Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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The End of the Law?
Robbert Veen
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Huizer Art Center Publishing
Trompstraat 65
1271 SZ Huizen
info@huizerartcenter.nl
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To Noëlle
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface............................................................................. 9
Introduction
a. The issue: the role of the Law in Christian ethics……11
b. Methods of investigation and presuppositions………41
6. Life in the Spirit versus life under the law ................ 107
7
14. Love for the enemy as the pattern of justice: the
“moral” dimension of social ethics (Romans 13)...........206
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Preface
This is the second volume in a series about the role of the
Mosaic Law in early Christian ethics. The first volume was titled
Fulfillment of the Law and dealt with the gospels of Mark and
Matthew and the letter of James. This volume deals with the
Apostle Paul. It focuses on the letters to the Galatians and
Romans. A third and volume vlume will appear under the title:
Justification and the Law and will examine the doctrine of
justification by faith alone and its role in Christian ethics.
The main issue, again, is the role of the Mosaic Law in Chris-
tian ethics. Did Paul, who is most often read as the one who
most forcefully explained that the gospel of Christ takes us
beyond the Torah and Judaism, actually saying that? Or is he
arguing for a different way of reading and applying the Torah,
now that the Messiah has come?
This book makes a single statement: Paul did not accept a role
for the Torah in the salvation of humanity, but did accept the
Torah as the revelation of Gods will for humanity in the light of
Jesus’ life and mission. Christian ethics was to be determined
by a conversation on the Torah. Paul’s paraenesis, his ethics
discourse, was saturated with Torah, and he envisioned that
Jewish Christians would still be living according to its precepts.
What Paul basically rejected, was the “unlawful use” of the
Torah as a body of precepts applied “moralistically.” To see the
Messiah reflected in the Torah as in a mirror took more than a
legalist mind applying rules.
10
Introduction:
1
Cf. Matth. 5:17 – 20.
11
Anyone who on the contrary looses a single commandment
from the Torah, even the least one, will be called “small” in that
kingdom. If one begins to reflect on the meaning of these words
without taking immediate refuge in the shelters of seemingly
solid exegesis that have been erected around it, one makes a
startling discovery. In a way, the Churches have concluded that
Jesus’ mission in effect has abrogated the Mosaic Law for His
disciples. Do we need to think that Jesus’ fulfillment of the law
actually means in practice that its commandments have been
set aside?
2
The argument that to “fulfill” in Matthews always means fulfilling a
prophecy, i.e. to fulfill the law must mean to establish the reality to which the
law pointed as its future fulfillment, does not hold. For one thing here in
Matthew 5 to fulfill is the opposite of abrogate and therefore determined by its
opposite.
3
As Dunn explains (Romans II, p. 596) Paul was thinking of the law in terms
of the “works”, i.e. as “a means of establishing and fixing firmly righteousness
as Israel’s special prerogative.” Christ is the end of that specific function of
the law. The same could be deduced if one would read the Greek telos as
meaning the “goal” in Rom. 10:4. In Käsemann’s commentary on this verse
however the law is seen as the absolute antithesis to the gospel, so Christ is
then the full abrogation of the Mosaic law and the Greek is rendered as “end.”
(Käsemann, Römer, p. 269)
12
formulate a Christian morality, hardly different from what could
be expected of any man in a civilized, European society. The
distinction between ritual law for Israel and moral law for
mankind in effect subsumed the authority of Moses under a
contemporary view of Christian morality. With the exception of
some strands of Calvinism, the Mosaic law has not been
respected – and certainly not in the way Jesus might have
understood it from within 1st century Judaism – in the manner
and to the degree of the Matthew 5:17 quote.
That tendency to move away from Mosaic law may have had its
own historical reason and justification, but can it be affirmed
even today? In the last century, particularly after WW II, a
totally new approach to exegesis has been opened in this
respect. We can no longer take for granted, that the
Reformation’s definition of the basic terms of Paul’s doctrines is
historically and exegetically a sufficient basis for doctrine.
Despite the new respect for Judaism and the essential
Jewishness of Jesus, we have had for quite some time an effort
(e.g. by the school of Rudolf Bultmann) to transform our
historical understanding of the New Testament while at the
same time maintaining the basic tenets and emphases of the
Reformation. Rudolf Bultmann understood the words of
Matthews 5:17 to be constructed in a Jewish-Christian setting
and directed against the Hellenistic mission among the
gentiles. The text established the law as continuing source of
obedience to God, at least in the sense of what I will later call
its paraenetical function, i.e. knowledge of the law as source of
ethics. In particular the law was seen historically as a threefold
condition in that early predominantly Palestine Church:
4
Bultmann, Theologie, p. 56
14
for the Church like has been done in the past. And if we cannot
find one, we should be prepared to adopt Matthew’s affirmation
of the Mosaic law into the inner circle of foundational notions in
Christian ethics. In general, we need to find the biblical and
systematic argument if any can be found, for such a direct con-
tradiction to the gospel of Matthew. It is the Church that stands
convicted for its past ignorance of Mosaic law if no such argu-
ment can be found.
5
Cf. James D. G. Dunn, Unity and Diversity, ch. 11, pp. 235 – 267.
15
It is equally clear, that the “law” in 16th century parlance does
not cover the 1st century meaning of Torah but summarizes
both a secular and Roman Catholic usage of “law.” It is there-
fore important to re-evaluate the New Testament-perspective
on Jewish law without the bias that has obfuscated the role of
the law in the New Testament-Church.
The kind of position that Bultmann took with regard to the Pau-
line solution of the problem of the law, however classic though
antiquated it may be, might still serve as the starting point of an
16
investigation into the foundations of Christian ethics. For one
thing because it is still widely held even outside the circle of
New Testament-scholarship. For another, because its result is
alluring at least in one respect: no direct connection between
Christian ethics and Jesus’ absolute moral teachings can be
established. By emphasizing the existential call of the gospel
and using Paul’s doctrine of justification as the foundational
paradigm, Jesus’ direct ethical exhortation can be laid aside.
Bultmann insisted that the “Urgemeinde” did not understand the
real fullness of the gospel, that the real gospel was to be
explained by Paul in his teachings on justification by faith
(alone). Retrospectively that leads to a position in which only
Jesus’ life and death can become focal points of a Christian
ethics of imitatio.
17
arrival of the Messiah”.6 If the doctrine ultimately rests on an
understanding of Paul’s adversary in the exegesis of his letters
to the Romans and Galatians, then we must indeed redefine
the doctrine as our historical understanding of this adversarial
context changes. But there can be no doubt that our under-
standing in the last two decades of the 20th century has chan-
ged considerably since the Reformation, to a far higher degree
even than in the days of Bultmann. It has changed to such a
degree, that Bultmann’s effort to stay in congruity with the Re-
formation doctrine can no longer be maintained without running
into considerable difficulty.
• the fact that the early Church still found a meaningful con-
nection to the Mosaic law and its Jewish exegesis and
practice (and in quite a different fashion than the Refor-
mation did) and that this connection is not contradicted by
Paul’s doctrine of justification since its opposite is not the
affirmation of the Jewish law as such but a Judaizing
theology devised in circles of gentile Christianity;
6
Yoder, Politics, 215. The quote is probably a reference to Stendahl.
18
the criticism of the law that we can find within the New Tes-
tament cannot have been directed to 1st century Judaism as a
whole.
The criticism of the law that we find in Paul has now been
severed in our understanding from the 16th century assumption
that there was a Pharisaic Judaism that taught a redemption by
a self-centered attempt to fulfill all the demands of the law and
achieve merit with God.
Paul’s polemic with the Judaizers had been primarily over the
shape of the Church and the status of gentile believers, not
about the importance and the validity of the law. New Tes-
tament-scholars with such different points of view and methods
as James Dunn and E.P. Sanders have contributed to this new
image. The merit-oriented concept of ‘works of the law” was
gradually replaced by either of these two options. (1) the notion
that gentile Christians were misunderstanding the law to
demand meritorious deeds to gain salvation; Paul’s opponents
could then be identified as gentile Christians who sought to
reintroduce their particular understanding of Jewish law. On the
other hand, (2) that Paul was merely or at least primarily talking
about part of the mitzvoth, i.e. those that express a boundary
marker for Israel to wit: circumcision, kashrut (dietary laws) and
table-communion. The area of discussion changed from the
gospel versus the law, to the shape of the Church, from sote-
riology to ecclesiology. There was room now for a more objec-
tive evaluation of Judaism and the way was open for a new
search for the Jewish roots of Christianity.
7
In this I agree with Meinrad Limbeck Jahrbuch 1989, p. 151 who wrote:
“Dennoch findet sich in den meisten Arbeiten, die sich in den vergangenen 15
Jahren mit der Gesetzesproblematik bei Jesus, Paulus und dem
Matthäusevangelium befaßten, kaum eine konkrete Überlegung, was die
neutestamentliche Kritik an dem auch für Christen positiv nachvollziehbaren
frühjüdischen Gesetzesverständnis für den christlichen Umgang mit Gesetz
und Recht bedeuten könnte – weshalb es nur logisch ist, daß selbst die
neueren neutestamentlichen Arbeiten zum Thema “Gesetz” im Bereich der
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correlation between the doctrine and Christian ethics. If we
have to change our understanding of justification by faith be-
cause of our historical insights, we have to redefine the foun-
dation and shape of Christian ethics as well.
10
E.P. Sanders, Paul, (1977), cf. p. 552. Here we find Sanders’ famous
dictum, that to Paul the only thing wrong with Judaism was, that it was not
Christianity.
24
focused on the eschatology of Christ’s imminent return that
gave rise to the question who are they that belong to Christ,
which in turn led to the concept of the union of the believers
with Christ in and as Christ’s body. Paul, approached in this
way, seemed to argue backwards. Christ’s coming into this
world brought a righteousness for the believer in the coming
judgment. That righteousness could not have been available
before. The positive statement about the work of Christ must
then necessarily evolve into a negative statement with regard
to the function of the Mosaic law as written standard of
behavior. To Paul, Sanders explained, the only thing wrong
with the Jewish understanding of the law was, that it could not
save gentiles.
Does that mean that we should now treat the doctrine of jus-
tification as merely an issue of the social identity of the
Church? Is justification a concept that addresses only the
status of the community and not the salvation of individual
believers? That would be a decisive break with the
Reformation’s insistence on the individual nature of salvation.
Apart from the role of the law as such, there is the question
who is addressed by New Testament paraenesis: the individual
in the 16th century sense, or the community of the faithful?
11
Cf. Yoder, Politics, 222
26
For now it may suffice to point to the problem, that Paul’s theo-
logy must be read as essentially referring to a peoplehood but
cannot be reduced to that perspective.
27
1991) and the earlier essay on Mark 2:1 - 3:612, that Jesus’
rejection of the Pharisaic distinction between righteous and
sinner in accordance with covenantal (and ritual) issues of
separation and exclusion, was developed further in the early
Church to include the gentile ‘sinners.” 13 That meant both a
distinction and continuity between Jesus’ teachings and the
response from the early Church, depending on the social issue
confronting whatever faction had arisen. Theology followed the
gospel of Christ by the dynamics of the supremely practical
question who was in and who was out.
12
Cf. “A Bridge between Jesus and Paul on the Question of the law”, 1983;
in Jesus, Paul and the law, 1990
13
In the same direction but more nuanced in the conclusion, is Peter J.
Tomson’s Paul and the Jewish law (1990). The bulk of his work is concerned
with evidence that Paul uses the specific Rabbinic though-structure of
“halakah” to define the way of life of the Christian community. Drawing upon
Jewish, apostolic and Christ’s halakhic teachings, Paul specifically in his first
letter to the Corinthians displays a great affinity with this proto-rabbinic way of
thinking. This has consequences for the understanding of Paul’s theology,
that is now not so much concerned with the individual’s justification but with
the matter of the inclusion of gentiles into a community where Jewish dietary
laws, prohibitions of idolatry and restrictions for table-fellowship with gentiles
are still prevalent
28
might indicate that the function of the Mosaic Law is completely
embedded in a Christology that leaves little or no room for
Torah-obedience as an independent standard of Christian
behavior. In other words, Paul may have targeted the “works of
the law” in their function as identity-markers, but could not
prevent that the moral function of the law diminished equally. It
may have been a characteristic of Paul’s method of polemics,
that a negative position becomes exaggerated in his attempt to
impress upon his readers the necessity of the path he wanted
them to take. As I will try to show, this seems most clearly the
case in Galatians where the denial of any need for gentiles to
become Jews before they became Christians leads him to
oppose the view of the law he himself expressed in Romans:
the Torah would not even be of value to Jews according to that
letter.
But whatever our assessment of the road that Paul took or his
distance to Matthew, no matter how Jewish we deem Jesus,
we cannot escape the question that dominated Paul’s mind:
how can Jews and gentiles both share in the blessings of the
messianic Age? It is difficult to see how we could answer that
question on the basis of Matthew’s gospel alone. If we cannot
find identity between Jesus’ teaching and Paul’s theology it
may and must suffice to establish continuity within the
dimension of the Church’s theology between the recorded life
and sayings of Jesus and the theology of Paul.
14
Cf. Schalom Ben-Chorin, Bruder Jesu, München, 1967.
30
law had a limited function as a custodian and has now faded
away. It has become obsolete not only as the condition for
entry into the covenant-community but also as the standard of
righteousness. Justification is apart from the law. Justification is
not only and not even primarily about entry into the covenant as
Dunn had emphasized, it is also God’s decision not to take the
sins of the people into account, because Christ has died for
them and this fact establishes the paradox that in order to live
in obedience to God, one must “flee from the law.” 15
15
Kruse, Paul, p. 298.
16
With regard to the method of reading Paul we must make mention of one
example of what Dunn called the “rhetorical reading.” Stanley K. Stowers
wrote his A Rereading of Romans in 1994 in which he attempts “reading
Romans afresh as a letter from the Graeco-Roman world of the first century
CE.” (p. 6) The basic trust of Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith is shown
to be aimed at gentile Christians who sought to find a moral self-definition
and self-mastery by introducing elements of Jewish law into their Christian
lives. Through Christ, gentiles were given the same access to righteousness
that had previously been given only to Jews based on the law. Moral
improvement is not the answer for the gentiles; the faithfulness of chosen
individuals like Abraham and Christ however is. Here the gentiles find the
pattern of behavior and in Christ, also the source of power, from which they
can obtain righteousness.
31
gentiles. Many of Paul’s statements that are negative with
regard to the law must be understood from that perspective.
Nevertheless, Paul does indeed also reject a particular Jewish-
Christian use of the Mosaic law as written standard to discern
the will of God and consciously replaces that by the “focal
image” of the Messiah as the embodiment of the divine will.
Kruse is right in this last respect: in Paul, there is hardly room
left for the Torah as independent standard. In my assessment
however, Sanders, Dunn and Kruse are wrong in their common
failure to bring out, that Paul nevertheless proposed a life in
obedience in an ongoing process of ethical discernment (life in
the Spirit) in which neither conscience nor freedom can act as
moral principles that effectively abrogate the contents of the
Mosaic law.
It seems to me that there are three possible avenues for the
translation of the new found insights in the area of New
Testament-exegesis, through systematic theology into the field
of Christian ethics.
17
Yoder, Politics, p. 215
34
the biblical texts: is there a function for a written code of
behavior (a concrete social ethics) in the community of the
redeemed?
18
Cf. Robbert Veen, Fulfillment of the Law, Huizen, 2005.
38
ciples of human autonomy and the life under obligation.
19
“Way of life” under moral principles as binding on the members of a
community.
20
The main issue is not to add a concept of sanctification to the foundational
notion of justification where each remains a separate concept, but to describe
both justification and sanctification from a Biblical perspective on their inner
39
attempts “To Keep Faith Ethical.” It is more the attempt to keep
ethics faithful than anything else.
21
Defined very generally as the effort to construct general rules of behavior
that embody more general value-concepts and apply the latter to specific
situations. These are to be distinguished from moral decisions by an
individual and the moral discernment of a community.
22
Cf. Robbert Veen, Fulfillment of the Law, Huizen, 2005.
42
I have made use of several methodological insights that have
been developed over the past decades in what might be called
a synoptic approach, in which the various methods are com-
plementary to each other. My perspective on scripture has
been defined in various extents by the following methodological
viewpoints .
23
Cf. e.g. Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New
Testaments, Minneapolis, 1992, pp. 70 – 79.
43
y Critical-historical method can and should still be used to
find the patterns of genesis in the text, indicators of stages
in the development of the final position arrived at and its
basis in the history of Church life. We should interpret such
textual layers not as divisions, or as marks of redactional
cut and paste, but as patterns of dialogue that have been
combined into the one view of the final redactor and to be
taken as “intentional structural markers”; not as pointers to
stylistic or theological hesitation or lack of editorial freedom.
Still, having said this, what we must look for is the continuity
between the intentions behind the traditional material, the
reflective/narrative context, the gospel theology, and the
canonical framework. The imagery of ‘layers’ in a text seems to
put too much emphasis on the archeological simile of this kind
of textual analysis, as if what we have here is not a choir of
voices but a load of debris. The text is not an object under
dispassionate scrutiny, but an invitation to join a dialogue. The
44
so-called ‘layers’ in the text are the recordings of voices that
talked to one another about the meaning of Christ. They are
different, and they do not sound completely in unison in the
final stage; so what we need is a careful attention to the single
voices in the whole choir, in order to better understand what the
whole means. In other words, the analytical approaches of the
history of form and history of redaction are effective only if they
are combined as tools of narrative structural analysis, toward
an understanding of how the theology of the gospel as a whole
relates to the sayings and traditions. These elements not only
evoked the canonical whole through their independent
existence, influencing the ongoing dialogue in various ways but
also became in their dependent existence as part of the
literature of the early Church. In their latter function they
became the building blocks of the final composition. And
beyond that, we must move toward understanding of the intent
of the whole of the New Testament as it has been handed
down to us through the instrument of the canonical process.
24
Cf. E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, pp. 1 – 24. On p. 17 he
gives a definition: “A pattern of religion, defined positively, is the description
of how a religion is perceived by its adherents to function.” The best analogy
for such a pattern is a soteriology because the patterns deal with questions
relating to how one stays within the religious community and what defines
concrete adherence to a belief-system.
45
actual statements of Pharisaism that the text refers us to. The
contextual implications of Jesus’ own sayings, their original
intent discernible to some degree within the synoptic redaction,
can be reconstructed with the aid of such a “pattern of religion”
and can be studied, to a degree, independently of the context
that the gospels themselves have provided. All we need to do
is to ask the question how a particular concept or behavior
would be perceived to function as to the issue of the identity of
a given community.
25
As Rudolf Bultmann did in his Theologie des Neuen Testamentes.
46
with mainstream Judaism to reconstruct creatively and adapt
the logia to fit their own context if they did not oppose the
remembered Pharisaic position, for they would expect Jesus to
contradict the theology of the Pharisees with which they were in
conflict themselves.
47
1. The traditional approach to Paul’s
ethics
26
Cf. Martin Dibelius, Die Formgeschichte des Evangeliums, Tübingen
1933, pp. 239-241.
27
H. D. Betz, quoted in Richard B. Hays (1996), p. 17.
48
Scriptures, and (3) seemingly imported from general Greek
culture into the Church’s early catechetical instruction. Because
their form of presentation in the letters was the same manner in
which such materials were taught in Hellenistic education, it
seemed obvious that it was simply borrowed from the
environment.
28
James D.G. Dunn ( 1993), p. 285.
49
vironment’s Hellenistic education, and if so, if it only had to be
adapted to the belief in the imminent return of Christ. The idea
that the indicative preceded and grounded the imperative, the
notion that the imperative as such belonged to the old age,
could then do the rest, or at least in part we could examine
whether we are dealing with the intrinsic development and
expression in written form of an existing halakah to which the
pagan Churches contributed elements of moral discourse from
their own background. We must then take particular notice of
the form, the context, and the way the material is connected to
find possible traces of deep differences between the material
as received and its new meaning within a Christian context.
29
Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament (1993), p. 19.
50
passage is 2 Cor. 5, where the crucial verse 17 is rendered
most often like this:
Hays takes this to mean that the ethical life of the Church is
determined by the double perspective of the cosmic conflict.
