Paul vs Jesus: Whose Words Carry More Weight?

today's courageous conversation is Paul versus Jesus whose words carry more weight and we have four phenomenal New Testament scholars that I'm excited about the first one is dr. Angela Parker she is the New Testament professor at Seattle School of Theology in Seattle Washington the second one is dr. Delman Coates he is the senior pastor of the mountain on Baptist Church in Maryland the third is dr. Dennis Edwards he's the New Testament professor at Northern Seminary in Chicago Illinois and the fourth one is dr. Esau McCauley he is the New Testament professor in Rochester New York at North Eastern Seminary well you to people like me I know we are filled with seminarians and theologians and pastors but I say comment normal folk like me why don't we just start with what is this conversation even about Paul versus Jesus why is that even a thing why are we why do we even have that conversation I'll start off and I'll start off with a small anecdote I teach an introductory introductory New Testament class and at the end of my syllabus I have a wine list that I say pair a glass of Pinot Grigio with this particular New Testament text as you read yes the wine list to you all and oftentimes I have students who come to me and this could be a variety of students I had one and Assemblies of God student that came to me was so upset that there was this wine list attached to her New Testament syllabus and I said honey context matters context context context you have Paul who's writing to folks who are in an urban context and talking about don't drink too much wine don't do this don't do that blah blah blah but you have Jesus who's accused of being a wine-bibber he's accused of being a drunk Jesus and in agrarian context is going to think slightly differently about wine than Paul in an urban context and so these conversations that we have about Paul versus Jesus are actually very important and so I assure students in a little bit with my wine list another story to give a little bit background I didn't know about this conversation either when I went to seminary and I just thought I'm gonna come and study the Bible and when I first got to seminary one of the first things that happened to me is that I was assaulted by the pauline experts that they started asking about the new perspective the oldest perspective w imputation all of this stuff and I was like I don't want to talk about Jesus I was trying to be pious and so for a long time and just to be honest just to be completely honest a lot of that discussion of Paul was you link to a certain culture white culture in normativity and so the question wasn't just what was my interpretation of Paul where did I fit in and I know the language sound of lingo and I did and so I felt like I was inferior and I didn't know Greek they study Greek before they got there and so I was like you know what y'all gonna have Paul I'm gonna Trump you I'm gonna go for Jesus and so for a long time I wanted to be a New Testament want to be a gospel scholar so it'sit's the biggest surprise in the world to me that I ended up in the longest cope of history coming back around to Paul but I would think that in in reality a lot of the conversation around Pauline interpretation has been had exclusively in white spaces and for when African Americans coming to that place and get that conversation it's often disorienting thank you for that and I want to thank you for inviting us to start with this question of why are we asking this question in the first place because when I receive a set of questions I struggled with the question itself and it really invites us to really consider the context of historical criticism as a field of methodological inquiry what many people fail to realize and I think your comment was so appropriate is that the subfield of biblical criticism historical criticism is really rooted in a pursuit that has its origins in Germany to find the original Arian Jesus that was imagined in the mind of these early German theologians that if we can appropriate certain methodological tools we can we can isolate sayings and the Jesus tradition that we regard as earlier by stratus stratifying the sayings of Jesus even though we all see the words in red and we assume these all come from Jesus there's this stratification there's this stratification of the sayings of Jesus there is this very extensive criticism of Paul you know I find myself asking which Jesus which Paul you know and but all of this is rooted in in a pursuit of this pure Aryan figure that is imagined in the mind of the early scholars and we have inherited all of their questions all of their obsessions and all of their tools and I reject those questions because I think they are decidedly a part of a project that I think is this is against the aim the liberation aims and agendas of the people that I serve and so I think is I want to thank you for inviting us to start there because we do need to contextualize the question and we have not done a sufficient job of contextualizing the tools that we have received because they informs so many other questions that we ask throughout this day in the prior panel and we need to spend more time yeah so I summarize why Jesus has no power to save well I just wanted to add a couple of things in there it's a thank you all I mean I share much of that experience too I think part of it is a question of ethics that people think Paul has given or they read Pauline letters see a lot of the don't do this do this and don't see that in the Gospels so perhaps the question is really a question of the Pauline literature versus the Gospels per se maybe not Jesus per se because you see for example in the teachings of Jesus you hear oh you hear his main message of turn because the Kingdom of Heaven is close by and then you look at Paul you don't see the Kingdom of Heaven operative and