THE GIFT, JOHN BARCLAY AND ST PAUL
I have a particular interest in Barclay’s recent book Paul and the Gift. Partly, because I have written a PhD thesis on a related – though much broader – topic, using contemporary anthropological notions of gift and sacrifice as a means to situate to Christianity on the spectrum of religious beliefs. I am also a great admirer of NT Wright. And while I was still engaged on the PhD, I went to a book launch organized for Wright by Chelmsford Cathedral. As the great man signed in his own hand my new copy Revelation for Everyone, we had a brief exchange in which I explained my research interest and he informed me of Barclay’s great work in progress. As so often in my academic experience, attempts to contact an eminent person who appeared to share my interest ended in failure.
I must admit to being not among the first to purchase my copy of the book. Nevertheless, I was sufficiently intrigued that when I began to see his study advertised and discussed, I had to buy it.
So, what do I think?
Barclay’s main contention is that Pauline Christianity (it remains unclear how this relates to Christianity in general) is distinguished from contemporary Jewish and pagan concepts and practices by the radical incongruity of its understanding of the concept and practice of gift. By ‘incongruity’ Barclay means, very specifically, that the Christian gift of grace is made without regard to the worthiness of the recipient.
In identifying radical incongruity as Pauline Christianity’s distinctive feature, Barclay sees himself as chiefly contributing, not so much to the discussions of social anthropologists about the gift, as to the ongoing debate between the New Perspective on St. Paul (NP) and the traditional interpretation of the Pauline corpus. In this debate, he appears to adopt a mid-way position, redressing, through his focus on radical incongruity, the tendency of the NP to over-emphasize elements of St Paul’s message that are continuous with contemporary Jewish ideas.
As regards the distinctiveness of radical congruity I believe Barclay to be mistaken. He is correct that St Paul’s notion of the gift demonstrates radical incongruity, and that this is core to his theology, but wrong in claiming this feature of the gift to be uniquely distinctive of Christianity, or St Paul’s version of it.
As for the Pauline debate, Barclay is correct that the NP has, for understandable reasons, tended to downplay the radical incongruity of Paul’s notion of gift. But he is wrong to represent his own focus as a return from NP to more traditional Pauline interpretation.
Let us begin with Barclay’s thesis that radical congruity is uniquely distinctive of Pauline Christianity.
Christian grace and the religious gift
My response to this is to draw attention to a particular category of the gift described by the social anthropologist, Jonathan Parry. Barclay himself refers to Parry’s work in his introductory survey of practices of the gift across the world’s religions and cultures. But he fails to pick up on the relevance to his own concerns of what Parry, in an influential paper identifies as ‘soteriological reciprocity’ [i] This is a type of gift practice distinctive of ‘confessional religions’ emerging in the axial age – i.e. Buddhism, Islam, and devotional Hinduism.
What we find in these religions, as compared with what preceded them, says Parry, is an altogether new focus on the motivation of the sacrificial giver and the role of the religious gift in promoting their spiritual progress. The gift is made FOR a spiritual goal (e.g. God, achievement of nibbana), even though it is made TO a fellow human-being (e.g. widows & orphans, ‘virtuous recluses’). The gift thus moves along two quite separate paths that must not be confused, and its value as a religious gift would be annulled by expectation of return in the here-and-now. We might be tempted to regard such gifts as unilateral. But Parry reminds us that, even though that is how they might appear from a sociological point of view, seen from the perspective of the religious giver, they would more appropriately be described as reciprocal, since a return is expected, albeit in the shape of some kind of spiritual good (e.g. reward in the next life, a better reincarnation), not than a material one. Parry sees this form of the gift as requiring a belief in some kind of moral return in the afterlife. Its social expression, as Mauss himself foresaw, is the development of practices of almsgiving.[ii]
Needless to say, a characteristic of all such giving is incongruity. Members of the donor’s religious community tend to be identified as suitable recipients, but by no means exclusively (at least, in Islam or Theravada Buddhism). Evidently, from the point of view of the recipient of alms, the gift is made indiscriminately, and doesn’t (or, at least, doesn’t necessarily) imply any prior attribution of worthiness to this, as opposed to that, recipient. In this respect, the benevolence of donors resembles the divine blessings of sun and rain, which descend alike on the just and the unjust.
So, incongruity could hardly be considered a distinctive characteristic of Christianity in regard to other confessional religions. The question therefore becomes: whether the gift practices of Christianity neatly fit the mould of Parry’s confessional religions; or whether they do indeed lie at the basis of its distinctiveness, but in respect to some aspect other than their congruity/incongruity.
