Brian Rosner on Paul and the Law (1)

Today's lecture is the first in the series of five, more detailed lectures (last Tues was an overview).

'Circumcision is nothing'...

There is certainly a complex subject and also one in which there is a good deal of 'taking sides'. Brian wants to offer a bigger view of the subject. It is the theological equivalent of Fermat's Last Theorem. Brian doesn't think he's giving us a 'solution to the problem', but rather a more worked out version of what others have said in passing.

'You would've thought we'd have it sorted by now' (Geogre Athas)

So how do we proceed?

Three methodological points.

1) look at ALL the evidence. IE< not just 'nomos'. What does Paul DO with law, and what doesn't he say about the law, and what does he say about other things that you'd expect him to say about the law?

2) use Biblical Theology. Jewish and intertestamental texts, and the way of using Paul's own terminology.

3) allow Paul to say one thing at a time. That is: when Paul says 'we aren't under law!' let him be a passionate rhetorician. A coherent but not systematic thinker. See Romans 5 - Paul sound universalistic, but if you read him patiently, you see that he isn't.

4) treat the law as a unity.

SO: some definitions.

Paul: "I mean both the Jew who was seized by Jesus Christ (Phil. 3:12) and became his apostle to the Gentiles and the letters he wrote which are collected in the New Testament. In a theologically conservative college this might seem like a formality. But it needs to be said, and carried through. It’s remarkable how most scholars work with a truncated Pauline corpus when looking at Paul and the law. And as we’ll see, some texts in the later Paulines shed much light."

LAW: what is the content of the study of 'the law'? BADG = three general meanings.

“The ‘law’ in Paul’s writings frequently refers to the sum of specific divine commandments given to Israel through Moses.” (Stephen Westerholm)

That is, 'law' denotes the Torah, or the Pentateuch in its entirety, not merely the legal material therein. Legal material in the Pentateuch doesn't decribe, say, most of Genesis and Exodus. Law is embedded in a historical narrative. 'The law' doesn't mean 'the laws'. Test case: Galatians 4:21 - Paul uses law to refer to the narrative of Hagar and Sarah.

There are two exceptions to this. Yes, nomos is not less than Torah. But sometimes: nomos is GREATER than Torah. Rom 3:19 (quotes from the Psalms)... 1 Cor 14:21 (from Isaiah). According to BAGD, this is nomos used in a wider sense employed on the principle that the most authoritative part gives its name to the whole. That is, it is a synechdoche. The text in Rom 3 is the conclusion to Paul's argument in that part of the letter. The law of Moses in the rest of the chapter functions as 'law'.

So,

Not, which bits, but as what?

"For Paul νόμος “is always the same collection of texts, but the import of those texts shifts dramatically in accordance with the hermeneutical perspective at each stage of the unfolding drama.” (Richard B. Hays)

The law is upheld by Paul not as a demand but as something else. Paul is positive about the law as prophecy or wisdom.

1 Cor 7:19: is Paul in contradictory mode? “Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God.”

In this passage- - the big idea is 'stay as you are'. What matters is that you walk by faith, not your status. Circumcision and slavery are illustrations. These don't matter - it seems like a digression, but it isn't quite.

For Paul to say circumcision is nothing is truly remarkable. It was a sign of membership in the covenant community and virtually all Jews considered it a principal command. When Antiochus Epiphanes wanted to eradicate Judaism, one of the things he did was have all those who circumcised their children killed (1 Macc. 1:60-61). Philo firmly criticizes some who argued that the Mosaic laws (including that regarding circumcision) had merely symbolic significance and thus did not need to be literally obeyed (Migr. 89-93). Jubilees 15:33-34 warns against “children of Israel … [who] will not circumcise their children according to the law.” 1 Maccabees 1:15 denounces Jewish men who remove the marks of circumcision. As Räisänen points out, for a Jew to be selective about the law was tantamount to disobeying it. To abandon circumcision was as good as annulling the law. In Acts 21:20-21, Paul telling people not to circumcise their children = turning away from (the Law of) Moses. This is confirmed in Acts 21:27-29, where Paul accused of teaching “against our (Jewish) law.”

Paul is expressing a sharp paradox (in the words of NT Wright). Circumcision is nothing, but keeping God's commands is everything? So, is he FOR Moses or against him? So what does Paul mean here, by 'keep'? Is Paul doing a 'threefold division of the law' thing - dividing between moral, ceremonial, civil? This approach seems to fly in the face of Paul's absolute statements against the law. Not a paradox but a polemic (say Brian). In 14:37, Paul say 'what I am writing to you is the Lord's command'... so here: keeping God's commands can mean something else.