much appalling teaching so there's a question of is G is Paul even interacting with the teachings of Jesus those are the kinds of questions that I think start to make attention how do the Pauline letters or the Pauline corpus how does it relate to the Gospels themselves I might say the kingdom of his in Paul we just read that's the first part and I said I mean we can get to that yeah I just mean you look you look at it and you don't see that same kind of interaction of term because the kingdom is here you so I'm just offering that as one reason why we see attention but I also have to point out that we do have to again contextualize even our text Paul's writings come first and so he's hearing oral tradition about Jesus and then he's writing to to communities who are trying to figure out how are we Jesus followers in the midst of this and then you have to think that then later years later people are starting to put together the Gospels and say oh maybe we need to write some of this stuff down so when we think about Paul versus Jesus we actually I think we have to think about what does the continuum of thought look like when we're thinking about our New Testament text in its entirety an understanding of sacredness that struggles with conflict and contradiction my understanding of sacredness is big enough and broad enough to embrace conflict and contradiction and so for me I think it's interesting that we're calling this meeting today courageous conversations because the Bible that we've inherited in my mind I imagine it's like the first courageous conversation where there's a great deal of conflict contradiction negotiation and yet what makes the faith that we identify with so rich is that it can handle the great diversity within our communion there is diversity before there is unity there is no this notion oceans about originality the reason there's a tradition of scholarship that privileges Paul over the Jesus tradition is because again they are trying to find this pure original figure it's a part of a Protestant anti-catholic project which imagines the gospel tradition as being imbued with a lot of ritual mist ISM traditions that they imagined as being derived from greco-roman pagan religions but you can have this pure Paul fellow who is untainted he's pure he's untainted not just religiously theologically but he's also culturally untainted this is also the same kind of project that's in the Jesus Seminar kind of movement for those familiar with the Jesus historic fight the quest for the historic Jesus and I just think that this project of conflict contradiction first and last is a quest that I don't know is is a project that's healthy for us I don't know if it's a project they would want to be a part of this is my problem we have to recognize that the project is out there and that especially when we think about white German scholars who try to figure out Paul as the perfect European identity or even think about Jesus as the perfect Aryan identity I think part of what we have to do is fight against that scholarship we have to be cognizant enough of the scholarship in order to argue against it because in my context I have students who will come to me from those same presuppositions from the idea that there is a Jesus is a universal figure who is a becomes a white Universal figure in their brain and the same thing with Paul so I have to be aware of the scholarship in order to fight back against it and give my students something a little bit broader and broadening up both Jesus and Paul so I don't think it's a Jesus versus Paul it's how European intellectuals have tried to contextualize that or decontextualize them in order to make them both white that's the problem Cooke so let me let me raise a question for the folk that could be watching this the regular folk so I'm I'm reading my Bible in my house because that's why I read it not in the classroom and I'm reading some things I'm reading some things that Paul is saying and that Jesus is saying and I call it what happens to be my my trusty Scholars on speed-dial and I'm like this seems to be in contradiction what do you say to me I think that the message of Jesus and the message of Paul are in fundamental agreement I think the Paul spoke about the kingdom I think that one of the things that happened and in this this is if if we're going to talk seriously about the history of scholarship then we're going to talk seriously about this idea that at the origin of German interpretation of the New Testaments the idea that in order for Jesus to become universal he had to become less Jewish and that Paul was the person who made Jesus less viewers and popular for his audience in Christianity becomes universal as the least Judaism behind and that's the case then you're gonna read Paul without looking for the New Testament resonances and what he says which means you're gonna be in see Paul as a theologian who's talking about abstract thought and not someone who's talking about the kingdom but if you understand that throughout all of Paul's letters he's constantly drawing on this grand story of Israel and he's talking about he's using Isaiah the entire time right and Paul like Galatians my area Galatians is like it's a rereading of Isaiah okay I mean what do you do when you open the Gospels the first thing you see is is John the Baptist who himself is saying I I'm preparing the way for the Lord as said in Isaiah and so I said if you understand Paul rightly then you understand how he uses scripture you begin to to get a better understanding that continuity I'm gonna say one more thing I read Howard I want Howard Thurman decently disinherited and I read him after I've been told the back end of my PhD and just about everything that was there at the new perspective on Paul is in that book so the entire revolution of need to take the exodus seriously we do think the Old Testament