The Church represents the new age in a hostile world. Its
proclamation of the truth is the divine weapon in the struggle for
the new world. The difference between the two translations is
that in the second version the basic situation of ethics is
defined as the realm of the Church (“in Christ”), and this as a
renewed, re-created community: new creation, whereas in the
first translation we talk about an individual’s subjective
experience of having been transformed through faith in Christ
or through baptism as a personal event and the ethical
commitment that follows it. At variance with Hays, it seems to
51
us that the passage presents the Church as the new creation
itself, and not as “at the juncture between” the old and the new
age.30 It is not about the imminence of the Kingdom of heaven
in history, but about the immanence of that Kingdom in the
Church. Notwithstanding that, Hays is undoubtedly right that
this situation of being between the times, cf. Menno’s
insistence that “now is the time of grace, defines the Church’s
ethical situation. The brokenness of all human ethical action
might lead to utilitarianism and a careful calculation of the good
effect of one’s actions. If the Church is the community that
holds on to faith in Christ’s imminent return, this at least bars
the way to this kind of realism. Instead, it signifies for the
Church that there is now no barrier to doing the good intended
by the creator right now, even if there is no visible result within
the present order of life.
30
Ibid., p. 20.
31
In J.H. Yoder (1994), pp. 203ff.
52
y To have a “transcendent ideal” gives us the ability to
unmask idols. The refusal to obey Hitler was meaningful
even if one could not provide a clear social alternative by
which to gain the right to criticism.
32
Cf. R. Hays (1993), p. 21
53
exceptional cases), or of new behavior’s being a sign of the
coming but not present kingdom.
33
Ibid., p. 27
34
See chapter 43
54
unified beyond the pluralistic diversity within (formal) unity that
society could offer.
56
2. The canonical framework
Let us move away from this preliminary overview of the central
motifs of Paul’s paraenesis, the framework in which he wrote,
and move to the framework in which he was read. At stake is
the primary role Paul’s writings played, and still play, in the
discourse on Christian ethics. In other words, we must again
discuss his apostolic authority. In order to understand how very
early on a hermeneutic framework was devised that
emphasized the idealized Paul as the center of apostolicity,
over against the empirical Paul and his actual relations with
different Churches, we must look for a moment at the history of
the canonization of Paul’s letters. Beker has argued that the
doctrinal need of the 2nd-century Church was the decisive
factor in producing the image of a Paul who addressed the
opponents of the Church as an apostolic and inerrant teacher,
rather than his factual audience in Rome or Galatia as a
concerned pastor, or his intended audience as a partner in an
ongoing dialogue that stretched far beyond the confines of the
letter.35
35
For a full discussion of the division between empirical and constructed
audience and its importance for understanding Romans, see Stanley K.
Stowers, A Reading of Romans, 1994, esp. chapters 1 and 2.
36
John W. Miller, Reading Israel’s Story: a Canon History Approach to the
Narrative and Message of the Christian Bible, Kitchener, 1998.
57
part by what has become common wisdom amongst scholars,
i.e., that the canon was formed out of those books that had
proved themselves over time to “to be the most useful in
sustaining, informing, and guiding the Church in its worship,
preaching and teaching...” 37
37
Harry Y. Gamble, “New Testament Canon,” in the Anchor Bible
Dictionary, I ,New York, 1992, p. 857. Quoted in Miller (1998), p. 39.
38
In itself this is not a new insight. Harnack, quoted by Miller, and
subsequently J. Knox (1942), had acknowledged Marcion as responsible for
the creation of the catholic canon. Gnosticism, which claimed secret traditions
from the apostolic age, was equally important, as Miller recognizes. Montanist
claims to fresh prophetical revelations were equally influential.
39
J.W. Miller (1998), p. 43
40
Ibid., p. 49.
58
were surrounded by the letters of James, John and Jude before
them, and Hebrews, Timothy, Titus, and Revelation after them.
The Church had recontextualized Marcion’s letter-collection.41
41
Ibid., p. 50.
42
2 Peter 3:15. On the other hand, such a statement presupposed the
existence of Paul’s letters. Following the inner dynamics of the LXX as a
history-oriented collection (as opposed to the order in the Masoretic text
expressing the order of revelation: Torah, early and late prophets, writings) it
would have been expected that Paul’s letters preceded those of Peter.
43
J. W. Miller Reading (1998), pp. 51-52.
59
was again being stressed, owing to the far more positive state-
ments concerning the law in Matthew 5. For our purposes this
is far from irrelevant. It means that the anti-Marcionist intention
behind the canon produced a Bible that was meant to
contextualize and relativize Paul’s position, including his ethical
position. It also meant that putting the letter of James before
the Pauline letters, and the gospel of Matthew before that of
Luke, intended to stress not merely a narrative continuity, and it
was seen to be providing a chronological framework not for the
age of the books, but for the seniority of the witnesses.
44
J.C. Beker, Paul the Apostle (1980), p. 26.
61
Stowers, that there never was an “original” letter as far as the
Church was concerned. The Church began to read Paul from
the assumption that his teachings were not embedded in a
specific situation, were doctrinal in nature, and had final
authority over everything else, and precisely for that reason she
excised from her collection of letters those elements that gave
the letter an empirical shape. The collection of letters therefore
became a literary genre that substantially reshaped the frame-
work within which one ought to read such a letter. So, in effect,
the Paulinism that preceded the canonization of Paul must
already have been working toward presenting the apostle as
the final authority in the doctrinal issues that became important
from the end of the first century. The anti-Marcionite cano-
nization helped counterbalance this Paulinist movement only in
part because it shared basic assumptions with Marcion about
the catholic and doctrinal nature of the Pauline corpus.
45
Ibid., pp. 26-27.
63
The multiplicity of views within the New Testament can no
longer be seen either as an obstacle for Christian theology or
as a source of delight for industrious historians. Revelation in
the New Testament does not come in a neat package of logical
and systematic discourse. It comes to us in the shape of a
recorded dialogue in which we are invited to join, not one that
forces us to be mere recipients. The contingent character of the
Pauline letters is directly important for historic exegesis. It does
not preclude the use of these letters as authoritative for the
modern Church, but it does imply indirectly that that authority
functions in a dialogue, because it has never existed outside of
a dialogue with rival positions within the Church. The primary
authority attributed to Paul is not a timeless given for the
Church, but a particular statement by the Church, defining
herself in specific historical circumstances. In the era of
canonization, the urgent need to find a common source for
doctrinal definition presented itself as the basic premise on
which the collection of Paul’s letters was formed in the first
place and then inserted into the order of books. If both the
internal evidence of the New Testament and the canon history
show us how that dialogue was the producing factor of the
Bible as we have it, we can no longer pretend to be recipients
of a closed doctrinal or ethical system, we can also no longer
ignore our creative responsibility for discernment.
68
3. Outline of the argument of Galatians
We found in the letter of James that a part of Christianity had
no reservations about the validity of the Torah and used it as a
standard for Christian ethics. The letter obviously opposes the
notion that, for Christians at least, the law has been abrogated.
If we accept an early date for the letter, it must have been
written in close proximity to the letter of Galatians, both around
A.D. 50.46 But there seems to be quite a gap between these two
apostolic messages! Even if we come to the conclusion that
James is a late addition to the corpus of New Testament
literature, we still have to accept that there was an intention
behind the canon to provide a counterweight to Paulinism by its
addition. Again, canon history provides us with a clue as to how
the letter should be approached. If that is so, its anti-Paulinist
intention must assume even greater importance, because that
was part of the reason for its inclusion. We must turn now to
the other end of the scale and discuss the letter of Paul that
seems to ground the notion of the complete rejection of the law.
In this paragraph we will provide a general overview of the
letter, which we will later discuss in as much detail as is
necessary for our purposes.
From the beginning, Paul stresses in this letter that his gospel
was not a human interpretation, but was based on a revelation
of Jesus Christ as if “apostolate and gospel [were] interlocking
realities” (Gal. 1:12).47 The experience of his conversion, or
rather the experience of his commissioning, is vital to the
understanding of this status of the gospel.48 It also implies that
46
James is given that date on the assumption that closeness to the gospels,
the simplicity of Church organization, the simplicity of the author’s self-
introduction, and the lack of reference to other issues are arguments in favor
of an early dating, despite the fact that the letter is written in literary Greek
and was accepted fairly late into the canon (cf. Richardson [1997], p. 41).
Galatians is dated around 49 on the assumption that it must fit into the
timeline of Acts, which implies its having been written before the Jerusalem
Council (cf. Dunn [1993], p. 8).
47
J.C. Beker, Paul (1980), pp. 42-43.
48
Commission is a better word than conversion, even though Paul’s
transformation from enemy of the gospel to its prime advocate serves as a
69
the authorities that his opponents in Galatia are referring to
were not the source of his message (1:17). Still, in all respects
Paul is like a true apostle, as is demonstrated by his success
(1:23, 24) and by the analogies between his experience and
those of the other apostles (1:18, the hint at a three year period
of being instructed by Christ). The historical situation of the
letter is of great importance to an understanding of its doctrinal
intent, as has been stressed by Dunn and others. We must first
reconstruct the audience Paul had in mind and the problem he
was trying to address.
model for the conversion of gentiles in the sense that here, too, the Spirit
leads to an awareness of the presence of the risen Christ. But Paul, in truth,
was not converted to another religion, but experienced a change in his view
on the status of the gentiles after Jesus as the Messiah had been
resurrected. Cf. James D.G. Dunn (1993), p. 3. His own description of the
status of being an apostle differs completely from that of Luke in Acts. To be
a witness to the resurrected Christ as an apostle was possible for those who
had witnessed during Christ’s life and had been authorized by Christ in their
positions, with Matthias becoming an apostle as the successor of Judas in
Acts 1 and being authorized through an act of the Spirit. Paul’s apostolate
necessarily entails the notion of being commissioned and being a witness to
the resurrection, but it does not comply with the first two conditions. But
Matthias’s election also refers to a primacy of the Spirit in these matters: the
resurrected Christ continues to have the authority He had on earth, and Paul
is vigorous in defending on that grounds the equal status of his apostolate.
49
J.C. Beker (1980), pp. 42-43.
70
keeping with the gospel of Matthew, e.g., it was taken for
granted that obedience to God in the eschatological age did not
mean a change in the contents of that obedience. I.e., the
Torah remained in full force. It merely meant using the Torah in
a different perspective, with an understanding of the nature of
the final days, when gentiles and Jews both would share in the
gift of the Spirit and experience the new Covenant of Jeremiah
31.
Apart from the accusations against Paul and the distrust of his
motives, the portrayal of Paul opposing Christ and Torah
seems to be right, if it means that the boundaries the Torah had
set to separate Jewish existence from the pagan world were
abolished by Paul for the gentile believers in Christ. This would
imply also that Paul’s opponents in Galatia were not following
James in his decision to allow the gentiles to remain as they
are. Or, if they were, their argument against Paul would have to
be reconstructed differently. Perhaps they had been saying that
the gentiles, including Peter, had not lived according to the
Noachian set of rules that was agreed upon in Antioch. As
could have been the case in many such conflicts, Paul would
then be overstating his opponent’s argument to bring out a
major principle more forcefully. If that is so, we have the
peculiar situation that Paul, who, according to Acts 15, had
50
Ibidem
71
agreed, or had at least been present when an agreement was
reached about the Noachian law, would have opposed that
same element in the preaching of his Jewish-Christian
opponents in Galatia, because it became connected to an
emphasis on the possibility that gentiles could accept
circumcision and go beyond the limitations of the Noachian
status. If he was going to prevent circumcision’s becoming a
stumbling block for gentile conversion, he had to oppose the
Jewish-Christian gospel where it stretched the limits of the
Antioch agreement, and perhaps he even passively accepted
the wish of Noachians to convert fully to Judaism.
51
That this emphasis on salvation as a function of the proposed keeping of
the law is an unnecessary hypothesis is evident from Dunn’s reading of
Paul’s opponents: “In short, the letter makes clearest and fullest sense if we
see it as a response to a challenge from Christian-Jewish missionaries who
had come to Galatia to improve or correct Paul’s gospel and to ‘complete’ his
converts by integrating them fully into the heirs of Abraham through
circumcision and by thus bringing them ‘under the law’.” James D.G. Dunn
(1993), p. 11.
52
J.C. Beker (1980), p. 44.
72
alike? In the letter of James, the Torah is never mentioned as a
source of redemption, but obedience to it is still required as the
self-evident necessity of life in faithful obedience to Christ’s
rule. Part of Beker’s description of Paul’s opponents rests on
the assumption that every emphasis Paul made is a precise
counter-measure against an exaggeration or distortion on their
part. Is it possible that Paul deliberately misrepresented his
opponent’s viewpoint? We can only guess, of course, but we
cannot rule out that Paul’s opponents were not demanding
circumcision as a prerequisite for salvation, but were merely
offering that possibility to non-Jewish converts who already had
accepted the Noachide law. They might have argued along the
lines Beker gives here in setting up full Jewishness as a
completed conversion. But on the basis of Torah and their
understanding of the gospel, they might have argued that the
non-Jewish Christians could be part of the Church by accepting
the Noachian Code for themselves, which would also have
settled the issue of table communion between the two groups.
To these Jewish Christians, therefore, the Noachian Code was
still the minimum requirement, to which circumcision and
entrance into Israel was a good follow-up. To Paul, however, it
seemed to have been the maximum, and going beyond it was
highly dangerous.
This raises questions about the function of the law. First of all,
Paul defends the idea that the promise to Abraham was given
before the law and was not annulled through the giving of the
law. So why was the law given? It was intended to prepare for
the coming of Christ by making clear that man had
transgressed it. By showing that all men are under sin, the law
showed the necessity of redemption on the basis of faith. The
coming of the reality of faith annulled this function of the law
(3:25).
76
4. The Antioch incident
Paul’s letter to the Galatians must then be the starting point of
our inquiry into the relationship between justification and
sanctification. In this letter, written at the latest around 54-55 to
Christian assemblies in Galatia (the area to the south of Ankara
in present Turkey), Paul mentions justification seven times:
once in opposition to justification by works of the law (1:16),
three times in opposition to righteousness under the law (2:21;
3:11-12; 3:24-25), and once in a reference to future redemption
(5:5). The letter has been considered a “charter of freedom” (C.
Kruse), as a description of the Spirit’s work beyond any law
(Zuurmond), “one of the most important religious documents of
mankind” (D. H. Betz) that “helped shape the character and
self-perception of early Christianity, both in terms of its
fundamental principles and in relation to the Jewish matrix from
which Christianity emerged” (Dunn).53 Nowhere else is the
connection between justification and the role of (a different)
ethics so clearly stated as here. Nevertheless, the letter
presents us with major difficulties. The exact nature of the
“Antioch Incident” that plays a major role in the introduction of
the letter is difficult to assess, yet its meaning is of the utmost
importance. It not only shows to what historical situation the
doctrine was related, a situation that provides part of its
necessity and logic, but it also shows that Paul’s solutions
represented at that time only a minority view in the early
Church; one that very rapidly, however, became the dominant
one.
53
James D.G. Dunn (1993), p. 2. Betz is quoted there as well.
54
J.C. Beker (1980), pp. 37ff.
77
stay closer to Palestinian Christianity.55 If they were sent by
James, that in itself cannot have been a rare occurrence
because there is ample evidence of a large Jewish population
there. According to the terms of the agreement in Jerusalem,
Paul would have a free hand in his mission to the gentiles,
without interference from the Jerusalem Church. This leaves us
with the question of who these “Judaizers” were that tried to
influence the Galatian Churches. Whoever they were, it is
obvious what they tried to do in Paul’s estimate: they wanted to
convince the Galatians that they needed to be circumcised and
keep the Mosaic law to complete their conversion to Christ. In
order to convince the Galatians, they even spoke disparagingly
about Paul’s status as apostle and questioned his authority and
sincerity. So Paul had to defend himself against charges that
his apostolate was of men, i.e., false (1:1-2:14), against the
opinion that circumcision and keeping the law were necessary
for Christians of gentile origin (2:15-5:12), a matter that takes
up the bulk of the letter, and to speak out in favor of Christian
freedom as a way of life in the Spirit that went beyond
compliance with the law but could still be considered a way of
obedience (5:13-6:18).
55
James D.G. Dunn excludes this possibility by arguing that Paul refers to
the troublemakers always in the third person, whereas he would include them
in his 2nd-person address if they had been part of his gentile Church. Dunn
(1993), p. 9, n. 1.
78
Jerusalem had spent with Christ on earth. So full weight is
given to his apostolic authority in presenting the correct gospel
to them.
After what was again a relatively short period of time, Paul went
to Jerusalem and with the help of Barnabas gained access to
the circle of disciples there. Paul then returned to Tarsus,
where he is later found by Barnabas and sent to Antioch for a
year. So when Paul states that he went to Jerusalem after
three years, this either contradicts Luke’s rendering of events in
Acts or it is an apparent exaggeration by Paul to enhance the
idea that his gospel was independent and based on private
revelation only. However, Acts was written about 30 years
after the letter to the Galatians, and the contents of the letter
were probably known to Luke. Did Luke think his account of the
Damascus Episode was in harmony with that of Paul in
Galatians (cf. Acts 11:25, 26)? In general it can be maintained
that, to Luke, the doctrine of justification was one of the most
important teachings of Paul. Some have argued that this is the
reason this doctrine is set in the context of Paul’s Antioch
sermon in Acts 13:38ff. One of Luke’s intentions could have
been to show the continuity between Jesus and Paul by putting
79
Pauline doctrine into Jesus’ mouth.56 And this device again is
an early element of the tendency to make Paul into the one and
only apostle who spoke with divine authority about all issues
that the Church faced. Luke therefore makes Paul’s gospel,
independent of circumstance, the epitome of Christ’s gospel in
the fact that it reached Rome, supported by the Jerusalem
apostles.
Having stated the divine origin and authority of his gospel, Paul
goes on to show that the Jerusalem apostles accepted his
apostolate and agreed with his mission to the gentiles. On the
basis of a revelation (which may either refer to his going to
Jerusalem or to the contents of his gospel), he explained his
gospel to the gentiles. He approached the Jerusalem
Congregation as a whole, and probably the Apostles separa-
tely. Paul then shows that the agreement was in full effect:
Titus, born of a Greek father, did not need to have been
circumcised as would someone under Jewish law and was not
forced to become so, not even after “false brethren,” spies
perhaps from the synagogue, or Pharisees who accepted
Christianity, “slipped in” (RSV) to see to what degree the new
messianic sect was abiding by the Mosaic law (2:4). In this
instance pressure from the outside did not make the Church
budge from its position.
56
U. Luz quotes Lk. 10:29, 16:15; 18:9-14; 20:20. Cf. Ulrich Luz in Friedrich
Rechtfertigung, p. 366.
80
by his gospel would be his to deal with. His suggestion is that
when these problems were in the area of circumcision, the
Jerusalem Church, by not demanding circumcision for Titus,
clearly showed that no enforcement of Jewish law was
necessary for those in the jurisdiction of Paul’s apostolate. This
led to a problem when non-Jews had been converted by
missionaries from the Jerusalem Church or when Jews were
converted by Paul’s mission. gentiles would be circumcised by
James and expected to keep the commandments, whereas
Jews, converted by Paul, would become de-Judaized. The
status of Jewish-Christian proselytes and Christian Jews was
therefore uncertain. gentiles were being pushed into Israel, and
Jews were being severed from their Jewish ties.
57
P. Tomson, Paul, 232.
81
handling of the wine for the Jews by Jews only, and other
measures of separation. It was of course no problem if the Jew
was the host. But the libation ritual in itself must have remained
a problem in all circumstances, especially if it occurred in the
setting of the Lord’s supper. As we are informed in 1 Cor.
11:17-43, the Lord’s Supper was celebrated most often in the
context of an ordinary meal. So we must conclude that Peter
did indeed drop all of his Jewish restraints and really “acted like
the gentiles.” The consequence of that will be seen in the
following.
58
Is it possible that to Peter his vision in Acts 10:9-16 not only meant that
gentiles were able to receive the Spirit but also that food laws were
abrogated? Though the vision refers to the impurity of gentiles, now declared
pure by God, by means of the analogy with pure and impure foods, it is
possible that it also implied a change from the foods being declared impure to
being pure; i.e., the terms of the analogy possibly share in the transformation
of what they refer to.
