Friday Review: Dunn's 1985 "Works of the Law and the Curse of Law"

In the 1983 article we considered last week, Dunn presented his idea that the phrase "works of law" referred primarily to issues like circumcision and food laws. These are, after all, the things under discussion in Galatians 2 leading up to his first mention of "works of law" in Galatians 2:16.

In this 1985 article, Dunn develops his thesis further. His recent compilation volume The New Perspective on Paul includes no less than 5 articles on the topic of "works of law." I wish I was prepared to review them all today, as well as Dunn's new comments on "works of law" in the introduction. But unfortunately there is much else to do in my life :-)

So today we just look at the first: "Works of the Law and the Curse of the Law." We'll keep in mind that Dunn did modify his views--or at least his rhetoric--at least a little over the last twenty years. To track the broader debate on Paul and the Law that was taking place at the time, I should mention E. P. Sanders' follow up book, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People. It came out the same year as Dunn's "New Perspective" article (Dunn had read it before writing that previous article).

Another Paul scholar that Dunn interacts with in the meantime of the articles is Heikki Räisänen, Paul and the Law. Räisänen's basic conclusion is that Paul is massively inconsistent on the topic of Paul and the Jewish Law.
_____________
1. The Social Function of the Law
I believe the full recognition that the Law served as a boundary to mark off Jew from Gentile is one of Dunn's most important contributions to this discussion. He quotes the Letter of Aristeas in more than one place to capture this fact:

"To prevent our being perverted by contact with others or by mixing with bad influences, he hedged us in on all sides with strict observances connected with meat and drink and touch and hearing and sight, after the manner of the law" (Charlesworth's translation).

He begins this section with some sociological study--it is precisely the boundaries of groups that define their identity. Since he had Pentecostals on the brain at the time, he uses them as footnote examples more than once. Certainly Pentecostals believe in much more than speaking in tongues, but this has historically been the focal issue for them because it is what distinguishes them from other groups.

So Dunn argues quite plausibly, mention of the Law in the context of Jew/Gentile debate immediately turns one's mind to issues like circumcision and food laws. These are the things both Jews and Gentiles thought of when it came to identifying a Jew and distinguishing him or her from a Gentile. "Works of law" might include much, much more than these issues, but these are the ones that you would picture when you hear this phrase in this discussion.

2. Works of the Law
So far so good. Now that he has put a little depth into the theory he mentioned back in "New Perspective," he now draws some insights:

a. He follows Ernst Lohmeyer of many years before in understanding the phrase "works of law" to mean the "service of the law," the observance of the law. My sense is that Dunn's 1997 article on the Qumran document 4QMMT modifies this "bullet point" somewhat. Nevertheless, Dunn was surely right to say that, it referred to "service not so much in the sense of particular actions already accomplished, but in the sense of obligations set by the law, the religious system determined by the law" (126).

"The phrase refers not to an individual's striving for moral improvement, but to a religous mode of existence ... the religious practices which demonstrate the individual's 'belongingness' to the people of the law."

Surely Dunn is far more correct than incorrect here. The Law was not some abstract moral item at the time of Christ; it was clearly a boundary marker of Judaism. "Works of law" had therefore to say "Jewish" and therefore "righteous" and "God." And any discussion of works of law in relation to Gentiles would thereby naturally focus on those aspects of the law that distinguished the two.

b. The meaning of the phrase "works of law" was apparently self-evident. Paul does not explain it. Both in Galatians and Romans it is used in the context of the Jew-Gentile issue. The implication seems to be that the Galatians and Romans would immediately have known by the phrase that Paul was talking about the very issues under discussion--are circumcision and food laws necessary for Gentiles to be included in the people of God?

c. "... the law and the Jewish people are coterminous" (128). Words and phrases like "with law"/"without law"-"lawless," "under law," "from the law," etc. amount to "Jewish" or not. The issue for Paul, as Dunn understands it, is,

"Are the heirs of Abraham no more and no less than the people marked out by the law, the people whose whole existence as God's people arises out of the law, whose whole national identity comes from the law? Or are they marked out simply by faith, identified simply by faith?" (128).

d. Associated ideas:
1) boasting is not individualistic boasting but "the confidence of the Jew as Jew" (129).
2) the phrase "in the visible" (Rom. 2:28) refers to "the Jew visibly marked out as such," that is, circumcised.
3) the phrase "in flesh" in this same context (Rom. 2:28) means the same.
4) "their own" righteousness (Rom. 10:3) refers not to trying to earn righteousness but to the collective righteousness of the Jewish people as the Jewish people in contrast to Gentiles (130).

