Corpus-Paul

["Mark D. Nanos" <nanosmd AT comcast.net>]

Jim,
I don't want to belabor the point, but even in your reply you seem to
confuse the categories. First you write:

>...Philemon has a slave who has run away.  Paul
> disobeys the law (Dt) and says he is sending him back.

Yet someone has offered you an alternative way to view this; no? Anyway, you
write:

>Paul sees the way 
> of salvation as lying in a) torah for the jew and b) Christ for the
> gentile.  This seems to me dichotomous...

(I don't see how this follows, but that is not the point I want to discuss.)
This statement shows you are thinking and talking about salvation, about
getting in, about how to get to God, although the first statement you make
is about behavior, not about salvation. (There is now another earlier post
from you that uses that language too.)

Then you plainly say that you are not bringing up salvation; you write:

> I don't really think theres a shift at all.  Because I don't see it
> as  "getting in".  Indeed, it is all about being in.  Paul addresses Jews
> and Gentile christians, not pagans.

OK, I accept that this is what you mean, but your language above and other
statements in prior posts does not communicate that, but the opposite. So it
will be helpful if you communicate what you say here that you mean.

Then you write:

>Salvation is lived out by the jews in
> torah observance- while for gentiles torah observance is unnecessary.  It
> is THIS dichotomy that is troubling.

Why troubling? (see below for elaboration of my question.)

Earlier I had written:
>> Thus, I won't be surprised to see the same old arguments paraded as if
>> disclosing something new (already begun, I see), with folks proof-texting
>> what they already know to be the truth about Paul's view, and sometimes
>> making plain what is ideologically at stake for them when that view is
>> challenged.

To which you reply:
> It isnt ideology that drives me- it is an intense discomfort with the
> notion of Paul that there are two ways of living.  And more than that, it
> is a sense that Paul is requiring more of Jews than Gentiles (cf. Acts
> 15!).  My question is, why would he do that?  And again, do remember, im
> not talking about how they come to faith- im talking about how they live
> the faith.

Gosh, how do I say this: it is precisely ideology that your comments
exemplify. I do not write this because I have none: as far as I know there
is no one who is free of an interested reading, or any ideology at work in
their interpretation of Paul; certainly no one within Western culture.
Historical critics should make every effort to remain value free, but it is
clear that we have something at stake, and thus that we are not entirely so
(unlike say, if we write about Plutarch, for example, and our interpretation
of something else depends on a certain view, or we find ambiguity; unless,
for example, that is our profession and we have published on a certain point
of view!).

So I ask about those already in-Christ (not about soteriology, but the
lifestyle that follows that decision):
Why discomfort (more so, intense discomfort)? Why is it that two ways of
living is discomforting, or that different requirements might be made? That
requires an explanation, unless you assume it is a universal reaction to
this proposition. If you assume that, as your language suggests, then that
is the result of an assumed or contemplated view of reality that is assumed
or concluded to be shared by everyone, and does not need to be explained, or
defies explanation, which is what ideologies suppose, and do not need to
explain. 

Specifically, does the idea that there is only one way of living require an
explanation? Is there not a place for anyone to legitimately live in any way
other than the way that a non-Jewish Christian in 21st century America
lives, that is, anyone other than yourself? Is that not an ideological
assumption at work in your discomfort with the proposition that Paul--a
first-century Jew who believed in Christ before there was institutional
Christianity, before the Temple was destroyed, before the movement was
populated and run by non-Jewish people (the apostles and most
Christ-believers being Jewish and apparently observing the Torah and Temple:
does that also makes you uncomfortable, or the argument that Jesus observed
Torah?), before it was the religion of the Roman empire, before holding
slaves was seen as immoral, before the equal participation of women in
education and politics was recently adopted in America, etc.--might have had
a view about the place for difference within his faith that you do not now
share, even sense, and thus find uncomfortable? Should not the ideas and
beliefs and activities of someone from thousands of years ago make you a
little uncomfortable? But if it does, does that mean there is something
mistaken with the interpretation? Perhaps you should be more concerned if it
does not make you aware of "difference."

Have not cultural critics shown that the idea of all differences being
abandoned into one differenceless people in order to express equality is a
chimera after all. There is always a model group to which the other groups
must be assimilated. E.g., the melting pot idea of American equality is an
ideal, but the reality is that everyone must melt toward certain particulars
to gain equality, which just happen to be those of the dominant group. Is
there no place for equality among different people? Can men and women, who
are at least biologically different, not be treated at equals, even though
there are biological and thus practical differences that cannot be
eliminated or denied? If so, then why would you object to other differences,
however cultural, being denied by the cultural imperative of Pauline
theology? In other words, is the differencelessness of Christianity only to
be expressed according to a not-Jewish and thus not-Torah-observant
standard?--for Paul I mean; of course, that came to be the standard for
later Christianity.

One more point from your comment here about what is fair. Are you concerned
with what is fair to Jews? If so, then what makes you so certain that it is
more fair to be denied the expression of their covenanted identity than it
is to be respected for continuing it, after faith in Christ? since continued
Torah-observance by choice was the case, apparently, for every other Jew
believing in Jesus as Christ of that period of which we are aware, and I
think, for Paul too.

Paul asks if God is only the God of Jews in Rom 3:29-30, and not also of
non-Jews, and answers that God is the God of both kinds. For him that God is
the God of different people is an ideologically advantaged proposition. For
you it is a problem. He did not think God should be limited to Israel, which
was a longstanding Jewish view of the purpose of Israel, so that all of the
other nations would also learn of the God of Israel as the one God of all
nations. Is your proposition that for Paul, God is only the God of non-Jews?
There is no place for Jewish behavior within the body of the Jewish Jesus
Christ and the institution his Torah-observant disciples were involved in
propagating? Is that conclusion what you came to without any value judgments
or self-interests or prior cultural learning or self-location as a Christian
when you began to read for the first time, in Greek, the writings of Paul?
Is there nothing at stake, nothing in your theology that would require
alteration, if the notion of continuing difference was demonstrated?

Regards,
Mark
-- 
Mark D. Nanos, Ph.D.
Rockhurst University
Co-Moderator
http://home.comcast.net/~nanosmd/