Ephesians 2:8-9 have had an immense impact on the history of Christianity these last five hundred years because these are some of the key verses of the Protestant Reformation: “by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” Interpreters of Paul ever since have had a tendency to read Paul’s earlier letters through the lens of these verses. But there are some key distinctions between Ephesians 2:8-9 and letters like Romans and Galatians. It is actually Ephesians that is unusual for Paul.
For example, Paul does not usually speak of salvation in the past tense: “you have been saved.” Romans 5:9 speaks of how we will be saved from God’s wrath, namely, on the Day of Wrath which is to come. Salvation is thus something that has not yet happened literally. Even in Ephesians, “you have been saved” probably is a poetic way of saying that it is a sure thing. Because of God’s grace, because of the audience’s faith, their salvation is going to happen at the appropriate time.
A second difference is in what “works” are in mind. In Galatians and Romans, the works Paul has in mind are works of the Jewish Law. Paul may be writing to Gentiles, but he is defending his preaching in the light of objections from other Jewish believers. His basic message is that no one can be right with God by how well they keep the particulars of the Jewish Law, especially the parts that most distinguished Jew from Gentile: circumcision, food laws, Sabbath observance, and so forth.
But Ephesians is not a defense against Jewish opposition. Ephesians only uses the word “law” once, and there only to say that Christ has abolished it—also quite unlike Romans, as we will see below. So when Ephesians 2:9 says that its audience is not saved by works, it is saying something quite different from Romans 3:28. The works in question are not works of the Jewish Law, but good works in general. While Romans says that a Jew does not have an advantage before God because of the Jewish Law, Ephesians says that no one is good enough to escape God’s wrath.
Interestingly, Ephesians is accordingly more positive toward works once one is "saved." We are "created in Christ Jesus to do good works" (Eph. 2:10). In Romans and Galatians, works of law are something a Gentile believer should not do. Indeed, Paul tells the Galatians that if they become circumcised, Christ will be of no use to them (Gal. 5:2). So works of Law are something a believer should not do, at least not a Gentile believer. In Ephesians, by contrast, good works are a good thing. They cannot save a person from God's wrath, but they are something God has created us to do in the name of Christ.
Showing posts with label works of law. Show all posts
Showing posts with label works of law. Show all posts
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Saturday, September 04, 2010
Sin and the Law 3
... In the first volume of this series, we argued that when Galatians uses the phrase "works of Law," Paul primarily had in mind those parts of the Jewish Law that distinguished Jew from Gentile. [1] In Galatians, circumcision in particular was the key issue under discussion when he said, "no one will be justified by the works of the law" (2:16, NRSV). The argument of Romans is more general, and certainly Paul did not think anyone could earn God's favor, but the key subject was still whether a Jew had any advantage over a non-Jew in being right with God. The underlying issue is not "Can you be good enough for God to accept you?" It is "Is there something about being a Jew that automatically makes you right with God?"
So when Paul says he is not under Law (e.g., 1 Cor. 9:20) and that right standing with God does not come by "works of Law" (e.g., Rom. 3:28), he primarily has things like circumcision, Jewish food and purity laws, and Sabbath laws in mind. Yes, as part of that argument he makes general statements about the impossibility of earning a right standing with God (e.g., Rom. 4:4-5; 9:32). But it is a supporting point, not the main one. When Paul distances believers from the Law, he primarily has the Jew-specific aspects of the Jewish Law in view, the boundary type laws that most distinguished Jew from Gentile.
What is confusing is that Paul also talks about the Law with a very different content in view. Sometimes he has a certain "core law" in view that is universal and timeless. When Romans 2:14 talks about Gentiles who "do by nature things required by the law," it cannot refer to Jew-specific elements. Gentiles by definition do not do such things. Paul can only have a certain universal, "moral" core in mind, if you would. It is this part of the Jewish Law that Paul has in mind in Romans 6-8.
The key to understanding Romans 6-8 is to understand the clear "before and after" he presents repeatedly throughout the section...
[1] Paul: Messenger of Grace
So when Paul says he is not under Law (e.g., 1 Cor. 9:20) and that right standing with God does not come by "works of Law" (e.g., Rom. 3:28), he primarily has things like circumcision, Jewish food and purity laws, and Sabbath laws in mind. Yes, as part of that argument he makes general statements about the impossibility of earning a right standing with God (e.g., Rom. 4:4-5; 9:32). But it is a supporting point, not the main one. When Paul distances believers from the Law, he primarily has the Jew-specific aspects of the Jewish Law in view, the boundary type laws that most distinguished Jew from Gentile.
What is confusing is that Paul also talks about the Law with a very different content in view. Sometimes he has a certain "core law" in view that is universal and timeless. When Romans 2:14 talks about Gentiles who "do by nature things required by the law," it cannot refer to Jew-specific elements. Gentiles by definition do not do such things. Paul can only have a certain universal, "moral" core in mind, if you would. It is this part of the Jewish Law that Paul has in mind in Romans 6-8.
The key to understanding Romans 6-8 is to understand the clear "before and after" he presents repeatedly throughout the section...
[1] Paul: Messenger of Grace
Sunday, December 13, 2009
The Message of Galatians (Mutiny 2)
To follow the chain back, see the previous entry of this chapter, The Setting of Galatians.
We continue with part 2 of chapter 8: "The Message of Galatians." Last night after long consideration, I finally conceded to myself that I need to give up the northern Galatia hypothesis. In any case, I can continue the chapter...
_____________
...
So the situation Galatians addresses is a primarily Gentile audience being urged to convert fully to Judaism by undergoing circumcision. Those who are trying to convince them are most likely Christian Jews, perhaps one key person in particular, who has come to Galatia from elsewhere, quite possibly from somewhere in Palestine like Antioch. It is important to recognize that their detractors claim to be Christians, not non-believing Jews. They are like the Christian Pharisees of Acts 15:5. Paul would probably consider them "false brothers" (e.g., Gal. 2:4), but they think of themselves as believers in Christ and the Jerusalem church likely would as well.
The central issue at debate is circumcision. If the meeting we call the Jerusalem Council was widely known, it is a little strange that we would find missionaries of a sort who are teaching that the Gentiles should get circumcised. [1] But we remember that Galatians 2:3 says Titus "was not compelled" to become circumcised, meaning it was still likely James and Peter's preference. It would thus be understandable if some were telling the Galatians they should fully commit and go the whole way.
One of the more peculiar features of the situation was the fact that these missionaries were apparently claiming that Paul himself agreed with them or at least had submitted to the authority of Jerusalem. They were apparently telling the Galatians that Paul himself thought it preferable for them to become circumcised (Gal. 5:11). How they made such an argument is puzzling to us, since we so strongly associate Paul with the opposite position. Perhaps he and Barnabas were still somewhat tentative on the subject when they came through the area on the first missionary journey. After all, it was after the first journey that Paul made the visit of Galatians 2 to Jerusalem. And Acts tells us that Paul circumcised Timothy at Lystra on his second journey (Acts 16:3), which certainly could have given the impression that circumcision was the optimal scenario.
Whatever they specifically argued, the undermining of his mission clearly infuriated him. This situation was personal, and no doubt reminded him of losing the argument at Antioch. Now they were tampering with his churches in his territory. One of the noticeable features of Galatians is the fact that Paul does not have a thanksgiving section at its opening, like his other letters. Instead, he launches into the Galatians in astonishment that they are beginning to act as if God's gracious acceptance of them is somehow not enough. They are beginning to observe aspects of the Jewish calendar (Gal. 4:10) and even to consider circumcision (5:2).
Paul's counterargument is not only that no amount of such "works of Law" could make one right with God. He is arguing that such Jewish particulars have no impact on one's status with God at all, particularly if one is a Gentile. To the Gentiles, God was offering a remarkable gift. Through the faithful death of Jesus the Messiah, he was offering both Jew and Gentile the possibility of being right with God regardless of how much wrongdoing a person had previously done. To try then to earn God's favor by keeping the particulars of the Jewish Law was a slap in God's face, tantamount to a rejection of His grace.
We have fallen off the log perhaps with the majority in thinking that Paul might be at Ephesus on his third missionary journey as he writes Galatians, perhaps not too long after he wrote 1 Corinthians. While many argue Paul's theology of getting right with God may have been intact very early on in his ministry, it does not really show itself in 1 Thessalonians and hardly in 1 Corinthians. [2] But just after our placement of Galatians in our reconstruction, we hear verses like Philippians 3:9 and then 2 Corinthians 5:21, culminating in Romans. Indeed, Philippians 3 and 2 Corinthians 10-13 address similar issues that Galatians does. We have from Galatians on a deeper exploration of what it might mean to be incorporated in Christ. [3] We even hear of "new creation" in Galatians (6:15) and 2 Corinthians (5:17).
Acts tells us that Paul rented out one Hall of Tyrannus while he was at Ephesus (19:9). Is it possible that Paul ran something like a school of interpretation while he was there? Is it possible that some of the arguments in Galatians are a product of his teaching there? These suggestions are all speculation, but they are not impossible.
The Message of Galatians
The heart of the message of Galatians is thus about what, in fact, makes a person right with God. The argument of Galatians is very thick, perhaps the thickest in the whole Bible. But the basic point is that Jesus is the only way to be right with God. Arguments over whether Gentiles need to get circumcised or whether you need to observe certain days certain ways are ultimately irrelevant to being right with God. Trusting in what God has done through Jesus--that's the ticket!
Of course there are countless debates both between scholars and churches over the details. Paul would no doubt be both perplexed and amused. It might be worth it to take just a little time to spell out what Paul was likely saying so that we can avoid some of the arguments between Christian groups today over theology.
First, it is important to hear exactly what Paul is arguing over concretely. Paul says that no matter how many "works of Law" a Jew might do, it will not make them right with God. It will not "justify" you. Five hundred years ago, Martin Luther heard Paul saying very generally that no one could earn God's favor. No matter how many good "works" you did, you could not earn a right standing with God.
Luther was of course correct. Paul did believe you could not earn God's favor (e.g., Rom. 4:4-5). Whether you were a Jew or a Gentile, all had wronged God and others at some point (e.g., Gal. 2:17; Rom. 3:23), thus requiring Him to overlook our sins. In other words, we all need God's grace, His "unmerited favor."
At the same time, Luther slightly changed the focus of Paul's argument. Particularly in Galatians, Paul is not really talking about faith versus good works in general. He is talking about whether "works of Law," that is the Jewish Law, could gain you right standing before God. [2] In other words, it was things like circumcision, the purity rules of Leviticus, and sabbath observance that were in the "bubble" above his head, not good works like feeding the poor or clothing the needy. One of the documents found among the Dead Sea Scrolls has an argument over "works of Law," and the things it has in mind are squabbles between Jewish groups over what makes a person unclean, not good works.
What Paul is arguing over, therefore, is the parts of the Jewish Law that were most distinctly Jewish, the things that distinguished the Jews ethnically from other people. Around the world, people knew that Jews did not eat pork and did not work on Saturday. These were exactly the kinds of "works of Law" that Paul is targeting. These are the sorts of things at Antioch that got in the way of Jewish and Gentile believers eating together. Paul's main point in Galatians is that none of these things actually help a person get in right standing with God.
In fact, relying on such things can be a slap in Christ's face. Here God has offered a free gift through Christ's death on the cross. It is a gift so good, no one could possibly deserve it. Yet you are insistent on trying to pay for it, and you cannot accept the gift for what it is.
Peter and James apparently agreed that a person could not be in right standing with God apart from trusting in Jesus' death. Paul uses an expression in Galatians 2:16 that scholars debate over, but we think Paul is saying that both he and Peter agree that you could only be right with God if you trusted in the faithful death of Jesus on the cross that one can become right with God. [3] But where they disagreed is in the value of keeping the Jewish particulars of the Mosaic Law. Paul goes on to say that those particulars do not help a person be right with God at all, while Peter and others still saw them playing a role in "justification," in being pronounced right with God. Only trust in what God has done through Christ works.
Paul uses Abraham as his fundamental example of this principle: "justification by faith." Abraham was a superb example because Paul could use him both as a model for the justification of Jews and Gentiles. Paul interpreted Genesis 15:6 to say that Abraham had faith in God, and God considered him right with him as a result (Gal. 3:6). Thus Abraham was a model to Gentiles of how to be right with God. Have faith in what God has done through Jesus the Christ and God will consider you righteous, right with Him. Paul understood Genesis 12:3's promise that all the nations would be blessed through Abraham as a promise that they would get right with God through faith, with Abraham showing them the way (Gal. 3:8-9, 14).
