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Confronting Legalism or Exclusivism? |
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Unless otherwise
noted, all Scripture references are from the New Revised Standard Version. According to the new
perspective on Paul, the early Judaizing controversy which framed Paul's
arguments regarding justification was not a controversy about whether
individuals are capable of "earning" salvation before a righteous
God. Rather, it was a controversy about whether Gentiles should be accepted
into the new covenant people of God as Gentiles. The controversy
involved practices like table-fellowship rather than moralism. Paul's
opponents were not legalists striving to merit the favor of God but rival
teachers creating division along ethnic lines. If this line of argument
is correct, it follows that the doctrine of justification is not simply an
individual, existential matter, but a very concrete social matter as well. It
means that the primary concern addressed in epistles like Galatians and
Romans is not about divine sovereignty and human inability, but about social
barriers in the church. This case, however, needs to be argued carefully in
order to gain a serious hearing. It is the purpose of this article to look
more closely at key Pauline texts with this issue in mind.1 Preliminary
Considerations: Judaism and the Law Such a
reconsideration would be difficult without the groundbreaking work of
E.P. Sanders, who in his widely influential 1977 book2 argued
persuasively that the Lutheran-Weberian interpretation of Judaism as a
religion of legalism was a gross distortion. Many scholars have tried to
accommodate some of the corrective work of Sanders yet preserve the
traditional Protestant emphasis on individual justification as well. Among
them is Frank Thielman, who in his book Paul & The Law3
posits general agreement between Paul and first-century Judaism on the principle
that justification is not by the works of the law. The difference, according
to Thielman, is eschatological. Drawing largely on Josephus and the
apocrypha, Thielman argues that most Jews agreed they had broken the law and
were under a curse (foreign domination). They looked to a time when God would
change their hearts so that they could obey the law. According to Paul, that
time had already come with the death of Christ.4 For Thielman, it appears
that this curse functions in part as the historical Jewish counterpart to the
Protestant doctrine of total depravity. However, Jewish writers could
certainly believe in widespread national disobedience without implying that
every individual person in The psalmist's statements are just
as bold and exceptionless as Paul's, but interpreters have learned to provide
historical contexts for such statements in 1 Enoch, the In fact Psalm 14 itself
distinguishes between the wicked (v. 4) and the righteous (v. 5), a common
and very real distinction in the Old Testament and Jewish literature. Turning
to Stowers again: Paul has an unambiguous belief in
the last judgment of every individual, including faithful believers in
Christ. He also believes in degrees of sin, reward, and punishment. These
beliefs about individual judgment and degrees of reward have a close relation
to the distinction between the lawless (ho anomos) person and the
righteous person (ho dikaios). Speaking of the concept of the wicked
in the Synoptic gospels, E. P. Sanders writes, "It refers to those who
sinned willfully and heinously and who did not repent." These
conceptions of the wicked and the righteous have been erased by
interpretations which have Paul claiming that it is necessary to keep the law
perfectly in order to be considered righteous. Paul neither argues nor
suggests that doctrine. All of this flies in the face of the dominant Western
understanding of Paul's doctrine of justification by faith alone.7 This critical point
deserves to be elaborated. Paul's argument against the Judaizers could hardly
have been that the law cannot be obeyed, therefore righteousness comes
through faith.8 According to Paul's own testimony, he had kept the
law blamelessly as a Pharisee (Phil. 3:6). Similarly, Luke writes that
Zechariah and Elizabeth "were righteous before God, living blamelessly
according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord" (1:6).
This is fully in accord with the teaching of the law itself. Moses assured
the Israelites: "Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult
for you or beyond your reach" (Deut. 30:11, NIV). Far from being crushed
by the impossible demands of an unfulfillable law, the righteous person's
"delight is in the law of the LORD" (Psa. 1:2). This does not mean that
the blameless person literally never sins. The perfectionistic standard that
is read back into the law simply does not fit the context. The pious author
of Psalm 119 may have confessed sin (119:176), but from the remainder of the
psalm it is clear that the overall pattern of the author's life was one of
faithfulness and blameless law-keeping and that the psalmist was a righteous
person. There is another fatal
flaw in the tradition of the all-or-nothing perfectionistic law: The
sacrificial system of Paul, who by his own admission
knew the law well (Gal. Similarly,
James D.G. Dunn writes: Nor
did God require a sinless perfection from his people or require that his
forgiveness had to be earned. The whole sacrificial system, including the
sin-offering and the Day of Atonement, was provided by God as a means of
conveying forgiveness to the penitent.10 Far from being a religion
of legalistic perfectionism, then, first-century Judaism was a religion of
election and grace. Paul and the Law To see how this
perspective plays out in relation to specific Pauline texts, it will be
helpful first to consider the different ways in which Paul writes about the
law. Sometimes his statements are negative, sometimes positive. Making sense
out of these references and preserving a consistent Pauline view of the law
has been the sticking point for interpreters. For example, Paul writes that
it is "doers of the law who will be justified" (Rom. First, Paul seems to
write about the law in terms of ethnic distinction. Since the law was given
to Second, Paul writes very
negatively about one's condition "under the law" (Rom. Third, however, is the
very positive category occupied by the "doers of the law" (Rom.