1 - there's a polemical repudiation here. Circumcision is NOTHING! is pretty radical.
2 - radical replacement.
3 - wholehearted reappropriation.

So: what does he want us to do? Various options put forward by scholars. Ciampa and Rosner note that 'flee porneia' seems to dominate this section. In the broader context of marriage + singleness, it makes sense. That is: marriage or singleness are nothing, but keeping sexual purity is what counts...

SO: repudiation/replacement/reappropriation: the following lectures will trace through these themes.

The pillars of Judaism: how was Paul's perspective on his Jewish faith changed in the light of his conversion? Three pillars: election, torah, temple. He seems opposed to these.

Of course, Christianity is not the only 1st cent sect to challenge these. See the Qumran community. There were several alternative temples running around!

That is, practices of reappropriation and replacement were around... there was already the conceptual possibility of the parting of the ways. What Paul does with the law seems to fit with how a group fissures from the original faith.

“Paul’s controversial view of the Law was inextricably bound up with the significance which he ascribed to Jesus as Messiah and with the challenge this issued to all the fundamental symbols of Jewish life.”

(W.D. Davies)

What about what Paul DOESN'T say? A Jew like Paul could be expected to refer to a number of practices that have to do with the law. Boasting, for example. But Paul never uses that language to Christian believers. His unconscious lexical choice: he never says 'we can boast in the law' 'we can walk by the law etc.



MPJ's questions:
1) use of intertestamental literature in 'biblical theology'?
2) what about law in Romans 2? Seems to be an implicit division. Right?

Mike Ovey on the UK riots

Perceptive stuff

Brian Rosner on Paul and the Law: Keeping the Commandments of God

This lecture is the first, overview lecture, in Brian Rosner's Annual Moore College Lecture series for 2011.

Brian starts by saying 'what was I thinking?' This is indeed a complex study. Critical to our understanding of the early church - Paul's scraps with the churches and the false apostles. The charge of Acts 21:28 - this man teaches against our law. Paul's view of the law plays a big part in understanding how Christianity splits off from Judaism.

It is critical to: his view of salvation, salvation-history, the church, anthropology, Israel etc. There's a lot at stake here. Walter Kaiser: 'how does (evangelical theology) relate to God's gospel of grace'?
Accusations of all kinds fly around. No aspect of Paul's thought is so disputed?

Why? Either people think the free gift of salvation has been compromised, OR the basis for Christian obedience? Lawlessness, or, legalism?

Matched by complexity. The scholars agree: it is complex (see Witherington, Hagner, Carson, Dunn, Raisanen, Wright).

So: what was he thinking?
Study of Paul is dense with thickets of secondary literature. The debates rage about various cruces of interpretation. Hasn't everyone been here before? Acres and acres of cultivated fields. Well entrenched positions! An equivalent of the battle of the Somme...perhaps?

Brian hopes to circumvent the problem! But what IS the problem? Paul seems to contradict himself. In some parts Paul is positively approving the law. In others: he critiques it ('an enslaving power'). Eph 2:15 'Christ has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances'. Ie, the WHOLE THING. Echo of Dt 6:1? 'Abolished' seems pretty unambiguous. The law has been set aside in its entirety. BUT - he also says, in Eph 6:1-2: 'Children obey your parents - the first commandment with a promise'. He cites this law approvingly... 1 Cor 7:19 'Circumcision is nothing - but keeping God's commandments matters'. Is this a 'Pauline paradox'? Sheer contradiction?

Are we to keep them - observe, retain?

Some kind of synthesis is what all scholars search for. But this leads to various divergent views according to how they resolve this tension.
1) Lutherans: Paul abolished the law. The law is a counterpoint to the gospel. The law plays no role in the Christian life.
2) Reformed: After beings saved, we must follow the moral law.
3) New Perspective: Paul's opposition to the law is on account of its ethnocentricism.

Yikes (says Brian). [exegetical method: Yikes. Hmm. Aha! Or Yeah right!]

Titus says 'avoid quarrels about the law!' :-)

You need to do three things:
1) Look at all the evidence. Most scholars talk about Romans and Galatians. nomos occurs there more than anywhere. BUT this is too narrow. It cuts Paul off at the knees. We should consider what he DOES with the law as well as what he says about it. And what he DOESN'T say about the law ought to be added on. The later Paulines are considered non-Pauline, and so we often get a truncated view of Paul and the law. Shame.

2) A Biblical-Theological investigation. Difficult theological issues need biblical-theological responses. Not to deny the usefulness of Systematics or Ethics. But work with the text as much as you can. What terms does Paul use? We lose sight of the Jewish context. It can be helpful to compare Paul with the non-canonical Jewish stuff.

