Corpus-Paul

["Mark D. Nanos" <nanos AT gvi.net>]

Dear Liz,
I thought I had asked you a few questions needing attention. You are clever
to pass the burden back to me so quickly. But I believe you need to answer
at least the question I pose on 1 Cor. 7:17-20 and Gal. 5:3, which suggest
logically the very opposite of what you assert for Rom. 7 below.

>> >I had written:
>> >> > Of course Jewish people should observe the Law, that is not the
>> >> problem but
>> >> > an advantage (note that by the logic of 1 Cor. 7:17-20 to remain in a
>> >> > circumcised state and Gal. 5:3 that one in a circumcised state
>> >> is obliged
>> >> > to observe the Law, that Paul holds this view). The issue
>> returns to a
>> >> > question on the place of Christ, not the Law. Was he or was he
>> >> not the one
>> >> > who has brought the age to come into the present age? Is that
>> >> not the real
>> >> > question that set apart this Jewish group from other Jewish
>> >> groups at the
>> >> > first?
>> >
>Liz wrote:
>My reply to this, to which you objected, was based on my assumption that the
>present age initiated by Christ's resurrection indicated that the law was
>now fulfilled/completed.  The law had served its purpose and was now moot.

From where do you get this impression?

>This is my understanding of Romans 7:  The law is binding only on those who
>still live. We have died to the law through the body of Christ so that we
>may live in the spirit. (Romans 7:1, 4-6). That is, since we have died to
>the law, it is no longer binding on us.

If this is where you get it, I think it says no such thing. Paul's
description is of coveting, and this is a description of how he views the
response to gentiles coming in on equal terms without becoming
proselytes--not paying their dues as it were. Like the response of those
who worked in the field all day only to receive the same recompense as
those who came in only for a short time. Aristotle speaks also of this, and
calls it envy. Paul says that only Christ makes him able to rise above this
discrimination that takes place at the boundary between Jews and non-Jews.
I think the Antioch incident is an example of this kind of problem for
Peter as well. So the law is not moot, the difference between law-observing
Jewish people and others still remains, but the status discrimination
between them, which is seemingly built into the law since it creates a
boundary, is negotiated by Christ for those who believe in him as the
restorer of Israel and the nations, now as one in worshiping the One God of
all.

By the way, how could non-Jewish people die to that to which they were not
bound, or what rhetorical weight would the claim carry anyway? I take the
call for Jewish people to die to the discrimination against non-Jewish
people in Christ to be along the same line as one must adopt with any kind
of attachment that is too strong and thus limiting them (remember it is
covetousness to which Paul directly refers in this passage), it is a
principle of reprioritizing. When you are too attached to the trees for the
forest, you need to die to the trees and see the forest anew. But the trees
remain, and in time you will no doubt need to die to the forest and look
again more closely at the trees. This is common for human attachments,
money, work, and on and on, even religious observance. Everything can
become a power that must be reassessed from time to time in a particular
context: Thus the Sabbath is made for humans, not humans for the Sabbath.
J. Ellul is brilliant in spelling out this seemingly ineluctable power
among humans. Paul was too.

I suggest that this was Paul's own struggle within this movement, just as
it was Peter's at Antioch, and one he projected to other Jewish people,
correct or not, whom he regarded as stumbling over the inclusion of
gentiles on equal terms. This is the larger context of the passage in
Romans 7 and can be seen by following him and his logic into ch. 8, and
then more clearly still in chs. 9--11, on my reading of the text at least.

Regards,
Mark Nanos