Paul's opponents no doubt had some arguments of their own, and most think Paul is responding to some of them in Galatians. One of the key questions he needed to answer was what the purpose of the Jewish Law was. If it was not meant to show how to be in right relationship with God, then what was it for? Paul's answer is that the Law was like a child's guardian (Gal. 4:24) that watches over it until it comes of age.
So also, the Law served several functions before Christ came. For example, it taught us the difference between right and wrong (e.g., Rom. 7:7). Paul here has seemed to shift a little in what he is talking about. When he was talking about "works of Law," he seemed to be thinking of what many Christians think of as the ritual or "ceremonial" parts of the Jewish Law. [4] But now he is talking about the heart of the Law, what later Christians would call the "moral law." The fact that Paul can glide without notice between these various parts of the Jewish Law is the primary source of confusion over what exactly he meant.
Before Christ, we were all, Paul taught, under the power of Sin in the world. Before Christ, the Law pointed out our weakness in the face of this power (e.g., Gal. 4:3). But now that Christ has come, God's Holy Spirit is available to empower us to do what is right. We no longer need the instruction of our guardian, the Law. We have the power of the Spirit inside us to keep the essence of the (moral) Law.
Galatians thus turns to an exhortation to the Galatians not to let their freedom from works of Law to lead to sinful living. This is the tight rope Paul's theology walks. On the one hand, he argues that the Jewish particulars of the Law cannot make us right with God, nor were we able to live above sin before Christ. But now Christ has enabled us to receive the Spirit of adoption and sonship. Now if we walk in the Spirit, we will not fulfill the desires of the flesh (Gal. 5:16).
Works of law cannot make us right with God, but if we have the Spirit inside us, fruit will follow. The fruit of the Spirit are things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23). Quite different are the works of the flesh, things like sexual immorality, strife, jealousy, anger, and so forth (5:19-21).
And so Paul closes his letter to the Galatians, likely to churches in south Galatia like Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, and Pisidian Antioch. He points out the hypocrisy of those urging them to get circumcised. They are not models of Jewish Law keeping. And Paul would know, since he was once a Pharisee who paid close attention to such things. But in the end, it is neither circumcision nor uncircumcision that matters before God, he claims. It is the new creation of the Spirit made possible through the cross of Jesus the Messiah.
[1] Even though we called them "missionaries of a sort," we are not insistent at all that the main reason they have come to Galatia is to further instruct Paul's converts. They might just as likely have come into the area on other business.
[2] Another article in James Dunn's The New Perspective on Paul is a classic here, "Works of Law," ***.
[3] The expression is "the faith of Jesus Christ." To understand the debate, you have to look at a phrase like "love of God." What does this phrase mean? Is it God's love, as in "The love of God led Him to send His Son"? Or is it our love for God, as in "Your love of God should lead you to serve Him better"? The phrase Paul uses, "faith of Jesus," could also mean either the faithfulness of Jesus or faith in Jesus.
The three main reasons I finally concluded that the first expression in Gal. 2:16 and Rom. 3:22 refer to the faithfulness of Jesus are 1) Otherwise these verses are quite redundant, Galatians 2:16 then referring to faith in Christ three times in the same sentence, 2) the parallelism between Romans 5:19--"through the obedience of one person many will be established as righteous" and finally, 3) 2 Corinthians 4:13, while the train of thought is hard to follow, seems to say that just as Jesus had faith and was resurrected, so we must have faith and be resurrected. It thus seems to substantiate the notion that Jesus' faith was indeed one of Paul's categories.
[4] It is significant to point out that a Jew, indeed Paul himself, would not not have categorized things this way.
We continue with part 2 of chapter 8: "The Message of Galatians." Last night after long consideration, I finally conceded to myself that I need to give up the northern Galatia hypothesis. In any case, I can continue the chapter...
_____________
...
So the situation Galatians addresses is a primarily Gentile audience being urged to convert fully to Judaism by undergoing circumcision. Those who are trying to convince them are most likely Christian Jews, perhaps one key person in particular, who has come to Galatia from elsewhere, quite possibly from somewhere in Palestine like Antioch. It is important to recognize that their detractors claim to be Christians, not non-believing Jews. They are like the Christian Pharisees of Acts 15:5. Paul would probably consider them "false brothers" (e.g., Gal. 2:4), but they think of themselves as believers in Christ and the Jerusalem church likely would as well.
The central issue at debate is circumcision. If the meeting we call the Jerusalem Council was widely known, it is a little strange that we would find missionaries of a sort who are teaching that the Gentiles should get circumcised. [1] But we remember that Galatians 2:3 says Titus "was not compelled" to become circumcised, meaning it was still likely James and Peter's preference. It would thus be understandable if some were telling the Galatians they should fully commit and go the whole way.
One of the more peculiar features of the situation was the fact that these missionaries were apparently claiming that Paul himself agreed with them or at least had submitted to the authority of Jerusalem. They were apparently telling the Galatians that Paul himself thought it preferable for them to become circumcised (Gal. 5:11). How they made such an argument is puzzling to us, since we so strongly associate Paul with the opposite position. Perhaps he and Barnabas were still somewhat tentative on the subject when they came through the area on the first missionary journey. After all, it was after the first journey that Paul made the visit of Galatians 2 to Jerusalem. And Acts tells us that Paul circumcised Timothy at Lystra on his second journey (Acts 16:3), which certainly could have given the impression that circumcision was the optimal scenario.
Whatever they specifically argued, the undermining of his mission clearly infuriated him. This situation was personal, and no doubt reminded him of losing the argument at Antioch. Now they were tampering with his churches in his territory. One of the noticeable features of Galatians is the fact that Paul does not have a thanksgiving section at its opening, like his other letters. Instead, he launches into the Galatians in astonishment that they are beginning to act as if God's gracious acceptance of them is somehow not enough. They are beginning to observe aspects of the Jewish calendar (Gal. 4:10) and even to consider circumcision (5:2).
Paul's counterargument is not only that no amount of such "works of Law" could make one right with God. He is arguing that such Jewish particulars have no impact on one's status with God at all, particularly if one is a Gentile. To the Gentiles, God was offering a remarkable gift. Through the faithful death of Jesus the Messiah, he was offering both Jew and Gentile the possibility of being right with God regardless of how much wrongdoing a person had previously done. To try then to earn God's favor by keeping the particulars of the Jewish Law was a slap in God's face, tantamount to a rejection of His grace.
We have fallen off the log perhaps with the majority in thinking that Paul might be at Ephesus on his third missionary journey as he writes Galatians, perhaps not too long after he wrote 1 Corinthians. While many argue Paul's theology of getting right with God may have been intact very early on in his ministry, it does not really show itself in 1 Thessalonians and hardly in 1 Corinthians. [2] But just after our placement of Galatians in our reconstruction, we hear verses like Philippians 3:9 and then 2 Corinthians 5:21, culminating in Romans. Indeed, Philippians 3 and 2 Corinthians 10-13 address similar issues that Galatians does. We have from Galatians on a deeper exploration of what it might mean to be incorporated in Christ. [3] We even hear of "new creation" in Galatians (6:15) and 2 Corinthians (5:17).
Acts tells us that Paul rented out one Hall of Tyrannus while he was at Ephesus (19:9). Is it possible that Paul ran something like a school of interpretation while he was there? Is it possible that some of the arguments in Galatians are a product of his teaching there? These suggestions are all speculation, but they are not impossible.
The Message of Galatians
The heart of the message of Galatians is thus about what, in fact, makes a person right with God. The argument of Galatians is very thick, perhaps the thickest in the whole Bible. But the basic point is that Jesus is the only way to be right with God. Arguments over whether Gentiles need to get circumcised or whether you need to observe certain days certain ways are ultimately irrelevant to being right with God. Trusting in what God has done through Jesus--that's the ticket!
Of course there are countless debates both between scholars and churches over the details. Paul would no doubt be both perplexed and amused. It might be worth it to take just a little time to spell out what Paul was likely saying so that we can avoid some of the arguments between Christian groups today over theology.
First, it is important to hear exactly what Paul is arguing over concretely. Paul says that no matter how many "works of Law" a Jew might do, it will not make them right with God. It will not "justify" you. Five hundred years ago, Martin Luther heard Paul saying very generally that no one could earn God's favor. No matter how many good "works" you did, you could not earn a right standing with God.
Luther was of course correct. Paul did believe you could not earn God's favor (e.g., Rom. 4:4-5). Whether you were a Jew or a Gentile, all had wronged God and others at some point (e.g., Gal. 2:17; Rom. 3:23), thus requiring Him to overlook our sins. In other words, we all need God's grace, His "unmerited favor."
At the same time, Luther slightly changed the focus of Paul's argument. Particularly in Galatians, Paul is not really talking about faith versus good works in general. He is talking about whether "works of Law," that is the Jewish Law, could gain you right standing before God. [2] In other words, it was things like circumcision, the purity rules of Leviticus, and sabbath observance that were in the "bubble" above his head, not good works like feeding the poor or clothing the needy. One of the documents found among the Dead Sea Scrolls has an argument over "works of Law," and the things it has in mind are squabbles between Jewish groups over what makes a person unclean, not good works.
What Paul is arguing over, therefore, is the parts of the Jewish Law that were most distinctly Jewish, the things that distinguished the Jews ethnically from other people. Around the world, people knew that Jews did not eat pork and did not work on Saturday. These were exactly the kinds of "works of Law" that Paul is targeting. These are the sorts of things at Antioch that got in the way of Jewish and Gentile believers eating together. Paul's main point in Galatians is that none of these things actually help a person get in right standing with God.
In fact, relying on such things can be a slap in Christ's face. Here God has offered a free gift through Christ's death on the cross. It is a gift so good, no one could possibly deserve it. Yet you are insistent on trying to pay for it, and you cannot accept the gift for what it is.
Peter and James apparently agreed that a person could not be in right standing with God apart from trusting in Jesus' death. Paul uses an expression in Galatians 2:16 that scholars debate over, but we think Paul is saying that both he and Peter agree that you could only be right with God if you trusted in the faithful death of Jesus on the cross that one can become right with God. [3] But where they disagreed is in the value of keeping the Jewish particulars of the Mosaic Law. Paul goes on to say that those particulars do not help a person be right with God at all, while Peter and others still saw them playing a role in "justification," in being pronounced right with God. Only trust in what God has done through Christ works.
Paul uses Abraham as his fundamental example of this principle: "justification by faith." Abraham was a superb example because Paul could use him both as a model for the justification of Jews and Gentiles. Paul interpreted Genesis 15:6 to say that Abraham had faith in God, and God considered him right with him as a result (Gal. 3:6). Thus Abraham was a model to Gentiles of how to be right with God. Have faith in what God has done through Jesus the Christ and God will consider you righteous, right with Him. Paul understood Genesis 12:3's promise that all the nations would be blessed through Abraham as a promise that they would get right with God through faith, with Abraham showing them the way (Gal. 3:8-9, 14).
Paul's opponents no doubt had some arguments of their own, and most think Paul is responding to some of them in Galatians. One of the key questions he needed to answer was what the purpose of the Jewish Law was. If it was not meant to show how to be in right relationship with God, then what was it for? Paul's answer is that the Law was like a child's guardian (Gal. 4:24) that watches over it until it comes of age.
So also, the Law served several functions before Christ came. For example, it taught us the difference between right and wrong (e.g., Rom. 7:7). Paul here has seemed to shift a little in what he is talking about. When he was talking about "works of Law," he seemed to be thinking of what many Christians think of as the ritual or "ceremonial" parts of the Jewish Law. [4] But now he is talking about the heart of the Law, what later Christians would call the "moral law." The fact that Paul can glide without notice between these various parts of the Jewish Law is the primary source of confusion over what exactly he meant.
Before Christ, we were all, Paul taught, under the power of Sin in the world. Before Christ, the Law pointed out our weakness in the face of this power (e.g., Gal. 4:3). But now that Christ has come, God's Holy Spirit is available to empower us to do what is right. We no longer need the instruction of our guardian, the Law. We have the power of the Spirit inside us to keep the essence of the (moral) Law.
Galatians thus turns to an exhortation to the Galatians not to let their freedom from works of Law to lead to sinful living. This is the tight rope Paul's theology walks. On the one hand, he argues that the Jewish particulars of the Law cannot make us right with God, nor were we able to live above sin before Christ. But now Christ has enabled us to receive the Spirit of adoption and sonship. Now if we walk in the Spirit, we will not fulfill the desires of the flesh (Gal. 5:16).
