The other day a friend let me know that he had read Mark Strom’s Reframing Paul: Conversations in Grace and Community, something he had been meaning to do since reading my review first published here in June of 2005. Going back tonight and rereading that review myself has reminded me of just how earth-moving that book was for me. It set off a chain of thinking about the church and how we do church that I have not been able to get away from since.

In case you missed it the first time, here is the review in its entirety once again:

A recent post on an internet message board revealed that the writer had given up going to church. He listed as chief among the reasons his frustration with the inability of people in church to be “real.” Despite the preaching of the Gospel of grace and forgiveness, it became apparent to him that no one felt safe revealing any weakness or failure. Least of all the pastor, not if he wanted to keep his job. At least one respondent suggested that there were probably “real” reasons, suppressed by the original poster, for why he left the church; in other words, it was more likely his fault than the church’s. However, almost all the other responders to the thread expressed empathy for the poster’s feelings, many of them sha+ring their own feelings of frustration or dissatisfaction with church. Not all will leave their church, but when pressed, many will admit that they continue to go only because “that’s what Christians do.”

Find a similar post on any message board, or even bring up the subject over coffee with friends, and you’re likely to get some similar responses. While our awareness of sin should make us always suspect our own idolatrous expectations, the question remains: is there something fundamentally wrong with the way we “do church” that also underlies such widespread dissatisfaction?

Reframing Paul: Conversations in Grace and Community by Mark Strom explores this question by asking what the Apostle Paul thought church should be. The relatively recent explosion of documentation and scholarship on life and thought in the Greek/Roman/Israelite world of New Testament times has produced a plethora of studies on “what Paul really was thinking.” Those garnering the most attention (and controversy) have attempted to shed new light on Paul’s theology by positing a different take on the Judaism from which he was departing (the so-called New Perspectives on Paul). Strom, however, is interested not in what theology Paul was arguing against but rather what (false) ecclesiology he was battling in his letters. He argues that a knowledge of the goals and values of the “enemies within” of first century church will help us better understand Paul’s conception of the ekklesia, the local church. In other words, we can’t understand what Paul was arguing for until we know what he was arguing against. Strom’s startling and unsettling conclusion is that the values Paul was arguing against are in many ways the very ones that are held most sacrosanct by the modern evangelical church.

Reframing Paul begins with an extensive and detailed study of the fundamentals of Graeco-Roman culture, the worldview of the society (both Gentile and Jewish) in which Paul and his original readers lived. This section of the book reads like a philosophy text book, examining almost every major development in Greek thought, and it’s unfortunate that many readers might give up at this point. Summaries of the main points at the ends of these chapters would probably have been sufficient and helpful for those who want to get on to the author’s main thesis. However, for those who desire the full evidence behind Strom’s assertions about Paul’s real concerns, this section is detailed and well-documented.

Whatever one may think of the current fracas over postmodernism, one of the side benefits of the debate has been a self-examination of modernism and its underlying assumptions. Such evaluation can be very helpful in uncovering our own blind spots, the real reasons behind doing things the way we do. Like our society, the Graeco-Roman world operated out of certain presuppositions which were so woven into the fabric of life as to be generally unnoticed and unquestioned. Strom shows that fundamental among the assumptions of that world was the belief in ideals or universals, that the “real” reality lay in realm of abstract, absolute “truths.” While different philosophies expressed this differently and drew differing conclusions from it, the end result was the same: an implicit devaluing of the “stuff” of everyday life. The ideal was to live the life of reason, the life of the mind.

That is not to say that this obsession with abstractions and ideals had no affect on everyday life; quite the contrary. That there were ideals or laws underlying the cosmos became strong support for the rigid categories of rank and status in the ancient world. The famous Delphic maxim “know thyself” had nothing to do with navel gazing; it meant know your rank and its obligations. Everyone assumed that the greatest benefit to all was derived from everyone in the polis knowing and fulfilling his or her place. For example, major civic project such as roads and public wells were not typically built using tax revenues as we would today, but were funded by wealthy benefactors. Thus the honor given to those of status and rank was not just a matter of custom but had very practical implications. Included in this social arrangement were patron-client contracts that often spanned generations and had complex expectations of honor and responsibilities in both directions.

