I was dialoguing with Glen Robinson on the translation of Galatians 2:16 under the post "By Faith Alone." I've spent a lot of time reflecting on this verse and actually have an article coming out this year with CBQ that ends with my understanding of it. I thought I might make this a commentary post.
1. We who are Jews by nature and not sinners from the Gentiles...
As the next statement makes clear, Paul is referring to "we Jewish believers" and although I don't think he is still telling us what he said to Peter, the "we" refers to people like him and Peter--Jewish believers.
Sinners from the Gentiles is not tongue in cheek. What is a sinner if not a law breaker and what other law would be in view other than the Jewish law. Clearly Gentiles don't keep the Jewish law, so sinners is quite literal here. Gentiles are clearly sinners. Paul plays out this idea in the whole of Romans 1:18-32--"Gentiles are sinners."
To some extent, we should think of Paul as starting out with common ground between him and Jewish believers like Peter. As we will see, however, he considers Peter's perspective to be incomplete because Peter only sees half of the equation. Paul will round out the argument when he gets to 2:17--we Jews, even Jewish believers, are sinners too. That is reminiscent to the progression of thought in Romans 2:1-3:20, namely, that Jews have sinned too. In fact, all [both Gentile and Jew] have sinned and lack the glory of God (Rom. 3:23).
2. since we know that a person is not justified...
Justification here is a legal term. The issue is on what basis a person might be considered righteous or "not guilty" in the divine court. Perhaps more to the point, the issue is on what basis a person might not face God's judgment. While the question is primarily a judicial question, its most crucial relevance pertains to the Day of Judgment and is thus eschatological.
I remain unconvinced of N. T. Wright's claim that it is also covenantal, meaning that a primary part of the meaning is whether or not a person is a member of the people of God and Israel in particular. Certainly Paul's language should be read as corporately as possible, rather than individualistically ("we" since "we" know "we" have placed faith...). But the Israel angle has not yet "clicked" for me. I don't see it.
3. ...since we know that a person is not justified on the basis of works of law except through the faith of Jesus Christ...
"Works of law" must certainly refer to works of the Jewish law. Paul is still stating common ground between himself, Peter, and other "conservative" Jewish believers. None of them, in fact no Jew at all, would claim that they deserved God's favor. They of course did believe that works of the law were an essential part of the equation, but all would have agreed with Paul that deeds of the law, apart from God's graciousness, did not earn God's acceptance of them.
"Works of law" might have had a strong connotation of the kinds of issues Jewish sects are notorious for debating. Rabbi so and so says that such and such makes the hand unclean, while so and so other rabbi says it doesn't. 4QMMT is a Dead Sea document in which, perhaps, the leader of one Jewish sect argues for his understanding of various temple issues to one of the Maccabean high priests. The title of this document is "some of the works of the law." Accordingly, Dunn argues that while "works of law" likely refers to any deed of the Jewish law, it probably had overtones of the elements in the Jewish law that distinguished Jew from Gentile.
The natural force of the word usually translated as "but" is more naturally translated "except" or "unless" (ei me). Since Paul is still laying out common ground between himself and Peter/conservative Jewish Christianity, this perspective is perfectly natural. Peter believes that the faithfulness of Jesus unto death (in other words, the atonement afforded through his death) is an essential element in justification before God. BUT, works of law are also an essential part of the equation for James and friends.
To take the phrase "faith of Jesus Christ" as a reference to the faithfulness of Jesus and in particular his faithful death is to take a particular position in a long and well documented debate. I personally became finally convinced when I came to a particular conclusion on the logic of 2 Cor. 4:13. That was the straw that tipped the scales for me. However, a more obvious argument is the similarity between Rom. 5:19 and 3:22. The parallel is striking, as pointed out by Luke Timothy Johnson:
"Just as through the disobedience of the one man many became sinners,
so also through the obedience of the one man many will become righteous"
"through the faith of Jesus Christ ... being justified [declared righteous]"
The faith of Jesus Christ here refers to his obedience to death (Phil. 2:8) and thus is a shorthand way of referring to Jesus' atoning death, the redemption provided through the atoning sacrifice God made through Jesus' blood.
4. We Jews ... since we know that a person is not justified by works of [Jewish] law except through the faith[ful death] of Jesus Christ, even we have put our faith in Messiah Jesus...
