Corpus-Paul

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

The following is a development of suggestions made by Dieter
Mitternacht regarding an approach to the subject of Jewish faith and
Paul. Using his methodology in an assessment of the first
communication situation of Galatians, I have brought back from my own
assessment a response to polarities that have surfaced from time to
time between the traditional Christian and the Jewish perspective of
Paul and Torah. Tim Gallant's essay 'Paul and Torah: An Introductory
Overview' (see www.rabbisaul.com) is IMO a very good synopsis of the
traditional approach to Paul from an evangelical perspective. I have
used this as a representative of the traditional pole. Of course, I
have drawn upon responses to the list from Mark Nanos for the Jewish
pole. I trust that the result that follows will be helpful in moving
toward an amicable solution to the question of presuppositions that
are brought to the text from these two poles.

> From: "Dieter Mitternacht" <dieter.mitternacht AT teol.lu.se>
> To: "Corpus-Paul" <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
> Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Did Paul break the Law?
> Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 11:39:56 +0100
>
>
> Maybe we can return to the issue of Jewish faith and Paul that was
> addressed but not really discussed earlier. I'd like to pick up a comment
> made by John Brand that some on this list (Nanos et al) assume that:
>
> >>  the Jewish faith was at the writing of the NT considered a
> >> legitimate vehicle to justification outside of Christ.

> First, I want to suggest that we set some parameters for the discussion in
> order to stay focused.

1) Let's not talk about how Jewish faith was considered "at the writing of 
the NT", but limit the inquiry to the time
of Paul's activity as a follower of Christ.

2) Let's focus on Galatians and restrain ourselves (for the moment) from 
including other letters of
Paul. Not everybody may share the presupposition that every letter of Paul 
has its own communication situation. But maybe we can simply agree that it
can be profitable to attend to the thought patterns of one letter at a time.

 John Brand responds:
 I am jumping ahead in this discussion having followed your method in
 "Foolish Galatians? - A Recipient-Oriented Assessment of Paul's Letter"
 [by Dieter Mitternacht, in _The Galatians Debate_ ed. Mark D. Nanos
 (Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 2002), 408-433].  This
 article together with Mark Nanos' article 'The Inter- and Intra-Jewish
Political Context of Paul's Letter to the Galatians' (Ibid., 397-407)
 appear to be slightly different perspectives on the situation being
 addressed at Galatia with substantial agreement on the identity of the
 influencers and the nature of the exigency (see "Recipient-Oriented
 Assessment" for terminology. For the purposes of discussion I have adopted
 the same terminology that Nanos et al have found helpful in their
 'Galatians Debate').

 What strikes me in particular about the value of your [Dieter's] approach
 is that by careful application of 'rhetorical criticism for the purpose of
 argumentation and persuasion analysis' (n 22, p412) you are able to
 circumvent 'gaining access to [Paul's] timeless thought' [the theological
 interpretations that are given to Paul by various Christian faith systems]
 in the interest of finding the 'historically and theologically relevant
 information … within the contingent communication situation of the letter'
 (p412). At several points during Mark Nanos' interaction with traditional
 'Pauline' perspectives on this list based on 'large very well known
 system[s]', it seems to me that a significant impediment to consensus has
 been the assumption that one regard as 'incontestable Paul's authority to
 correct, threaten, and judge' (p413). There appears to have been some
 confusion as to the exegetical objective. I would like to compare your
 method briefly with the method that Tim Gallant is using in his "Paul and
 Torah: An Introductory Overview" (www.rabbisaul.com). I should stress at
 the outset that Tim is speaking to Evangelicals primarily in this essay
 and I do not mean to denigrate Tim's view in my use of his essay; rather,
 he aptly articulates 'a' traditional Pauline view (in this case the
 evangelical) as it struggles to come to terms with the New Perspective on
 Paul as well as other reconsiderations of Paul's thought. I recognize that
 in this matter, we are all in process to some degree and there seems to be
 some motivation to come to the same page on the part of representatives
 from these traditional polarities. With this caveat in mind, let me begin
 from Tim's stated objective in his consideration of Paul's thought:

 Tim writes:
 The key to any evangelical evaluation of Paul … requires that he gets a
 coherent reading. An evangelical doctrine of Scripture means that we are
 not to take him to be muddled and self-contradictory. For this reason,
 although there are numerous points at which certain scholars may help us,
 we cannot accept their global viewpoint on Paul [i.e. Raisanen, Hubner and
 Sanders]. It is in any case far too convenient to suggest a writer such as
 Paul is hopelessly muddled and inconsistent; we must rise to the challenge
 of seeing how everything fits together.