These arrangements were rarely questioned and were seen as rooted in the primary realities basic to Graeco-Roman philosophy and religion. Primary reality implied that

the general is more important than the particular; that the greatest truths are timeless and universal; that a certain aloofness marked heroes and sages of past times…; that nature has endowed some men superior to others; that the highest god is unfeeling, unchanging, unmoving, unknowable; that one should know one’s place in the world and live up to its expectations; that reason and piety are the paths to immortality; that the highest good is to be found in the speculative, philosophical activity of the mind, the most honorable part of man; that the greatest truths of the gods are to kept in mysteries; that god is known only where words and logic have ceased.

In the second part of the book, Strom turns his attention to Paul, and in particular his presentation of Jesus Christ and his Gospel. Strom contends that attempts to frame Paul’s primary concern as laying forth a systematic theology miss the point. Rather, he sees Paul as a master story teller relating the story of Jesus. Or better, “Paul was like a jazz musician improvising on a theme. The theme was Christ and his story; the improvisations were the various ways in which he brought his knowledge of Christ to bear upon the changing circumstances of his own life and the lives of those in the fledgling ekklesiai.” This idea of improvisation on a theme serves as a prime metaphor for what Strom means by “grace-full conversations.” The Gospel is not a collection of abstract universal truths, but rather a story that is worked out and lived out in the everyday circumstances and interrelations of believers. Paul is not, therefore, constructing a new religion, a “Judaism-plus,” but rather is laying the framework for a new community, a new polis, one not based on the abstract disputations and social status of either gentile Graeco-Roman society or Torah-based Judaism.

The radical nature of this new community is made most explicit, perhaps, in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians. While in Galatians he was concerned with Christians regressing to Judaism, Paul’s concern with the Corinthians is their (to him) inexplicable desire to return to the conventions of Graeco-Roman culture. The context of his fear is the Corinthian’s apparent disappointment with Paul’s refusal to play the role of the Greek sage. In their eyes, everything he did was antithetical to what one who is looking to teach and be heard should do. The strikes against him were many: he refused to use eloquence and rhetoric; he was open about his failings and weaknesses; he was inconsistent in accepting and rejecting patronage; and he maintained his (lack of) status as an artisan (tentmaker), only one notch above a slave.

But Paul not only refused to fit the expected patterns, he actually gloried (”boasted”) in his weaknesses. For him all that mattered was the dying and rising of Christ and the meaning of those events for the everyday matters of life for believers. Strom summarizes Paul’s “innovative and often startling formulations” as

• The future has broken into the past.
• Life is a constant dying.
• Dying brings a previously inaccessible life.
• Weakness is the vehicle of strength
• Joy expresses meaning in suffering

With this framework, Paul could cheerfully ignore the social conventions and systems of thinking of his day. His purpose was not to found a new religion or system of thought, but a whole new way of living centered around the personal presence of Christ.

Strom is careful to qualify that, while Paul was constructing a radical new society, he did not advocate radicalism in the larger society. He practiced “in the world” as well as “not of the world.” For example, in the very argument where he was rejecting the necessity of rhetoric and eloquence to establish credibility for the Gospel, he made skillful use of those conventions (e.g., his use of irony in 1 Corinthians). He was not above accepting patronage (regular support from wealthy benefactors), although he seemed to avoid it wherever it could be construed as conveying status upon him. Additionally, he urged believers to remain content in their social rank and to cheerfully fulfill its obligations. So Paul modeled that believers were to live “normal” lives in society, yet be radically different in their perceptions toward one another (more on this later).

Paul also interacted with, and yet revolutionized, the world of theology. As in other areas discussed, the Greeks had developed theology along the lines of abstract ideals. These ideals constrained what God (or any gods) must be. Paul scandalized these theologians by presenting a God who is all-knowing and all-just and yet merciful, an irreconcilable contradiction to the Greeks. He only compounded the scandal by insisting that this God was not only personal and knowable, but had taken on flesh. Not only in his public discourses and debates (such as on Mars Hill in Athens) but also in his writings, Paul’s concern is not with abstracts about a “reasonable” God, but rather with Jesus Christ who lived, died, and lived again and has a love relationship with his people. Yet, as Strom points out, within a century after Paul, the primary concerns of Christian teachers seemed to be more with the abstract categories of Greek theology (the “essence of Christ that lay behind the story”) than with the one “who is rich in mercy.” His concluding paragraph concerning the implications of this shift for our own day is worth quoting in full:

Evangelicals have benefited enormously from the faithful and creative labors of many theologians. I certainly acknowledge that for myself. But there are other less acknowledged sides to the story of theology: its inability to connect with everyday concerns; its use to patronize and disdain others; its role in propping up an elitist system of leadership; its deadening effects on young theological students; its promotion of pedantry and destructive debate; its second-hand character that minimizes genuine creativity and new perspective; the ways it imposes law in the name of protecting grace; the ways it preempts and gags conversations that might otherwise break new ground in integrating faith and life. There is great value in laying a foundation of beliefs. But the methods and disposition of theology have failed to deliver its promise of a richer personal knowledge of God. Theology and church have by and large abducted the conversations that rightfully stand at the heart of the gathering.

