years since he "denied the atonement*"
*Obviously he didn't (unless you strictly identify the extrapolations of the description of the model with the thing itself).
They are saved by Christ's faithfulness.
This makes sense to me.
Why did you change the preposition?
That seems perfectly reasonable me, despite this verse being a favourite of the "believe what we believe or burn eternally" set.
That sounds really nice.
An intriguing thought (my italics, BTW).
Why, it could mean that even people of other faiths might come to the Father!
Not an idea the fundamentalists would like, I suspect.
The rather fundagelical Church Of My Youth was not too keen on C S Lewis. However, when I was a member of the Youth Group at that church in the mid-60s, several of us were keen on Lewis (who had but lately died), but our curate soon put us Right...
Indeed - those of us who were Lewis fans very much enjoyed and appreciated his work. Alas, the curate told us that anyone who didn't believe in the literal truth of every word of the Bible would inevitably be consigned to Hell...
Is that the same 'Hell' that Chalke says does not appear in any of St Paul's writings?
Happy Days! No wonder the church is collapsing to the damnationist hard core in which the gates of Hell will never open.