82
It is not clear, however, that this is what the emissaries of
James really had in mind. After all, they did not force Titus to
be circumcised, and the issue here is only that of table
fellowship. If the host was a Jew, there was no problem of
gentiles participating, so in Jerusalem there might have been
no practical problem whatsoever. It is Paul who sees this
consequence: if Christian Jews are going to abide by Jewish
law and impose conditions on table fellowship with gentiles, this
implies that gentiles should become Jews. What Paul had in
mind was a Church without inner boundaries between Jews
and gentiles, and the only way he thought he could reach it was
by removing Jewish restrictions on fellowship with Christian
gentiles. We do not think Paul’s mind was set against the
halakah in itself, but against the practical implication of the
halakah that a gentile Christian must still be considered to be
impure according to the reasoning of Jewish law. To alleviate
that, James had probably introduced the adoption of the
Noachide code, giving gentile Christians the status of the ger
toshav. It is not clear whether the resident alien was allowed to
handle Jewish wine or was trusted enough to be left alone with
the wine or prepare Jewish meals.
59
This is of course also the way Jesus was reported to have behaved
himself in order to convert Jewish sinners. Cf. Mark 2:16; Matth. 11:19.
83
for Christian Jews, and so they expected Peter to conform to
that principle as well. It is unclear whether James would have
accepted the lenient view that allowed Jews and gentiles to eat
together in specific circumstances that were already permitted
by provisions of Jewish halakah.
60
Peter Tomson, Paul, pp. 222-235
84
then need to know why Paul was dissatisfied with this halakah
from Jerusalem that seems to be in full accordance with
James’s position in the Jerusalem Apostles’ Conventicle.
Tomson describes the issue like this:
James Dunn, who advocates the idea that the issue here is
focused on “identity markers,” must also presuppose that
Paul’s saying of Peter that he walked according to gentile
ways, reflects the viewpoint of the Jamesian party rather than
his own. But it is far less complicated to see it, with Kruse, as a
neutral description: first Peter accepted gentile customs, which
implied fellowship beyond the law, and by retreating re-erected
the boundaries that denied fellowship outside the provisions of
the law. Furthermore, as G. Kruse has pointed out, Paul
continues his statements about the law by speaking of “dying to
the law,” which seems to indicate something more than a
difference of opinion about its application (Kruse, 68). Dunn
argues, on p.131 under (2), that:
“Need not mean” and “probably” are the key words here. Dunn
wants to find a Jewish faction that insisted upon Judaizing the
gentiles in this incident because the remainder of the letter is
directed against Judaizers, at least against those who favored
circumcision for gentiles. But the incident in itself is not about
circumcision, which would imply a clear-cut issue of being in or
87
out of Israel. It is about Peter’s “living like a gentile,” i.e., his
giving up the relatively moderate distinctions between Jewish
and gentile Christians that the Jerusalem Church expected to
be maintained in deference to Paul, and then re-adopting them
after James’s emissaries arrived.
That means that Peter must have gone beyond the apostolic
agreement of Jerusalem, and James’ emissaries would have
been right to oppose him, remember that the letter
presupposes an agreement on this issue, at least with regard to
the distinction of missionary fields , especially if it concerned
the prohibition of libations and non-kosher foods that even the
semi-proselytes would have wanted to obey. So it must be
concluded that Paul overstated the Antioch incident on
purpose. To him, the relatively moderate demands of the
Jamesians had implications that went beyond the letter of the
agreement. To thwart what may have seemed in Paul’s eyes a
growing reluctance to accept gentiles without circumcision, a
reluctance perhaps furthered by growing opposition from the
Jewish side, Paul comes to insist upon a gospel that departs
completely from affirmation of Israel’s status as the people of
God. So the function of the incident within the letter is to show
Peter’s acceptance of the Pauline gospel of complete freedom
of the law for both Jew and gentile, and the explanation of his
attitude towards James as a matter of fear! So Paul’s message
is clear: if the Galatians would accept circumcision, their only
motivation would be fear, not the intent of the gospel.
90
5. Justification by faith and not by
works
The Antioch account turns smoothly into a homily on
righteousness from ch. 1:14 onwards. The “we” might very well
be Peter and Paul. Though they are Jews, and not sinners
(idolaters) from out of the gentiles, they know that “a man is not
justified by works of the law.” Now what does this statement
mean in its context?
After it had been made abundantly clear after WW II, that 1st-
century Judaism could not be considered a religion that based
salvation on works of the law in that sense, it became obvious
that Paul had to be interpreted differently. The effort was made
to interpret the works of the law as (2) those elements of the
law that served as identity markers for Israel: circumcision,
Sabbath, dietary rules. That would make it possible to hold that
Paul was not against the law as a way of life for Christian Jews,
but did not see it as a prerequisite of salvation to either Jew or
gentile, which Judaism did not hold either. But we have seen, in
the discussion of the Antioch incident, that what was at stake is
not merely a difference of opinion between Peter and James on
the application of the law, but the principle of law itself.
61
Talmud Bavli (b), bBerakhot, 32b. The quote is given according to the
Soncino edition of the English translation of the Babylonian Talmud.
96
Because God does not forget the earlier deeds of His people
and because He is involved in the history of His people, He can
forgive. In fact, all of the stars in the infinite universe were
made exactly for the purpose of aiding Israel and to keep
“track” of her deeds. And by “forgetting” the evils, Israel can
have a renewed start after she lapses into sin. Prayer,
forgiveness and sacrifices are thereby taken together as one
expression of God’s sovereign grace extending to Israel within
the boundaries of the covenant of God’s promises to her, not
within the “identity-markers” that define Israel’s relationship to
the other nations. And in that context of affirmation of God’s
covenanted pardoning grace, the statement about the “good
works” is made.
97
in love (Gal. 5:6: John 6:29). 62
There are more modern views on the phrase “works of the law,”
which try do to justice to what we know of 1st-century Judaism.
James Dunn, e.g., explained the concept like this:
62
Theological Dictionary etc., II, p. 649.
98
prominent. The law serves both to identify Israel as the
people of the covenant and to mark them off as
distinct from the (other) nations. “Works of the law”
denote all that the law requires of the devout Jew, but
precisely because it is the law as identity and
boundary marker which is in view, the law as Israel’s
law focuses on these rites which express Jewish
distinctiveness most clearly. The conclusion of the
previous section is thus confirmed: “works of the law”
refer not exclusively but particularly to those
requirements which bring to sharp focus the
distinctiveness of Israel’s identity.
63
As E.P. Sanders wrote: “He (Paul) claims that he ‘upholds’ the law (Rom.
3:31), he favors keeping the commandments (1 Cor. 7:19; Rom. 13:8-10; 8:4;
Gal. 5:14), and he states that the ‘law is holy and the commandment is holy
and just and good’ (Rom. 7:12); yet he virtually equates the law with Sin and
the Flesh (Rom. 6:14; 7:5f.), and he maintains that the purpose of the law is
to provoke sin or to condemn all of humanity (Gal. 3:19, 22; Rom. 3:20; 4:15;
5:20).” Paul, Oxford, 1991, p. 85. Some argued that Paul is incoherent in this
issue. (Raissanen) Others have claimed that Paul is positive on the subject
of the law in as far as its moral precepts are involved, based on the “law of
faith”, and negative, where the whole of the law is seen as a series of identity-
markers. (James Dunn, D. Boyarin)
99
time: that the Judaizers were merely fighting for the
preservation of identity markers for Israel and at the same time
wanted to make Christians obedient to the entire Jewish law.64
This does not mean that “works of the law” should therefore
mean the fulfilling of the commandments as a means for
acquiring merit before God, as the Reformation had thought.
There is a third way, according to Kruse: the works of the law
refers to the fulfillment of all the commandments “because this
is what the covenant required.” In 3:6-14 the issue is that when
some argue that justification is dependent upon the fulfillment
of a few commandments, they fail to see that the principle of
law involves the law as a whole. That would then have been
Paul’s main point.
64
We use the term Judaizers as implying an effort to proselytize, though that
is strictly speaking not correct: a Judaizer, in 1st-century parlance, is
someone who lives according to Jewish halakah, not someone who tries to
have others follow the Jewish halakah as well.
100
line and in order that their sins might be continually
atoned. One finds in ancient Jewish texts a persistent
theme of reading Israel’s calamities as severe
punishments wrought out of God’s love in order to
discipline her, whereas God is frequently said to
overlook gentile sin, allowing gentile liability to
accumulate (see chapter 3). The evidence of Jewish
texts betrays the implausibility of Dunn’s presumed
reader.65
65
Stowers, A Rereading , p. 29.
101
It does raise the question of why the Jewish nation has not
become followers of Christ if the Torah testifies to the
righteousness that is manifested in Christ. Paul answers it in
chapters 9-11 by reiterating that God’s promise will not fail with
Israel as it did not fail with the gentiles who received the
blessing of Abraham. So the basic intention of Romans is not to
develop a specific Christian concept of righteousness and
salvation, but to settle the matter of the principle of law: not
imperial power and the acquisition of righteousness, but God’s
sovereign grace, faithfulness to promise, and grace that
enables man to do righteousness in Christ. All of this then
serves as the basic presupposition of the exhortatory chapters
12-15.
66
Luther on Gal. 2:14 states it thus: “In civil life obedience to the law is
severely required. In civil life Gospel, conscience, grace, remission of sins,
Christ Himself, do not count, but only Moses with the law books. If we bear in
mind this distinction, neither Gospel nor law shall trespass upon each other.
The moment law and sin cross into heaven, i.e., your conscience, kick them
out. On the other hand, when grace wanders unto the earth, i.e., into the
body, tell grace: "You have no business to be around the dreg and dung of
this bodily life. You belong in heaven."
103
statement in Galatians 2:16 can be interpreted with some
clarity: Paul and Peter knew that a man is not justified by works
of the law no matter how much merit he has acquired: the
fulfillment of commandments in itself, whether they express the
social identity of Israel or any other good deed according to the
principle of law, does not make a person righteous before God.
No man can be righteous on the basis of deeds that exclude
grace and on which he is judged by God, as we find in Psalm
143:2, quoted in 2:16: “And enter not into judgment with thy
servant; for in thy sight no man living shall be justified.” If there
could be righteousness through works of the law, then Christ
has died in vain (Gal. 2:21). The rejection of righteousness on
the basis of performance, of compliance with the law, is to Paul
directly linked to the meaning of Christ’s death. It is either
salvation through the law (as gentiles thought), or salvation
through God’s grace (as Jews thought), but the third option is
the best: through Christ. But it cannot ever be justification and
salvation through law and Christ.
The heart of the matter is, therefore, that if the Christian life
begins with the identification of the believer with Christ in His
death and resurrection, and that, therefore, faith in Christ and
life in the Spirit is its principle, then to add to that by
concentration on specific commandments, on works of the law,
does not make any sense. The gift of the Spirit already makes
the believer a member of the people of God and he does not
add to this by doing the works that were commanded to Israel.
Justification is received without and outside of the works of the
law. The law as a separate force outside the authority of the
Messiah cannot grant this. So in the ongoing Christian life there
is no need for works of the law either. But in Galatians this
means without doubt that the gospel is free from law to both
Jewish and gentile Christians but is still not without a specific
and radical form of obedience to Christ. So we can conclude:
the Antioch incident results in Paul’s clear statement of the
principle of his gospel: that the believer is justified by faith in
Christ, and no longer obeys God through the intermediary of
(knowledge of) the law, whether in its function as boundary
between Jew and gentile (the ecclesiological view) or its
function as God’s righteous demand (the traditional view). The
position that works of the law are being denied as works of
merit has no place here at all, since that was not an existing
position within 1st-century Judaism.
106
6. Life in the Spirit versus life under the
law
Paul stated twice that the reception of the Spirit , an expression
for conversion and the beginning of Christian discipleship, was
not based upon doing the works of the law (3:2), it was not
based on the principle of obedience to law and was not for the
purpose of making such obedience possible (3:2, 3, 5).67 After
this reference to the faith experience of the Galatians, Paul
argues further with the aid of the example of Abraham. It is “in
the same way” that Abraham had faith in God, which was
accounted to him as righteousness. In the promise to Abraham
in Gen. 12:3, all gentiles were included since ”in you all nations
will be blessed.” Resting on the fact that Abraham was
declared righteous before the giving of the law, his faith in
God’s promise was considered by God to be an act that
constituted the “right relationship” with God, the opposite can
now be stated. “For as many as are under [the principle of]
works of the law are cursed” (3:10). Why are they cursed? The
text in Deut. 27:26 that is quoted here states: “Cursed is
everyone who does not observe and obey all that is written in
the book of the law.” This must be a quotation from the LXX,
though with some variation; e.g., the LXX use of logos, which
also indicates the spoken word and is closer to the Hebrew
davar), is exchanged for gegrammenos), the written word.
67
Cf. James D.G. Dunn, Galatians, p. 153. Dunn gives Rom. 8:15; 1 Cor.
2:12; 2 Cor. 11:4; and Gal. 3:14 as proof texts of this sense of the expression.
It refers to an experiential context for both conversion and affirmation, hence
the linkage with baptism.
107
nation and is not the opposite of salvation, but of being bles-
sed. Someone is cursed if he is cut off from the source of well-
being and blessings, and that source is precisely life in
obedience to God’s Torah. The meaning of the Hebrew,
therefore, is something like: Cursed (i.e., without blessing,
without the fullness of life) are those who do not uphold as a
standard the words of this instruction. Cursed are those who do
not live under this instruction that gives life to all who obey it,
and not: God will punish those that do not obey. Through the
LXX, and Paul’s application of it here, we get the meaning:
those who do not obey each and every instance of the law, i.e.,
those who break even one single commandment, have lost
salvation and will be punished with a curse. In Paul’s view,
therefore, the Torah as law demands full compliance and only
then gives life, i.e., salvation. But how can this be an accurate
assessment of the law? Did Paul forget that the law allowed for
atonement to be made through sacrifices for all transgressions
bishgaga “without intent”? Is he implying that such a work of
atonement is not enough for the gentiles who have formerly
engaged in such “works of the flesh” as he mentions in Gal.
5:19-21 (as it would not be sufficient in the case of intentional
sin)?
Paul now needs to explain what the function of the law was
before the coming of Christ. He takes up this argument in 3:19-
25. The law here is merely seen as an addition that in the end
served a purpose in the greater scheme of the fulfillment of the
promise to Abraham. Its revelatory status was therefore only
secondary, since it was given through the hands of angels,
implying that in it God did not disclose Himself as He had done
in Christ (3:19b), though it might have the ordinary sense of
divine origin that we find, e.g., in Acts 7:53. The law was ad-
ded “for the sake of transgressions” (3:19a), i.e., to show that
human conduct transgresses the law, and to “shut up all things
under sin” (3:22). Such a law cannot make alive; it is a
guardian and tutor to those who have been promised a future
life under a new principle, that of faith. In its provisional function
it has guarded (3:23) the boundaries between Israel and the
nations and it has tutored (3:24) all of mankind by showing that
justification cannot be a goal of human aspirations for
perfection. Life under the law is portrayed as a life of imam-
turity, needing a pedagogos or tutor-slave who accompanies
man in his service of God. When a boy comes of age, he
accepts his heritage and the full responsibility for his actions,
which the believer can, because Christ, the heir, is the principle
of his life.
So what then is this new life of the Christian outside of the law,
even the law of love? In 5:16 Paul directs his main exhortation
to the Galatians: “live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the
desires of the flesh.” The law seemed an answer to the
permanent question of man’s inability to do good. By living a
life under restrictions that formed a hedge around the Torah by
providing commandments that were meant to secure that man
could not even begin to break the really important command-
ments, Judaism tried to tutor man from wickedness to righte-
ousness. Paul recognizes this zeal since he was once part of
that tradition. But now the tutor is gone, since Christ has come.
That leaves us with the question: can Christians live without
any kind of law? Does Christian freedom mean doing whatever
you want?
Obviously not, since there are two powers within man that are
at odds with each other. The desires of the Spirit are set
against the desires of the flesh, and man is but a tool in the
hands of each. If you are in the power of the flesh, you have no
freedom (5:17). If you are in the power of the Spirit, then Christ
is expressed in your life (2:20). If you are led by the Spirit, the
law is of no use, you are not “under” it (5:18). The fruit of the
spirit (not its work or its demand) is love, joy, peace, long-
suffering, kindness, goodness, fidelity, meekness, self-control
(5:22). This fruit is set against the works of the flesh, the acts in
which the flesh is expressed. The flesh, however, belongs to a
previous life; it has been crucified along with its passions and
desires. Man has been transformed, not only changed, in his
114
status before God, from slave to son. Life in the Spirit is still a
life of obedience, but not an obedience that is directed at the
intellectual understanding of a law and its application. In that
sense, Paul’s statements about the Spirit are in conformity with
Jesus’ statements about the law. Both submit the Torah to a
higher principle of obedience that is materially identical and
analogous in the shape of its obedience, but not identical to the
law’s aspect of demanding obedience to specific prescriptions.
That this new life in no way resembles a life under “law” is also
clear from Paul’s statement in 6:4 that each should “prove his
own work…for each shall bear his own burden,” meaning that
there is no imperative that can be used to condemn others. The
function of the imperative has come to an end; what is left is
“reminding” ourselves of what we have become in Christ and
helping each other make it possible for the Spirit to bear its fruit
in our lives. Such, apparently, is the “law of Christ” of Gal. 6:2.
By bearing each other’s burdens, going to the full length of
brotherly and sisterly love, a believer shows himself to act
115
beyond the formal demand of the law of Moses.
116
7. The Noachide commandments and
Antioch
We must ask a “legal” question now. Was this picture of life in
the Spirit beyond the imperative of law accepted by all the
Church? Is there really no place for the imperative in the
Christian life? We have seen that Paul placed much emphasis
on the acceptance of his gospel to the gentiles by James and
John in the Jerusalem Council. In the description of that
Council in Acts 15 there are some details that raise doubt as to
whether Paul is referring to that meeting with the Jerusalem
Church at all. Furthermore, the impetus for the meeting in Acts
is the action on the part of the Judean brothers in Antioch. They
taught that circumcision and the law of Moses were
prerequisites for salvation. According to Gal. 2:2a, Paul went
up on the basis of a revelation; in Acts 15 Paul and Barnabas
were sent by the congregation in Antioch to Jerusalem to
discuss this matter. But whether Paul is referring to this
meeting or not, it is clear that the Antioch situation was treated
differently in Jerusalem than it was by Paul. When the matter is
settled by James, a specific part of Jewish oral law (halakah) is
required of the gentile Christians:
But there is even more to it. The list of Acts 15:20 mentioned
four prohibitions or abstentions: idolatry, fornication (i.e. illicit
relations), the eating of the strangled (e.g., animals caught in a
trap), and the eating of blood, i.e., meat with blood in it. It is
easy to recognize here four out of the seven so-called
Noachide commandments that were developed as a means to
express the basic conditions under which devout Jews could
consort with gentiles. Keeping the Noachide laws was a
prerequisite of being a “righteous” person. Noah was called a
righteous person in his age (Gen. 6:9), but of course it
particularly refers to the matter of communion between Jews
and gentiles in the land of Israel. In the Babylonian Talmud a
person who has abjured idolatry is called a ”son of Noah,” a
118
righteous one from the gentiles.68 The Noachide rules were
valid first of all for those who lived in Israel and had the status
of ger toshav, i.e., resident alien (Lev. 25:35). James’s proposal
in Acts 15 is therefore to use these commandments to regulate
the behavior of gentiles outside the land of Israel as well as to
make possible communion between them and Jewish
Christians living abroad.
68
Cf. bAvoda Zara 51a
69
Cf. Zuidema, 1991, p. 45.
70
Guttmann, 1927, 105
119
concern us here.71 What does concern us is the fact that this
Noachide Code was an extension or application of the Torah to
gentiles that expressed conditions for being righteous. Only
those gentiles who kept these commandments could be
considered righteous in practice, i.e., could enter into fellowship
with Jews. On a practical level, the keeping of these command-
ments would be sufficient to allow Jewish and non-Jewish
Christians to have fellowship together without either party’s
renouncing its separate status under law. It would have been a
fair compromise if it allowed for the Jewish law to stay in full
effect without continuing the separatist side-effect of the
Pharisaic Halakah and therefore would reject that the gentiles
had no option but to become full-fledged proselytes in order to
be a part of the New Covenant.