2:13), those who "do what the law requires" (Rom. 2:14), who
"obey" or "practice the law" (Rom. 2:25), "keep the
requirements of the law" (Rom. 2:26; contrast Gal. 6:13), "keep the
law" (Rom. 2:27), "establish" or "uphold the law"
(Rom. 3:31), who "fulfill," have "fulfilled," or are
"fulfilling the law" (Rom. 13:8,10; Gal. 5:14; 6:2). This is the
"law of faith" (Rom. So, then, in Paul's own
language, there are those who keep the law and there are those who don't.
Ironically, those "under the law" performing "the works of the
law" are the ones who don't keep the law (Rom. Can we be more specific?
Can we move beyond the mere vocabulary words, fleshing out the distinctions
between these contrasting ways of approaching the law?11 I believe
that we can, and that our effort hinges on a proper understanding of the
specific phrase "the works of the law." This phrase is important
not only because it is one of Paul's key phrases but also because of its
central position in the very passages in which Paul articulates the doctrine
of justification by faith. It is to these passages that we now turn. Like the Reformation
doctrine of justification by faith alone, Paul's doctrine of justification by
faith did not evolve in a systematic theological vacuum but in a very real
historical setting in response to a very real crisis within the church. This
setting is clearly articulated in Paul's first letter enunciating his
understanding of justification, his letter to the Galatians. The fact that
Paul would interrupt his opening greeting with a defense of his apostleship
(Gal. 1:1) is telling. The gospel which he had preached among the Galatian
churches was being undermined by "another gospel" (1:6-9). The
brief autobiographical account which follows includes a rather difficult
articulation of Paul's relationship with the Paul's narrative of the
conflicts and treaty leading up to the crisis in Paul's use of the term
"Gentile sinners" in verse 15 buttresses our observation. In the
various factions of second-Temple Judaism, to be a "sinner" was to
be excluded from the covenant people; hence by definition Gentiles were
"sinners" (cp. Matt. 5:47//Luke In this light it is also
telling that the gospel which had been divinely revealed to Paul on the It is this context in
which Paul uses the key term "the works of the law" for the very
first time. Though naturally the term in theory would include all efforts to
comply with the law, it is evident that in practice it boiled down to a few
test-cases of covenant loyalty, i.e., circumcision (2:1-10) and food laws
(2:11-14), "badges," Dunn would say, of covenantal nomism. The
Judaizing position criticized in This theme extends into
chapter 3, where the New International Version of the Bible badly obscures
Paul's meaning. "I would like to learn just one thing from you,"
Paul asks in the NIV: "Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law,
or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the
Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?...Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among
you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard"
(vv. 2,3,5)? The contrast in the NIV is between observing the law/exerting
human effort on the one hand and simply believing on the other. This
introduces terrible confusion into the letter. In 5:7, Paul writes: "You
were running well; who prevented you from obeying the truth?" If Paul
had meant to disparage human effort, he chose the least appropriate metaphor
to do it; running a footrace invokes an image of strenuous effort. The contrast in Galatians 3:1-5 is not between exerting human effort and simply believing, but between covenantal nomism ("the works of the law") and the appropriation of the gospel. The Galatians had not received the Spirit (i.e., entered the Christian community) "by doing the works of the law" (3:2b). Yet having started "with the Spirit," some were "ending with the flesh" (not "trying to attain [their] goal by human effort"). The reference is likely to circumcision. The alternative is not "simply believing": "There is no doubt as to the meaning of Gl. 3:2: eV ergwn nomou to pneuma elabete h eV akohV pistewV (cf. v. 5). The true reading is not pistiV akohV but akoh pistewV, and in correspondence with erga nomou this does not mean 'believing hearing' but the 'preaching of faith'; i.e., proclamation which has faith as its content and goal."12 When Paul brings Abraham
into the discussion (vv. 6-9) he is not merely invoking an illustration.