Works of law cannot make us right with God, but if we have the Spirit inside us, fruit will follow. The fruit of the Spirit are things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23). Quite different are the works of the flesh, things like sexual immorality, strife, jealousy, anger, and so forth (5:19-21).
And so Paul closes his letter to the Galatians, likely to churches in south Galatia like Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, and Pisidian Antioch. He points out the hypocrisy of those urging them to get circumcised. They are not models of Jewish Law keeping. And Paul would know, since he was once a Pharisee who paid close attention to such things. But in the end, it is neither circumcision nor uncircumcision that matters before God, he claims. It is the new creation of the Spirit made possible through the cross of Jesus the Messiah.
[1] Even though we called them "missionaries of a sort," we are not insistent at all that the main reason they have come to Galatia is to further instruct Paul's converts. They might just as likely have come into the area on other business.
[2] Another article in James Dunn's The New Perspective on Paul is a classic here, "Works of Law," ***.
[3] The expression is "the faith of Jesus Christ." To understand the debate, you have to look at a phrase like "love of God." What does this phrase mean? Is it God's love, as in "The love of God led Him to send His Son"? Or is it our love for God, as in "Your love of God should lead you to serve Him better"? The phrase Paul uses, "faith of Jesus," could also mean either the faithfulness of Jesus or faith in Jesus.
The three main reasons I finally concluded that the first expression in Gal. 2:16 and Rom. 3:22 refer to the faithfulness of Jesus are 1) Otherwise these verses are quite redundant, Galatians 2:16 then referring to faith in Christ three times in the same sentence, 2) the parallelism between Romans 5:19--"through the obedience of one person many will be established as righteous" and finally, 3) 2 Corinthians 4:13, while the train of thought is hard to follow, seems to say that just as Jesus had faith and was resurrected, so we must have faith and be resurrected. It thus seems to substantiate the notion that Jesus' faith was indeed one of Paul's categories.
[4] It is significant to point out that a Jew, indeed Paul himself, would not not have categorized things this way.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Another Wesley Quote: "Works of Law"
Very busy... thanks for thoughts on yesterday's quote. Here's another quote I found striking from the same sermon, "Means of Grace."
"What is seeking salvation by works? In the writings of St. Paul, it means, either seeking to be saved by observing the ritual works of the Mosaic law; or expecting salvation for the sake of our own works, by the merit of our own righteousness" (Vol. 5, p. 196, italics mine).
I'm not sure exactly what Wesley was thinking here, but this is exactly the way I interpret the phrase "works of Law" in Romans and Galatians--primarily a reference to the Jew-specific parts of the Law but also secondarily a reference to the question of whether any human could deserve God's favor purely on the basis of their right actions.
"What is seeking salvation by works? In the writings of St. Paul, it means, either seeking to be saved by observing the ritual works of the Mosaic law; or expecting salvation for the sake of our own works, by the merit of our own righteousness" (Vol. 5, p. 196, italics mine).
I'm not sure exactly what Wesley was thinking here, but this is exactly the way I interpret the phrase "works of Law" in Romans and Galatians--primarily a reference to the Jew-specific parts of the Law but also secondarily a reference to the question of whether any human could deserve God's favor purely on the basis of their right actions.
Friday, February 06, 2009
Galatians 2:16 Mini-Bibliography
We spent nearly all of Greek Galatians class today translating Galatians 2:16. Surely it is the most debated verse in the New Testament. Am I wrong?
It occurred to me that I always throw out a core bibliography when I go through Galatians 2:16 for whatever reason. I thought I would post it. Certainly, the key articles reflects my interpretive leanings. Obviously, James D. G. Dunn features high on my list of resources. Since most of the relevant essays now appear in one volume, The New Perspective on Paul, I list the older articles as they are situated in this volume.
"We who are Jews by nature and not sinners from the Gentiles..."
James D. G. Dunn, "The Incident at Antioch (Gal. 2:11-18)," in Jesus, Paul and the Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians, 129-82 remains, in my opinion, an excellent introduction to the basic context of Galatians 2:15-21, which I agree is indeed the proposition of the letter.
Since we know that a person is not justified...
What does it mean to be justified? In general, John Piper is too thoroughly ensconched in the Calvinist tradition to be a reliable original meaning interpreter of Paul in general, although as we might expect, he is a good scholar when the right conclusion fits within Calvinist parameters.
N. T. Wright is good on justification two-thirds of the time--on the law court and eschatological parts of it. His covenantal spin, however, continues to be the best illustration of the fact that we often formulate our key ideas when we are young in a PhD program, then become associated with those immature ideas, then spend the rest of our career defending them. A must read is his forthcoming response to John Piper on the topic.
Basically, you can trust a Bible scholar when they are critiquing another Bible scholar. You just can't trust us when we are selling material from our dissertations :-)
by works of law...
Here Dunn's mature statement in the long introduction to The New Perspective, "The New Perspective--Whence, What and Wither" (1-97), is in my opinion the best understanding of this phrase.
Also significant is his earlier piece, "Works of the Law and the Curse of the Law (Gal. 3:10-14)" from 1985 (New Perspective, 121-40), not to mention the article that put the name "new perspective" on the new perspective, namely, "The New Perspective on Paul" (1983--in New Perspective, 99-120).
except...
Should we translate the two words here in their normal sense or as "but." Dunn's "Incident at Antioch" above argues for "except."
through faith of Jesus Christ...
The two key articles here are reprinted in Richard Hays' signature volume, The Faith of Jesus Christ: The Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1-4:11. The two articles were originally presented in Kansas City at the 1991 SBL: Hays: "Pistis and Pauline Theology: What's at Stake" and Dunn: "Once More, Pistis Christou."
even we have placed our faith in Jesus Christ that we might be justified by Christ faith and not works of law...
All the key issues above are repeated here. Consult especially Dunn on works of law and Hays/Dunn on redundancy if one goes with an objective genitive throughout.
Since this is my blog, you'll forgive me if I sneak in my article here, "2 Corinthians and the Pistis Christou Debate, CBQ 70 (2008): 524-37," which suggests Paul may have a double entendre in mind in the final pistis Christou. Since that claim was not a part of my dissertation, you can trust it. :-)
for by works of law no flesh will be justified.
This quotation of Psalm 143 and Paul's modifications to it are well treated by Richard Hays in his book, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul.
You could do a whole course on this verse, reading through this literature. It would actually be quite a good introduction to Paul's theology in the specific area of his interaction with the Jerusalem church. If twenty of you wanted to do an online graduate course on Acrobat in the Fall... :-)
Dunn's Historical Jesus summary of the day is a comin'.
It occurred to me that I always throw out a core bibliography when I go through Galatians 2:16 for whatever reason. I thought I would post it. Certainly, the key articles reflects my interpretive leanings. Obviously, James D. G. Dunn features high on my list of resources. Since most of the relevant essays now appear in one volume, The New Perspective on Paul, I list the older articles as they are situated in this volume.
"We who are Jews by nature and not sinners from the Gentiles..."
James D. G. Dunn, "The Incident at Antioch (Gal. 2:11-18)," in Jesus, Paul and the Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians, 129-82 remains, in my opinion, an excellent introduction to the basic context of Galatians 2:15-21, which I agree is indeed the proposition of the letter.
Since we know that a person is not justified...
What does it mean to be justified? In general, John Piper is too thoroughly ensconched in the Calvinist tradition to be a reliable original meaning interpreter of Paul in general, although as we might expect, he is a good scholar when the right conclusion fits within Calvinist parameters.
N. T. Wright is good on justification two-thirds of the time--on the law court and eschatological parts of it. His covenantal spin, however, continues to be the best illustration of the fact that we often formulate our key ideas when we are young in a PhD program, then become associated with those immature ideas, then spend the rest of our career defending them. A must read is his forthcoming response to John Piper on the topic.
Basically, you can trust a Bible scholar when they are critiquing another Bible scholar. You just can't trust us when we are selling material from our dissertations :-)
by works of law...
Here Dunn's mature statement in the long introduction to The New Perspective, "The New Perspective--Whence, What and Wither" (1-97), is in my opinion the best understanding of this phrase.
Also significant is his earlier piece, "Works of the Law and the Curse of the Law (Gal. 3:10-14)" from 1985 (New Perspective, 121-40), not to mention the article that put the name "new perspective" on the new perspective, namely, "The New Perspective on Paul" (1983--in New Perspective, 99-120).
except...
Should we translate the two words here in their normal sense or as "but." Dunn's "Incident at Antioch" above argues for "except."
through faith of Jesus Christ...
The two key articles here are reprinted in Richard Hays' signature volume, The Faith of Jesus Christ: The Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1-4:11. The two articles were originally presented in Kansas City at the 1991 SBL: Hays: "Pistis and Pauline Theology: What's at Stake" and Dunn: "Once More, Pistis Christou."
even we have placed our faith in Jesus Christ that we might be justified by Christ faith and not works of law...
All the key issues above are repeated here. Consult especially Dunn on works of law and Hays/Dunn on redundancy if one goes with an objective genitive throughout.
Since this is my blog, you'll forgive me if I sneak in my article here, "2 Corinthians and the Pistis Christou Debate, CBQ 70 (2008): 524-37," which suggests Paul may have a double entendre in mind in the final pistis Christou. Since that claim was not a part of my dissertation, you can trust it. :-)
for by works of law no flesh will be justified.
This quotation of Psalm 143 and Paul's modifications to it are well treated by Richard Hays in his book, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul.
You could do a whole course on this verse, reading through this literature. It would actually be quite a good introduction to Paul's theology in the specific area of his interaction with the Jerusalem church. If twenty of you wanted to do an online graduate course on Acrobat in the Fall... :-)
Dunn's Historical Jesus summary of the day is a comin'.
Saturday, December 06, 2008
Answers: Paul's Theology in Romans 1-8
I gave my Romans and Galatians class a take home test whose questions I posted a while back. I thought I'd post my answers to those questions today. There's some stuff here I'd like to publish, so as is always implied, © Ken Schenck on the parts that aren't common positions.
1. What is the gospel?
The gospel, the good news, is that God has enthroned Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, the Lord of the cosmos. Jesus was qualified to be cosmic king because he was descended from David and then God raised him from the dead.
2. Ethnic make-up of the audience of Romans?
There are only three reasons to suggest that the audience might have a significant Jewish component: 1) the Jewish names in Romans 16, 2) the Jewish interlocutor of 2:17, and 3) common sense, the likelihood that early Christian communities might have been mixed.
Aside from chapter 16, however, whose destination is questioned, the actual text of Romans pushes us toward an overwhelmingly Gentile audience. 1:13 implies that the audience is Gentile, and the discussion of 9-11 speaks about the Jews as other than both Paul and the audience. The interlocutor of 2:17 is an imaginary one and could even include Gentiles who were particularly "conservative" on matters of law.
3. Why did Paul write Romans?
First, Paul planned to visit Rome soon. Romans thus was meant to introduce himself to the Romans in preparation for his coming visit.
Second, he was visiting them hopefully on his way to Spain. He preferred not to minister in locations where the gospel was already established. The church at Rome was already founded, so he hoped to use Rome as a launching pad for a mission to Spain and no doubt hoped to have the material support of the Roman church as he went.
Thirdly, part of his introduction involved fending off possible rumors about him the Romans might have heard. In particular, it was rumored that he advocated sin because of his emphasis on grace (e.g., 3:8) and probably that he disdained his Jewish heritage. Romans is thus, more than anything, a defense of his understanding of the gospel.
Lastly, Paul has apparently heard that the kinds of issues between "weak" and "strong" that he addressed at Corinth were also in play at Rome. Romans 14-15 in particular address these issues directly, 12-13 indirectly, and the theology of Romans 1-11 indirectly.
4. What does Paul mean by the "righteousness of God" in Romans?
The Jewish background of the phrase in Psalm 143, Isaiah 40-66, and the Dead Sea Scroll hymns suggests that the first meaning this phrase would have had for a Jew is that propensity of God to act in love toward His people, Israel, and to save them. For Paul this love clearly extends to the Gentiles as well, so that the phrase, God's "saving righteousness" is very appropriate to the sense of Romans 1:17.
For Paul, the phrase also has connotations of God being just, a slightly different sense that we find in 3:26. God has passed over sins, but he has offered Christ as an atoning sacrifice. He is thus "just" at the same time that he justifies the ungodly.
In a couple places, however, Paul seems to build on the semantic flexibility of the phrase "the righteousness of God" to double entendre (3:21) or explicitly blur to (10:3) a sense of the righteousness that comes from God in justification, a pronouncement of innocence in court, acceptibility by God.
