Corpus-Paul

["John Brand" <jbrand AT gvsd.mb.ca>]

Mark and Tim:
If I might add to this conversation my understanding of what both of 
you are saying from my understanding of you more extensive treatment 
of the subject in other books/essays, please see some of my 
insertions below:

> From: "Mark D. Nanos" <nanosmd AT comcast.net>
> To: "Corpus Paul" <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Monday, January 17, 2005 2:33 PM
> Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Did Paul break the Law?
> 
> 
> <snip>
> I have tried to raise the problem of context, of language usage, and
> by Paul in particular, that is, within the canon of texts scholars
> today attribute to Paul. 

Tim Gallant responds: 
> Dr Nanos, your post was very long, and I certainly do not have time to
> interact with everything you have written here. There is a great deal
> I agree with, and those who have taken the time to look at my work
> elsewhere will know that I have a great deal of sympathy for reading
> Paul as someone who is not discarding Torah, but for (for lack of a
> better term) re-reading it. (To get a basic handle, one could compare
> my position on Paul and the law with N. T. Wright's, although I
> disagree with him in spots, and think that he somewhat overplays the
> ethnological hand.) Torah as Scripture remains fully authoritative.
> And even Torah considered more narrowly as the administration known as
> the Mosaic covenant is not merely discarded, but eschatologized in
> Christ and the Spirit.

John responds:
My understanding of your 'Paul and Torah' essay is that the Torah as 
scripture is still relevant and authoritative but as 'covenant' it 
has been abrogated for the Christian. More particularly you say:

"Correlative to the understanding of nomos as the Torah-covenant, we 
must recognize that a fundamental dictum in Paul's theology of the 
law is that Christians are not under the Torah-covenant (see e.g. Rom 
6.14)." (Paul and Torah: An Introductory Overview)

What I understand from the work of the scholars who contributed to 
"The Galatians Debate" (ed. Mark D. Nanos) is that an understanding 
such as yours where 'Christians are not under the Torah-covenant' is 
a misunderstanding of Paul's thought. Rather, we have a Torah 
observant mission to the Gentiles which necessitates a new look at 
the Jewish halakah (from Hebre hlk 'to walk') i.e. if the Gentile is 
accepted as a Gentile without reference to Jewish halakah because he 
has received the same spirit as the Jew, what are the halakhic 
implications for the Jew/Gentile 'in Christ.' The implications have 
mainly to do with the Gentile and the attitude of the Jew or his 
reception of the Gentile as a 'co-heir.'

Torah, in my understanding, is 'a teaching' (from yarah 'to teach') 
and would be the embodiment of what is taught by a father or 
patriarch. For example, Genesis 26:5 uses Torah apart from a 
connection to Moses: 'Abraham obeyed my ... laws (toroth).' Thus, to 
follow your logic, Tim, that faith was always the way before Moses 
and after (I trust I am not misreading you); halakah is always a part 
of the picture when considering what 'faith' is all about. In the 
Reformed Tradition, for example, the Three Forms of Unity are a type 
of Halakah as they are teachings or 'symbols' which are derived from 
the scripture. Are these to apply to all men everywhere? In the 
Reformed view, the answer would be 'yes.' However, my understanding 
of your view is that these 'symbols' are only authoritative as they 
correspond to what we can see in the NT. 

As a Christian (i.e. a believer in the historic resurrection of Jesus 
and the authority of the NT), I can agree with you. But I tend to 
move in the same direction as Mark Nanos when it comes to 
understanding the difference between Torah as covenant for the Jew 
and Torah as covenant for the Gentile in terms of the Halakah but not 
in terms of what the Torah embodies in terms of 'teaching.'

One point I would like to add is the implications of the Noahide Laws 
(also Noahic) which are also discussed in the Galatians Debate for 
the position of the non-proselyte Gentile. Moshe Greenberg ['Some 
Postulates of Biblical Criminal Law' in the Jewish Expression ed. 
Judah Goldin (Yale University Press: 1976), 18-37] points out that 
understanding some basic 'postulates' underlying the Biblical 
Criminal Law goes a long way toward understanding the uniqueness of 
Biblical Criminal Law when considered within the context of other ANE 
Law Codes (Hammurabi, Hittite, etc.). He discusses the 'life for 
life' postulate, for example, which is revealed to Noah in Genesis 
9:4ff.  Palestinian Judaism recognized the relevance of the Noahide 
covenant for the Gentile. What are the implications for this in the 
current discussion?

IMO the fundamental implication is that it is difficult to separate 
Torah as covenant and Torah as revelation/guide. This was as 
difficult for the NT situation as it is in our own day. Also, it is 
misguided to think of the Jew as having 'stumbled' so as to be 
outside of a relevant covenant. I think that this lies at the heart 
of the difference between yourself and Mark rather than his coming 
from a 'post-modern' perspective while you come from a confessional 
perspective. However, I may be wrong in this observation and I 
welcome clarification from yourself and Mark.

Regards,

John Brand

B.A. (Providence College, 1980)
M.Min. (Providence Seminary, 1990)