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The End of the Law?

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The End of the Law?

The positive function of the Law of Moses


in the social ethics of Paul

Robbert Veen

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Huizer Art Center Publishing
Trompstraat 65
1271 SZ Huizen
info@huizerartcenter.nl

By the same author:

Fulfillment of the Law, Huizen 2005


ISBN 1 – 4116 – 5927 - 9

Justification and the Law, Huizen 2005


LULU Id. 205031

This edition 2005 @ by H.A.C. and R.A. Veen

Printing on demand: www.lulu.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,


stored in a database or retrieval system, or published, in any
for or any way, electronically, mechanically, by print, photoprint,
microfilm or any other means without written permission from
the publisher.

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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

1. The traditional approach to Paul’s ethics.................... 48

2. The canonical framework .......................................... 57

3. Outline of the argument of Galatians......................... 69

4. The Antioch incident................................................... 77

5. Justification by faith and not by works ....................... 91

6. Life in the Spirit versus life under the law ................ 107

7. The Noachide commandments and Antioch............ 117

8. Reading Romans...................................................... 126

9. The condition of Jew and Greek before God (Rom 1:1-


2:27) ............................................................................. 136

10. Justification (3:21-3:30) ......................................... 150

11. The status of the justified (ch. 5) ............................ 164

12. The moral objections against the gospel of grace and


the life in the Spirit (6:1-8:39) ....................................... 170

13. The new righteousness of the believer’s community


(Romans 12) ................................................................ 188

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14. Love for the enemy as the pattern of justice: the
“moral” dimension of social ethics (Romans 13)...........206

15. The positive meaning of the law ............................221

16. The idea of theonomous obedience........................230

17. Abraham’s example: heteronomy and the cognitive


function of the commandment ......................................241

18. The heteronomous source of obedience ................260

18. The heteronomous source of obedience ................260

19. Summary and Conclusions.....................................268

20. Selective Bibliography………………………………..277

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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.

In my estimate, Christian ethics can only attain its relevance as


a critical alternative to morality-as-usual, its community-building
power and its particular biblical shape by readopting its original
“legal” hermeneutics, addressing the issues of obedience not
through narrative modeling but by careful casuistic and para-
digmatic reflection on the application of the divine command-
ments. Our renewed understanding, both of the way that law
functions in Jewish practice, and of Paul’s (and Jesus’) attitude
towards it, warrants such a return to the Jewish roots of
Christian ethics. In substance and in formal mode of reflection,
the Church should become pupil to the Scribes and Pharisees
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again. (Matthews 23:3a) I do believe however, that the tra-
ditional Mennonite insistence that faith in the Redeemer and
obedience to the law of Christ ought to go hand in hand or
rather, cannot be distinguished, provides us with an invaluable
foundation to regain the proper perspective on the concrete
contents and formal structure of Christian ethics.

It is my hope to contribute to an ongoing conversation about


the Jewish nature of Christian (social) ethics. Both from its con-
tents and its method, a lot could be learned that will strengthen
the Christian witness in this world.

Robbert Veen, HUIZEN, Christmas 2005

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Introduction:

a. The issue: the role of the Law in Christian


ethics

There is a distinct tension between the appraisal of Paul’s


central doctrine of justification and the implications of the letter
of James. Whereas James seems more concerned with the
gap between rich and poor Christians and the over-emphasis
on faith in opposition to works-obedience, it is widely held that
Paul defined the true gospel as righteousness by faith in op-
position to any kind of works-righteousness.

In Paul’s ecclesiology this could be found in the doctrine of the


one Church in which the boundary between Jew and gentile
had been lifted, and in his ethics it could be found in a specific
pattern. The imperative of Christian living followed the indica-
tive of God’s redemptive presence in Christ. That imperative
could no longer be considered analogous to the pattern of
obedience to the laws of Moses. In this chapter we will try to
show, that Paul’s solution to the problem of Christian ethics
resulted from his position with regard to the shape and nature
of the Christian community; that he did not fully solve that
problem as can be seen from the different approach of the
Jerusalem Council, especially with regard to the so-called
Noachide laws, and that nevertheless Paul’s ethics remained
orientated toward the fulfillment of the divine imperative. The
brief discussion of Paul’s canonical status is intended to convey
that the presumption of a Pauline primacy is incorrect.

According to the gospel of Matthew, Jesus emphatically denied


that it was His intent to reject the validity of the Mosaic law for
His disciples. “Do not think that I have come to abrogate the
law and the prophets.” Jesus’ mission was not to make void the
law or abrogate, but to fulfill it. He who both teaches and does
the law shall be called “great” in the kingdom of heavens. 1

1
Cf. Matth. 5:17 – 20.
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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?

But how is that possible? How could such a clear emphasis on


the continuing role of the Mosaic law for Jesus’ disciples be
wiped away in the history of the Church? How could to “fulfill”
come to mean “abrogate, to declare void” and thereby indicate
the obvious and exact opposite of the saying’s intent?2 Various
kinds of antinomianisms and anti-Judaisms have in effect
echoed a single phrase in Paul’s letter to the Romans: “for
Christ is the end of the law.”3 (Rom. 10:4) Perceptions of the
law as document of condemnation, as tutor that brought in
awareness of sin, as mere preparation to the gospel of grace,
have been with us since the 2nd century Church in various
forms, and have developed into the orthodox position after the
Reformation introduced its antithesis of law and grace. Even
those who opposed a law-free gospel on the erroneous ground,
that it furthered a life of sin because it was a “cheap grace” that
was offered to the sinner anyway, almost never returned to the
Mosaic law in full. Either they used that law as a source of civil
law in a society that was Christian in name only, or they
dispensed with large portions of the law and sought to

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)
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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:

(1) the condition of defining the will of God.


(2) the condition of salvation, i.e. obedience to the law was in
some way vital to redemption.
(3) the condition of belonging to Israel.

Bultmann observed that “the ‘Urgemeinde” held on to these


three conditions.

“In whatever degree she had (at least in the beginning)


become critical towards the Jewish law-obedience under the
influence of the words of her Lord, and in whatever degree she
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had broken away from the Jewish concept of merit that was
supposed to have dominated 1st century Jewish thought, she
held on to the law as a characteristic of the elect people, and
was aware that she represented it.”4

But this Palestine theology, though admittedly early and in that


sense closer to Jesus, also represented to him a break from
the true Gospel which he found almost exclusively in the letters
of Paul. Apparently then, the new historical understanding of
Jesus as an exponent of Judaism did not lead immediately to a
revision of doctrine, and certainly not of moral theory. In
Bultmann’s view, Paul’s version of the Gospel in its Reforma-
tion version, remained the authentic one, precisely because it
broke away from the Jewish pattern of faith that was still so
clearly present in Matthew.

We can make several vital objections to Bultmann’s approach


to this problem.

First, we must emphasize that Matthew’s gospel was in part


written as a response to a Christian practice and theology that
may have had its center in Paul, by a theologian in a
community that in some way had continued the earliest
impulses of Jesus’ disciples. Matthew’s Church at least had
more continuity with the earliest theology of the Church in
Jerusalem. Now this is not to say, that early means authentic
and later must therefore mean falsified. It is important to affirm
in advance that there is diversity in dialogue in the New
Testament, despite the harmonizing framework that went along
with the canonization-process or followed it. But this position
does imply that we dispense with the argument of success
altogether in dealing with the earliest developments in Christian
ethics and theology. The apparent success of the Hellenistic
mission with its emphasis on the law-free gospel is in itself not
a sufficient argument to dispense with the Mosaic law in Chris-
tian ethics, if the latter can be shown to be a consistent posi-
tion, held by a substantial minority in the early Church and in
continuity with the earliest traditions around Jesus. Nor can the
argument be construed in opposite direction. What we need is
a reason that makes sense in a modern systematic theology to
dispense with Matthew’s claim to the validity of the Mosaic law

4
Bultmann, Theologie, p. 56
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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.

Secondly, we should recognize that there was a vibrant though


perhaps short-lived type of Christianity5 in which the law of
Moses continued to fulfill a vital function, independent of, or
even contrary to Paul’s teachings. We know that type of Chris-
tianity through Paul’s vehement opposition against some of its
adherents, and from the scarce evidence provided by Acts and
quotations from the Church fathers.

And thirdly, that there was and is a way (opened up in an


unbiased and historically informed exegesis) to understand the
law as a graceful gift of God to His people, as a source for a
distinct way of life, without focusing immediately on the concept
of “merit” and certainly without restricting the proper use of the
law to its role as indictment and condemnation of humanity.
Identifying the keeping of the law in 1st century Judaism with
amassing merit in order to gain salvation through “good works”
will not do anymore as a historic judgment. It has become part
of the consensus over the last thirty years, that “merit” in the
16th century is not the same category as that of 1st century Ju-
daism. To name just one essential difference: merit in 16th
century parlance was taken by both Protestants and Catholics
to have a final character, i.e. they contributed to redemption
and were its necessary condition. In 1st century thought, merit
was the (historical yet immeasurable) effect of compliance with
God’s will both for the doer and Israel as a whole. In 16th cen-
tury terminology, 1st century Palestinian Judaism would have
seen merit as something that was both consecutive on God’
covenant-Grace and effective in adding to the redemptive con-
dition of God’s people. Ultimately, redemption was not merited
but granted based on God’s Covenant-loyalty and not human
faithfulness.

5
Cf. James D. G. Dunn, Unity and Diversity, ch. 11, pp. 235 – 267.
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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.

Bultmann’s conclusions with regard to Paul’s “original” gospel


and the necessity to overcome the vestiges of Judaism in the
Palestine Church are in need of major modification and have
been respectfully challenged in the past 20 years.

First of all, there is the evaluation of the historical status of the


Mosaic law in 1st century thought. We can no longer un-
derstand Jewish law in the 1st century as directed towards
merit or acquiring eternal salvation by performing the “works of
the law.” The positive evaluation of the law in circles of Jewish
Christianity can therefore no longer be seen as a residue of the
Palestinian Church destined to fade away with the rise of the
Pauline Church.

Furthermore, the concept of law in Paul itself is more ambi-


guous than even Bultmann thought. If Dunn is right, most of
Paul’s antithetical statements with regard to the Mosaic law aim
at a particular understanding of the Mosaic law as limiting
righteousness to Israel as a special prerogative. If Stowers is
right, most if not all negative remarks about the Law in Paul’s
letter to the Romans are directed against gentile Judaizers who
sought to add elements of the Torah into the gospel they had
received. After a short period in which the scales were tipped to
the other extreme, the most widespread position now is that
Paul’s doctrine of justification is not the core essence of his
gospel, nor the polemical slogan of the first decade of the
century, but a reasoned attempt to contradict those gentiles
who saw the Mosaic law as a necessary condition of salvation
or even as an useful addition to the gospel of Christ. In both ca-
ses, affirmation of the law as a prerogative of the elect or as a
means of salvation contradicted the supreme value of Christ.

