Paul as Pastor

Last week, I was at the Evangelical Covenant Church's Midwinter 2017 Conference. With fear and trembling, I was asked to teach on the topic of leadership in the New Testament, and I ended up preparing a message entitled: "Paul as Pastor." It became a tougher topic to address than I thought because Paul does not really use the word “leader” in any of his letters. 
    The words for “leader” in Greek are ἄρχων (archōn) and ἡγούμενος (hēgoumenos), translated “rulers” and “leaders” in your Bibles, and refer to secular leadership but not church leaders, with the exception of Hebrews (13:7, 17, 24). Instead of the word “leader,” what Paul does is discuss various leadership roles or pastoral activities using other terms like: 

I’ve arranged these 12 terms for pastoral leadership into 4 semantic domains or umbrella categories. 

1) The Preacher •  minister / servant (Greek διάκονος or diakonos) •  preacher (Greek κηρύσσων or kēryssōn) •  evangelist (Greek εὐαγγελιστής or euangelistēs) •  teacher (Greek διδασκάλος or didaskalos):	2) The Pastor •  overseer (Greek ἐπίσκοπος or episkopos) •  elder (Greek πρεσβύτερος or presbyteros) •  mentor/imitation (Greek μιμητής or mimētēs) and spiritual father/mother (Greek πατήρ or patēr; μητήρ or mētēr) •  shepherd /pastor (Greek ποιμήν or poimēn) where through the Vulgate/patristic writers we get the Latin word pastor •  slave/servant of God and the church (Greek δοῦλος or doulos)
3) The Prophet •  prophet (Greek προφήτης or prophētēs) x apostle? (Greek ἀπόστολος or apostolos): But apostleship was a unique office to the 1st century church alone.	4) The Priest •  priest or priestly minister/servant (Greek λειτουργός or leitourgos) •  administrator (Greek οἰκονόμος or oikonomos) of the mysteries/sacraments (Greek word μυστήριον or mystērion). μυστήριον is translated sacramentum in Latin

    But let’s call the semantic domains something like the 4 ministerial roles, offices, even ministerial “functions” or responsibilities of the Christian leader. I call them the 4P’s of church leadership. Leaders 1) preach, 2) they pastor or shepherd or care for the flock, 3) they prophetically challenge the church and discern what God is doing in our midst,  and 4) they do their priestly duties, administering the sacraments, standing in the gap between God and suffering, but much more. So 4P’s: preacher, pastor, prophet, and priest, but it is arguably the role of the pastor or shepherd which functions as the core and unites all the other roles and responsibilities of leadership.

    I'm thankful that so many pastors, Christian leaders, former students, colleagues and friends at Midwinter appreciated the morning session I taught. Paul sometimes gets a bad wrap among scholars as too authoritarian. But this is really a modern pet-peeve. The solution to bad authority in the secular world is not no-authority in the church but the right use of authority that edifies and redeems. In fact, the more I study Paul, the more I am convicted that he was a premier pastor of the church whose teachings and practices can inform and form our present-day ministerium to become faithful servants of Christ and His body. 

    I am thinking that eventually this session can evolve into a small book on Paul as Pastor. We shall see. I have to finish my other book projects first. In the meanwhile, one of the most helpful resources on a pastoral theology remains the one written by the late Thomas Oden. His Pastoral Theology (1983) is a classic and still the best on the topic: 

Still the best work on a pastoral theology
available for the scholars, pastors and leaders
RIP Thomas Oden

Postscript: It pains me to blog so little (probably 1X a month) but until the ATS Accreditation report for North Park is complete, I'm swamped with work. The seminary needs its 10 yr accreditation so we can't fumble the ball on this one. Likely I can blog much more regularly again when we reach the summer and end of the academic year. MJL

Paul’s Theology on Justice, Righteousness and Reconciliation (A Primer on Justice and Missions, Part 2)

In my last post (Framing Justice Theologically), I posited the following thesis:

 “Justice–fairness, though important to God and to God’s people, is nevertheless incomplete. God’s justice is larger than simply fairness or equity. God’s justice is inseparable from his saving activity for a fallen world. In the grander scheme of God’s economy of salvation, distributive justice acts as one component to a much larger process called reconciliation.”