I am very much of the latter opinion. There are few ethnographic studies devoted to gift practice in Islam, considerably more for Theravada Buddhism.[iii] But careful reading of these studies convinces me – and would soon convince anyone from a Christian background, I suspect – of a quite different moral emphasis where the sacrificial gift of Christianity is concerned, even if that difference of emphasis has little relation to incongruity. So, what has it to do with, if not incongruity?
It is always tempting for us to fall back on the familiar schemata of Protestant Evangelicalism; to the effect that soteriological reciprocity (whether in the shape of Buddhist ‘merit’ or Muslim ‘sadaka’) appears innocent of the Christian misgiving as to efficacy of a ‘works-based righteousness’ in securing any divine blessing. This gets us somewhere near; but doesn’t quite nail the difference.
The real distinctiveness of Christianity (and I suspect Judaism, too) lies rather in the perception that the very capacity of humans to relate to God comes to us as a special dispensation rather than being something native to the universal human condition. In other words, it is not a capacity with which we are naturally endowed, but one that must be superadded; a capacity as a result of which we become God’s children (and members of his family) in a special sense, not just by dint of being born human. This is closely related to the Christian perception of humankind as fallen or depraved. It is because humankind cannot restore its relationship to God, that it becomes dependent on a second grace, in addition to that of our initial creation. Kenneth Cragg helpfully contrasts with this fundamental Christian characteristic the relatively straightforward Muslim conception of the human relationship to God as a responsibility everyone can and must assume on the basis of the moral discernment they already possess, and links it, I think very perceptively, to the absence of any complicating notion of moral depravity in Islam.[iv]
This fundamental difference between the Judaeo-Christian position on grace and the Muslim one (which I take as broadly representative of ‘soteriological reciprocity’) produces various others. First, it distinguishes Christianity from traditions of soteriological reciprocity in excluding universalism: we do not stand as equals before God on the basis of common humanity (in fact, on that basis, we don’t stand before God at all); but only on the basis of some supplementary dispensation, which may or may not be ours, and of which we may be more or less worthy. Second, it differentiates us in excluding individualism: the possibility of God’s favour comes to people by dint of their being amongst those who have received the special dispensation; not to each and every human being as their birth right. A consequence of this is the collective nature of divine grace in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. God’s covenants are always with communities, not individuals, even if those communities are, at time of the covenant is given, still in the loins of the favoured ancestor. A requirement of being a potential recipient of grace is thus being a Jew, or belonging within the body of Christ. Nothing is more antipathetic than this to the Muslim outlook, which fundamentally sees the possibility of grace as common to each and every human individual. Those individuals subsequently constitute the ‘ummah’ or family of the faithful. But the order of priority as between community and individual is fundamentally opposed in Christianity and Islam: in Christianity the belonging is prior; Islam begins with a purely individual act of faith as a result of which a believing community is established. The same, in principle, is true in Theravada Buddhism.
This is all I mean to say on the subject of why I think Barclay is wrong in giving the place he does to the characteristic of incongruity in the self-definition of Christianity (even in its Pauline expression).
What question is really being addressed by Paul and the Gift?
But the above discussion has a second purpose. Not only do I want to show that the distinctiveness of Christianity lies elsewhere, I also want, in so doing, to give a worked example of what I see as a good methodological approach. I hope the reader will see that helpful insights on Christian (or Pauline) distinctiveness can emerge when we begin from the standpoint of other (i.e. non-Judaeo-Christian) traditions, and attempt to see Christianity as it might appear from the opposite side of the fence.
Barclay’s problem is that he does not really do this, though the initial survey of the gift in other (non-Judaeo-Christian) traditions might give the impression that he does. In fact, this first chapter, with its anthropological discussion of the various modalities of the gift in the non-Christian world, serves only as background. It doesn’t really supply any of the criteria according to which the gift of grace is defined in subsequent chapters (as, for example, Parry’s discussion of soteriological reciprocity supplies the basis by which I appraise Christianity in the above paragraphs). Instead, Barclay resorts, for some unspecified reason, to a methodology he evidently derives from Kenneth Burke, conducting a kind of linguistic analysis of the concept of grace, by distinguishing its various ‘perfections’ – i.e. the distinguishable senses in which it can be taken to an extreme by different theologies. At first sight, there appears to be something arbitrary about why some characteristics of grace are selected in preference to others (e.g. ‘purity of intention’, the basis of soteriological reciprocity, does not figure); indeed, defined as they are here in the abstract, they are sometimes hard even to understand (e.g. ‘singularity’). But the motivation of Barclay’s selection becomes clearer, as we enter chapter three, with its comparative appraisal of seven defining theological positions in terms of these perfections. The reader rather suspects, in the absence of any strong counter-indication, that it is comparison of these positions that has provided Barclay with his criteria of evaluation.
