L. Ann Jervis

Some of the most fruitful and profitable studies come from fundamentally re-assessing the assumptions which undergird certain core concepts in the faith.

I am currently in the middle of John Barclay’s Paul and the Gift and am very much appreciating his very deep investigation into how gifts and grace were understood in ancient contexts and in the history of interpretation. It helps to show how people have been talking above and past each other and very much tied into the framework of their place and time.

Not for nothing, then, does Barclay provide a forward for another book doing something similar: L. Ann Jervis’ Paul and Time: Life in the Temporality of Christ (galley received as part of early review program).

What Barclay does for gift and grace, Jervis does with time. She explores the two predominant perspectives on how Paul views time: the kind of “now/not yet” paradigm popularized by N.T. Wright and others (and one which I have favored), and the “apocalyptic” time viewpoint also common today.

Jervis does well at attempting to not bring any preconceived notions of how time “must work” for Paul in reading Paul’s works. She explores many of the ways in which Paul talks about who Jesus is and what He did in terms of time and temporality.

She well establishes her conclusions: for Paul, there is “death-time” and “life-time.” “Death-time” involves the ways of this world, the powers and principalities, and its corruption and decay. “Life-time” is what God has and is accomplishing in Jesus. She notes well how there is nothing which Jesus needs to be do in order for death to be defeated; He has already done what was necessary in His life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Thus believers are called to live in “life-time” and share in “life-time.” It is not as if she denies that Jesus will return and we will share in the resurrection of life; if anything, it is in her full affirmation of the resurrection and its power which leads her to conclude we already share in “life-time” and simply await for it to be made good in terms of our bodies.

One could strain to continue to justify a “now” but “not yet” framework, but as Jervis well notes, such gives a bit too much credence to that which Jesus has already overcome and defeated. “Apocalyptic” time is rendered irrelevant, because Jesus has been revealed and is revealed in His Lordship and work among His people. There’s no comfort here for a realized eschatology perspective since there is a robust affirmation of the resurrection of the body.

I definitely appreciated this study and have begun working to incorporate it more effectively into the presentation of the Gospel as it relates to where we find ourselves as believers in this moment. We have passed from death to life, and thus from “death-time” into “life-time”; we should live and act like it!… (altro)