I first discovered Todd Still while working on a Thessalonians paper. I found his book Conflict
at Thessalonica a model of biblical scholarship. He is rigorously historical,
careful in his judgment and pays close attention to the text. Thus I was
delighted to stumble upon a volume of essays he edited focusing on the old question
of the relationship between Jesus and Paul, Jesus
and Paul Reconnected: Fresh Pathways to an Old Debate. The list of
contributors includes some of the best NT scholars alive: John M. G. Barclay, Stephen
Westerholm, Bruce W. Longenecker, Markus Bockmuehl, Francis Watson and Beverly
Roberts Gaventa.
John Barclay’s article, “‘Offensive
and Uncanny’: Jesus and Paul on the Caustic Grace of God” draws from Bultmann
and Sanders to ask why Jesus and Paul were offensive to their contemporaries.
Barclay still considers this question largely unanswered. His suggestion,
surprising in a post-Sanders world, but argued brilliantly is that the scandal
of both Jesus and Paul was “the enactment of the deeply subversive and sharply
caustic grace of God” (5). Indeed, “both enact and express a paradigm of God’s
grace that is simultaneously welcoming to the lost outsider and deeply challenging
to the insider” (17).
Barclay points out that
though Sanders refers to the availability of forgiveness in Jewish literature (Jesus and Judaism, 202-3), Sanders fails
to take note of how Jesus’ enactment of that grace is actually portrayed in the
gospels themselves. “As the parable indicates, Jesus is dealing with people who
can never expect to find social acceptance, the irretrievably wicked, who are
permanently subject to hostility or suspicion” (9). Though ideally these sinner-folks
had the availability of forgiveness, it was practically speaking socially
problematic. It is not that Jesus introduced a new idea of “grace,” but rather he
enacted the grace latent in Israel’s traditions. “This dramatic act of generosity
emerges out of the ethos of Israel’s traditions and scriptures, but
simultaneously threatens to destabilize the categories and norms by which
righteousness is defined and covenant maintained” (11). So, the father who
loves the hard-working elder son is not celebrating the wickedness of the
younger son. Rather, he is attempting to uphold that standard of just activity
while simultaneously welcoming the younger son. This, in turn, forces the elder
son to submit to the scandal of welcoming back his wicked brother. Here is the
subversive grace of God on display.
The revelation of the gospel
is equally destabilizing for Paul, who prior to Damascus is the quintessential “elder
brother” – righteous according to the law (Phil 3.6). Yet, it was precisely
this righteousness that prevented Paul from seeing the grace of God at work in
the Messiah. In Barclay’s brief reading of Rom 9-11 he observes the way in
which it is God’s prerogative to act with unsettling grace (Rom 9.6-29) which
has become a “stone of stumbling” for Israel (Rom 9.30-10.21). In the end, Paul
argues that no-one can rest on their elective laurels but only the divine grace
(Rom 11.1-32). Thus, “Romans 9-11 is about the bonfire of the vanities, when
every social, legal, ethnic, and political support is stripped away by the
acerbic, but ultimately redemptive, grace of God” (16). This revelation of
grace forces Paul to rethink social identity for the people of God. He can no
longer operate under Torah but a new kind of social status quo that operates
with caustic grace, a grace that is everywhere imprinted in Torah but easily missed
by righteous eyes. Barclay as usual is cautious, not suggesting that Paul got
the idea from Jesus but simply noting the striking “congruity between Jesus and
Paul on this issue” (17). As Barclay sees it, the enactment of grace is the
scandal of Jesus and Paul.
