Tipos de Clima Laboral

The argument of this chapter problematises another move, the eschatological corollary of a cosmology of ‘invasion’, namely the attempt to screen out the covenant narrative in discussions of the ‘apocalyptic Paul’. It was noted above that Jenson considered the apocalyptic ‘unveiling of God’s underlying plot for history’ as a feature congenial to Martyn’s Paul. Martyn would perhaps challenge the phrase ‘underlying plot for history’ since, for him, an ‘apocalyptic’ approach to Paul means a resistance to any salvation- historical interpretation of the apostle. According to Harink, ‘the whole of [Martyn’s] Galatians is written against that interpretation, arguing in fact that it is the Teachers, the opponents of Paul… who establish their position on the basis of a salvation-historical exegetical paradigm.’118 As such, it is impossible for Paul-according-to-Martyn to speak of a ‘divine plan’, of history ‘going somewhere’. Rather, history is in bondage until the invasive and liberating act of God in Christ. Harink does not mince words: ‘history

117 _{It should be noted that this challenge to the use of the category of ‘invasion’ does not at all mean that} there is no place for the theme of ‘divine warfare’ in apocalyptic cosmology and soteriology. Far from it – Revelation relies heavily on such a theme and it is important in apocalyptic thought, but even a cursory look at Revelation 20 reveals that the motifs of divine warfare and divine judgement operate in tandem not dichotomy. I will return to this in the next chapter.

before this event, according to Paul in Romans, is wreckage.’119 _{In Martyn’s language,} this is the distinction between the linear and the punctiliar.120 Responding to the contemporary popularity of redemptive-historical exegesis of Paul,121 he argues that

the covenantal promise is as polemically punctiliar as it is polemically

singular… The distinction between linear and punctiliar is thus a distinction drawn by Paul himself. In Gal 3:16 he denies the Teachers’ linear,

redemptive-historical picture of a covenantal people, affirming instead the punctiliar portrait of the covenantal person, Christ.122

We might also recall here Martyn’s statement that ‘the gospel is not about human movement into blessedness (religion); it is about God’s liberating invasion of the cosmos (theology)’.123 Douglas Harink’s recent argument against salvation-historical interpretations of Paul are another case in point. Citing Wright as a representative, Harink critiques salvation-historical interpretations of Paul which involve a smooth ‘continually progressing “plan” of God’.124 But these descriptions of salvation-history appear to be astraw man. Nowhere in redemptive-historical Pauline exegesis, or in Jewish apocalyptic literature, do we get the idea that salvation-history is a smooth developmental transition into a state of blessedness (the ‘religion’ which Martyn’s Paul confronts). This is not the message of Ezekiel or Revelation, which do not portray anything like a steady development of human history and religion towards its future in the heavenly city. The city-temple descends from heaven to earth and the day of the Lord comes with warfare and upheaval. In 2 Baruch, history is portrayed in (literally) black-and-white terms. There are times of great darkness and rebellion, but also times

119 _{Ibid., 85–6. As discussed in chapter three above, Harink is here referring to Walter Benjamin’s} discussion of history in his reflections on Klee’s Angelus Novus (Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History, 257–8.) As noted above, Wright has challenged this interpretation (see Wright, PFG, 1471–84). 120 _{On which see also chapter three above.}

121 _{Citing in particular the work of Beker and Wright.} 122 _{Martyn, Galatians, 347–8.}

123 _{J. L. Martyn, “The Apocalyptic Gospel in Galatians,” Interpretation 54, no. 3 (2000): 246–66, 255. cf.} Martyn, Galatians, 349.

124 _{Harink, “Partakers of the Divine Apocalypse”, 85 citing. Wright 2005, 50–1, 134, 9. Consideration of} the full context of the relevant discussion, however, reveals that Harink has misunderstood or

when God intervenes in surprising ways, bringing light – and lightning. In the great vision of the cloud, there are no ‘shades-of-grey waters’.

To be sure, the fulfilment of God’s promises will involve some shocking and dramatic events, not least a radical re-reading/re-telling of the covenant story and a concomitant redefinition of the covenant people, as 1 Enoch and 2 Baruch make clear.125 But nevertheless, apocalyptic and salvation history cannot be so summarily divided, and oftentimes the two go together.126 _{As Wright puts it, ‘we cannot expound} Paul’s covenant theology in such a way as to make it a smooth, steady progress of historical fulfilment; but nor can we propose a kind of ‘apocalyptic’ view in which nothing that has happened before Jesus is of any value even as preparation.’127 As the above discussion shows, the cosmological significance of the Temple is what it is

because of its place in the covenant narrative. Apocalyptic cosmology cannot be

isolated from the narrative of YHWH’s presence expressed in Ezekiel 1—3, its departure

from Jerusalem in 8—11 and the eschatological hope of its return to the temple in 40— 48, of which Malachi also spoke: ‘the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple’ (3.1a). However sudden the Lord’s coming may be, and however arrestingly immediate John’s vision, the Temple cosmology of the Apocalypse means what it means because of the covenant, as Isaiah 10—11, Habakkuk 2 and the rest of Malachi 3.1 attest.128 Cosmological questions of divine presence cannot, therefore, be divorced from their covenantal context, since ‘covenant and presence go hand in hand.’129 _The rending of the heavens in the coming of Christ is not an unprecedented invasion which sweeps all of history off the table, but the surprising climax of the story of God’s covenant presence, permeating the duality of heaven and earth, now radically

reimagined and anticipating its eschatological consummation. As Wright continues, ‘in

125 _{Collins, Apocalyptic Imagination, 219.}

126 _{As de Boer concedes: ‘Jewish apocalyptic eschatology naturally finds its focus in God’s covenantal} relationship to Israel’ (de Boer, “Paul and Apocalyptic Eschatology”, 348–9). The accompanying statement that ‘the scope of the two ages is cosmic’ somewhat begs the question.