Here in this post, I give the exegetical basis for making this claim.

Paul’s Theology on Justice, Righteousness and Reconciliation (A Primer on Justice and Missions, Part 2) *

            To a certain degree, the principle of justice as fairness (or “distributive justice” as some call it)¹ is affirmed by both the Old and New Testaments. The psalmist, for example, recognizes God’s role as an impartial judge and executor of justice over the affairs of Israel when he says of God:

“Mighty king, lover of justice (םשׁפט mishpat), you have established equity, you have executed justice (םשׁפט mishpat) and righteousness (צדקה tsedeqah) in Jacob. Praise the Lord our God! Worship at his feet! Holy is he!” (Ps. 99:4-5; cf. Pss. 9:1–20; 89:5–14; 97:1–12; 103:6; Jer. 9:23–24).² 

Jim Bruckner has called God’s mishpat and tsedeqah a “ferocious justice” whose goal is restoration but nevertheless confronts the oppressor, the arrogant, and evil-doers with the demand of repentance.³

            Not only does God judge impartially, God expects his covenant people to act justly as well and be executors of his justice:

“He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you? But to do justice (םשׁפט mishpat), and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God!” (Micah 6:8; cf. Ps. 72:1–3; Jer. 22:3).⁴

[Hang onto your linguistic seatbelts, folks, we are about to go from 0 to 60 mph in one paragraph!]

            As we look at how the New Testament quotes Old Testament verses in Greek (e.g., Hab. 2:4 in Rom. 1:17), or how the Greek Septuagint translates Hebrew passages on justice such as Ps. 99:4–5 and Micah 6:8 above, we observe that the Hebrew word mishpat (sometimes translated as “justice” but more often meaning a strict “judgment” where each person is given his or her due) is precisely rendered in Greek as κρίμα krima or κρίσις krisis (that is, “judgment” as in legal proceedings). The term tsedeq (“righteousness” or “uprightness” that defends, rescues, and delivers both communities and individuals) or tsedeqah (“righteous act”) is translated as δικαιοσύνη dikaiosynē, that is, “righteousness” as in one’s intrinsic just character or how one relates rightly with others. But dikaiosynē is also used singly to translate both mishpat (“judging–justice”) and tsedeq (“restorative–righteousness”). In this case, δικαιοσύνη means mainly “righteousness,” or God’s saving righteousness but depending on the context can also denote distributive justice (see, e.g., Ps. 72:1–3; 98:1–3).⁵

            If you got lost in the above discussion, here’s a chart mapping simply (but not comprehensively) how some Hebrew words for justice and righteousness are translated into Greek by the Septuagint and New Testament:

Fig. 1: How the LXX and NT translates םשׁפט and צדק

Main Point: If the Old Testament concepts of mishpat and tsedeq bear any influence on the New Testament understanding of dikaiosynē (and the consensus is that they do!), then I argue here that dikaiosynē mainly means “righteousness,” or God’s saving righteousness but at times can be translated as distributive justice, or even denote righteousness with some sense of distributive justice subsumed within it (see, e.g., Ps. 72:1–3; 98:1–3 par. Rom. 1.16–17).⁶

            Paul can even set up both senses of dikaiosynē – i.e., God’s saving righteousness and God’s distributive justice – in tandem with each other in the same passage. Let’s look at Romans 3:21–26 as an example and observe that the same word dikaiosynē and its cognates have been translated more than one way (in bold):

But now the saving (cosmic) righteousness of God (δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ; or God’s saving activity), apart from the Torah, has been made known, to which the Torah and the Prophets testify. ²² that is, the righteousness that comes from God (δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ) through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. There is no difference, ²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ and are justified as a gift (δικαιούμενοι δωρεὰν) by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. ²⁵ God presented him as an atonement (ἱλαστήριον) through faith in his blood. He did this as a demonstration of his distributive justice (εἰς ἔνδειξιν τῆς δικαιοσύνης αὐτοῦ) because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished-- ²⁶ he did it to demonstrate his righteous character (δικαιοσύνης αὐτοῦ; that is, to be true to himself) at the present time, so as to be just (δίκαιον; in character) and the one who justifies (δικαιοῦντα; forensically and actually) those who have faith in Jesus.