The novelty here for Paul is to point out that in fact Jewish believers have not only put their faith in God and what God has done through Jesus, they have in a sense put their faith in Jesus as Messiah. We are so programmed to think of faith in Christ that we miss that this is in fact the more unusual way of thinking of faith both for Paul and even moreso for other Jewish Christians. Rather, their faith was primarily in God and in what God had done through Jesus. Romans 4 is all about faith in God, not faith in Christ. And in 1 Thessalonians, in my view before Paul started getting really thick into these debates, he speaks of faith toward God (1 Thess. 1:8). God remains throughout Paul's writings, in my view, the primary object of faith.
But Paul certainly can also speak of placing faith in Christ, as this verse and other places where he uses the verb form pisteuo. We are prone to draw false distinctions between the verb "to believe" and the noun "faith" because they look different in English. But it is the same root: pisteuo (believe) and pistis (faith). To believe thus often means to have faith, although we have to be careful because these words have a range of meanings and should not be translated the same in every instance.
Hopefully everyone knows that the word Christ is the Greek translation of Messiah. Most of the time, the word lurks without Paul drawing much attention to it. But I think it has meaning for him (see, for example, Rom. 9:5) and I think the word order here in Gal. 2 means something. When referring to the faithfulness of Jesus, Messiah, Jesus comes first. But now that Paul speaks of putting faith in him, he puts Messiah first because it is primarily as Messiah, as Christ, that we place our faith in him.
5. ... we have put our faith in Christ Jesus in order that we might be justifed by faith of Christ and not by works of law...
I think Paul is having a little fun here. The expression "faith of Christ" is deliciously ambiguous, as the history of the scholarly debate shows. Is it faith in Christ or the faith of Christ? I think given the lead up it must be both, a clever double entendre. But I think that given his comment to faith in Christ that has just preceded, it has the upper hand. In other words, if I gave the tie to Richard Hays in 2:16a, I'm going to give it primarily to Dunn here in 2:16c.
So Paul sets up a contrast. The balance of the phrases with what are called "objective genitives" speaks against seeing Hays' interpretation here: faithfulness of Jesus and not doing the law. We are justified by trusting Christ and not by doing law. The principle of justification by faith will then play itself out throughout Paul's subsequent argument.
6. ...for by works of law no flesh will be justified.
Here Paul cites and modifies Psalm 143:2. The verse says that no one living is righteous before God. Paul changes "no one living" to "no flesh." Flesh is of course a characteristic category for Paul, as we have seen. "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Cor. 15:50). The key is therefore to get out of the flesh ;-), which we can due through the Spirit (Rom. 8:8).
Paul also adds the phrase "works of law" to the quote. In this way again those living can be justified through faith of Christ, even if not by works of law. Just as a final parting blow, Paul's use of Scripture here is the death blow to fundamentalist and biblicist interpretation. As I've argued elsewhere, we cannot use Scripture as Paul if we do not see the Word of God as something bigger than the words of the text. Paul found the text in the Word of God, he did not find the Word of God in the text.
Final Translation
"We who are Jews by nature and not sinners from the Gentiles, since we know that a person is not justified by deeds of law except through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, even we have placed our faith in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not deeds of law, for no flesh will be justified by deeds of law."
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14 comments:
I like this. Do you think NT Wright is partly right, since most of the context throughout Galatians is having to do with the Gospel expressing that Jew and Gentile are now one in Christ?
Doesn't the faithfulness of Jesus declare us to be right, but also break down the dividing wall between enemies?
Is that not in the context of this verse?
To borrow something Dunn has said about Hays, I don't necessarily think that the idea that "justification means you are declared to be a part of God's covenant with Israel" contradicts Paul's theology. But the question of the meaning of the word "to justify" is not a question of whether this idea fits with it or even a question of whether justification implies that a person is in the people of God. It is a question of whether Paul defined the word justification itself this way in some or all individual instances of using the word.
By the way, this is such a crucial point of understanding how words work, and I'm not sure I've ever reached clarity of explanation on it yet (unlike my smashing "dimmer switch" illustration ;-). But this is perhaps the "biggest offender" in the war of exegesis versus eisegesis. Here I'm moving beyond your comment, Glenn, to one of my pet issues.
On the one hand, reading Scripture with a view to "is my reading theologically true" approaches the way Paul used Scripture, reading the text in the word of God. The difference is that he often changed the words and what must have been obvious meanings to fit what he believed God wanted his audiences to get out of the text. In other words, I think he did so consciously at times. Some fundamentalist discussions of Scripture more often do so without realizing it while claiming to stick closely to the text, while claiming to get the word of God in the text.