5. What is salvation for Paul?
Salvation for Paul most literally refers to escaping God's wrath on the Day of the Lord. On the one hand, the wrath of God is something already intrinsic to him "giving over" idolaters to sexual immorality and such. There is judgment intrinsic to their actions.
Yet Paul also looks to a Day of Judgment at the point of Christ's return. Salvation relates most directly in his regular usage to being rescued from that wrath (5:9). We must all appear before the judgment seat of God (2:5; 14:10).
When Paul speaks of being saved in the present tense in Romans, therefore, he is either speaking proleptically of something certain enough to speak of it as accomplished, gnomically of general truths, or using a futuristic present. Only Ephesians seems to use salvation language with more of a genuine past tense (2:8), and we would argue that it reflects more the wording of a secretary or heir than Paul's own natural vocabulary, style, and specific thought patterns.
6. What is faith for Paul? What is its content? Whom is it directed toward?
Paul can use the word faith with most of the flexibility of meaning the word had at the time. He can use it to mean faithfulness (3:3). He can use it with a primary emphasis on belief (10:8).
Most of the time Paul uses it, he uses the connotation of trust or confidence in the God who raised Jesus from the dead (4:25) or in Jesus' Lordship and all that it accomplishes (9:33; 10:11). Presumably faith in this latter case involves commitment and investment in Jesus as Lord, surrender to his Lordship.
The belief content of faith is thus primarily that God raised Jesus from the dead and thus that Jesus is Lord.
7. What does the expression εκ πιστεως mean for Paul?
This phrase is drawn from Habakkuk 2:4 and can be taken as a shorthand reference to Paul's understanding of that verse. The expression, "justification by faith" is an apt summary of Paul's understanding, provided that we correctly understand what Paul might mean by that phrase.
First, it is clear from 9:32-33 that Paul understands the phrase more in relation to human faith rather than Christ's faithfulness. Human faith leads to justification as opposed to Jewish or human "works." We trust in what God has done in Christ and God declares us justified, not guilty, our sins not reckoned because of our faith in the God who has raised Jesus from the dead and enthroned him as cosmic Lord. Most of the time Paul uses the expression, we believe he refers to human faith.
However, since we believe that Romans 3:22 refers to the faithfulness of Jesus, his obedient act to the point of death, it seems more likely than not that the first sense of "from the faith of Jesus" in 3:26 is Jesus' faith rather than human faith. The context thus implies a double reference in this verse--a reference to the faith Jesus had and to the faith we must have. 2 Corinthians 4:13 reflects this same common story of faith between Jesus and us, leading to resurrection.
8. What is the role of works in final justification?
Romans 2:5-10 speak of the Day of Wrath when God will render to each person according to his or her works. This is possibly the same event as Romans 14:10 where Paul indicates we will all stand before the judgment seat of God and 2 Corinthians 5:10. In 2 Corinthians, Paul speaks of giving an account for things done in the body.
The idea that even Christians will be judged for their earthly deeds is found several places in Paul. Thus in 1 Corinthians 3:13-15 Paul speaks of the Day disclosing a Christian's works, including some judgment by fire for individuals who will nonetheless be ultimately saved. Paul also indicates that certain notorious sinful types of individual will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9-10).
I think we should thus factor in repentance and forgiveness for the time in between "initial" justification, Paul's primary concern in Romans, and ultimate or "final" justification on the Day of Wrath. The works for which a believer might be judged on the Day are thus sinful and carnal deeds toward which a person shows no repentance (e.g., 2:4).
9. What is the role of repentance in justification?
Paul makes no explicit connection between repentance and justification. However, it does show up in a couple instances where Paul is addressing the process of reconciliation with God. It is the goodness of God that allows the sinful to repent (2:4). We suspect that Paul would fully affirm the importance of repentance as a prior requirement for justification, even though it is not a category that plays a major role in his explicit and probably conscious thought.
As an aside, my hunch is that Paul is not saying in 2:4 that God causes repentance but rather that God allows for it.
10. What does Paul mean when he says that all have sinned?
While I believe Paul would affirm that all individuals have sinned, 3:23 primarily indicates that both Jews and Gentiles have sinned. So all have sinned--both Jew and Gentile. The Jews as well as the Gentiles stand under the wrath of God.
In my opinion, Paul uses the words sin and transgression in much the same way, although Sin can take on cosmic proportions for him that the word transgression does not. Transgression tends more toward concrete actions, while sin can become more abstract. The basic meaning he primarily has in mind is to violate God's law (5:13; 7:7-8). Paul, however, seems to focus on those aspects of the Jewish Law that a believer will keep after the Spirit of Christ indwells him or her.
He does not, however, seem to define sin as the violation of some absolute perfection, such as to "miss the mark." Nor does he have in mind unintentionally violating a law that one knows. We now know the commandments (as opposed to those between Adam and Moses) and in this context Paul never speaks of sinning without knowing one is sinning. We should probably steer away from the word unintentional, however, because Romans 7 speaks of a person who does not intend to sin but is overpowered by Sin's power over their flesh.
11. What does it mean to lack the glory of God?
The glory of God is what God intended humanity to have at creation (Ps. 8) but that all currently lack because of sin (Rom. 3:23). Christ's atonement and our justification on the basis of his and our faith gives us hope to attain to such glory on the Day of Salvation.
Romans 8 gives us some hints of what such glorification might entail. It involves, for example, the redemption of our bodies (8:18, 23). It relates directly to the Spirit we have inside as a downpayment (8:23; 2 Cor. 5:5). And presumably, it has a lot to do with the resurrection body of 1 Corinthians 15.
12. What does it mean to be justified for Paul?
To be justified is to be found innocent, not guilty, reckoned as righteous (4:6) by God. This is despite the fact that all have sinned (3:23-24) and takes place by way of the atonement God has provided through Christ (3:25). Justification so credited when first confessing faith in Jesus as Lord does not guarantee the ultimate trial verdict on the Day of Judgment.
13. What does Paul mean by the "faith of Jesus Christ"?
The expression that appears in Romans 3:22 and Galatians 2:16 may at least initially refer to the faithfulness of Jesus to the point of death. Romans 5:19 seems to parallel this sense closely. The fact that Paul does not explain the expression may imply that it was a well known expression in early Christian Judaism as a shorthand reference to the faithful death of Jesus.
However, Paul tends to build on the ambiguity of the expression in moving toward human faith in his later discussions (see #7) above.
14. What does Paul mean by "works of Law"?
In Galatians 2 it seems fairly clear that Paul primarily has in view elements of the Mosaic Law such as circumcision and food laws when he denies that "works of Law" can result in justification. The expression now found in the Dead Sea Scroll document, "Some of the Works of the Law" corroborates a primary connotation of the phrase in reference to those elements of Law keeping that fueled intra-Jewish debate.
However, Paul's use of the phrase is not limited to those elements of the Jewish Law that separated Jew from Gentile. Paul always has the Jewish Law in view no doubt when he uses the phrase. The question is which parts he most focuses on at any one time. In Romans he tends to speak more generally of "works of Law" in reference to how well one keeps any part.
Paul's point is simply that being right with God is always a matter of His grace. Everyone has some violation of Law for which they need God's forgiveness. The real point of controversy between Paul and his opponents does not seem to be this point, but rather on what basis God dispenses it. God does not dispense His grace because of how well one keeps the Law but on the basis of confession of Jesus' Lordship and all that it entails.
15. What is the nature of atonement in Romans?
Atonement is sacrificial in nature in Romans. God offered Jesus as an atoning sacrifice by means of his blood. The Greek word ιλαστηριον is notoriously controversial (3:25). It surely involves a vindication that God is just (3:26) and a cleansing for sin as well. The fact that the word always refers to the physical cover of the ark of the covenant in the Jewish Scriptures surely implies that Paul has it in view here. God has made Jesus to be the Day of Atonement altar where our atonement is effected.
The logic of atonement remains difficult for us, the way in which the ancients understood animal or human blood to substitute for the offenses of others. But the result was reconciliation between the person or group and the offended god or gods. In the Christian sense, it has to do with reconciliation between an alienated humanity and God by way of the blood of Jesus. Redemption is another image used for the freedom of the offender from their guiltiness by the "payment" of Christ.
16. What is the nature of boasting in Romans?
The principal boasting Paul has in mind is the boasting that a Jew might make in being acceptable before God simply because of being a Jew and knowing the Law (2:17). Boasting in works (3:27) thus still primarily refers to the kind of boasting a Jew might make for keeping the Law. Gentile believers similarly have no basis to boast in relation to the Jews either (11:18). What Christians can boast in is the hope of the glory of God (5:2).
17. What is the role of grace in justification?
Justification is entirely by grace. No one merits or earns God's favor (4:4-5), and death results in a kind of justification for all (5:7). But God has now graciously and mercifully enabled justification for the living on the basis of their faith in what He has done through Jesus Christ and in the Lordship he has bestowed on him.
Grace here is God's patronage toward us in doling out forgiveness. Such grace does not come without expectations, however, and one should not think that such grace is unconditional or will continue indefinitely regardless of how one behaves toward the Spirit of grace.
18. What is the role of Adam in Paul's theology?
Adam for Paul brought Sin and death into the world (5:12-14). Since Adam, all humanity and the creation are under the power of Sin. All humans die, and the creation decays (8:20). Because of the power of Sin, we all sin like Adam although we do not inherit his sin.
But just as we have borne the image of the earthly man Adam we will bear the image of the heavenly man Jesus (1 Cor. 15:49). As in Adam all die, so all in Christ will be made alive (1 Cor. 15:22).
19. What is the role of sin in the life of the believer?
Paul makes no allowances for sin in the life of the believer in Romans, although it seems very likely that he assumes it does happen sometimes. It does not have to (1 Cor. 10:13), but he is not making some absolute argument in these chapters. He is not arguing that a Christian will never sin. What he is arguing is that sin must not reign in a believer's life (6:12) and that sin should not typify a Christian's life. Sin should be atypical of a believer, not typical.
Here of course he is talking about doing wrong when you know to do the good (e.g., 7:19). He is not talking about never "missing the mark." Paul consistently in this section says that while we used to be enslaved to sin (6:17) we now walk in newness of life (6:5). We fulfill the righteous requirement of the Law through the power of the Spirit (8:4).
Paul knows nothing about Christ fulfilling the Law for us, only of us dying to the Law by participating in Christ's death. Paul knows nothing of some legal fiction of righteousness that continues to cover our actions after we have first been justified by our faith in the Lordship of Jesus the Christ.
20. What does flesh signify for Paul?
Flesh is that aspect of our human bodies that is susceptible to the power of Sin. There is a dualistic element to Paul's thought here. The physical world is not evil, but it is weak in relation to the power of Sin. Apart from the power of the Spirit our flesh will overcome any intent of our mind to keep the Law. Apart from the Spirit, we will not be able to do the good we want to do. The body and the flesh thus relate to the world where Sin is empowered. Spirit and the mind pertain much more to the heavenly realm, although our minds perhaps can also be affected by Sin (12:2).
In Paul, the flesh thus becomes shorthand for a person under the power of Sin, so much so that those who are "in the flesh" are unable to please God (8:8). To be "in the Spirit" is thus for a person to be empowered in relation to the weakness of the body in this world where Sin and Satan hold sway.
21. What is the Law in Paul's thinking and how does it function?
Paul can use the word Law in a number of ways. Clearly the Jewish Law, the Mosaic Law, the legislation of the Pentateuch, is the base camp for Paul's references to the Law. When he says that Gentiles are freed from the Law or are not under Law (e.g., 1 Cor. 9:20) he both means that they are not required to keep the Jewish particulars of the Law and that our (initial) justification is not on the basis of the Law.
The Jewish Law in this respect functioned 1) to tell me the commandment of God that I must not violate and 2) pointed out my helplessness to keep that Law because of the power of Sin over my flesh. Paul here has subtly blurred into a focus on those parts of the Law that remain in force for a believer, what later Christians (but not Paul) would call the "moral" law. Paul affirms in Romans 8 that Christians can fulfill this righteous requirement (8:4; cf. 3:31). Romans 13:8-10 suggests that it basically amounts to loving one's neighbor.
But Paul uses the word Law in other ways as well. It can refer to the first five books of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch. He can use it to mean a "rule" (3:27). The fact that he does not signal any of these sorts of shifts significantly confuses his meaning.