 And, he invites our interaction with him:

 I think this global perspective will stand up to careful scrutiny of the
 various passages, although I will not claim that I personally have done
 close exegesis of every relevant Pauline text. That is the labour of a
 lifetime' (p1).

 John continues:
 Tim offers a 'global perspective intending to describe the general
 contours of Paul's theology of the law' from an evangelical perspective.
 Tim admits to the limitations of the overview:  that he is not able to go
 into 'extensive exegetical demonstration' for the 'numerous choices [he
 has] made' (Ibid.). As I have read and re-read this essay, I still come
 away with the impression that working with the 'numerous [exegetical]
 choices' that are being made makes discussion of this particular global
 perspective on Paul relatively inaccessible especially to those who are
 not conversant with the developments of evangelical theology from the
 reformed tradition.  Tim recognizes that 'one of the difficulties in
 exegesis is that we bring a lot of unseen assumptions to the text. These
 assumptions greatly affect our reading, not only of the passages as a
 whole, but even individual words' (Paul and Torah, 2).

 However, by trimming away theological interpretations of Paul and looking
 at the 'historical realities of the first communication situation' I find
 myself more hopeful of using Tim's articulation in a discussion of Paul's
 thought having come away from Dieter's essay in agreement with his
 reconstruction of what he calls the 'first communication situation' of
 Galatians. The reconstructed situation resonates from my own experience
 with 'rhetoric involved in any communication' and found that I could
 identify with the 'plausible effect of the letter on the addressees'
 (Mitternacht, p413). I also see a good deal of potential in continued
 interaction between traditional polarities of the discussion within the
 context of a delimited perspective on Paul (i.e. free of theological
 systems which have used Paul as a basis for their doctrine). This
 delimited perspective focuses on a recipient oriented assessment based on
 the thought pattern of this one letter for the time being.

 Dieter continues:
> The question then would be: What is Paul's position on Jewish faith
> (outside of Christ) in Galatians?

 John adds:
 Having used this question as a benchmark for my review of your essay
 ("Recipient-Oriented Assessment") and following some of your suggestions
 in the post to which I am now responding, I would like to center my
 comments around an expanded scope for the question: What is Paul's
 position on faith (outside of Christ) in Galatians? By this I mean to
 include all 'faiths' (even 'Christian' faiths) in the implications of
 Paul's apparent interpretation of what it means to be a Christ-believer
 expecting to be 'delivered … from the present evil age' (Galatians 1:4):
 'being crucified with Christ and to the world must be taken as resounding
 assertions of the life conditions Paul is expecting for himself [and those
 to whom he addresses this letter] in this evil world' ("A
 Recipient-Ordered Assessment," 430).

 Dieter writes:
> I will begin with stating (very comprehensively) some basic assertions
> that seem reasonable to me. Maybe discussing these will help clarify our
> different presuppositions:
>
> 1. Paul was in agreement with other Jews of his time that trust in and
> faithfulness to God belonged together. 2. When Paul alludes to Ps 143 in
> Gal 2:16c and states that by works of the law no one shall be justified,
> he was making an assertion that was intelligible to Jews (in general).

