Corpus-Paul

["Mark D. Nanos" <nanos AT mail.gvi.net>]

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