22. What is the role of the Spirit in the believer and in the Church?
As mentioned under #20, the Spirit finally empowers the person wanting to do good, to do good. The person is empowered to love as God gives life to our mortal bodies (8:11). A person who does not have the Spirit of Christ, on the other hand, is not his (8:9). The Spirit is thus the most essential ingredient in salvation.
The Spirit is an earnest of our inheritance, both a downpayment of our glorified bodies and a guarantee (5:5). The Spirit of sonship indicates our adoption as sons of God (8:14-17). The Spirit sanctifies us, purifies us and possesses us as God's property (1 Cor. 6:11).
1. What is the gospel?
The gospel, the good news, is that God has enthroned Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, the Lord of the cosmos. Jesus was qualified to be cosmic king because he was descended from David and then God raised him from the dead.
2. Ethnic make-up of the audience of Romans?
There are only three reasons to suggest that the audience might have a significant Jewish component: 1) the Jewish names in Romans 16, 2) the Jewish interlocutor of 2:17, and 3) common sense, the likelihood that early Christian communities might have been mixed.
Aside from chapter 16, however, whose destination is questioned, the actual text of Romans pushes us toward an overwhelmingly Gentile audience. 1:13 implies that the audience is Gentile, and the discussion of 9-11 speaks about the Jews as other than both Paul and the audience. The interlocutor of 2:17 is an imaginary one and could even include Gentiles who were particularly "conservative" on matters of law.
3. Why did Paul write Romans?
First, Paul planned to visit Rome soon. Romans thus was meant to introduce himself to the Romans in preparation for his coming visit.
Second, he was visiting them hopefully on his way to Spain. He preferred not to minister in locations where the gospel was already established. The church at Rome was already founded, so he hoped to use Rome as a launching pad for a mission to Spain and no doubt hoped to have the material support of the Roman church as he went.
Thirdly, part of his introduction involved fending off possible rumors about him the Romans might have heard. In particular, it was rumored that he advocated sin because of his emphasis on grace (e.g., 3:8) and probably that he disdained his Jewish heritage. Romans is thus, more than anything, a defense of his understanding of the gospel.
Lastly, Paul has apparently heard that the kinds of issues between "weak" and "strong" that he addressed at Corinth were also in play at Rome. Romans 14-15 in particular address these issues directly, 12-13 indirectly, and the theology of Romans 1-11 indirectly.
4. What does Paul mean by the "righteousness of God" in Romans?
The Jewish background of the phrase in Psalm 143, Isaiah 40-66, and the Dead Sea Scroll hymns suggests that the first meaning this phrase would have had for a Jew is that propensity of God to act in love toward His people, Israel, and to save them. For Paul this love clearly extends to the Gentiles as well, so that the phrase, God's "saving righteousness" is very appropriate to the sense of Romans 1:17.
For Paul, the phrase also has connotations of God being just, a slightly different sense that we find in 3:26. God has passed over sins, but he has offered Christ as an atoning sacrifice. He is thus "just" at the same time that he justifies the ungodly.
In a couple places, however, Paul seems to build on the semantic flexibility of the phrase "the righteousness of God" to double entendre (3:21) or explicitly blur to (10:3) a sense of the righteousness that comes from God in justification, a pronouncement of innocence in court, acceptibility by God.
5. What is salvation for Paul?
Salvation for Paul most literally refers to escaping God's wrath on the Day of the Lord. On the one hand, the wrath of God is something already intrinsic to him "giving over" idolaters to sexual immorality and such. There is judgment intrinsic to their actions.
Yet Paul also looks to a Day of Judgment at the point of Christ's return. Salvation relates most directly in his regular usage to being rescued from that wrath (5:9). We must all appear before the judgment seat of God (2:5; 14:10).
When Paul speaks of being saved in the present tense in Romans, therefore, he is either speaking proleptically of something certain enough to speak of it as accomplished, gnomically of general truths, or using a futuristic present. Only Ephesians seems to use salvation language with more of a genuine past tense (2:8), and we would argue that it reflects more the wording of a secretary or heir than Paul's own natural vocabulary, style, and specific thought patterns.
6. What is faith for Paul? What is its content? Whom is it directed toward?
Paul can use the word faith with most of the flexibility of meaning the word had at the time. He can use it to mean faithfulness (3:3). He can use it with a primary emphasis on belief (10:8).
Most of the time Paul uses it, he uses the connotation of trust or confidence in the God who raised Jesus from the dead (4:25) or in Jesus' Lordship and all that it accomplishes (9:33; 10:11). Presumably faith in this latter case involves commitment and investment in Jesus as Lord, surrender to his Lordship.
The belief content of faith is thus primarily that God raised Jesus from the dead and thus that Jesus is Lord.
7. What does the expression εκ πιστεως mean for Paul?
This phrase is drawn from Habakkuk 2:4 and can be taken as a shorthand reference to Paul's understanding of that verse. The expression, "justification by faith" is an apt summary of Paul's understanding, provided that we correctly understand what Paul might mean by that phrase.
First, it is clear from 9:32-33 that Paul understands the phrase more in relation to human faith rather than Christ's faithfulness. Human faith leads to justification as opposed to Jewish or human "works." We trust in what God has done in Christ and God declares us justified, not guilty, our sins not reckoned because of our faith in the God who has raised Jesus from the dead and enthroned him as cosmic Lord. Most of the time Paul uses the expression, we believe he refers to human faith.
However, since we believe that Romans 3:22 refers to the faithfulness of Jesus, his obedient act to the point of death, it seems more likely than not that the first sense of "from the faith of Jesus" in 3:26 is Jesus' faith rather than human faith. The context thus implies a double reference in this verse--a reference to the faith Jesus had and to the faith we must have. 2 Corinthians 4:13 reflects this same common story of faith between Jesus and us, leading to resurrection.
8. What is the role of works in final justification?
Romans 2:5-10 speak of the Day of Wrath when God will render to each person according to his or her works. This is possibly the same event as Romans 14:10 where Paul indicates we will all stand before the judgment seat of God and 2 Corinthians 5:10. In 2 Corinthians, Paul speaks of giving an account for things done in the body.
The idea that even Christians will be judged for their earthly deeds is found several places in Paul. Thus in 1 Corinthians 3:13-15 Paul speaks of the Day disclosing a Christian's works, including some judgment by fire for individuals who will nonetheless be ultimately saved. Paul also indicates that certain notorious sinful types of individual will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9-10).
I think we should thus factor in repentance and forgiveness for the time in between "initial" justification, Paul's primary concern in Romans, and ultimate or "final" justification on the Day of Wrath. The works for which a believer might be judged on the Day are thus sinful and carnal deeds toward which a person shows no repentance (e.g., 2:4).
9. What is the role of repentance in justification?
Paul makes no explicit connection between repentance and justification. However, it does show up in a couple instances where Paul is addressing the process of reconciliation with God. It is the goodness of God that allows the sinful to repent (2:4). We suspect that Paul would fully affirm the importance of repentance as a prior requirement for justification, even though it is not a category that plays a major role in his explicit and probably conscious thought.
As an aside, my hunch is that Paul is not saying in 2:4 that God causes repentance but rather that God allows for it.
10. What does Paul mean when he says that all have sinned?
While I believe Paul would affirm that all individuals have sinned, 3:23 primarily indicates that both Jews and Gentiles have sinned. So all have sinned--both Jew and Gentile. The Jews as well as the Gentiles stand under the wrath of God.
In my opinion, Paul uses the words sin and transgression in much the same way, although Sin can take on cosmic proportions for him that the word transgression does not. Transgression tends more toward concrete actions, while sin can become more abstract. The basic meaning he primarily has in mind is to violate God's law (5:13; 7:7-8). Paul, however, seems to focus on those aspects of the Jewish Law that a believer will keep after the Spirit of Christ indwells him or her.
He does not, however, seem to define sin as the violation of some absolute perfection, such as to "miss the mark." Nor does he have in mind unintentionally violating a law that one knows. We now know the commandments (as opposed to those between Adam and Moses) and in this context Paul never speaks of sinning without knowing one is sinning. We should probably steer away from the word unintentional, however, because Romans 7 speaks of a person who does not intend to sin but is overpowered by Sin's power over their flesh.
11. What does it mean to lack the glory of God?
The glory of God is what God intended humanity to have at creation (Ps. 8) but that all currently lack because of sin (Rom. 3:23). Christ's atonement and our justification on the basis of his and our faith gives us hope to attain to such glory on the Day of Salvation.
Romans 8 gives us some hints of what such glorification might entail. It involves, for example, the redemption of our bodies (8:18, 23). It relates directly to the Spirit we have inside as a downpayment (8:23; 2 Cor. 5:5). And presumably, it has a lot to do with the resurrection body of 1 Corinthians 15.
12. What does it mean to be justified for Paul?
To be justified is to be found innocent, not guilty, reckoned as righteous (4:6) by God. This is despite the fact that all have sinned (3:23-24) and takes place by way of the atonement God has provided through Christ (3:25). Justification so credited when first confessing faith in Jesus as Lord does not guarantee the ultimate trial verdict on the Day of Judgment.
13. What does Paul mean by the "faith of Jesus Christ"?
The expression that appears in Romans 3:22 and Galatians 2:16 may at least initially refer to the faithfulness of Jesus to the point of death. Romans 5:19 seems to parallel this sense closely. The fact that Paul does not explain the expression may imply that it was a well known expression in early Christian Judaism as a shorthand reference to the faithful death of Jesus.
However, Paul tends to build on the ambiguity of the expression in moving toward human faith in his later discussions (see #7) above.
14. What does Paul mean by "works of Law"?
In Galatians 2 it seems fairly clear that Paul primarily has in view elements of the Mosaic Law such as circumcision and food laws when he denies that "works of Law" can result in justification. The expression now found in the Dead Sea Scroll document, "Some of the Works of the Law" corroborates a primary connotation of the phrase in reference to those elements of Law keeping that fueled intra-Jewish debate.
However, Paul's use of the phrase is not limited to those elements of the Jewish Law that separated Jew from Gentile. Paul always has the Jewish Law in view no doubt when he uses the phrase. The question is which parts he most focuses on at any one time. In Romans he tends to speak more generally of "works of Law" in reference to how well one keeps any part.
Paul's point is simply that being right with God is always a matter of His grace. Everyone has some violation of Law for which they need God's forgiveness. The real point of controversy between Paul and his opponents does not seem to be this point, but rather on what basis God dispenses it. God does not dispense His grace because of how well one keeps the Law but on the basis of confession of Jesus' Lordship and all that it entails.
15. What is the nature of atonement in Romans?
Atonement is sacrificial in nature in Romans. God offered Jesus as an atoning sacrifice by means of his blood. The Greek word ιλαστηριον is notoriously controversial (3:25). It surely involves a vindication that God is just (3:26) and a cleansing for sin as well. The fact that the word always refers to the physical cover of the ark of the covenant in the Jewish Scriptures surely implies that Paul has it in view here. God has made Jesus to be the Day of Atonement altar where our atonement is effected.
The logic of atonement remains difficult for us, the way in which the ancients understood animal or human blood to substitute for the offenses of others. But the result was reconciliation between the person or group and the offended god or gods. In the Christian sense, it has to do with reconciliation between an alienated humanity and God by way of the blood of Jesus. Redemption is another image used for the freedom of the offender from their guiltiness by the "payment" of Christ.
16. What is the nature of boasting in Romans?
The principal boasting Paul has in mind is the boasting that a Jew might make in being acceptable before God simply because of being a Jew and knowing the Law (2:17). Boasting in works (3:27) thus still primarily refers to the kind of boasting a Jew might make for keeping the Law. Gentile believers similarly have no basis to boast in relation to the Jews either (11:18). What Christians can boast in is the hope of the glory of God (5:2).
17. What is the role of grace in justification?
Justification is entirely by grace. No one merits or earns God's favor (4:4-5), and death results in a kind of justification for all (5:7). But God has now graciously and mercifully enabled justification for the living on the basis of their faith in what He has done through Jesus Christ and in the Lordship he has bestowed on him.
Grace here is God's patronage toward us in doling out forgiveness. Such grace does not come without expectations, however, and one should not think that such grace is unconditional or will continue indefinitely regardless of how one behaves toward the Spirit of grace.
18. What is the role of Adam in Paul's theology?
Adam for Paul brought Sin and death into the world (5:12-14). Since Adam, all humanity and the creation are under the power of Sin. All humans die, and the creation decays (8:20). Because of the power of Sin, we all sin like Adam although we do not inherit his sin.
