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Subject: Corpus-Paul

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  • From: "Rabbi Saul" <tim AT rabbisaul.com>
  • To: "Corpus-Paul" <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] (no subject)
  • Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 18:16:02 -0600

> Rabbi,
> when you say "because the incompetency of the law was part of God's
> salvation-historical plan of laying Sin upon His Son" it seems to suggest
> that God deceived Israel with the law. The law could never do it, but God
> gave it to Israel anyway just so he could show them they couldn't do
> it. The picture one thus gets of this sort of God is not very
> positive. As someone has already noted, the god you posit is himself
> incompetent if he cannot act competently in the giving of law. Further,
if
> he meant for people to be incapable of doing what he said he is nothing
> less than cruel (as though you were to tell your child to do something you
> knew was impossible and then punished him for it!!!!!!). Is this the way
> you read Paul or is this what Paul actually thought? In my view you are
> reading Paul through the lenses of Luther who indeed saw Law as God's
> method of condemning Israel; but in this regard Luther was wrong. I would
> recommend Sander's "Paul and the Law" to disabuse you of your
> luther-lensed-anti-paul-reading-of-the-text.

Au contraire, you are radically misreading my position. As I have indicated
more than once, Torah was never supposed to function as a hypothetical means
of achieving life. I have not in fact adopted Luther's reading, but run a
long way away from it - further in some respects than has the NPP, though
closer in others. I do think that NPPers have often tended to get blinders
on and focus too narrowly on "ethnological" issues, rather than
salvation-historical ones, but I would describe myself as moderately NPP.
(I do suggest that Sanders's "getting in" and "staying in" categories are
woefully inadequate to describe Judaism, which had a fundamental
apocalyptic/eschatological viewpoint underpinning its nomism. More below.)

What I did say, however, is that Torah was an accounting system - for *God*.
It was a perpetual debit account, so that in His justice He did not simply
ignore sins, but laid them up for the day of judgment upon His Son: that is
the point of Rom 3.25-26. I didn't say Torah was or intended to be an
accounting system for *Israel* herself; and believers living under Torah
recognized this. That is why David in Ps 143.2 says, "enter not into
judgment with your servant, for in your sight no one living is righteous."
Paul glosses this in both Gal 2.16 and Rom 3.20 as "by the works of Torah no
flesh shall be justified." Meaning: he takes Torah as a place of judgment,
and he takes the pre-Christ era as "flesh." Now note: David himself
recognizes that is not the basis of his life with God, and indeed in the
same Psalm he appeals to God for vindication (=justification) over against
his enemies. That is the norm, and Paul is well aware of the contexts of
the biblical passages he cites. Justification is not "in Torah" and never
was.

Now, to the eschatological issue: It is a fact (which falls out of
Sanders's "getting in/staying in" schema) that Second Temple Judaism by and
large believed that God would act in eschatological deliverance in response
to Israel's faithful Torah-keeping. Paul is saying: "Actually, that won't
work. God Himself has acted to justify flesh by condemning Sin in the flesh
of His own Son, and raising Him up to new creation life." This is the
eschatological deliverance Israel sought, and it has come to her from beyond
her own works of Torah. Paul's doctrine on this is squarely rooted in
Isaiah, where Yahweh looks at Israel's bondage and is astonished there is no
man, no deliverer, and so He works righteousness by His own arm.

We need to get beyond the Lutheran/NPP impasse. Neither side has yet
grasped the salvation-historical issues, although the NPP readings have
generally been a step forward from the "timeless law" posited by much
Protestantism.

tim

Tim Gallant
Pastor, Conrad Christian Reformed Church
Conrad, MT

Biblical Studies Center
http://www.timgallant.org/center.htm

Pauline studies:
http://www.rabbisaul.com

(406) 278-5846 / (406) 278-7809
Fax: (406) 278-7809
http://www.timgallant.org







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