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  • From: "moon-ryul jung" <moon AT sogang.ac.kr>
  • To: corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: The Mystery of Romans: the theme of- - restoration of Israel
  • Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2002 22:25:11 -0500


> Moon,
> I will comment below your reply to my reply to your last post.
>
> > Mark,
> > You said:
> >> Israel will be restored, e.g., freed from the social (such as
> >> religious and political) constraints of the present age (Roman govt. and
> >> Hellenistic culture), as well as the power of sin (communal and personal)
> >> that often restrains humans from expressing fully the image of God in
> >> what
> >> they do and think.
> >
> > Very good. But I wonder. Was Paul misled? The fact of history tells us
> > that Israel was destroyed by the Roman armies and was scattered all
> > over the world since then, rather than being restored. Some people
> > solve this problem by spiritualizing the restoration of Israel, that
> > is, via the equation of Church = New Israel = True Israel. Some people
> > think that the current Israel in Palestine is the beginning of the
> > restoration of Israel, which was long interrupted. You would reject both
> > postions.
>
> Moon,
> Yes, I do not believe those two options represent Paul's voice.

Mark,
let me introduce into our discussion what Daniel Boyarin says in
his book "A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity". The reason
is that I am sort of convinced by his argument that Paul redefines
Israel, which implies that he allegorizes the restoration of Israel.

He said, in p.202:

As he himself says, "I ask then: Did God reject his people? By no means.
I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of
Benjamin."
(rom. 11.1). This, however, is not proof that Paul's theology
is not supercessionist, for the historical understanding of Israel
has been entirely superseded in the new, allegorical interpretation.

Because Boyarin is also a Jewish scholar as is Nanos, I am particularly
interested in reading Boyarin.

On the same page, he says:

As I have already argued, supersession can be understood in two ways.
Although Paul argues against one version of supersession, I will suggest
yet again on the basis of Roman 11 that from a Jewish perspective,
his theology is nevertheless supersessionist. At the very site of Paul's
main argument for tolerance of Jews, I find the focal point of his
ultimate
and unintended devaluation of Jewish difference.

He has basically two kinds of argument for his case.

The first arguement: the redefinition of the remanant.

P. 203, he says:

Now the crux of Paul's argument is for the continuing significance of
the Jewish people. If the Christian part [i.e. the remnant that
believes in Jesus, my comment] is holy, so is the rest [of the Jewish
people]. Paul, however, subtly shifts the ground upon which
he is standing. On the one hand, he argues that the Christian
Jews are merely a saving remnant, such as the one that the same
prophetic texts would speak of from Elijah to Jeremiah. Here, however,
is where the shift comes in, for the saving remant is no longer, as it
was in the prophets, those Jews who are FAITHFUL to the COMMANDMENTS, the
WORKS OF THE TORAH, but is NOW DEFINED BY GRACE ALONE [i.e. the grace
through
Jesus, my comment]

For the prophets as well, it was clear that a remnant would persist
through history that would gurantee the salvation of all Israel
at the end-time, so in a sense Paul has CHANGED NOTHING, but for those
very prophets the remnant was defined by faithfulness to works - all
works, circumcision and charity [Boyarin accepts the "covenantal nomism"
of Sanders and Dunn as basically valid, my comment] - while for Paul
the ground has explicitly shifted from works to a new, arbitrary
election of some of Israel who have been chosen to have faith in Christ
now.

Although ultimately God has not abandoned the original election by grace
of Israel, a NEW ACT OF GRACE has taken place which REPLACES those who
are faithful to the original covenant WITH those who have faith in
Christ as the remnant of Israel.


The second argument: The Gentile believers do not have an independent
status but should be grafted into Israel of God. [Although grafting
is based on the practice of the works of the Law, but faith in Christ]

P. 204, he says:

The root remains Israel, and just as in the case of a graft, the root
stock defines what the plant, in some sense, is and gives it nutriment,
so also the new plant of Christians remain DEFINED AS ISRAEL.
...
...
The Old Israel has been superseded and replaced by a New Israel
[which consists of Jew and Gentile believers in Christ], precisely
, as claimed, because Israel itself has not been superseded.
The claim of some scholars, therefore, that the notion of the Church
as a New Israel that superseded the old first appears in Justin Martyr
seems to me falsified by this passage. Paul holds out to the Jews
the possibility of reinclusion into the community of faith by
renouncing their "difference" and becoming the same and one
with the grafted Israel of gentile and Jewish believers in Christ,
but if they do not, they can only be figured as the dead and discarded
branches of the original olive tree. There is, on the one hand,
what I take to be a genuine, sincre passion for human (re)unification
and certainly a valid critique of "Jewish particularism", but on the
other hand, since the unification of humankind is predicated on sameness
through faith in Christ, those humans who choose difference end up
effectively hon-human.



-------------------

Mark, I would like to know exactly how you are different from Boyarin.
As you would know well, he also thinks that Paul's discourse is
intra-Jewish, as you reminded us all the time.

Note what he says, p. 205:

I treat Paul's discourse as indigenously Jewish, thereby preempting
the question of the relationship between Paul and anti-Semitism.
This is an inner-Jewish discourse and an inner_Jewish controversy.
The only flaw in the rejected branches is their rejection. Indeed,
they retain their character as Israel, and if they will only return
they are assured of a successful regrafting. .....
.. ..
Reform Jews consider Orthodoxy seriously flawed in its "refusal"
to see that the Torah "intended" itself to change with the time,
and Orthodox Jews Reformers as heretics, but on one doubts
the Jewishness of either group, nor considers the other "anti-Semitic".


In summary he says, p. 206:

Precisely because we understand "grace" and "works" as sociological
markers, we must understand Romans 11:5-6 as reflecting a replacement
of the historical , physical Jewish tribe, with its cultural practices,
by another kind of community, defined by grace. Indeed it has always been
the case that only part of Israel are the elect, but election until
now has been defined through commitment to Israel's historical practice
and memory. No longer: The remnant is now defined through its graceful
acceptance of Christ. No longer Israel according to the flesh, but Israel
according to the spirit - that Israel signified by the physical and
historical one.

Any comments?

Moon R. Jung
Associate Professor
Dept of Digital Media
Sogang Univ, Seoul, Korea

Indeed Christ is the goal of the Law. I do agree with Boyarin that
if Christ is the fulfillment of the Law, some notion of supersession is
involved in this fulfillment.








  • Re: The Mystery of Romans: the theme of- - restoration of Israel, moon-ryul jung, 01/03/2002

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