Friday Review: Dunn's 1991 Article, "The Justice of God"

I thought I would skip a few articles in James D. G. Dunn's collection and move on to the next "hot one." Surely his 1991 JTS article, "The Justice of God: A Renewed Perspective on Justification by Faith" constitutes such an article. The backlash on both Dunn and N. T. Wright for their views on justification has taken both of them by surprise. If you want to see some of their puzzlement and reaction, check out The Paul Page, particularly this piece by Dunn and this piece by Wright.

I personally struggle to find much of anything objectionable in this article. Indeed, in many respects it is simply Dunn's version of Krister Stendahl's "Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West." As someone from the Methodist tradition--and a revivalist version of that as well--I need not worry (like Peter Enns of Westminster Theological Seminary) whether or not I am properly living out the Calvinist Westminster Confession of 1647. And the Methodist tradition stands on an opposite side of the spectrum from the Lutheran, which takes a particularly hard hit from recent developments in Pauline studies.

Frankly, developments in Pauline studies have made this a great time for Wesleyan theology. The runt of the litter proves to be the most biblically sound of the lot. Of course Dunn himself is a Scottish Presbyterian, as his stubborn interpretation of Romans 7 reflects. Seemingly out of keeping with his other perspectives, he has become a minority in continuing to see this chapter as an expression of Paul's ongoing struggle with sin even as a person with the Spirit. Wright is an Anglican bishop, and I wonder at times whether the Westminster Confession colors some of his thought as well.

But to the article.

1. A richer understanding of biblical justification
Dunn begins with the famous quote from Luther in which Luther expresses his shift in understanding of what "the righteousness of God" is in Romans 1:17. Luther moves from the Latin sense of the justice of God, which was fearful to Luther, to a righteousness from God. This righteousness from God is our righteousness by faith or, as we English speakers say, "justification by faith."

In his contemporary response to his detractors, Dunn points out several lines from the article they seem to have willfully overlooked, like this one: "I should perhaps emphasize that what I say is not and should not be conceived as an attack on the Protestant doctrine of justification" (194). Oops. Dunn is not denying the doctrine of justification by faith. He is rather "drawing attention to aspects of a larger, still richer doctrine" that have been lost in the train of Luther's rediscovery.

I'm sure it's irritating when you find out that, after your tradition has trashed the church in deference for "Scripture alone," it turns out that your tradition too is a Christian tradition that has modified biblical teaching itself. There is development of doctrine after the New Testament in the church in every Christian tradition. It's about time we all came to grips with it and clarified appropriate and inappropriate means for evaluating it.

2. Negative fallout from Luther's doctrine
Dunn mentions four areas in which the impact of Luther's version of justification by faith has been untrue to Paul himself.

First, it has led interpreters to see Paul's "conversion" as the climax to a long, inward, spiritual struggle (195). The problem is that Paul gives no hint of such agony in any of the passages where he explicitly recalls his pre-conversion days (e.g., Gal. 1:13-14). Dunn recognizes that Romans 7 is not giving pre-Christian autobiography (as Kümmel pointed out way back in 1929).

Secondly, Augustine and Luther led to an understanding of justification by faith in distinctly individualistic terms. But as Stendahl and before him William Wrede and Albert Schweitzer have protested, Paul is focused on identity in relation to groups (which more recent sociological NT studies like those of Bruce Malina have vindicated). Paul only writes indirectly about individual justification before God. It is an implication of his writing but not the main thrust, which is about how the Gentiles can be included within the people of God and God still be true to his covenant with Israel. I frankly don't see how this point is even debatable.

Thirdly, it has led interpreters to see Paul's "conversion" as a conversion from Judaism and the idea that Judaism is opposite Christianity. How many pulpits still speak of "Paul" as Paul's Christian name and "Saul" as his Jewish name, as if Paul's identity changed fundamentally with regard to his ethnicity at his "conversion." Oops. Acts continues to call him Saul for over 10 years after his "conversion."

Stendahl has of course pushed the question of whether Paul's coming to Christ should be called a conversion or rather, a call from God to go to the Gentiles. In his Theology of Paul the Apostle, Dunn rightly notes that it depends (as Joel Green has pointed out previously in blog comments here also). It is appropriate to call Paul's coming to Christ a conversion if you are speaking of a change from one Jewish group to another (such as from Pharisee to Essene or from Pharisee to Christian). However, given the way the term conversion is usually used, it is more often inappropriate. Paul did not see himself changing religions when he believed on Christ.

Lastly, Luther's views fostered a virulently negative view toward Judaism as a degenerate religion, with the Pharisees the worst of all. No doubt Matthew has helped perpetuate this view of the Pharisees. It is important to remember that Matthew's portrayal of them is only one of those in the gospels, and by far the most negative of all. If we only use Matthew to arrive at our understanding of the Pharisees, our view will be very one-sided, which is what happens when you form your understanding of a person or group solely through the eyes of their enemies.