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
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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.

Despite the advance of biblical theology, many of Bultmann’s


formal assumptions can still be seen as productive. His
historical assessment e.g., that Paul developed his justification
by faith in opposition to a Jewish doctrine of salvation through
works and merit, implies at least a valid systematic correlation
between sola gratia and the historical understanding of what
Paul was arguing against. That provides us with a necessary
though preliminary strategy of how we can tackle the problem
of the foundation of Christian ethics. For if our historical un-
derstanding of Paul’s opponents changes, then, on account of
this necessary correlation, our understanding of the doctrine
should change as well. And if the latter changes, then also the
concept of Christian ethics (or sanctification) that is linked to it,
must change with it.

It hardly needs argument that our historical evaluation has


changed considerably since Bultmann. It has already become
abundantly clear, that the historical correlate of the Reformed
understanding of Paul’s doctrine was its understanding of
Roman-Catholic practice and not Paul’s real 1st century
opponent. Such a 16th century correlation between Catholic
meritology and justification of the ungodly would make one
think that Paul understood the law to be an instrument of
instilling fear and guilt and as a mere preparation for the gospel
instead of it being a “gracious arrangement made by God for
ordering the life of his people while they were awaiting the

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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.

So this is our first major point of departure: the new image of


Paul in his Jewish, 1st-century context, and a new reading of
the gospels against the background of Pharisaic (and Qumran-)
Judaism. Several changes in our view of history have become
part of our new hermeneutical situation: a new view of the
meaning of 1st century Judaism as a religion that understood
the concept of grace and a Jewish Christianity that managed to
combine Torah-obedience and the gospel of Christ into one
single kerygma. These two historical elements in particular
motivated the basic question that I want to engage in this book:

• 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;

• that the antithesis to such a form of “messianic Judaism”


has its center in (an interpretation of) Paul’s doctrines,
specifically his teachings on justification by faith, that con-
strued its correlate in late Catholic meritology and the prac-
tice of repentance and salvation through good works, and
not in 1st century elements of Jewish Christianity and/or
Hellenist Judaism.

In the last three decades especially it has become clear, that

6
Yoder, Politics, 215. The quote is probably a reference to Stendahl.
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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.

The consequences of this re-evaluation of the NT-position to-


wards Judaism and the law both in basic Christian doctrine and
in its practical consequence for Christian ethics, have however
not been examined yet.7 However, there is an important

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.

The subject matter of this study is therefore the connection


between justification (by faith) and Christian ethics8,
concentrated in the question whether the Mosaic law (both as a
written text and as a principle of an attitude of obedience) is a
valid source to determine the specific obligations of the
Christian way of life. My question is, to put it from another
angle, whether the “law of Christ” or the “messianic Torah”
entails only or primarily the love command as a general
principle of ethics, narratively summed up in Jesus’ own
example of obedience unto death or provides us beyond that
with a framework in which the concrete contents of the Mosaic
commandments and the pattern of Torah-obedience are the
primary means of understanding the will of God for a
community of disciples.

Such a path of redefinition might go against a well-established


opinion, reiterated also many times outside the arena of
theological debate. It seems quite self-evident to some, that
Christian ethics is not concerned with the ‘realization of an
imperative as an impersonal and transpersonal ‘thou shalt’,
through which man could create for himself a secure status in
the world and before God, but with a behavior on the basis of a
present promise of salvation.”9 Bultmann’s vigorous opposition
against the search for security through merit, and the self-
centeredness of moral striving, was the paradigm for his
estimate of the shape of Christian ethics. In this, Bultmann
expressed a view that was held among (Christian) philosophers
as well. In Europe, ethicists generally maintained the following
characteristics of any Christian ethics:

Praktischen Theologie nirgendwo ernsthaft zur Kenntnis genommen und


aufgegriffen werden.”
8
Christian ethics in this study can be broadly defined as the doctrine of the
attitude towards life and the definition of behavior, to which God has called
(a) people in Christ and (b) for which He enables them. Christian ethics is
therefore a part of theology, since it involves a normative position and is
based in some way on revelation.
9
H.-H. Schrey, Einfuhrung in die Ethik, Darmstadt, 1977, p. 30. My
translation.
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1. Discipleship is focused on Christ’s suffering and cross, not
so much on His teaching. Its shape in the gospels is
therefore an heroic ethics for exceptional individuals or an
“interim-ethics” (Schweitzer) or an utopian ethics (Goppelt) .
2. The subject of moral action is the new creation, the
spiritually reborn in the new community of the Church. But
reborn or not, such a person would still be a citizen of the
state and his regeneration led to an inner morality or an
exceptional selflessness against the background of
complete submission to the national state.
3. Moral action is not oriented backward toward the codices of
revelation and tradition, but exclusively forward, in
anticipatory openness for the situation in which the
“neighbor” is encountered. In that manner, disagreement on
basic principles could be relegated to differences in culture
and situation. A simple picture of love for the neighbor
could be used to exemplify exceptional degrees of civic
duty. In short, Christian ethics could be swallowed up by
society’s need for moral values.
4. Specific Christian virtues are determined by the escha-
tological emphasis: sobriety, hope, steadfastness, rea-
diness and the like. In addition, of course, such values were
universal in themselves and led to the kind of behavior that
was beneficial to society as a whole.

The problem of Christian ethics was not primarily debated in


the arena of biblical exegesis, nor based on an ecclesiology
that knew about the principled status of the Christian
congregation as a minority within society as large. The debate
was philosophical more than biblical. The defining moment of
the post-Enlightenment debate on the foundations of Christian
ethics was the opposition between autonomy (freedom) and
heteronomy, as an aspect of ethics that was constitutive for
both the motivation and the understanding of Christian ethics
as a religious ethics. Most often the solution to the tension
between both defining elements was sought in a combination of
both. If man e.g. could be understood to be oriented toward
God by nature, then the autonomy of man is fulfilled when he
directs himself to God. A theonomous heteronomy is then the
last consequence of autonomy. Or autonomy could be
understood as finding in its own depth the foundation for such a
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theonomy. The foundation figures of thought and speech were
derived from the philosophical discourse.

The specifically religious element in this debate about ethics


can be located in a particular attempt to combine the
viewpoints of autonomy and heteronomy. In other words, if man
really understood his own autonomy he must find it ultimately
reasonable to assume a divine foundation for it. He might even
opt for the Kantian solution, that Christianity, understood philo-
sophically, expressed in the life of Christ the ultimate image of
rational morality. A complete understanding of human auto-
nomy would then lead to the discovery of (postulated)
theonomy, or their equation in a rationalist ethics. In both
cases, the tension between human liberty and divine trans-
cendence was not denied, but mitigated by a theory about their
intrinsic or logical interdependence. The question must be
raised what this discussion had to do with the biblical sources
for Christian ethics and the status of scripture. It seems as if
modern philosophical notions and not the return to a renewed
understanding of scripture set the agenda for the debate on
Christian ethics. Of course, such a return to a biblical ethics in
itself would imply at least a provisionary decision about the
need for theonomy. Nevertheless, I would venture, that the
specific character of Christian ethics can only be found, if we
return to a rigorous discipline in Biblical theology in which we
ground the particularity of the Christian concept of God’s
commandments as the ultimate basis and decisive shape of all
Christian ethics.

Turning to the area of exegesis now, the question underlying


this study developed as follows. For years, scholars have be-
come more aware of the importance of the Mosaic law in the
writings of Paul, especially since World War II. Before that
Paul’s theology had most often been interpreted as a sustained
attack on the Jewish religion. One of the milestones in the new
assessment of Paul’s theology was W. D. Davies’ Paul and
Rabbinic Judaism (1974, first edition 1948). It made ample use
of rabbinic sources and provided arguments for the insight that
a clear cut distinction between Hellenistic and Palestinian
Judaism could no longer be maintained, so that Paul could not
be simply explained as part of a monolithic historic entity called
“Hellenistic Judaism.” The classic interpretation saw Paul
vehemently opposing what was called the Jewish commitment
22
to “works-righteousness”. It had been presupposed that Hel-
lenist Judaism provided the basic motives for a critique of such
a works-oriented (Palestinian) and legalistic form of Judaism.

The second enriching insight was, that Paul’s relationship to


contemporary Judaism was not simply that of anti-thesis, as the
Reformation had claimed. It became clear that this interpret-
tation of Paul derived from the anti-thesis between the Refor-
mers and the Roman-Catholic Church, that became the model
used to explain the New Testament references to the Mosaic
law, oral tradition and the nature of the Pharisee movement.
The result of Davies’ work and that of his student E.P. San-
ders, was a better understanding of how Paul used contem-
porary Jewish moulds in which to shape his gospel, spec. his
transformation of the attributes of the Torah into characteristics
of Christ, what Davies called a “Christifying” of the Torah.

He also showed, that righteousness in connection with obe-


dience was a key concept to Paul, implying that he was after a
new understanding of what it meant to live from faith as obe-
dience. But this renewal of the concept of obedience still
centered around the meaning of Christ as the one who was to
be obeyed, emphasized the messianic way of life as
substituting and surpassing, and not reaffirming and enhancing
the validity of the Torah. The embodied or messianically
interpreted Torah could still be seen as an abrogation of the
“old” version, as in opposition to the written Torah. So we still
have the problem that a transposition of the characteristics of
Torah to Christ in the Pauline letters might in fact imply a
dismissal of the former in any concrete sense. Such a concept
would then again be outside the general direction given by
Matthew 5:17 and would instigate the hopeless effort of re-
conciling Matthew’s clear emphasis on a Christian Torah-
obedience with a law-free Pauline gospel or a new dismissal of
the former.

Nevertheless a lot was gained here. At least Davies had shown


that Paul’s theology was that of a 1st century Jew, and not that
of a 16th century reformer. There was no clear break between
1st century Judaism and Paul’s theology apart from the identity
of the Messiah and certainly not along the lines of an
opposition between Hellenistic and Palestinian Judaism. But if
23
Paul was then closer to his Jewish contemporaries in thought
and even in his central theological statements, the question
must arise what his “polemic” with the Judaizers was all about.
How did Paul actually understood the role of the law now that
Christ had come, if we could not simply state that he
transferred the properties of the Torah to Christ? In this area
new insights arose in the last two decades.

