Corpus-Paul

["moon-ryul jung" <moon AT saint.soongsil.ac.kr>]

Dear Pauline Scholars,

Let me raise some questions about the  recent exchange 
between Liz and Jim as shown below:

[Liz]
>Practically speaking then, a person who puts on the body of Christ and
>continues to practice the sins that flesh is heir to will not inherit the
>Kingdom of God. He is not in fact justified by faith alone, but only by 
the
>faith that brings about a transformation of behavior.
>
>Is this a correct understanding of Paul's thought in his letter to the
>Galatians?
>
[Jim]
Yup- you have it just as Paul had it. Your previous view of "justification
by faith" is pure Luther!

I think that this is an issue in Protestant evangelism in general.
If we can refer to the discussion between me, Mark Nanos, and others
about the the "new perspective on Paul and the Law", it says that
 when Paul said "one is not justified by the works of Law but by faith", it 
did not have to do with "salvation based on one's merit",
but with whether one can enter into the covenant with God 
      by believing Christ
      WITHOUT becoming a Jew by adopting their identity marks,
 e.g. circumcision and eating regulations. 

If this is right, the overall language of Paul with respect to the 
importance of behavior and good works would not be so 
different from those of Jesus, John the baptist, and the writer
of the book of James. In this light one may criticise the Protestant
tradition.

1) Many Protestant churches give a lip service to good works, 
 whereas many Catholic churches deliberately and conciously try to do
 good works in many social sectors, including social justice in
 underdeveloped and developing countries. No wonder if they believe
 that by doing so, they would "receive eternal life". Many Protestant   
scholars would say that if they do good
works thinking they would receive eternal life by doing so (of course 
without denying that salvation is
based on the grace of God in Christ), it is legalism or a sort of it. But 
what if such legalism is what Jesus and his disciples actually taught?

2) But, on the other hand, one may argue that both Protestant and Catholic
traditions suffer from a sort of legalism, without fully appreciating 
the grace of God in Christ. Saying that  good works is
an evidence of genuine faith that leads to eternal life may not be so
encouraging. One has to soberly examine what is inside one's mind. One
may be threatened by the thought that perhaps one's conduct isn't good
enought for staying in God's grace. Because Paul also could say that
"if any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself 
will be saved, but only as through fire" (1 Cor 3:15), one could link
 good works with reward rather than salvation itself. Though Paul here 
talks about the work of preachers like Paul and Apollos, I think we can
apply what he says to the relationship between one's work (whatever it may 
be) and one's salvation and reward.

When Paul said in Gal 5:21 that "those who do such things shall not inherit 
the kingdom of God. ", didn't he talk about the reward that they
would INHERIT in a similar way as the Jew expected to inherit the
Land? Paul's message is supposed to have psychological dimension because it 
is supposed to be understood and praticed by ordinary people. If his
message really said that one's status can be lost not just reward based on 
one's behavior, it would put immense tension on one's mind, and it would
be difficult to have and maintain assurance and hope obtained through 
Christ. We may simply say that there is patent tension between assurance 
based on one's reliance on Christ and threat that one may lose one's 
status. But is it really so? Even ordinary family relationship is not like 
that. If children feel threat that if they behave wrong, they might be 
expelled from the family, this is not a healthy family.



Respectfully,
Moon-ryul Jung
Assistant Professor
Dept of Computer Science
Soongsil University, Seoul, Korea