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

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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: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 10:36:23 PDT





From: "Jeffrey B. Gibson"

> 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.

Jeff ~ I humbly accept your apology.

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.

My goodness! I don't know about any of that stuff.

The way I got this read of Psalms was simply to imagine David alone in his cell [or under a tree somewhere] praying the psalms. Just read the first psalm for this suggestion, verse 1 and 2. David meditates on the Law of the Lord day and night, that he might be blessed in his walk in the counsel of the Lord only... The Psalms just seem to make a lot of sense viewed this way, and the house of David seems on the line... I am but guessing here, for I really AM a beginner, and I come out of no Christian tradition that I am aware of...

This is pre-Christian, granted, so the faith 'in Christ' will not be seen in [His ancestor] David...

> 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)?

I remember Paul warning the recipients of his letter that if Paul himself, or anyong else, should come around teaching anything that is not in agreement with his first evangel, that they are to reject that person [as their teacher at least]. So that Paul seems to have the understanding in this warning even concerning himself that his human side could potentially rise up and anathematize him, should he fail in his faith... What else could stumble him?

As well, the whole death and rebirth theme seems operative in this justification evangel, and faith can be seen as the action and ascetic process of causing the death of oneself into Christ, which results in the condition of oneself such that Paul can truely say "Not I, but Christ in me..." I REALLY am not a good enough scholar to carry and/or propound this view very well, Jeff. I'm really not a scholar at all...


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.

I never heard of these guys, and do not know if Paul had an introspective conscience. He did complain about his 'body of death' and 'doing what he would not'... Would that be introspection?? I don't mean to 'deliberately distort' anything, Jeff ~ I'm just a beginner with a particular slant, as we all seem to have...[slant].

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?

Maybe later... I need to pray...


George Blaisdell
Roslyn, WA


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