E. P. Sanders wrote a summary of his position on Paul in 1991,


in the past masters series of Oxford University Press.
(Summarizing his Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 1977, and
Paul, the law, and the Jewish People (1983).) Sanders argued
that Judaism was not and never had been a religion of works-
righteousness. It was rather a religion of covenantal nomism,
that granted salvation to all those within the Covenant-
community and even beyond that by a free act of God’s grace.
All Jews were saved by this grace unless their behavior
indicated that they had fully renounced the Covenant. The
proper response to this Covenant of grace was obedience to its
regulations. Against the background of this covenantal nomism
of Palestinian Judaism, Paul would best be described as
producing a participationist eschatology. His theology was
centered in the notion of dying with Christ and obtaining the
new life of complete immersion in the mystic “body of Christ”
which finally leads to an ultimate transformation when Christ
would return. But that position did not qualify Paul as an anti-
nomian. The covenant was only replaced or reinterpreted as
participation in Christ’s life and the obedient response to it was
explained with reference to the Spirit of Christ working within
the community. On a passing note, we can infer that Paul’s
approach hardly qualifies as being more universalist in outlook.
Membership in Israel is as particularistic as Paul’s claim that
only faith can give access to redemption.

Nevertheless Sanders continued to affirm the image of a


Pauline break with the Torah, by his assessment that
justification in Paul meant to be saved by Christ, and did not
mean (not primarily at least) to obey the Torah and to repent of
transgression.10 As Sanders explained, Paul’s interest was

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.

Despite the enormous importance of the new paradigm that


Sanders has provided, and especially his intuitive grasp for the
inner logic of Paul’s position, there are various problems in his
approach. Sanders’ views for one thing lead to a rift between
Jesus and Paul. The opposition between Jesus’ own Pharisaic
teachings and Paul’s eschatological and mystical ethics could
hardly have been imagined greater than in Sanders’ view.
Coming from the incorrect dualism of a purely Hellenist versus
a purely Palestinian Judaism, it must be disappointing to find
that Sanders has in fact replaced the former dichotomy with a
new one. Both James Dunn, who followed Sanders’ lead in
focusing on the social identity of the Church, and Sanders
himself, concur in their estimate that Paul’s Christology leads
him to address the issue of justification and Christian ethics in
terms of the believing community as a whole.

In the perspective that was opened up by Sanders and Dunn,


the sources of social ethics might remain the same as in
Judaism. The function of the Torah might still have been
affirmed. Different views as to the function of the Torah
emerged in the context of this new image of Paul. The Mosaic
law is surpassed as boundary marker but left in place as
paraenetical source in Dunn’s view or surpassed by the life in
the Spirit, in communion with the exalted Christ in
Sanders’view. But despite these minor differences on what can
only be characterized as a “low” view on the role of the Torah,
one basic issue has been made clear by both: the ongoing
validity of the Mosaic law, if there is any, in Paul’s theology,
25
was now shown to be effective in the domain of ecclesiology
and ethics, and not in his soteriology. Not redemption as such,
but the concrete way of life of the redeemed community was at
stake in Paul’s debate with the Judaizers. The law remained a
vital source of insight for ethics, precisely because Paul held
that the immanent principle of Torah-obedience was faith, and
that faith had received its fulfilling focal point in Christ.

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?

It seems our century has moved towards an “objective” and


“social” gospel, where faith is an extrinsic power that motivates
people from the outside and social justice is the first goal of all
works of faith. The new image of Paul seems congruous with
our 20th century predilection to treat ethics as a social and
political issue. Is there then no room any longer for the indivi-
dual’s experience of guilt and redemption? It may be true that
the “new creature” of 2 Cor. 5:17, to name just one exegetical
issue that showed this new emphasis, is not an individual and
the text should actually read: “if anyone be in Christ: a new
creation.11” The transformation spoken of therefore does not
concern primarily the individual reality. But it is ironic to note
against this tendency in exegesis that the same verse opens
with ‘anyone” in the singular. It is to me nearly impossible to
make the theology of Paul fit the position that redemption is
only intended for collectives. The individualistic emphasis must
certainly be dealt with in a critical fashion where it bars us from
seeing the social implications of the gospel. But I would
contend that we should be careful in falling yet again from one
bias into another. For one thing, the imagery of the “body” is
not identical to the social category of a “group”, notwithstanding
all the elements of group dynamics that we would wish to
include. All of this will have to be dealt with in some detail later.

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.

Nevertheless, it is undeniable that part of Paul’s polemics does


have its center in the issue of the shape of the people of God.
James Dunn, perhaps the most influential writer now with
regard to these issues, has followed the specific leads
concerning the law and the identity of Israel that Sanders had
established before him. He deeply agrees with Sanders that
any description of Judaism must be based on Jewish texts and
not on Paul himself – precisely in order to come to a real
understanding of Paul, the Judaism that Paul responds to
should not be reconstructed from his own texts. Yet, Dunn
argues that Paul does indeed have a quarrel with a real Ju-
daism of his own era when both are viewed as contrary
definitions of the social identity of God’s people. Dunn’s main
thesis is threefold:

1. that Paul’s opposition to the law is concerned primarily with


the inclusion of gentiles and not with the law itself;
2. that the “works of the law” are the boundary-markers of 1st
century (Temple-) Judaism, and
3. that Paul’s doctrine of the justification of the ungodly refers
to the believer being taken up and maintained within the
covenant-community for the sinners in the sense of
gentiles.

Such a view does not slander Judaism. The problem of the


relationship between Israel and the nations was a real problem
within 1st century Judaism. Paul’s solution to that problem dif-
fers from that of mainstream Judaism, but without misre-
presenting the latter. And that in itself is an important gain in
comparison to the theological construction of a Jewish-Chris-
tian conflict in the 1st century about salvation – as it had been
reconstructed so many times.

Dunn’s treatment of the evidence for his thesis is impressive.


Of great importance to my investigation is the view he
propagated both in his The Partings of the Ways (London,

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.

And so we can reconstruct a general position toward the Mo-


saic Law in Paul. If Paul understood the negative function of
the law first of all as a hindrance to the table-communion
between Christians of Jewish and pagan descent, then the
polemic in Romans and Galatians has to be read primarily as a
defense of the social shape of the Church. Furthermore, it
would be obvious why the Mosaic law could be a secondary
source for moral exhortation only, and not the primary legal
code for the Church. Paul could not have accepted a validity of
the Mosaic law if that validity implied a primacy of the Torah
over the Messiah and of Israel over the righteous of the
gentiles. Dunn’s argument amounts to a social re-evaluation of
the function of the law within the Church and he therefore re-
jects any Pauline polemics with the law as such. The law of
Moses had secondary and paraenetical value for Christians,
because they were not “under” the law, but were “in Christ.”

But Dunn’s expanded thesis is not without its own problems.


For one thing, an assessment of Paul’s theology as a whole

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, if we take the Matthew 5 quote as our criterion, the propo-


sed interpretation of Paul leaves little doubt that he would flatly
contradict the Matthean gospel, even more so if the law would
thereby be robbed of some or all of its paraenetical function.
The question we will examine later is, whether this antithesis is
necessary. If Paul’s theology in Romans is not only directed
against the law in its function as boundary marker, but more
precisely against its independent use as a written standard for
behavior, his theology would emphasize a different relationship
to the Mosaic law than was (is) necessary for the Jewish
people, while keeping its (messianically reinterpreted) contents
fully in tact. Paul’s argument would then not only deal with the
social implications of the Torah, but also with a specific view of
the effect of the Torah as a legal code. Dunn’s argument that
the law, understood in terms of faith, deals with the expression
of love in works, involves a change in the way people deal with
the law as a code of rules, yet preserves its capacity to express
God’s intent. But that can be argued as well for the Sermon on
the Mount! The question must then be asked how Matthew and
Paul tried to reshape the concept of obedience to the law in
their Christology without denying the priority of the Mosaic law
for knowing the will of God.

This question must now be raised, whether we ought to choose


between Paul and Matthew in this respect and how we can find
a solution that does justice to both. Here the issue is no longer
29
exegetical only but directly part of systematic theology. What
weight should we give to the reports on Jesus’ teaching and the
Pauline corpus? Some have defended the thesis, already
defended by Bultmann in his Theologie, that Paul’s gospel was
an independent theology, a reflection on the kerygma not
based directly on Jesus’ teachings. But some have evaluated
this fact in different ways. Especially in the Jewish search for
the “real” Jesus the Jewishness of Jesus is emphasized to
such an extent, that there is no room for a gentile Church any
longer.14 Paul’s theology emerges as the real and quite distinct
foundation of a gentile Church, against the dominant Jewish-
Christian witness in Matthew. Such a secondary status
attributed to Paul’s writings, might remove the antithesis found
between Matthew and Paul but it would also set us into the
impossible situation that there is no gospel left for the gentiles.
Matthew’s Jesus would come out supreme because it would be
historically more plausible that Jesus’ teaching was closer to
Judaism. Between such a historical reconstructed Jesus as
pious 1st century Jewish martyr, and the Christology of the
gentile Church, there would be no continuity whatsoever.

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.

There is however also reason enough to review at least some


of the arguments for this new image of Paul. Both E.P. Sanders
and James Dunn have been challenged by Colin G. Kruse on
the issues of the law and the primacy of the social function of
the gospel.

Kruse made a convincing exposition on these issues in his


Paul, the law and Justification. (Leicester, 1996) In his view the
Reformation was right to teach that Paul has argued that the

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

Both covenantal nomism and legalism are thereby excluded


and he can argue then, that there is no special way of salvation
for the Jewish people, apart from Christ. So it is obvious that
although Kruse belongs to those, who have absorbed the
points that Sanders and Dunn have been making and have
come to regard them as meaningful emphases he at the same
time remains adamant in his assessment of Paul as teaching
justification by faith in a traditional sense.16 At least in ex-
perience, Kruse argues, justification is about an individual
finding himself at peace with God and being freed from the
Mosaic law.

The conclusion that Kruse draws from his re-evaluation of


Dunn’s work is motivated clearly by a Lutheran perspective, but
the arguments that Kruse has brought into the dialogue are
important to note nonetheless. Dunn’s thesis can only be
affirmed partially in Kruse’s view: Paul did emphasize the
abrogation of any application of the Mosaic law that hindered
the social shape of the Church as a communion of Jews and

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.