In subsequent chapters, Strom continues to build his case that our modern conception of “church” little resembles Paul’s. He contends that the ekklesiai, the local Christian gatherings, resembled dinner parties more than religious services. He sees our insistence upon an ordained clergy as the triumph of the Graeco-Roman model over Paul’s model of servant-laborers who simply enable the Spirit-inspired one-another ministry of the body. This clergy is trained to remain aloof and superior to the congregation, the dispensers of the secret “higher knowledge” gained through their seminary training, the ones who must be given special honor and status necessary to maintaining the credibility of their teaching.

Strom recognizes that the intentions and goals of our modern church system are the same as those of Paul. Moreover, he states that those who support and nurture the modern system sincerely believe themselves to be following Paul’s directives. Nevertheless, as he says it, the “system is what the system does.” He contends that though we teach and preach radical grace, the fact that we do so from positions of rank and status and with the tools of law and rhetoric undermines the very message we preach.

Most fundamentally, he questions the centrality of preaching and the sermon as the single most indispensable activity of church life in evangelical churches. This is an area so sacred to some, particularly in the Reformed world, that to question it is tantamount to heresy. But Strom dares to question both the roots and the results of this model. For one thing, it tends to stress the superiority of the intellect, or at least the intellect as the primary means of knowing God. Thus, only the brightest are fit to pastoral ministry. He quotes one church authority as saying, “If a person cannot handle [seminary], we should assume that he is not being called to the work of gospel ministry.” Most seminary classes are oriented toward analysis and dissection of the text, extraction of its “universal truths,” and the Greek ideals of eloquence expressed in “conventions of voice, manner, appearance and style.”

In preparing the young preacher seminaries, even those that advertise themselves as helping one to “think biblically,” actually serve to inculcate a system of theology. The most desirable ordination candidates will be those who have proven their ability to organize biblical “truths” into the predetermined categories of the accepted system. This carries over into their training in sermon preparation as they are taught to deliver systematized truths that the congregation is then to translate into their unique personal situations. The recent innovation of tagging on an “application” section to the sermon does little to solve this. The very situation of a sermon, a generalized talk given to a diverse group of people, means that any applications must be highly generalized.

It is Strom’s position that the church long ago adopted the Greek ideals of abstract truth and the eloquent orator and then read those ideals back into Paul’s teaching. For example, when we read Paul’s references to preaching such as Romans 10:14 (”how shall they hear unless someone preaches?”) we usually have a picture of modern preaching in our heads, but how do we know that that is what Paul was referring to? Strom relates a story from his seminary days where his preaching class was given an assignment to develop a theology of preaching by the use of selected biblical words having to do with the speech-act. It occurred to Strom and a friend of his that the exercise was flawed because they “had assumed the conventions of preaching, then sought to validate these conventions with texts.” He goes on to make the stunning statement that “there is absolutely no evidence for anything like our conventions of preaching in the New Testament–no expository talks, no pulpits, no ordination, no teaching of eloquence. The evidence does not point to the centrality of a monologue in the early gatherings, let alone the conventions of preaching as we have known them for two millennia.”

Just like the Sophists of Paul’s day, the modern preacher is to “uncover the absolute and universal truths that his congregation needs most” and then “convey the persuasion and conviction of his message…to move the congregation ’so that the full impact of drama and emotion can take place’” (secondary quotation from R. C. Sproul, see Reframing p. 207 for reference). In this system, spiritual growth is made dependent on the ability of one person to communicate clearly and persuasively as well as on the ability of the listener to interpret, translate (into his/her own life situation), and apply. The great irony, Strom says, is that all the marks of the “best” of modern preaching–”ideals, universal principles, abstract systems, intellectual capacity, eloquence, preaching as therapy, elegance as a mark of leadership, professionalism”–were the very marks of the Graeco-Roman era that Paul fought against! A corollary to this emphasis is that many a fine man and woman of God who cannot measure up to those ideals is told that he/she is not fit for gospel ministry.

