Corpus-Paul

["Mark D. Nanos" <nanosmd AT home.com>]

on 6/5/01 5:11 AM, Francisco Ramirez at franramirez AT teo.upco.es wrote:

> Mark,
> 
> I feel very much close to your refusal of a either/or interpretation of
> Paul. But are you restricting the "dawn of the Kingdom" to the resurrected
> Christ (kingdom would then mean "Christ to reigns" as in 1 Cor 15,25)?

> What about the believers?

Please understand that I do not mean to offend, and I hope I am not missing
your point, but Church history, or for that matter, human history since the
death of Jesus, undermines the proposition that the kingdom of God is here
in believers in some kind of ontological way. Can you imagine it looking

that way to a Jewish student of the history of Christian policies toward
Jews/Judaism?

On the other hand, if believers believe that the kingdom of God has downed
in Jesus Christ, then are they not obliged to "try" to live accordingly,
that Paul is calling for this from the Galatians?

I agree with your comment in another post that the Galatians are addressed
as already having the Spirit, yet Paul writes in 5:25: "If we live by the
Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit" [NRSV, the point is clearer in the
Greek]. 

Throughout this argument Paul is calling for these Christ-believers to get
with living according to the principles that follow from what they believe
Christ means, including suffering for not getting with the prevailing
programs, whether being held accountable to their continuing identity as
"pagans" or, if they wish to escape the constraints of that identity, by
becoming proselytes, and thus no longer pagans according to long-standing
communal norms. The Galatian non-Jewish addressees are caught in the
middle--between being no longer pagans but not
proselytes/Jews/Israelites--but called to live based on the reality in which
they believe: according to the norms of the age to come, which has dawned in
Jesus Christ, and not as it appears in the present age according to
prevailing human conventions. They will suffer for this in the present age,
to the degree that they really live it, but God will bring them justice in
the age to come. 

Paul appeals to his own example to support the call. He suffers similarly to
uphold his contrary views, bearing on his body the stigmata of Jesus (5:11;
6:17). And Jesus suffered publicly the shame of being crucified as a threat
to the Roman regime (another kingdom of god/Caesar) (3:1). Is the point not
that the kingdom of God in Christ has merely dawned in "the present evil
age," so those who believe in Christ are "supposed to" continue to decide to
live accordingly, regardless of the fact that they will suffer for these
"non-conventional" choices? (By the way, I do not believe that the choice
for Paul was not to observe Torah, but simply not to proceed as though
nothing had changed for the community of God's people, which is indicated by
not making gentiles into proselytes/Jews/Israelites, but calling them full
members of God's people as representatives of the nations, which is based on
the claim that the end of the ages has dawned, and the one God of Israel is
once again the one God of all humankind).

> I wonder if some texts as 1QS 11:2ff. or the Hodayot may shed some light on
> Paul's idea of kingdom of God: in Qumran the community is already sharing
> the "inheritance in the lot of the holy ones" (1QS 11:7-8).

In the context of 4QS 10--13 it seems to also be a statement of hope and the
call to persevere, since things are not as they seem to others to be, and
God will repay people accordingly in the end.

Regards,
Mark
-- 
Mark D. Nanos, Ph.D.
313 NE Landings Dr.
Lee's Summit, MO 64064
USA
nanosmd AT home.com