Biblical Theology: Past, Present, and Future (II)
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 56, No. 1 – Fall 2013
Managing Editor: Terry L. Wilder
By Heikki Räisänen. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010. 479 pages. Softcover, $39.99.
Long-term research within the New Testament and early Christianity produced this work by Heikki Räisänen, the Emeritus Professor of the University of Finland. It consists of two parts, the first refers to the historical, cultural, philosophical, and religious background of the birth of Christianity. The second major division discusses various beliefs among early Christians. For those who have an introductory education in Biblical studies, Räisänen suggests that they might skip the first part and start reading the second part, carefully reminding them that his prepositions for later theological discussions occur in the first section.
Part I (chaps 1-3) shows how early Christianity was diverse in its beliefs. Caution concerning oversimplification of any early Christian element remains both necessary and recommendable. However, evangelical readers need to be aware that Räisänen considers Gnostic believers as genuine Christians whose views are simply different from so-called orthodox Christians and could possibly be closer to the original understanding of the gospel. Räisänen assumes that a first-century New Testament theology does not have the authority or the right to judge the orthodoxy of later Christians and to prescribe a solution for any theological problem. As a result of this presupposition, Räisänen adopts William Wrede’s thesis of “no New Testament writing was born with the predicate ‘canonical’ attached” and asks his readers to see that “the canon is a later construction that came gradually into existence in a complicated process during the second to fourth centuries” (4). Therefore, in order to capture a true picture of Christianity from the unfixed Christian world of thought, Räisänen does not mind moving beyond and reinterpreting New Testament theologies in light of non-canonical and even heretical writings of Nag Hammadi. Räisänen intentionally avoids a confessional reading of the development of early Christianity because there is no “prescriptive or normative” element in first-century Christianity yet.
Räisänen repeats F. C. Baur’s old but still popular hypothesis that first-century Christianity struggled with a rivalry between a Pauline (Gentile) Christianity and a Petrine (Jewish) Christianity. However, one must admit that such a theological conflict between two rival Christian communities in Galatians, in particular, argues from silence at best because the text itself does not describe how Paul’s correction of Peter ended. Furthermore, the second-century writers seem to disagree with Baur and Räisänen. In his admonition to Corinth, Clement of Rome mentioned Peter and Paul as the “righteous pillars [of the Church]” and presented them as the examples of all Christians (First Letters to the Corinthians, 5). Clement’s description of Peter and Paul does not show any rivalry or tension in the church of Rome and in the church of Corinth. Irenaeus (Against Heresies. 3.12), Origen (Against Celsus, 2.1.), and Tertullain (Against Marcion, 4.5.3.), who mentioned Paul’s rebuke of Peter, never recognized the existence of a theological conflict between a Petrine community and a Pauline community in first-century Christianity.
Part II discusses several fundamental early Christian beliefs: eschatology (chaps 4-5); anthropology (chap 6); soteriology (chap 7); Christology (chap 8); pneumatology (chap 9); ecclesiology (chap 10); Christian relationship with pagans (chap 11); and the development of Christian orthodoxy (chap 12).
With regard to eschatology, the resurrection of deceased non-believers and eternal punishment for sinners include no room in Räisänen’s understanding of the early Christian world. If any resurrection arrives for nonbelievers, it would only transpire for their judgment, and, then, annihilation would occur. Resurrection and eternal life belong to believers alone. Räisänen believes that Paul and the Didache (16.7) support his conclusion. One should not take Paul’s relative lack of using the term “hell” or “eternal punishment” as evidence of the apostle’s defense of annihilation or rejection of Jesus and John’s clear teaching on eternal conscious suffering in hell as the second or eternal death. Paul continued the ministry of Jesus and worked with other apostles. Therefore, Paul would not have been hesitant to clarify his position if he was different from other Christians or so-called apostles on eternal punishment. Rather, Paul’s relative silence about hell could mean that Paul accepted Jesus and John’s lessons on that subject and might have felt no need to highlight the issue further. As a matter of fact, Paul spoke of ὄλεθρον αἰώνιον (eternal destruction, 2 Thess 1:9) as a rightful payment for the sinners. In contrast to Räisänen’s appeal to 2 Thess 1:9, the word ὄλεθρον (destruction) itself does not favor annihilationism.
4 Macc has the same phrase ὄλεθρον αἰώνιον (10:15) and uses it as eternal torment of fire (9:9) by which sinners will suffer forever (12:12). In addition, the second-century writings, such as the Didache and Hermas, do not provide enough contents for their readers to judge whether those patristic works rejected eternal punishment or could be simply read in favor of annihilation. In contrast, other contemporary works such as Second Clement (17.7), Letter to Diognetus (1.29) and Justin Martyr (I Apology, 8; 28; 52) provide explicit references to eternal conscious suffering of sinners.
Nor does the Finnish scholar accept that the resurrected body of Christ could ascend into heaven because that body, if transformed, did not quite become spiritual and kept its fleshly constitution. Indeed, Paul taught that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 15:50), and only the spiritual body could receive incorruptible things in heaven. Paul’s teaching of the resurrection is not much different from the Greco-Roman view of “the immortal, but material, soul” (emphasis Räisänen’s) or the “Jewish visions” of the “resurrection of the spirit from Sheol” (127).