seriously leading me to Jesus Jewish again is in black interpretation of Paul and so I would say that one of the one reason where there's often this tension is because we've not read Paul rightly if you're not understood Paul himself as an as a retailer of Israel story in the same way that Jesus was I just want to jump in here I'm with you on this you saw I guess the the other part and you doc you refer to people prioritize Paul I think and I wanted to ask you what groups you might see that I don't know if that's like out and folks but I guess but my point though is to is that there's this sense of of G of Paul's of people's understanding of Christianity let's put it that way more broadly as merely pauline language so to say that it's all about justification per se and and then you don't see that kind of language in the gospels you don't hear it out of the mouths of Jesus so I guess all I'm all I'm saying is that your friends who are reading their Bible I think that the natural reading is where their attention might rest are in ethics you know in terms of you get a sense of Paul drawing lines and you get a sense of Jesus drawing circles you know in that sense but I think that's also a question of of what is when we boil it down to what's the essence we go to Paul at least in many Protestant circles and we say it's about justification and and you don't see that language in the gospel so I'm not offering that as a as as going to the solution I'm just trying to outline what I think some of that tension is is in that kind of language or the different kind of language but again even when we think about justification we have to think about the the term that's used in the taxes think I oh so it's righteousness and so we've taken this term justification take kind of stripped it of what it means to be made right and then even thinking through some of the Gospels where Joseph Joseph being a righteous man also being a justified man so to speak so we have these ethics we have this language that crosses both that crosses both gospel and Pauline literature as well so I'm kind of I often go back and forth are they in tension or are we just are we making more attention than what is really there I would also say God and this may be for only my academic people I gossip every another book on justification and so one of the things one of the rejections of Paul is this endless sir go on manoosh around salvation to the exclusion of ethical questions you can have you can you can name 50 every New Testament scholar who wants to be well-known needs to write a commentary on Romans or Galatians about justification but you don't have to write anything about Paul skeptics you get ignore pause ethics your entire career and be seeing at the top of the discipline but I'm like well then for every hour I've always said we should call for moratorium or justification books until until we started doing ethics and and what happens is when people want to do ethics you may have to turn to the Gospels and I really think it and I really think that what we really need is a recovery of a holistic interpretation of Paul that goes beyond arguing over and this isn't a it's an important question that's why we keep writing books about about how we say in an age of justification but I may I will probably die before I ever publish a book on justification because it's there's 15,000 people who would do it but I want to talk about Paul's ethics and what does Paul actually think these communities in the first century how should they live and he had a lot to say about that and this is where I think the scholarship was lacking if people who had that passion tend to go to the Gospels in dr. Paul for the for the benefit of thus those of us in the audience can you say more about your understanding of those texts that you regard as authentically Paul line do Turrell Pauline do you yeah it will help me to yeah I think Paul wrote all of it I know I know I know I'm in the minority position but here's the here's the question though if we're going to go back to the beginning right if you go back to the beginning and say that we have German scholarship created a standard by which they does what what was it wasn't Pauline based upon these these categories that we all now consider invalid I find it very interesting that we now still maintain that scholarly consensus so I tell all the German scholarship to kick rocks I'm going to start from the beginning and I'm gonna go from there and for that reason I think Paul wrote all of it now have I have I studied all of the arguments for and against Titus no what happened because I had other stuff to do but as a whole as a whole I think he wrote it but well my question though would be would it matter for this conversation or though does the authorship question matter for this conversation for you or yeah maybe that's just the question for from me I mean it depends it was a it was important for me knowing the the history of conversations around you know Paul in these texts it was important for me to kind of understand the context from which you're coming yeah on this a good example that for that might be Ephesians right so the idea that the church could be universal that early was a seem as some I mean there's the language issues and the theological tensions I don't want to downplay those things at all but some of the undergirding stuff was like of course Paul I mean the first generation of Christians weren't thinking about the church in a way that is describing the fuchsias to and I thought well why not and so does that mean I've been have a wider kind of palette of stuff that to deal with when it comes to parting interpretation I think yes and I also think that that means that those who limit Paul to the seven undisputed letters on one level it makes it easy because most of the stuff we don't like impalas in the stuff that we say isn't in there