Reinhard Feldmeier. Power, Service, Humility: A New Testament Ethic. Translated by Brian McNeil. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2014.

RBL 02/2015 Reinhard Feldmeier Power, Service, Humility: A New Testament Ethic Translated by Brian McNeil Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2014. Pp. x + 145. Paper. $19.95. ISBN 9781481300254.

David E. Briones Reformation Bible College Sanford, FL In Power, Service, Humility: A New Testament Ethic, a translation of Macht—Dienst— Demut (see http://bookreviews.org/pdf/8758_9641.pdf), Reinhard Feldmeier, Professor of New Testament at Georg-August-University, Göttingen, Germany, highlights a neglected and frequently misunderstood ethic in the New Testament: the connection between power, service, and humility. Although his work is too short for its scope, Feldmeier aims to situate service and humility toward God and others within a power spectrum, with God’s idea of power on one side and the world’s on the other, and so produces a foundational study on which many others will attempt to build (not least this reviewer). Feldmeier begins his study with a “Prelude with the Devil,” an introductory chapter in which he describes how Satan, in his strategic temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, appeals to the libido dominandi (“the will for power”). Having had success with Adam and Eve in the garden, the devil expects Jesus, the “Son of God,” to take advantage of the opportunity to demonstrate his power. Satan and Christ, however, hold antithetical conceptions of power. Satan affirms “power in the sense of an unfettered personal authority,” especially in the domination of others as a “superior power” (3). Divine sonship, for Satan, therefore means: a son whose will is superior to and therefore distinct from his Father’s. But Christ makes it clear that his authority and power as the Son of God

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consists “in the fellowship with the Father whom alone he ‘serves’ ” (3). Christ therefore submits himself to the Father as the true source of power for a life of humble service (see Mark 10:45). To be sure, Christ does not renounce power entirely. He certainly possesses it, as evidenced by performing wondrous deeds during his earthly ministry (see Acts 10:37–38). But he does redefine power. It is “an authority bestowed by his union with God” (5), which manifests itself as that which “brings benefits to others” (7). Thus, two opposing ideas of power emerge: “the power of the rule of God” and “the power of the devil.” The latter seeks to subject others forcefully, but God’s power introduces a “new reality” into which believers, who are united to God in Christ, live, move, and have their being in God’s will for the sake of others (8). Chapter 1 expounds on the power of the rule of God. Feldmeier briefly surveys the idea of power in the history of religion before turning to the New Testament. In ancient Greece, the gods, as personifications of powers, are considered “more powerful” by virtue of their deity. Unsurprisingly, veneration of the gods and political power coalesce in ancient Rome, particularly in the Roman imperial cult. Even so, Israel’s conception of God’s power parts ways with all other conceptions, as evidenced by the classic formulation of Proverbs 3:34 (LXX): “God resists the haughty, but he gives grace to the humble.” Extrabiblical parallels to this idea may be found (e.g., Hesiod, Works and Days 5–8), but what distinguishes the biblical testimony is that the enthroned God stoops down to raise up the lowly (see 1 Sam 2:4–8; Ps 113:5–8; Luke 1:46–55). As Feldmeier puts it, “God’s power benefits his human partner” (15). Power and service come together. Consequently, the human partner must recognize that all power is God’s power, acknowledge one’s distinct and dependent role as a human, and so align oneself with the will of the Father. This requires humility. God’s power therefore becomes a place for the vulnerable and powerless. This is “no potentia absoluta, but a potentia personalis sive relationis” (18). The connection between divine power and relationship becomes more palpable in the gospels, where “divine power in [Jesus’s] message is virtually identical with salvation” (19). It is a power that God shares with his people (Luke 1:48, 52; cf. 14:11; 18:14), as Christ performs mighty deeds to establish God’s rule in creation against the powers that seek to destroy life (Mark 3:23–27; Acts 10:38). But this rule is also expressed, albeit counterintuitively, in Christ’s own powerlessness on the cross. Paul’s theologia crucis expounds on the relationship between Jesus’s death/resurrection and weakness/power. The Christ who was crucified is the Christ who is called “the power of God” (1 Cor 1:23–24), sub contrario. This power in the powerlessness of the cross is what empowers the apostle’s life and ministry marked by suffering (2 Cor 1:8–11; 4:7–10, 16; 11–12). Being united to the suffering Christ, Paul participates in his weakness, a weakness that produces humility and a renewed vertical and horizontal disposition: by

