Lucy Peppiatt on 1 Cor. 11 and 14

Lucy Peppiatt’s Women and Worship at Corinth (Eugene: Cascade, 2015) is a very good book. I don’t say this because I agree with the conclusions, although I do; I don’t even say it because Lucy is a good friend and a former student of mine, although she is; I say it because her book is comprehensively researched and carefully argued, and that combination is what makes a book ‘good’ in the academic world I inhabit. Lucy treats three difficult texts in 1 Corinthians: 11:2-16; 14:20-25; and 14:34-36. She proposes that they may be best read by assuming that in each case Paul is in part quoting his opponents’ views back at them. For this argument, she draws gratefully on Douglas Campbell’s major recent work on Romans, and his extensive investigations into the nature of rhetorical arguments in the world in which Paul wrote his letters. I confess to remaining unconvinced by Doug’s arguments on Romans, but his research on rhetoric is solid, and Lucy’s deployment of it here seems – to me at least – far stronger. Why? Three reasons, roughly in order of significance: 1. the texts in question are self-contradictory unless we invoke some argument like this; 2. we know that Paul is quoting the Corinthians’ views back at them in other places in 1 Cor., which makes an extension of this principle plausible; 3. Lucy’s reconstruction of the basic theological argument of 1 Cor. – that it is cruciform, and God has reversed the standard power hierarchies of the world – make readings of the gender texts which suggest Paul is here reinforcing hierarchies implausible. Lucy’s research is thorough; I do not know if she has read every scholarly commentary on 1 Corinthians, but (admittedly as a non-specialist) I cannot think of one (in English, at least) that she has not read and interacted with; she works extensively with scholarly essays and journal articles also.  As she points out, the sort of ‘rhetorical’ conclusion she is offering here has been proposed before in relation to each of the three texts, but no-one has used Campbell’s work on rhetorical pointers to suggest that the three texts share common literary features which allow us to identify Corinthian quotations within them. Previous work argued that the logic could be sorted out here or there if we imagined an act of quotation; Lucy argues that there is textual evidence of an act of quotation in each case. Her case is not confined to identifying Corinthian quotations: she holds the three ‘headship’ clauses of 1 Cor 11:3 to be Paul’s own, and investigates carefully the (endlessly-debated) question of the meaning of kephale, for instance. That said, the rhetorical arguments are her real advance over earlier interpreters, or so it seems to me. Lucy gives us a reading of the texts that is centred on the cross, and the re-ordered society that the church should be under its crucified Head. In this society, ministry is based on gift and calling, not on gender, and the powerful gifts of God’s Spirit are normal and necessary for the building up of the Body. I am no New Testament scholar, and would not presume to judge the detailed points of the argument; but this reconstruction is theologically convincing, and fits well with the broader themes of the epistle, and of the Pauline corpus more generally, for me to be convinced by...

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On repentance, forgiveness, and the Church of the Second Chance