so I take the whole thing on board and say we gotta deal with all of the things our tribute to Paul as a means to construct the Christian theology but even if you disagree with me it's in the Canon so as a Christian who serves the church I gotta come to grips with the entirety of Paul's letters and try to put them into the kind of paint that was behind my question there it's in our Canon so so if I can pull it away from the particular authorship question for some level of discussion that's what I was just really asking why does it why was it important to you to know or is it rather important to know if Paul what Paul actually wrote I'm gonna have to go on the offensive side on this though because if we're thinking about the seven authentic letters and we're thinking about in the deutero Pauline the secondary Paul text I again I'm thinking that context is very important if we're thinking about Paul and the seven authentic letters and he's writing to these communities trying to get these communities into some some form of what it means to be with one another or bear with one another I can hold on to that and I can hold on to canonization as well however when we get into those deutero Pauline's and now we're having a church possibly I argue that's trying to figure out how do we live in this Roman Empire when Jesus is not coming back immediately and then they go back to some old standard forms let's go back to children obey your parents slaves obey your masters wives obey your husbands and do all this in this write unto the Lord where as in those earlier letters you get more women doing things you get women meeting in Chloe's house or all the church coming in to Chloe's house you get priscilla and aquila doing some stuff and then just say now alright no you can't do that anymore women know you gotta get back in and now we have to get into this hierarchy that's actually a Roman household code I think that's problematic and so I think we have to wrestle with ok this could this is I think this is authentic Paul this is deutero pauline and then think about what's happening in the midst of these contexts so that we don't automatically say ok that's the right thing to do and they shouldn't have been doing that in the first place and that's an argument that we're still having in our churches that i think we have to still wrestle with I'm glad to I wanted to live I want to listen once bring it up this is what it really comes down to the the late Paul is supposed to be the slave and hate women Paul that's through issue right and so what I want to say I mean that's what that's what it is that's why not like we're gonna be a courageous conversation tell the truth and so what what I would say is the following rather than then and a couple of things first you're gonna run into some difficulties with not not you we are going to struggle through 1st Corinthians 2 so I mean we're gonna have that issue even if we push all of Paul's stuff later there's some stuff in the 700 feet of lettuce but the second thing that I would say is rather than for me putting those letters of Paul in contradiction with the early letters of Paul I would say whatever Ephesians says has to be read in a context where we know what Paul's practices were and so it can't be the case that Paul expected all women to be completely silent when he's running around having woman preachers I mean so those things so so rather than just saying we're gonna dismiss Paul and I don't and we would have a long conversation about the meaning agree phrase which would just kind of skip but what I want to say is that if if Paul has these these liberated messages then that has to inform how we read those those other texts so he can't mean what they've said that he meant and then when you have two interpretations on the table which we can if you want to google them they're google of all right and one reading opens up the space for women to preach and teach and minister and one does it and we have on-the-ground evidence for Paul's ministry then I think the tie goes to liberation right if it's close then you read into that in that direction and so that's at least how I come now people can come to it differently but that's at least how I deal with those difficult pauline texts there's a there's a premise there that a that Paul's thinking does not change or evolve I'm not saying it does what I'm saying is that there is an operative premise about unity about the static nature of once thought that allows for this stratification of sayings this conversation in some way is connected to the prior panel about our notions of authority and one of the things I think we miss in Protestant circles is we miss what early Protestants meant by Scripture when Martin Luther says Sola scriptura or only Scripture is authoritative he was not talking about the book or the Bible there's a difference in Latin between scriptura and verba okay and Paul is and Luther and these early Protestants are very clear and having a discussion and a dinner lineage between whether it is verba that is authoritative which is the letter of the book or is it scriptura that is authority so how can someone if they want to get involved with u3 and support this amazing event that you have and just everything that g3 does how can they get involved well one of the major ways they can get involved is a donate I'm the g3 project not only reaches impact churches but we also have an HBCU tour where we engage students on campuses around the topic of Christianity being the white man's religion and we come back there yeah and one of the things we do is we're a support to help fund the HBCU tour so that the schools won't have to to pay for that so one of the ways that people can support us and reaching students is to give at Jude 3 project comm or they can mill in their gift and there's the address at g3 project comm to Mill in your gift if you