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  • From: "Jeffrey B. Gibson" <jgibson000 AT mailhost.chi.ameritech.net>
  • To: Corpus-paul <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: justification: a pre-Pauline doctrine?
  • Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 10:39:48 -0500


George Blaisdell wrote:

> >From: Robert M Schacht
>
>
> >Your argument is interesting. Which of the Psalms do you have in mind?
> >Would you cite a number of clear examples relevant to the present
> >discussion?
>
> Bob ~
>
> Almost any Psalm will do. I see them as the product of ascetic practice,
> whereby the meditant clearly places himself in God's [the Lord's] hands to
> rectify [through God's righteousness] the [Adamic] state of his soul in the
> face of his [inner and demonic] enemies, who will overwhelm and destroy him
> without God's help.
>
> So that the righteousness [of God] secured is secured through the constant
> and extended process of ascetic faith and is effected in the person who
> calls upon and is responded to by God. [Which IS righteousness through
> faith by God.] The psalmist's enemies, who are indeed Israel's enemies, and
> the Lord's enemies, are mostly to be seen as inward enemies, on this view...

I am sorry, George, but I cannot let this -- and what you say subsequently --
go
unchallenged.

What evidence do you have that indicates that when Israel's enemies are
spoken of in
the Psalms, they are really "inward enemies"? It seems to me (as is indicated
by what
you say below) that you exegete those Psalms which supposedly speak of
justification
by faith (but note, NOT justification by/through PISTIS CRISTOU) through a
model of
the human condition that is more modern and Western, and dare I say
Lutheran/Reformation based?, than Biblical and are therefore finding there
what you
want to find in order to support a model of Paul and justification that you
have
derived from elsewhere.

> >
> I am uneasy with this idea we seem to be developing that Paul's "Christian
> Education" did not come from where he says it came, if we can show somehow
> that he encountered the idea somewhere else prior to his espousal of that
> idea. Paul spent a lot of time in prayer and communion with Christ ~ It
> would not surprise me to learn that he was in constant communion through
> prayer with Him ~ Nor would I be surprised to learn that this is indeed what
> he means when he says that he learned his evangel only from Christ. Nor
> would I be surprised to learn that his first few years after the Damascus
> event were spent in primarily an inward ascetic struggle [in Christ] to
> clean out his own soul, just as the disciples who knew Christ in the flesh
> took three years to mature with him alongside them. How long did David have
> to struggle with His? There's a LOT of Psalms!
>

May I ask where from anything Paul himself says you get this notion of Paul
having an
overwhelming sense of having to "clean out his soul" (let alone that "David"
felt this
need too)? This (admittedly long popular and even, at one time, scholarly
accepted)
idea that Paul had an introspective conscience was laid to rest by Krister
Stendahl
and buried six feet under by Sanders and others who showed, especially
through an
exegesis of Philippians . 3:6 and Rom 7, that it is a patent
misunderstanding, if not
a deliberate distortion, of Paul, and deserves a place in the history of
ideas right
next to belief in a flat earth.

In any case, there is still to be explored the exegetical issue of whether
Paul
actually says that he received his revelation of his *commission* as well as
his
Gospel from Jesus. That is to say, we need to make some kind of decision
about whether
the genitive in Paul's claim that his reception of his commission and the
Gospel
preached by him was received by him through APOKOLUPSIS IHSOU CRISTOU is
subjective or
objective. You seem to think that it is a subjective genitive. Can you tell
me why?

Yours.

Jeffrey
--
Jeffrey B. Gibson
7423 N. Sheridan Road #2A
Chicago, Illinois 60626
e-mail jgibson000 AT ameritech.net






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