1. the renewal of Paul’s position trying to find the continuity


with Jesus’ original teaching, exemplified by James Dunn.
His main thesis is, that justification of the ungodly gentiles
implies the acceptance of non-Jews in the new covenant
without the boundary markers of circumcision and dietary
laws that belong to the nationalist use of the law as a mark
of righteousness for Israel. The Mosaic law is then a
secondary source of paraenesis because the ‘righteous
demand of the law” must be read in terms of Christ’s
commandment to love the neighbor. “Walking in the Spirit”
replaces the Jewish Halakah as an incomplete analogue.
2. the appreciation of Paul’s reflective theology as secondary
to Jesus’ own teachings but fundamental to the gospel of
the Christian Church along the classic lines of Bultmann in
which the law-free anti-Jewish gospel is the fundament of
all Christian theology, implying the abrogation of the Mosaic
law and
3. the re-establishment of Paul’s theology as the first and
adequate explanation of the gospel of Christ even against
the implicit theology of the gospel writers as we find e.g. in
Colin Kruses’ work, in which the condemnatory function of
the law is reasserted.

In whatever direction we would want to find the answer, this at


32
least is clear: the function of the Mosaic law (and thereby the
concrete shape of Christian ethics) in Christianity depends on
the interpretation of its status now that Christ had come. The
individual and social reading of Paul’s position must waver
between two positions with regard to the Mosaic law: either it is
exclusively the constitution of Israel, including at the most a
minority of Jewish Christians. In that case Christ abolished the
law at least for His disciples. Or – and this is in fact a fourth
option that I will try to defend - it is addressed to both Jew and
gentile through the coming of the messianic Age, constituting a
new community in which the Mosaic law continues to function
though in a different manner for Jew and gentile. In that case
Jesus fulfilled the law by bringing it to eschatological com-
pletion and upheld its formal validity. The question then re-
mains in what manner the Mosaic law has validity for non-
Jewish Christians.

To ascertain that, we must answer the secondary question of


how the Mosaic law addresses people. First of all: which
people? Israel or the Church? An emphasis on the Mosaic
covenant and its social boundary markers of circumcision,
kashrut and Levitical purity limits the function of the law
severely. It becomes the basic charter of Israel alone. The
moral function of the law, so appealing to the godfearers that
were attracted to Judaism in the 1st century, seems to
transform the constitution of a people into the universal moral
guidebook for individuals. Most common indeed is the Re-
formation’s view, more than 15 centuries later, of the law
addressing primarily individuals and not communities in order
to prepare them for the reception of the gospel. James Dunn on
the contrary had shown that Paul at least had communities in
mind when he addressed these issues in Romans, Galatians
and Ephesians. So it could not be held that the law addresses
the Jewish nation first and foremost and gentile individuals in a
secondary sense only. In Paul’s mind, the formal validity of the
law was restricted to Israel and it made no sense to him to
adopt the law as an individual believer. But is there a
necessary disjunction between a validity of the Mosaic law for
Israel first and for the Church in a modified sense as well? After
all, the teachers of Israel did envision the rule of Torah for all
peoples in the era of the Messiah. It can be maintained that the
Mosaic law addresses both Israel and the Church, but does so
33
in a different manner and through different historic channels.

Neither is it necessary to limit the function of the Mosaic law for


gentile individuals if Israel in its own prophetical tradition
expects the entrance of peoples into the Mosaic covenant,
while accepting a joining of individuals into Israel in the present
era. There is also no theological reason for Christians to sup-
pose that the opposite emphasis on the social dimension of
justification as a “setting the relationship right” or “enabling
humans to comply with the known will of God” cannot be
combined with an understanding of an “imputation of righte-
ousness” to the individual as such. John Howard Yoder has
argued in his “Justification by Grace Alone” that we need to
object to a doctrine of justification that would exclude the social
and ethical dimension.17 But the correct inference from that
position must be that both dimensions need to be addressed.
The social emphasis cannot replace the Reformation’s
insistence on the individuality of faith, but may deepen its
meaning and widen its horizon. In short, the acceptance of a
validity of the law for Israel does not mean the Church cannot
in its own way, on the basis of the authority of its Teacher and
Lord, accept that validity for itself, nor does that mean, that
such a validity addresses only individuals and not the Church
as such.

So how could such a merger between the individualistic and


social dimension of justification come about? And what function
if any would the Mosaic law have in this connection? The
doctrine of “justification by faith alone” in its 16th century
Reformation shape, was up to a point individualistic. But there
is a possible exception to be made for the Anabaptist-
Mennonite emphasis on the “pure” Church and its insistence on
holiness and moral purity for the congregation as such.
Between the “magisterial” and the Radical Reformation this
social and ethical dimension of the gospel was one of the main
areas of dispute. Because of this, Mennonite theology has had
a strong if not exclusive emphasis on the moral way of life of a
community that is the result of and contemporaneous with
redemption. It is therefore an intuition that we derive from our
understanding of the 16th century Anabaptist-Mennonite
movement, that we translate into a question that we address to

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?

John Howard Yoder expressed the primacy of doing concrete


ethics in the concept of Nachfolge forcefully in his Politics of
Jesus. Taking as his starting point the conviction that Paul’s
polemics was aimed at the exclusion of gentiles from the
Church that was the result of a specific way of incorporating
Jewish law, he finds that social ethics is the main form of faith-
obedience in the gospel. Jesus Christ is the norm for the ethics
of the Church, which means that for Yoder too, Christian ethics
is Christologically defined. The Sermon on the Mount is a way
of life, not part of an indictment to be overcome through the
general amnesty of justification by grace. The key to under-
standing Paul’s doctrine of justification is to Yoder not so much
Romans and Galatians but Ephesians 2:14. The law that has
been set “out of order” is here epitomized in the boundary
markers for Israel. The “removal” of the law not so much
indicates a change in the will of God, but a change in the social
status of God’s people. The ethics that may develop on the
basis of the social and moral re-evaluation of justification by
faith, emphasizes the this-worldly elements of Jubilee, the
practice of reconciliation, peace-witness and the like. Part of
our investigation will focus on this possibility of combining what
seemed impossible to combine before: the Mosaic law as
source for the understanding of the will of God in its messianic
shape for the Church and Israel in different manners and the
dual perspective of the validity of law and gospel to individuals
and the ‘redeemed community” alike.

So how could one hope to answer the questions outlined


above? It seemed necessary to me to combine the different
dimensions of the question, history of theology, exegesis and
philosophy, in the following investigation. The concept of faith
as obedience, the role of the law in the life of faith, the sources
of ethical rules for the Christian both as individual and as
community, need to be found within Scripture, and with an
open mind for the Jewish background in which they developed.
That defines this inquiry as an exercise in biblical theology. But
these questions are not purely exegetical. The dimension of the
debate in which they are to be set is the development of the
35
doctrinal core of Christian ethics in the post-Reformation era:
the doctrine of justification and its corollary in sanctification. I
hope to show here, that Mennonite doctrine is centered around
an experiential emphasis within the doctrine of justification by
faith that allows no rift between justification and sanctification.
(But it has tended sometimes to obscure this core element of
the gospel, by teaching an independent emphasis on
sanctification as a human effort to comply with evangelical law.)
That defines this inquiry as an exercise in (the history of)
systematic theology.

One last dimension needs to be introduced. The tension be-


tween the social and individual dimension of Christian ethics,
between grace and obedience, gospel and law and the like,
require also an understanding of the philosophical presup-
positions involved. The theological appreciation of Paul’s
“major” doctrine has been influenced in its various stages by
dominating strands of general thought. The 16th century dis-
covery e.g. of the inwardness of human self-consciousness in
moral introspection as exemplified paradigmatically in the work
of Descartes paved the way for the concept of cognitive auto-
nomy in the philosophy of the Enlightenment. Lutheranism,
Wesleyanism and modern forms of evangelical conservatism
with their strong emphasis on the inner nature of faith, all
emphasize the personal and experiential nature of guilt and
the imputation of righteousness. Though equally centered on
the self and inwardness, they do not accept the modern claim
of moral and cognitive autonomy that found its proponent in the
philosophy of Kant and the like. The doctrine of justification in
its secular counterpart from the late 18th century Socinians up
to the late 19th century Modernists re-interpreted it to refer to
that same moral autonomy, using the philosophical paradigm of
moral autonomy as the foundation of theology. Nearly all 19th
century forms of modernism and 20th century shades of
liberalism followed that direction of trying to find a foundation
for religion in human reason. The evangelical insistence on
individual guilt and redemption made ethics into a secondary
corollary of the gospel whereas modernism and liberalism
tended to emphasize autonomous ethics without a basis in
divine authority.

It is obvious that within the confines of this book no full philo-


sophical line of questioning could be developed. I hope to deal
36
with elements of this philosophical dimension in a later study.
The importance of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant both for
ethical issues as such and as source for our understanding of
modern liberal theologies cannot be overstated. The concept of
moral and cognitive autonomy found in his work a well rea-
soned defense. In our time, the most prominent philosophy that
opposes the Kantian (and Lutheran) paradigm of autonomy, is
to be found in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. The
importance of both with respect to this study lies in the fact that
Kant is the proponent of that form of secular “justification” that
shows the inner logic of that doctrine combined with the
presuppositions of the 16th century Lutheran Reformation: its
insistence on human self-consciousness as the medium and
maybe even source of truth. In the field of ethics, the univer-
sality of the Good, the insistence that outward duty and
legalism are to be distinguished from the inner free resolve to
do the Good out of deference for human reason as such, are
principles that cast their shadow in many commentaries on
Paul’s writings – up to and including Adolf Schlatter and Rudolf
Bultmann.

The contribution of Emmanuel Levinas to this discussion lies


primarily in his apology for the fundamental heteronomy of
ethics and his contention that this does not constitute the
legalist outwardness that was the foe of Kantianism, but
describes the original dimension of the primacy of the Other, on
which all ethics (including the social morality of the state)
ultimately rests – and by which the latter is judged. In dealing
with the key texts in the New Testament it became clear to me
that there is an inner “resonance” between its messianically
explained Torah and basic motives that ground Levinas’ Jewish
philosophy.

The benefits of combining these perspectives are numerous.


My exegetical discussion e.g. has benefited greatly by this
philosophical re-evaluation of heteronomy. In the reading of
Romans and Galatians I have had to show what Paul intended
to convey by the key concepts of justification and life in the
Spirit. The formal and material status of the Mosaic law in
Christian paraenesis must be explained. I hope to show, that
Paul intended justification to include the notion of enablement
and (objective) sanctification but excluded the return to an
37
ethics-as-usual. The life in the spirit contains the proper key for
understanding the ongoing role of the Mosaic law in ethical
discernment. Nevertheless, in this emphasis on the spiritual
mode of ethical life, Paul did not in fact move away from the
teachings of Christ as recorded in the gospel of Matthew as
one might have thought by reading “spirit” along the lines of
Kantian ‘inwardness.” The element of the Spirit in Pauline
theology seems concerned with safeguarding the heteronomy
of Christian ethics, not establishing a new autonomy of freedom
– understood in a modern sense – over against the letter of the
law.