3) Treat the law as a UNITY. What are we talking about? The lexicon defines nomos three ways. Most treatments take 'law' as legal system. Ie law as 'commandments'. See Rom 9:4 - Moses giving the law. Gal 3:17 etc. Parts of the Pentateuch readily fit this description of laws. BUT Brian wants to take 'law' not merely as 'laws'. Narrative dominates Gen, Ex, Numbers (1st half), Deut etc. Laws are embedded in a narrative. Law denotes the Pentateuch together - as a literary whole. We see this approach in the NT itself. Paul (Brian thinks) deals with the law as a unity. He is happy to appeal to law as narrative - see Gal 4:21, 'what the law says' (ie Sarah and Hagar).

So Rosner has a hermeneutical solution: the law should be treated as a WHAT. He cites Hays, Carson, Hagner, Bruce and himself in support. Hagner says the law negatively is as commandments, positively as Scripture.

Paul is negative about the law AS law, but positive about the law as prophecy and wisdom. (3 categories)

The key word is 'as' = in the capacity of, from the perspective of ...

Jews in Paul's day treated the law as a unity in just this way.

So: what does Paul do with the law AS law? We could get stuck if we just went to Romans and Galatians. Loads of negative material is there. But how absolute is his rejection? It seems pretty absolute.

Paul quotes Lev 18:5: 'the one who does these things will live by them'. In the New Perspective it means 'those who do these things will live in accordance with them when they live in the land'.
Brian wants to understand it as 'will have life because of them'. He cites contemporary Jewish literature - Qumran docs; Psalms of Solomon; etc. You will get life if you live according to the Jewish law'. Paul pits this way over and against a different way = the way of faith: 'but the righteousness that comes by faith'... Gal 3, for example. What Paul has in mind is eternal life. Therefore, Lev 18:5 is law qua law: a failed path to life. Paul quotes it in the opposite way to contemporary Jews. It is all about doing, therefore it is a disaster!

1 Tim 1:8-10 - a neglected text because it is seen as unPauline: 'the law is good if anyone uses it lawfully... not laid down for the righteous but for the lawless'. That is, when it is used lawfully it isn't for believers but unbelievers. This verse is translated 'lawfully' as 'legitimately' or 'properly'. In Philo and Josephus it is 'according to the laws'... The law was thus not set up to bind the righteous.

Now, an argument from silence...important not to exaggerate this. BUT - how might a Jew like Paul have been expected to relate to the law? We know from his own writings that he expected Jews to obey the law etc. But he never says that Christians should keep the law... he does say 'fulfill' the law, but that's different. He is not real big on the law as something Christians should obey.

Where does Paul get this view of the law from?
1) from his Calling and conversion. See Martin Hengel. It presented a soteriological alternative. Was the law life, or some other option?

2) from some prophetic texts. Jer 31:31-33, Ez 36:22-32, Dan 9:9-16a, 18b. The 'gracequake' of the new covenant.

So - Paul's postive stance? Prophecy and Wisdom.

See the prophetic character of the Pentateuch. See Gary Millar and Sailhammer. In Dt, there are some pessimistic elements that point beyond the book. The new covenant is anticipated in Deuteronomy - see 4:30. Paul as a minister of the new covenant can read it this way. See Acts 28:23 - he testifies to the koG from the LAW of Moses and the prophets. Rom 3:21-22 - the prophecy predicted by the law and prophets. He puts law and prophecy together. The law now functions as testimony, witness and promise.

The law as wisdom. Wisdom is indeed a key motif in Paul's letters. Moses makes you WISE (Dt 4:6). The torah psalms, Ps 19 and 119 - label law as wisdom. What does reading the law as wisdom look like? It's an approach to the law which notes the character of God and the moral framework stiched into the creation. The laws have an appeal to the moral reality all about us.

See Tithing: the practice of tithing is found in the OT. Does Paul recommend it for Christians? Despite having many opportunities to do so, he doesn't. But in 2 Cor 9, he says something very different. Does this mean he considers it irrelevant? No - he recommends deliberate managed giving... the laws are there to teach us, to make us wise.

Stealing - in Rom 2, he accuses his Jewish opponents of transgressing the law against stealing. But he tells Christians not merely not to steal but exhorts them to get a job! It functions as admonition, instruction and so on.

SO - Paul's letters present both negative critique and positive approval of the law. Brian offers a hermeneutical solution. Not a radical one, admittedly. We don't think we are under it as Christians, but we do think it is valuable... and it points to Christ of course! It is possible to dispute some details and still go with Brian's thesis.

