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  • From: Loren Rosson <rossoiii AT yahoo.com>
  • To: Corpus-paul <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: the role of the law in salvation-history
  • Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2001 04:43:33 -0700 (PDT)


Billy,

>I have not yet worked out how to read Rom. 7
>the way it was meant to be read, but being
>that Rom. 2-4 and 9-12 are about the Jew-Gentile
>issue, I wouldn't rule out 5-8 as somehow
>being part of the same argument. I'll
>dig in the archives for the discussion you
>mentioned.

I assume you meant "9-11" instead of "9-12". Rom 12-13
doesn't address the Jew-Gentile issue anymore than Rom
5-8 does.

The best "new perspective" treatments of Rom 5-8 (esp
ch 7) have probably come from James Dunn (Romans),
Alan Segal (Paul the Convert), and Mark Nanos (Mystery
of Romans). But for all the merits of these works --
and the merits are many -- they fail to convince me on
the question of Rom 5-8 in general, and Rom 7 in
particular. It's as if Dunn/Segal/Nanos are paranoid
of anything which remotely smacks of the "old
perspective" that they lose sight of the very
different issues being addressed in Rom 2-4 and Rom
5-8. Consider:

1. Rom 2-4 is about the impartiality of God's
righteousness in light of Christ's death and
resurrection. Rom 3:21-31 is arguably the heart,
showing beyond reasonable doubt that Paul objected to
"works of the law" (circumcision, some food laws, holy
days, etc.) because they limited the grace of God to
the chosen people -- not because they constituted
supposed merit-earning demands. This is where the
various "new perspectives" on Paul really apply.

Single-sentence summary: Paul disparaged "works of the
law" (Rom 3:28) because Jews and Gentiles are one in
Christ; he said "uphold the law" (Rom 3:31) because
Gentiles are still bound by minimal Torah standards
(as Mark puts it in "Mystery of Romans", they are not
free to Gentilize/paganize with wild abandon).

2. Rom 5-8 is about the eschatological tension in
light of Christ's death and resurrection. Rom 7:7-25
is arguably the heart, showing that Paul objected to
"law" because it belonged to the old epoch of sin and
death [**note that this is the particular theological
conundrum I have been addressing in the thread which I
entitled "The purpose of the law in salvation
history": how can the law be on the side of sin? what
was God ever up to with humanity at large and the
Jewish people in particular?**] -- not because he was
an anguished Augustine or guilt-ridden Luther stifled
by legalism.

Single-sentence summary: Paul disparaged "the law"
(Rom 7) because believers (whether Jew or Gentile)
have died to the entire thing (whether Mosaic or
Noahide), as much as they have died to Christ at
baptism; but he said "fulfill the law" (Rom 8) because
believers have only partly died -- they still hang
suspended between the old and new epochs.

The arguments of Rom 2-4 and Rom 5-8 are very
different. Nowhere in Rom 5-8 do we see the term
"works of the law" used apropos "Jews" and "Gentiles".
The new perspective is here to stay, but I think we
should be careful about pressing every single Pauline
text on "the law" into its service.

Loren Rosson III
Nashua NH
rossoiii AT yahoo.com

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