The notions of autonomy and heteronomy also served as a re-


search tool within the exegesis. One of the problems I faced
was the relationship between the gospel of Paul and the letter
of James. It seemed at first as if James could only be seen as a
deviation from the Pauline gospel and a return from the
Christian freedom of Paul to the heteronomy of the law in
James. But there is no need to affirm a dichotomy between
Paul’s and James’ gospel. It has become highly probable to
me, that if the writer of James did know about the Pauline
doctrine of justification by faith he would have rejected it as
inconsistent with the teachings of Jesus in so far as it implied a
separation of justification and sanctification.18 (But of course as
I will show, Paul did not actually teach that.) Without the
application of an absolute Pauline primacy, without a reading of
justification as a separate and complete act of God and without
a bias in favor of a spiritualized ethics, this can be more easily
detected. James can provide us with a necessary corrective in
our understanding of Paul. The same goes for our reading of
passages in Matthew that outright defend an ongoing validity of
the Mosaic law in its messianic shape. Here the interpretation
has found another barrier to its inclination to read antinomism
in Paul. In evaluating these exegetical ways of approach
philosophy may aid us. Kant and Levinas can provide us with
two different paradigms that place the reading of the texts in a
new and different light. Kantian autonomy and Levinas’ hete-
ronomy are conflicting perspectives in modern culture through
which different models of Christian ethics can be construed.
For the great hindrance in the reading of Paul since the 17th
century has been the collision between the self-evident prin-

18
Cf. Robbert Veen, Fulfillment of the Law, Huizen, 2005.
38
ciples of human autonomy and the life under obligation.

Finally, as to the result I think might be achieved, I hope to


show that the center of the New Testament ethics lies in the
concept of faith as active and concrete obedience to the
commandments of Christ, which include the messianically
interpreted Torah, in the context of the redeemed community,
on the sole basis of justification by God’s grace – a grace that
is external and imputative as well as intrinsic and active. God’s
act in calling humans to faith, restoring the relationship with
them through the Cross and resurrection of Christ is the full
foundation of ethics. Without the Cross, there is no possibility
for Christian ethics. However, the Cross becomes effective in
the resurrection. The continuity between Jesus’ messianic
Halakah19, Paul’s law-free gospel and James’ Torah-obedience
is the notion that God calls people to become obedient to Him
through Jesus Christ who is the appointed Sovereign of the
world and enables them to do so by giving them an “amnesty”
for their sins as well as regeneration and the new life. The
ecclesia is called to display now in obedient witness and
suffering, the character of the new humanity, that God will
ultimately establish on Christ’s return but gives already to the
faithful as an inner and outer transformation of their lives.

I contend that this view on the particular nature of Christian


ethics, is consistent with a fair reading of Paul, the gospels and
basic tenets of Mennonite tradition. It leads us to a renewal of
Mennonite theology, where it becomes clear that a reappraisal
of the function of the Mosaic law and Christian halakah is now
in order. But I must make clear from the start, that I do not
mean by this renewed emphasis on sanctification any sort of
moralist appeal to do good works. Justification by faith and
sanctification are both divine works in man, and we should
beware of any return to the kind of moralism that has obscured
the central meaning of justification by faith in Mennonite
theology. 20 My effort here is not to be listed in the inventory of

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.

and intrinsic connection.


40
b. Methods of investigation and
presuppositions

The exegetical questions that I have set myself to answer arise


primarily from the observation that in protestant theology the
issue of ethics has been dealt with as a corollary of the doctrine
of justification, and that this doctrine is strongly dependent
upon a specific way to read Paul, esp. his letters to the
Galatians and Romans. If the goal of ethics is to understand
what makes a man righteous or what righteousness is, then the
doctrine of justification can be seen as the foundational res-
ponse to that question. Our specific exegetical inquiry is
therefore after the formulation of the doctrine of justification in
the letters of Paul to the Galatians and to the Romans as the
foundation for ethics in comparison with differing traditions in
the New Testament itself. I start from the possibility that
justification is an ambiguous term, referring both to a divine
initiating act of salvation and a process of transformation in
man that is usually called sanctification. Is it about man’s indi-
vidual behavior, the status of redemption before God in a divine
amnesty, the condition of a community, or combinations of
these? If we accept the basic outlines of the discourse on justi-
fication in Mennonite theology, what type of Christian ethics
would then be its result?

In particular my exegetical aims are the following:

y I will attempt a presentation of Paul’s doctrine of justi-


fication that will bring out the intrinsic connection between
God’s redeeming act as justification and the transformation
of human ethics both in the individual believer and in the
Church. I will make extensive use of E. P. Sanders and J.
D. G. Dunn and a major critique of this reappraisal: G.
Kruse, to formulate the doctrine and its consequences for
the foundations of Christian ethics.

y I will try to establish to what degree and in what sense the


New Testament allows for the concept of obedience in
faith. Can it rank equally with Paul’s concept of trans-
formation through the Spirit? My intent was to test the
41
position provided e.g. by my teacher R. Zuurmond that the
rejection of “salvation by works of the law” precludes all
heteronomous obedience and morality, and that Paul in
fact transforms all ethics into a spirit-driven inner attitude.
Contrariwise, if it could be shown that Paul lends support to
the concept of a Christian halakah,21 specifically in his
paraenetical address to the Romans, things would look
different. Paul’s concept of life in the spirit might then be
taken as a metaphor for the renewal of the condition of
human beings within a fundamentally transformed commu-
nity that is consistent with such obedience, and not as a
possible basis for the “inner” morality of modernity.

y I have already attempted to show that the New Testament


vision of ethics, as exemplified by the gospel of Matthew, is
patterned more on obedience to concrete and specific
commandments than on either an “enthusiast” spirit-driven
life or an inner morality of conscience. In general, my aim is
to find the biblical basis for the concept of heteronomous
obedience as the grounding concept for Christian ethics.22

Furthermore, the issue of justification is intrinsically linked to


the issue of the status of the Mosaic law, as a cursory glance at
the context of the term in Romans will show. To be justified
does not mean to live righteously according to the precepts of
the law, but still the demands of the law need to be met in
some fashion. Even in the argument that justification is a divine
act of grace to which we respond in faith, the law might still be
construed as a primary source for our understanding of the
ethical life. This role of the law in the argument for justification
by faith and its expression in the gospels needs to be distin-
guished and brought into a correlative and synoptic view. In the
chapters on Jesus’ attitude toward the Mosaic law I will try to
show both the continuity and the discrepancy between the
gospel account of the law and Paul’s theological reflection on
its purpose and function.

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 .

y In my estimate the primacy of the canon-historical approach


(in combination with the “narrative” hermeneutics of the
Amsterdam School) gives us both a view on the final
redaction stage as the basis for all exegesis and a
perspective on the relative weight of its various parts based
on the reception of the New Testament in early Church
history. We need such a reflection on the canonicity of the
New Testament to establish the relative weight we must
give to James and Paul, e.g., with regard to the issues over
which they seem divided, if we are to proceed from the
domain of exegesis into the area of systematic theology.
The history of the canon may provide a basis for an integral
reading of the entire New Testament and allow us to
determine the relative weight of its parts, assuming that
inclusion in the canon does not in itself imply an intentional
doctrinal harmony or establish that a meta-narrative of
revelational history separates Christ’s teachings from post-
resurrection theology, affirming one or the other as
decisive.23

y The narrative approach. Basic methodological viewpoints


and techniques of the Amsterdam School of Biblical
Hermeneutics are used, in particular its insistence that the
text itself must give us the data on which we base structural
divisions and decide on context and meaning. The notion
that the final redactor effectively functions as the author and
intends the whole of the text to be precisely “as is” provides
a major counterweight to the cutting up of texts into compo-
nents and the need to hypothesize about their possible
separate contexts. For a review of these principles I refer to
Voices in Amsterdam: A modern Tradition of reading
Biblical Narrative (Atlanta, 1994).

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.

y Jewish background - Knowledge of the thought patterns of


1st-century Palestinian Judaism may provide us with insight
into the probable historical and possible systematic context
of the received saying of Jesus, and the understanding of
the logic of Paul’s argument, so that we may infer how
interpretations altered (without denying the continuity that
can be ascertained in many cases), how arguments were
born out of a specific conflict or were reapplied to different
circumstances by different spokesmen for different
communities.

In this manner, the text as we have it becomes a dynamic and


fluid pattern of thoughts and movements of interpretation con-
stituting the theological discourse that underlies the New Tes-
tament as a whole. A basic result is the insight that in the gos-
pels we still have more or less unaltered materials, some of
which are shared by two or more of them; we have a common
narrative framework which sets these gospels apart from others
like the gospel of Thomas; we have a narrative reflection on the
meaning and/or context of the material that was handed down
in early tradition, i.e., we have a specific theology working
implicitly and explicitly in the arrangement of the text and the
redactional additions.

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.

It is important to note that the actual shape of the text as we


have it is the permanent basis for all possible explanations,
including hypotheses concerning its genesis and origin. We
should therefore grant to the actual existence of the text a high
priority above all our theorizing about its production, even if we
would not simply turn to dogmatics to affirm the principle that
the Bible is after all a book of the Church and has been ac-
cepted by the Church as the witness of prophets and apostles
to God’s revelation.

It is particularly the fourth element of this outline of my


approach (the Jewish background) that may present us with an
important new image of the background of the texts. What E. P.
Sanders called a ‘pattern of religion’24 - in his case that of early
Rabbinic Judaism, which was the recipient of Pharisaic tradition
- is the closest we can get from the rabbinic material to the

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.

Such a synthetic methodology with the aid of rabbinic material


might be better equipped to deal with the sayings of Jesus than
those New Testament studies that take Jesus’ position towards
Judaism and the law as amounting a priori to the complete
rejection of Pharisaism and the abolition of the law. That
position too simply equates the 2nd- or 16th-century under-
standing of the gospel with the context and intent behind the
particular sayings. It presupposes an identity between that
theology, the theology of the gospel writers, and the procla-
mation of the kingdom by Jesus, or it proclaims that Jesus’
teachings were only the presupposition of that theology and
not part of its contents and dynamic development,25 instead of
applying the less stringent concepts of dynamic continuity and
reflective stages that allows for greater differences and more
complex relations between the voices heard.