127 _{Wright, Paul: Fresh Perspectives, 54 (emphasis mine).}

128 _{Mal 3.1b continues: ‘the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight – indeed he is coming, says} the Lord of hosts’. The juxtaposition of the suddenness of God’s coming with the covenant hope is very much in line with the view of apocalyptic for which I am arguing. See also Wright, PFG, 1051. 129 _{W. A. Tooman, “Covenant and Presence in the Composition and Theology of Ezekiel,” in Divine}

Presence and Absence in Exilic and Post-Exilic Judaism, ed. N. Macdonald and I. J. De Hulster,

the messianic events of Jesus’ death and resurrection Paul believes both that the

covenant promises were at last fulfilled and that this constituted a massive and dramatic irruption into the processes of world history unlike anything before or since.’130 This problematises any attempt to describe ‘apocalyptic’ in the New Testament by screening out redemption history. Rather, God’s covenant with Israel is, to borrow the words of Lars Hartman, the ‘referential background’ of apocalyptic cosmology.131

Summary

Jenson critiques the use of vertical/horizontal coordinates in describing God’s action, considering such discourse to be ‘just Platonism stripped to its geometry’.132 _Martyn’s use of the motif of punctiliar invasion, and his resistance to anything resembling the linearity of redemptive-historical paradigms, opens his ‘apocalyptic Paul’ to such a charge and implies a cosmological dualism which is problematised by the witness of the Jewish apocalyptic literature and the book of Revelation. This implicit dualism of the language of invasion, and the dichotomy of ‘linear’ versus ‘punctiliar’, are foreign to apocalyptic thought, as they are to much in Second Temple Jewish and early Christian thought besides. The temple-cosmology of the apocalypses problematises any strict heaven-earth dualism since it affirms the ongoing presence of God in this world. As Jenson concludes, ‘much as it goes against the polemical consensus, the notion of a

Heilsgeschichte maps what Scripture as a whole presents better than can any geometry.’133 History, for Käsemann, ‘is not, therefore, marked by a visible earthly continuity but by interruptions and paradoxes; again and again its path leads over the grave out of which it brings the dead to life. We must not deny salvation history, however, because God’s Word in its activity permeates the world in its breadth and depth.’134 This is no smooth developmental narrative, but a narrative it is, nonetheless.

130 _{Wright, Paul: Fresh Perspectives, 54 (emphasis mine). I would, however, want to question Wright’s} choice of the word ‘irruption’ here for the reasons argued above.

131 _{Hartman, Asking for a Meaning. See also the discussion in Macaskill, Revealed Wisdom, 46;} Bauckham, “Apocalypses”, 142. Contrast the discussion in Collins, Apocalyptic Imagination, 49. 132 _{Jenson, “Dogmatic/Systematic Appropriation”, 160.}

133 _{Ibid., 161.}

134 _{Käsemann, “The Faith of Abraham in Romans 4”, 88. Cf. Käsemann, “Justification and Salvation} History”, 66–8.

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Introduction

As noted in the previous chapter, cosmology as Weltbild plays a secondary role in the ‘apocalyptic Paul’, or is even eliminated altogether as a concern. Gaventa, for example, says she cannot ‘imagine Paul gazing in awe at the heavens as evidence of God’s glory or expatiating on the order of the cosmos.’1 _{For her (following Martyn), Paul’s}

‘cosmology’ is less concerned with the shape of the cosmos than with its redemption understood within a Weltanschauung of invasion and cosmic warfare. Having laid the important cosmological groundwork (though the arguments there have importance in their own right), we turn now to these more central soteriological paradigms,

remembering Gaventa’s observation that ‘cosmology and soteriology are inextricably connected to one another.’2

The pattern of this chapter is as before. I will first give a brief summary of the soteriological dichotomy characteristic of the ‘apocalyptic Paul’, focussing on Martyn, de Boer and Campbell. I then look at 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra and examine the two soteriological narratives of judgment/forgiveness and warfare/victory (what de Boer calls the ‘forensic’ and the ‘cosmological’, as we will see shortly). I then turn again to the book of Revelation and look at those soteriological patterns. I hope to demonstrate that a more interrelated framework best characterises the way in which the two soteriological narratives function. These insights will then be brought into critical dialogue with the soteriological antithesis characteristic of the contemporary

‘apocalyptic Paul’.

1 _{Gaventa, “Neither Height Nor Depth (2011)”, 278.} 2 _{Ibid., 265.}

Soteriological dichotomies in the ‘apocalyptic Paul’