So, the question which, by this point, the reader will conclude that Barclay is seeking an answer (it was never very clear at the outset) is which of a range of Christian theological positions best reflects the authentic position of the New Testament. But, frankly, these seven broadly defined positions do not really amount to a very representative selection of the views of grace that the Christian Church has taken over the two millenia of its existence. Here they are: Marcion (Gnostic heretic of second century); Augustine; Luther; Calvin; a constellation of 20th century Protestant theologians, including Barth, Bultmann and Käsemann; the representatives of the ‘New Perspective on Paul’, including Sanders, Dunn and Wright; recent theologians distinguished by their opposition to the New Perspective. For a start, the bias towards Protestantism seems unjustifiable. Protestant theologians have often had ‘Grace’ at the heart of their theological preoccupations, it seems unlikely they will have been the only ones to have distinctive and representative positions on the issue.
So, what is motivating this particular selection of theological positions?
The answer that immediately sprang to my mind on consideration of the above list is one not, I think, belied by the subsequent argument of Barclay’s text. Broadly, what we have here is, on the one hand, a representative sample of the traditional Protestant theologies long familiar to us (Augustine, Luther, Calvin, supplemented by the traditionalists of position 7), and, on the other, the theology of the New Perspective on Paul (EP Sanders, Dunn, Wright). Barclay evidently aims to weigh up the congruence of these respective interpretative standpoints with the position of Paul himself, by attending to their particular declension of the concept of grace.
As a goal, this seems to me entirely justified, though it not clearly signposted from the outset of the study. Let’s put it this way. The theological positions of Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Barth, Carson all have their distinctive inflections; but there is nothing in any of it that would ruffle the feathers of a Protestant Evangelical congregation such as the one I regularly attend. The differences are like the subtle distinctions of accent in a language we all share. As I listen to my more senior fellow Christians, I hear a bit more Calvin here, more Luther there, and (amongst the more sophisticated) just an occasional hint of Barth, and it all merges together quite nicely. But when it comes to position 6 – that of the New Perspective – we have something that stands out. It is a subtly new flavour of theological interpretation that has become familiar to most members of our congregation through the voluminous output of NT Wright – and, it is something on which, frankly, we not altogether united. Crudely, there are partisans of NT Wright, and partisans of John Piper. This couldn’t be said to amount to a theological split exactly; but we certainly have two rather distinct dialects of the common Protestant Evangelical tongue.
Barclay is evidently seeking in this book to characterize these two ‘sides’ on the basis of their understanding of grace, and subject each understanding to a comparison with an understanding of grace that Barclay himself attempts to extract directly from the texts of Paul on which he focuses in the second half of the book.
Where does Barclay stand on the New Perspective?
The crucial difference between the New Perspective and traditional positions on Paul emerges out of Barclay’s survey of theological positions on ‘perfections’ of grace. And it has little to do with those perfections. Rather, it’s all about a shift from the traditional emphasis on personal salvation and how to achieve it – by grace not works – to a more social emphasis on the Kingdom of God (i.e. covenantal identity) and how we belong – through Jesus, not through being a Jew. In Tom Wright’s terms, it’s about ‘bringing the Kingdom of God to earth’, not ‘going to Heaven when you die’.
The reason why we might expect this theological position to be indexed by a different configuration in the perfections of grace is as follows. The NP shift to a focus on differences of identity and social praxis as ‘the’ issue between Christianity and Judaism, church and synagogue, naturally goes along with a de-accentuation of the issue that traditionalists have understood to be the stake of St Paul’s message: notably, the opposition between grace and a ‘works-based’ righteousness. According to the NP, Judaism never preached a gospel of works, and grace is not what is ultimately at issue between Paul and the Judaizers. Hence, NP tends to stress what Christianity shares with Judaism in respect to its theology of grace. Barclay’s point seems to be that this has led NP to underestimate what distinguishes them, and the radicalness of Paul’s notion of grace.