want to do it that way as well Essaouira is the message of the Bible the good news the gospel right this sort of fetishizing of the book that we find in modern Protestantism is a form of theologizing that is so foreign to early Protestants who give us this language and is a far departure from the early Christians so from the early Christian so this notion of what is divinely inspired scriptura which martin luther is deriving from people like augustine and an origin who really gives the church its language that the scriptures are divinely inspired and when the when the early church these church fathers are talking about the divine inspiration of scriptures they will say explicitly that it is not the letter that is inspired it is this deeper divine meaning earlier we talked about allegory or spiritual exegesis as i prefer but this notion that the book is authoritative in us needing to fill this obligation to reconcile the book i think is a distortion of what Protestants meant by the authority of Scripture scriptura is decidedly different than verba the book it is not the book that they were regarding as inspired on matters of faith and practice but the message a christological message that they regarded as running from Genesis to Revelation I see you I told I want to make sure I didn't talk to myself I did something she can kick me trying to make it very much yeah I'm still formulating my thoughts you go ahead I mean I know I want to like respect and I'm in Baptist basis so I love all y'all but I'm like barely Protestant I'm Anglican and so we don't just we're not just come in with just so we I'm from a tradition I'm from a tradition there we go I'm from a tradition that contains that the honors both the inspired word tradition and reason and so when I talk about the the dialogue between those three for me it comes down to the fact that ultimately the scripture has the final word and when I talk about believing in the inspiration of Scripture is to me isn't like a confining thing and it's not always even easy I always tell my students that we use like the Jacob is the image that I like you so you gotta wrestle with Scripture until it blesses you and then sometimes you come to it and you feel like I can't find meaning here I can't find my purpose I can't find that God that I know but patience sometimes will bring that fruit and then I say read widely because the first thing that happens is you come across a difficulty in Scripture and you reject it but then maybe there's there's an interpretive tradition that you weren't aware whatever there's information that you don't have and so I think part of inspiration is patience with the text and then I first instinct isn't to say well there's this inevitable contradiction here's this or that but for me that's like what it means to be a Christian is that in some sense however you want to define it I'm stuck with this text and that it's not it's not within my authority to say I know a version of Christianity that I can construct apart from the text that is better than that which is contained at least in the text or its tradition of interpretation and so that's kind of where and maybe this humility maybe this arrogance I just don't think I'm smart enough to come up with an alternative version of Christianity that can sustain a community in the same way that the Scriptures have and so in that sense I find myself like if something's constrained to do the best that I can to understand it and being communicated to the people and I'm flawed I'm limited in my perspective but at least I'm that it's I'm wrong show me that I'm wrong he and we can have a conversation about it I want to say that part of what we hope for those that we may have an opportunity to minister to is that we're all thinking reasoning people and so we read scripture we think about the traditions that were in we reason even within our own bodies our own emotions our own knowledge and we have conversations around this and so to have a conversation on is second Timothy Paul or not Paul is I think another part of the reasoning process that even our folks that we deeply love should be able to engage in and not break down over that's not and I agree with you I and I didn't mean in my question to imply that we should not be asking those questions I was just saying we've inherited this canon so on one level I'm not sure I need to with the ordinary reader first worry about who if Paul actually wrote that or not I do think as people are asking questions we go there and I think it's helpful I'm I'm still wrestling with this notion of why when we want to ask tell people how tell people if you're the pastor I guess you're doing that or encourage people in some way that's our Christianese encourage you but but if we want to kind of point people a particular direction we do run the paul so and and and i think there's a pragmatics there right he's writing letters to churches so I think that so I guess I guess I'm just in my mind I'm still wrestling with the question on art panel because I'm still flooded with issues from the first panel don't wait a part two for that yeah but but I didn't anymore do you want to go there but I guess I'm coming back to you your question you saw about about our writings on Paul resting on justification and umpteen books there and not on ethics I'm curious what you mean by that when you say ethics and how might that relate to to the teachings of Jesus a couple of things I mean there's a ton of scholarship there's a ton of scholarship on for example Paul in slavery but maybe I'm wrong but how how aware of that conversation do you have to be to be recognized as a little nice collar on Paul so you could have read zero books on Paul and slavery and coming to grips with it and five books and justification you mean you get to go to all of the panels and be the expert on Paul and so I think that when I talk