However, the Noachide Code does not deal directly with the
issue of separation or with issues of salvation. The righte-
ousness that is its concern is of a social nature, regulating
relations between communities, and not directly the relationship
with God, and we must conclude that its basic concern is
“ecclesiological.” There could have been no argument that the
righteousness that is by faith surpasses the concerns of the
Noachide Code, seeing that the latter is a minimal requirement
with a social purpose. Now if these commandments were in
effect for gentile believers in Antioch, it would have been hard
for James’s emissaries to find fault with Peter. So if they did,
unless they form a third party or reflect James’s position before
the Council, the Antioch Incident took place before the
Jerusalem Council, and therefore the letter to the Galatians
must have been written before it, and the Jerusalem Council’s
decree must have been an answer to the problems that this
incident revealed.
On the assumption that Paul did not simply ignore the matter,
which we would have to suppose if he is referring to a meeting
that has already taken place, we must argue that either Luke’s
account has no historic reliability, or that Paul’s letter precedes
that particular meeting. The trip to Jerusalem that is mentioned
in Gal. 2:1 is then the one described in Acts 11:30; 12:25.
Paul’s mention of a previous visit to Galatia, in Gal. 4:13, must
then refer to a single visit, mentioned in Acts 13:13-14, 20.
71
Cf. bSanhedrin 56a-59b
120
Galatians would then be the oldest letter of Paul, being written
in 49 or 50. This idea is most often rejected because it seems
unlikely that there were two councils on the same issue of
circumcision. There are, however, major differences between
Luke’s account and that of Paul, making it hazardous to base
the dating of Galatians on Luke’s description of Paul’s journeys.
It is also not impossible that Luke combined materials in a way
to make it appear that the Jerusalem Council decided on all
relevant issues pertaining to Jewish-gentile relationships at
once. Paul did mention that his visit to the Jerusalem apostles
in the first place was on his own initiative, whereas Luke’s
account in Acts 15 mentions an initiative of the apostles them-
selves, instigated by the Judean brothers. The Jerusalem
Council then merely reaffirmed the missionary decree, cf. Acts
15:12, which affirms the notion that Paul’s role here was that of
portraying the success of his mission, a mission therefore
already accepted and not only affirmed at that time, as indeed
Gal. 2:9 states. The Council’s major contribution then lies in the
solution by James that the gentiles should accept the Noachide
Code, thereby ending the dispute with Peter and Paul that his
emissaries, and the Judean brethren, must have had in the
mission field where they met each other.
121
gentiles.72
72
This adoption of the Noachide Code in principle meant the establishment
of a Christian halakah, which would also entail a “halakhic” form of applying
the Mosaic law. Not only the specific regulations (as a Torah for gentiles) but
the manner and mode of halakhic reasoning, a messianic oral law (a Torah
of the gentiles) should be considered here.
122
law’s demand, righteousness is lost.
If this is the way God has acted to save the gentiles who were
without the law in the first place, then the question arises of
how God’s saving action in Christ relates to the Jews who are
living under the law. As to the element of salvation, obviously
Paul makes no difference. He is not arguing that faith-without-
law is the way for gentiles to enter the covenant people, so that
Christian Jews would still have to submit to law after all. He is
arguing that circumcision is not necessary because it is in itself
without meaning after Christ has come. Jews and non-Jews
alike are saved without recourse to the law, but if that is true,
the law has no essential function. It might be argued that the
problem of the (easy) entrance of gentiles into the Church was
the starting point of Paul’s argument. But he did not stop there.
By claiming that faith in Christ was the only means of entrance
to gentiles and that the law should not be used to uphold the
barrier between Jew and non-Jew, Paul had in fact abrogated
the law for Jews as well.
So while it is true that the Mosaic law was not seen as the
prerequisite of the gift of the Spirit, or of salvation, it was clear
that to be part of the covenant-people, i.e., the Church,
compliance with a halakah was demanded. To James this
would have meant the continuation of the law for Jews and, as
a necessary condition for gentiles, the imposition of the Noa-
chide Code, implying further that James had no objection to
gentiles who did want to undergo circumcision and become full
fledged Jews.
125
8. Reading Romans
Our goal in this chapter is to make clear how the two major
sections of the letter, the first dealing with justification (1:16-
11:36) and the second dealing with moral exhortations (12:1-
15:13), are related to each other. As we stated before, the goal
of this study is to find the relationship between the doctrine of
justification and the practice of Christian life with regard to
obedience. Since the law had had the function of “increasing
trespass” (Rom. 5:20), it could be argued that Christians, by
being dismissed from the observance of the law, were led into
an immoral life. Being under grace, however, does not mean to
live in sin (Rom. 6:15), but to live a life of holiness, of service to
righteousness (Rom. 6:18). The main difference is then the
attitude of obedience: it is not to be found in the condition of
the “letter, but of the spirit” (Rom. 7:6). So Paul takes it upon
himself to show how both are connected explicitly, as he had
done more briefly and implicitly in the letter to the Galatians.
In the scope of this work we cannot deal with all the issues that
confront us in reading Paul’s letter to the Romans. We will have
to give some clarification of how we read the letter and provide
some framework for our detailed analysis of key passages
below. We will try to go over the argument of Paul’s letter
again, without trying to deal in detail with all the existing
literature on Romans. We will try to answer two questions in
our preparation of understanding Paul’s ethics; first: what is the
extent of Paul’s usage of the Greek root dikaio- in terms that
were translated traditionally as justification, righteous(-ness),
justified, etc., and second: what is the condition and the identity
of the believer to which the exhortatory portion is addressed? In
our approach we will try to use the confrontation between a
selected number of traditional interpretations (Schlatter,
Ridderbos) and representatives of the new approach to Paul
(Sanders, Dunn, Stowers, Johnson). E. Käsemann and G.
Kruse represent the effort to maintain basically traditional views
on Paul while at the same time responding to elements of the
new perspective on Paul that had been developing since
Davies’s publication of Paul and Rabbinic Judaism in 1948.
126
most often portrayed as the foundation of Paul’s ethics, has not
yet been laid to rest. As late as 1994, Stanley K. Stowers
published his A Rereading of Romans, which takes full
advantage of new and old insights into the strongly Jewish-
doctrinal and Hellenistic-rhetorical background of Paul’s
thinking. One of its most essential conclusions is that the
exhortatory part of Romans 12:1-15:14 is intended to give a
specific moral and social content to the renewal of the gentiles
as a community of faith. One of the most important conclu-
sions of his approach is that the traditional doctrinal framework
that connects chapters 9-11, about Israel, to chapters 12-15:13
is very weak. The chapters on the role of Israel seem to have
become an interlude, instead of a vital foundation for the
specific ethics of Christians. In order to see Paul’s intent more
clearly, there must be a reading of Romans that shows how
chapters 9-11 make the necessary link between chapters 1-11
and 12-15.
73
Cf. Sanders (1977) pp. 441-442.
128
even perhaps to intrinsic righteousness. That interpretation also
implies that the whole letter is Paul’s explanation of what his
essential gospel is, and that the exhortatory part is not an
addition to a completed gospel but an intrinsic part of the
argument.
74
Stowers’s expression for the audience implicit in and intended by the
rhetoric as distinct from our reconstructed audience, based on historic
presuppositions only loosely connected to the text.
75
Such references to future judgment are (too) heavily emphasized by J.
Chr. Beker, who argues that Paul’s theology was in a way derived from his
eschatology, which gave all of his texts an “apocalyptic texture.” (Beker
[1980] p. 17)
129
brings out the more clearly the righteousness of God’s demand
as executed in judgment. The law of Moses in its secondary
function does precisely that, by making sin more visible, and by
showing in the inevitable judgment of the sinner that nobody
will be justified by the effectiveness of (having and studying)
the law or by keeping the commandments as “works” of the law
(3;19, 20).
130
• the effective revelation of God’s righteousness in Christ’s
death and resurrection, and
This does not mean that Israel itself has been rejected. There
is a remnant, elected by God’s grace, that has received
redemption together with the gentile Christians (11:5).
However, the rejection of Christ by Israel as a whole has a
function within salvation history. It meant that the gospel could
reach the gentiles, who were made part of the olive tree that is
Israel, so that the gentile Church receives continuous
instruction from that source. Paul apparently expected this
condition to be temporary when he wrote that after the gentiles
have been accepted in full number within the new community of
Christ, Israel will also be redeemed (11:25).
135
9. The condition of Jew and Greek
before God (Rom 1:1-2:27)
76
It is difficult to determine what difference, if any, Paul had in mind when he
stated (Rom. 3:30) that the circumcised were made righteous from (a) faith
(ek pisteoos) and the uncircumcised by the faith (dia tes pisteoos).
Justification obviously had the same sense for Jew and gentile in 3:28. But it
might be construed that the Jew, on hearing the gospel, heard in essence a
principle of faith expounded that was already expressed in the Torah, as Paul
meant to show elaborately in chapter 4. So the Jew was redeemed out of ‘a’
faith that was expressed in different ways to Jew and gentile. The gentile,
who had had no prior access to this Abrahamic faith that was fulfilled in
Christ, was made righteous by the faith, as was now preached to him through
the gospel. That would explain the use of the determinate article. From faith,
echoing the formula of Rom. 1:17 might then emphasize the notion of trust in
a God who makes good on his promise, and by this faith, refers immediately
to the faithfulness of Christ that is at the heart of the gospel that now also
reached gentiles. Rom. 3:28 already stated that man, both Jew and gentile, is
justified ”in the power of faith” (instrumental dative: pistei), which can then be
understood to imply separate histories but equal forms of faith.
77
To Luther this was an adequate basis for the doctrine of justification by
faith. Cf., e.g., his remarks in the “Sermon on Good Works”: “This is what St.
Paul means in many places, where he ascribes so much to faith, that he
says: Justus ex fide sua vivit, “the righteous man draws his life out of his
faith,” and faith is that because of which he is counted righteous before God.
If righteousness consists of faith, it is clear that faith fulfills all commandments
and makes all works righteous, since no one is justified except he keep all the
commands of God. (Emph. mine) Again, the works can justify no one before
God without faith. So utterly and roundly does the Apostle reject works and
praise faith, that some have taken offence at his words and say: “Well, then,
we will do no more good works,” although he condemns such men as erring
and foolish.” (Luther, op. cit., p. 122) From this passage, however, it may be
inferred that the rejection of good works involves those works that have been
done without faith, and equally that faith implies works of faith. The issue then
136
The gospel is a divine power that has visible effects because of
the work of the Spirit in the lives of men. It is here seen as
restricted in its effect to those who have faith, at least in as far
as salvation is concerned. In that respect there is no difference
between Jew and Greek, as Peter had stated in Acts 15. The
reason the gospel can be that power is that something else is
revealed in it: the righteousness of God becomes effective
through the gospel as a power to salvation. (We will go into the
nature of “righteousness” in the next paragraph.) Following
Dunn, among others, we read it like this: Righteousness
springs from faith, which may refer to the faithfulness of God,
and is accepted by faith.
Others have read differently and state that every act of faith
makes the next one come to life, so it would refer to a life of
faith in which righteousness is revealed in a practical sense,
i.e., from one act of faith to the next.79 Schlatter has argued
himself that the phrase “from faith to faith” is meant to exclude
any interference from merit or works in the salvation of man, so
in effect it refers to the sola in sola fide. There is also the
possibility that two separate kinds or moments of faith are
meant, e.g., that ek pisteoos refers to the believing acceptance
of the gospel as the condition of the revelation of righteousness
toward anyone that believes (verse 16), leading to faith as
saving reliance on Christ. But then the passage is construed
80
Johnson (1997), p. 27.
138
sexual vices in connection with idolatrous cults (1:24-27), which
constitutes punishment in itself (1:27b). To “dishonor the body”
is mentioned as the result of sexual vice over against the social
vices and violence listed from verse 28 onwards. These other
vices are mentioned in connection with a wrong way of thinking
in 1:28, a way of thinking that was modified in chapter 12 to
form the basis of a new ethic. All of these are connected with
the righteous dictum of God: that those who perpetrate these
things deserve death as punishment (1:32), not in the sense
that they should be executed for it, but that death as part of the
condition of mankind is proper for a humanity in the power of
such vices.
81
Stowers (1994), pp. 100-102. Stowers calls this interlocutor the
”Pretentious gentile.”
140
of verse 15, where we read that they ”showed the work of the
law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness,”
etc. But is that perhaps a premature judgment? Schlatter states
in his commentary on this verse: “Fusei [by nature – RAV]
means that the pagans can show this behavior because of
what they find in themselves and have received because of the
history of their lives.”82 It makes it possible for Schlatter to use
this as a paradigm of the kind of obedience that God demands
from humanity later on in his analysis of the work of the spirit.
“Where there are only words (note: this takes up Paul’s
deconstruction of the law in terms of the letter vs. spirit
dichotomy in 7:6, and the way Paul in Galatians changed the
‘words of Torah’ to the ‘written words’, the merely written word
– (Gal. 3:10) the law as such is rejected. This makes perfect
sense if Paul’s opponent is a modern legalist, who would value
the possession of the written law over the obedience that is
commanded by it. Such an opposition would entail an inner
morality over against a merely outward legalist compliance with
rules, as in the Kantian (and probably Lutheran) opposition
between morality and legality. After all, it was not the
possession of the written Torah in itself that was at stake, but
the Torah’s dual role in the promise to Abraham as the father of
many peoples and as boundary marker for Israel.
But does the text state that these gentiles (ethne of course
does not refer to pagans, but to non-Jews, it does not refer to
“states” or “nations” because the definite article is missing)
obey the law “by nature” in the sense of “according to their
individual nature,” i.e., with the same force as “according to
their nature?” Paul uses fusei only 3 times, if we disregard Eph.
2:3, whose sense is not different from the usage in Gal. 2:15. It
refers, e.g., to those who are not gods by nature, i.e., the idols
(Gal. 4:8), to being Jews “by nature,” i.e., through birth (Gal.
2:15), and then we have the expression in our verse.
82
A. Schlatter, Brief an die Römer, p. 90.
83
Cf. James D.G. Dunn (1988, ad loc.) argues that “syntax and balance of
the sentence require that fusei be taken with what follows” , against Cranfield
and Achtemeier. The parallels cited in 2:27; Gal. 2:15, and Eph. 2:3 do show
141
nature, do what the law commands, etc. Then we have fusei
connected with the first part of the verse, which makes perfect
sense. The other option would connect fusei with “acting,” as a
mode of behavior and not as a mode of being. But this presents
a problem. Nowhere does Paul use fusei in connection with a
behavior. In the other two instances, fusei is connected with the
origin of a way of being.84 It makes no sense, however, to state
that someone acts according to his nature what the law
commands, unless we construe that law to be a “natural law” or
if we understand it to be a reference to pagan Christians85 in
whom the prophecy of Jeremiah 31 had been fulfilled. I will
discuss the Jeremiah 31 prophecy later so I will address the
natural law option here first. I fail to see how such a concept of
natural law can be part of Paul’s understanding of things, and
the only other place where we might construe this is Rom. 1:26,
where we have the change of natural (fusiken) to the unnatural
(para ten fusin) use. Here, though, it is not a matter of acting
“against nature,” but of acting against the “honor of the body”
(Rom. 1:24). It therefore refers to a way of behavior, in this
case, one that is incongruous with God’s intentions in His
that Paul in general would have put fusei within the phrase and not at the
end of it. Is it not possible, however, that Paul would have wanted to stress
“by nature” because the context is about natural prerogatives? In that case,
he would have put fusei at the end of the phrase. “gentiles who do not have
the law, by nature [that is],, since after all, gentiles could “have” the law by
becoming proselyte or adopting it in their Christian context. Furthermore, if
Paul wanted to stress that gentiles practice the law “by nature” he would have
put the fusei within the next phrase, following the same logic that Dunn
proposed and we would have had the phrase: ta tou nomou fusei poioosin. If
fusei, finally, does belong to the next phrase, as Dunn argues, it is somewhat
singular in that its position is contrary to Paul’s general practice of using it
within the phrase and the only reason for that could be the desire for
emphasis. But if emphasis accounts for its positioning outside the phrase it is
connected to there is no reason why it could not be connected to the previous
part of the phrase anyway, since emphasis could be achieved in both
positions.
84
Romans 2:27 has “ek fuseoos,” which implies a different concept. Gal.
2:15 does show fusei within the phrase, but here the phrase is quite short and
no emphasis is intended: hemeis fusei Ioudaioi. Finally, in Eph. 2:3 there is
also no opposite to fusei, since it applies to all that “we are by nature children
of wrath.” So again, there is no reason there to put fusei in a separate
construction. More importantly, both Gal. and Eph. show that fusei is
normally connected to the origin of people, not to a mode of behavior.
85
Karl Barth e.g. stated in his Church Dogmatics, I,2, p. 332 that Rom. 2:14
can only refer to pagan Christians in whom the prophecy of Jeremiah 31:33
was being fulfilled.
142
creation. But this behavior is expressed as the opposite of
fusikos (in the derived sense of “natural,” according to its own
original intent as immanent in its being) and not constructed
with fusei, which would introduce a concept of “natural order”
as a standard. (So I contend that “against its nature” must be
distinguished from either against, or in accordance with, nature
as such.)
But having said that, it is obvious also that Paul exceeds the
statement of Rom. 2:14 in the next verse, where the words of
Jeremiah 31:31-32 are seemingly applied to nations outside of
the law.
The notion that the nations have the work of the law “written on
their hearts” is puzzling when we consider that the prophecy of
Jeremiah 31 refers to a future state of affairs in Israel and is
taken in the New Testament to refer to the reality of Christian
life in the Spirit. The other reference to this future state in
Hebrews 10:15-18 obviously refers to Christians. A little later
we find Paul in chapter 7 explaining the ineffectiveness of life
under the law by expressing the position of the proselyte under
the covenant with Israel like this: “For I delight in the law of God
according to the inward man.”86 With this statement, the attitude
of, e.g., Psalm 37:31: “The mouth of the righteous proferreth
wisdom and his tongue speaketh judgment; the law of his God
is in his heart; his goings shall not slide,” and Psalm 40:8: “To
86
The literature usually considers different possibilities in dealing with
Romans 7: Paul is either speaking autobiographically about his individual
experience with the Torah, or he is speaking about Israel’s collective
experience under the law (Ex. 19), or, in a combination of both, about the
‘typical” experience of a Pharisee (Dunn). In our estimate he is speaking
about the effect that acceptance of the law has on gentiles, who take that law
as the means for salvation (with Stowers).
144
do thy good pleasure, my God, is my delight, and thy law is
within my heart” is both reflected and surpassed. For we read
elsewhere that “the love of Christ is poured out in our hearts”
(5:5) and that we “believe with our hearts unto righteousness”
(10:10). Both Ezekiel 11:19 and Isaiah 51:7, on the contrary,
refer to the restoration of Israel. Is Paul saying that the hope for
the future as expressed by the prophets is nothing but an
illusion, since the nations already had the law written on their
hearts? Hardly.
87
E.P. Sanders Paul (1991), p. 66.
149
10. Justification (3:21-3:30)
The judging of the sins of others, setting up the standard of the
law to reveal unrighteousness in others, does not lead to an
improvement in behavior. Teaching gentiles the law would
therefore only lead to an increase in guilt. So how then can
righteousness be achieved?
150
law. Though crucial for Paul’s argument, it is also the most
difficult and obscure passage in the letter.88 Some have argued
that Paul uses earlier confessional material, which could
account for the density of the passage.89 Justification by faith
is mentioned for the second time as a principle in 3:28. Chapter
4 contains the midrash on Abraham, where Paul uses the
second quote (after Habakkuk 2:4 in Rom. 1) that affirms
justification by faith on the basis of Gen. 15:6 (Rom. 4:3).
Finally, chapter 5 expounds on the consequences of
justification by faith, and is therefore our main focus later on.
With the “now” of 3:21, Paul turns to the major thesis of his
letter. Righteousness is now revealed beyond and outside [the
principle of] law, while the law [of Moses] and the prophets
testified unto its ultimate revelation. The first mention of law is
without the definite article, and refers back to the statement in
3:20. The new righteousness, revealed in this new epoch, is
different from the righteousness under the law that followed the
works of the law. The “now” might be taken as both a logical
and an eschatological antithesis and is opposed to the present
of Rom. 1:18.90 The reality of the next verses is already present
and working within the present world, though its fulfillment still
lies in the future. That righteousness must mean here: a
righteousness of God (i.e., gen. subj. with the explicative
genitive in verse 22: dikaiosune de theou, “a righteousness of
God then”), i.e., a way of being righteous that God has given. It
has no reference to God’s being inherently righteous nor does
it mean a righteousness of man before God or a “divine”
88
E. Käsemann Römer (1974), p. 85.
89
C.G. Kruse Paul (1996), p. 188.
