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writing things down…Archive for Harink
Apocalyptic Accounts of Paul
Given the recent discussions of the apocalyptic perspective of Paul, I found interesting the following sentence by Stephen Fowl in Paul, Philosophy, and the Theopolitical Vision (ed. Douglas Harink), a forthcoming volume in our Theopolitical Visions series that I am currently working on.
These apocalyptic accounts of Paul are a persistent reminder that both scholars and Christians have a tendency to domesticate Paul and his writings, gathering supposed conceptual and religious antecedents to central Pauline terminology so that he appears to be little more than a small tremor on the theological terrain, something you can feel, but which does not bring down buildings (Fowl, “A Very Particular Universalism”).
More Harink: Redemption
Two Harink quotes in successive days? I couldn’t pass this one up:
For what is promised in Christ and the Spirit is not the community’s escape from its enmeshment in the created order, but rather the redemption of the whole created order with the children of God. (121)
The context for this quote is a discussion of Rom 8:12–39. But, I find it resonates well with Eph 1:3–14.
More Harink: Principalities and Powers
In his chapter on Yoder, Harink writes after a lengthy discussion relating Yoder’s notion of principalities and powers to that of St. Paul:
Exegetes who insist on understanding the principalities and powers as “personal, demonic intelligences” that primarily attack individual human hearts have failed to read seriously enough the apocalyptic context of Paul’s language. (119)
[Thought: The view of principalities criticized by Harink seems to be the flip side of the well-worn notion that Christianity is a personal, individual relationship with Jesus. Both sides of this coin fail to appreciate the systemic and communal aspects of biblical themes.]
More Harink: American Liberal Democracy
I’m still slowly moving through Harink’s book. I want to remember some of the things I’ve read and I want to share them with the few of you who read this blog. Here, then, is another brief excerpt:
The churches of America, whether conservative or liberal, are divided in their loyalty; divided between allegiance to American liberal democracy and society on the one hand and to the triune God revealed in Jesus Christ on the other. When it comes to the decisive moments—the apocalyptic, revelatory moments, when America goes to war in the name of “freedom,” “justice,” and “democracy”—the latter loyalty almost always takes second place to the former. … American liberal democracy is the One Great Thing for which most American Christians are prepared to make the costliest sacrifice: the lives of their own and others’ children. Such human sacrifices declare final—apocalyptic—allegiances. (84–85, in the context of discussing Hauerwas’s hatred of idolatry)
Insufficiently Theological
I’ve been slowly making my way through Douglas Harink’s Paul among the Postliberals: Pauline Theology beyond Christendom and Modernity (Brazos, 2003)—slowly, not because I am digesting it deeply, but because I have little time for reading these days and so I can only get at the book in fits and starts.
Harink writes well and clearly. And, his project is impressive, crossing disciplinary boundaries easily. He is able to address issues with both the traditional and the new perspectives on Paul. The criticisms of the traditional perspective are well worn. Harink’s criticism of the New Perspective, on the other hand, is fresh because he does not march out the old soldiers from the traditional view. Instead, he writes things like the following:
