Faith in the Son of God (Foreword by Robert W. Yarbrough): The Place of Christ-Oriented Faith within Pauline Theology

By Kevin McFadden and Robert W. Yarbrough

A Study of "Faith in Christ" in Pauline Theology
Over the last fifty years, the apostle Paul's theology has come under immense critical examination. One important issue prompted by recent scholarship is the correct translation of the Greek phrase pistis Christou as "faith in Jesus Christ" (Galatians 2:16). Many English-speaking scholars now interpret this Greek phrase as the "faithfulness of Jesus Christ." This new translation is bound up with the theological argument that we are not justified by our own faith but by the faithfulness of Christ.
Kevin McFadden argues that faith in Christ is a proximate cause of salvation that accords with grace. Not only is this treatment a helpful introduction to the pistis Christou debate, but it also demonstrates the central role of faith in salvation as the church brings the gospel to the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Crossway Books
• Release date: May 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781433571435

Kevin McFadden

Kevin W. McFadden (PhD, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is professor of New Testament at Cairn University in Philadelphia and the author of Faith in the Son of God.

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A number of recent books have been written on the subject of faith in Paul’s letters, and so we might wonder if there is anything fresh and interesting to say about faith in Christ in Paul’s theology. McFadden’s book shows us that the answer is yes. I was struck repeatedly by McFadden’s careful and astute reading of the biblical text, a reading in which he dialogues with scholarly interlocutors. McFadden demonstrates that faith in Christ is constitutive of Paul’s theology and central to it as well. Those interested in Pauline theology, even those who disagree, will be provoked to consider anew the role of faith in Christ in Paul’s theology. We find here a remarkably close and insightful reading of the Pauline letters, one that repristinates the theology of the Reformers for our day.

Thomas R. Schreiner, James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament Interpretation, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

"Kevin McFadden has written an important book on a central theme of the New Testament and of the theology of the apostle Paul more specifically. Interacting with a wide range of scholarship, he forcefully defends the traditional understanding of the phrase ‘faith in Christ’ as highlighting the necessity and the reality of faith in Jesus that saves sinners. At a time when it has become fashionable to diminish the significance of individuals in favor of corporate dimensions of the body of Christ, Faith in the Son of God describes with admirable exegetical sensitivity how Paul uses the language of faith when explaining what sinners do as God saves them on account of Jesus’s death on the cross. Thus, the book is as much about the gospel as it is about faith, and thus about the effective witness of the church in an increasingly secular world."

Eckhard Schnabel, Mary French Rockefeller Distinguished Professor of New Testament, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary; author, Jesus in Jerusalem

McFadden presents a compelling case that Paul’s letters emphasize the importance of faith in Christ. His argument is that ἐκ πίστεως Χριστοῦ describes Christ-oriented faith as the means (‘instrumental cause’) of salvation. This work is biblical theology at its finest. Not content to merely tread the path well worn by others, McFadden presents fresh arguments that I have not previously encountered. He writes as a scholar who is consistently fair and irenic in his treatment of differing views and as a humble student who is able to learn from those with whom he disagrees. More than anything else, he writes as a faithful exegete who seeks to formulate his theology from the biblical text rather than impose his preconceived theology on the text. I highly recommend this book to scholars, students, and pastors.

Charles L. Quarles, Research Professor of New Testament and Biblical Theology, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

Faith in the Son of God

Faith in the Son of God

The Place of Christ-Oriented Faith within Pauline Theology

Kevin W. McFadden

Foreword by Robert W. Yarbrough

Faith in the Son of God: The Place of Christ-Oriented Faith within Pauline Theology

Copyright © 2021 by Kevin W. McFadden

Published by Crossway

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Wheaton, Illinois 60187

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Cover image: Jordan Singer

First printing 2021

Printed in the United States of America

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Scripture quotations marked NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-7140-4

ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-7143-5

PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-7141-1

Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-7142-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: McFadden, Kevin W., 1980– author.

Title: Faith in the Son of God : the place of Christ-oriented faith within Pauline theology / Kevin W. McFadden.

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020022105 (print) | LCCN 2020022106 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433571404 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781433571411 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433571428 (mobi) | ISBN 9781433571435 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Bible. Epistles of Paul—Theology. | Jesus Christ—Spiritual life—Biblical teaching.

Classification: LCC BS2651 .M395 2020 (print) | LCC BS2651 (ebook) | DDC 227/.06—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022105

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022106

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2021-04-19 04:09:23 PM

To my beloved Colleen,

διὰ πίστεως γὰρ περιπατοῦμεν, οὐ διὰ εἴδους·

(2 Cor. 5:7)

Contents

Analytic Outline

Foreword

    Robert W. Yarbrough

Preface

Abbreviations

Introduction: The Πίστις Χριστοῦ Debate and Pauline Theology

1  Paul’s Understanding of Christ-Oriented Faith in Historical Context

2  Direct Statements of Christ-Oriented Faith in Paul’s Letters

3  Conceptual Parallels to Christ-Oriented Faith in Paul’s Letters

4  ’Εκ Πίστεως Χριστοῦ as a Pauline Idiom for Christ-Oriented Faith

5  Theological Synthesis: Christ-Oriented Faith within Pauline Theology

Bibliography

General Index

Scripture Index

Analytic Outline

Introduction: The Πίστις Χριστοῦ Debate and Pauline Theology

The Theological Argument of the Faithfulness of Christ View

The Influence of the Theological Argument

Evaluation and Prospect

1  Paul’s Understanding of Christ-Oriented Faith in Historical Context

The Meaning(s) of Πίστις

Faith as a Concept

Faith’s Subject and Object

Faith and Salvation

Conclusion

2  Direct Statements of Christ-Oriented Faith in Paul’s Letters

Faith in Christ

Faith in the God Who Raised Christ from the Dead

Faith in the Gospel

Conclusion

3  Conceptual Parallels to Christ-Oriented Faith in Paul’s Letters

Obedience to the Gospel

Calling on the Name of the Lord

Hoping in Christ

Seeing the Lord’s Glory

Conclusion

4  ’Εκ Πίστεως Χριστοῦ as a Pauline Idiom for Christ-Oriented Faith

A History of Translation and Interpretation

Evaluation of Hays’s Christological View of Πίστις

By Faith as a Consistent Pauline Idiom

Conclusion

5  Theological Synthesis: Christ-Oriented Faith within Pauline Theology

Faith and Christology in Paul

Faith and Anthropology in Paul

Faith and Soteriology in Paul

Faith and Eschatology in Paul

Conclusion

Foreword

This is a book with a clear and striking central contention: Paul significantly emphasizes Christ-oriented faith in his theology. This is a bombshell in an interpretive world in which the faith/faithfulness of Christ (hereafter FOC) has for many largely supplanted the older notion that faith in Christ was the key to salvation.

I confess that I never thought the FOC view (as a wholesale replacement for faith in Christ) was convincing. So the exegesis and arguments of this book ring true to me.

But what will other readers think? Kevin W. McFadden certainly has his work cut out for him in this book.

For the FOC understanding has become a ruling paradigm for many, and no substantial correction is sought or allowed. After all, the FOC view¹ (sometimes in concert with the celebrated New Perspective on Paul) has the great virtue of calling into question not only the Reformation reading of Scripture but (more importantly) common evangelical preaching in the Reformation vein that calls the lost to personal and saving faith in Jesus. The mainstream we who eschew such preaching know how trite and wrong this preaching is!

Therefore, the FOC view functions for some as a bulwark against affirming the legitimacy of preaching that calls for saving faith in Christ all around the world. That’s a pretty strong commendation if it upholds your status as a herald of the gospel that salvation is not by personal faith in Christ and never was—all you need is faith in a gracious God or participation in a community that celebrates Jesus (whoever he was) in ways analogous to how Paul and others in the early church framed and articulated their God consciousness. Or maybe it’s that, additionally, you should affirm staunch allegiance to a regal Jesus.² Construals vary; what is constant is a rejection of the Reformation’s sola fide conviction (salvation is through faith alone).

There is in too many cases an even more fundamental assumption at work in all this: no one needs to be saved in the New Testament and evangelical sense. Michael McClymond has shown how pervasive the doctrine of universal salvation has become—no one, in the end, will suffer eternal condemnation.³ Humans have already been put right with God as a function of the goodness of God’s creation or God’s loving nature or God’s covenant faithfulness or the total loyalty of God’s saving agent Jesus Christ.⁴ But isn’t this, in the end, just a recapitulation, in key ways, of what H. Richard Niebuhr summed up as liberal theology’s essence: A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross?⁵

This is not to say that all who support the FOC interpretation answer to liberal in Niebuhr’s exact sense. But many tend in that direction. And there is no question about which way mainstream academic readings of Paul tend toward at present along the divide between a liberal understanding of human nature and religious salvation, on the one hand, and an evangelical conviction of human sinfulness and proclamation of salvation through faith in the crucified and risen Christ, on the other.

Yet change is in the air. Leading lights in Pauline interpretation like E. P. Sanders are passing from the scene, and their arguments and outlook have come to seem, in the end, unconvincing and unhelpful to many. So perhaps this book will be a guiding voice in a move away from Hays’s FOC (and, where indicated, the New Perspective) and toward a fresh regard for the tried-and-true reading that McFadden seeks to rehabilitate.

Faith in the Son of God will certainly be a valuable resource and foundational for rereading Paul by a new generation of PhD students, seminarians, and intellectually active pastors who may be willing to admit that the FOC interpretation seems a bit thin and out of sync with too many New Testament passages, as McFadden shows. Some are bound to be asking, What’s the alternative?

This book is an apt reply for those with an appetite for interpretation tethered to the whole of Scripture’s witness. McFadden recovers a Pauline message true to historic gospel proclamation in the Reformation heritage that, while always subject to refinement, never deserved the dismissal it received in North American mainline circles. May gospel recovery among at least a few in those circles, and many elsewhere around the world, be among the outcomes of this understated but quietly brilliant book.

Robert W. Yarbrough

Professor of New Testament

Covenant Theological Seminary

1  The FOC view is the central concern of this book, particularly as epitomized in Richard B. Hays’s now-classic work The Faith of Jesus Christ: The Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1–4:11, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002).

2  See, e.g., Matthew W. Bates, Gospel Allegiance: What Faith in Jesus Misses for Salvation in Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2019).

3  Michael J. McClymond, The Devil's Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018).

4  Repetition of God and avoidance of a masculine pronoun referring to God are intentional in this sentence, in keeping with the linguistic scruples that often attend these theological convictions.

5  H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1937), 193.

Preface

Perhaps nothing is more axiomatic in the church than the idea that we believe in Christ. But as Martin Luther warned us, the doctrine of faith is indeed easy to talk about, but it is hard to grasp; and it is easily obscured and lost.¹ While faith in Christ may seem axiomatic in the church, it has been highly debated in the academy, especially among those who study Paul’s letters. Many have argued that Paul did not actually teach that we are justified by our faith in Christ but rather taught that we are justified by Christ’s own faith or faithfulness. Others suggest that we have mistranslated the Greek word for faith in Paul’s letters and thus misunderstood the concept. Add this to our broader cultural context in which unbelief has strangely taken the place of faith in our catalog of virtues, and it seems like plenty of reason to go back and examine carefully what exactly Paul’s letters say about faith in Christ.

This book has taken a lot of time and work to write, and I have many to thank for their help along the way. First, I am grateful to the Lord for answered prayer, strength, and understanding. Thanks also go to my friends and family for praying for me and encouraging me. My former provost, Brian Toews, and my colleagues at Cairn University granted me a reduced class load for the 2016–2017 school year that enabled me to get my mind around this topic. Jonathan Master, my former dean, has supported me since then with a schedule that enabled continual chipping away at it. Stephanie Kaceli, Melvin Hartwick, Caleb Daubenspeck, and the staff at the Masland Library helped me secure needed resources. Thanks are also due to the staff at the Princeton Theological Seminary Library for their hospitality and the use of their resources. Several students, friends, and colleagues read drafts of the work and aided me in clarifying and sharpening my argument, including John Biegel, James Dolezal, John Hughes, Gary Schnittjer, Tom Schreiner, Claude Soriano, and Mike Stanislawski. Courtney Schlect helped me compile the bibliography. And my wife, Colleen, read a draft of the whole book and significantly improved it with her eagle eyes and perceptive feedback. Any remaining faults in the work, of course, remain my own. I also want to thank Crossway for accepting the book for publication, Justin Taylor for his valuable direction throughout the publication process, the Crossway team for their excellent work in publishing the book, Bob Yarbrough for taking time to write a foreword that sets this study in a broader context and thereby shows its importance, and David Barshinger for his exceptionally skillful work in editing the manuscript.

This book is dedicated to my beloved Colleen. All the Christian life until the resurrection is, as Paul says, an exercise in walking by faith and not by sight. Sometimes we feel this more acutely and sometimes less. But I am so grateful to be able to share this light and momentary journey with a fellow traveler like you.

1  Luther’s Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1963), 26:114. Luther concludes, Therefore let us with all diligence and humility devote ourselves to the study of Sacred Scripture and to serious prayer, lest we lose the truth of the Gospel. Luther’s Works, 26:114.

Abbreviations

Introduction

The Πίστις Χριστοῦ Debate and Pauline Theology

Belief is so important.

Blaise Pascal, Pensées

On a flight several years ago, I was reading a book titled Paul and His Recent Interpreters when the person in the seat next to me said, Oh, people are writing about Saint Paul these days? Yes, I assured her, they were, and if I had said what I was thinking, it would have been that I wish they would write a little less! The pens of Pauline scholars have not been idle. So many aspects of the apostle’s theology have been questioned, reappraised, and debated in the last fifty years. These debates can become a weariness of the flesh to those trying to keep up and make sense of the various perspectives on Paul. But they can also force scholars and Christians from every perspective to reexamine Paul’s letters more carefully and with new questions. This is what the πίστις Χριστοῦ debate has done for me. It has forced me to reconsider what Paul’s letters actually say about faith, and this book is the fruit of that study.

For readers unfamiliar with this debate, it is a debate over the meaning of a Greek phrase that occurs eight times in Paul’s letters: πίστις Χριστοῦ.¹ While this phrase has historically been understood as a reference to Christ as the object of our faith (the faith in Christ view), many English-speaking scholars now understand it as a reference to Christ’s own faith or faithfulness (the faithfulness of Christ view).² So much ink has been spilled over this debate in the last few decades that one might legitimately ask, Why does it really matter? At the level of grammar, these phrases can really be translated either way. And at the level of theology, both our faith and Christ’s faithfulness are important, so the question may be simply which truth these eight phrases speak of.

But I have come to believe that this debate is significant because of the relationship of these eight phrases to Paul’s entire theology and especially his view of justification and salvation (and thus, by implication, our view of salvation). Six of the phrases occur in the apostle’s most important passages about justification: Romans 3:21–26 (2x); Galatians 2:15–21 (3x); and Philippians 3:2–11 (1x). Moreover, the grammar of the phrases in these passages indicates the role that πίστις plays in justification. This fact is obscured by the debate’s unfortunate label. Technically, the words πίστις Χριστοῦ never occur in Paul’s letters, because these words are always found within a prepositional phrase that indicates the means by which one attains salvific benefits (e.g., ἐκ πίστεως Χριστοῦ in Gal. 2:16).³ That is, these eight phrases are part of Paul’s common idiom "by faith, which he often sets in contrast with the attainment of salvific benefits by works of the law or by the law or by works (e.g., Rom. 3:28). All this means that the debate is not simply about the meaning of a few phrases; rather, as Karl Ulrichs rightly concludes, the debate is about the basic principles of soteriology."⁴

