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  • From: "Mark D. Nanos" <nanos AT mail.gvi.net>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: hUPO NOMON in Gal 4:5
  • Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 10:59:50 -0600


Dear Moon,
I will attempt to interact with some of your questions, but this may require a book! and I do not have time to write this one at the moment (I think some are covered in one already written). I think that my last post, and based upon your response, has altered perhaps the foundation upon which these questions stood.

Mark,
Let me clarify the last question in my previous message.

> >Then, for Paul, "Those under the Law" are not simply the Jewish people,
> >the people of the Law, but those who were under the dominion of sin as
> >well.
> >
>
According to your system, "being under the Law" would have
no problem if they are Jews. But if they are Gentile believers,
it would cause all vices of the flesh. Why the difference?
In fact, that seems to the most difficult problem in your approach?

Hasn't this been answered? It is not being under the Law that is the problem for gentiles, it would be an advantage on its own terms, but those terms have been modified for these gentiles by their relationship with God in Christ as affirmed by the Spirit. To seek to become proselytes now would be to subvert the very meaning of who they have become, as well as how and why. It would be for the agonistic struggle for recognition, for undisputed access to goods according to prevailing human conventions, when God knowing them should be all the acceptance they require, regardless of the price this may require them to pay.



[Moon]

It means that I am not satisfied with your explanation as to
why Galatians' attempt to "be under the Law" is so bad. Yes, Galatians were
under pressure to get circumcision, to be under the Law.

Again I think my last post alters the basis of the question. The issue is, what pressure, what constraints. It is a result of their own declaration of identity (based upon what they have learned from Paul) against the grain of the prevailing views of their identity that has created the exigence for those now seeking to influence them to comply with the prevailing views. Now that response has created a new exigence for these gentiles, and a new exigence that Paul seeks by way of this letter to show them the way to resolve/not resolve yet.

They
did not have to. Moreover, it was the desire of the flesh to "be
under the Law" and thereby to get acceptance from the mainstream
community. It amounted to not understanding and going AGAINST
what God was doing at the age to come. It was bad enough. Paul had to
fight, both for the Gentiles and the Jews as well. For the Jews,
because his losing in the fight meant that God failed to "redeem those
under the Law", and failed to bring the salvation that the Jews had been
waiting for generation after generation.

But what I wonder is whether what was at stake was only that
Gentiles could be included into people of God without becoming people
of the Law, which was good in itself.

This is what is at stake in Galatia, and thus the rhetoric must be interpreted in this light. It does not mean it was always the issue for everyone everywhere, and it was not. Otherwise why would these Jewish people like Paul have become Christ-believers?

If so, it means that God sent
Christ and Christ died at the cross only to make God's salvation available
to Gentiles as well. But it does not seem to be a big deal, because
there was a way for Gentiles to become people of the Law and thereby
people of God. Then Paul fought so that Gentiles might become
people of God via his way.

Paul believes the end of the ages has come, that is what modifies the "right way" of the present age of proselyte conversion. It is not wrong, except in view of the meaning of the death of Christ, which has initiated the age to come community of Israel "and" the Nations as One worshipping together as Israel and the Nations the One God of all humankind (cf. Rom. 3:29-31). To deny this result for themselves (as gentiles) is to deny the foundation of Paul's own self-identity in Christ (as a Jew and as an apostle of this Jewish coalition).

An interesting point may be made here with respect to the "no big deal" you recognize. If the Christ-believing coalition continued the traditional practice of proselyte conversion then it seems their new "theological" claims in Christ were not necessarily all that objectionable (implied in Gal. 5:11). The rub is when what they believe alters their halakhic lifestyle in such a way as to impose upon the interests of other Jewish groups who do not share their view of an altered reality/time. Otherwise Jewish believers in Christ would signal a difference that would not be all that divisive, at least no more than a difference of opinion about any number of such matters concerning messiah, messiahs, then or now or future, etc.


But Paul's letter indicates that there were more to it. The issue was
more than Gentiles could be God's people without becoming people of the
Law.

Yes, as noted above.

The issue was that the economy under the Law failed, and God sent
Christ to redeem those under the Law from the failed regime.

I do not understand on what basis you make this comment...

It failed not
because the Law was bad, it failed because humans are flesh. The issue was
the transfer or liberation from the realm of sin and death, which the
economy under the Law could not overcome. Doesn't Rom 8:1-5 point to that?

No. Was it not God's plan to help humanity until the appointed time? Giving of the Law did not create the human problem, it just could not ultimately solve all of it, as neither has the coming of Jesus Christ, as far as I can see, and thus the expectation of a "return" to complete the task (I do not mean to offend, but to generate a comparison that I hope will make the point vivid). Does this mean that the coming of Christ created the human problem? No. Nor did the giving of the Law. Both may be understood by "believers" to help, but not to ultimately yet resolve the problem entirely. That will require an anticipated action of God. And perhaps the greater one's human suffering, the greater the awareness of what has yet to be resolved by the former actions, and the greater the concern with the awaited "complete" solution.


There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ. For the
law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from
the law of sin and death. For God has done WAHT the LAW, weakend by
the flesh, COULD NOT DO: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful
flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that
the righteous requirement of the law may be fulfilled in us, who walk not
according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

This to is situational rhetoric, but to a different situation. I take this to be addressing the problem of reconciling Jew and gentile, with the gentiles in Rome confused about the situation that has resulted from their new relationship with Christ, and Jewish people like Paul struggling with granting full equal standing to these gentiles on the basis of this claim (cf. my argument in appendix one of The Mystery of Romans). Paul is here disclosing the solution to the later, although not the gentile addressees' problem, in the midst of a larger argument for the benefit of the gentiles he is addressing about their own misunderstanding about what is going on around them, a part of his effort to have their "minds renewed" to see things from God's vantage point instead of their own "humanly" constrained self-interested gentile perspective, where the non-Christ-believing Jews in Rome are concerned. How can this struggle for identity when difference remains be reconciled apart from discrimination? Only by way of faith in Christ and walking in the Spirit, Paul declares at end of Rom. 7 and into ch. 8. That is how these gentiles are to live, even if they are not fully accepted as they wish or believed to be "justified" to expect in view of the work of Christ on their behalf.


So, by "flesh" Paul seems to refer not just human weakness likely to
surrender social pressure to conform the mainstream norm, but also
the fundamental weakness that caused the economy of the Law have failed.

I have addressed why I disagree with this above and in last post, have I not?

Though I cannot claim that I have experienced the empowering of the
Spririt which Paul assumes for the recipients of this letters (
cf. James Dunn), receiving the Spirit and being empowered by it
is one of the main thrusts of his gospel and theology.
So, the liberation through Christ has some ontological dimension,
if not psychological, as well as sociological dimension.

This I do not follow. Perhaps the above comments have modified the issue and thus would modify this statement. I do not see, at least based upon what we have been discussing, any introduction of an ontological claim about human liberation, but a social claim in view of the meaning of Christ's death, enabled by the Spirit for those who make an effort to live in this way; thus the call to resist compliance and instead live freely, not the assumption that it is in some way automatic (cf. Gal. 5:1ff.). The enabling of the Spirit is a Jewish idea that functioned and still functions apart from faith in Jesus as Christ. Am I missing your point? Is what you seem to be claiming not the ontological altering of reality that both Jewish and Christian people still await in the restoration of creation in the age to come, the "wait for the hope of righteousness"?

Hope this has been clear.

Regards,
Mark Nanos
Kansas City





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