My friend Natalie Collins wrote a piece a few weeks ago for the (excellent) preachweb.org site responding to an earlier piece by Martin Saunders; both reflect on how a preacher might deal with the simmering news story concerning the footballer Ched Evans, who has recently been released from prison on licence for a rape conviction, and is looking for a club to resurrect his career. He is (or was) talented enough that a number of clubs are tempted; his crime, his refusal to acknowledge his guilt, and his public lack of remorse, are together sufficiently sickening that the opinion of the public and (perhaps more crucially) that of a significant number of financial sponsors is set against at having him at any particular club. As a result a rolling story is being played out, with one club after another testing the possibility of signing him and then – in every case, so far – refusing to do so, because the financial and reputational cost is too great. Natalie does an excellent job of pointing out the structural and sociological realities that lie behind this story, and I don’t really want to address the particular narrative, other than to note my agreement with what she says. The defence offered for Evans by those who wish to employ him, or to see him employed, is uniform: ‘he’s served his time’ and deserves ‘a second chance’. The first claim is factually untrue (he is released on licence and so in law he is still serving his sentence); it is also uninteresting, at least from a Christian perspective. The interesting question here (as Martin noted) is about repentance, which is a necessary precursor to rehabilitation. What does it mean to ‘repent’ adequately? What does one need to do to be granted a ‘second chance’? The phrase, inevitably, reminded me of Anne Tyler’s excellent novel Saint Maybe. (Actually, that is redundant: it’s a novel by Anne Tyler; obviously it is excellent). The novel tells the story of the Bedloe family, and particularly of Ian Bedloe, who is at high school as it begins, but some way in is nineteen and a freshman in college. At this point he also is (or feels) responsible for the suicides of his brother and sister-in-law. Struggling with guilt, and worrying how his parents will manage to bring up the orphaned children, he finds his way into a small storefront church called ‘The Church of the Second Chance’, pastored by the Revd Emmett. He prays for forgiveness, and falls into conversation with the pastor (quotations from pp. 122-124 of my Vintage paperback edition): ‘…don’t you think? Don’t you think I’m forgiven?’ ‘Goodness, no,’ Reverend Emmett said briskly. Ian’s mouth fell open. He wondered if he’d misunderstood. He said, ‘I’m not forgiven?’ ‘Oh, no.’ ‘But … I thought that was kind of the point,’ Ian said, ‘I thought God forgives everything.’ ‘He does,’ Reverend Emmett said, ‘But you can’t just say, “I’m sorry, God.” Why, anyone could do that much! You have to offer reparation–concrete, practical reparation, according to the rules of our church.’ ‘But what if there isn’t any reparation? What if it’s something nothing will fix?’ ‘Well, that’s where Jesus comes in, of course … Jesus remembers how difficult life on earth can be … He helps with what you can’t undo. But only after you’ve tried to undo it.’ The pastor calmly tells Ian that, for him, the path to forgiveness involves dropping out of college so that he can raise the children. Ian’s response: ‘This is some kind of a test, isn’t it?’ he said finally. Reverend Emmett nodded, smiling. Ian sagged with relief. ‘It’s God’s test,’ Reverend Emmett told him … ‘God wants to know how far you’ll go to undo the harm you’ve done.’ ‘But He wouldn’t really make me follow through with it.’ Ian said. ‘How else would he know, then?’ After working through the reality of this demand, Ian explodes: ‘…What kind of a cockeyed religion is this?’ ‘It’s the religion of atonement and complete forgiveness,’ Reverend Emmett said. ‘It’s the religion of the Second Chance.’ Then he set all the hymnals on the counter and turned to offer Ian a beatific smile. Ian thought he had never seen anyone so absolutely at peace. Ian follows through on the demand, despite the horror of his parents, and the latter two-thirds of the book trace the reality of the second chance he has found through his repentance. I have some theological questions about the language Revd Emmett uses in speaking to Ian – it is a bit too much like a classical American self-help religion, ‘God helps those who help themselves’ – but there is something deep here. Real repentance must, at least, mean a burning...