Piece on NT background

Carson vs Piper

Review of Bible – The Story of the King James Version by Gordon Campbell

Feeling enthusiastic about writing this review, I emailed David Marr and said:

I was wondering if I could trouble you for a brief comment about Patrick White and the King James Version that I could include in my piece? It seems to my amateur’s eye that The Tree of Man and Voss at the very least contain a self-conscious echo of the rhythms of KJV prose. I would even venture to say that The Tree of Man echoes the narratives of the latter half of the book of Genesis. Would this be wide of the mark?

This was going to be my scoop: the Australian connection. A great deal has been written about the influence of the 1611 Bible on the West without referencing antipodean literature. Very kindly, Marr replied. But the reply from White’s biographer wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for. Marr said

Patrick was never shy of listing his influences but I can’t remember him ever citing the Bible.

And he went on to explain that, even so, that if you wanted to write a creation epic such as The Tree of Man, you could scarcely avoid drawing on the ‘epic simplicity’ of the King James. There just aren’t that many models for epic in our culture. But at the same time, it would be hard for a writer to cite the Bible as an influence because it would sound a little like you were shaping your own prose to be heard as if it were the Word of God.

That is to say: it just isn’t particularly newsworthy to proclaim that the KJV Bible has had an influence on the literature of English-speaking authors from the mid seventeenth century till the mid twentieth including of course Australian ones. It was the bible of English speakers for more than three centuries, until competitors emerged at the end of the twentieth century.

Since that time, if the KJV has had an influence over writers it is because they deliberately and consciously sought it out. For example, Helen Garner spent months reading the King James in preparation for writing her novel Cosmo Cosmolino. But for the generation of Patrick White and for centuries before him, the KJV was part of the language itself. That we have spent so much effort pointing this out on the 400th anniversary of its publication says perhaps more about our contemporary cultural amnesia than anything else.

This is my chief problem with Gordon Campbell’s book Bible – The Story of the King James Version 1611-2011. It is a beautifully produced and thoroughly researched book that is itself a lovely object to hold. It is meant to serve as a companion to the Oxford University Press’s King James Version – 400 Year Anniversary Edition. This is a role it serves admirably, by acting as a storehouse of interesting facts about the commissioning, translation, publication and even printing of the KJV. It might be best characterised as an ‘affectionate biography’ of the KJV. But it lacks a thesis beyond the observation that the KJV has been very important in the life and language of English-speaking peoples.

Campbell is very good on tracing the complicated path of reprints, new editions and new formats. He retells the story of the ‘Wicked Bible’, so –called because in this edition the printers mysteriously left the ‘not’ out of the seventh commandment, such that it read ‘Thou shalt commit adultery’. Unsurprisingly, there are only a handful of this edition that have survived the horrified reaction of the publishers.

Campbell is also able to reveal a good deal about the reception history of the KJV. A romanticised vision of the KJV might think of it as constantly revered by English-speaking peoples. In the eighteenth century, for example, the KJV had many detractors on the grounds that its language was ‘obsolete and uncouth’. They had a point. What could ‘In measure when it shooteth forth, thou wilt debate with it: he stayeth his rough wind in the day of the East wind’ (Is 27:8) possibly mean, just to cite one example. It was also the case that scholars had begun to notice inconsistencies and infelicities in the translation of the Hebrew and Greek text; and to point out that the so-called ‘Textus Receptus’, the form of the original language text from which the translators had worked, had been proven to be inaccurate at many points by the discovery of new manuscripts.

That the KJV resisted these attacks and became so dominant for so long was not the result of its superb prose style but as a result of the way in which for so many people it conveyed spiritual truth. It was the language of their spiritual birth. One of Campbell’s great strengths is that he understands belief and believers and does not patronise them. He grasps that the greatness of the KJV lies not in its literary style and its influence on authors of novels, but in its role as the sacred book of the English-speaking peoples. Unlike many commentators, he is even-handed with regard to those contemporary Christian groups who are ‘King James only’.

The story that Campbell tells is told just as well by David Daniell in his 2003 book The Bible in English: History and Influence (New Haven: Yale). The advantage of Daniell’s book is that it is not merely the story of the King James Version but of the Bible in English in its many versions. As Campbell recognises, the KJV transmits and refracts the influence of the translations that went before it – most especially the work of the remarkable and brave William Tyndale who was martyred in 1534. The story of the KJV is really a part of a larger and more significant story – the story of how the English-speaking peoples came to hear the Scriptures in the language of their heart, and the story of how so many of these people came to know a spiritual transformation in the hearing of these words.

My piece on John Stott

Christ Abolished Death: John Stott, 1921-2011