 John responds:
 I would like to make the proposal that we underline Torah as its etymology
 implies it to be a 'teaching' (from yarah 'to teach'). The Torah of Moses
 became central to a faith system [Judaism] and integral to the faith of
 those adherents of the system [Jews]. However, it develops from a teaching
 that is addressed within its own first communication situation (i.e.
 Israel at the entrance to the land of Canaan) and later adapted and
 applied in another communication situation out of which arises what we
 have come to know as Jewish faith.  Similarly, the rejection of that
 system (Judaism) necessitated the development of another faith system
 which came into its own right as an Imperial cult (i.e. Medieval
 Christianity).  This system developed with deleterious effects not only to
 Jewish but also to many other non-Christian faith systems. In effect, it
 gives rise to what has to be regarded as another 'evil age' even if it is
 only so regarded by those who have attempted to remain outside of its
 'stereological safety.' I am underlining this so as to address the
 implication of our interpretation of Galatians vis a vis a basis for
 positing Christ as Torah for Christ-believers (Jewish and non-Jewish). I
 do not mean to accuse any one Christian faith group of insincerity. I mean
 simply to step outside of my particular Christian faith and look at what
 has happened as a result of the faith system of which my own is a
 development.

 As an illustration of how we develop stereological systems, consider this
 statement from Tim Gallants essay: "if 'circumcised' is swapped with
 'baptized' in the question [Do Gentiles need to become circumcised in
 order to be saved?], the apostolic answer would have been a resounding
 "Yes!" Yes, Gentiles and Jews need to become baptized in order to be saved
 (cf. Acts 2:37-38). The kingdom is given to those who are born of water
 and Spirit (John 3:5)" (Paul and Torah, 6)

 In the context of our 'trimmed' discussion of Galatians, this appears as a
 very limited understanding of what deliverance from this present evil age
 entailed. Paul represents himself as the servant who suffers as Christ
 suffered and the example of what his recipients needed to become in order
 for Christ to benefit them. There would have been no occasion for the
 Galatian letter if it was just baptism that Paul had in view or adherence
 to an 'evangelical' system projected into the future.  This would have to
 be regarded as a system every bit as much as the system of Judaism from
 which release would be needed in order to experience an emancipation from
 the evil of the age.  I am sure that Tim would agree with this qualifier.
 I offer this only as an illustration of what seems to be goading Jewish
 readers of Christian theology.

 Returning to Paul's citation of Psalm 143 and thinking of an 'evil' or
 threat to safety, there is continuity between the atmosphere of Psalm 143
 and the Epistle to the Galatians. One cannot escape the heightened feeling
 of 'exigency' in this Psalm. This is helpful in bringing focus to Paul's
 intent in Galatians 2:16 in his citation of this Psalm: "the enemy has
 pursued me; he has crushed my life to the ground; he has made me sit in
 darkness like those long dead" (Psalm 143:3)

 You [Dieter] have reconstructed for the Galatians what I consider to be a
 very plausible 'first communication situation.' Paul's first Gentile
 converts were probably 'liminals to Judaism who had been kept from
 becoming proselytes [to Judaism] before, both by the requirement of
 circumcision and the social disruption that denying one's own cultic
 affiliations brought with it (cf. 4:9)' (Mitternacht, p431). 'Paul [had]
 managed to portray his stigmatization as a charisma of Christ' which made
 a deeper impression on these liminals than that of the Jews they had
 encountered previously and they became enthused with a similar attitude.
 The small gathering that was formed around Paul may have been able to
 exert some influence giving 'the impression that it was a legitimate
 socioreligious group' (Ibid.). After Paul left, however, the new
 Christ-believing converts gradually came to realize that they were
 'squeezed between a rock and a hard place. As liminals of Judaism, their
 communal identity had been functional. They had been able to fluctuate
 between obligations to different social and religious contexts … [h]aving
 begun to confess Christ as the Lord of their lives, they were now
 restrained from performing their Gentile community obligations both
 regarding the cult to which their families and relatives were obligated
 and regarding participation in the Imperial cult' (Ibid., 432). Now they
 were 'denied at the same time status equality by the larger Jewish
 community' leaving themselves in a 'social, political and religious void'
 (Ibid.).

 When we view Paul's citation of Psalm 143 ('no man living is righteous
 before thee' in the statement 'for by works of the law shall no one be
 justified') within its context the plain meaning is that adherence to
 Torah does not make a man righteous i.e. we do not merit God's favor or
 obligate him to save us from a crisis because we obey Torah or a faith
 system developed from Torah; trust in and faithfulness to God belong
 together and should be considered apart from the faith system to which we
 belong.

