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corpus-paul - Re: The purpose of the law in salvation-history

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  • From: Loren Rosson <rossoiii AT yahoo.com>
  • To: Corpus-paul <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: The purpose of the law in salvation-history
  • Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 05:06:12 -0700 (PDT)


Mark,

Thanks for the reply.

> I am struck by the order that emerges
> in these three points.
>
> For example, the ordering (1, 2, 3) of these
> propositions makes it seem that
> the first consideration of God was to give the law
> in order to consign
> humankind to sin, in order that humans would need be
> saved/rescued from this
> plight, on the basis of faith. Perhaps I am mistaken
> about what the order of
> the points is meant to set out, but when I try to
> conceptualize why (Paul or
> anyone would imagine) God going about things in this
> way I am unable to make
> sense of the proposition.

Because Paul believed in God's sovereignty. The law
could never have been opposed to God's will. Yet the
law does not (now) provide the common demominator for
salvation. That's a dilemma, no? The natural way out
of such a dilemma is to connect the law with sin and
assign it a negative role in the scheme of salvation
history. Naturally, that leads to perverse
implications. But that Paul was -- initially -- moved
to this logic is (to me) more than understandable.

> I wonder if both propositions don't suffer from a
> flaw in terms of
> evaluating these documents as though the (assumed)
> chronology of events that
> gave rise to these two letters,...
> since we don't actually
> know that Galatians preceded Romans

True -- and Galatians is one of the most difficult
letters in the Pauline corpus to date. But I know few
commentators who place it after Romans. I lean towards
a very early dating (c. 48) for reasons developed in
past posts. Paul's thought seems more refined and
tweaked in Romans -- in many places, not just with the
texts under discussion.

> Perhaps you are needlessly accepting
> limitations of the received way to organize the
> issue, and thus needlessly
> limiting the possibilities?

Could you elaborate a bit here? As you know too well,
I've precious little use for the "recieved" way (older
Lutheran/Calvinist/Augustinian/existentialist readings
of Paul-and-the-law).

Thanks again for the helpful comments.

Loren Rosson III
Nashua NH
rossoiii AT yahoo.com

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