No one would deny that Luther's views toward the Jews were detestable and certainly did nothing to prevent the Holocaust. It is far more likely that, in fact, they helped enable it.

While E. P. Sanders may himself have overstated his case, he has surely shown more correct than not that "Judaism is first and foremost a religion of grace, with human obedience always understood as a response to that grace" (199). To be sure, this theology may at times have been obscured by an over-focus on righteous acts. But I suspect it would have been very hard to find an ancient Jewish thinker who would not have put true to this question on a quiz.

3. Overlooked Pauline Clues
Now Dunn mentions three overlooked Pauline clues that might have kept us from such Lutheran fallout.

First, we should have known from the background of the word zeal. All the examples of zeal in the Jewish background literature are about fighting to defend the exclusiveness of Israel, "by maintaining Israel's distinctiveness as God's own people over against the other nations" (201). It is very easy to see that these sorts of individuals from Jewish tradition--Phinehas, Judas Maccabeus--might very well have served as Paul's "pre-Christian" role models. These are individuals who were zealous for those aspects of Jewish identity that distinguished Jew from Gentile, not zealous to be a person with more good works than anyone else.

Again, I fail to see how this perspective is even debatable.

Second, the boasting Paul has in mind is patently not Rudolph Bultmann's "sinful self-reliance" or Käsemann's boasting in one's own achievements--when these are understood apart from Jewish identity. The confidence of Romans 2 is primarily a confidence in one's status as a Jew. This is not to say that there is not an implication for individual boasting in self-righteousness. It is simply to say that to put this notion first is to skew the context of Paul's comments.

While I am still mulling over Dunn's understanding of "my own righteousness" in Philippians 3:9, I think Dunn must be more correct than incorrect to see the reference to "their own righteousness" in Romans 10:3 as a sense of Israel's righteousness in the light of its performance of the law, understood to refer primarily to distinctives like circumcision and purity laws.

Thirdly, Dunn mentions "works of law" as primarily, although not exclusively, a reference to acts that distinguished Jew from Gentile and, indeed, that distinguished Jew from Jew. As far as I can tell, Dunn here mentions for the first time 4QMMT, which at that time was still unpublished. Dunn concludes, "... 'deeds or works of the law' was a way of characterizing the same intense concern shared by so many Jews of the period to maintain the distinctiveness of their relationship with God as over against the Gentiles" (204).

Dunn draws a conclusion at then end of this section, one that is part of what he means by a "richer" doctrine of justification by faith: "Justification by faith is a banner raised by Paul against any and all such presumption of privileged status before God by virtue of race, culture or nationality, against any and all attempts to preserve such spurious distinctions by practices that exclude and divide" (205).

4. The Righteousness of God in the Old Testament
I never got back to a comment under an earlier post about the idea that Paul understands the righteousness of God as a reference to God's righteousness in His saving relationship with Israel and the world. The comment asked why look to the Psalms and Isaiah for the background of this phrase. The answer is that Paul's writings are replete with echoes of middle Isaiah and, indeed, Richard Hays spends a good deal of his Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul unfolding them.

So in this final section of the article, Dunn's makes some claims about the concept of the "righteousness of God" or, as the title of the article puts it, "the justice of God," understood more in its Old Testament sense.

First, Dunn follows Cremer (1900) in seeing righteousness as a "relational concept" (206). It's background is not the Greco-Roman legal sense of absolute ethical norms. "God is righteous not because he satisfies some ideal of justice external to himself. Rather, God is righteous when he fulfils the obligations he took upon himself to be Israel's God" (207).

So in Romans 1:16-17, the righteousness of God is "God's saving power to faith." The issue between Paul and his Jewish brothers is thus "not because of any dispute over the fundamental principles of grace and faith and human obedience" (208). It is rather "dispute about the particulars and outworkings of these principles." By implication, "to characterize Judaism per se as a religion of self-achievement is not only scurrilous, it is simply bad exegesis."

Dunn's second and final point is that God's saving righteousness brought with it expectations both in an appropriate response to God in obedience and in "being righteous toward one's neighbour" (208-9). Dunn cites Ezekiel 18:5-9 to show what Ezekiel understood a righteous person to be. The one who rejects this aspect of righteousness thus rejects not Judaism but the Old Testament.

Part of the justice of God thus entailed care for the poor, the fatherless, the widow as one's brothers and sisters (citing Deuteronomy 24:10-22 at some length). Again, this dimension of righteousness is no doubt part of what Dunn means by a "richer" understanding of the "justice of God."

There are no doubt minor points at which one might take issue with one or another aspect of this understanding of Paul. But its general accuracy over and against the earlier prevailing "Lutheran" reading seems beyond serious dispute. That of course has not stopped attempts by those who have suddenly found themselves kicking against the pricks. Why I heard that D. A. Carson did some kicking and screaming in a class just a couple weeks ago at Trinity against Dunn et al.

Ah, what a great time to be Wesleyan :-)