In the passage quoted just above, Paul shares how the saving righteousness of God (δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ; the subjective genitive; v. 21)⁷ took a particular form: a righteousness that comes from God (δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ; the genitive of origin; v. 22) which can be received through faith in Christ. God could have meted out justice–fairness (δικαιοσύνη) with a vengeance for sins committed beforehand, but God chose not to (v. 25a)! Instead God demonstrated distributed justice (εἰς ἔνδειξιν τῆς δικαιοσύνης αὐτοῦ; v. 25b) and just character (δικαιοσύνης αὐτοῦ / δίκαιον; v. 26) not by condemning sinners but by presenting Christ as an atoning sacrifice. He paved the way for sinful humanity to be declared justified and in right relations with himself (δικαιούμενοι / δικαιοῦντα; 3:24, 26).

            So here is the theological and exegetical punchline: Given Paul’s understanding of how distributive justice relates to the saving righteousness of God, what does Paul mean when he says that God did all of this (= presented Christ Jesus as an atonement) for one reason: that we might become the righteousness of God and preach the message of reconciliation? Here is the full text of 2 Corinthians 5:17-21:

¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, that person is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, everything has become new!

¹⁸ And all this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ (τοῦ καταλλάξαντος ἡμᾶς ἑαυτῷ διὰ Χριστοῦ) and who gave to us the ministry of reconciliation (καὶ δόντος ἡμῖν τὴν διακονίαν τῆς καταλλαγῆς)

^19ab – that is (ὡς ὅτι), God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself (θεὸς ἦν ἐν Χριστῷ κόσμον καταλλάσσων ἑαυτῷ), not reckoning their transgressions against them (μὴ λογιζόμενος αὐτοῖς τὰ παραπτώματα αὐτῶν)

^19c and [who] placed upon us the message of reconciliation (καὶ θέμενος ἐν ἡμῖν τὸν λόγον τῆς καταλλαγῆς).

²⁰ Therefore, we are ambassadors (πρεσβεύομεν) for Christ, as though God was making his appeal through us (παρακαλοῦντος δι᾽ ἡμῶν). We beseech you on behalf of Christ: Be reconciled to God! (δεόμεθα ὑπὲρ Χριστοῦ, καταλλάγητε τῷ θεῷ)

²¹ He made the one who knew no sin to be sin for us (τὸν μὴ γνόντα ἁμαρτίαν ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν ἁμαρτίαν ἐποίησεν) in order that we might become in him the righteousness of God (ἵνα ἡμεῖς γενώμεθα δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ).

The Greek words “reconcile” (καταλλάσσω) and “reconciliation” (καταλλαγή) find their historical context in the peace-treaty process whereby two parties, who are estranged from another because one has wronged the other, are attempting to re-establish diplomatic and personal relations.⁸  Whereas in Judaism, God is often described as being reconciled to Israel once he has vented his wrath,⁹ Paul, on the other hand, never claims that God reconciles himself to the sinner, but rather God reconciled us to himself (ἡμᾶς ἑαυτῷ; 5:18; cf. 5:19ab κόσμον ἑαυτῷ). In sending Christ “who knew no sin to be sin for us” (5:21), God took the initiative to provide atonement and forgiveness for the estranged sinner. Even though it was humanity who wronged God, not God who wronged humanity, through Christ’s death and resurrection God nevertheless opened the way for sinners to have renewed relations with him.