But just as we have borne the image of the earthly man Adam we will bear the image of the heavenly man Jesus (1 Cor. 15:49). As in Adam all die, so all in Christ will be made alive (1 Cor. 15:22).
19. What is the role of sin in the life of the believer?
Paul makes no allowances for sin in the life of the believer in Romans, although it seems very likely that he assumes it does happen sometimes. It does not have to (1 Cor. 10:13), but he is not making some absolute argument in these chapters. He is not arguing that a Christian will never sin. What he is arguing is that sin must not reign in a believer's life (6:12) and that sin should not typify a Christian's life. Sin should be atypical of a believer, not typical.
Here of course he is talking about doing wrong when you know to do the good (e.g., 7:19). He is not talking about never "missing the mark." Paul consistently in this section says that while we used to be enslaved to sin (6:17) we now walk in newness of life (6:5). We fulfill the righteous requirement of the Law through the power of the Spirit (8:4).
Paul knows nothing about Christ fulfilling the Law for us, only of us dying to the Law by participating in Christ's death. Paul knows nothing of some legal fiction of righteousness that continues to cover our actions after we have first been justified by our faith in the Lordship of Jesus the Christ.
20. What does flesh signify for Paul?
Flesh is that aspect of our human bodies that is susceptible to the power of Sin. There is a dualistic element to Paul's thought here. The physical world is not evil, but it is weak in relation to the power of Sin. Apart from the power of the Spirit our flesh will overcome any intent of our mind to keep the Law. Apart from the Spirit, we will not be able to do the good we want to do. The body and the flesh thus relate to the world where Sin is empowered. Spirit and the mind pertain much more to the heavenly realm, although our minds perhaps can also be affected by Sin (12:2).
In Paul, the flesh thus becomes shorthand for a person under the power of Sin, so much so that those who are "in the flesh" are unable to please God (8:8). To be "in the Spirit" is thus for a person to be empowered in relation to the weakness of the body in this world where Sin and Satan hold sway.
21. What is the Law in Paul's thinking and how does it function?
Paul can use the word Law in a number of ways. Clearly the Jewish Law, the Mosaic Law, the legislation of the Pentateuch, is the base camp for Paul's references to the Law. When he says that Gentiles are freed from the Law or are not under Law (e.g., 1 Cor. 9:20) he both means that they are not required to keep the Jewish particulars of the Law and that our (initial) justification is not on the basis of the Law.
The Jewish Law in this respect functioned 1) to tell me the commandment of God that I must not violate and 2) pointed out my helplessness to keep that Law because of the power of Sin over my flesh. Paul here has subtly blurred into a focus on those parts of the Law that remain in force for a believer, what later Christians (but not Paul) would call the "moral" law. Paul affirms in Romans 8 that Christians can fulfill this righteous requirement (8:4; cf. 3:31). Romans 13:8-10 suggests that it basically amounts to loving one's neighbor.
But Paul uses the word Law in other ways as well. It can refer to the first five books of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch. He can use it to mean a "rule" (3:27). The fact that he does not signal any of these sorts of shifts significantly confuses his meaning.
22. What is the role of the Spirit in the believer and in the Church?
As mentioned under #20, the Spirit finally empowers the person wanting to do good, to do good. The person is empowered to love as God gives life to our mortal bodies (8:11). A person who does not have the Spirit of Christ, on the other hand, is not his (8:9). The Spirit is thus the most essential ingredient in salvation.
The Spirit is an earnest of our inheritance, both a downpayment of our glorified bodies and a guarantee (5:5). The Spirit of sonship indicates our adoption as sons of God (8:14-17). The Spirit sanctifies us, purifies us and possesses us as God's property (1 Cor. 6:11).
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Review 12 of Piper's Future of Justification, Chapter 10
Sorry I've been off for a few days.
Today we look at chapter 10 of John Piper's book, The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright:
"The Implications for Justification of the Single Self-Righteous Root of 'Ethnic Badges' and 'Self-Help Moralism'"
This is one of Piper's longer chapters. In it Piper takes on several elements of the so called new perspective on Paul.
I continue to try to put my finger on why I don't really like the way Tom Wright goes about doing exegesis a lot of the time--even when I agree with him. I think I'm getting close. My sense is that he overloads passages with meaning because of his "system."
There's a great rule for reading texts in context--don't see more meaning in a text than is necessary for it to make sense. By contrast, Wright is in many respects as much a theologian when he interprets as a straight exegete (we are of course all theologians in our hermeneutic and application). In his own way Piper has pointed this fact out (he does it far more than even Wright of course). Wright reads the text from within a system he created back in his doctoral days. He has only elaborated it in dialog with specific passages and history ever since.
In that sense I view Jimmy Dunn as a better exegetical model of the original meaning than Wright is, which is why I wanted to study under him. Dunn sticks to the text wherever it leads--at least as much as any of us can--and has little time for the special pleading that is increasingly the name of the game in the biblical studies guild.
Certainly the ideological critics have conquered the text in the name of postmodernism and made it say whatever their ideology wanted it too. Yet postmodernism has also afforded conservatives an opportunity to slough off legitimate questions raised by modernist biblical scholarship. Others have turned to Gadamer as a way of interpreting within Christian tradition without regard for the original intent--a clever dodge but still a dodge.
My scheme has been to 1) let the text say what it said, no matter how painful, and 2) work out any problems when we move to theology. At times I let faith in my tradition trump reason's evidence, but I do this with full disclosure to myself. I realize this process has a tinge of the catholic to it, but I believe this is the way forward, a la Mark Noll and others. I think Christianity is ready for a synthesis that finally lets the Reformation reach equilibrium with the church catholic.
1. "mercy, not sacrifice"
This is not a major part of the chapter, but I wanted to put the funniest thing in this chapter first so it doesn't get buried in minutia.
I couldn't believe that Piper quoted this verse in the way he does, when Jesus tells the Pharisees of Matthew 23 to go learn what the Scripture means when it says, "I desire mercy and not sacrifice." For Piper, this is Jesus' "basic statement about the hermeneutic that guided the Pharisees' pursuit of Torah" (157). More on Piper's skewed, even if traditional understanding of the Pharisees below...
What was so funny was the way he turned this into an implied critique of the fact that the Pharisees didn't see their total depravity and, thus, their need for God's unconditional election. He doesn't put it this way, of course, but it stands behind what he does say: "They say that they are depending on God's grace. But Jesus said they are not" (157).
HA! The context is an indictment of Pharisees who pay attention to small details of the law and then miss the weightier ones--"justice, mercy, and faithfulness" (Matt. 23:23). In other words, Jesus critiques them because they don't show the right works!!! This passage has nothing to do at all with their absolute reliance on God's mercy. It's about the need for them to show mercy and thus to act righteously.
Frankly, Matthew and James are two NT texts Piper's theology should stay away from for their own health.
As an aside, I had a graduate student once who strongly objected to my translation of Matthew 6:1 as "do righteousness." His reasoning was that it is impossible for us truly to "do righteousness." I was at somewhat of a loss as to what to say to him. Sorry, that's what the Greek words say.
2. the phrase "works of law"
The New Perspective
As we have seen, Wright views the phrase "works of law" as a reference to "an ethnic badge worn to show that a person is in the covenant rather than deeds done to show that they deserve God's favor" (Piper, 145-46). In other words, Paul is addressing ethnic boasting rather than "self-help moralism."
By "self-help moralism," Wright means the attempt to earn God's favor by way of a person's good deeds and accomplishment of the law. In other words, following Sanders, Wright does not believe that Judaism in general at the time was "legalistic" but that Jews kept the law in gratitude to God for his grace.
Once again, I find Wright's way of describing his position less than communicative. As he does not see faith or justification as things that make a person right with God, he insists that "works of law" were badges of covenant membership for mainstream Judaism just as faith becomes for Christians. They show that a person is in but do not bring a person in.
I find Dunn's presentation of this new perspective on works of law much more helpful. Like Wright, he thinks that by "works of law," Paul is primarily thinking of boundary issues like circumcision, food laws, and sabbath observance--those aspects of the law that most set off Jew from Gentile.
However, Dunn has made it clear in an introduction to a recent collection of essays, The New Perspective on Paul, that he would not limit the referent of the phrase "works of law" to these items. They are simply the primary content Paul has in mind.
Both Dunn and Wright adduce the train of thought in Romans 3:27-30 in favor of the idea that Paul is attacking a kind of "ethnocentrism" on the part of the Jews, who see the fact that Gentiles do not perform "works of law" as an indication of the superior standing of the Jews in God's eyes.
"Where therefore is boasting?
"It has been excluded?
"By what law? The law of works?
"No, but through the law of faith. For we reckon that a person is justified by faith irrespective of works of law. Or is God [the God] of the Jews only? Is he not also [God] of the Gentiles?
"Yes, he is also [God] of the Gentiles, since God [is] one who will justify the circumcision on the basis of faith and the uncircumcision through faith."
Piper didn't finish out the train of thought. He omits the final verse of the passage: Therefore, do we nullify law through faith? Certainly not! But we establish law.
Dunn and Wright's understand Paul's train of thought like this:
a. A person is justified by faith apart from works of law.
b. Otherwise, no Gentile could ever be justified.
c. And that can't be so because God is the God of the Gentiles as well as the Jews.
d. Thus, "works of law" must be acts of law-keeping that distinguish Jew from Gentile and
e. Thus, the Jews saw works of law as indications of God's sole approval of them and rejection of the Gentiles. The inappropriate boasting here is thus boasting in Jewishness as a path to justification and the de facto exclusion of the Gentiles thereby.
This argument makes a good deal of sense, although I get uncomfortable when such an anachronistic term like "ethnocentrism" gets introduced into the equation.
Piper
Piper argues in reverse. The way in which God is one God is the fact that He does not show partiality (as in Romans 2). "God is not a tribal deity" (147). This shows why, moving back to vs. 28, justification is by faith and not by works. "The focus in the argument is not mainly on 'works of law' but on faith as the universally accessible and universally humbling way of justification" (147).
This is a dubious way to go about exegesis, especially if you don't play it back forward after you have rewound from the end. A train of thought runs forward, not backward.
Schenck
I conclude with Dunn's somewhat nuanced understanding of this phrase. Certainly from the standpoint of the words themselves, the phrase "works of law" would seem to refer to performance of the law. And what law is Paul most likely to have in mind? Why the Jewish law, of course. Wright is correct to see Jewish particularism as an element in the train of thought--Gentiles obviously don't tend to keep the law in question.
I find the background of 4QMMT potentially helpful too. If in fact this document reflects intra-Jewish arguments over the particulars of matters like purity and such, then the phrase might immediately bring to mind these sorts of issues--issues that were very particular to Judaism and the most ethnically unique aspects of the Jewish law. This is true even if the phrase itself potentially had broader connotations.
Indeed, if the word "Essene" is actually related to the verb אשה, "to do," it is possible that the idea of "doing" the law would have immediately brought this whole set of issues to mind--the kinds of issues that Essenes worried about.
The upshot of all this is that Paul targeted not so much "faith versus works" in the abstract, (although this issue is raised by Paul's argument, much as individual predestination is tangential but raised by Paul's corporate argument in Romans 9-11). What Paul specifically had in mind was faith versus works of a law that was the particular possession of Israel.
This of course has the effect of limiting salvation to the Jews, and it does steer the question of boasting toward Jewish boasting in the (Jewish) law as an indication that they are superior.
3. Was Judaism legalistic?
A significant portion of the chapter also takes on the new perspective's presentation of Judaism as a religion of grace rather than legalism. I have already mentioned a particularly ironic element in Piper's argument above in #1.
Now I would agree that Sanders' description of Palestinian Judaism is a bit simplistic, "canned," if you would. And Wright's sense of law keeping as gratitude to God for His grace is even more myopic. There were all sorts of Jews with all sorts of perspectives, even on the law. I will begrudgingly conceed that a phrase from the title of Carson's work, "variegated nomism," is more appropriate than Sanders' term, "covenantal nomism." The Devil is in the details, and grand, all encompassing typologies--this group is this way, that group is that way--are almost always wrong from the start. In real life people are complex and don't usually reduce to simplistic categories. This is, again, why I prefer Dunn to Wright.
But the "new perspective" is far more correct than the "old perspective" that saw Judaism as a religion of works righteousness and Paul as opposing this head on. Piper is right that works were in the mix of God's favor for Judaism. But they were in the mix of God's favor for Paul too. The pure abstraction of absolute faith (created by God and thus not a work) versus any work at all is not Paul. Further, the intertestamental texts often do emphasize God's grace. John Piper could have written half the Thanksgiving Hymns from Qumran.