"It is to be doubted," Howard writes, "that Paul uses Abraham
only as an example. His emphasis on the sons of Abraham (vss. 7,29) and the blessing
of Abraham (v. 14) suggests that Abraham, rather than being merely an example
of justification by faith, is part of a salvific faith-process which works
for the salvation of Gentiles....The idea is that the Gentiles are blessed
not simply like Abraham but because of Abraham."13 The
contrast here is not between "faith" and "works" but
between promise and law, as the emphasis on the inclusion of the Gentiles
makes clear (vv. 7-9; cf. vv. 14-22,29). In If we are right about the
meaning of the key phrase "the works of the law," then its presence
in The tearing down of this
barrier between Jew and Gentile happened on the cross. That is the point of
verse 13, which affirms that Christ "redeemed us from the curse of the
law." The "us" includes not only Jews but Gentiles, who
because of the law were outsiders. Howard writes: Paul's whole discussion of the law
in this section of Galatians aims at showing that the law suppressed the
Gentiles and kept them from entering the In the remainder of the
chapter Paul continues to emphasize the contrast between law and promise to
the effect that "in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through
faith" (v. 26). "There is no longer Jew or Greek" (v. 28)
since all in Christ "are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the
promise" (v. 29). The stage is now set for Paul to warn the Galatians
not to revert to the old status (4:1-5:12) but instead to fulfill the
obligations laid upon them by the freedom of the
Spirit ( Paul's articulation of his
gospel in his letter to the Romans is entirely consistent with what we have
seen so far. Paul presents the gospel as "the power of God for salvation
to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the
Greek" ( In 1:18-32 Paul describes
the degeneration of the Gentiles with typically Jewish polemics against
idolatry ( Some scholars, like
Sanders, have seen the difficulties. But by failing to revamp sufficiently
the traditional Protestant reading, Sanders attributes the inconsistencies to
Paul himself. "Paul's case for universal sinfulness," he writes,
"as it is stated in Rom. 1:18-2:29, is not convincing; it is internally
inconsistent and it rests on gross exaggeration."16 But can
we fairly blame Paul for the incongruities of the received interpretation? That Paul regarded all
people in need of Christ is obvious. Paul was also very aware of the fact
that everyone sins. It must be asked, however, whether those facts are the
point of Romans 1-3 and whether the traditional reading of Paul's argument
can hold water. It seems to me that a renewed emphasis on the historical
Jew/Gentile issue in the context of the first-century church makes far better
sense of the passage. Stowers' observations in this regard are invaluable. He
writes, for instance: The first two chapters of Romans
speak of Jews and gentiles as peoples and not in
abstract-individual-universal terms. Salvation does not concern a universal
question about human nature. These chapters do not treat the philosophical
question of the human condition or the root sin. Instead of an
individual-universal perspective of the human essence, Paul's perspective is
collective and historical....Rom. 1:18-2:16 is not about sin in general or
the human condition but about the gentile situation in light of God's
impartial judging of both Jews and non-Jews.17 Far from establishing a
universal doctrine of total depravity, the text before us actually assumes a
very positive view of human nature per se. God's impartial judging means that
"those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and
immortality" will be granted eternal life (2:7) and that "the doers
of the law...will be justified" (2:13), even if they are Gentiles
"who do not possess the law" (2:14). These verses, together with What is Paul's argument,
then, and what is his point? To answer this question we should consider the
true identity of Paul's hypothetical dialogue partner who is explicitly named
in Nor should we regard
pride in personal achievement to be the Judaizer's principal sin. The
Judaizer's downfall is not boasting, but boasting in the law ( It is in this context
also that we must read 3:9-20. As "both Jews and Greeks are all under
sin" (3:9, NASV), seeking refuge in the ethnic-oriented "works of
the law" ( When Paul writes in Paul next turns to the
real solution, the righteousness disclosed apart from the law in Christ,
"for there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of
the glory of God" (3:22b,23). Years of exposure to these words in Sunday
School and evangelistic sermons have conditioned us to think of them strictly
in relation to individuals (no one person is any better than another), but
that is not Paul's point. The assumed words here are "Jew and
Gentile." "There is no distinction [between Jew
and Gentile] since all have sinned...." Again Paul is thinking in
terms of ethnic peoples. All of this is driven home by This
'boasting' which is excluded is not the boasting of
the successful moralist; it is the racial boast of the Jew, as in 2:17-24. If
this is not so, Ephesians
2:8,9; 2 Timothy 1:9 Significantly, wherever
justification is expounded in the Pauline corpus the Judaizing issue lies
close at hand. This fact obtains even in the disputed Pauline epistles.
Ephesians 2:8,9 is unquestionably one of the most
popular proof-texts to demonstrate that legalism was a concern in the early
church. Whereas it is true that the text emphasizes the divine source of
salvation ("not of yourselves," NASV), it should be asked whether
verse 9 ("not the result of works, so that no one may boast" in
said works) is really about meritorious deeds -- the individual quest to pull
oneself up by one's own moral bootstraps -- or whether the Judaizing issue
isn't still in view. In light of what we have
seen so far, it is highly likely that this text is indeed framed in the
context of the Judaizing controversy. The "works" by which the
people of God are not saved in verse 9 is shorthand for "the works of
the law." As such these works are not the "good works" to
which God's people have been called in verse 10. That the Jew/Gentile issue
is still in view is clear from what follows in Has made both groups [Jew and
Gentile] into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the
hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and
ordinances [i.e., the law of works], that he might create in himself one new
humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both
groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that
hostility through it (vv. 14-16). The principle of
atonement and justification here is identical to that of Galatians 3:10-14.
