Justice and the gospel: Bruce Longenecker on Paul and the poor.
Joel Willits offers a review of my former colleague Bruce Longenecker’s recent book Remember the Poor: Paul, Poverty, and the Greco-Roman World (Eerdmans) over at Euangelion. I have not yet seen a copy, but Bruce was working in these directions before he left St Andrews for Baylor, and I think I can guess something of how the argument goes: although there is not an enormous amount of emphasis in the NT texts on Paul’s ongoing concern for the collection for the church in Jerusalem, or for caring for economically-disadvantaged members of the community, there is some; if we consider the then-prevalent assumption amongst devout diaspora Jews (like Paul…) that charity was an essential component of acceptable worship, then we can reconstruct on the basis of the evidence we do have a picture of concern for the poor, and particularly concern that the gentile churches should relieve the poverty of the mother church in Jerusalem, as being central to Paul’s vision of his own mission, and of the Christian identity of the churches he founded. Rather like Finney refusing to allow someone to profess Christianity without committing to the abolitionist cause, Paul could not conceive of a church that was not involved in (what we would now call) social justice; it is as intrinsic to the gospel as worship, discipleship, and mission – actually, it just is worship, discipleship, and mission, in Paul’s view. As Joel points out, this is a timely reminder. Joel himself has recently offered a substantial review of Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert’s What is the Mission of the Church?, which is only the latest of a stream of publications arguing that social justice, whilst perhaps commendable, is no part of the core business of a Christian community. I understand the concern that, sometimes, justice has been perceived as an easier and less costly practice than other forms of gospel witness, and so has been allowed to displace them. The answer to this, though, is not so to swing the pendulum as to neglect this aspect of gospel witness instead. The bloodless conquest of the Empire by the early church was in large part achieved by a sustained and serious practice of social justice; bishops took the title ‘lovers of the poor,’ and lived it so well that, over a century or so, they constructed a new and previously-unimagined political power-base that propelled them to positions of prominence in almost every city of the Empire (Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity, is very good on this; start around pp. 90-100). Human hearts were conquered by the fearless witness of the martyrs; but the culture was conquered – whilst the church was still a minority movement – by a faithful practice of social justice. Paul consulted once with Peter and James and John about the ethical implications of belief in Jesus; one thing only was agreed to be non-negotiable by all four of them: ‘remember the poor’ (Gal. 2:10). This is at the heart of the...
Read MoreTrue Christian manliness? CVM & The Code
Back in the day, I led my share of Boys’ Brigade parade services. Now, I’ve nothing at all against the BB (I’ve known, indeed chaplained, companies that worked astonishingly well as Christian youth organisations), but that bit in the service where we went through the organisation’s old object, ending with ‘and all that tends towards true Christian manliness’ was, I confess, always a struggle. With some rehearsal, and a resolute refusal to look at certain friends in the congregation, I got through each time without collapsing in helpless laughter; without even smirking, indeed. The aim of that ‘object’ was truly noble, but the wording was, shall we say, not phrased in the vernacular of this generation (or the last one, or the one before that…). There have been times recently when I’ve longed for ‘true Christian manliness’ to re-appear. I try to avoid contemporary Evangelical discussions of Biblical manhood – not for fear of laughter, but of despair. I will acknowledge that I have heard one sensible discussion of ‘Biblical headship’ in my life, but of the several dozen I’ve come across, that is not a good average. I’ve read Driscoll, Grudem, Piper, Mohler, and the rest on the subject because I’ve had to; I find them unhelpful and unedifying; there have been moments when my gut reaction to a particularly poorly expressed thought has been a sudden irrational desire to embrace my feminine side with an energy that would make Frank N Furter or the travellers aboard Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, look positively macho (darling!). (And to put this into context you need to know that I generally refuse to buy shaving foam with moisturiser in it because to do so would be uncomfortably metrosexual…) I say all this because I want here to praise a book on Christian masculinity, and it is appropriate context to indicate that this does not come naturally to me. Carl Beech, Andy Drake, and Ian Manifold are all leaders within Christian Vision for Men (CVM), and a year or so ago they published a little book called The Code: It’s time for a new kind of man. Codelife is a programme CVM are running, inviting blokes