            So themes in Romans 3:21-26 (God demonstrating his justice by the atonement of Christ) are re-presented in 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 (God reconciling the world to himself by Christ becoming sin for us) but with an important advancement: the goal of this saving act in Christ is to make us the righteousness of God and to send us as ambassadors of Christ.

            The person who is a new creation in Christ, that is, the believer and the church corporate, becomes “the righteousness of God” (ἵνα ἡμεῖς γενώμεθα δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ). In other words, the righteousness of God is on display for the outside world to see through us, Christ’s ambassadors, as we participate in the ministry of reconciliation, suffer as Christ did, and appeal to sinners with the message of reconciliation: “Be reconciled to God” (5:20b).

            What is more, God’s modus operandi becomes the method of the church. How did God use distributive justice? To this end: that we might be justified before God (Rom 3) and become the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:17). In the grander scheme of God’s economy of salvation, distributive justice acts as one component to a much larger process called reconciliation. Justice serves to make reconciliation complete. The former is the means to the latter as an end.

            What, then, are the ethical implications of Romans 3 and 2 Cor. 5 which define God’s sense of justice in the theological framework of justification and reconciliation? 
            First, we realize that justice–fairness, as important as it is, cannot become an end in itself. Acts of mercy, compassion and justice are only means to a greater work: the reconciliation of the sinner to God and sinners with one another. Therefore, the church participates in the task of justice out of compassion for those who are disenfranchised, but the community of faith does this so that eventually (and here wise discernment has its place) the powerless can feel safe enough to avail themselves of God’s grace. We model God’s compassion so they can feel unafraid of a God whom they might feel has abandoned them.

            In the previous post, I used Weborg’s example of how justice mutes the volume of suffering so the sinner can hear God’s call to reconciliation. So, justice, like evangelism and missions, are means by which human beings can encounter the risen Lord.

            Secondly, if justice as fairness is a subcomponent of the larger task of righteousness as reconciliation, then any brand of justice which hinders a person from becoming reconciled with God, even if that person is our enemy, is no longer truly just and righteous. Martin Luther King Jr., for example, thought that any violent act against a person was evil because violence closed more doors and created more barriers for wounded parties to renew broken relationships.¹¹ If our so called “just” actions creates a situation where it is impossible for persons to heal, forgive, and receive forgiveness, then such actions must be suspended in the interim for the sake of the greater mission of seeing all human beings experience God’s reconciling grace.

            Thus Christians paradoxically have a two-fold ethic: we seek justice as fairness for others so that it creates a safe space for them to meet and be reconciled to God. At the same time, we are willing to suspend justice and vindication for ourselves so that the greater work of reconciling our enemies to Christ can become a reality.

            If it feels like burning the candle at both ends (justice for others, suspension of justice for myself) then yes, burn brightly. We are called to follow Jesus into those dark places where human dignity stands in jeopardy, sin rules, and misery is rampant. We are called to do what it takes to get even our enemies reconciled with God. Let Jesus the Light of the world shine through our ministry and message.

End Notes

* I felt it stylistically cumbersome to include the full and original notes to this article and therefore have reduced them to the bare essentials since the medium for this essay is no longer a published work but this blog. Still the notes are substantial as you see below.

1) Chris Marshall, The Little Book of Biblical Justice (Intercourse, PA: Good Books, 2005), 6–9.

2) Unless otherwise noted, all OT Scriptural quotations are from the NRSV with some slight modifications. I will offer my own English translation of the Greek text from the NT.

3) James Bruckner, “Justice in Scripture,” Ex Auditu 22 (2006), 22 [17–25].

4) For further discussion on the OT concept of distributive justice, see Bruckner, “Justice in Scripture,” 17–22; Mark A. Seifrid, “Righteousness Language in the Hebrew Scriptures and Early Judaism,” in Justification and Variegated Nomism (vol. 1: The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism; ed. by D.A. Carson, et al.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 415–442; Horst Dietrich Preuss, Old Testament Theology (vol. 1 of 2; trans. by Leo G. Perdue; Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), 171–94.

