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  • From: "Jon Peter" <jnp AT home.com>
  • To: "Corpus Paulinum" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: justification: a pre-Pauline doctrine?
  • Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 10:08:18 -0700


Jeffrey wrote:

>
>
> Now what ever may be made of each of these arguments or the assumptions
> behind them, they nevertheless point up something that I had not really
> given much thought to (possibly because of not reading widely enough),
> namely, that "justification" is historically NOT strictly a Pauline
> doctrine. It is not original to Paul.
>
> So two questions. Is Hunter's thesis (which he notes was adumbrated by
> Weiss in his _History of Primitive Christianity_, p. 231) that the
> justification is not "Pauline" sound?
>
> Second, if it is sound, to whom or to what do we attribute its origin?
>
==========

Hi Jeffrey,

I will take a stab here, as one who hasn't read much on this either.

I don't know Weiss's book so cannot answer your 1st question. In a generic
religious sense the question of what brings Justification obviously
pre-dates Paul. The archaic idea is: "What cultic acts must we do in order
to receive God's Providence?" -- get His rain, crop growth, calving etc, and
this is universal. The answer to the question defines what is "righteous."
A person who performs righteousness is then "justified." [tsadaq]

The connotation for "faith" [ 'emuwnah] , is something like "steady,"
"persistent" and "sustained"

Paul's approach seems to have Hab 2.4 in mind as you noted. The context in
Hab. shows the writer believes that a person's steady persistence ('emuwnah)
in Torah-observance, will bring life. Paul's exegesis differs markedly of
course, because his definition of 'emuwnah has changed.

A possible precedent (a likely one, I think) for Paul's interpretation can
be found in DSS 1QpHab, the Habakkuk Commentary. The sectarian writer
interprets "faith" 'emuwnah in Hab 2.4 as steadfast loyalty to *the
eschatological Teacher of Righteousness* as well as obedience to the Torah.
This writer actually sees a large scale one-to-one correspondence between
the prophecies of Hab. (placed in 6th cent BCE) and elements of the DSS
community's experience apparently under the Roman invasion (63 BCE) in which
the Hab. prophecy is being fulfilled.

A century or so later, Paul interprets justification in terms purely of
allegiance to Christ, "apart from the works of the law." This is
interesting because it seems to reflect the earlier innovation in 1QpHab, of
"faith" as being loyalty to a Teacher in addition to steady lawkeeping. In
comparison, Paul's formula is "faith in Christ, *apart* from works of the
law." He echoes the same original two-part structure of the 1QpHab -- but of
course he replaces the "and" conjunction with "apart from," inverting the
second part completely.

Another interesting aspect here is that the Hab. prophesy about special
"faith righteousness" is pointedly end-times (v 2.3). As we know, this epoch
was very much on Paul's mind.

I think it is very likely that Paul knew the 1QpHab exegesis of Hab directly
or indirectly. Again, both *emphasized* "faith" defined in terms of loyalty
to an eschatological Teacher figure, which brought the disciples much
suffering. In this sense, you could say that Paul was perhaps not entirely
original in his Justification theology. In another sense though, by
declaring that such Justification can be attained solely by
Messiah-attachment without Torah, *and* by linking this
relationship-paradigm to Abraham+God, I think Paul added a progressive
development.

On the other hand, this approach to Justification sort of goes back to
Deuteronomy 6.5 ("love the LORD with all your mightÂ…") and to Deut 11.1
("love the LORD and obey his statutes." The exegesis of Deut. is reflected
of course in Mt 22.37 = Mk 12.30 = Lk 10.27 in a way that apparently
abandons the legal requirement of Deut 11 and replaces it with "love your
neighbor as yourself" (Lk) and also with "love [alone and sufficiently]
fulfills the Torah." I think the Synoptics are very Pauline in their
Justification theology here. Who came up with it first -- Jesus or Paul?
Here I am inclined to think these variations on Deuteronomy are certainly
independent of Paul and probably pre-dated him. What impresses me is that
the Gospels don't poach on Paul's work on Hab, nor does he think to discuss
Deut. 6.

Best regards,

Jon





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