to sign up to a series of ethical commitments, The Code (you can see the list here); The book is a series of brief chapters illustrating each commitment in The Code. What’s so good about it? First, it does not fall into the trap of defining masculinity against femininity. For Carl (who – full disclosure – is a friend), Andy, and Ian, being a man is not primarily about not being a woman. So it is not about headship, or leadership, or protection, or strength (or indeed inability to multitask, or a pathological hatred of Strictly Come Dancing – that last is just part of being properly human, surely?). Or, rather, there is discussion of leadership (Codelife IX: ‘I will lead as He would lead…) and protection (Codelife X: ‘I will use my strength to protect the weak and stand against the abuse of power.’), but this is not cast in binary gender terms, but as a positive account of a well-lived life. It is certainly not gender-indifferent, but nor is it controlled by a simple opposition. As Gen. 1:27 points out, we are human before we are male and female; to narrate being human solely in terms of that binary opposition is a serious mistake. Second, however, it is serious about (contemporary, British) masculinity. This is subtle, but obvious. Carl, Andy & Ian recognise that living as a man in C21st Britain is different from living as a woman, and The Code, and their explications of it, are alike constantly alive to that. They – perhaps wisely – make no commitments about which (if any) of the differences are down to a fundamental gender divide, and which (if any) are down to contemporary cultural mores, but they are alive to the lived reality of being male in Britain today. (How far might this extend, culturally? I don’t know; I’d be interested to know, for instance, the extent to which British Asian or Black British men might feel the need to shape and nuance what is said here to make it real for them.) For me, however, this book speaks to the world I live in, to the expectations and complications and (significant) privileges of being a man in British society today. Third, their vision of ‘true Christian manliness’ is holistic. It is about creation care, as well as about unashamed personal evangelism; being a man, for these three brothers, means taking with utmost seriousness the injustices of the global...
Read MoreThe pastor’s library (1)
Extracts from a letter to a pastor… You were the second person this week to ask me for recommendations on how to spend money on books, which seemed odd to me-I’ve never had a problem doing this… Anyway, you got me thinking about what good advice for a pastor’s library might look like, so I’m afraid you get an essay rather than a shopping list-teach you to ask a theologian! It is only in the last two or three years that I have taken to buying books because I wanted to read them; this is because we have both more money and more space than ever before in our lives. Before that I worked with a key distinction that I commend to you, between books I wanted to read and books I wanted to own. The latter I bought; the former I borrowed, unless I found them available very cheaply. (Spurgeon commends ‘a little judicious borrowing’ to his students somewhere, following it up with the sorts of dire imprecations about the morality of not returning books that can only come from long and painful experience.) There are a lot of books worth reading once; far fewer that you will want to return to again and again. Whence to borrow? Well, my shelves are yours, to misquote the Bedouin, and you know some of our more established local pastors well enough to presume the same of them. Beyond that, you presently have the advantage of living in a university town with, perhaps, the fifth best theological collection in Britain-get the church to pay your fees as an occasional student each year, and that is a rich source, particularly of the formidably expensive commentaries and reference works. Further afield, the Evangelical Library in London offers a loan by mail service at a modest cost, and is worth knowing about. The National Library in Edinburgh won’t lend you books, but it is a copyright library and so has virtually everything-a half-day there browsing commentaries when planning a new sermon series, to determine which of them you might want to buy, will be time well-spent. Which books might you want to buy? Let me suggest two reasons for buying books that should apply to a pastor: first, you will buy books to use repeatedly; second, you will buy books so that you can lend them to others. The first group consists of the standard reference works, commentaries, liturgical resources and the like; also of the particular pastoral manuals and theological and spiritual works that inform and sustain your life and ministry, and that you want to own so that you can read and re-read them regularly. The second consists of the sorts of books (and CDs and DVDs) that will benefit the people you are called to serve, and that you want to be able to place in their hands. (I think I am on my fifth copy of Fee & Stuart’s How to Read the Bible for All it’s Worth, a book I repeatedly lend to people, and occasionally receive...
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