 An appropriate translation of Galatians 2:16 would not contrast Torah
 observance and trust in and faithfulness to Christ but see these as
 working together for the Jew or proselyte who becomes a Christ-believer:
 "a man is not [being justified] by works of the law [except] through faith
 in Jesus Christ, even we [who are Jews] have believed in Christ Jesus, in
 order to be justified by faith in Christ, and not by works of the law,
 because by works of the law shall no one be justified.'  Bearing in mind
 the 'exigency' of Psalm 143, those who hope to be delivered from this
 present evil age (Galatians 1:4) must come to trust in and be faithful to
 Christ which appears to mean different things for the different players in
 the Galatian situation.

 For the Jewish Christ-believer it would mean becoming like Paul with the
 stigma of rejection from the greater Jewish community because of the
 acceptance of non-proselyte Gentiles as co-equals. For the proselyte
 Christ-believer it would also mean rejection by the larger Jewish
 community for the same reason. But for the non-proselyte Christ-believer
 it would mean relief from the void previously discussed because of the
 fellowship of those who are also coming under the same stigma. Thus, a
 gradually growing a socioreligious group and deliverance from the present
 evil age where a little leaven leavens the whole lump (Galatians 5:9) in a
 good sense.  This interpretation seems to fit very well with Tim Gallant's
 statement that 'Paul is apparently dealing with Israel's liberation from
 the law for the purpose of creating a united eschatological people of God
 comprised of Jews and Gentiles' (Paul and Torah, 6).

 Dieter continues:
> 3. One function of the law is and has always been to promote and support
> Abraham's trust in and faithfulness to the promise. 4. When Paul declares
> Christ to be the coming (fulfillment) of the promise to Abraham, this must
> mean that there is no longer any promise to promote or support.

 John responds:
 Or it would mean that the promise is 'yet future' to those who are
 non-Christ believing understood in terms of the definition of
 Christ-believer that you develop in your essay vis a vis Paul's 'forceful
 and explicit conjunction of the suffering servant of Christ with the
 suffering servant Paul: "the world is crucified to me and I to the world"
 (6:14), followed by "I bear on my body the stigmata of Jesus" (6:17)
 ("Recipient-Oriented Assessment' p430 see also n111, p431). This qualifier
 would put Jewish faith and Christian faith on the same playing field as
 any of those who are outside of what Paul represents as trust in and
 faithfulness to Christ. Just because a person is called 'Christian' having
 aligned himself with what eventually becomes an imperial cult in its own
 right, does not mean that he is participating in the kind of trust in and
 faithfulness to Christ that appears to be actively promoted by Paul.

 Dieter continues:
> 5. Fulfillment does not alter the focus of the promise (trust in and
> faithfulness to God). It only alters the conditions under which trust in
> and faithfulness to God operate. 6. We should not confuse change of
> conditions (provisions) with change of content. Even the pistis of Christ
> that has come (3:23-24) is about trust in and faithfulness to God. 7. Paul
> uses the formula "Christ gave himself for our sins" in order to emphasize
> all Christ-followers' deliverance from the present evil age (Gal 1:4).
> This prepares for the assertions regarding the distribution of the Spirit,
> who will support trust in and faithfulness to God within the evil age. 8.
> Trust in and faithfulness to God without the "adoption as sons" amounts to
> inferior conditions.

 John adds:
 I would reiterate here what I have said above: Because we adhere to a
 recognized system of beliefs, we should not presume to put ourselves on
 the side of Paul while leaving those from other recognized belief systems
 opposed to Paul and, therefore, outside of the promise.

 Dieter continues:
> 9. Jews and Gentiles in Christ share the same ("we" 4:4) conditions
> (provisions) for trust in and faithfulness to God, even Gentiles can be
> adopted sons of God ("you" 4:6). 10. Jews in Christ thus have the
> privilege of being part of a double heritage from God. 11. Jews without
> Christ lack the second heritage. Their trust in and faithfulness to God
> continues to require the pedagogical function of the nomos. Apart from
> that, why should God revoke his promises? The law did not annul the
> promise given to Abraham, so why should Christ annul the law for those to
> whom God had given it?

