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  • From: George Blaisdell <maqhth AT hotmail.com>
  • To: corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: justification: a pre-Pauline doctrine?
  • Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999 07:59:29 PDT





From: "Jeffrey B. Gibson"

George Blaisdell wrote:

> I am very seriously wondering if the PISTIS IHSOUS CRISTOS doctrine is
> Paul's independently at all. When he first was struck blind on the road to
> Damascus, he remained blind until he was taken to a member [Ananias] of the
> church that he was persecuting, where his vision was then restored [after 3
> days of total fasting] and he was baptized... Into Christ's Church, where
> the doctrine of PISTIS is the CORE teaching... So that IF he didn't get it
> in his blinding vision prior to Ananias, he would most certainly have gotten
> it with his basptism at Ananias' hands, would he not? And there is no
> mention of it being given in vision ~ Only that he is to take the message to
> the Gentiles.
>
> So I would have to guess that Paul received it from the Church, in which it
> existed from the beginning, and that he received it from Ananias who
> baptized him. [As well, righteousness by faith does seem to be the
> underlying thematic of the Psalms, which would make it a pre-Christian
> doctrine as well, would it not?]
>
> I apologize for my stumbling approach... I am very much a beginner...
>

George,

I'd like to ask you to re-evaluate whether you would come to the same conclusions you
arrive at above in the light of two considerations.

Jeff ~

First off, I would simply like to say that guesses of mine might best be seen as just guesses, and not 'conclusions'. Justification by faith would certainly seem to be pre-Pauline, and even pre-Christian, if Psalms are any indication.

First, your reading of the sequence of events you see as standing behind Paul's
gaining/developing his "doctrine" of justification is is grounded more in Acts than it
is in any information from Paul's letters. If you didn't have the Acts account(s) of
the Damascus road experience(s) and its aftermath(s), would you make the claims you do.

Without the account from Acts, my guesses would be even more speculative. Yet Acts are in the Bible, so what to do? Paul does seem to have a particularly Pauline understanding of justification, and claims it from no man, but through revelation from the Risen Christ Himself. And it is sharply opposed to obedience to the Law, which seems to give it a 'foreskinned' focus that was implied but lacking in Cephas and the other Apostles and the Church that they oversaw.

Second, how do you handle the data from Gal. 1:1 where Paul claims that his commission
as an Apostle, which presumably includes his message about justification of the
Gentiles, is not derived from or through men?

If you believe Acts, that Paul was baptised, [I do...], then Paul became a member of the Church soon after the Damascus event. What, if anything, did he learn from Ananias? Did he learn justification by faith alone? Did he even learn justification by faith at all? The text is silent. We just know that he learned the evangel [which he brings to the gentiles] by revelation from Christ, and that he has the blessing of the 'Fathers' [Cephas etc.] whom he subsequently does not hesitate to bring into correction!

Did Paul learn his message to the Gentiles across time, as he developed in his faith in righteousness? Or did it all come in a huge rush at his conversion on the road to Damascus? I would guess that Paul was given a several year tutorial by Christ in the laboratory of his own sinful self prior to his preaching the evangel to the gentiles, and that it was from this crucible of his own salvation that he learned and delivered Christ to the world beyond the circumsized.

Yet the text is silent on this issue, yes? When Paul tells us "I did not receive it from man, nor was I taught it..." [1:12] does he mean that he, Paul, was the first to ever know about justification by faith, and that this gospel is original to him, and that he never heard about it from any other man? Or does he mean that he received it as Christ taught it by revelation, regardless of whatever teachings by the church he might have heard?

Text seems silent on that one too. Not in focus. Paul seems to be zeroing in on the problem that the Galatians are having with a challenge to their faith, and this stuff we would wrest from his words that address other issues is simply not in view.

So I am left guessing... In my own crucible...


George Blaisdell
Roslyn, WA


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