10 - History and Israel

Summary

Central to current Pauline scholarship is the desire to do right by Paul’s Jewish heritage and the first-century Judaism that formed him. To do right by Judaism historically is, however, not the same as doing right by Israel theologically. Exegetes continue to think of Israel’s existence as subvenient to the wellbeing of the nations. This chapter argues that the narrative substructures assumed in contemporary approaches form the building blocks of a different reading. This account should be centered on the nonfunctional nature of God’s relationship with Israel as witnessed by the Torah, the prophets, and Paul. It is a relationship motivated by divine love for this people. Read through the lens of the incarnational vision of Colossians and Ephesians, it is a relationship born of God’s desire to give Godself in incarnation. If Christ is the embodiment of the first divine intention vis-à-vis all that is not God; and if human embodiment is essentially particular, located in a particular history, culture, tribe, and family, Israel is the very particularity created to receive God’s presence. In Christ, God’s first decision is to be a God for others; those others are Abraham’s family.