 John adds:
 Here again, I offer the qualifier that in our present discussion we put
 all faith systems (including Christian systems) in the same boat as the
 Jewish faith system when discussing the implications of the first
 communication situation of Galatians. I am saying this because in our
 'language of ideological polemic' we use words that become triggers and
 should be avoided. For example, if we recognized that our faith system is
 a faith system every bit as much as the Jewish faith system and not
 precisely what Paul had in mind when he wrote his Epistle to the Galatians
 we would feel what a Jew feels when we say things like:

 '[circumcision] is an initiatory sacrament to the wrong covenant' (Gallant, 
6)

 '[Galatians is] a book primarily concerned that Christians not fall back to 
Judaism' (Ibid., 7)

 'The Abrahamic covenant has been taken up in the coming of 'the faith' … 
leaving Torah as a prison without
 a redeeming purpose' (Ibid.)

 'Torah now no longer provides for the forgiveness of sins. It is rather a 
prison house of sin' (Ibid.)

'the liberating powers of the age to come have arrived [in Christ] … This is
 why Paul repeatedly parallels law and flesh throughout Galatians. Torah
 belongs to the old aeon of the flesh which has found its termination in
 Christ' (Ibid., 8)

 'Whereas the law offered life on the basis of deeds, Paul's gospel offers 
life by way of mere faith' (Ibid.)

 However, if we consider Tim's statements in light of the level playing
 field that I am suggesting, we can agree that 'in Galatians, the contrast
 made [in the juxtaposition of Leviticus 18:5 and Habakkuk 2:4 in Galatians
 3:11-12] seems to be more pointedly between faith as eschatological and
 life in Torah as immanent and therefore temporary and pre-eschatological'
 (Ibid., 11)

 When Paul's representation of the cruciform life as normative is in view,
 we are all forced to wrestle with the implications for our own faith
 system. Are we now 'pre-eschatological'? If we move into the cruciform
 life, are we to abandon the halakah associated with our own faith system?
 Do we regard that faith system as a 'prison' from which we need to be
 liberated?


 Let me bring this to focus through a comment made by Mark Nanos (Sun, 14
 Nov 2004 07:46:53) in an earlier dialogue on this list:

> "Why Torah's 'yoke'? This is a negative characterization that tells
> something about the person who so phrases it, but it does not communicate
> to someone who does not share that valuation. It is polemical language,
> not respectful. Is Christ's yoke a parallel? Is there no question of
> allowing Jews to come under Christ's yoke? Is that not putting language on
> the same negatively inscribed scales, so that the non-Christ-valuing
> reader gets the assumed negative valuation (of Christ) without having to
> explain why it is negatively valued (as yoked), while the
> positively-valuing Christ-believer is left wondering what that means (if
> not already naturally turning into something positive, like, why not be
> yoked to Christ, that is a good thing, unlike being yoked to Torah, a bad
> thing). In other words, this is language of ideological polemic,
> explanations that do not explain except to those who do not need an
> explanation, because they share the writer's point of view, even if for
 unexplained reasons'

 John continues:
 As an excerpt from previous confrontations on this list, I think that the
 above becomes more intelligible and moves the conflict toward resolution
 when each of us realizes that our belief system is just as much a 'yoke'
 or 'guide' as Torah was/is for the Jew. It also highlights the point of
 Galatians which is that in what some regard as our own 'present evil age'
 we must find out what Christ's yoke is and come under it so that we will
 be justified by trust in and faithfulness to Christ rather than by works
 of our own 'Torah' or teaching.

 Dieter:
 May I just emphasize in conclusion (as I have done before), that I am
 simply attempting to make some kind of systematic sense of a text. I do
 not claim to construct "truth" or that Paul were the mouthpiece of God.

 John finishes:
 I am obviously making some suggestions beyond the text pertinent to the
 recurring clash of polarities on this list as a suggestion for possible
 mitigation of the underlying conflict through clarification of the
 presuppositions that we bring to the text as we jump from the first
 communication situation to our own system of application.

 I am looking forward to criticisms of this proposal as the discussion
 continues.

 John Brand

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