Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

corpus-paul - justification: a pre-Pauline doctrine?

corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Corpus-Paul

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Jon Peter" <jnp AT home.com>
  • To: "Corpus Paulinum" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: justification: a pre-Pauline doctrine?
  • Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1999 11:00:25 -0700


Liz wrote concerning the Natural Law concept:

>
> Yes. Exactly. This was the argument recorded in the Talmud. The gentile
> argued that Natural Law was more perfect since it was unchanging. Of
course,
> the rabbi argued that the torah was also unchanging.
> >

[deletion of previous discussion]
.
>
> I am wondering if Paul's interpretation of the "new covenant written on
> their hearts" is not informed by the Stoic understanding of Natural Law.
It
> seems to me that Paul's Greek would not be so excellent had he not studied
> the Greek writers and thinkers. He must have read them, and he did not
live
> in a vacuum. Why wouldn't he be influenced by them?
>


My sense is that Paul likely knew the schoolbook Stoic and Cynic concepts.
Several of his ideas reflect Greek philosophical exposure. For his education
in Greek, reading Plato was like reading Shakespeare is now (or was), for
English. And he debated with Stoics in Athens (Acts 17.18).

Of course Paul, like anyone, absorbed ideas from all directions. Yet I
think he shows almost an obsession with messianism and with a new,
post-Torahnic age. His interest in philosophy merely comes in passing and
its teachings are no where shown to be a central value to him. He never
credits Greeks with advancing his knowledge or providing him any
discoveries. We would expect him to mention them if they had sparked any
'eureka!' insights. The idea of Natural Law was no great news flash to him
or anyone, being already 300+ years old. If he was thinking of NL as he
wrote Rom 2.14, this is only a subordinate tangent to his main argument. He
tips his hat to this idea only as rhetorical allusion, and moves on.

The all-important obsession for Paul was the Messiah. This was very
un-Greek. It struck philosophers as odd 'theobabble' (Acts 17.18). The
matter for Paul was not Nature or a philosophical Order, but the Cross. Such
a preoccupation was even viewed, he says, as "foolishness" by Greek
sophisticates (1Co 1.23)

Paul's sense of Justification was not that "the law is written on hearts,
and therefore people can be Justified by heeding their consciences better,"
but, rather, that Justification comes by PISTIS XRISTOU apart from the Law
written or instinctual. Paul's allusion to Natural Law is tangential and
not central to his message.


>
> Jeffrey suggested in another post: "As to the ultimate source for Paul's
> belief that justification occurs apart from "works of the Law", I would
look
> to his "call" experience as the source for this, not Plato." Perhaps I
> should have said the Stoics, then, not Plato. But whether you call it a
> "call" or a "conversion" I think Alan Segal's book is relevant here. Segal
> has shown that conversion experiences are characterized by a change in
> *community.* They are sociological. They are characterized by people who
> associate with the new community prior to the conversion experience. They
> associate on the margins, and they need the authority of the conversion
> experience to join the community as full-fledged members. Segal tried to
> show that this was true of Paul, that Paul associated with a gentile
> Christian community, and indeed probably hovered on the edge of that
> community prior to his call experience. Scholars argue against this by
> saying that Paul did not conceive of himself as changing communities. They
> argue it was a prophetic "call" not a "conversion."
>

This theory simply psychologizes willy-nilly and ignores Paul's eyewitness
statements. I think the high probability is that either Paul had the
experience he perceived as a vision, or he lied and made it up, the latter
being very unlikely. What is, to me, almost impossible is the scenario Segal
gives, in which a sociology paradigm is woodenly presumed and retrojected
2,000 years, despite all that Paul himself says.

At the time of his vision, Paul was not associating with a gentile
community! He was persecuting an all-Jewish sect. Paul could not have been
"hovering on the edge of" any Gentile community -- unless he was simply
lying about everything. Why should we believe Segal, who wasn't even there?


> To me it is a 'conversion," not a "call." If *I* heard a voice on the
road
> to Damascus saying "why are you persecuting me?" I would not interpret it
as
> Jesus talking to me. I would interpret it as YHWH. We have to ask why
Paul
> interpreted it as Jesus. The answer can only be that, psychologically
> speaking, he had already converted before his call.

Have you read Acts 9? Paul calls the voice "Lord" at first (as you
apparently would) and then the voice says back, "Ego eimi Iesous."

> Paul's interpretation of the Jeremiad passage is not derivable from the OT
by itself. Jeremiah has God say "This
> is the covenant I will cut with the Israelites after those days, declares
> YHWH, I will put my torah in their midst and on their hearts I will write
> it." YHWH's *torah* includes the special laws, not simply the so-called
> natural laws.

There's no reference to special laws. On the contrary, Jer says pointedly
that the new cov. will be *un*like the former one, in the the Law will be
*qereb* or internal. And, to be even more specific and clear, it is "written
on hearts." And again, just for good measure, Jer goes on to say that "no
one will go around teaching the Torah anymore, because everyone in every
social class and age group will KNOW ME {God) intimately! [yada']

This is very, very Pauline. Jer's covenant reverts to a non-Torahnic,
non-cultic-obligatory model. People have a personal relationship with the
deity. This is Pauline Justification, and it is easily derived from Jer.
31.31-36.

In fact, v 37 is eschatological ! It speaks of a new, "post-biological"
redefinition of being "Israelite." Again, shades of Paul.

>
>
> I have started reading Donaldson's book on Paul's mission to the Gentiles.
> (I forget the exact title now and I don't have it handy.) I have only
just
> begun it, but what I find interesting about it is that he does not take
the
> mission to the gentiles for granted. He understands it as a problem to be
> solved. If we realize that the call experience is the *apex* of something
> (as well as the beginning of something else), then we have to ask what
> informed Paul's beliefs, both intellectually and socially, which brought =
> him to that experience.
>

There's a widespread misunderstanding being expressed here, I think --
namely, that 'righteousness' is, and has always been, equated with obedience
to prescriptive rules and directions. What's crucial to realize is that
there's a completely different, alternative biblical method for obtaining
righteousness. It is frequently mentioned in the HB. However, it is sort of
obscured there, largely because readers assume that "righteousness" equates
to "law-abiding," hence certain subtle nuances are missed (such as Jer
31.34b 'yada). The *revival* of this alternative is the core message of the
NT Gospels, and it is also Paul's definition of Justification .

Best regards,

Jon





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page