This fact has been recognized by the advocates of the faithfulness of Christ view but has not been adequately addressed by scholars who hold the faith in Christ view. It is sometimes forgotten that the influential dissertation of Richard Hays, which convinced many scholars of the faithfulness of Christ translation, was concerned not primarily with the grammar of these phrases but with the shape of Paul’s theology as a whole. In response, Barry Matlock, one of the most articulate advocates of the faith in Christ view, argued that we need to detheologize the debate, setting aside theology so that we can concentrate on the meaning of the word πίστις.⁵ I agree with Matlock’s view in this debate. I also agree with him that the theological concerns of the faithfulness of Christ view have tended to cloud the debate through a lack of precision in defining the word πίστις in Paul.⁶ Nevertheless, I think that Hays and others are correct that we cannot set aside theology in this debate, and I understand why he has faulted Matlock for failing to engage the argument in the terms that [he has] tried to pose it.⁷

The goal of this book is to engage the theological argument of Hays and others and then to retheologize the debate by examining Paul’s larger theology of Christ-oriented faith. The first step is to carefully articulate the theological argument of the faithfulness of Christ view, which can be summarized as follows: Paul does not teach that we are justified by our own faith in Christ but rather teaches that we are justified by Christ’s faith or faithfulness. This theological argument then propels us to reconsider what the apostle says about faith and Christ in the rest of the book. In contrast with those who have de-emphasized the importance of our faith in Paul’s letters, I argue that Paul significantly emphasizes Christ-oriented faith in his theology.

The Theological Argument of the Faithfulness of Christ View

Rarely does a dissertation have as much influence as Richard Hays’s The Faith of Jesus Christ, originally published in 1983 and then published in a second edition in 2002. Before Hays, many scholars had suggested the faithfulness of Christ translation in Paul,⁸ most notably Karl Barth in his early commentary on Romans.⁹ But it was Hays’s careful argument that convinced many scholars in the English-speaking world to adopt this new translation, which has now had an effect even on some English Bible translations.¹⁰ Because the faithfulness of Christ translation has become the enduring legacy of Hays’s work, many may be surprised to learn that the primary concern of his dissertation was not about the phrase πίστις Χριστοῦ but about the story of Jesus that underlies the apostle’s theology. In what follows I outline the theological argument of Hays and its continuing trajectory in the apocalyptic school of Pauline theology. Not everyone who adopts the faithfulness of Christ translation accepts this theological argument in its entirety, but I aim to demonstrate that it was an important part of Hays’s dissertation and is tightly bound up with the new translation.

Christology versus Anthropology

Those who hold to the faithfulness of Christ translation often label their position the Christological or Christocentric view, as opposed to the anthropological or anthropocentric view.¹¹ Framing the debate in these terms has led to some protest from the other side. Francis Watson, for example, comments that it is disingenuous to play off a (virtuous) ‘christocentric’ reading against a (bad, protestant) ‘anthropocentric’ one. It is simply a matter of exegesis.¹² While I agree with Watson, I think that these labels can help us understand the argument of the faithfulness of Christ view—namely, that its advocates think of it not simply as a matter of exegesis but also as a matter of theology, something that has been true since the influential dissertation of Hays.

Reflecting on his work twenty years later, Hays recalls that his central thesis was that "a story about Jesus Christ is presupposed by Paul’s argument in Galatians, and his theological reflection attempts to articulate the meaning of that story."¹³ Elsewhere he labels this approach narrative theology or the narrative substructure of Paul’s theology. Hays observes that "the book’s subtitle [The Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1–4:11] is a better guide to its content than the main title [The Faith of Jesus Christ].¹⁴ His argument about πίστις Χριστοῦ is an important but secondary thesis. And even this thesis is not simply about the translation of the phrase but more broadly about the meaning and function of the word πίστις in the argument of Galatians 3. Hays argues that Paul uses the phrase πίστις Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ, and the word πίστις, as a way to refer by metonymy to the story about Jesus Christ—specifically, to suggest and evoke that focal moment of the narrative, the cross. The cross was the place in which Jesus demonstrated his human faithfulness to God and in which God demonstrated his divine faithfulness" to humanity. Thus, πίστις Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ is an expression referring to the climactic event of Christ’s gracious, self-sacrificial death.¹⁵