As we mentioned under #1, Piper draws on Jesus' words against the Pharisees in Matthew 23 to base his understanding of Judaism. Here is a good statement of Piper's general perspective: "No doubt there were such grace-dependent, gratitude-driven Jewish people, but it is doubtful that Paul and the Pharisees whom Jesus knew and Paul's opponents in Galatia were among them."
In a way, I agree with Piper. I agree that the Jews didn't have his standard of "grace-dependence." Yet I disagree in that many Jews were sufficiently grace dependent to be acceptable to God. And the same applies to Paul--he didn't have Piper's standard of "grace-dependence," yet he was sufficiently grace-dependent to be acceptable to God.
Would Piper agree, however, that there were Pharisees who were sufficiently grace-dependent to be acceptable to God? In a footnote, Piper acknowledges that we are reading Matthew's presentation of the Pharisees and that there might, in theory, be a Matthean perspective in play. He dismisses such speculation: "If I have to choose which testimony to believe about the nature of the Pharisees, I choose to believe the testimony of the early Christians, not the reconstruction of twenty-first century scholars whose biases are no less dangerous than those of early Christians" (155 n.18).
He is perhaps alluding to Sanders' claim that Pharisees were a Judean phenomenon and that it is not likely that Jesus ever substantially came into contact with them.
I protest, however, to Piper's reference to "the testimony of the early Christians." Here he pretty much means the testimony of Matthew. When we listen to the perspectives of each of the gospel writers, Matthew is clearly the harshest toward the Pharisees. Piper could never make his claims from Luke-Acts or John. Jesus has Pharisee supporters in John (e.g., Nicodemus). And Acts seems to consider the Pharisees who have believed to be "in" (Acts 15:5). Indeed, Acts 21:20 seems to indicate that the vast majority of believers in Jerusalem leaned in this direction. Further, Paul identifies himself as a Pharisee in the present tense before the Sanhedrin in Acts 23:6.
We cannot 1) equate Pharisees with all Jews or 2) deny that Matthew's presentation tends toward one extreme and is not the whole picture even of "the testimony of the early Christians."
With regard to Paul, I might note again that Piper turns to Ephesians and 1 Timothy with respect to Paul's view toward his pre-Christian self. We can affirm by faith that Paul wrote these writings. But that does not allow us to deny the significant differences between them and Paul's earlier writings. You cannot start a theology of Paul from 1 Timothy or you will end up skewing all his earlier stuff.
Similarly, I was flabergasted to see that John McRay used Ephesians as the template for his presentation of the life and teachings of Paul. Ephesians is close to Paul's earlier writings, but it is different enough that it should be treated as a variation rather than the norm.
Take the following two statements:
"Therefore, since we have been justified on the basis of faith, we have peace with God ... Therefore, how much more since we have been justified by his blood, we will be saved through him from wrath" (Rom. 5:1, 9), and "a person is justified on the basis of faith irrespective of works of law (3:28).
"For by grace you have been saved through faith... not on the basis of works, so that no one can boast" (Eph. 2:8).
Note 1) that Ephesians no longer uses the language of justification. Meanwhile, 2) while salvation is future tense in Romans, it is now past tense in Ephesians. Further 3) works of law no longer is enmeshed in a discussion of Jews and Gentiles but has become the more abstract discussion that we know so well from Augustine to the present.
Again, the Devil is in the details. This is why Dunn is a better Bible interpreter than Piper. Piper runs rough shod over important distinctions and poo-poo's them in the name of some alleged "higher view of Scripture" that in practice is far more apt to rape the biblical text.
4. A futile distinction?
Finally, Piper spends a good deal of time arguing that there is ultimately no distinction between Wright's "racial boast" and "successful moralism." Both, according to Piper, amount to self-righteousness: "ethnocentrism and legalism have the same root" (157).
If one believes, as Piper does, that grace precludes merit to any human action at all, then he is correct. However, the Bible does not know such an absolute distinction.
Grace is a concept of ancient patronage. It was an informal relationship in which a "have" helped out a "have not" disproportionate to anything the recipient might give in return. But it was not absolute. Certainly a "client" might seek out a patron. Certainly such "gifts" often came with expectations in return and, in that sense, were not completely unconditional.
Now we must let the NT itself tell us the degree to which it might modify this socio-cultural background. Just because it happened this way in the Meditteranean world doesn't mean that it operates that way in the NT.
But the texts of the NT fit remarkably well against this background, which was current to the NT. Certainly God calls and elects in one set of texts. But then "whosoever" solicits God's favor in faith. And there are definitely expectations that God has in return for His grace. No one can give enough to merit His grace, but He expects us to give.
Piper's distinctions are thus post-NT. Faith is the sine qua non of justification. No amount of works add up to justification. And certainly, works of the Jewish law do not add up to justification. God will justify the Gentiles through their faith but He will justify the Jews also because of their faith, not because they have kept the Jewish law.
But in the final analysis, at the final judgment, appropriate "works" are also a sine qua non for final justification. We can do our "after the fact" rankling in theology class about whether the works are a result of justification rather than a pre-requisite for it. But these are our arguments, not Paul's.
Today we look at chapter 10 of John Piper's book, The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright:
"The Implications for Justification of the Single Self-Righteous Root of 'Ethnic Badges' and 'Self-Help Moralism'"
This is one of Piper's longer chapters. In it Piper takes on several elements of the so called new perspective on Paul.
I continue to try to put my finger on why I don't really like the way Tom Wright goes about doing exegesis a lot of the time--even when I agree with him. I think I'm getting close. My sense is that he overloads passages with meaning because of his "system."
There's a great rule for reading texts in context--don't see more meaning in a text than is necessary for it to make sense. By contrast, Wright is in many respects as much a theologian when he interprets as a straight exegete (we are of course all theologians in our hermeneutic and application). In his own way Piper has pointed this fact out (he does it far more than even Wright of course). Wright reads the text from within a system he created back in his doctoral days. He has only elaborated it in dialog with specific passages and history ever since.
In that sense I view Jimmy Dunn as a better exegetical model of the original meaning than Wright is, which is why I wanted to study under him. Dunn sticks to the text wherever it leads--at least as much as any of us can--and has little time for the special pleading that is increasingly the name of the game in the biblical studies guild.
Certainly the ideological critics have conquered the text in the name of postmodernism and made it say whatever their ideology wanted it too. Yet postmodernism has also afforded conservatives an opportunity to slough off legitimate questions raised by modernist biblical scholarship. Others have turned to Gadamer as a way of interpreting within Christian tradition without regard for the original intent--a clever dodge but still a dodge.
My scheme has been to 1) let the text say what it said, no matter how painful, and 2) work out any problems when we move to theology. At times I let faith in my tradition trump reason's evidence, but I do this with full disclosure to myself. I realize this process has a tinge of the catholic to it, but I believe this is the way forward, a la Mark Noll and others. I think Christianity is ready for a synthesis that finally lets the Reformation reach equilibrium with the church catholic.
1. "mercy, not sacrifice"
This is not a major part of the chapter, but I wanted to put the funniest thing in this chapter first so it doesn't get buried in minutia.
I couldn't believe that Piper quoted this verse in the way he does, when Jesus tells the Pharisees of Matthew 23 to go learn what the Scripture means when it says, "I desire mercy and not sacrifice." For Piper, this is Jesus' "basic statement about the hermeneutic that guided the Pharisees' pursuit of Torah" (157). More on Piper's skewed, even if traditional understanding of the Pharisees below...
What was so funny was the way he turned this into an implied critique of the fact that the Pharisees didn't see their total depravity and, thus, their need for God's unconditional election. He doesn't put it this way, of course, but it stands behind what he does say: "They say that they are depending on God's grace. But Jesus said they are not" (157).
HA! The context is an indictment of Pharisees who pay attention to small details of the law and then miss the weightier ones--"justice, mercy, and faithfulness" (Matt. 23:23). In other words, Jesus critiques them because they don't show the right works!!! This passage has nothing to do at all with their absolute reliance on God's mercy. It's about the need for them to show mercy and thus to act righteously.
Frankly, Matthew and James are two NT texts Piper's theology should stay away from for their own health.
As an aside, I had a graduate student once who strongly objected to my translation of Matthew 6:1 as "do righteousness." His reasoning was that it is impossible for us truly to "do righteousness." I was at somewhat of a loss as to what to say to him. Sorry, that's what the Greek words say.
2. the phrase "works of law"
The New Perspective
As we have seen, Wright views the phrase "works of law" as a reference to "an ethnic badge worn to show that a person is in the covenant rather than deeds done to show that they deserve God's favor" (Piper, 145-46). In other words, Paul is addressing ethnic boasting rather than "self-help moralism."
By "self-help moralism," Wright means the attempt to earn God's favor by way of a person's good deeds and accomplishment of the law. In other words, following Sanders, Wright does not believe that Judaism in general at the time was "legalistic" but that Jews kept the law in gratitude to God for his grace.
Once again, I find Wright's way of describing his position less than communicative. As he does not see faith or justification as things that make a person right with God, he insists that "works of law" were badges of covenant membership for mainstream Judaism just as faith becomes for Christians. They show that a person is in but do not bring a person in.
I find Dunn's presentation of this new perspective on works of law much more helpful. Like Wright, he thinks that by "works of law," Paul is primarily thinking of boundary issues like circumcision, food laws, and sabbath observance--those aspects of the law that most set off Jew from Gentile.
However, Dunn has made it clear in an introduction to a recent collection of essays, The New Perspective on Paul, that he would not limit the referent of the phrase "works of law" to these items. They are simply the primary content Paul has in mind.
Both Dunn and Wright adduce the train of thought in Romans 3:27-30 in favor of the idea that Paul is attacking a kind of "ethnocentrism" on the part of the Jews, who see the fact that Gentiles do not perform "works of law" as an indication of the superior standing of the Jews in God's eyes.
"Where therefore is boasting?
"It has been excluded?
"By what law? The law of works?
"No, but through the law of faith. For we reckon that a person is justified by faith irrespective of works of law. Or is God [the God] of the Jews only? Is he not also [God] of the Gentiles?
"Yes, he is also [God] of the Gentiles, since God [is] one who will justify the circumcision on the basis of faith and the uncircumcision through faith."
Piper didn't finish out the train of thought. He omits the final verse of the passage: Therefore, do we nullify law through faith? Certainly not! But we establish law.
Dunn and Wright's understand Paul's train of thought like this:
a. A person is justified by faith apart from works of law.
b. Otherwise, no Gentile could ever be justified.
c. And that can't be so because God is the God of the Gentiles as well as the Jews.
d. Thus, "works of law" must be acts of law-keeping that distinguish Jew from Gentile and
e. Thus, the Jews saw works of law as indications of God's sole approval of them and rejection of the Gentiles. The inappropriate boasting here is thus boasting in Jewishness as a path to justification and the de facto exclusion of the Gentiles thereby.
This argument makes a good deal of sense, although I get uncomfortable when such an anachronistic term like "ethnocentrism" gets introduced into the equation.
Piper
Piper argues in reverse. The way in which God is one God is the fact that He does not show partiality (as in Romans 2). "God is not a tribal deity" (147). This shows why, moving back to vs. 28, justification is by faith and not by works. "The focus in the argument is not mainly on 'works of law' but on faith as the universally accessible and universally humbling way of justification" (147).
This is a dubious way to go about exegesis, especially if you don't play it back forward after you have rewound from the end. A train of thought runs forward, not backward.
Schenck
I conclude with Dunn's somewhat nuanced understanding of this phrase. Certainly from the standpoint of the words themselves, the phrase "works of law" would seem to refer to performance of the law. And what law is Paul most likely to have in mind? Why the Jewish law, of course. Wright is correct to see Jewish particularism as an element in the train of thought--Gentiles obviously don't tend to keep the law in question.
I find the background of 4QMMT potentially helpful too. If in fact this document reflects intra-Jewish arguments over the particulars of matters like purity and such, then the phrase might immediately bring to mind these sorts of issues--issues that were very particular to Judaism and the most ethnically unique aspects of the Jewish law. This is true even if the phrase itself potentially had broader connotations.
Indeed, if the word "Essene" is actually related to the verb אשה, "to do," it is possible that the idea of "doing" the law would have immediately brought this whole set of issues to mind--the kinds of issues that Essenes worried about.
The upshot of all this is that Paul targeted not so much "faith versus works" in the abstract, (although this issue is raised by Paul's argument, much as individual predestination is tangential but raised by Paul's corporate argument in Romans 9-11). What Paul specifically had in mind was faith versus works of a law that was the particular possession of Israel.
