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  • From: "Rabbi Saul" <tim AT rabbisaul.com>
  • To: "Corpus-Paul" <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Second Temple Judaism and Covenant
  • Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 13:13:39 -0600

John Brand wrote,
>Those who have the law written on their heart are those who do these works. At the coming of Jesus each man will be judged according to his works (Mathew 16:27). What kind of works? Works done out of love for their Lord: they feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and welcome the stranger (Mathew 25:34-36). It is those who have done good in these terms who will rise to live while those who have neglected these matters will rise to condemnation (John 5:28-29). What we sow in terms of loving our neighbor, we will reap in terms of eternal life both now and in the world to come (Galatians 6:7-8).

>Thus, I see a connection between our works and the new covenant. In the new covenant there is an empowering of the Spirit from within to do what the older covenants based as they were sarx were unable to do. Theology after Augustine tends to marginalize the role of human cooperation in the process of the fulfillment of God's initial covenant with Abraham.

 
 
John, I cannot reproduce in a short email my entire perspective, but here is a very abbreviated response:
 
"Human cooperation" is an awfully slippery term, and is of little interest to me, and the charge that "theology after Augustine" tends to marginalize it is far too sweeping for me to interact with.  I would rather speak of "human response," which is elicited by God's own acts and words of power.
 
There is a Christ-as-Torah theme which is picked up by Paul (e.g. glossing Torah in Deut 30 as Christ Himself in Rom 10.6-8), and thus the regulatory functions of Torah are refracted/fulfilled in and under Christ.  Thus I have no problem saying (contra many hyper law/gospel theologians) that then new covenant includes "demand," a regulative function.  Moreover, the union with Christ in whose flesh sin was condemned (Rom 8.3), and who is now life-giving Spirit (1 Cor 15.45), means that new covenant believers have a new power to walk in the ways of the Lord. 
 
Finally, the new covenant is not different from the old in the sense that God never mandates works as a means of earning life, which is always an inheritance.  Paul's pistiV argument revolves around his presupposition that the heart of man's relationship to God is covenant loyalty, which takes various embodied expressions at different points in salvation history.  PistiV is always the righteous response God seeks, and that is one reason why Paul can marginalize Torah, because pistiV both predates and antedates it. 
 
tim



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