Yet in terms of Paul's actual meaning, we cannot read the words with the question of whether the meaning we are finding is true, we have to ask whether it is what Paul was thinking in this particular sentence given its context.
I know you know all these things, Glen, so I'm just seizing the moment.
By breaking down the wall between enemies, I'm hearing overtones of Ephesians and maybe Colossians, right? Regardless of the pseudonymity issue, these two writings are too different from Paul's other writings to be used (without due consideration of the differences) to interpret Paul's comments in his earlier letters. My opinion... So the language of God "abolishing" the wall that separates is decidedly not the way Paul talks about the law in his earlier writings. And it is at least debated what the "handwriting in commands which was hostile to us" is (Col. 2:14). Some translate it as "record of debt." If it refers to the commands of the law, this is indeed a strikingly new image in Paul's writings!
You've hit a button and my response has nothing to do with you! I just feel that so much evangelical scholarship is so mediocre because it doesn't make crucial distinctions and it often doesn't do so because of sloppy presuppositions. Why are evangelicals often accused of being bad scholars? Because often they are!
Signed: an evangelical scholar ;-)
OAW:
1. I am willing to see a primary overtone of "sinners" here in relation to, for example, purity issues. I don't think circumcision was the issue in this case but table fellowship between Jewish and Gentile Christian. But your point still stands in the sense that it is primarily violation of what we would call the ceremonial law that Paul has in mind.
I don't think that Paul himself consciously divided the law into "moral law," "ceremonial law," etc., but I do find this later construct useful if we footnote it (isn't it Justin Martyr that it comes from?).
2. I would agree with you that in this instance Paul is not thinking about "final" justification. In fact, you might have pointed out an inconsistency between my earlier posts and this one if I meant to say that eschatological justification is in view here.
This verse uses the word "to justify" in both the present, aorist, and future tenses. The first statement is present "a person is not justified" (perhaps an aoristic present, though, where the nature of the action is not specified); the second is aorist "in order that we might be justified" (but it is subjunctive, so there is no temporal connotation); the third is future, "will be justified" (this one might be eschatological).
3) I'm sure you are thinking of Carson and friends (Justification and Variegated Nomism, vol. 1). The crucial distinction for me is not whether works were taken into account at all, it is whether works suffice in themselves and add up alone to justification. I am simply claiming that no Jew believed that they were justified by works alone. This is a crucial distinction in my mind.
4) The question of whether the NT models how to use Scripture is a crucial question. Richard Longenecker interestingly considers the manner of biblical exegesis to be cultural and thus not something we should do. I also agree that Paul was inspired and David Koresh was not, as well as the dangers of giving every Christian uncontrolled authority to do this with Scripture (I personally think the consensus of the church is an essential control factor).
But you have to admit that there's something awefully fishy about saying that the Bible alone is the authority except when it comes to the matter of how to use Scripture... ;-)
Thanks as always for deep level engagement!
I think I hear what you're saying. Words can mean different things in different contexts that the biblical authors use, which takes careful exegesis and time.
I too have been guilty of "lumping together" meanings of words to construct certain conclusions. I can really see the danger in that.
I think it's very easy in a pastoral context to jump the gun and apply Paul's use of words (like justification) to fit every single issue in a person's life. It's definitely a challenge to not lump all of Paul's theology in every one of his letters (and for every use of the same word), because they are written to specific and often very different contexts. Thanks for this!
Bottom line I think for a lot of pastors (at least me) is that we have to take the time to really dig out those meanings while trying to swim in a pool of responsibility of running a church. Which is difficult, but the responsible thing to do.
Oh my! You've been busy over Spring "break!" Now to catch up... great!
The most fatal flaw in the entire Reformed system is the clear teaching of the NT that a person might not be saved even after having received the Holy Spirit. I say emphatically. No one who gets their theology from the Bible--rather than from their theological worldview--can believe in eternal security or the perseverence of the saints. But with this point gone, the entire deck of cards, built completely on human logic, tumbles to oblivion.
I have always thought that the term "biblical Christian" was a major misnomer. The Martinite/neo-Reformed agenda is a philosophical system that interprets the Bible in the light of its own theological system. Time and time again it trumps the biblical text itself in lieu of its own theology and idea of Scripture. Of course the Wesleyanism you grew up with did exactly the same thing, which is why it is my passion to let the text mean what it meant whether it fits with my theology or not. No one can free themselves of their own biases, but it is my passion to do so even when it hurts.
