Corpus-Paul

["Tim Gallant" <tim AT rabbisaul.com>]

> 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)

(Note by Tim: Lest one take this out of context, I elsewhere try to make 
clear that the new covenant is not just some de novo administration, but a 
glorification and "eschatologicization" of the Mosaic. Thus one is not to 
take the "abrogated" side of things on its own.)

> 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.'

In many respects, I do think that the "eschatologicization" of the law 
focuses upon Jew/Gentile issues, but not completely. However, it will not do 
to say that with reference to the Jew, the main issue is "attitude."  For 
one thing, as Davies has shown, Paul in numerous places sets Christ up as a 
personal Torah (which is the implication, not least, in Rom 10.5ff, where 
Paul applies Deut 30 to Christ). For another, Galatians 3-4 does not say 
merely that "you" Gentiles were lost or imprisoned during the period of 
Torah, but that "we" Jews were under a paidagogos, and in Christ we have 
been moved from minority to mature sonship. Consequently, the notion that 
Jewish Christians are de jure under the Mosaic covenant is not possible.

> 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.

That statement is not clear to me. In my view, everywhere in Romans Israel's 
stumbling is over Christ. But I'm not clear on what you are attempting to 
say here.

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.

By suggesting postmodernism (or something parallel), I was pointing to 
Mark's supposition, not that Jews and Gentiles could live differently (i.e. 
in Paul's view), but that there are two ways of salvation. I don't find that 
a believable reading in the first century Jewish context in general, much 
less in the light of Paul's own statements.

Let me clarify a term I used above. I believe that for Paul, Jewish 
Christians are no longer *de jure* under the Mosaic covenant. But parallel 
with that, I don't believe either that he encourages Jewish Christians to 
violate the Mosaic law either. Precisely because it has been relativized 
along with the rest of "this age," Jews are free and even encouraged to 
remain in the place where they were called (cf 1 Cor 7). And I think Acts is 
right on the money when it portrays Paul's response to James's report (James 
tells Paul that people are saying he is telling Jews not to observe the law; 
Paul's response indicates that he is saying no such thing). The only place 
where Paul would tell Jews not to observe the law would be regarding 
possible issues where fellowship with Gentiles on an equal footing would be 
impossible, and those issues are relatively few, in my reading of the law. 
Thus the fact that Jews observe Torah and Gentiles do not is not a matter of 
"unfairness" (as someone suggested earlier). Far from it; unfairness would 
be requiring Jews to live like Gentiles. Living like Jews is what they 
always have done, and following the law's prescriptions as "lifestyle" is 
presumably not onerous. (As a friend of mine says: perhaps for the first 
generation, avoiding pork was difficult, but in a culture that hasn't eaten 
pork for generations, it simply isn't a temptation, just as for most of us, 
eating some strange meat is not all that appealing. Changes in habit are 
always more difficult than retention.)

Does this mean ambiguity and difficulty? Absolutely, as witness passages 
such as Romans 14! It seems to me that it is precisely the view above the 
leads to the writing of the passages that we do have.

tim

Tim Gallant
Pastor, Conrad Christian Reformed Church

http://www.timgallant.org
tim | gallant site group