Book Review: "Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul" by JRD Kirk

"Paul was not a systematic theologian in the Christian tradition of that enterprise. He was a missionary whose Pastoral letters strove to help churches faithfully play the roles God had assigned them in the drama of Israel as that drama was being brought to its head in Christ. He was a director, cuing the understudies to imitate the Master Actor's performance. He was a narrative theologian, writing letters to churches to help them see more clearly how God had written them into the cosmic story of salvation. The upshot of all this is that we are being the most faithful stewards of the Pauline correspondence if we use these letters to help us narrate our own communities' participation in the Jesus story."

      Paul, unfortunately, has been used to champion all sorts of things that in our modern worldview do not look very good. Were as Jesus is seen as the liberator of the oppressed, Paul is soon as someone who supports slavery, bigotry, sexism and most recently the rejection of equality for homosexuals. He is also accused of being someone who is only concerned with a "heart" religion and has done little to continue the imminent physicality (healing, feeding, clothing, freeing, mourning with, etc...) ministry of Jesus. This apparent disconnect has left many people who want to follow Jesus but have not found an ally in Paul thinking something like Jesus have I loved, but Paul have I hated.

      So Kirk sets about the task of deconstructing this, what he considers misguided, view of Paul in exchange for a view of Paul that locates him in the narrative of the God of Israel who is bringing about new creation. This reading requires us to understand Paul as situated in a specific time and place with a specific mission and expectations. Furthermore when we read Paul in the narrative of the God of Israel we recognize that the life, death and Resurrection of Jesus is the climax of that narrative, and Jesus has to be the lens which we view Paul through. 

    With that in mind Kirk works through issues like new creation, community, inclusion, women's roles, slavery, justice and sexuality. On every issue he starts with Jesus and works his way over to Paul, always reading him with the larger, cosmic narrative of God's redemption in mind. He concludes that Paul is always inviting us into more faithful participation in the incoming Kingdom of God, which involves figuring out what exactly that looks like in our own place and time.

      "There is, of course, a danger here, that we might confuse 'what is happening in the world' with 'what God is doing in the world,' as though these two statements meant the same thing... But there is a danger in falling off the other side of the horse as well, the danger of so restricting the activites of God to the church or to issues of personal spiritual growth that we miss our calling to praise God for what God is doing in the world and our summons to participate with this broader work as a component of our own Jesus stories."

    JR Daniel Kirk is a New Testament Professor at Fuller Theological Seminary. You can find him at his blog and you can order "Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul?" and his other book "Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God" at his Amazon Page.