In addition, the Gospel of Thomas presents a more Pauline ideology concerning the resurrection because Thomas spoke of the “rest of the soul” and the abolishment of “dichotomy” between sexes or the body and the soul, not “the idea of immediate postmortem retribution” in the Gospel of Luke 16 (129). The Platonic negation of the body strongly influenced Paul in spite of his Biblical emphasis on the corporeal nature of the resurrected body. For Räisänen, Origen’s denial of the actual physicality of the resurrected body is not heretical at all but is rather “a reasonable attempt to make sense of Paul’s [unclear] account in 1 Corinthians 15” (131).However, Räisänen misunderstands Paul’s notion of the pneumatic sōma. The resurrected body is not a simple improved body. The resurrected body is pneumatic not because it will be no longer corporeal but because it will be completely under the power of the Holy Spirit and will be no longer vulnerable to corruption, sin, and death.
On anthropology, Räisänen acknowledges the universality of sin as part of Hebraic biblical anthropology but rejects the concepts of original sin. No one is born with the inherent sinful nature. Every sin is “acquired” (140) later in one’s life. The Hebrew Bible and other Jewish literature, except 4 Ezra, remain at odds with the Augustinian despair of human incapability to accomplish the requirements of the law. Pelagius, not Augustine, maintained the theological legacy of Hebraic Biblical anthropology. If any difference exists between Räisänen’s early Christian representatives and Pelagius, it appears in the possibility of a sinless life. The former did not believe it, whereas the latter defended it. Surprisingly, Räisänen argues, “Jesus himself went to be baptized by John, indubitably in order to repent and to receive forgiveness for his sins” (139). The predominant thought of early Christians on humanity is “much closer to Judaism (and Islam!) than to mainstream Protestantism [based on Augustine’s original sin] with regard to the issue of the human condition” (153).
Regarding soteriology, Jesus did not expect his disciples to understand his death as an exclusively salvific event in the Protestant sense. Penal substitution or bearing the guilt of others, even though some of the New Testament writings contain several references to the death of Jesus as a ransom, does not receive weight. Räisänen states, “It is even controversial whether Jesus anticipated his imminent death….this would be hard to understand if Jesus had spoken to his followers of its extraordinary saving significance” (159). If there is any value in the vicarious death of Jesus, it shows the exemplary death of one Jewish martyr. As E. P. Sanders already demonstrated, the Second Temple Judaism and the early Christianity described in the New Testament taught the necessity of good works not as the evidence of salvation but as one ingredient of salvation. Therefore, for early Christians, salvation comes not from Luther’s sola fide but from Pelagius’s synergism between divine grace implanted in nature and human effort by observing the law. Räisänen does not see any theological consistency within Paul himself and between Paul and other writers such as James.
The title of Räisänen’s section on Christology – True Man or True God? – shows a very close theological affinity with James Dunn’s adoptionist argument. Christ never taught his ontological equality with God the Father. If there is any equality between Christ and God, it is always to be functional, not ontological. What early Christians did in their worship of Jesus was not the adoration uniquely set aside for the true God but the veneration attributed to the angels and the servants of God who appeared with divine authority and power. High Christology in the Gospel of John is a completely rewritten story of Jesus by later Christians.
Even the Gospel of John presents a docetic Christology in order to promote the deity of Christ. Räisänen sees the later Christological confession of the councils as a theological evolution, not a theological clarification, from the New Testament. Like John Hick, Räisänen does not accept the genuine incarnation of God in Jesus Christ.
Chapter 11 on the Christian relationship with pagans in early Christianity might be the least controversial part of this book, although there are still debatable arguments. Räisänen is right in that the persecutions of Christians in the first and the second centuries were not universal but local in the Roman Empire and that the local citizens, not the government, were responsible for those persecutions. Christians’ rejection of joining pagan social practices involving idol worship, and their refusal to offer honor to the cult of the Emperor, might be the immediate cause of the persecutions of Christians in the Roman Empire during the first two centuries. However, Räisänen desires to minimize the contribution of Christian martyrdom in the development of early Christianity and its growth. Therefore, he describes John’s references to the persecutions of the seven Asia Minor churches in Revelation as his “expectation of a worldwide persecution” “due to the tremendous impact of his apocalyptic thought world,” not as the actual threats to the churches (292).
The last chapter is the author’s summary of his own arguments in this book. To read this last chapter even before reading the first chapter might be a good way for readers to grasp the author’s theological presuppositions of the formation of early Christian beliefs.
This book may not be a good textbook for evangelical seminary students whose theological understandings of the Bible and Christian orthodoxy find foundation on their confessions. Nonetheless, Räisänen’s detailed exegesis of various Gnostic views would undeniably deepen conservative evangelicals’ understanding of Gnostic alternatives to the early orthodox Christian beliefs. An instructor or students of department of religion at a college that pursues more inter-faith dialogues might discover interesting thoughts for their concerns. Räisänen offers very provocative thoughts and perspectives on essential Christian themes. However, he presents them in a way that denies the commonly accepted assumptions and conclusions that historic orthodox Christianity has preserved since New Testament Christianity. Not only evangelicals but also many Catholic or Orthodox believers would not easily embrace the methodology and theological conclusions that Räisänen employs in this book.