5) The definitions for the lexemes should not be surprising. Consult the standard lexicons (BDB, BDAG, LSJ or Louw-Nida) and dictionaries (TDOT, TDNT). But if you want something even more technical, I invite you to read my essays "Greek Words and Roman Meanings," parts 1-2 published in the Festschrift for Seyoon Kim.

6) In his discussion of Ps. 98:1-3 as an OT parallel to Rom. 1:16–17a, Laato, while arguing for the forensic character of δικ– word group, nevertheless acknowledges that “the concepts ‘salvation’ and ‘righteousness’ overlap here. They are synonymous.” See Timo Laato, “‘God’s Righteousness’ – Once Again,” in The Nordic Paul: Finnish Approaches to Pauline Theology (ed. by Lars Aejmelaeus and Antti Mustakallio; LNTS 374; New York/London: T&T Clark, 2008), 47 [40–73].

7) By the subjective genitive, I am following more Käsemann’s reading of δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ  as the saving activity of God as it relates to the entire creational order including humanity rather than the narrower reading by Wright as God’s covenantal activity; see respectively: Ernst Käsemann, trans. by Wilfred F. Bunge, “God’s Righteousness in Paul,” in The Bultmann School of Biblical Interpretation: New Directions? (ed. by SaJames Robinson, et al.; Journal for Theology and Church 1; New York: Harper&Row, 1965), 100–10; N.T. Wright, What Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 101-103. Some scholars like Moo in his NICNT commentary on Romans translate δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ as the possessive genitive (“God’s righteous character”) but for the purposes of this paper, it makes no real difference in the arguments I am making.

8) Disclaimer: New Testament scholars, since James Barr’s book The Semantics of Biblical Language (1961), always get nervous about what Barr calls “illegitimate totality transfer.” I want to assure the reader that this is not what I am doing here. Given the possible options for how to translate dikaiosynē, in the entire discourse unit of Rom. 3:21-26, I have chosen what I think is the best in-context translation for each appearance of the word. I do make the distinction between word and concept, where the former cannot possibly encapsulate all of the latter. Instead, based on reading the entire discourse unit of Rom 3:21-26, I assert the following about Paul’s understanding of God’s righteousness and justice.

8) On the linguistic background to the terms for reconciliation, see Seyoon Kim, “God Reconciled His Enemy to Himself: The Origin of Paul’s Concept of Reconciliation,” in The Road from Damascus: The Impact of Paul’s Conversion on his Life, Thought, and Ministry (ed. by R.N. Longenecker; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 104-107 [102–24].

9) See 2 Maccabees 1:5; 5:20; 7:32–33; Philo, On the Life of Moses 2.166; Josephus, Antiquities 7.153. For further discussion of these texts, see Kim, “God Reconciled His Enemy to Himself,” 104–105.

10) For more on how justification frames distributive justice, or on how reconciliation structures justice–fairness, see George Hunsinger, “Justification and Justice: Toward an Evangelical Social Ethic,” in What Is Justification About? Reformed Contributions to an Ecumenical Theme (ed. by M. Weinwich and J.P. Burgess; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 207–30; and Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 193–231.

11) On the theology of the cross which drove the ethics of Martin Luther King Jr., see James McClendon, Biography as Theology (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1974; repr. 1990), 50–59.