This new perspective on works of the law irons out some thorny issues, Dunn thinks:

1) the tension between law as negative in Paul and law as continuingly positive. The law in its social function receives Paul's critique (131), not the law per se.

2) According to Dunn, "Paul does not defend his position by dividing up the law into acceptable and unacceptable elements. For what he is attacking is a particular attitude to the law as such, the law as a whole in its social function as distinguishing Jew from Gentile. Viewed from a different angle, the point of the law as a whole will come into focus in other ways, particularly in faith ('the law of faith' - Rom 3:28; 9:31-32) and love of neighbour (Rom. 13:10). And, just as important, the requirements which obscure that point will become of secondary relevance as adiaphora."

This is a very important perspective to consider, the most important one for me from this article. I am not sure I would put it quite this way, but it is certainly something to mull over.

3. Galatians 3:10-14
I will confess that it has taken me a good deal of effort over the years to see clearly what Dunn is saying here in the final part of this article, which deals with the "curse of the law" in Galatians 3. I have read this passage with Reformation glasses on for so long that it has been difficult even to follow Dunn's argument in the past. In this section Dunn uses his new perspective to address the train of thought in Galatians 3:10-14.

3:10 "For as many as are from works of law are under a curse; for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who does not remain within everything that is written in the book of the law to do the same."
The usual interpretation is that since no one keeps everything in the law perfectly, everyone is under a curse.

Not so, says Dunn. First of all, those "from works of law" are those who consider their right standing with God in the people of God to be based on their attention to matters like circumcision and food laws. So far so good. This makes sense in the overall context. These individuals are under a curse, says Dunn.

So Paul is not talking here specifically of individuals who might try to earn their salvation in the abstract. He is talking about Jews who formulate right standing before God primarily in terms of attention to boundary issues like circumcision and food laws.

Those "from works of law" fail to abide by everything in the law. Primarily, they have a false set of priorities and give primacy to matters that are at best of secondary importance (135). "To thus misunderstand the law by giving primacy to matters of at best secondary importance was to fall short of what the law required and thus to fall under the law's own curse."

I'll have to continue to think about this one. I'm open but not fully convinced.

3:11-12 "And that no one in law is justified with God is plain, because 'the righteous on the basis of faith will live' And the law is not on the basis of faith, but 'he who does the same will live with them."
Dunn believes that to distinguish living "in law" and living "from faith" is for Paul to distinguish things that most Jews did not distinguish. Not that he considered them mutually exclusive, but that his kinsmen had the wrong priorities. Faith is a "trust in and openness to God brought about by the word of preaching, without any reference to the law or its works" (136). It was something a Gentile could do.

3:13-14 "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse on our behalf - as it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree' - in order that the blessing of Abraham might come in Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, in order that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith."
Dunn thinks that the curse here "falls on all who restrict the grace and promise of God in nationalistic terms ... the attitude which confines the covenant promise to Jews and Jews" (137). Dunn admits that this is a "suprisingly narrow" curse in relation to our sense that the curse applies to all humanity.

He has not yet fully convinced me here, although old paradigms are hard to shake. I agree that he is talking about a curse on Jews primarily. Dunn notes the very close parallel between 3:14 and 4:4-5: "Christ became under the law to redeem those under the law that we might receive the adoption." Notice how similar that is to 3:14: "Christ became a curse to redeem from the law's curse that we might receive the Spirit."

Christ took the place of the Gentile, outside the law understood to exclude, and on the cross put himself under the curse of the law. The fact that God raised him shows that He accepts the Gentile. Christ broke through the restrictiveness of the typical Jewish understanding of God's righteousness" (139). I'll confess I don't follow Dunn here. I thought the curse had to do with Jews who restricted righteousness to the Gentiles. Jesus didn't take on that curse, did he?

I agree that it is Jews in particular that are under a curse here. But I am not convinced yet that their curse does not also apply in some way to Gentiles as well, and I am not convinced yet the curse is primarily about the exclusivity of certain Jews who exclude Gentiles.

I am open. I have not read all of Dunn's later articles on this topic. It will be interesting to see if and how he might have modified his later views.