about dealing appalling epics I mean this is really the conversation we cannot have the conversation but it's about slavery right and it's legacy here the entire interpretive tradition of saying servant it's at a slave like all of this stuff are questions so but we know but we also know you say that is that Paul had egalitarian communities at least the beginnings of it right where we're slaves and women and Jews 2,000 live together and what are the implications of that beyond the like you know I'm colorblind mess but like the real implications of that for our society so the idea that you're going to go around the first century and start some what you got latarian communities has direct political implications in a divided culture but where is that I'm not gonna say where who's writing about that there is recognized I've been people here and people who are in this front row who suffered in their careers who they've chosen to pursue those areas and not pursue the cause of things to get promotion and tenure and those the policies and I'm talking about when I say not that we're not producing that scholarship but it's not always taken seriously understood that's it's interesting that you're talking about that because one article that is coming out next month I don't have it with me I'm sorry I can't hold up the article but it's entitled Paul's problematic self-identity so when Paul talks about himself as a slave for Christ and when Paul talks about himself as birthing children for Christ I take issue with Paul's co-opting of language I take issue with Paul's co-opting of slave language I take issue with Paul's co-opting of mothering language and birthing language because he's neither slave and neither mother and so part of what our own critical thinking skills means for me is saying that's problematic for african-american women who have grown up in Antebellum slavery I'm sorry enslaved women who had to bear children for a society women who had to bear children for masters and so yes we read we say hmm this is good but then we have to think well is it really good and what does it look like to have that conversation can I ask you a quick follow-up on that and this is really good I want to know I think I might as well go home clearly uh the people have got got tweeted you know Twitter is everything right so I tweeted out a passage where Paul was using a muttering image to talk about it talk about I forget which one is one of though he uses it in a couple places and most of the and the reason I did it because you know oftentimes the ministry is seen as a masculine thing and so most of the women who were on I was trying you know we try but we fail I was trying to say here's a feminine image for ministry that I thought I thought was liberated it says very interesting that you thought that I was an appropriation and so in the response to that that I saw when I did that and women who were kind of oh yeah see Paul does that so just really interesting that you saw what I thought of as a positive use of feminine imagery for ministry which I thought opened up you know it challenged both men and women to think my ministry differently you thought of that as a negative so can you say a little bit more about like how how we use Paul in that respect if that's you know these two different interpretations are the same same motif well see that the part that I've usually come to Paul from is I'm coming from thinking through black lives matter I'm thinking through enslaved folks I'm thinking through how have we taken up Paul and said oh this is all good part of when we think about the authority of Scripture again being able to push back and say wait is that really good or at least to ask the question so Paul will say you know he's birthing children for Christ but he'll say it in language that still power over top down to people so I still see him as trying to use the language but still trying to exert his authority over his over the people that he's trying to write to and to kind of put in place while using the language of oh I'm mothering to you but you better do what I'm support I'm telling you to say especially in Galatians think he's very angry and then he comes back and gives is that that mothering language so can you have it both ways Paul and is that a good example for us to think about how a masculine person can use his privilege and invoke motherhood but still be a power over a whole bunch of people that's the problem I have let me jump in with a question because I want does I got one thing and and I want to pull you to Sunday School class I want to pull you out of the Academy and I want to pull you to the 10:30 Sunday School class okay with the Saints with the heavily highlighted Bibles and the pages folded and since the Dinkas is in the front row and she got questions and I'm gonna invite sister Jenkins right now because I want to pour les the Sunday school because at the end of the day those are the people that we need to be talking to so this is my Sunday school question for you what is the gospel what is the gospel according to Paul and what is the Gospel according to Jesus that's a good question since the Jenkins wants to know I think both of those I think but it's weird because Jesus Paul would see Jesus that's right there's his authority but Paul actually defines the gospel in first Romans and the first Corinthians not what we think he does but actually the first different races risa the message is about Jesus Christ ascended of David according to the flesh that cleared the son of God and power as the asked by the resurrection of the Dead to which he has called him to be a possible about the obedience of faith to the Gentiles so Paul defiance has got gospel in Romans 1 as messed about Jesus Christ crucified and risen the result of which he is now ranting as king and now Paul needs to go to the Gentiles and tell them about this