Seven-Minute Summary of Paul and the Gift by John Barclay

Paul and the Gift (Eerdmans 2015)

Many thanks to Nijay Gupta for finding this video on Seedbed's youtube channel. Here is John Barclay giving a summary of his central thesis in the recently reviewed book Paul and the Gift. The book was reviewed at the Pauline Soteriology Seminar (S23-133) at SBL-AAR 2015 by a great panel of scholars, namely, Joel Marcus, Margaret Mitchell, and Miroslav Volf with Barclay responding at the end. 
   I, unfortunately, had to miss the panel review since I was presiding over another session. I am still hoping someone in the blogosphere (HT Nijay Gupta) might offer some comments on the session. But this little video is a neat, tight, 7-minute summary of how Barclay's research on gift-exchange in the ancient world illuminates Paul's own discourse on grace. Thank you Seedbed for interviewing and producing this video: 

   Some quick thoughts: Barclay points out that the Greek word χάρις (often translated "grace" in the New Testament) had no unusual meaning on its own in every-day common or Κοινή usage and simply means "gift." Paul is not unique in talking about the abundance of God's gifts to human beings, nor is he unique in saying that God was the one who took the initiative in the gift-exchange. There apparently were many examples, in the literature of the Mediterranean world, of gods being the first to give gifts to humankind, and they did so quite lavishly. 
    What makes grace or gift unusal in Paul's gospel was that God gave χάρις to people regardless of their worth or in spite of their unworthiness. God did not pay any attention to the worth of the individual. In the ancient world, gifts functioned to produce relationships or bind two people or communities together. So an ancient person chose carefully whom to give a gift and form a binding relationship with. Not so the God of the gospel. God does not discriminate against any person based on their intrinsic worth. He forms binding relationships with anyone who receives the gift.
    That said, if ancient gift-giving took into consideration the ethnicity or social status of the individual, and if God's gift/grace now by-passes these previous social standards of discrimination, Paul can now challenge his congregation to form relationships with one another regardless of ethnicity, education, power or privilege solely on the basis of this same grace.
    Wow! That preaches! Though John shares his summary very irenically, it's still a powerful seven minutes worth listening to. So enjoy, and blessings as we head into the Thanksgiving holiday!

Highlights from the Pauline Epistles Session (Nov 21)

My flight back home is delayed, so while I'm waiting at the airport, I'm thinking the best use of my time is to do a quick post on SBL-AAR 2015. I won't be posting on every session and every paper that I attended but I will highlight what I feel were presentations either of particular interest to me personally, or I think would be of wider interest to those who, as Kevin Vanhoozer puts it, appreciate that one aspect of pastoral ministry is being a public theologian and therefore do not shy away from the insights born from engagement with academic study.

Pauline Epistles Session at SBL-AAR Atlanta on Sat morning (11/21/15)

   The Saturday morning Pauline Epistles session (Nov 21) had some great papers. I'm grateful that David Wheeler-Reed mined Galen's recently discovered treatise De Indolentia (now published in a critical edition) for how its exposition on λυπή (often translated as "grief") might illuminate Paul's discourse (paper title: "Paging Dr. Paul: Reading Paul's Use of Grief with Galen"). Long story short, after a great summary of the treatise, Wheeler-Reed argued that the injunction μὴ λυπῆσθε in 1 Thessalonias 4:13 should be translated not as "Do not grieve" but "Do not distress over." Galen, of course, was writing much later than Paul, but the former's discourse on λυπή, so argued by Wheeler-Reed, was part of the wider linguistic currency of the Greco-Roman world that ran through the 1st century up until Galen's time. 
   Theologically, the implications of the translation means that Paul was not against emotional grief per say (by all means, the loss of someone in this earthly life is an occasion to grieve, weep, and remorse). Rather "distress" relates to a mental state on how to deal with the tragedies and external circumstances surrounding an individual. Rather than reacting with visible demonstrations of panic, Paul's antidote to distress is faith, especially a faith which confesses that those who have died in the Lord will not be excluded from the benefits and promises of salvation. 
   I'm not completely convinced that Paul would limit the definition of λυπή to exclude the emotional component of distress. Paul does say: Don't grieve as those who have no hope, not: dont' grieve at all [period!]. And since Galen was not a Stoic but accounted for emotional experience in moderated measure (see my essay in Klyne Snodgrass' Festschrift), I'm inclined to think that Paul's use of the term did include some emotional component. However, the paper was a helpful reminder that λυπή focuses not on an internal condition of the soul but one's deliberate (not knee-jerk) response to present external circumstances. 
    I must mention also that my dean, colleague, and friend Stephen Chester gave a fantastic paper on "Conflicting or Mutually Dependent Perspectives?: Interpreting the Flesh, Sin, and the Human Plight in Paul." I don't think he meant to be humorous, but the points he made in his presentation were so clear, I could not help but laugh a few times throughout his presentation for the sheer irony that he was so ably cataloguing in his history of interpretation on Paul's justification language. His central thesis was that the New Perspective has made the mistake of lumping together the views of Augustine and Martin Luther so that in their re-reading of Paul, the NPP (= New Perspective on Paul) ends up faulting Luther for concepts that Luther himself does not support. In fact, if one examines Luther's interpretation of Galatians more closely, many of Luther's exegetical conclusions anticipate the criticisms of the NPP against Augustine. 
   In regards to Luther's understanding of the flesh vs. the Spirit, for example, the NPP has accused Luther of being dualistic in his views of human anthropology. However, Luther, in a text quoted by Chester, actually says: 

