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  • From: Jeff Peterson <peterson AT mail.ics.edu>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: justification: a pre-Pauline doctrine?
  • Date: Fri, 18 Jun 1999 14:56:14 -0500


A belated thought in response to one of Jeffrey Gibson's original questions
on this thread, viz.,

>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?

It would seem to me that the strongest of Hunter's grounds for thinking
that Paul's doctrine of justification DIA PISTEWS IHSOU XRISTOU comes from
Gal 2:15ff, Paul's reported conversation with Peter; here the justification
that Peter and Paul share is taken as the basis for a critique of Peter's
conduct vis-à-vis gentile Christians in Antioch (i.e., Paul doesn't argue
for the conviction, he deduces halakhic consequences from the conviction).
The most natural reading of this is that Peter (and the others before whom
Paul reportedly debated this) already understood Christ's mission as
resulting in their justification in the heavenly court. Interpretation of
Habakkuk was doubtless involved in reaching this understanding, and the
Qumran texts' documentation of contemporaneous interest in this text is
thus important, but the strongest evidence for regarding the Christian
conviction as pre-Pauline is Paul's own.

One is left with the question just how precisely Paul represents his
exchange with Peter; in favor of substantial accuracy is the communication
among churches (noted e.g. by Michael Thompson in Bauckham, ed., _The
Gospels for All Christians_) which would discourage pinning one's case on
falsifiable statements in situations as grave as the Galatian dispute. A
final caveat: Lloyd Gaston has argued that the statements in Gal 2:15ff
apply only to Paul's gentile converts, with whom he identifies (like the
teacher of a Greek class who might say, "We don't know enough vocabulary to
translate this passage yet," while knowing it perfect well him/herself); a
very interesting but finally unconvincing treatment of the passage in his
_Paul and the Torah_.

------------------------------------
Jeffrey Peterson
Institute for Christian Studies
Austin, Texas, USA
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