That said, Barclay is hardly adopting a mid-way position between traditionalism and New Perspective. If I am right about what constitutes the crucial issue where NP is concerned (i.e. the shift from individual salvation to identity and social praxis) Barclay clearly belongs, heart and soul, in the NP camp. On the fundamental issue, one only has to read passages like the following:
The incongruous gift has subverted previous measurements of symbolic capital, establishing its own criteria of value and honour that are no longer beholden to the authority of the Torah. The Christ-event as gift is thus the foundation of Paul’s Gentile mission, while Paul resists attempts to reinstitute pre-constituted hierarchies of ethnic or social worth, and forms alternative communities that take their bearings from this singular event.(p.350)
It is inconceivable that a traditionalist (e.g. Stott or Piper) would ever speak in such terms. Concepts evoked in relation to the gift of grace such as ‘symbolic capital’, ‘hierarchies of ethic and social worth’, ‘alternative communities’ bespeak a fundamental allegiance to the thought-categories of the non-individualist Pauline theology of the New Perspective.
The question remains to what extent Barclay, with his focus on incongruity, is indeed diverging in any very significant respect from the position of NT Wright. The most impressive parts of the book (certainly the ones that leave the strongest impression on this reader) are those where he brings home the fundamental radicalness of Paul’s position – indeed, from a contemporary Jewish perspective, its enormity – in breaking with a tradition of social identity based on Torah-observance. This, in turn, leads Barclay to stress the discontinuity of the Pauline Gospel with everything that has preceded it in terms that, in certain passages, seem reminiscent of Badiou:
On every front, it appears, Paul is concerned to frame the Christ-event not as the completion of a Torah-narrative, nor even as a surprising turn within its progression. It is the reversal of the previous human condition and is inexplicable when viewed from the preceding human state, including the state of those under the authority of the Torah.(p. 408)
So, is Barclay offering us a ‘supersessionist’ reading of Paul? One that is irreconcilable with an anti-supersessionist account of salvation history like that of Irenaeus?
I think the answer is to both questions is: ‘No’. It’s all a question of perspective: that is to say, of whether you are looking at a landscape from ground level, or at 5000 feet up. With Paul – and the Letter to the Galatians especially – we’re definitely seeing things from ground level. What is at stake here, after all, was precisely the existence of an independent Christian identity – a ‘church’ as opposed to a re-interpretation of Judaism. In fact, this perspective of discontinuity is precisely the pre-condition of a properly ‘typological’ perspective such as that of Irenaeus. The fact remains one could go a step further than Barclay or St Paul to a properly supersessionist position such as that of Marcion or Badiou. I don’t suppose for a moment Barclay would propose we go there. This all becomes clear a couple of pages later:
Paul’s figural readings find reverberations in history of the Christ-event, which reveals what that history (and not just those texts) were really about. Christ is the hermeneutical key to both Scripture and history, because all of reality takes its bearings from the unique and particular event resonating backwards and forwards in history, and backwards and forwards in the text. To invert a well-known phrase, Paul finds echoes of the gospel in the Scriptures of Israel.(p. 418)
A visceral anti-supersessionist like Irenaeus, would find little to disagree with in such a statement. Irenaeus is, after all, speaking of types and antitypes in a manner that seems to require as its pre-condition precisely the kind of historical discontinuity that Paul and Barclay are speaking of – a moment which, as Dix put it, brings the eschaton forward into a moment of historical time.(Shape of the Liturgy, Westminster: The Dacre Press, 1945, p. 265) The strange thing is that there could be something – the Christ-event itself – in relation to which historical time would seem to enter such contradictory relations, being both at one level so utterly discontinuous with it, yet at another somehow continuous.
But that, given the eschatological nature of the Christ-event, is perhaps what we should expect!
Other related blog material:
[i] Jonathan Parry, ‘The Gift, the Indian Gift and the ‘Indian Gift’’, Man, New Series, 21, no.3, September 1986, pp. 453-473ä
[ii] Marcel Mauss, The Gift [1922], trans. By W.D. Halls (London, Routledge, 1990, pp.22-23
[iii] For a full survey of this literature, see Leslie Goode, Re-evaluating the relationship between Christian salvation event and ‘history of religions’ sacrifice: an appraisal of the theological options, PhD thesis, Heythrop College, London, 2018, pp. 177-183 ‘Fresh Perspectives on Ethicization in Conversion Religions’: https://gdoc.pub/doc/e/2PACX-1vQh36ynQiz-ut-uLC7UC7Bx4c0ij-QSPSJdeDmnNk66h3tcMHGKrSKpCYPHsrYPIg
[iv] Kenneth Cragg, The Call of the Minaret, London: Oneworld, pp.294-296