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Two new books on sexuality

I try to keep up with books addressing human sexuality from a theological/Christian perspective. The general flow of publications reminds me of an exchange from an old BBC Radio 4 drama: ‘He made pork pies the way Wagner wrote semiquavers.’ ‘You mean they were good?’ ‘Not often. But there were an awful lot of them…’ A minority of the books published simply repeat already well-rehearsed arguments and so contribute nothing to the debate; most of the rest could not be described anything like so positively. This is true on every side of the debate: much heat, little light, and less understanding tend to characterise contributions, which are nonetheless routinely praised to the skies around social media by the partisans of whichever position they champion, before they, thankfully, disappear almost without trace remaining. That the past couple of months have brought the publication of not one but two books in the area that are really very good, then, had me watching the end of the road for four blokes on odd coloured horses. The world does not seem about to end, but the fact remains. Robert Song and Eve Tushnet have not just added to my (short) list of books worth reading in this area, they have moved towards the top of it. The books are very different: Song is academic, Protestant, and revisionist; Tushnet popular, Catholic, and traditional. Regardless, both make a genuine contribution, and both need to be read. Robert Song’s Covenant and Calling: Towards a Theology of Same-Sex Relationships (SCM, 2014) offers an argument that is richly theological and serious. He locates marriage as a creational good that, however, has been transformed by the coming of Christ and the inauguration of the eschaton. Marriage will end in the coming Kingdom, because death will end: there will be no need for the begetting of further children. The church lives both in the expectation of the Kingdom and as its first fruits: in Christ, we know that death has ended, and so can embrace celibacy, a way of life not ordered to the begetting of children. This embracing of celibacy, Song thinks, re-orders marriage within the church: a people who no longer fear death no longer need to procreate, and so it is striking that, whilst emphasising the representational aspects of marital love (‘but I am talking about Christ and the Church…’) and the mutuality of self-giving, the various New Testament teaching on marriage never specifically names procreation as its purpose. Song does not write out children from the good of marriage; he recognises that the creational norm requires that procreation be intrinsic to the definition of the calling. He notes, however, that since the 1930 Lambeth Conference, Anglican theological ethics, in contrast to Roman Catholic moral theology, has consistently entertained the idea of deliberately childless marriage, chosen for weighty ethical reasons (the context here was the Anglican acceptance of the use of contraception). This does not change the definition of marriage, but opens up the possibility of imagining an eschatological space, a third calling (Song will call it ‘covenant partnership’) that can sit alongside marriage and celibacy as a way of being authentically Christian; such covenant partnerships will be marked by faithfulness, permanence, and a commitment to non-procreative fruitfulness. Can such covenant partnerships be sexual in nature? Song argues that they can, because in Scripture sex can be about faithfulness and permanence without mention of children – 1 Cor. 7 is perhaps the crucial text here. Behind this reading is Song’s account of the transformation of marriage, and so sex, in the life of the church; procreation is de-emphasised. Again, the Anglican acceptance of deliberately childless marriage, creates the same space: sex in such a union is intentionally non-procreative, but licit. Song addresses the standard texts against same-sex sexual activity from within this framework; he accepts that ‘whatever it was the biblical writers were referring to in relation to same-sex sexuality, they took themselves to be opposed to it’ (62); he suggests, however, that a careful reading of the texts, which he offers, paints a somewhat narrower intended condemnation than is usually offered. What of arguments that marriage somehow depends on the complementarity of male and female? Song does not, of course, need to dispute this point, only that sex somehow depends on that complementarity; he follows Chris Rogers’s account of the theological history of sexual differentiation (Creation and Covenant, Continuum, 1997; another must-read book in this area), and proposes that there is no convincing theological reason (other than bare divine fiat, which he concedes in passing to Barth on p. 47) why sex must be restricted to opposite-sex couples. He ends with some, admittedly tentative, proposals for working out the...

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Rutherford House Blog Competition

An announcement from the Research Committee of Rutherford House: The 2013 Rutherford House Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference will take place on September 2-5 (details here); the subject will be ‘The Doctrine of Scripture’. To promote engagement with the topic around and beyond the conference, we are pleased to announce a competition for the best blog post on the topic of the doctrine of Scripture published between now and 31st August; the prize will be six books from Rutherford House, likely to be proceedings of previous conferences, which feature essays by Bruce McCormack, N.T. Wright, Richard Bauckham, John Webster, and others (but we’ll negotiate with anyone who already has a complete set!) Rutherford House will feature links to some entries on its Facebook page to promote discussion and interest in the theme. The winning entry will be chosen by the Rutherford House Research Committee. To enter, simply post on the topic on your blog, and email a link to the post to Steve Holmes (sh80@st-andrews.ac.uk) and Bethany Turner (BTurner@rutherfordhouse.org.uk), making clear it is an entry for the blog...

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Tim Bulkeley’s Not only a Father: an experiment in e-theology

Dr Tim Bulkeley, of Carey Baptist College, NZ, has recently published a monograph based on his doctoral work on naming God. Alongside the print publication, Tim has put the entire book up on a website, with the facility for comment and discussion attached to each paragraph. I am sure the web will change the way we engage with academic literature, but I haven’t seen a good example of that happening yet; Tim’s experiment is an interesting one which might help us explore one potential way forward. You can read the book and interact with it and other readers here – or buy it in a more traditional format here (Amazon.com – amazon.co.uk does not seem to have it listed...

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