In many approaches there is also the assumption of contextual


integrity, i.e. the assumption that the context adequately
expresses or is a vehicle for the original intent of the passage.
The principle that authentic Jesus’ sayings would be those, that
dissent from Judaism, is a case in point. It accepts the
dissenting context as the main indicator for the dissenting
nature of what Jesus said and after interpreting it like that, uses
it as support for the thesis that the saying or logion would have
to have been incongruent with Judaism as well to be re-
membered and recorded in the first place. The uncritical accep-
tance of the denominator ‘“Pharisees” and its implicit gene-
ralization help further that impression. However, the opposite is
more likely: i.e. that traditions in the mixed Church after or
around the destruction of the Temple would have the tendency
on account of its own heightened awareness of the growing rift

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

This is the common view: in his letters Paul responds to


pastoral problems in the Churches he had founded or had
assumed responsibility for, and in so doing he occasionally
explains doctrinal issues insofar as they seem to be relevant to
those problems. Since Martin Dibelius, it has been held that
Paul’s ethical passages are a form of paraenesis, blocks of
moral maxims and advice without intrinsic connection to each
other or to the doctrinal parts of the letter.26 Paul did not
formulate an ethical code like the Mishnah, and his ethical
discourse does indeed give the impression of being random
collections. Dibelius argued that these ethical passages were
written in a different style, without religious or theological
foundation, often in the form of proverbs. They were not written
with a specific community in mind but for a general pedagogical
purpose; in short, the ethical blocks are repetitions of general
instructions given to new converts. They are furthermore based
on general Christian tradition and do not contain any spe-
cifically Pauline thought. The ethical vacuum that was opened
up by the delayed coming of the kingdom was filled with a form
of ethics that was derived from the outside world and was not
specifically Christian.

It may be a matter of how the paraenetical material is read and


approached in the first place. H. D. Betz argued, much in line
with the classic view of Dibelius, that the letter to the Galatians,
our subject in the following chapters, did not contain a specific
Christian ethics. “The Christian is addressed as an educated
and responsible person...In a rather conspicuous way Paul
conforms to the ethical thought of his contemporaries.”27 The
support for that thesis lies in the observation that the parae-
netical material is (1) without internal connections, as if it were
a mere list of popular moral maxims that were Christianized in
a superficial manner, (2) without direct reference to the

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.

Betz’s view was published in 1979 and the matter seemed


decided. But perspectives changed nonetheless. Dunn
expressed in 1993, in his commentary on Galatians, that
Dibelius’s assumptions as to the manner of tradition that had
governed thinking about paraenesis were unnecessary. “We
need not assume use of fixed or established catechetical
material. On the contrary, here [reference is to Gal. 5:13-6:10 –
RAV] the terms of the paraenesis seem largely to have been
determined by the circumstances addressed .”28 By the
circumstances? Could Paul have adapted himself to the
“ethical thought of his contemporaries” because the most
determining factor “in these circumstances” was the imminent
parousia? Did Paul in fact expect his pagan audience to adopt
moral norms from the surrounding culture and Christianize
them? The imminence of the parousia might have led to the
conclusion that there was no time and no need to formulate a
specific Christian halakah. The Christians’ ethic was an “interim
ethics,” a way of obliging the old order while the new was on
the brink of making its appearance. Is this however sufficient?
Or is there a more intrinsic connection between the paraenesis
and the doctrinal foundation? After all, the doctrinal parts of
both Galatians and Romans are dominated by the issue of
justification, a term with which Paul certainly addresses the
basic condition or situation of ethics. Bultmann’s general
contention, that in Paul’s work the imperative follows the indica-
tive, provides us with an example of such an assumed intrinsic
connection. But even then, the paraenetical material seems
disconnected from Paul’s major theological themes. Bultmann
explains this with reference to the parousia and the fun-
damental change in the ethical situation.

We are left with the challenging question of whether the


paraenetical material was simply adopted from the en-

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.

Let us take a look first at this general “indicative” that provides


the basis for Paul’s ethics as it appears in Richard Hays’ book
on the ethics of the New Testament. We will use that later on
to see whether such a general outline of the indicative back-
ground of Paul’s paraenesis gives us sufficient clues to
understand the passages in question. Richard Hays has
managed to rework Bultmann’s general thesis in an ethical
context, and that is why we chose to discuss his thesis first. To
be clear, this “general” framework is to be distinguished from
Paul’s doctrine of justification, which is the systematic out-
working of the situation of humanity based on God’s redeeming
action in Christ. Here we speak of the pattern of various mo-
tives that Paul brings into play or presupposes in his
paraenesis, and which makes it possible to see organization in
the contents itself, even where the discursive context will not
provide one.

Hays gives three “recurrent, interlocking theological motifs that


provide the framework for Paul’s ethical teaching: eschatology,
the cross, and the new community in Christ.” 29

the eschatological motif

Hays contends that Paul’s ethics is only intelligible when we


keep in mind that he had an “apocalyptic” perspective on the
historic reality of the Church. The vocation of the Church lies in
its role within “the cosmic drama of God’s reconciliation of the
world to himself.” But what perspective did Paul have? A major

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:

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new


creature: old things have passed away; behold, all
things are become new. (KJV)

Such a verse may provide a general perspective on ethics. If


we understand it the way the KJV suggests, we accept that a
convert to Christianity (someone who is “in” Christ, has been
baptized and is saved) belongs to the new age. As an
individual he is transformed from the old sinful creation to a
new order of life. That would imply that the behavior we can
expect of such a person is fully congruous with an unseen
reality: the present reign of the Kingdom of heaven. But the
translation is faulty, as Hays explains. It must be:

Therefore, if any man be in Christ, there is a new


creation. (or:, a new creation!)

If in our present anyone can profess to belong to Christ, which


would probably mean something like being part of Christ’s
body, i.e., the Church, then that in itself means that the new
creation is already present and active. But that new reality need
not be fully realized by the individual in his or her practical life.
The bearer of this new reality is the congregation or the Church
as a whole. In other words, it is primarily through the social
reality of the convert that his belonging to the new era is
expressed.

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.

Yoder, who similarly accepts the corrected translation of the


passage in 2 Corinthians, developed this same idea. The
Church’s being present in this world as the sign of the new
creation is morally determined by this fact. Far from making
ethical judgments pointless, this eschatological perspective
actually defines the specific ethics of the Church. The escha-
tological dimension of her existence, the then that is already
now, defines her approach to obedience in many ways. Yoder
listed them in his “Christ, the Hope of the World.” 31 To quote
just a few:

y If eschatology defines us, then we can abandon, e.g., the


need for a causal link between our obedience and the
results we hope for (p. 203). “We obey in a world that we
do not control.”

y The immediate result might not be clear, but there may be


results in a future beyond our reckoning. We may be
pouring water into the desert, but the combined result of
these actions might be that the water is there, and plenty of
it, when some day a lonely wanderer needs it most. The
meaning of what we do lies not in its productivity, but in its
sometimes very real significance as a sign.

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.

y To act in accordance with a transcendent hope might be as


relevant as seeing a mirage. Though the mirage shows us
a reality in a different place from where it really is, it still
accurately depicts that reality in itself. The kingdom of God
might not be on our doorstep, not on our horizon, but
knowing it is there somewhere might give us courage
based on a reality and not on fantasy. So the Church is the
community of hope, which allows its actions to be guided by
the transcendent ideal of the kingdom and not the realities
of everyday life. And if it does, it actually becomes the
righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21). The Church is a pre-
view of the community of the future; it already unfolds the
righteousness that is the characteristic of the new age,
precisely because it already acts in conformity with that
transcendent ideal in a world that is still governed by the
rules of the order of sin and power.

It is in this perspective that it can be understood why Paul em-


phasizes the role of the Spirit so much. In Galatians the
experience of the indwelling of the Spirit serves as one of the
major factors in deciding the issue of the role of the law and the
necessity of circumcision (Gal. 3:2). The presence of the Spirit
is not only a sign and foretaste of the things to come, but it is
the reality of the coming era itself. (In 2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5 the
expression arrabon, meaning “first installment,” refers to the
reality, not the sign.32) The Spirit thus enables action in
conformity with the kingdom right away, even if it is confined
within the remains of the old age. That is why obedience takes
on the shape of suffering and cross. However, contrary to
Hays, Yoder holds that the Church does not stand “between
the times” as does the world; she already belongs to the new
era through the spirit. Moral exhortation in the perspective of
the Church as being the new Creature must be different from
both the traditional view of the individual’s bearing the
responsibility for new behavior (and succeeding only in

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.

the motif of the cross

Hays takes as his second ethical paradigm that of the cross,


which he characterizes as the “paradigm of faithfulness.”33 The
loving, self-sacrificial obedience of Christ as depicted in the
Philippian hymn (Phil. 2:1-13) is the pattern for Christian obe-
dience. In passing we may note that to Hays this is the real
content of the expression “law of Christ” in Gal. 6:2. To fulfill the
law of Christ by bearing one another’s burdens is to act in
conformity with the pattern of life and death of Christ. In
general, the model for obedience itself is obedience to God, in
the service of man, to death. It functions as the exact antithesis
of Adam’s rebellion, which was defiance of God’s will for self-
serving purposes and which brought death to all. Identifying
with Christ will not mean the removal of death in a physical
sense. But sharing in His life implies sharing His death and
resurrection. The motif also signifies a meaningfulness of
suffering, when this is a result of our obedience, and makes
patience and endurance into one of the most basic Christian
virtues. We will deal with this motif again at the end of this
study.34

the redeemed community

Finally, the third motif of Paul’s ethical discourse is the


redeemed community. We will see in our discussion of
Galatians how important this notion of the unity of the Church
was to Paul. Circumcision for some in the Church would entail
erecting fresh barriers where none could have been intended.
The vices enumerated in Gal. 5 are offenses against the
community. Paul’s decisions concerning the eating of meat
consecrated to idols, in 1 Cor., tell the same message. Paul
was adamant that there could be no social barriers within the
Church. The particular community of the Church was to be
ruled by new marks of participation: baptism, confession,
experience of the Holy Spirit. All three served to define parti-
cipants in the Church as members of the body of Christ, as

33
Ibid., p. 27
34
See chapter 43
54
unified beyond the pluralistic diversity within (formal) unity that
society could offer.