good news which seems to me remarkably similar to Jesus saying in Matthew 28 all authority on heaven and earth to me give it to me as the resurrected King who now rules over all now go and make disciples of all nations and so I think Paul really understood in Jesus both and that Paul doesn't only speak about the kingdom apart does define me that in Kingdom terms in both Romans and also on first Corinthians and Jesus defines his Gospel as being the good news about the kingdom and he end his message with map in Matthew at least to go and evangelize and so I would say both of them would have Jesus's Universal kingship and its implications for the entire world at the center their Proclamation and I'm with you I would say the gospel is Jesus and when Mark opens up this is the gospel you got two genitive there of Jesus I think he's saying this is the good news that is Jesus so I would say in the essence of it Jesus is the good news but but his message of repent because the kingdom is near I would say that's that's the gospel that the kingdom is right here nearby and it's there because of him he's the one that that's showing and demonstrating and welcoming people into the kingdom and I and I would agree with you he saw in that Paul's elaboration of that is he connects now this this kingdom of Jesus kingdom of God in Jesus to the grandeur story of Israel so that one can see how the death and resurrection of Jesus kind of I could say completes the story if you will of the Messiah so but I still I don't want to see it disconnect honestly I'm trying to say that they are connected but I think it starts with good news of the kingdom I've never pushed back a little bit because I'm thinking about where's the context that this gospel language is coming up in the got the context that the gospel language is coming up in is in the Roman Empire and so you have a Caesar Augustus who's already declare declared himself son of God and you also have a Caesar Augustus who says that he brings the you Angelia he brings the good news because he's stopping the war he's actually going and kicking everybody in the tail and then after he's kicked everybody in the tail he's bringing about peace what's that what's that what's that quote like Hugh Caesar makes a rule and it calls it peace yeah yes and say Jesus is coming and saying wait no this gospel is not about what happens just internally for this is where we get it wrong it's it's not just about this internal repent believe that Jesus hung bled and died for your sins but no Jesus has come in a context where war is running rampant and so good news actually means how are we going to make peace with one another so that we can live together a little bit better and I think that Paul does the same thing especially in the context of Galatians in these talking about people who are trying to be like other people like should we become Jews in order to to get this gospel of Jesus Christ no you actually need to stay who you are and learn how to be with one another learn how to be in community learn how to love one another that's the gospel as well and so we miss it will we make it all internal and don't think about what's going on in the external because that's part of the gospel too that's part of that absolutely I think the contextual applications of gospel in both Paul and in Matthew Mark and Luke are really by giving voice to this universal principle of liberation peace and hope this fundamental quest that is being expressed in particular ways in the in the Gospels and in Paul but they're really about inviting people to connect with this broad universal principle and commitment to freedom and liberation and inclusion which is both a personal value and a sociological value as well I guess I was trying to get at the kingdom like their liberation stuff by kingdom language one of the things that I find is interesting is that like we treat liberation theology is a separate reading of the New Testament that has two or Old Testament there has to be gleaned it isn't always there I want to say it's that that liberation narrative is actually in Exodus and it's in the kingdom and so you until you talk about the contradiction to the Roman Empire yes when you say I'm the king when there's other Kings there's inevitably political implications of that but in we've inched our communities that are under the authority of the true king then it's political implications of it when you then say entry into that Kingdom is based off upon faith anything that you do as the what it requires to get Roman citizenship that let's put the doclet cultural implications and so you write the gospel itself is an invitation to be a part of God's kingdom and God's family that touches the pond because the other thing that Caesar said that he was that he was the father of the Empire and so that all of all of the language of Christianity at various points touches up against not only Roman propaganda but modern propaganda and in it in the same way that it exposes Rome for the lies that it tells it exposes every modern Empire for the vile it tells about the ability to bring people together and establish peace and all the other stuff I just wanted to add amen I wanted to add though when I was when I when I'm quoting Jesus talking about term because the kingdom is heaven is near I don't mean that to say it's merely an individualistic kind of pietistic you know get yourself right with God kind of question I'm I'm seeing as he saw just explained the kingdom is of in this broad encompassing thing that we see not just in Paul but even in the in the general epistles of Jesus with his with his feet over it over the enemy in victory all things under his feet is is sort of that completion that picture so I I just want to make sure I'm not trying to present a gossip that's merely pietistic person I will repeat I will rip I wouldn't like I mean I think they're