90
E. Käsemann Römer (1974), p. 85.
151
righteousness that would be a human achievement. The
emphasis is on God’s effective exercise of justice in the midst
of human failure.91 The forensic nature of the expression is not
by accident and cannot be replaced by stating that Paul meant
that God’s grace has been revealed.92 That means that
justification is here seen as extrinsic to the anthropological
condition of man; it is extra nos. Paul goes on to state the basis
for this: the revelation of God’s righteousness in Christ is not in
contradiction to God’s standard of justice, for it is based upon
an atoning sacrifice.
91
Cf. A. Schlatter (1935), p. 137.
92
Interestingly, in the commentary on Romans by St. Thomas Aquinas the
role of faith is expressed as primus motus mentis in Deum, "a primary
movement of the mind toward God", and faith thereby becomes a form of
justice, a prima pars justitiae. For if faith in that way becomes a cause of
righteousness, such faith must be a faith that is alive (James 2), works
through love (Gal. 5), implies Christ being in our hearts (Eph. 3), and purifies
(Acts 15). Apparently this exegesis is prompted by the succession of ”through
faith” and ”for all who have faith,” with the first mention of faith signifying the
means of access and the second referring to a mature faith that works
through love and therefore signifies a being righteous (St. Thomas Aquinas,
in Omnes S. Pauli Apostoli Epistolas Commentaria, c. iii, l. iii).
93
The phrase dia pisteoos Iesou Christou can be translated as: through faith
in Jesus Christ. Since pistis can also mean “faithfulness,” it might be
rendered, “through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ.” The argument could be
made that it was intended to be the opposite of “works of the law” so that the
152
forensic language that Paul uses here (judgment in 2:16, 3:8,
20; accused in 3:9) is first of all a declaration of being set free
from judgment (cf. 5:1) , is a sacrifice. (We will however
examine the implications of the so-called forensic language
later in this paragraph.) Verse 25 is crucial here. God has
made Christ into a mercy seat (language of the Day of
Atonement, Lev. 16:15-16) through faithfulness [shown] in his
blood [death]. We again take “faith” here as a reference to the
obedience of Christ and not as reference to the subjective faith
of the believer. So in fact Paul has a basis for his statement
that God revealed His righteousness by accepting believers
into a renewed relationship with him, since the sins that would
require Him to pronounce a verdict [of death, 1:32] on Jew and
gentile are now atoned for by Christ. God does not condone
sin, but atones for it through Christ.
96
Ibid., pp. 48-49.
154
Lev. 16:16, 30. The scapegoat of the day of Atonement also
seems to refer to spiritual purification, a strengthening of moral
attitudes and vigor.) The declaration could be also priestly and
not judicial alone. Furthermore, in Rom. 8:4 Paul explains that
Christ’s sacrifice involved the condemnation of sin in the flesh,
“in order that the righteous requirement of the law should be
fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to flesh, but according
to Spirit.” This can surely be read as a description of the reality
of justification: being freed from sin, being united with Christ,
having God’s Spirit dwell in us, implies walking according to the
Spirit, so all of it refers to one and the same reality. The
passive mood might extend the judicial meaning beyond its
ordinary confines, as Sanders puts it, and this might be very
true with regard to the relationship of this usage to classical
Greek. But is it possible that to Paul “righteousness” had legal
and priestly implications simultaneously? If justification is based
on a sacrifice, the declaration of righteousness might very well
be a priestly declaration.
97
Gerhard von Rad, Gesammelte Studien zum Alten Testament, München,
156
anyone eats the flesh of a sacrifice on the third day after
slaughter, “it shall not be reckoned to him that had presented
it.” It is the priest that is able to accept or reject the “imputation”
of the sacrifice to the believer. The same meaning occurs in
Lev. 17:4, where we find the niphal jechashev as in 7:18b. Lev.
17:4 is especially interesting, since here what is imputed is
dam, blood guilt, which has as its opposite presumably
tsedaka, righteousness. The formula for this declaration can be
found, e.g., in Lev. 13:8, where a priest declares someone to
be impure by stating: “it is leprosy.” By stating this in reality and
formally, the condition is recognized as such. Of course, the
priest does not create that condition by proclaiming it. It is not a
legal fiction, but a legal recognition of a reality with cultic conse-
quences.
Von Rad then goes on to show that the formula in Ezekiel 18:9,
which concludes a long description of a tzadik, is such a
priestly declaration: “He is righteous, he shall certainly live,
says the Lord God.” This declaration of righteousness, as is
obvious from the context, does not imply a mere
acknowledgment of the constitution of righteousness by man’s
activity, but the recognition of the status itself, which makes it a
reality in practice. It is not simply an indicative of God’s
observation, nor is it a creative act, in which a new condition
emerges in the declaration that has no relationship with reality
at all. In all the senses of the word we discussed, we do not
find the equivalent of the Greek legal usage of dikaioun, a legal
declaration on the basis of a given reality, but the priestly
declaration of a condition that becomes effective in the
declaration itself so not conditioned on the reality, nor devoid of
reality, but bringing that reality into effect as to its cultic
implications. Its condition is faith, the moral status of the
person, which in itself does not constitute a sufficient cause for
the declaration.
98
Ibid., p. 133.
99
I am disregarding the reading of Gen. 15:6 that argues that it was
Abraham that reckoned righteousness to God. The verse would then say that
Abraham trusted in God’s promise because he reckoned (thought) it was
righteous for God to do so, and not because he thought he had merited it.
This reading by Nachmanides (commentary on Torah ad loc.), however,
reflects rabbinic Hebrew usage, which hardly ever uses chashav for human
achievements and most often as ‘thinking’ (even in Gen. 50:22), and instead
158
le renewed life of the believer that was the basis of being made
righteous, epitomized by trust in Christ, and not faith alone as a
single, isolated event or characteristic. Faith, furthermore,
would not be the corollary of the reception of justification, but
indeed, as the “life of faith,” its formal equivalent.
Because Bultmann at the same time believes that Paul did not
fully dispense with the eschatological sense of the imputed
righteousness and sees primarily the forensic sense of that
concept, the eschatological righteousness is completely
severed from any freedom from sin, ethical perfection, or
quality of the believer. The future-oriented approach severs the
connection between imputed and realized righteousness as far
as the believer is concerned. To be truly “righteous,” in the
plain sense of the “righteous” as in Rom. 5:19, can then only
mean: to be acquitted in the present from a judgment that is in
the future. That will have ethical consequences which Bultmann
deals with at length from par. 38 onwards, but justification in
itself means only this acquittal.
100
R. Bultmann (1953), 269-270.
160
transformation as well as the legal acquittal. Furthermore, the
imputation in itself is a reality, not a fiction, as Bultmann
correctly states. But because Bultmann was so anxious to
remove any possibility of righteousness as an ethical quality,
he inferred that it could only be considered a righteousness of
works under law if he allowed any meaning of righteousness as
intrinsic.
101
On the Warfield email-list, in a response to Robert Brow’s article “Did
Paul Teach Forensic Justification”? on Feb. 18, 1999.
162
differently in the letter to the Hebrews. Abel, e.g., is called a
“righteous one” a dikaios, in Heb. 11:4. The interpretation of
Genesis 4:4 that is given here indicates that the author of
Hebrews did not make a declaration of righteousness as did
Paul in his treatment of Abraham in Romans 4:5. Abel is
recognized as righteous because he is, and the same goes for
the other faithful that are mentioned in chapter 11. As the
concluding remark in 11:33 shows, all of these have achieved
righteousness according to the principle of faith, and were not
justified because of their faith. 102 As we have shown, that was
also the basic position of James.103
102
Cf. Erich Gräßer, “Rechtfertigung im Hebräerbrief,” in Friedrich,
Rechtfertigung, pp. 79-94; against our intepretation, e.g., see F.F. Bruce,
Hebrews, p. 285, who emphasizes the connection between Heb. 11:1 and
10:38 (the righteous one will live from faith” and concludes “There is no
fundamental difference in this respect between Paul and the author of
Hebrews…but our author…emphasizes the forward-looking character of
saving faith, and in fact includes in faith…what Paul more often expresses by
the companion word ‘hope’.” (p. 275)
103
Cf. chapter 15.
163
11. The status of the justified (ch. 5)
To determine how Paul viewed the status and position of the
believer in justification, we need to take a closer look at Rom.
6:1-8:39, which we will do in the next chapter. There is a
specific emphasis in the way the word righteousness is used in
this passage, e.g., in 6:19, where Paul speaks of obedience
unto righteousness, and in 6:20, where it is stated that the
”service of righteousness” is in opposition to the former
condition of “being free from righteousness.” This new
emphasis is prepared in chapter 5:12-20, where the justification
that imputes righteousness to the ungodly is widened to
become an cosmic event. The language here takes a slight turn
from the previous chapters when we find Paul speaking about
the “gift of righteousness” (which is not forensic language any
more) connected to life and kingly rule (5:17), and Christ’s deed
of righteousness leading to “justification unto life” (5:18),
meaning not only staying alive in judgment, but the possession
of (eternal) life. Still, in 5:16 justification is the opposite of
condemnation, so we have the judicial sense. The subtle
transition in the terminology seems therefore to have occurred
between 5:16 and 5:17.
104
So A. Schlatter, 192. The worthiness of being just will be given to
believers when Jesus will accept them in His royal glory.
164
reference to the new eschatological kingdom, we are talking
here about “real” righteousness in terms of hope and
expectation, as in Rom. 8:28. After all, being kings implies the
exercise of righteousness. Then being “righteoused” goes
beyond the forensic meaning, and still we have a future tense
which must be construed as referring to the present, if we are
to be righteous in the future in a real sense, in order to govern
righteously, we can anticipate that condition and also be
partially in it in the present. If not taken as reference to a tem-
poral future, however, the force of the expression is weakened
to mean a future taking its reference point from Christ’s
resurrection, and then again the interpretation is possible that it
means “having been justified,” i.e., declared guiltless, now
referring to a moment in time after the resurrection of Christ.105
105
Most often the term dikaomai, is taken to mean exactly what is
expressed in the passive participle dikaioothentes (cf. Theological Dictionary
of the New Testament, Grand Rapids, 1964 – vol. II, p. 191). Yet it is agreed
that Paul sometimes uses the passive for those who have kept the law (Rom.
2;13, stating the general principle) implying an intrinsic meaning. The more
complex formula referring to Habakkuk 2:4, stating that the just will live on the
basis of his holding fast to righteousness, is expressed by Paul as being
justified through faith. Through faith we cling to God’s righteousness
revealed, which is a power of God unto salvation. The notion of accepting
the righteousness of Christ as the essence of our own life does not seem to
exclude the idea that having been justified also means that we are no longer
sinners in Adam. In Rom. 5:19 the word must then mean being intrinsically
righteous. To be intrinsically righteous can however mean two things: to be
part of the the community of those who have been made righteous, or to be
on a high moral level individually. I prefer the former sense as in general
agreement with Yoder’s correct emphasis on the ecclesiological dimension of
justification in Paul.
165
verse provides us with an obstacle in understanding the
righteousness of chapters 1-4 as meaning only that of an
imputed and declarative righteousness, because then implies
an inherent righteousness and states something beyond the
mere declaration of the acquittal of the ungodly as in 4:5.
Kruse (ad loc.) also refers to the fact that the future tense is
used in 5:19 and states that Paul has justification in mind
throughout this chapter. In verses 16 and 18 the dikaiooma and
the dikaioosin dzoes stand in contrast to the katakrima in verse
16, so we must have a legal sense of the word righteous. But
the judgment or condemnation needs not to be taken in a
strictly forensic sense, since it is contrasted not with pardon,
but with the gift of grace, which is given to all, and not to those
who are acquitted in that judgment on the basis of their faith as
in 3:28 and 4:5. If the judgment on Adam is taken as universal,
it must refer to the general consequence of sin in opposition to
the general consequence of the gift of grace. There can be no
”sentence of justification” for all, but there is no doubt that
through Christ’s obedience there is a new way of becoming
righteous for all. In Adam all are under the power of sin, so in
Christ all are freed from sin, so they can become participants in
Christ’s life and become righteous, which the many actually will
become (5:19).
106
R. Bultmann (1953), pp. 272-73.
166
to read the dikaios as meaning intrinsic righteousness. The
grounds for this relative shift of emphasis can only be Paul’s
statement of the corollary of justification in chapter 5:1-9, which
paves the way for an extended application of the word righte-
ous (subst. pl.) as meaning the opposite of wickedness, or,
more accurately sinners. It is important in this respect to note
that the language of 5:1 does not indicate that justification is
the basis or cause of having peace, access, etc., as its result,
but all are presented as immediately connected with each
other. There is peace with God, access to God, the infusion of
the love of God in our hearts (5:5), the reception of the Holy
Ghost (ibid.), but all of that is expressed in connection with a
repeat of the notion of the justification of the ungodly (here: the
death of Christ for us while still sinners, 5:8). Justification of the
ungodly cannot be separated from how it is received and the
transformation that corresponds to it: by the reception of the
Holy Ghost, by being identified with Christ, by having the love
of God in our hearts. And if that is so, the liberation of our
former life from the bondage of sin and death and the reception
of the new life in Christ is such that 5:19 can speak of the
believer being constituted as righteous, beyond the legal
metaphor, and therefore intrinsically.107
107
The language of bondage under sin and sin and death as powers does
not signify that Paul thought of these as separate, metaphysical entities. The
language is metaphorical, and the real subject behind them is scripture,
which defines gentile sin and shows its ultimate result in death. Cf. Stowers
(1994), pp. 176-183, who on this basis claims that the interpretation of sin-as-
power has led theologians astray since Augustine, since they derived from it
a ”universal individualism” in which sin was made into a metaphysical
characteristic of mankind, whereas it should be understood historically.
108
Cf. the discussion in E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, pp
439-440. Sanders agrees up to a point with the classical position of Albert
Schweitzer that in general Paul grounded his ethics on the life in the Spirit
and not directly on justification. But he argues that there are many passages
that do make that connection. We agree with Sanders that justification by
faith is connected intrinsically to life in the Spirit, the Spirit being received
through faith, for one thing(Gal. 3:1-5), and being also the seal of justification,
the sign of the future redemption, the gift of being identified with Christ in His
resurrection, etc. But we disagree that this amounts to a form of mysticism.
167
put forward by Schweitzer that the act of justification does not
imply that man now receives the capacity to do good works, the
fact that the believer is now enabled to do the will of God is
based on his participation in Christ. The imperative to walk
according to the Spirit is not based on the indicative of
justification, but on the indicative of the believer’s life in the
Spirit. That is true in the case of Gal. 5:16, where the
exhortation to walk in the Spirit can only be based on the
indicative of Gal. 4:6: and because you are sons, God has sent
forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts. Gal. 4:29 speaks
likewise of being born in accordance with the Spirit. So here the
new life of the believer in the Spirit of the Son is the basis for
the obedience that is demanded in Gal. 5:16. In the same
manner, in Romans 8:1 the indicative is expressed when it
states that “to them that are in Christ Jesus,” i.e., those who
have been freed by the “law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus”
and that have the Spirit dwelling in them (verse 9) and on that
basis it is expressed that the law is being fulfilled in those who
walk according to that Spirit (verse 4) But precisely in chapter
8 of Romans, the interconnection between being justified and
being in the spirit is also expressed. To be made free from the
law of sin and death (8:2) obviously expresses the same thing
as justification did in earlier chapters. Justification is connected
to Christ’s being raised from the dead (4:25), and it is our
identification with the resurrected Christ that imparts to us the
new life in the Spirit that was Christ’s as well.
The life in the spirit and the reception of the Spirit are terms for the entrance
into the congregation and the adoption of a new lifestyle, only partially and
initially defined by the ecstatic signs of the presence of the Spirit in the shape
of speaking in tongues, prophecy and the like.
168
means of joining two separate strands of thought: that Abraham
was justified through faith, and that Christ revealed God’s
righteousness through His death.109 The participle “having been
justified” does not mean a statement of the cause of what
follows, but begins to explain the reality of justification on the
part of the believer.
This reality of being justified provides the basis for trust in the
hour of tribulation. If Christ has died for us while we were weak
and ungodly, then we will also be saved from wrath (5:9). The
opposition here is not between justification and sanctification,
but between justification and life under duress. After that we
have a second “not only that” in verse 11, referring to the
reconciliation that we have received. So justification is made
manifest in salvation from oppression and, ultimately, in
reconciliation (katallagè). We rejoice in hope, in tribulations, in
God. If we have read the flow of the argument correctly, the
chapter is not about the response to being justified, but an
explanation of the real effects of justification in the life of the
believer. It describes not only the position, but the condition we
are led into through justification.
109
Cf. A. Schlatter, Gottes Gerechtigkeit, p. 175.
169
12. The moral objections against the
gospel of grace and the life in the Spirit
(6:1-8:39)
170
sin cannot be such a bad thing after all.”110
110
James D.G. Dunn (1988), p. 325.
171
about the inclusion of gentiles Paul’s zeal for the law was
particularly directed at preserving the distinctive character of
Judaism; that is, to protect Judaism from defilement by gentile
lawlessness.. If the Christ that these early Jewish converts
followed was resurrected and could appear to Paul, then this in
itself meant that Paul must change his view on the status of the
gentiles. It was the fact of the resurrection along with Christ’s
appearance as resurrected that brought this message home to
Paul.
111
James D.G. Dunn (1993), p. 203.
173
pattern of the believer’s life. In that sense, ethically, the basic
view for discerning ethical possibilities is not the imitation of
Christ’s acts as example, but the cognitive effort to view all
things moral with the aid of Christ’s life. In part, this involves a
renunciation of all attempts at self-justification, of boasting and
pride taken in ethical achievement. There is no success to be
expected from moral behavior if the Christ who is accepted as
morally perfect died on the cross as the consequence of it.
112
James D.G. Dunn (1988), 1, p. 333
176
have been brought from death to life, and your
members to God as instruments of righteousness.
In 7:5 the antithesis between being in the flesh and being “in
the new state of the Spirit” is described. Being in the flesh
meant that our sinful passions made use of the law to bring us
to death. The law could not prevent that, since it actually provo-
ked transgression in us by merely stating God’s command-
ment.
113
Colin G. Kruse (1996), 216.
114
Justification by faith, participation in Christ, and the gift of the Spirit are
called the basic focal images of Paul’s doctrine of salvation and of his ethics
(Dunn [1998] p. 631). Though each of these do represent different sub-
systems in the language and imagery of Paul, they are all connected
experientially: by faith the believer participates in (and identifies with) Christ,
and the transformation inherent in that is expressed as the gift of the Spirit.
Hays combines these three notions into one by talking about the new
creation, and then adds the Cross as the paradigm of action and the
community as the location of God’s effective grace (Hays [1996], pp. 196-
206). I prefer to make a simpler distinction between justification and sanc-
179
that we have been freed from the law of sin and death,
apparently in an attempt to explain what is stated in verse 1.
Being freed from that law implies of course both status and
condition. It means not only that we are not formally in the
grasp or jurisdiction of such powers, but also that such powers
have no effect on our lives any more. The spiral of guilt which
begets more guilt because we despair of our ability to be moral
is broken. And so is the fear of death, which hinders us in
fulfilling God’s command.
tification.
115
Käsemann, (1974) pp. 204, 205)
116
“Das Gesetz des geistes ist nichts anderes als der Geist selbst nach
seiner Herrschaftsfunktion im bereiche Christi.” Käsemann, Commentary on
Romans ad loc. Schlatter however still tried to explain ‘law’ with reference to
Mosaic law: “The law that was valid until then has been divested of its
sovereign power by a new law. (Schlatter, 253) “Dem bisher gultigen Gesetz
wird die Herrschermacht durch ein neues Gesetz genommen.’ The result is,
that God “shapes both will and mind creatively’ of man. Man is made
obedient in Christ, and has no autonomous power left to do anything but the
negative of striving against it.
180
there is no hint at a renewal of that kind of obedience after the
impediments have been set aside. The form of obedience is
completely changed.