All three of these motifs then work together to provide a


framework within which Paul’s ethical discourse can be under-
stood as a unity rather than as Dibelius’s blocks of paraenesis
without context or coherence. Of course, all of them are inter-
locked theologically. The cross is a paradigm of obedience as
well as the real event that brings in the eschatological kingdom
and grounds the new community. So, if we need to make a
choice, the cross would be the most powerful paradigm of them
all, since it by itself constitutes the others. On the other hand,
one might be tempted to add to the list of motifs by making
distinctions between the various ways they are brought into
play and to list the other concepts that co-define Paul’s
thinking, such as righteousness, salvation, faith, incarnation,
covenant. All of these function in various ways to define the
ethical situation as well. For our purposes, it is useful to adopt
Hays’s suggestion that these three are the theological
convictions that are at the basis of Paul’s ethical thinking and to
demand that all three of them be used to adequately interpret
any single Pauline statement. Nevertheless, though helpful in
defining the background of the intent behind Paul’s paraenesis,
especially in the context of doctrinal letters like Romans and
Galatians, we must still seek what drives the shape of this
paraenesis formally. We will contend that obedience in faith is
still the best way of approaching the form of the Pauline
exhortation.

We need to add one dimension to the three motifs of Richard


Hays. Paul’s ethics, as defined by the three motifs, is pastoral
in its nature. That means that its formulation was usually
connected to the real circumstances of Church life, addressed
to real participants in particular conflicts, meant to change local
conditions. Pauline paraenesis, far from consisting of separate
and isolated blocks of tradition, was intended for a specific time
and place from which it receives a specific coherence. Further-
more, Paul’s ethics was never intended for the whole Church,
but only for the gentile Church that he ministered to, and he
was never their only authority. The Jerusalem Church and the
other apostles in general never relinquished their own apostolic
mission for the Church as a whole, but yielded to Paul’s
55
primacy only in his mission to the gentiles. That Paul needed
approval from the Jerusalem Church is obvious from Galatians
and Acts, as we will discuss shortly. Nevertheless, for the
history of Christian ethics it is important to note in passing that
this was not how the Church came to read Paul. Soon he
became the sole authority in matters of doctrine and ethics.

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

Beker puts it like this:

The specificity and occasional character of the letters


was felt to be a hindrance to their catholicity once the
letters were collected and later canonized [italics
mine]. Therefore steps were taken to minimize their
particularity and heighten their catholicity and doctrinal
uniformity.

It is doubtful, however, that this “hindrance” was only felt after


collection and canonization. John Miller will be our guide for a
moment.36 The addition of the apostolic writings to the Hebrew
Bible had in itself a specific intentionality. It was motivated in

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

As John Miller states it, the Christian Bible was formed as a


quick response to a theological challenge.38 In the third and
fourth centuries the gentile Church began to publish the Greek
translation of the Hebrew Bible in a specific order and com-
bined them into one Bible together with a selection of apostolic
writings to form the prototypes of our modern Bible, producing
the Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus, and Codex Alexan-
drinus as the chief surviving examples. As Miller explains,
before this era the Hebrew Bible was taken for granted as a
common source of revelation for Judaism and Jewish Chris-
tianity. The issue that divided them was the question of the
fulfillment of scripture in Christ. With the Marcionite challenge in
the third and fourth centuries, this situation came to an abrupt
end. The question now became whether Judaism and Chris-
tianity had anything to do with each other at all.39 It was only
after Marcion had published his canon-codex of the New
Testament that Church leaders responded by creating their
own counter-canon.

Marcion’s position was simple and clear. Amongst all the


apostles, it was only Paul who stood out as a faithful witness of
the evangelical truth. All other apostles, in particular Paul’s
opponents in Galatia and Rome, had been false apostles,
because of their loyalty to the law and the prophets.40 The
Church now took over Marcion’s collection, comprising Luke
and the Pauline letters, but placed it in a different context. Luke
was now surrounded by Mark and John, and the Pauline letters

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

Miller explains the rearrangement of the Pauline letters as


follows. Romans is taken up as the first letter, which placed
Paul’s quite modest statement that the gospel “was promised
long ago through the prophets in the holy scripture” (Rom. 1:1)
at the opening of the collection. The letters that were added to
the collection view Jesus as someone who was preceded by
others, emphasizing the chain of tradition that linked the new to
the old covenant (cf. Heb. 1:1). The opening four gospels,
together, in contrast to Marcion’s gospel by itself, show Paul to
be just one apostle in a missionary movement addressed to the
whole world. In the oldest codices, Paul’s letters are preceded
by Jewish-Christian letters, implying that James and Peter are
just as important as Paul. By putting 2 Peter before Paul’s
letters, the statement that Paul’s letters can be misconstrued
and are difficult to read serves as warning beforehand.42 The
whole was added to the Old Testament and closed with
Revelation, implying again that Paul’s mission was just part of a
larger narrative. Finally, all of this together meant that Paul had
become just one of the perspectives within the apostolic
tradition and no longer the single truth that Marcion had made
him out to be.43 In a way, the order of the books in the canon
now reflected the pre-Marcionite understanding of Paul’s
relative role.

Marcion’s insistence on the shorter canon was of course


theologically motivated by the antithesis between law and
gospel that made him state that the Old Testament had a
different God than did the writings of Paul and Luke. In
opposition to that, when the 4th-century codices opened the
New Testament canon with Matthew, the relevance of the law

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.

The concept of contemporaneity with Christ might have had a


hand in this. The older strata in the New Testament were not
simply abolished by the newer in the sense of a gradual
unfolding of the gospel, with Paul, in the center, determining
the meaning of the gospels in hindsight and laying the
foundation for the practical application of the pastoral letters
and the historical perspective of the Revelation of John.
Through this narrative framework the unity and catholicity of all
the apostolic writings could be maintained, and the order of
books provided some suggestion that any interpretation of its
parts needed to take account of all. In the New Testament the
apostolic witness was measured by its faithfulness to Jesus’
teachings, not its closeness to Jesus in time, the gospels
therefore became more authoritative than the letters both in a
doctrinal and a hermeneutic sense.

But the recontextualization was in a way undone. Beker


describes the reasoning behind the process of making Paul
more “catholic” as follows:

There is evidence that when 1 Corinthians headed the


list of the Pauline collection, the superscription was
enlarged in a catholic sense (cf. 1 Cor. 1:2, "together
with all those who in every place call on the name of
our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours’).
Because in all probability (cf. Tertullian and the
Muratorian Canon) Corinthians opened the original list
of the Pauline letters and Romans closed it, Rom.
16:25-27 functioned as the ending of the total
collection. Its peculiar style, terminology, and general
tone point to a non-Pauline hand; it most certainly
displaced Rom. 16:24 when the letters were collected.
60
On the basis of evidence of the early use of Romans,
1 Corinthians, and Ephesians, Nils Alstrup Dahl cor-
rectly surmises that even before the “official” collection
of the Pauline letters, individual letters circulated in the
Churches. In all these cases, geographical particularity
was omitted for catholic reasons. This would explain,
according to Dahl, the omission of Rome in Rom. 1:7
and 15, the omission of a geographic reference in Eph
1:1-2 (which Dahl considers to be a Pauline letter),
and the catholic address of 1 Cor. 1:1. Moreover, 2
Thessalonians may have circulated as well without
geographic address. (Polycarp points to a Philippian
address [Pol. Phil. 11.3; cf. 3.2].) 44

Beker’s argument points to an early attempt, even before and


outside Marcionite circles, to make Paul into the deciding
authority within the apostolic witness. Important for our
purposes is Beker’s statement that the opening verse of 1 Cor.
was read as an indirect affirmation of the authority of the whole
of Paul’s letters for the whole of the Church. Paul’s contextual
ethics thereby became a general code, even while it was
obvious that it was not couched in the literary form one would
expect. Dibelius’s contention that Paul had used older
paraenetical material can be seen as a corollary of that, since
now the authority of Paul as collector of that collection is even
more “general” than is suggested by the opening words of 1
Cor. Paul’s ethical authority would then rest on the prior
acceptance of a common and older tradition, which was
catholic in its own nature, and not on specific Pauline ethics
being made universally valid for the Church by Paul’s personal
apostolate. To move away from Dibelius here, as well as from
the implications of this reading of 1 Cor. 1, implies
recontextualizing Paul’s paraenesis and providing a fresh
perspective on the issue of his authority.

A secondary observation is important for our purposes as well.


If we “have” the letter to the Romans or Galatians only as
already interpreted in their canonical context, then what does
this mean for our present exegesis? This implies, according to

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.

Beker continues his treatment of the fate of the Pauline corpus


with the era of canonization. We will quote the relevant
passage in full here:

The particularity of the Pauline letters was diffused


more decisively by the formation of the New
Testament canon. The "ecumenical" Paul of Acts —
who preaches the same message to a variety of
Churches and who, as a supreme witness for Christ,
faithfully adheres to the one Christian kerugma as
authorized by the Jerusalem Church — was placed
before the historical Paul and his collected letters. This
placement actually functions as a hermeneutic key to
the understanding of the Pauline letters, because the
one ecumenical Paul speaks supposedly in them all
with the same message. Second Peter 3:14-16,
although acknowledging the difficulty of interpreting
the Pauline letters, testifies that Paul proclaims the
same catholic message, ”speaking of this [the forbear-
rance of our Lord] as he does in all his letters."

When the "Catholic Epistles" were placed in the canon


after the Pauline letters, they suggested not only the
"catholicity" of the Pauline letters but also the idea that
the apostle Paul was one harmonious catholic voice
among the unanimous voices of all the apostles. At the
62
time of the canonization of the Pauline letters then,
both their particularity and the specificity of Paul’s
gospel were felt to be a problem. Because the "apos-
tolic" witness of the canon claimed universal rele-
vance, Paul must have addressed himself to "all
Christian Churches," just as such a universal address
was ascribed to the so-called Catholic Epistles. After
all, canonicity meant catholicity. The problem with the
Apostle of the canon was not the plurality of the gos-
pels but the particularity of the letters. Indeed, the
plurality of the gospels in the canon was acutely felt,
as the superscriptions reveal (e.g., the gospel
according to Matthew) and to which the longevity of
the Diatessaron in the Syrian Church testifies. How
could the gospel be one and yet be present in four
different forms? How could the "apostolic" witness be
applicable to the universal Church if Paul had simply
written to specific Churches about specific problems?
Plurality and particularity are part of the same pro-
blem: How can the universality and the unity of the
gospel be maintained in the face of them? Irenaeus
argued for the universality of the gospel by speculating
on the number four as a universal number. Just as the
number four functioned as the universal number for
Irenaeus, so did the number seven for the Pauline
Epistles, as the Muratorian Canon discloses: in
catholica habentur (1.69). And so Hebrews was finally
conjoined to the Pauline letters to create a Pauline
canon of 2 X 7.

The Catholic Church then solved the issue of particu-


larity by diffusing the occasional character of the
letters, that is, by positing their universal "catholic"
relevance. This in effect negated the problem of the
particularity of the letters and allowed a general con-
sensus of apostolic doctrine to overshadow not only
the contingent character of the gospel within the
Pauline letters but also the specificity of the Pauline
gospel among the other books of the New
Testament.45

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.