• The apostle [Paul] does not wish to be understood as saying that the flesh and the spirit are two separate entities, as it were, but whole... [LW 25:339-41 = WA 56:350, 22 - 352, 9]. Note that one and the same man at the same time serves the law of God and the law of sin, at the same time is righteous and sins! For he does not say: "My mind serves the law of God," nor does he say: "My flesh serves the law of sin," but "I, the whole man," the same person, I serve a two-fold servitude." [LW 25:336 = WF 56:347, 2-6; excerpt from a handout given by Chester]

When Luther talks about the whole person, he is hardly being dualistic or positing an anthropological hierarchy (human spirit > flesh). So when N.T. Wright says: 

• [Paul's anthropological terms] sometimes appear to designate different 'parts' of a human being, but, as many have pointed out, it is better to see as each encoding a particular way of looking at the human being as a whole but from one perticular angle (Paul and the Faithfulness of God, p. 491; excerpt from Chester's handout)

Luther would agree with Wright, and would add: And I said it first! Luther says the whole man serves God or sins. He does not think two different faculties in a person are at war with each other in some sort of (Neo)platonic dualism as Augustine does, but the NPP wrongly posits Luther's position as Augustinian. 
   So there is a delicious irony at work: the NPP has defined its movement vis-à-vis the Reformers but in fact many of its tenets (e.g., a holistic view of the flesh, or sin as an apocalyptic power) continue to depend on the exegetical work of the Reformers like Luther. 
    This paper, by the way, is part of a larger monograph that Stephen is almost finished with, and is tentatively entitled: Righteousness in Christ: Paul, the Reformers, and the New Perspective. He plans to submit a manuscript to Eerdmans and we will probably see it debut at the next SBL-AAR 2016 in San Antonio, Texas. Can't wait! 

Review: The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis (NIDNTTE; 5 vols) by Moisés Silva

"Two steps forward and one step backwards..." is not new dance move but my succinct way of reviewing the 2nd edition of the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology andExegesis (henceforth NIDNTTE). Revised by Moisés Silva (click for an interview with him on the lexicon over at Matthew Montonini's NT Perspective blog), this 2014 five-volume update published by Zondervan is, in many ways, a marked improvement of its previous 1975-78 four-volume predecessor edited by Colin Brown.

The impressive 5 vol. NIDNTTE by Moisés Silva

   Let me comment on the two advances which the NIDNTTE makes. First, in terms of its lexical information, it is a thorough revision of how a particular word is used in its Greek, Jewish, and New Testament literary and historical contexts. In fact, each entry (alphabetized according to the Greek) begins with the history of early Greek meanings and ends with how a word is deployed in the secular discourse of the Roman period. Then the entry defines the unique uses of a word in the Greek Old Testament or Septuagint as it translates the Hebrew. Finally, the entry describes how the New Testament writers, given the range of meanings for a particular word, often depend on the Septuagint for its definitions. 