We come full circle, then, to Strom’s maxim: the system is what the system does. The words of the preacher may be all about grace, the power of the Spirit, and the priesthood of the believer, but the result of the ordained-preacher-centered system is control. All is dependent on the authority and skills of the preacher. Typically this system is defended on the basis of preserving the authority of Scripture. But Strom asks

What does the authority of Scripture mean to those who sit silently through sermons listening to Greek quoted as a key to deeper understanding? What does it mean when someone grows up experiencing the admiration and criticism of preachers’ oratory skills, hearing comparisons between successful and struggling ministers and churches, and noting the deference shown to pastors and professors? What does the doctrine mean when one grows up having to request permission from pastors for “lay” ministries? What does it mean in a system where qualification, ordination and salary are the marks of those who dispense permission?

Harvey Conn (”Theological Education and the Search for Excellence,” Westminster Theological Journal 41:330) adds

In the church [citing Ward] status is earned by knowing: what is required for leadership is the possession of a “magic bag of merits.” “These magic bags of merit are systematically dealt out only to a relatively few players in the game. The dealers are the theological seminaries. Once a magic bag of merit is in one’s possession, it can be traded for honor and prestige (plus a salary) at the friendly local church, and thus one maintains oneself, career and salary, more in terms of what one knows than what one is.

Over the course of our first year at seminary my wife and I have developed a similar concern from our own observation from inside the system. Now I hasten to state that the vast majority of the young students we have met at our seminary are intensely passionate about and committed to Christ and his church, as are our professors. Yet we see chapel services attended by barely a tithe of the student body, student prayer meetings where “two or three gathered” is all too literal, and an angst about grades and the ever watchful eyes of potential employers that seems eerily similar to that of students in an Ivy League MBA program. These students aren’t giving up on fellowship, group prayer and worship, and conversation because of a lack of piety. Rather they are focusing their time and effort on the only thing the system rewards: intellectual achievement. Now we have heard that a faculty committee is studying how to shift more emphasis in the seminary to character and spiritual formation. This is certainly encouraging, but Strom’s book still brings into question the whole system of seminary/ordination/pastoral authority that will remain whatever correctives are introduced. The bottom line Strom asks us to confront is this: is that system truly ‘biblical’?

In his final chapter, Strom lays out some “frames for grace-full conversation.” They are just that–frames. He in no way proposes some new system to replace the existing one. His very thesis is that Paul built no church system at all. (At one point Strom intriguingly raises the possibility that none of Paul’s references to the ekklesia have anything to do with the “universal” church, but he does not elaborate.) Rather, Paul simply instructed Christians to live out their relationships with Christ in their everyday lives. They were to gather together regularly, but such gatherings were to be the informal gatherings of friends over a meal, sharing, singing, exhorting, teaching, and praying for one another. They were not forming a new religion with its own set of rituals, rules, and priestly hierarchy. They were forming a new family, a new society, a new polis within the polis.

Strom sees Paul’s conception of the ekklesiai as being gatherings for “grace-full conversation,” totally the opposite of the Graeco-Roman social clubs where status and rhetoric were central. In the ekklesia believers are to actually believe that Christ is present with them and works through each member by the Spirit. All have something to contribute and all participate. Life and growth takes place through conversations, the sharing of our stories in the context of the Great Story of God’s redemption through Jesus Christ, culminating in the story of his death and resurrection. In this gathering, no value is placed on status or rank. Trained teachers are a valuable resource to the body, but they remain just that–a resource, not persons invested with special authority or responsibility merely because of their advanced knowledge. There are indeed leaders, but Paul sets their roles as servant-laborers, enablers of the ministries of everyone in the gathering. The overall goal is that grace will not only be spoken about but modeled and encouraged.