Hays’s primary thesis about the narrative substructure of Paul’s theology and his secondary thesis about πίστις, however, are closely intertwined. This is because his argument is that the faith of Jesus Christ is a reference to the narrative substructure that underlies Paul’s theology in Galatians. Moreover, these two theses are both responding to the work of a German scholar whom Hays later refers to as the "great adversary whose shadow looms over The Faith of Jesus Christ"—Rudolf Bultmann.¹⁶ Reflecting twenty years later, Hays says,

In brief, it seemed to me that Bultmann had made two interrelated and fatefully mistaken hermeneutical decisions in his reading of Paul: he sought to de-narrativize Paul’s thought world, and he understood the gospel principally as a message about human decision, human self-understanding. The theological burden of my argument is to show that Bultmann was wrong on both counts.¹⁷

We should observe how Bultmann’s two interrelated and fatefully mistaken hermeneutical decisions are countered by Hays’s two interrelated theses. Bultmann’s famous project of demythologizing Paul’s gospel (which Hays thinks is better termed de-narrativizing) is countered by Hays’s thesis that Paul rested his theology on a story about Jesus Christ. And Bultmann’s understanding of faith as an act of decision, a new understanding of oneself, is countered by Hays’s thesis that Paul’s language about faith actually refers to Christ and not the human individual. This means that in order to understand Hays’s two theses, we must understand Bultmann’s two hermeneutical mistakes.

First, Bultmann refuses to allow faith to rest on the contingent facts of history: Faith, being personal decision, cannot be dependent upon a historian’s labor.¹⁸ He strikingly admits that he disagrees with Paul on this point: in 1 Corinthians 15:1–11, Paul thinks he can guarantee the resurrection of Christ as an objective fact by listing the witnesses who had seen him risen.¹⁹ But Bultmann asks, Is such a proof convincing?²⁰ He clearly does not think so: The resurrection cannot—in spite of I Cor. 15:3–8—be demonstrated or made plausible as an objectively ascertainable fact on the basis of which one could believe.²¹ Faith cannot rest on the facts of the past but only on the proclamation of the present: Insofar as it [the resurrection] or the risen Christ is present in the proclaiming word, it can be believed—and only so can it be believed.²² Even to believe in the cross of Christ is not to believe on an objective historical event. Rather, he says, to believe on the cross means the cross of Christ as it overtakes the individual; it means to be crucified with Christ.²³ This is the kind of demythologizing or abstracting of the gospel from the story of Jesus that Hays is responding to in arguing for a narrative substructure to Paul’s gospel.

Second, Bultmann’s existential view of faith is very focused on the human self, or anthropology. As Hays observes, Bultmann’s exposition of Paul, in the effort to free God’s action from mythological ‘objectification,’ inevitably tends to shift the weight of the emphasis away from God’s action and onto the human faith decision.²⁴ Another way to put this is that Bultmann allows faith to rest on no external object other than the present proclamation (the kerygma). In so doing, he shifts the emphasis away from God’s action in Christ and toward our faith itself. Bultmann also defines faith in existential terms, focusing on the individual self and the new self-understanding that one must submit to in light of the kerygma.²⁵ He argues that saving faith is not merely a belief that certain things are true about Jesus Christ but a faith which is self-surrender to the grace of God and which signifies the utter reversal of a man’s previous understanding of himself.²⁶ Thus, faith is not merely agreeing with the kerygma but is embracing that genuine obedience to it which includes a new understanding of one’s self.²⁷ This is the self-focused view of faith that Hays responds to by shifting the meaning of πίστις from our faith