I completely mean what I said about eternal security having nothing to do with Scripture read in its historical context at all. I know there are Calvinist responses to passages like Hebrews 6, 10, 12; 2 Corinthians 9:27; Philippians 3:11-12; Jude 24; etc... But there are none that in my opinion listen to the biblical text in the slightest. I am willing to hear Romans 9 and 1 Timothy 2--just not willing to shove them down the throat of other passages that are in tension with them.
This is a major difference between me, you, and the Wesleyanism you grew up with. If two passages seem to disagree, I must let them still say what they seem to say. You--and the Wesleyans of your youth--will shove one or the other passage down the other one's throat. This may pass for a higher idea of Scripture, but it shows no real respect for the Scriptures themselves.
I'm tired of Calvinists acting as if they are smarter, more logical, and superior to all other groups. Which of the two is the tradition most known for calling the other tradition and its theology stupid and heretical? Pot calling kettle, pot calling kettle, come in kettle. The Calvinist God is a God I can understand. He basically amounts to a big human. My God is a God past understanding whose essence we could not possibly fathom.
I truly resonate with "he found the text in the Word of God and not the Word of God in the text"! All of creation sings, doesn't it? As Jesus said, "he who has ears to hear"...funny how we get mixed up in the function of our parts...and it is those of us who should be hearing that miss the mark...I appreciate also your holding up God to be God above reason and yet, struggling to understand...I'm truly in the same "boat", now if I could only understand His people, I'd be better off!
You'll be happy to know that I don't bash Calvinists in class and when I'm wearing the aegis of the university, I try to facilitate. Certainly I let them know my interpretations, but with at least half the people in my class believing in eternal security, I don't bash the position. I am better known for the statement, "Feel free to disagree."
I am less restrained on the blog, which I do not intentionally promote in class and almost never mention. Thank you for making it impossible for any reader of mine to be looking at a "straw man." Thanks for letting them see a real live Calvinist ;-)
But we are in the middle of a resurgence of 5 point Calvinism. I do not ask you for your forgiveness for combatting it. To me there is about as much hubris in saying it is not biblical as in arguing that my car is grey.
P.S. My car is grey. No, really, it is ;-)
OAW
I might add that while I was a student at IWU, I too was warned to avoid reading or buying anything that smacked of Calvinism. I recall Charles Carter advising me not to buy a certain book because of it's Calvinistic slant. Also, I was advised by Leo Cox to choose a seminary that was non-Calvinistic. I might also add that Calvinists were not the only ones historically put down by the faculty at IWU. Let's not forget the Charismatics.
I admit I am a Martinite. Dr. Martin was a huge influence in my life. He made my education at IWU a life changing experience.
I believe that Dr. Martin was a godly man for as much as I was able to tell. My strong hunch is that God did very great things through him for the kingdom. I will not in any way claim to be anywhere close to him spiritually. I am glad that Bartley was able to get a book of his basic thought published with Triangle. Of course I vehemently disagree with him.
By the same token, I would not want the name of Charles Carter and mine to be uttered in the same sentence (oh no, I just did it!). To me both the typical Calvinist and the typical Wesleyan of the past had the same faulty hermeneutic. Barth, on the other hand, is a Reformed thinker I deeply respect, even if his writing style drives me nuts.
Martin was reformed through and through--he should have made up for Carter or any other former faculty member who kicked against the goads.
Though he had a high school hermeneutic he did have a neat "spreadsheet theology" that gave clear and simple answers to students, and I applaud his efforts at what he considered "integration." Even integrating a high school hermeneutic with one's discipline should be applauded.
He was gone before he allowed his ideas to be "peer reviewed" or even responded to, and his departure is too recent to engage in answering... so I will let the sleeping dog continue to nap another decade... it is not fair to answer his posthumously-published book for there is nobody willing to defend it--including those who published it.
He did good work at prodding students to think like a reformer, and thus broadened IWU's theological field considerably.
Actually, Drury and I are the only rabid ones here--all the others are entirely sanctified. And neither of us teach theology. Chris is of course fervently Arminian, but is entirely sanctified.
I don't remember ever speaking disrespectfully about Martin to a student while he was alive or after his death (any comments to Keith would not have been hateful, only Cheshire ;-). If I've alluded here to my strong irritation at his method and, in my strong opinion, misnomers, I've at least initially done so only in a way that an insider would catch (which you did).
De mortuis nil nisi bonum.
In case anyone was wondering, Monday is Latin night on the blog. The merengue is next.
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