    The second advance is the dependency of NIDNTTE upon the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, and other Jewish literature to draw out the meanings for New Testament words. This is biblical theology at its best. Silva demonstrates a linguistic savvy when he traces the theological continuity between the Old Testament and the New without committing the mistake of confusing Gundbegriff (or the larger concept to which a word points) with its basic definition (what the word means) in context. 

     I do wish, however, the dictionary would explore more thoroughly how the everyday use of Greek words contributes to the vocabulary of the New Testament. When, for example, Paul talks about hilastērion in Romans 3:25, the dictionary unsurprisingly defines the term as "atonement" in parallel with the Old Testament use of the Hebrew kippur as an "expiation" or "covering over" of sin. But hilastērion in Greco-Roman discourse can also mean "propitiate." Defined in this way, New Testament writers could be employing the word hilastērion to help explain how the death of Christ propitiates or satisfies the justice of God. To be fair, the NIDNTTE does describe the Koiné or common uses of hilastērion in its entry, but I fault the dictionary for not drawing out the theological implications of such usage. For a theological dictionary aimed at aiding exegesis and interpretation, the dictionary, at times, demonstrates too narrow a focus on Jewish backgrounds without due consideration to how Greek discourse might also inform the lexical choices of the New Testament authors.

    But my largest criticism concerns the format of the dictionary. The decision to partially abandon the original organization of the entries by semantic field in favor of an alphabetized listing is a step backward in my opinion. It is also a lost opportunity. 

    Take, for example, the concept of power. 

The older NIDNT by Colin Brown (1975-78)
Notice that the dictionary is organized by concept, with a very short beginning
paragraph describing how the different words in a semantic field relate before
giving a detailed definition/discussion of each word as with βία and its cognates

In the older edition (above), the dictionary listed out the definitions of kratos ("might"), ischys ("strength" or "power"), bia ("force"), and other lexemes all under the category: Strength, Force, Horn, Violence, Power (see above). This format immediately informs the reader that no one word can encompass an entire concept. One needs to identify an entire constellation of words and their meanings (what linguists call a "semantic field"), and then examine the discourse in which these words are found, to provide a comprehensive treatment of how New Testament authors understood the concept of power. A study on just a single word would leave out too much information and be misleading. Yet the new edition reverts back to single word, alphabetized entries. 

    Silva does provide a concise list of concepts at the beginning of the first volume (below), but it is a poor substitute for a more technical treatment of semantic fields. 

The new NIDNTTE by Moisés Silva (2014)
A list of concepts with English glosses
is given in the beginning of vol. 1
but missing is an needed analysis on
how the words relate in a semantic field

Let me explain. The older edition provided little discussion on how the different words in a semantic field relate to each other. What is the difference between kratos ("might"), for example, and ischys ("strength")? I have my suspicions on how to answer this question, but I would like to have seen the new edition provide an updated analysis. To date, we only have one lexicon that does this in any systemic way: that is, Louw's and Nida's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains. This new NIDNTTE edition could have taken the material of the older dictionary, incorporated the contributions made from Louw and Nida, and created a lexicon based on semantic fields that surpassed any of its predecessors or competitors. But alas, it does not. 
    So, at the end of the day, I would strongly recommend pastors, seminary students, and theologically trained leaders alike to purchase the NIDNTTE. I can imagine someone preparing for a sermon or Bible study, reading about a particular Greek word of importance that is highlighted by a commentary, and wanting to learn more about the word, then turn to the NIDNTTE to look up more information. I would suggest to also check the list of concepts with English glosses to see what other words belong to the same semantic field. As a lexicion, it is an excellent resource. 
    While I myself will likely refer to the NIDNTTE on a regular basis, and undoubtedly learn much from its volumous pages, a part of me also laments at what it could have been. I can only hope that a future third edition might dare explore the still uncharted territory of semantic field lexicography.

Postscript: the above review will be published in the next edition of the Covenant Quarterly