It is dominated throughout not by the question of human achievement but by
the Jew/Gentile issue. The "works" of verse 9 are not "good
works" but the "commandments and ordinances" of verse 15. The
abolition of this barrier of works lies at the heart of the doctrine of
justification by faith and (as in Galatians 1) is closely bound up with
Paul's conversion and commissioning as an apostle to the Gentiles (cf. Eph.
3:1-13). Even 2 Timothy 1:9, which declares that people are saved "not
according to our works," is followed by an assertion of Paul's
commissioning as an apostle (v. 11), and false teachers "desiring to be
teachers of the law" (1 Tim. 1:7; cp. Rom. 2:17-20) are not far on the
horizon (and may we not compare 1 Tim. 1:8-11 to Rom. 2:25-3:20?). From
Galatians to the Pastoral Epistles, one end of the Pauline spectrum to the
other, the doctrine of justification is tightly bound up with and clearly
defined by the fact of Gentile inclusion into God's covenant people. Conclusion As the preceding
observations have demonstrated, Paul's overriding concern in the debate over
justification was not the anachronistic (Protestant) concern of moralism but
the status of the Gentile as the ethnic-religious other within the early Christian
communities. This conclusion is driven in part by the recognition that Paul's
polemic against the Judaizers was part of an inter-Christian debate, not a
polemic against Judaism as a religion of legalism. Significantly, however, a
careful consideration of these key Pauline texts in light of this new
perspective can be as theologically compelling as it is historically
enlightening. In a fragmenting age of rugged individualism and ethnocentric
nationalism, a renewed emphasis on the relational dimension of justification
promises both to energize the Christian gospel and to buttress ecumenical
dialogue. Careful exegesis, far from undermining the principal thrust of the
new perspective, highlights its strengths. Endnotes 1 The broad outline of my reading of
Galatians 1-3 below is based on the work of James D.G. Dunn, Jesus, Paul
and the Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians (Westminster/John Knox Press),
1990, particularly pp. 183-241, and the broad outline of my reading of Romans
1-3 is based on the work of Stanley K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans:
Justice, Jews, & Gentiles (New Haven & London: Yale University
Press), 1994, passim. Though my interpretation is based on the works
of other new perspective scholars, however, it should be noted that what
follows is not a straight presentation of any one. 2 Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A
Comparison of Patterns of Religion ( 3 Frank Thielman, Paul & The
Law ( 4 Ibid., pp. 48-68. It may be pointed out
that this is not so very different from the thesis of one of the foremost
advocates of the new perspective, N.T. Wright, who argues that "the
Jewish doctrines of salvation and justification are reflected across early
Christianity," adding: "The major underlying difference between the
Christian and the Jewish views at this point was that the early Christians
believed that the verdict had already been announced in the death and
resurrection of Jesus" (The New Testament and the People of God [Minneapolis,
MN: Fortress Press], 1992, p. 458, emphasis his). Wright argues extensively
that first-century Jews believed that the exile had not yet ended (Ibid., particularly pp. 268ff), but Wright,
unlike Thielman, argues that salvation was believed to have primary reference
to the condition of the nation, not the condition of the individual (cf. Ibid.,
pp. 273, 300,337,338). 5 "For there was no one among
them who practiced righteousness or justice: From their leader to the
commonest of the people, (they were) in every kind of sin: The king was a
criminal and the judge disobedient; (and) the people sinners." James H.
Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha ( 6 Stowers, Romans, p. 186. 7 Ibid., p. 140. 8 Cp. E. P. Sanders, Paul, the
Law, and the Jewish People ( 9 Paul: Crisis in 10 James D.G. Dunn and Alan Suggate, The
Justice of God: A Fresh Look at the Old Doctrine of Justification by Faith
( 11 It may be argued that the
difference is eschatological: The Spirit enables Christians to fulfill the
law. True as that may be to one strand of Paul's thinking, it does not
explain all of the references cited above. 12 G. Kittel, ed., Theological
Dictionary of the New Testament ( 13 Paul, pp. 54,55. 14 Ibid., p. 61. 15 Romans, p. 126. 16 Sanders, Paul, p. 125.
Sanders' opinion is that Paul took 17 Stowers, Romans, pp.
107,108. 18 Paul invokes the doctrine of
monotheism to argue for his doctrine of justification in Galatians also ( 19 What |
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