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  • From: "Dieter Mitternacht" <dieter.mitternacht AT teol.lu.se>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: The purpose of the law in salvation-history
  • Date: Sun, 2 Sep 2001 17:35:09 +0200


Loren wrote:
> Paul must have been quite exceptional
> (less-than-human?) if he never had to change his mind
> about some of these things!! Surely you don't believe
> this strictly as stated? With everything Paul was
> invloved in doing as a missionary... We'd better
> believe Paul had some reassessing to do on occasion.

Yes, of course. Believe it or not, I was actually *not* intending to argue
that Paul never ever changed his mind, and I was not aiming at making an
absolute statement to that effect. Instead, I was trying to make a point
(emphatically) as we were discussing how to deal with rhetorically motivated
overstatements. What I was trying to state was that we should not construct
our concepts of Paul's opinion/thought as it comes to expression in a
specific situation without first having done rhetorical critical analyses
both of the rhetorical situation and the rhetorical strategy as it comes to
expression in the text. - But I was of course expressing myself poorly, that
I have to admit. (- I hope this admission will be a comfort to David Hindley
too. - ) Remember though that my remarks continued where your quote breaks of
with: "Instead it was the situation that required an adequate response.". But
I am glad you gave me an opportunuty to clarify.

> But I do want, again, to emphasize my agreement with
> you on the point of rhetorical strategy. After all,
> how else can we understand Paul's remarks about the
> law being a "curse" in Gal. 3:10-14. Ditto for the law
> as a "pedagogue" in Gal. 3:19-25. But is it not also
> possible that underneath Paul's exaggerated rhetoric
> lies some "truth"? All I'm asking you to take
> seriously is that Paul surely worried about God's
> constancy in dealing with Israel and the world. Rom
> 9-11 is an obvious case, and I think we also see hints
> of such concerns beneath the rhetoric of Gal.
> 3:19-25/Rom. 7:7-25.


Yes - but... in Gal 3:19-25 Paul may not be aiming at dealing with (or
expressing his own) worries with regard to "God's constancy in dealing with
Israel" (depending, of course, on what you mean with the phrase). Why would
Paul want/have to worry about that?
We may have a situation where nobody is especially worried about God's
dealings with Israel. The issue at stake may be the inclusion of the Gentiles
into God's covenant with Abraham and how that can/should/must be realized.
For some of the players this may not even be a theological problem but a
socio-political one. And if that is so, overstatements as the ones we have
been discussing may in fact turn out to mean something quite different (if we
understand an utterance's meaning to belong within the utterance situation)
than if they had been uttered out of worries about God's dealings with Israel.

Dieter

Lund University
SWEDEN
dieter.mitternacht AT teol.lu.se











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