both I think that Jesus I think that Jesus encounters us and when you hear when you see the person of Christ you come face-to-face with your own sin failure yeah so there's this corporate reality that I can emphasize when it's lacking but there's ultimately everybody has to do business with the person who calls us and part of the interest in that chemically Kingdom with evidence to say I've not lived the Kingdom lifestyle and Jesus has shown me what it is I tend of not doing that and then I began to adopt those practices in my own life dr. average you mentioned language of drawing lines so Paul appearing to draw lines Jesus drawing circles and that for me it feels like there is a working bias not for you but to some generals we're having this conversation that somehow Paul is intolerant and Jesus is highly progressive so that's that's the working bias and it may be it might some of us might say like yeah we think it's true right and so in that sense what are the ways in which we reconcile that foundational bias maybe even in this very conversation that one of those represents the bad guy the other one represents the good guy and depending on what we want to do what we believe we run to one of those well dr. Edmondson thank you I that's what I was trying to touch on earlier when I wrote when I brought up the word ethics cuz I think that's kind of what's underneath some of the tensions people are feeling so when we have a question about what's good behavior or or maybe how we should look at others we go to Jesus and because we and we would say Jesus is welcoming we would say Jesus is loving and we don't and we don't go to Paul so I and I say we in a very generic sense but I but I do get this I don't see as much of the tension as people may may argue but I do see my suggestion is that when we read Paul's apparent intolerance we are somehow not taking to account of the picture of Jesus that that we have that Paul would have had that picture too so so say for example we go to the to the woman caught in adultery and we see this very well we I'll say loving but but certainly a very fair or a very welcoming posture of Jesus and then we look at Paul's own own and I he's ready to throw you out the church I would say that Paul still has the Jesus that Jesus in mind but but when you brought up the question of context I do think there's a contextual question that we do have to wrestle with to see if there is a potential tension I think that in this all right both Jesus and Paul can be problematic yeah I know nobody want to say that okay see this is the thing we think that Jesus is all loving accepts everybody and it's all good had a conversation last night about the Canaanite woman Jesus is heaven this woman comes to him crying begging Jesus my daughter is stricken with demons help me he ignores her doesn't say a word to her and she's still crying and disciples say get her away from us and then he's seemingly says something unthinkable and doctor will Gaffney has written on this you need to google her sermon on that and talked about I can't give to you because I can't give to the dogs and she's like well even the dogs under the table eat of the crumbs and so we hear that in our churches and think well Jesus is teaching this woman how to pray better he's making he's growing her faith no Jesus is very acting very ethnocentrically actually Jesus had some ethnicity issues and we don't want to read that in our text so Jesus actually drew a line for a moment so let me ask you this dr. Parker in that moment is Jesus sinning against this woman this is the problem this is what we're getting into in this where these courageous conversations are coming in that's a fair question but the thing is all right let's think about this let's talk about what we say about Jesus Jesus fully divine fully man fully human how is fully human goodness how can someone who's not fully human saved me I need someone fully divine and fully human who understands what it means to wrestle with some of the things that were wrestling with today even in our ethnocentric conversations so Jesus had to wrestle with that we gotta wrestle with it too I don't think I'm not comfortable saying that Jesus sinned against that woman but I am comfortable with saying that Jesus was in his human self at that moment and had to wrestle with his human self I am very comfortable with saying that and we've got to deal with that's you we had that we have another company will thank you all so much for joining us in part two of our dialogue Wow that was an amazing topic and an amazing talk on that so how can someone if they want to get involved with u3 and support this amazing event that you have and just everything that dude three does how can they get involved well one of the major ways they can get involved is to donate I'm the jewelry project not only reaches impact churches but we also have an HBCU tour where we engage students on campuses around the topic of Christianity being the white man's religion and we come back there and one of the things we do is we're a support to help fund the HBCU tour so that the schools won't have to to pay for that so one of the ways that people can support us and reaching students is to give at Jude 3 project comm or they can mail in their gift and there's the address at g3 project comm to Mill in your gift if you want to do it that way as well awesome awesome so until next time I'm staying junior and I'm here with Lisa fields we'll see you next time you Oh [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Jude 3 Project

Views: 21,128

Rating: 4.1671925 out of 5

Keywords: Paul, Jesus, apologetics, black liberation theology, esau mccaulley, delman coates, angela parker, dennis edwards, Courageous Conversations, Jude 3 Project, Howard Thurman

Id: 6T7aIWBWjGs

Length: 50min 45sec (3045 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 15 2018