If God in Christ could atone for sin and remove it, the law (in its
accidental function) of (empowering) sin and death could be
broken. Sin was judged and condemned as the law demanded.
But Christ’s death also accomplished liberation from sin and
death for all those in Christ who have been resurrected with
Him. So we can summarize our analysis of 8:1-3 as follows:
181
There is no (present or future) condemnation for those who are
set in Christ. They (Paul changes to “us”) have been liberated
from the power of sin and death. That which the law could not
do, make itself be obeyed and condemn the sin without
destroying the sinner, God has been able to do In Christ by
making Him into a sin-offering. The result of this offering was
that, not Christ, but sin was condemned, satisfying the
requirement of the law. And at the same time, by identifying
himself with Christ, the sinner received a new life after dying in
the way the law required.
117
In Rom. 5:16 the translators most often choose ‘judgment’, but that does
not make much sense to me. Out of the offences of the many the gift of grace
brought them to the just demand of the law, because that was being fulfilled
in them by God’s grace, making them righteous, as in 5:19. The plural
diakioomata, however, used once by Paul in 2:26, means the requirements of
the law specifically. In Hebrews 9:1, 10 the word is used for ordinances, and
in Revelation (15:4; 19:8) it is also used for ‘righteous acts’. The plural can be
used for many acts flowing from a quality to denote that quality itself,
especially in Hebrew, as in Psalm 11:7. This might be the source for the
usage here. In Rom. 1:32 we have the singular, meaning the righteous
demand. In Rom 8:4 the dikaiooma tou nomou (the righteous demand of the
law, being fulfilled in the spirit-led life) is not fully equal to the diakioomata tou
theou (God’s demand in the shape of separate mitzvot) in Rom. 2:26, and it
certainly does not refer to the demand in its application as judicial verdict as
in Rom. 1 where it denotes God’s verdict of death.
182
both passages, (b) the antithesis of flesh and spirit is the
same, and (c) the striking convergence of the concepts of
freedom, walking in the spirit, and the negative aspects of
the flesh. Schlatter, however, argued against this option
with the contention that the context shows God here to be
seen as judge (starting from the mention of condemnation
in 8:1) who wanted to condemn sin, not atone for it
(Schlatter, 257). But in Rom. 3:25, the concepts of showing
righteousness and sacrificial language (mercy seat) are
also connected. We might make such a clear distinction,
but Paul apparently did not. So Schlatter’s counter-
argument must be rejected.
The just demand of the law is then that what the law can
rightfully demand from human beings; that demand is then
accepted as such, and not reduced to it, by referring to the one
single demand in it that can be used pars pro toto to express
the whole of it under a specific aspect: to love one’s neighbor.
(In the same manner, the 10th commandment could stand
paradigmatically for the entire law and the way it is abused by
human lusts to bring man under the verdict of death.) We must
equally emphasize that our text uses the divine passive for
fulfilling. It is not about believers fulfilling the law as a require-
ment, let alone that such was a new condition for salvation.
Walking in the power of the Spirit accomplishes it because God
accomplishes it in us (8:4). If we have the Spirit, we have the
mindset of the Spirit of Christ, which is life and peace. The flesh
does not submit to God’s law; it is hostile toward God. But
believers, first of all being in Christ (8:1) and in the Spirit (8:9),
do. The multiplicity of God’s commandments (implied in the
claim of the law, but there seen as a unity and not as a
fragmented series of prohibitions and commandments), seen
from the perspective of love for one’s neighbor, are being ful-
filled in such a life.
118
It does not state that we are debtors to the Spirit, presumably because
that would imply a new kind of formal obligation. The obligation Paul intends
to put forward is a negative one only: to refrain from something, as if the
184
the flesh must be put to death in the body.
What are these acts (praxeis) and what does it mean to put
them to death? The acts of the body must be the same as the
result of walking according to the flesh. The first expression
seems to describe the fruit of the latter, the result of not
submitting oneself to the law of God (8:7), of enmity against
God. Being in the flesh meant succumbing to sinful desires,
which led to the breaking of the prohibitive side of the law (7:5),
so putting to death the acts of the flesh means refraining from
doing what the law prohibited. It seems that the prohibitive side
of the law is being referred to specifically. It also does not state
directly that we will put to death the workings of the flesh or the
flesh itself, for we are unable to do that. The terminology of
deeds of the body is a way to describe deeds that have no
power in them any more to make us obey, since the “body” can
be seen as the flesh without power, or the flesh as being put to
death in the Spirit. It does not say either that we have now a
personal existence that is as “body,” i.e., that is flesh without
power, which in itself would be able to produce the works of
obedience that the flesh could not. The body, the personal
existence of man, is useless even if cleansed from the power
of sin and death. As a matter of fact, Paul even states directly
that the body also is dead in chapter 8:10, and here the spirit is
alive because of Christ. It is merely the bearer of the new
reality of the Spirit, it is the new creature that gets its spirit from
God, and where it tries to maintain its own in distinction to the
Spirit, its works are equal to that of the flesh and should be “put
to death.”
187
13. The new righteousness of the
believer’s community (Romans 12)
We have found that Paul actually teaches a new type of righte-
ousness that is not earned in a life that tries to fulfill the various
demands of the law, but is fulfilled through us by the presence
and power of the Holy Spirit when we accept Christ in faith. The
atonement that Christ brings once and for all, assuring us of
future acquittal in God’s judgment, frees us from the effort to
acquire righteousness by doing the “works of the law,” both in
the sense that we seek to become part of Israel as community
and in the sense that we take upon ourselves the separate
duties under the law to become more fully righteous. Faith
leads to righteousness in the sense of leading us into an
acceptance of God’s sovereignty in the sacrifice of Christ and
the atonement brought by God’s action alone, and in the sense
that the individual’s identification with the resurrected Christ
involves a new way of life in which sin has no power and death
does not have the final word.
Is there however a third way that does not try to derive the
content of obedience from the narrative of the One who is to be
obeyed? Is God’s demand perhaps already expressed in the
law of Moses (and interpreted according to its inner purpose in
Jesus’ teachings and example), and have we been freed from
its destructive power by being set free from the power of sin? Is
grace enabling us to actually live in accordance with the law of
Moses? In that case, the intent behind the unity of the believer
with the Spirit of Christ is enablement and in that sense it leads
to the fulfillment of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. The
Kingdom-ethics is then a transformation, not an abrogation, of
the Mosaic law. As we will see, a concept of the meaning of
Christ’s sacrifice is of the utmost importance to understand the
transformation of ethics and the continuity between Jesus’
ethical teachings and this focus of attention on the Cross.
119
The hebrew plural chasadim or mercies does not primarily denote a
manifold number of compassionate acts, but is derived from the LXX-
189
death, it was only through God’s mercy that righteousness is
attainable for man (cf. 11:32). The service of God which is
“intelligent” (DV) or ”spiritual” (NIV) is based upon our
understanding of God’s character as revealed in His actions
towards mankind in Christ’s death and resurrection.120 That
service can now no longer be understood as analogous to law-
obedience outside the principle of faith. Nevertheless it is a
worshipping of God through our actions as servants, and a
service through obedience to Him.
Let us review the meaning of the law in this respect. The law,
as Paul understood the primary effect of its dictates (not its
intent as a whole!), effectively demonstrated the frailty of man.
Death and sin took advantage of our weakness, and the law
could only affirm what we were by condemning us and glo-
rifying God’s justice in the process (Romans 2). Having been
identified with Christ as the revelation of God’s ultimate grace,
we have died to sin and regained new life in the Spirit (Romans
8). In that new life there is no room for sin any more, we are
“dead” to it. The works of the flesh have no hold over us any
more. Yet, even without the power of sin, our personality (Paul
then speaks of the “body” in the sense of “being in a social en-
vironment) is weak. The deeds of the body must be controlled
by the power of the Spirit. This does not involve a feverish
activity on our part, but an attitude of “Gelassenheit,” of re-
ceptive surrender to the activity of God’s Spirit within us. That is
the gist of what we have found so far.
121
S. Stowers (1994), p. 318.
191
through Christ’s faithfulness and understands Christ’s
faithfulness as his generative adaptation to the needs
of others, then 12-15 sketches an ethic of community
based on the principle of faithfulness as adaptability to
others.122
The shape of this new obedience (for obedience it still is; cf.
Rom. 6:16, 19; 7:6) is called “presenting your bodies [as] a
living sacrifice.”123 The terminology brings us back to the theme
Paul mentioned only in passing, the cultic background of
Christ’s death as a sin-offering in Romans 3:25. What does this
expression mean? First of all, to what does it refer within the
letter itself? The sacrifice of Christ in which God revealed both
His justice (Rom. 3:21-26) and His sovereign grace (Rom. 4:2-
4) is imitated by those who believe in Him. Sharing His death
122
Ibid
123
The body as living sacrifice seems also to stand in contrast to the
dishonoring of the bodies in pagan practices in Romans 1:24. So is the
renewal of the mind a reversal of the ”despicable thinking” in Romans 1:28.
192
implies sharing His life-pattern. We are not called to imitate or
follow Christ in the same sense that the moralism of Paul’s
gentile audience called them, they believed, to obey Torah. The
essence of Christ’s sacrifice had been expressed by His full
dedication to God and His obedience to the law as an ex-
pression of God’s sovereign will for the present and unto death.
Such a service in imitation of Christ’s obedience on the part of
the believer can then be called “reasonable” or “intelligent,”
because it makes sense that we, after sharing in His death,
now share in His life.
The main point behind the notion of a “living sacrifice” can now
be formulated: the death of the animal represented the total
124
Cf. Amos 5:21-27; Micah 6:6-8.
194
dedication of the believer which must work itself out in
obedience to the law, the same law that prescribed the
sacrifice. Where this connection is severed, the early prophets
of Israel express the moral prescription as superior to cultic
purity, because then the intent of sacrifice is reduced to an
outward and legal compliance. The prophets can then boldly
state that such sacrifice is merely provisional, and even invalid,
without its necessary moral accompaniment. Christ’s death
expresses first and foremost His total dedication in terms of the
obedience to God that led to His death in this world, this world
being what it is.
125
‘Recognize’ from Greek dokimadzoo: to learn, to test and affirm.
195
sacrifice, dedicated to the service of righteousness, motivated
by the knowledge of a compassionate God. Our thinking, which
begins with conformity to this world, is changed through a
transformation of our understanding of the reality before God.
Both exhortations call us to allow ourselves to be transformed,
not to achieve it on our own. As Schlatter emphasizes: we are
exhorted to “do” this, because God is already doing it “in” us.126
The compassionate God who motivates our service is the
power source for our new understanding.
126
A. Schlatter (1935); p. 331.
127
Ibid., pp. 334-35.
128
“Die drei Adjektive können die Attribute des thelema sein oder
selbstandig als Apposition an dieses antreten.” According to Schlatter the
difference is of minor importance: the attributes only express the reason why
the divine will should be sought. But Schlatter has already decided, of course,
in his commentary on chapter 2, that the goal of Christian ethics is inner
congruence between our and the divine will, setting all heteronomy aside. He
actually argues in conformity with the ‘Enthusiasm’ that Käsemann sees as
the opponent in the passage.
196
find to be the good, acceptable, and perfect must be done
because we recognize it as the divine will. So does God will it
because it is good, or is it good because God wills it?
We come now to the two passages that form the context of the
passage on the relation to government: 12:9-21, and 13:8-14,
which we will discuss together. In general we can say that the
exhortations in 12:9-21 express how the commandment of
brotherly love must be exercised within the community (verses
9-16) and with regard to “outsiders,” who are called “all people”
(verses 17 and 18) and “enemy” (verse 20). The passage ends
with the exhortation not to be overcome by evil - meaning not to
resist evil with violence, but to overcome it with the good. Very
naturally at this point, the three elements: (1) acceptance of the
different gifts of people in a community as contributing to the
unity of the whole, (2) brotherly love that makes patient
acceptance of suffering possible, and (3) love for the enemy
and submission to evil, are used to describe the attitude
towards the rulers in chapter 13.
129
Cf. K. Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik, Zürich, 1942, II/2, p. 796 (§38.3)
130
Apparently the reading of the powers in the opening of chapter 13 as the
state obscures the inner connection between love for the enemy in chapter
12 and love as fulfillment of the law in 13:8ff., both of which deal with love on
the level of the personal encounter. Many have argued, as Ridderbos, e.g.,
(1959, ad loc.) that the passage is more like a separate discourse inserted
only because Paul felt its need for his Roman audience. By applying the
alternative reading of the powers as ”officials,” however, the connection is
restored.
199
here. Let’s see how we can show this structural integrity of the
letter.
131
J.H. Yoder, 1972, p. 196.
200
use of the sword, i.e., it may use violence to achieve its goals.
It would imply, as Yoder pointed out, that the ideal of love of
one’s enemy in 12:19-21 and the demand of love in 13:8-14 are
characterized as religious affairs, but that, for a Christian,
existence in this world implies acceptance of the government
that is there, even when it contradicts these religious ideals, as
long as such a government provides for the minimum re-
quirements of human society. All governments and authorities
derive their power from God (verse 2), so that any kind of
resistance, even on the basis of the religious principles
mentioned in the context of the passage, is resistance to God,
again, unless the government fails to comply with its basic
function, and then rebellion seems in order. The essence
remains that every soul (a Semitism for ‘everyone’, kol nefesh),
here referring to Christians, must submit to the authorities
(which Yoder consistently reads as synonym for the ”state”)
that are set over them. With that statement, the fanatics of
12:3, according to Käsemann, had to be put in their place;
literally: “had to be put back into the boundaries of the earthly
order.” 132
132
E. Käsemann (1974), p. 335.
133
A. Nygren (1954) pp. 303-306.
201
Adolf Schlatter defends clearly the exact point against which
Yoder has argued so forcefully. He acknowledges that the
primary point of doubt for the Christian in his obedience to the
state is the spilling of blood. Then Schlatter states: “Paul
accepts even the military foundation of the state’s power as
part of that which enables the state to fulfill its divine mission
because she is the ’advocate of justice’, of which the divine
wrath makes use; because of that power, God’s anger
persecutes and punishes the wrongdoer.” If that is so, morality
is subordinated to the political dimension: the state’s power and
its habitual killing must be accepted because the state
punishes wrongdoings in the place of God, as if the entire letter
had not first preached the fact that the revelation of God’s
justice meant acquittal for sinners; as if chapter 12 had not
spoken out loudly against hatred and violence.
First of all we can see, with Yoder, that the text does not imply
a divine act of institution or ordination of a particular
government.134 It is merely a matter of accepting the political
power that happens to be there. This might be inferred from the
usage of exousia in verse 2, the powers that are there. Yoder
concludes by arguing that that excludes both the affirmation of
the providential act by which any particular government comes
into existence and the idea that the principle of government is
being taught here. Paul is not intent on describing the minimal
conditions under which a government may be accepted. A
rebellion against such a government that fails to live up to this
standard might then be motivated by the prophetic call for a
proper government, which is the ideology of the just rebellion.
134
J. H. Yoder (1972), pp. 198-199.
202
Christians would then be in the dilemma of giving active moral
support to a government that fulfills its duty under God or of
rebelling against the evil state if it fails in that respect. But the
text merely speaks about submission. In no way can Paul be
understood to be saying that a rebellion with force against any
government is warranted, but what is important is the reason
for this submission. Is it the divine origin of the state, or the
general prohibition against the use of violence for no matter
what purpose?
But does the passage teach the divine institution of the state?
Yoder observes that Paul does not say that the authorities are
created or instituted by God (though the NIV uses “instituted”
here as its translation of tetagmenai from tasso, to order, to set
in its place), but rather that God sets them in their place.
Government as such was not created by God: the state
involved “domination, disrespect for human dignity, and real or
potential violence ever since sin has existed.” Paul’s
acceptance of authorities is therefore no moral affirmation, but
he intends to say, according to Yoder, that “by his permissive
government he lines them (the authorities in general) up with
his purpose.”135 Christians are therefore called to a nonresistant
attitude even toward a tyrannical government. No revolution or
insubordination is possible for the Church, precisely because it
trusts in a God who governs the governments.
Yet there are limits to this submission to the state and the
cooperation it generally calls for. The sword, for Rome, was
the symbol of judicial authority, not of state-violence, and the
function of the sword to which Christians are subject, even
when it implies the use of violence, is the judicial and police
function, not the death penalty and war. And yet another limit
is expressed in the structure of verse 6b: ”attending to this very
thing.” Käsemann discusses various possibilities without
making a choice: (1) the authorities are constantly mindful to be
in the service of God (exaggerated and unlikely, according to
Käsemann) (2) the authorities, insofar as they exercise their
function, remain within the limits ordained by God. Yoder
chooses the second possibility, seeing in the participial
construction an adverbial modifier to the main statement. The
135
Ibid., p. 203.
203
full translation, in the restrictive sense, would then be: “they are
ministers of God only to the extent to which they carry out their
function, i.e., the judicial and police function; through taxes, the
ordering of economic life; what is referred to in the phrases
”servant for your good” and “execute wrath on the wrongdoer.”
This is the criterion by which we measure whether the state
functions as God devised it to do, not to ascertain whether such
a government is permissible, using the condition of the
kingdom as a standard, or should be rebelled against because
it does not further the interests of the Church. Yet the payment
of taxes does not in itself constitute recognition of the state, as
Ridderbos argues, e.g.136
136
Ridderbos (1959), p. 293.
204
be nonresistant in all their relationships, including the
social. They both call on the disciples of Jesus to
renounce participation in the interplay of egoism’s
which this world calls "vengeance" or "justice." They
both call Christians to respect and be subject to the
historical process in which the sword continues to be
wielded and to bring about a kind of order under fire,
but not to perceive in the wielding of the sword their
own reconciling ministry.137
137
Yoder (1972), p. 210.
205
14. Love for the enemy as the pattern of
justice: the “moral” dimension of social
ethics (Romans 13)
Mennonites broke away from the idea that the state was
coterminous with the Church. Instead they argued that state
and Church each had their own distinct and exclusive
membership, and their own standards of behavior. The Church
was a voluntary separation of society because of the assum-
ption of a different standard. The sword of justice was neces-
sary to punish evildoers and maintain order in society. So there
were two standards of morality for the state and the Church
and only if the state turned evil could it be argued that
Christians should not obey its official representatives. It
followed from this principle that Christians were not allowed to
serve in government, even if they could affirm the state’s right
to use the power of the sword. Even though there was a social
justification for the existence of the state, Christians were
morally denied access to political power. Nonresistance to evil,
the love for the enemy and the acceptance of repentance of all
evil-doers were the positive requirements of any Christian that
were inconsistent with the application of worldly power. The
rejection of all warfare and capital punishment were equally
incompatible with the other elements of the function of national
states: to defend by force the political unity of a community and
to restrain the evil-doers by the ultimate violence of death. In
sum: the state could never be Christian.
When the New Testament refers to the state it never uses the
abstract term polis which is reserved as the common term for a
township or local community. The state is meant when it refers
to the emperor (Mt. 22:17) or the king (1 Pt. 2:13, 17; 1 Tim.
2:2), or when Paul speaks about “authorities” or exousiai. The
philosophical background of the term polis can be assumed to
be lacking in New Testament discourse on the state, and
instead the notions of power and order come to the fore. It must
be an anachronism therefore, to read back into the New Testa-
ment the notion of the modern state as it evolved since the Re-
naissance and has undoubtedly influenced the theological
206
reflection of the 16th century Reformation. The proper strategy
for reading “backwards” can only be found when we remember
that after all the reality of the state is present not when we
argue that the state is a “divine institution of ordering power”138
(Brunner) because all authority is from God. Power has been
given to the state to serve the order, the community and justice.
140
The Greek exousia refers to delegated power, the fact that one can
exercise the power given him as if it were his own, but it can also be used for
the persons carrying that power, so in this case: rulers, officials. Its usage as
equivalent to power would be a Semitism; cf. Hebrew reshut, domination,
authority, domain.
208
metaphysical determination of the nature of the state. Neither
the state nor the Roman Empire is the subject of Paul’s
statements here, but the officials, the police, the tax collector,
the judge, the circle of the bearers of delegated power. Paul
demands an application of the love for the enemy in a moral
sense to those who exert force in the name of the state and no
affirmation of the state in any modern sense is implied
141
Schlatter stated that it was not impossible that Paul had received
messages that the Zealots were influencing the synagogues and Churches in
Rome. Even without such a historical incentive, it would still be necessary for
Paul to discuss the issue (Schlatter [1935], p. 350).