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not puffing oneself up, one avoids marginalizing fellow human beings and leaving no space for God (26). To describe this process, Feldmeier coins the phrase: “an empowering power” (28), which the “Pauline school” describes by using ἐνδυναµόω to speak of God’s grace in Christ that strengthens (or empowers) believers (1 Tim 1:12; 2 Tim 2:1; Eph 6:10; cf. 2 Tim 4:17). In the end, God’s love is God’s power, a power that “preserves and maintains, a power that makes the gift of self, a power that has compassion for the guilty and the weak and therefore gives weakness a helping hand; but it is also vulnerable.… In short, it is a serving power” (33). The element of service thus becomes “the criterion for the human use of power” (34). Chapters 2 focuses on the human use of power as “Service.” Being freed from the power of sin and death and united to God in Christ, believers are manumitted in order to become “slaves of righteousness” (Rom 6:18). They are freed to serve (Gal 5:1). In Mark 10:42–45 Jesus describes the radical difference between the subjugating power of the world and the serving power of God in the Christian community. There, “true greatness lies in service, in existing for others and making their needs one’s own, free from the compulsion to assert oneself and from the urge to dominate” (42). It is not that Jesus envisions no authority in the community. Far from it. Rather, he promotes an inverted hierarchy in which those in the superior position act in the interest of others and tangibly display God’s loving rule (42). Jesus gives the gift of himself in service toward others; so, too, must his followers. Here, however, Feldmeier distinguishes between church ministries (Rom 12:7; 1 Pet 4:10; Acts 6:1; 1 Cor 12:5; 16:15) and the state as “servants” (Rom 13:1–7). What he has in view is the oppression and the abuse of power promoted by the Ansbach Memorandum, a response to the Theological Declaration of Barmen written by a working party in the National Socialist Union of Protestant Pastors in 1934. Its fourth thesis clearly supported the führer of the National Socialist state, Adolf Hitler: “as Christians, we honor, with gratitude to God, every ordering of society, and thus every authority, even in disfigurement” (54). Against this distorted view of the state as “God’s servant” (Rom 13:4), Feldmeier asserts that “the power of the state is the servant of God only when it does not bend the law but uses its monopoly on force to safeguard life in civil society—for in that way, it serves human beings in accordance with God’s loving will” (57–58). God’s powerful rule is enacted in the world when the servitude and selflessness of Christ for others is replicated in the lives of his followers. Chapter 3 highlights the human use of power as “Humility.” The key word here is ταπεινοφροσύνη. In the ancient world, ταπεινοφροσύνη and its cognates have a negative

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connotation, lying “somewhere between sycophancy and pusillanimity, servility and shabbiness” (61; see, e.g., Epictetus, Discourses 3.24.56). It went against the widespread desire to seek honor and glory for oneself by outdoing others. With this misconception in view, Feldmeier examines the New Testament development of humility as a “central concept of ethics” (63) by directly linking it to the Christ event (Phil 2:5–11). This event produced a “transvaluation of values” (66); that is, it created a new reality into which believers are transposed and which promotes “a new life praxis”: love, a praxis “oriented to Christ’s conduct and is shaped by it” (73). Through union with Christ, believers embody this new life praxis. The idea of embodying the love of Christ in humble service toward others is further advanced by 1 Pet 3:8–9 and 5:1–5a. There believers are called to have a “humble mind” and to “clothe [themselves] with humility in [their] dealings with one another.” Consequently, a reciprocity of humility occurs, vertically and horizontally: God gives grace to the humble (i.e., those who submit to his will) as they exhibit humility toward one another. Humility becomes “the bond of love—for God and for one’s neighbor” (88). Although I take issue with Feldmeier’s view of Pauline authorship among the “disputed” letters and perhaps some of his exegetical conclusions concerning the kenosis of Christ in Phil 2:5–11 (he employs strong statements such as “he renounces his divinity” [72] and “who divested himself of his divinity” [74], though he may be distinguishing between Christ’s earthly and heavenly ministry [see 76]), I thoroughly enjoyed reading Power, Service, Humility. It was refreshing to witness an author bring together God’s role as the source of all things, especially power, and (what seems to me) the obvious fact that neither a pure hierarchicalism nor egalitarianism in the church can be supported by the New Testament. A middle position is needed. The way forward, in my opinion, is the route taken by Feldmeier; however, it needs further exposition, that is, drawing out the theological implications from the tripartite relationship between God, believers, and others “in Christ.” One unfortunate fact about his work is that it may be a bit too ambitious for its length. This certainly does not diminish the value of his work, but it simply means that the structure of the overall argument lacks a few essential pillars. To begin with, Feldmeier completely avoids situating his work in the ongoing discussion on power in New Testament scholarship. Perhaps he wants to avoid writing a massive monograph in order to paint the broad brushstrokes of his thinking. If that is the case, it is completely understandable, but it would have been helpful to know his intentions. Even more disappointing is the absence of the connection between grace and power. This is somewhat surprising, since, in my view, one cannot have a proper view of obligation and service without rightly perceiving grace as gift and power (though, surely, overtones of Käsemann’s theology emerge throughout). Neither can one have a proper view of

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imitation unless grace, as gift and power, is understood through the believer’s union with Christ, the very embodiment of grace. Feldmeier tips his hat in this direction, especially when criticizing the “moralizing misunderstanding” that turns Christ into a mere model whom we imitate (72), but we are left wanting a robust imitatio Christi from a participationist rather than emulationist position. Despite these critiques, Feldmeier’s Power, Service, Humility will challenge New Testament scholars, pastors, and lay leaders to reconfigure their ideas of power in accordance with the biblical text, with the intended goal of promoting relationships of mutual enhancement rather than diabolical tyranny.

This review was published by RBL ©2015 by the Society of Biblical Literature. For more information on obtaining a subscription to RBL, please visit http://www.bookreviews.org/subscribe.asp.