To call Reframing Paul an unsettling book would certainly be an understatement. Any book that challenges the core ideals of an institution central to one’s life is not one to be taken lightly. Strong reactions against it would not surprise me; I felt many of them rising up in me even as I read it. Recently a pastor saw my copy lying on a table at a church retreat and half-jokingly expressed relief when he discovered that it belonged to a “trained seminarian” and not one of the “lay” members of his congregation. This must be pretty subversive stuff! Yet, as startling as it was to hear someone lay it all out as bluntly as Strom does, little in the book came as a shock to me. In some ways, it was relieving to hear someone voice thoughts that I’ve had half-formed for a long time. Where did the whole system we call church really come from? Is it really what Paul and the other New Testament writers were after? If so, why does it so often seem to fail to produce what they said it should? How much are we invested in a system through the power of tradition that, for the sake of survival of the system, we must find a way to read back into the texts? In some ways, systems are like living organisms, they have an instinct for self survival.

One of Strom’s observations about Paul is that he refused to detach his personal experience and personal history from his teaching about Christ. Quite the contrary, he saw the two inextricably entwined. He very often told the story of the Gospel through his own story; whether of the past he had been delivered from or the working out of the Gospel through his own present-day trials, tribulations, and weaknesses. In a similar way, I can’t divorce my reaction to Strom’s book from my own experience. I’ve grown up in the church, many different churches as a matter of fact. Warts and all, the church as it is has been my closest family for most of my life, and I owe it a great debt. But I have also seen way too much of the manipulation, control, and (at worst) abuse that can take place as a result of the authority invested in the ordained ministry/senior pastor model. A kingdom is hard pressed to rise above its king, and a church is known by the reputation and skill of its pastor. So much is invested in this one man. We choose our church like we choose which late night talk show we watch: they all have the same guests and similar comedy routines, so what matters is whether I “connect” with Leno or Letterman.

On at least three occasions now I’ve been in or closely involved with churches that split or dissolved entirely based on situations revolving around the senior pastor. Too often the goal of church leaders or denominational authorities seems to be the preservation of the pastor’s ministry, even at the cost of losing many members of the congregation. Does anyone imagine that that would have been Paul’s goal?

However, my resonance with much of Strom’s critique is not just out of negative experiences. When my wife and I think back on what have been our most meaningful and life -changing experiences in churches, they almost exclusively involve “grace-full conversations” within small groups of closely-relating believers, not “worship experiences” or sermons. This is not to say that there have been no significant sermons; there have been many. But as I reflect on them, it was not the sermons themselves that produced change or growth in me, but rather the living out of the implications of the content as we worked them out in our lives together. In fact, it would be wrong to think that Strom discredits sermonizing and teaching altogether. He tells us that in the gathering of believers he was a part of for many years he himself was recognized as a qualified and gifted teacher. The difference was that the teaching and “preaching” was seen as an act of service and equipping to the body, a resource rather than the central and essential act of church life.

A possible response to Strom’s critiques might be from the perspective of church tradition. Indeed, my first response was to think if Strom is right, then most of the church has been doing it wrong for nearly 2000 years (Strom himself believes that the Graeco-Roman “captivity” of the church was an accomplished fact in a little more than a century after Paul). Has the Holy Spirit been asleep all that time? Would Jesus allow his church to wander in the wilderness for centuries? Or is it just possible that God is far more patient in his Fatherhood over the church than we would be? After all, our beloved Reformation didn’t take place until a millennium and a half after the church’s founding. And it should always be remembered that the Reformation was not an innovation but rather a radical returning to the foundations. The Reformers saw themselves as returning the church to the church of the early Fathers. Could it be that the present dissatisfaction so many are feeling with church as we know it and the stumbling attendant experiments such as seeker-sensitive and emergent church, are marking the birth-pangs of a second Reformation, one that will seek to take us not just back to Augustine but all the way to Paul? Mark Strom’s book challenges us in that direction.

Grace is subversive. It undermines the ideals and standards of those of us who can not tolerate weakness in others (or in ourselves). It undermines the pride of those of us who search out every vestige of unbiblical belief and practice. It undermines the presumption of those of us who preach the pure gospel to cure all ills. It undermines the safety of those of us who throw off the shackle of abusive and codependent relationships only to exclude grace from those who have hurt us. It undermines our need to find the ideal, the answer, the method, the cure. We are left with the weakness of grace-full conversation.Grace leaves us with Jesus. Jesus leaves us with his Spirit. His Spirit draws us into conversation. The conversation opens us to the wonder and fragility of life. The Father who gave us life bids us live and converse in grace.

Purchase Reframing Paul here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 10th, 2006 at 9:17 pm and is filed under Christian Community, Discipleship, MereMission, Post-conservative Evangelicalism, Reviews, Theology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.