142
So we have a reversal here of the situation in which Judas Maccabeus
decided to kill his countryman for obeying the command to sacrifice to the
Greek god, and the representative of the Greek king who came to his home
town to enforce the state’s demand. That representative was killed because
he was identified with the state, and the state was a power to be opposed (1
Macc. 2).
210
Zealots could try to make a case for justified killing of Roman
officials as part of a just war scenario: when they killed even
their own countrymen to further their political goals, this was to
be accepted because they themselves accepted the principle of
politics that the end justifies the means.
The Zealot option was not reversed on the issue of the denial
of the legitimacy of human rule where only God should be
sovereign Lord. Submission to the state is not part of an
acceptance of the old order if it had been reversed to become
submission to the people who represent the state. The
concrete alternative to Zealot violence, was the proleptic
dealing with officials as if God already had established his
Kingdom – which in Christ He already had in the view of the
Church. This is a vital point: it is not the state itself that is
acknowledged, but its legitimacy is reduced to the domain
where neighborly love, the good of the individual, the love for
one’s enemy rules. The moral order supersedes the political
order. Such a submission is revolutionary in nature and far from
constituting acquiescence to the status quo. It looks upon the
representative of the state with respect to the good he achieves
to the extent that he works toward the good that the powers of
the state are supposed to accomplish. We do not see the state
in the man we encounter, but we do see the function by which
such an official is commissioned to further the well-being of
others. In a way, such an acknowledgment treats the state
official in a way analogous to that in which the members of the
Church are to behave toward one another.
143
Cf. M. Dibelius, Die Formgeschichte des Evangeliums, Tuebingen,
1933, pp. 239-244.
211
The coin with the emperor’s face on it makes trade possible,
and only the Emperor has the authority to mint coins. God,
however, mints people, because all have been created in his
image. It is therefore in vain to refuse to render the coin back to
Caesar, who has made that coin in the first place and in that
sense is entitled to it as an “object,” and at the same time also
to refuse to render unto God what is rightfully His, i.e., to reject
the image of God in every man and to kill to further political
goals. To kill people in the name of God is absurd, and so is
refusing to pay taxes when you are participating in an economy
that was made possible by that same Emperor. So the point is
not that we should give all to God because of the radical
understanding of the coming kingdom (against Goppelt,
Theologie des Neuen Testamentes, p. 164), but that we are
caught up in an absurd paradox if we kill the image-bearer of
God in His name for political reasons, and refuse to pay taxes
on the profits that were made possible by the very imperial
power that we seek to fight.
212
conformity with the sermon on the Mount.”144 If the coming
kingdom, instead of the present rule of God as visible in the
Church, is relied on as the motivation for obedience to the
command to love the enemy, then in actual fact the
commandment loses its strength altogether. Now it is the
situation that determines when it is proper to resist and when
not to. Can Goppelt accept that Jesus only acted in
nonresistance and still acknowledge the application of justice
and power, both “fundamentally” and “practically”?145
144
L. Goppelt, Theologie des Neuen Testamentes, 1976, p. 165.[This “op.”
is not previously cited and is not in the bibliography.]
145
Goppelt finds fault with Karl Barth for emphasizing the presence of God’s
kingdom at the expense of the Kingdom that is still to be fully realized.
According to Goppelt, Jesus wants the ”total conversion” of human beings,
but the complete fulfillment of His commandments can never be a
requirement for all, it has the character of an exception that acts as a sign
pointing toward a kingdom in which it will be possible for all to obey. The
reality of the present kingdom, one might oppose to Goppelt, is then reduced
to an ideal without effectiveness in the present.
146
J.H. Yoder, Royal Priesthood p. 147
213
call for the kingdom does not address the individual alone, and
the point of the taxes is without merit in this context. The paying
of taxes is not an affirmation of the old order nor of the state, as
we have seen from Romans 13; it is a proleptic affirmation of
the new one, changing our perspective on what is important
and what is not within the remnants of the old world. In the
context of Jesus’ saying, we can put it like this: if our dedication
is fully to God it becomes immaterial whether we pay our taxes
to the government, and if we use the system, why complain
about that one element of it through which some good on an
individual level can arise? We pay taxes, not because we affirm
the state, but because we affirm the possible goodness in
those people who use those taxes for the good of all, to the
degree that this is what happens.
However, this will only be true, Yoder explains, for a given state
if it does not add to the evil already there. The state has on
some occasions subscribed to a moral value, punishing the
guilty and saving the innocent. Then evil is used for a good
purpose, though it in itself remains evil. The demoniac state,
however, denies all moral responsibility, punishing the innocent
147
Cf. J.H. Yoder, Royal Priesthood, p. 149
214
and rewarding the guilty, as in Revelation 13. The state as such
therefore cannot be called good, but some of its actions though
can be called good to the extent that they do not add to the evil
already there!
148
J.C. Beker , Paul p. 255.
216
and in which the believer participates through
obedience. The lordship of Christ, however, does not
rob believers of their volition; they are not simply
pawns in a cosmic struggle, because their obedience
demonstrates their allegiance to God’s sovereign will
for his creation. According to Käsemann, the obe-
dience of Christians must be viewed in the context of
their solidarity with the created order, which comes to
expression in Paul’s definition of "the body" (sooma).
In other words, Käsemann advances the discussion of
the relation of the indicative and imperative in Paul,
which had heretofore been dominated by Bultmann’s
definition of "the body" as a person’s relation to
himself. This existentialist definition of "the body" ne-
glects its cosmic-historical character and spiritualizes
a person’s relation to the world. It causes an
existentialist narrowing of both the indicative and
imperative, because indicative and imperative are here
construed as an antinomy or paradox in which God’s
gift in Christ is simultaneously an appeal to our
decision to become bearers of the cross in each
moment of time. The problem is that a precise
explication of this antinomy or dialectic remains
hermeneutically vague. Bultmann defined it in terms of
possibility and actualization and so not only
endangered Paul’s emphasis on the actuality of God’s
act of salvation in Christ but also overemphasized the
human will.”149
149
J.C. Beker, Paul, p. 263
217
imperative of Christian obedience serves as a pathway to the
final indicative of the glory of God. The soteriological effects of
Christ’s victory in the future are the telos of Christian
obedience, but not its motivating ground. Christian obedience
does not stand on the basis of a present reality; it has the
character of hope.
Beker sees his view confirmed in Romans 12. The use of the
term “bodies” here refers, in his view, to the ontological
solidarity between Christians and a world still under the power
of death. At the same time, the “body” suggests the ethical
seriousness of life in the Spirit “because believers are called to
challenge the power of death in the world.”150 Christian
obedience is therefore determined by solidarity with the world
and proleptic faithfulness to the new life that God has ordained
for his creation. The Christological indicative does not comple-
tely fill up the apocalyptic indicative: the last judgment is still
there as a reminder of the seriousness of the need for solidarity
with a fallen world.
150
J.C. Beker Paul, p. 289.
218
was therefore firmly rooted in His dedication to God as the One
who promised ultimate redemption.151 So our dedication in
obedience to Christ must be rooted primarily in dedication to
God. It is not based on any specific character of God’s
revelation to us, but only modified by it. Christian ethics, we
contend, is not rooted in the eschatology of God’s future
redemption, and is not rooted in the present soteriology of
Christ’s Spirit as reality in us, but it is established in the Cross
as the basic symbol of complete dedication to God. In other
words, Christian ethics is the ethics of the present Lord Jesus
Christ who showed in his humiliation and death the way that
God provides to become righteous.
151
Cf. Thomas Finger, Christian Theology (1985) II, p. 93.
219
posit solidarity with the world as our main motivation for ethics.
Instead we must look to ethics as a way to define the particular
community that is called upon to express its redemption in a
concrete way of life in the midst of the old order.
220
15. The positive meaning of the law
221
reading of the law as the source of knowledge of God’s will.
Paul goes on to explain that all the commandments (in this
order: 7th, 6th, 8th, 10th) can be brought under the heading of
the commandment of neighborly love. The expression used
might indicate a ”summing up,” but more likely we have here
the technical term for grouping a set of commandments under a
principal rule that governs them hermeneutically ;152 the various
commandments so grouped together are then considered
applications of the “head” commandment. He goes on to
explain in the next verse that love does no harm to the
neighbor, and that is why it fulfills the law.
Now what does this mean? It cannot mean that all the
commandments can be reduced to the one commandment of
love. It is surely an affirmation of the “ethical” meaning of the
Mosaic law, but this poses a new problem, because it is not
immediately clear what “moral” can mean in this context. There
is a more solid answer, derived from the technical implications
of such a “summary” of the law. The whole of that law is now
being put under a specific hermeneutic perspective that looks
for its provisions under the aspect of neighborly love, and not
formal authority, the holiness of God, or simply the givenness
of a manifold of commandments and prohibitions. It indicates a
way of interpreting the law that is in conformity with the general
rule of 12:2. Only by a change in our way of thinking can we
“use” the law to guide us in finding the will of God.
But the situation has changed for Christians with respect to the
152
According to Käsemann, the expression is derived from mathematical
parlance and can only mean ”to sum up.” Still, he acknowledges that in this
context it refers to the rabbinic issue of the ‘summary’, i.e., a definition of a
general hermeneutic perspective of the law as can be found, e.g., in the last
chapter of the tractate Makkoth. .
222
law.153 First of all, Christians belong to a new type of
peoplehood that is to be considered a ”body,” i.e., that has
organismic, not organizational, coherence amongst its
members. They all share the same life of faith and have the
same Lord, have been redeemed by the same Sacrifice that
renders their differences in merit meaningless. They are a
people taken out of the nations, which implies their being
dissassociated from the various states in which the life of the
nations is organized.
Apart from the situation and condition, however, the written law
is still the source for our general understanding of what is good
and holy and righteous. As Paul had explained that the law was
not used ”lawfully” when it was considered a definition of
righteousness and redemption, so here the law is used lawfully
when it is considered as God’s righteous claim, to be fulfilled in
153
James Dunn argues that Paul’s critique of the law was “carefully
targeted” against its abuse by sin, and against the assumption that having the
law implied a favored position and redemption. The other functions of the law,
defining sin and condemning transgression, were still valid for the believer.
223
our communal Christian life through the specific hermeneutic
that is embodied in Christ. To accept Jesus Christ as the
definition and standard of our lives (“putting on Christ Jesus,” in
13:14) is perfectly congruent with fulfilling the law through the
hermeneutic of the love for the neighbor in 13:10. Such a
perspective on the law implies that it is still seen as the
standard of righteousness, but as being established by
(Abrahamic) faith, and not by works. Israel had pursued a law
of righteousness, the Mosaic law, in vain, because they
disconnected that law from the principle of faith that was
embodied in it. By accepting the promise as a national
prerogative and by demanding works as testimony to status
alone, the law was not seen in its original intent as redeeming
charter and guide to a life under God’s sovereignty.
But to Paul this Mosaic law had not remained the same. Christ
had given it His final interpretation, not only through the
structure of His life and death, but also in His teachings. Dunn
quotes “some eight or nine” echoes of Jesus’ teaching in Paul’s
paraenesis.154 Romans 12:14, e.g., reminds us of Luke 6:27-28:
Love your enemies...bless those who curse you. Romans 14:14
may remind us of Mark 7:15. He also argues that in a
community that was well versed in the traditions, an explicit
154
James D.G. Dunn, Theology of Paul, pp. 650-651.
224
reference to Jesus’ authority was unnecessary. When Paul
does so, it is because he needs to qualify that authority or
distinguish it from his own, as in 1 Cor. 7:10 -16. Since Paul
also understood his own apostolic authority and the tradition
handed down in the congregations as derived from Jesus’
authority, the Pauline paraenesis did not need to be a formal
explanation or commentary on the law. In fact, as Dunn states
it, the paraenesis in Paul had the same function as the Mosaic
law had for Israel. The written word had become taken up in
the ongoing process of discernment within the congregations,
illuminated by reflection on Christ’s life and death and
supported by new traditions that arose from it. The law of Christ
could become the term that encompassed all of this into one
title in Gal. 6:2, and it is reiterated in Rom. 13:9-10 as the
fulfillment of the law in connection with ”putting on Christ.”
The larger thesis that underpins the entire letter can now be
made clear. In effect, Romans 1-7 deals with the wider picture
of the fall of man (Romans 2) and how it was dealt with
proleptically by the kind of relationship under the promise that
God established with Abraham (Romans 3, 4). The
righteousness God has established in Christ deals effectively
with the fall of man (Romans 5, 6), whereas the law as written
standard of indictment against humanity can only bring despair.
(Romans 7). The New Covenant of the Spirit upholds the
validity of the law while surpassing it in two ways. First of all, it
brings in the gentiles, and secondly, it gives the ability to obey
from the heart because of the power of the Spirit coming from
outside us, dislocating the center of our lives (having died with
Christ) and giving us a new center of life in Christ. The written
law is thereby surpassed in a manner analogous to the
prophecy of Jeremiah 31.
155
C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament,
tr. James Kennedy, Michigan, 1950 (1886-1882). Of C. F. Keil the
225
most illustrative passages in that commentary is this one:
(1) God will make a new covenant, different from the covenant
of the Sinai.
(2) Now the law will be written in the hearts; God will be
inseparable from His people.
(3) All will know God and no one needs to be instructed by
anyone else, and
(4) God will forgive their iniquity.
Encyclopedia Judaica reports (Zev Garber): “He maintained the validity of the
historico-critical investigation of the Bible only if it proved the existence of the
New Testament revelation in the scriptures” (Vol. 10, 897). The passage
referred to can be found in vol. 2 of the commentary on Jeremiah, p. 39.
156
James D.G. Dunn_Theology of Paul_, pp. 74-75.
226
Jeremiah 31 stands to Paul’s description of the Spirit of Christ
dwelling in us (Rom. 8:9). In 2 Cor. 3:3, Paul, of course, directly
refers to the Jeremiah 31 quote. Here the Corinthians are
called a letter from Christ, written on tablets of flesh within their
hearts. The contrast is described between the old covenant of
letter and stone versus the new covenant of spirit and freedom.
The “letter” is surpassed by the Spirit, but, as in Jeremiah 31,
the contents remained that of the law. 157
157
Ibid., p. 148.
158
James D.G. Dunn (1988), 1, p. 440.
159
Ibid, p. 441
227
does not refer directly to a new ethics, but more to a changed
attitude toward the same source of ethics. The law, if applied
lawfully, from the principle of faith and with total commitment, is
not split in itself, but there is a dual mode of applying it already
referred to in the Old Testament. Accordingly, Jer. 31 mentions
that God will put His law in their hearts, not replace the law with
something else. James Dunn correctly concludes that to Paul,
“the purpose for which God sent his Son is explicitly stated as
to bring about the fulfillment of the law’s requirement” (Rom.
8:4).160
160
James D.G. Dunn _Theology of Paul_, p. 646.
228
the Spirit of Christ. The Spirit of the Messiah Jesus working
within the community has hermeneutic priority above the
written text. Christ does not replace the law, but He does
replace the hermeneutic principles of the oral tradition. It is no
longer the authority of tradition and the legal hermeneutic of
rabbinic commentary that decide on issues of law and ethics,
but the Spirit of Christ as working in the discerning community.
229
16. The idea of theonomous obedience
230
moral agent judges his actions to be either good or bad.
161
N. H. Søe, Christliche Ethiik, ein Lehrbuch, Munich, (1965).
162
Ibid., pp. 14-15.
234
Revelation, as an ”assumption” of believers, is primary and is a
standard for morality.
163
Kant, Akademie Textausgabe, VII, p. 63 footnote, [my translation].
235
nality, i.e., possibly universal, can such a principle be adopted.
164
S. Hauerwas (1983), p. 1
165
Ibid, p. 5.
236
determined by “elaborate games of power and self-interest”
which leave us hardly any options to choose from. In such a
situation, any attempt to find a foundation for ethics is doomed
to failure.
What then is the difference from the view that Kant discussed
and rejected? On the one hand, the experience of fragmen-
tariness of moral judgments in this world makes us retreat from
the Kantian concept of universality, that concept is relegated to
the world of fragments. Kant based his demand for universal
rationality of moral claims on the notion of freedom. But specific
answers are being demanded, and these are informed by
specific cultural and relative contents. Kant would have no
trouble with that. On the other hand Hauerwas goes on to claim
for the Christian story a truthfulness, i.e., universality, that
cannot be grounded on social functionality, and therefore
ultimately lacks the kind of rationality and universality that Kant
demanded, but must refer instead to individual persuasions
166
Ibid, p. 24.
167
Ibid, p. 15.
237
becoming joined in a community’s commitment. One does not
know the Christian story to be right; one judges that story to be
in congruence with one’s life experience, and one does so in a
community of people who share the basic stories and
paradigms of that persuasion. .
Scott Holland affirms that this is a problem in his article, “Problems and
Prospects of a ‘Sectarian Ethic’,” Conrad Grebel Review, Spring 1992, p.
165. In his assessment, “While he [Hauerwas] is appropriately critical of
modernity’s tendency to impose a metanarrative or master story upon diverse
communities in the name of truth, or the common good, or civility, his so-
called sectarian or communitarian method of interpretation does not
adequately address problems related to the legitimating of knowledge in a
world of pluralism and competing narratives.” But Holland reiterates the
Kantian claim by stating that “all positivism of revelation must be rejected,”
whereas we claim that it must be reinterpreted away from historical and
ontological to a particular ethics that must accept the characterization from
the outside as a form of moral positivism. Holland is right, however, in stating,
that Hauerwas’s attempt actually creates a positivism of communal
peoplehood to function in the same way as revelational positivism.
238
The second part of Hauerwas’s strategy in our reading is his
deconstruction of the word ‘revelation’. Kant had argued that
authority must be based on revelation, and revelation was
equal to “hearing the voice of God booming from heaven.”
Hauerwas contends that the word revelation “is not a qualifier
of the epistemic status of a kind of knowledge, but rather points
to the content of a certain kind of knowledge.”168 If it bears the
”stamp of God and God’s saving intentions,” it might properly
be called ”revelation.” A secondary claim is that “propositional
statements” can be revelatory, insofar as they combine to make
up a coherent narrative with the same contents. But again, this
sets up a standard by which to judge revelation that is
analogous to Kantian claims to universal practical reason. A
revealed morality must be in congruence with the basic formal
requirements of rational morality in Kant, and in Hauerwas it
has to fit within a coherent narrative framework and express
“God’s saving actions.” A commandment that lacks this
historical embeddedness could then very well be considered
not revealed, supposedly because the lack of narrative
coherence makes it impossible for the community that lives it to
form a meaningful tradition around it. In the end, revelation is
then up to the community’s ability to understand something in a
formal sense as revealed moral demand. Its narrative
imagination becomes the functional standard for Christian
ethics, in very much the same manner as rational liberty was
the primary criterion for any material ethics in Kant’s
perspective. In the long run, Hauerwas’s depiction of the
narration about Jesus and its ethical significance shows us a
Christian ethics that is not about obedience, and is certainly not
a theonomous one, and which submits to the Kantian claim that
it must be grounded in some pre-known standard and must
dispense with transcendent revelation.
168
Ibid, p. 66.
239
symbol of reason, God could not have commanded the
idolatrous infanticide, and the Bible is mistaken. If God is the
Good, Abraham trusted in a God who commanded a human
sacrifice, and the Good becomes irrational. If the story of Isaac
provides us with a coherent narrative, how can a community
live out its commandment? .
And yet, a Christian ethics can hardly ignore that the Christian
faith is intrinsically connected to this story. Not only is
Abraham’s faith the model of ours with respect to trust in God
(Rom. 4:9b) and the acceptance of a promise reaching beyond
human infertility (Rom. 4:19-20), but Scripture even calls
Abraham’s obedience the basis for his “justification by works”
(James 2:21-23), seeing in it the fulfillment of Abraham’s faith
for which he had been “justified” beforehand. As we explained
in Chapter. 3, that justification according to James was
proleptic because that faith only bore fruit when Abraham com-
plied with the demand to sacrifice Isaac. So what does it mean
that Christian ethics finds its basis in the offering of Isaac,
going even beyond the faith of Abraham as explained in
Romans 4?