This of course has the effect of limiting salvation to the Jews, and it does steer the question of boasting toward Jewish boasting in the (Jewish) law as an indication that they are superior.
3. Was Judaism legalistic?
A significant portion of the chapter also takes on the new perspective's presentation of Judaism as a religion of grace rather than legalism. I have already mentioned a particularly ironic element in Piper's argument above in #1.
Now I would agree that Sanders' description of Palestinian Judaism is a bit simplistic, "canned," if you would. And Wright's sense of law keeping as gratitude to God for His grace is even more myopic. There were all sorts of Jews with all sorts of perspectives, even on the law. I will begrudgingly conceed that a phrase from the title of Carson's work, "variegated nomism," is more appropriate than Sanders' term, "covenantal nomism." The Devil is in the details, and grand, all encompassing typologies--this group is this way, that group is that way--are almost always wrong from the start. In real life people are complex and don't usually reduce to simplistic categories. This is, again, why I prefer Dunn to Wright.
But the "new perspective" is far more correct than the "old perspective" that saw Judaism as a religion of works righteousness and Paul as opposing this head on. Piper is right that works were in the mix of God's favor for Judaism. But they were in the mix of God's favor for Paul too. The pure abstraction of absolute faith (created by God and thus not a work) versus any work at all is not Paul. Further, the intertestamental texts often do emphasize God's grace. John Piper could have written half the Thanksgiving Hymns from Qumran.
As we mentioned under #1, Piper draws on Jesus' words against the Pharisees in Matthew 23 to base his understanding of Judaism. Here is a good statement of Piper's general perspective: "No doubt there were such grace-dependent, gratitude-driven Jewish people, but it is doubtful that Paul and the Pharisees whom Jesus knew and Paul's opponents in Galatia were among them."
In a way, I agree with Piper. I agree that the Jews didn't have his standard of "grace-dependence." Yet I disagree in that many Jews were sufficiently grace dependent to be acceptable to God. And the same applies to Paul--he didn't have Piper's standard of "grace-dependence," yet he was sufficiently grace-dependent to be acceptable to God.
Would Piper agree, however, that there were Pharisees who were sufficiently grace-dependent to be acceptable to God? In a footnote, Piper acknowledges that we are reading Matthew's presentation of the Pharisees and that there might, in theory, be a Matthean perspective in play. He dismisses such speculation: "If I have to choose which testimony to believe about the nature of the Pharisees, I choose to believe the testimony of the early Christians, not the reconstruction of twenty-first century scholars whose biases are no less dangerous than those of early Christians" (155 n.18).
He is perhaps alluding to Sanders' claim that Pharisees were a Judean phenomenon and that it is not likely that Jesus ever substantially came into contact with them.
I protest, however, to Piper's reference to "the testimony of the early Christians." Here he pretty much means the testimony of Matthew. When we listen to the perspectives of each of the gospel writers, Matthew is clearly the harshest toward the Pharisees. Piper could never make his claims from Luke-Acts or John. Jesus has Pharisee supporters in John (e.g., Nicodemus). And Acts seems to consider the Pharisees who have believed to be "in" (Acts 15:5). Indeed, Acts 21:20 seems to indicate that the vast majority of believers in Jerusalem leaned in this direction. Further, Paul identifies himself as a Pharisee in the present tense before the Sanhedrin in Acts 23:6.
We cannot 1) equate Pharisees with all Jews or 2) deny that Matthew's presentation tends toward one extreme and is not the whole picture even of "the testimony of the early Christians."
With regard to Paul, I might note again that Piper turns to Ephesians and 1 Timothy with respect to Paul's view toward his pre-Christian self. We can affirm by faith that Paul wrote these writings. But that does not allow us to deny the significant differences between them and Paul's earlier writings. You cannot start a theology of Paul from 1 Timothy or you will end up skewing all his earlier stuff.
Similarly, I was flabergasted to see that John McRay used Ephesians as the template for his presentation of the life and teachings of Paul. Ephesians is close to Paul's earlier writings, but it is different enough that it should be treated as a variation rather than the norm.
Take the following two statements:
"Therefore, since we have been justified on the basis of faith, we have peace with God ... Therefore, how much more since we have been justified by his blood, we will be saved through him from wrath" (Rom. 5:1, 9), and "a person is justified on the basis of faith irrespective of works of law (3:28).
"For by grace you have been saved through faith... not on the basis of works, so that no one can boast" (Eph. 2:8).
Note 1) that Ephesians no longer uses the language of justification. Meanwhile, 2) while salvation is future tense in Romans, it is now past tense in Ephesians. Further 3) works of law no longer is enmeshed in a discussion of Jews and Gentiles but has become the more abstract discussion that we know so well from Augustine to the present.
Again, the Devil is in the details. This is why Dunn is a better Bible interpreter than Piper. Piper runs rough shod over important distinctions and poo-poo's them in the name of some alleged "higher view of Scripture" that in practice is far more apt to rape the biblical text.
4. A futile distinction?
Finally, Piper spends a good deal of time arguing that there is ultimately no distinction between Wright's "racial boast" and "successful moralism." Both, according to Piper, amount to self-righteousness: "ethnocentrism and legalism have the same root" (157).
If one believes, as Piper does, that grace precludes merit to any human action at all, then he is correct. However, the Bible does not know such an absolute distinction.
Grace is a concept of ancient patronage. It was an informal relationship in which a "have" helped out a "have not" disproportionate to anything the recipient might give in return. But it was not absolute. Certainly a "client" might seek out a patron. Certainly such "gifts" often came with expectations in return and, in that sense, were not completely unconditional.
Now we must let the NT itself tell us the degree to which it might modify this socio-cultural background. Just because it happened this way in the Meditteranean world doesn't mean that it operates that way in the NT.
But the texts of the NT fit remarkably well against this background, which was current to the NT. Certainly God calls and elects in one set of texts. But then "whosoever" solicits God's favor in faith. And there are definitely expectations that God has in return for His grace. No one can give enough to merit His grace, but He expects us to give.
Piper's distinctions are thus post-NT. Faith is the sine qua non of justification. No amount of works add up to justification. And certainly, works of the Jewish law do not add up to justification. God will justify the Gentiles through their faith but He will justify the Jews also because of their faith, not because they have kept the Jewish law.
But in the final analysis, at the final judgment, appropriate "works" are also a sine qua non for final justification. We can do our "after the fact" rankling in theology class about whether the works are a result of justification rather than a pre-requisite for it. But these are our arguments, not Paul's.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Monday Thoughts: Piper's Chapter 9, Future of Justification 11
Today we review chapter 9 of John Piper's new book, The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright. This chapter is titled, "Paul's Structural Continuity with Second Temple Judaism."
In this chapter, Piper presents--but largely does not evaluate--Wright's understanding of the phrase "works of law." To a large extent, Piper in this chapter is presenting some of the key distinctives of the so called "new perspective on Paul." In particular, he is evaluating an article Wright wrote comparing Paul with one of the Dead Sea scrolls: "Some of the Works of the Law" (4QMMT).
I have already mentioned this issue. Key here is the fact that Paul largely does not contrast faith with works in the abstract, as Luther and the Protestant Reformation did, indeed, as Augustine did. The phrase that Paul primarily uses is "works of law."
Thus Romans 3:28--"So we reckon that a person is justified by faith and not by works of law."
The law in question is certainly the Jewish law. For me, a crucial issue is whether Paul here primarily pictures the "core law" that I have argued he has in mind in Romans 2 or the fuller Jewish law with special reference to the particulars that distinguished Jew from Gentile (circumcision, sabbath observance, food laws). Certainly in Romans 2 he must have something like a core law in mind, since Gentiles do the things in the law--something they by definition cannot do if Paul has things like circumcision in mind.
Wright's Argument
Wright's argument is, first of all, an argument about Judaism. Following the "new perspective," Wright does not believe that Judaism at the time of Paul was a religion of legalism where you tried to earn God's favor. Rather,
1. God graciously brought Israel into covenant with Himself.
2. Israel's life of obedience was in response for this grace.
3. Final justification would come on the basis of an entire life lived.
With this last point we should emphasize that Wright and Piper are talking about the Second Temple Period (516BC-AD70). The OT in context has little sense that history is headed toward some sort of culmination.
So Wright has 6 points in relation to 4QMMT, the key text of which reads,
"We have written to you some of the works of the law... You will rejoice at the end time when you find the essence of our words to be true. And it will be reckoned to you as righteousness."
Here are Wright's points"
1. "Works of the law" here are in a covenantal and eschatological context.
2. The works in question function as "boundary markers" of God's people now anticipating the end time.
3. Paul replaced "works of law" in this scheme with "faith."
4. Both Paul and this document are talking about community definition.
5. Paul's ethics though functions differently than "works" do here.
6. This document is not Pharisee, so we can't assume Paul's Galatian opponents had this understanding of the structure of justification.
So Wright believes that Paul's understanding of justification has a similar structure to that of this Jewish background, only with faith taking the place of works of law.
So for the Teacher of Righteousness, the alleged author of MMT, 1) God's promise led to the 2) establishment of the community of Israel on its way to 3) final vindication, but in the meantime 4) in a state of exile marked by works in the present.
For Paul, according to Wright, 1) God's promise led to the 2) establishment of the community in Christ as fulfilled Israel on its way to 3) final vindication, but in the meantime 4) in a state of exile marked by faith in the present.
I'll confess before we get to the next chapter that I think Wright has seriously overread the parallel and is overloading Paul's words with mega-extraneous meaning. In the next installment, we'll look at Piper's critique and I'll add mine to both of them...
In this chapter, Piper presents--but largely does not evaluate--Wright's understanding of the phrase "works of law." To a large extent, Piper in this chapter is presenting some of the key distinctives of the so called "new perspective on Paul." In particular, he is evaluating an article Wright wrote comparing Paul with one of the Dead Sea scrolls: "Some of the Works of the Law" (4QMMT).
I have already mentioned this issue. Key here is the fact that Paul largely does not contrast faith with works in the abstract, as Luther and the Protestant Reformation did, indeed, as Augustine did. The phrase that Paul primarily uses is "works of law."
Thus Romans 3:28--"So we reckon that a person is justified by faith and not by works of law."
The law in question is certainly the Jewish law. For me, a crucial issue is whether Paul here primarily pictures the "core law" that I have argued he has in mind in Romans 2 or the fuller Jewish law with special reference to the particulars that distinguished Jew from Gentile (circumcision, sabbath observance, food laws). Certainly in Romans 2 he must have something like a core law in mind, since Gentiles do the things in the law--something they by definition cannot do if Paul has things like circumcision in mind.
Wright's Argument
Wright's argument is, first of all, an argument about Judaism. Following the "new perspective," Wright does not believe that Judaism at the time of Paul was a religion of legalism where you tried to earn God's favor. Rather,
1. God graciously brought Israel into covenant with Himself.
2. Israel's life of obedience was in response for this grace.
3. Final justification would come on the basis of an entire life lived.
With this last point we should emphasize that Wright and Piper are talking about the Second Temple Period (516BC-AD70). The OT in context has little sense that history is headed toward some sort of culmination.
So Wright has 6 points in relation to 4QMMT, the key text of which reads,
"We have written to you some of the works of the law... You will rejoice at the end time when you find the essence of our words to be true. And it will be reckoned to you as righteousness."
Here are Wright's points"
1. "Works of the law" here are in a covenantal and eschatological context.
2. The works in question function as "boundary markers" of God's people now anticipating the end time.
3. Paul replaced "works of law" in this scheme with "faith."
4. Both Paul and this document are talking about community definition.
5. Paul's ethics though functions differently than "works" do here.
6. This document is not Pharisee, so we can't assume Paul's Galatian opponents had this understanding of the structure of justification.
So Wright believes that Paul's understanding of justification has a similar structure to that of this Jewish background, only with faith taking the place of works of law.
So for the Teacher of Righteousness, the alleged author of MMT, 1) God's promise led to the 2) establishment of the community of Israel on its way to 3) final vindication, but in the meantime 4) in a state of exile marked by works in the present.
For Paul, according to Wright, 1) God's promise led to the 2) establishment of the community in Christ as fulfilled Israel on its way to 3) final vindication, but in the meantime 4) in a state of exile marked by faith in the present.
I'll confess before we get to the next chapter that I think Wright has seriously overread the parallel and is overloading Paul's words with mega-extraneous meaning. In the next installment, we'll look at Piper's critique and I'll add mine to both of them...
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