240
17. Abraham’s example: heteronomy
and the cognitive function of the
commandment
A Christian morality that seeks enlightenment from the
narrative of Abraham must be a heteronomous morality. It
cannot ground itself on the universality of practical reason nor
upon the notion of a particular narrative. It must seek the
reason for obedience in God and God alone, at the risk of
confounding moral reasonability, the identification of God with
the Good, and the foundation of ethics in a story-telling
community. It must on that account resist the temptation of all
these three alternatives for the ethics of obedience. It must
accept that cognition is not a basis or a verifying criterion for
the ethical demand, the ethical situation does not demand an
answer to the question of what we must choose, but a
response to the commandment given to us. It is the
commandment that makes us aware of the situation, not the
situation that makes us recall a fitting commandment.
169
I am using the statement here in its common understanding. The full
quotation of Hans Denck, however, shows that the statement is more
complex. Denck actually wrote: “But the medium is Christ whom no one can
truly know unless he follow him in his life, and no one may follow him unless
he has first known him. Whoever does not know him does not have him and
without him he cannot come to the father. But whoever knows him and does
not witness to him by his life will be judged by him...whoever thinks he
belongs to Christ must walk the way that Christ walked.” Klaassen (1981), p.
87.
241
knowing that it is so, and yet “knowing” it would destroy its
absolute character. Knowing is not an absolute relationship, but
involves a finite act of interpretation; it means, e.g., applying a
(narrative) framework to a given statement. So knowing in
Christian faith has an a priori structures that enable the
predicates ”divine” or ”revealed” to become meaningful, and yet
in these predicates their origin in human reason is being
transcended.170
170
Because the objective implications of the statement in such a case
transcend the mere finite nature of interpretation and express its own ground,
i.e., through what it as interpretation is itself made possible.
171
Cf. James Wm. McClendon, Jr., Systematic Theology, O, Ethics,
Nashville (1986).
172
Ibid, p. 330.
242
we say: “the King died and the Queen died from grief,” we have
a germinal narrative because character is added as an
explanation of the incident. Character in this context means the
“embodiment of self” or the “continuities of that selfhood.” Next
to character we have the ”social setting,” and third we have the
transformation of incident into an action of God. The narrative
of the gospel can then be a meta-narrative in relation to our
own life’s narrative, showing us the structure of response to
divine actions and social setting and a specific perspective on
selfhood that we can relate to.
But what was the goal of the testing? Both Kant and religious
historians assume that the commandment was about murder in
a religious-sacrificial context. Kant assumes that Abraham
could have understood that killing his son must be a
transgression of the moral law. Biblical Abraham was faced
with a contradiction between the divine voice and his previous
understanding of God, and yet he complied. Kierkegaard
agrees with Kant but claimed the “leap of faith” that made it
possible (and meaningful) for Abraham to do this, but then
separated Abraham from the rest of humanity. So was the
testing intended to show that Abraham would go beyond the
known moral demand to comply with the immediate and
absolute commandment of God? Again we find Kant intruding
upon our discourse: How then could he have known it was the
voice of God?
173
In the Midrash Rabbah this was obviously the interpretation of R. Abin.
“Even though it may seem to men that God disobeys his own moral
command, He never does so in reality. Although God demanded that no one
would try to test God (Deut. 6:16) He Himself obviously tested Abraham”
(Gen. 21:1; Bereshith Rabbah LV, 3).
174
The connection between the meaning of “testing” and “lifting up” (as a
banner) was made, e.g., in the Midrash Bereshith LV,1. Utilizing Psalm 60:6,
it is stated that Abraham was tried “to exalt him in the world like a ship’s
ensign…in order that the equity of God’s justice may be verified in the world.”
The Midrash thereby circumvents the strange implication that God would test
because He would not know Abraham’s faith.
245
this stage, Abraham had been given the solid assurance that
God would keep His promise, Isaac had been born of Sarah,
and the blessing to the nations would proceed through the
people that were to be born from this son. The object of the test
is Abraham’s view on this son, more than his readiness to obey
God in all things. It is “thy son, thine only one, whom thou
lovest” that he has to bring to Moriah, and the command to go
to Moriah is phrased in the same manner as the original call to
Abram in chapter 12: lech lecha, go by thyself, meaning in
isolation from all other considerations and human interests. It is
the mission of Abraham, the specific status of Isaac as the
fulfillment of the promise, that is at stake here, not the depth of
Abraham’s faith. Just as Abram was required to disassociate
himself from his country, culture, and family, he must now in a
sense abandon his own son, i.e., transcend the natural
relationship that exists between them.
175
Stressed by Menno (Works, p. 123): “This is for the encouragement of all
the pious, that they should believe, and submissively follow the word of the
Lord, however heretical and ridiculous it may appear to them, not murmuring
against the Lord why he so commanded it; but it is enough that they know
that he has commanded and in what manner he has commanded.”
176
Menno, Works, p. 125.
248
interpretation of the required offering. In verse 10, Abraham
takes the knife in his hands. And now the narrator interprets
Abraham’s action for us, “to slaughter his son.” It is as if the
narrator wants to show us that though Abraham on the one
hand is driven by the commandment to see a specific action as
the proper response, bringing an offering requires slaughtering
his son as if he were a lamb, at the same time it is an action
that can itself be interpreted from the outside and weighed
against the divine intent. It is an external act, a risk taken. The
commitment to obey the divine command is an effort to obey
while interpreting. It can always be challenged by others and
compared with the text of the commandment. Abraham’s
obedience is an embodied commentary on a text.
Though Abraham states his trust that God will choose a lamb,
he does not wait until God shows him what to do. Submission
to the divine will, the interpretative framework of the
commandment itself, the whole history of Abraham’s dealings
with God beforehand, leads him to take the knife, not to show
this submission, but to ”slaughter” (lishchot) his son, since this
was his interpretation of the divine commandment. The
narrator’s intervention in the story means that if Abraham had
in fact done this, it would not have amounted to bringing the
required offering at all. In fact, it would have been a slaughter
of his son. His son acquired the character of a lamb because
Abraham assumes that Isaac was designated as the lamb in
God’s view and that killing him was the only way to elevate him
in dedication to God. The commandment turns out to change
Abraham’s view of life in two respects: Isaac can become the
lamb to be slaughtered, and this slaughter can be a fulfillment
of the command to dedicate him fully to God as o’lah. The
commandment to elevate and dedicate fully what Abraham
must have understood to be both his own and humanity’s future
was therefore interpreted correctly, save for the manner of its
execution. That element of divine instruction was given only at
the moment when Abraham stood ready to execute the
command as he understood it.
177
Cf. Jon Levinson, The Death and the Resurrection of the Beloved Son,
London (1983), in which the binding of Isaac is shown to be the most
fundamental “myth” that binds Jews and Christians together. The ideal of total
submission to God in an act that at the same constitutes the basic covenantal
relationship with God is present in the Akeidah and in its application to the life
story of Jesus in the early Church. Judaism rests on the meaning of
Abraham’s sacrifice and identifies itself with Isaac. Christianity reads into the
story the act of God who relinquishes His son into death for all mankind (1
Cor. 15, this was the gospel Paul received, not invented), and rereads
Abraham as the father of all faithful, identifying Isaac with Christ.
178
Paul M. Van Buren, A Theology of the Jewish-Christian Reality, Part II,
New York (1995), p. 42.
252
But there is a difference between the Abrahamic pattern of faith
in Judaism and in Christianity that we need to deal with. We
take as our primary witness the Jewish philosopher Emil
Fackenheim, who wrote about Abraham’s ultimate test in
connection with the Kantian position that we discussed
earlier.179 His insights into the road Judaism travels between
Autonomy and Heteronomy were a guide in our earlier
discussion of Abraham. In Fackenheim’s view, Christianity
suffers from a tragic misunderstanding by making Abraham into
the lonely knight of faith who cannot communicate with others,
and who in fact cannot claim any connection with human
(universal) reason. Both Kant (who rejects Abraham’s action as
immoral) and Kierkegaard (who accepts it as suspension of the
ethical) make Abraham into an absolute exception. The direct
and absolute duty toward God, what we have called
“submission”, is a suspension of the ethical, according to Kier-
kegaard. Agamemnon's sacrifice of Iphigenia, though
exceeding the boundaries of the ethical, still has a universal
purpose. It tries to serve the whole by sacrificing one of its
members. Agamemnon is therefore a moral hero, while
Abraham has to live with the paradox that he must obey the
command to sacrifice Isaac and yet must believe that Isaac will
live.180 Abraham’s obedience is therefore a private affair bet-
ween himself and God, an absolute test that will not be
reenacted since it could not be demanded of the faithful today.
To Kierkegaard, then, Abraham is the father of the faithful
because he accepts the paradox between commandment and
promise in absolute submission to God; to Kant this was the
exact reason why he had to disavow Abraham as a murderer,
and both are agreed that Abraham is set apart from the entire
human race by this acceptance of a divine command to
slaughter his son.
179
Emil, L. Fackenheim, Encounters between Judaism and Modern
Philosophy, New York (1973). Cf. esp. Chapter 2, “Abraham and the
Kantians, Moral Duties and Divine Commandments.”
180
Ibid, p. 63.
253
explains Abraham’s ordeal is adamant that testing in this
context is like showing something in its inner nature and value
to others. Far from being a private affair, it was intended to
show to the world the character of Abraham’s faith as the one
to whom God had given the promise to bless all peoples. In a
direct sense, Abraham was the father of all who stand in the
covenant, because in some way Abraham’s obedience affects
them all. It is based on Abraham’s merit that Israel was given
the Torah, which implies that the whole meaning of Torah is
dependent upon the character of Abraham’s faith. It signifies
that elements of Torah are in fact as absolute as the divine
commandment directed to Abraham. The values of humanity
and moral good that Kant deemed intrinsically absolute are
relative to the absoluteness of the giving of the Torah and its
divine origin.
254
When Menno Simons wrote about Abraham’s faith, he was of
course completely unaware of anything like the subtle
philosophical context in which Fackenheim argued his case for
Abraham against Kant. This does not make him unaware of the
issues that were relevant to calling Abraham the father of the
faithful. Fackenheim argued that Abraham was considered by
Kierkegaard as a pattern of what may turn up in the life of a
Christian as a surprise demand to abandon ethics. Every
believer is a potential Abraham. But to Menno, Abraham’s
conduct in the offering of Isaac is the fruit of a life of already
established obedience in faith. It is brought into the open by the
test, as the Midrash insists. It showed the inner contents of his
faith. There was no struggle between the promise and the
commandment, as Kierkegaard thought. Menno stated: “He
well knew that unless he would believe the word of God, he
could obtain no grace, no blessing, no promise, for only the
obedient obtain the promise.” 181 In the manner of his
obedience, Abraham can be called the father of the faithful.
181
Menno. Works, I, p. 123.
182
Ibid.
183
The “binding” of Isaac on the altar is called Akeidah in Hebrew.
184
Menno, Works, I, p. 125.
255
by the pure love of God.”185
185
E. Fackenheim, op. cit., p. 62
256
narrative locus of Christian martyrdom. But to Christians, the
reenactment of Isaac’s binding has been singularly expressed
in God’s own Akeidah when Jesus Christ, the new Isaac, was
murdered on the Cross. The “seed of Abraham,” in the
Christian midrash, became Christ, who as the first-born of the
Father also became the new man and the head of His Church.
Through this Christological transformation within the New
Testament, the focus of the connection between faith and
martyrdom shifts away from the Isaac of the Old Testament to
the “Isaac” of the New Christian Covenant without contradicting
the former. Christian faith is about receiving the new Isaac,
Christ Jesus, into the “heart”. That is a faith that acknowledges
that God will not break his promise and thereby makes the
believers “free, joyful and glad in spirit; though they are
confined in prisons and bonds, have to suffer [death by] water
and fire, in chains and at the stake;…for they believe on Christ
in whom the promises are sealed.”186
186
Menno, Works, I, p. 159.
187
Ibid., p. 125a.
257
It has two consequences. First, because obedience to Christ is
understood as comprising first of all the spirit-led life, and only
on that basis does human obedience to rules and ordinances
come about, the principle of Abraham’s submission was
expressed as submission to God directly and not through the
mediation of Torah, like this: “inward man…does willingly all
things whatsoever the Lord has commanded him, let it be what
it will.”188 But then immediately those elements of the law of
Christ are mentioned that fulfill the function of idolatry and
murder in the call to steadfastness under Jewish law: baptism
upon confession of faith, leading to life according to the inner
word and the scriptures. This general principle of obedience is
not immediately connected to the Akeidah itself, as in
Kierkegaard, since there is no heroism in Menno that seeks
ultimate submission by suspension of the ethical. But it is
connected to a way of life that is determined by “doctrine, Spirit,
commandments, prohibitions, ordinances and usages” in which
they walk who “would receive the commanded baptism,
surrender themselves to all obedience, and according to their
weakness, walk as the Lord commands, teaches and enjoins
upon all true Christians.”189
188
Ibid, p. 123b.
189
Ibid, 123b – 124a.
258
and Jewish midrash with regard to the Akeidah. Rabbinical
ethics could be a function of the Talmud Torah, the scrupulous
study and practical application of the law, both written and oral,
precisely because it envisioned the life under Torah as an
embodiment of Abraham’s faith to God and the concrete and
specific nature of God’s covenant in response to it. In Chris-
tianity, ethics evolved in principle without the resources of the
oral tradition – or rather, oral tradition was the local tradition of
exegesis but did not have universal authoritative application. It
did not put the written Torah on a par with the oral, because
both were embodied in the Word made flesh. The incarnation
theology of John and Paul looked to the life and death of Jesus
the Messiah for guidance on issues of obedience and behavio-
ral rules. Precisely because of these profound differences, the
analogies which we found before, namely obedience from love
and the connection to martyrdom, are the more striking.
259
18. The heteronomous source of
obedience
190
C. Norman Kraus, “American Mennonites and the Bible,”,in: Essays on
Biblical Interpretation, Williard Swartley, Ed., Elkhart (1984), p. 135.
191
Confession of Peter Jansz Twisck.
260
self, and not in the written word. Only knowledge of Christ can
give us the key to understanding Scripture, and only the will to
obey can give us knowledge of Christ.
192
Ben C. Ollenburger, “The Hermeneutics of Obedience,” in Swartley
(1984), p. 61.
261
events. Canonical Scripture has a priority in this endeavor, but that
makes it only a “participant” in dialogue, and the community of that
dialogue has the locus of authority.
193
Menno Simons, Eng. edn. (1956), p. 329.
194
Ibid.
262
inner man as God’s gift . A believer would obey the command-
ments of God out of love for God, seeking instruction in the
Scriptures and obeying to the letter what was clearly
prescribed, but most of all, he would obey whatever God
commanded, taught, and enjoined in the present through His
Spirit. As we have found in Paul, there was a profound
difference in this idea that the Spirit could enable an
understanding of God’s will that went beyond the letter of
Scripture. Only in the acceptance of this effectiveness of the
Spirit in the community could there be such a thing as a “law” of
Christ.
195
E.g. Abraham’s use of the sword in Genesis 14 is immediately countered
with a reference to the commandment to abjure any use of the sword under
the new covenant when Menno deals with it. Menno Works, I, 122a.
263
rity in which the state functioned as the power of punishment
for evildoers. Anabaptists in the 16th century projected their
own experience with state persecution into their reading of the
law. If the Mosaic law dealt with government and ordered so-
ciety, punishing evildoers and promoting the well-being of all its
citizens, it was important because it gave a standard by which
to judge our human corruption, but it was not decisive for
Christians as a source of moral enlightenment. They after all
had to stand apart from the government and the state, which
were outside the perfection of Christ. The Mosaic law,
understood in these two functions and as essentially correlated
to human government, could by these facts alone never beco-
me the standard for Christian living.
196
John E. Toews, “Some Theses Toward a Theology of law in the New
Testament,” in: The Bible and law, Elkhart (1982), pp. 43 - 64.
197
Because they are circumcised, they fall under the principle of Gal. 5:3.
264
John Toews affirmed this vision by stating:
198
Ibid, p. 49.
265
turn a prerequisite to understanding the Bible. In historic
Anabaptism, the New Testament gained a specific status. Here
was the source of the faithful life under the new covenant,
demanding filial and not servile obedience. The Old Testament
was understood along the lines of the Reformation in general in
its prosecutorial and pedagogical use. Historic experience with
the power of the state, and the connection between Mosaic law
and government, made Anabaptists cautious in accepting the
authority of the Mosaic law. Menno Simons is the most
outspoken defender of the thesis that faith implies obedience to
all of God’s commandments as they are present in the Holy
Word, but in practice, this was defined as those command-
ments given by Jesus Christ.
199
Cf. Meinrad Limbeck, Das Gesetz, pp. 8-14.
266
Marpeck and Philips would have had the opportunity that we
enjoy, to know the spirit and meaning of the Jewish law from
the inside, there might have been a totally different atmosphere
to the Anabaptists’ moral thinking. Given the fact that there was
a prevailing tendency to look at Jewish law in this manner, it is
interesting to note how close they remained to the concept of
obedience in faith as revealed in the New Testament. A secon-
dary reason that at this stage no specific Christian halakah was
developed (with the exception of Hutterites and Amish) is the
strong rejection of the kind of casuistry that was present in the
Catholic practice of confession.
267
19. Summary and Conclusions
We have found so far that the general pattern of Christian
obedience is theonomous. The offering of Isaac shows that
submission to God’s will, whatever it is, beyond and above our
own moral reasoning and even theological views on the nature
of God, forms its basis. However, we have also found that
ethics is not identical to this submission. Absolute submission
is substituted by the heteronomy of a specific institution. In the
life of Israel, heteronomous obedience to the Torah comes in
place of submission. In a way, the Torah mediates between
theonomous submission to God’s will and human liberty. It ma-
kes it possible for a community to have a standard for its con-
duct that defines a way of life for its individual members. If sub-
mission alone is the essence of ethics, all ethics would be
individual, and there could be no adequate means of expres-
sing its concrete contents.
200
J. H. Yoder (1994), p. 55.
201
W. Klaassen (ed.) (1981), p. 88
268
lead a blameless life and follow in Christ’s footsteps inevitably
leads to suffering. After all, “servants are not greater than their
master, and if they persecuted Christ they will persecute those
who follow Christ” (John 15:20) .
202
J. H. Yoder (1994), p. 87.
269
gregation would be divided into a religious part and a civil part.
Christians, however, do not live in two worlds at the same time,
since they are citizens of the kingdom of heaven, residing in the
world until the kingdom is established at the return of Christ. To
use the tools of civil authority would be in violation of that
citizenship and would affirm that not Christ, but the state, is the
highest power.
203
Cf. J. H. Yoder (1994), p. 63: “The second scandalous conclusion is that
there may well be certain functions in a given society which that society in its
unbelief considers necessary, and which the unbelief renders necessary, in
which Christians will not be called to participate.”
270
be the Church.”204 In order to be the mission, it has to be a
visible reality. Moral nonconformity is a dimension of this
visibility. Yoder enumerated the possible elements of this
nonconformity.
But stating that the Church in its separation and specific ethics
is the mission does not exclude that it actually has one. In
Matthew 28:16-20, we find that the early Church was under an
obligation too, connected with the affirmation of Christ’s
sovereignty. On the mountain in Galilee, where the disciples
had been appointed, Christ after His resurrection gives the
affirmation that He has all authority in heaven and on earth. So
now the Church should do these things:
204
J.H. Yoder, ibid , p. 61.
205
J.H. Yoder, ibid, p. 81.
271
• therefore baptizing them [i.e., the disciples, never children]
in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit [which makes them into disciples, adopting them into
the covenant community and establishing their right
relationship with God on the basis of Christ’s death];
272
In sum, the mission of the Church is twofold. (1) In its capacity
of being the redeemed community, consisting of those who
have accepted Christ in faith and have submitted to his
authority, they show Christ’s sovereignty through their behavior
as a priestly kingdom, glorifying Gods “excellencies” and
making others glorify their father in heaven. But they also (2)
have a mission, a direct command to teach the gospel of
remission of sins and repentance, and to be the community in
which forgiveness rules. Teaching the gospel must have a
continuation in teaching the commandments of Christ. The
shape of the redeemed community is the product of its
obedience to Christ’s law. Only then can the Church be the city
on the hill, the visible Church.
273
274
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