If this is true, of course, then the kind of “hindrance” that the


traditional exegesis has experienced with Romans and
Galatians can be addressed in two ways. Along the first route,
we try to understand again what the historical circumstances
were in which these letters originated. And that again we can
do either by reconstructing those historical elements (audience,
occasion, simultaneous developments) from the outside, as it
were, using both our increased knowledge and informed hypo-
theses concerning the continuity between 3rd-century Judaism
(Mishnah Judaism) and 1st-century Pharisaism, or by
reconstructing the audience of Paul’s letters with the aid of the
internal evidence of the text, i.e., we assume that the intended
audience is more important than the empirical audience as “we”
see it. We then reconstruct the meaning of Paul’s letters as if
the Pauline corpus were a single entity that could be
interpreted on its own without reference to the rest of the New
Testament. This is of course necessary toward a description of
64
the content of Paul’s letters. Only those relationships that are
present in the text themselves can be used for understanding
the text as it is. But we are seeking the normative contents of
the New Testament as ethicists. That means that we must take
Paul’s authority as apostle of Christ into account, which implies
a concurrent reading of the available evidence about Jesus and
using the whole of the New Testament canon as the “legal”
context of Paul’s writings. That brings us to a second possible
approach, which we will follow here. Along this second route,
we may take the process that led from the empirical letter to the
letters as doctrinal genre as providing us with a necessary
hermeneutic key for doctrinal exegesis. We then deny validity
to the image of Paul as it has emerged since the 2nd century,
as well as transcend the exegetical image of Paul’s letters
taken on their own, and try to work within the canon-history
perspective that we have indicated with reference to the work
of John Miller.

That has profound consequences. Paul’s authority as an


apostle is then made relative (1) by the insight Beker provided
into the Church’s tendency to move away from the contextual
and pastoral Paul of the 1st century to the teacher of doctrine
of the 2nd century, which gives us our exegetical clue, and (2)
by the insight Miller provided into the intentionality behind the
canonization of Paul in the first place, which is the cornerstone
of the way we read Paul’s ethics. The intention behind the anti-
Marcionite canon that makes Luke relative within the fourfold
gospel and makes the Pauline corpus relative within the
perspectives of James, Peter, and John, is then our most basic
guideline. Only then can we prevent falling into the 16th-
century temptation of neo-Marcionitism, which was to
reinstitute Paul as the champion of grace over against law, of
evangelical freedom against Jewish obedience, etc., and only
then can we avoid using Paul as the basic paradigm of New
Testament hermeneutics.

The internal evidence of Paul’s letters (Beker) and canon


history (Miller) not only provide us with the basis for accepting
the authority of Paul’s letters, but instigate a hermeneutic of
dialogue that does not submit to Paulinism, but listens to other
voices as well. The position obtained thereby cannot pretend to
be new. It is in fact nothing but the kind of hermeneutical
65
situation that is prescribed in the gospel of Matthew. We cannot
go into the entire context of the verse, but there is one aspect
that needs lifting out at the moment. In Matthew 18:18 we read:
I tell you (plural) truly, whatever you shall bind on earth shall be
bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth shall be
loosed in heaven. There are two meanings of “binding and
loosing” to consider here. The one is directly connected to the
context, where we find a description of the way to deal with
brothers or sister who have sinned, Church discipline, in short.
Binding then means withdrawing fellowship, and loosing means
forgiveness. But the most obvious meaning is derived from the
Aramaic equivalent, which is used to denote the outcome of
Rabbinic consultations on matters of law. Binding then means
to declare a rule valid, loosing means to declare an inference
from the law as invalid or not applicable. Binding and loosing
are directed toward a situation in which a law might apply, so
we can use the word discernment in this technical sense to
describe the whole process. The result of discernment is a
halakah as an application of a general law to a specific (type of)
situation, i.e., a rule that defines a way of life. And through the
context of forgiveness and exclusion we might add: the rule
also defines those who are covered by it and the community
that follows it.

In such discernment, a knowledge of what is right and wrong is


presupposed, as is the source of that knowledge: the Torah,
not simply the whole of scripture, but a part of it. Halakah also
functions as a jurisprudence, a tradition of decisions that are
passed along to later generations and form the background of a
specific community that is bound by them. The objective of this
binding and loosing is obviously forgiveness, i.e., the
restoration of relationships that have been disturbed by sin and
hurt.

From this perspective, not only the continuing authority of the


Torah can be surmised, which we will deal with in discussing
Matthew, but also a specific status of scripture. The status that
Matthew was given as part of the New Testament canon is
incongruent with the status Matthew ascribes to scripture as
such. The Torah functions in Matthew 18 as the constitution of
the community, and that entire community has the right and
duty to apply its precepts to resolve matters of sin and hurt, i.e.,
to dispense judgment on sin in order to provide restoration and
66
forgiveness. Because its goal is forgiveness and restoration, it
is obvious that such a community, conditioned by the fact that it
is assembled in the name of Christ, implying His presence both
as the ultimate authority and the hermeneutical key for
discernment, is as such the locus of this ethical discernment.
The forming of halakah, which Judaism relegated to the rabbis
as an intellectual task and to the people to accept or ignore,
and thereby shaping it in practice, has now been given as a
conscious task to the entire community assembled under the
conditions mentioned and aspiring to the goal indicated. If
Matthew, who belongs to the canon, defines what authoritative
scripture can be as Torah, it thereby implicitly defines its own
status with regard to ethics as being part of the “inspired”
discernment of the Church.

This passage, then, gives us a clear view on what scriptural


authority may and may not be. Certainly Matthew’s Jesus
affirms the eternal validity of the law, as we have seen. Jesus’
interpretation not only radicalizes the law, but it also radicalizes
the processes of its application. The completion of the law that
is the core essence of Jesus’ fulfillment of it also comprises this
change in the relationship between the Torah as constitution
and the people of God who are governed by it. The
development of the status of Paul’s letters, from apostolic
missionary to canonical authority, brought with it a decisive shift
in hermeneutical framework. Having been placed into a
canonical narrative framework in opposition to Marcion, it
gained inspired authority and doctrinal status. After that, to a
degree Paulinism was restored, and the final sequence of
letters, placing Romans behind Acts, and adding James and
others at the back of the collection, made Paul into the primary
apostle again, in a historical framework in which Paul could be
seen as the doctrinal center. All of this tended to strengthen
doctrinal interest in Paul to the detriment of his ethical
teachings, and it certainly changed the ecclesiological setting in
which Matthew, and to an extent Acts, had placed apostolic
authority, and made it into an equivalent of imperial power. To
understand Paul in an ethical setting without destroying the
apostolicity of his writings must therefore mean: to reconstruct
the original dialogue within the Church as the background of
Paul’s writings, and to view the different voices in the New
Testament not as a hindrance to unity but as its basic mode.
67
The canonicity of the letters provides us after all with an
ambiguous concept: doctrinal authority with regard to and
dependent upon the present situation of the Church, and an
inspired status only as secondary commentary in the form of
spirit-guided discernment on the absolute source of revelation:
the Torah.

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.

Beker reconstructed the argument of Paul’s opponents as


follows:

[It] runs along the following lines: You Galatians were


gentiles when, through the gospel which Paul
preached, you turned to Christ. This turning away from
idols and the "elemental spirits of the universe" (Gal.
4:3, 9) is an important first step. It is like the step
gentiles take when they turn from idols to the God of
Israel and attach themselves as semi-proselytes or
God-fearers to the synagogue. However, do not
mistake the first step for the end of the road (Gal. 3:3).
Paul misled you when he told you that your new status
as sons of God in Christ depends on faith alone.49

If that is what Paul had said, it was misleading indeed. As we


have seen in the letter of James, for earliest Christianity, and in

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.

That is an opportunistic misconstruction of the gospel


and short-circuits its full implications. You realize—of
course— that our Christ was the Messiah promised to
the people of Israel, the true sons of Abraham. Jesus
Christ is indeed the messianic fulfillment of the
promise to Abraham, and therefore the promise
pertains to those who belong to the people of Israel. It
does not mean that gentiles are excluded from the
promise: They can participate in the full blessings
promised to Abraham if they join the people of the
promise. When Paul opposes the Torah and Christ, he
is not only wrong but also opportunistic, because he
wants to make it religiously and sociologically easy for
gentiles to become Christians in order to enhance his
apostolic grandeur. 50

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.

It is simply false that gentiles can remain participants


in pagan society without the "yoke of the Torah." The
Torah and Christ cohere, because it is only within the
realm of the Torah that the promise is fulfilled in Christ.
To be sure, the observance of the Torah does not
mean the observance of all its statutes and ordinances
(cf. "the whole law": Gal. 5:3, 14; 6:13). Although
Jesus Christ, the Messiah, acknowledged their validity,
they have been fulfilled by him in his death for us.
Nevertheless, "Torah-keeping" means the obligation to
become a member of the Jewish people and therefore
circumcision marks your entrance into the line of
salvation-history that started with Abraham and finds
its fulfillment in Christ. The Torah then, has primarily
salvation-historical significance;51 it assures your
participation in Christ by placing you in the correct
salvation-historical scheme.52

As for this latter issue: it seems obvious that Paul understood


his opponents to see the Torah as part of salvation history. But
did they? Is it not more obvious that they considered the Torah
to be part of the blessings of the new age for Jew and non-Jew

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.

Paul’s gospel was not only based upon a revelatory and


personal experience of conversion, but it was also in its
contents a new revelation (2:2). It involved the idea that
gentiles who converted would not have to, or indeed should
not, be circumcised; in other words, that the gospel could reach
the gentiles without their having to become Jews. Those who
maintained that gentiles should be circumcised are called “false
brethren” from the start (2:4). Since Titus was not forced to be
circumcised when Paul was in Jerusalem, apparently all agreed
on this. But the issue went beyond circumcision alone. In
Antioch the issue deepened into the question of under what
conditions table fellowship could exist between Jewish
Christians and believers from the nations. Apparently Peter had
been eating with the gentiles without using any of the special
provisions that 1st-century Judaism would use in such a case,
with the probable exception of pagan idolatrous rites. (On the
arrival of emissaries from Jerusalem who are identified as
disciples of James, Peter withdraws from these meals. Paul
73
sees in this the implication that gentiles should follow Jewish
law in this respect, and if they do not, Jewish Christians would
have to withdraw from the communal meals.

To Paul, this meant that justification still would have had


something to do with specific commandments under the
principle of law, and he interprets these as in contradiction to
the gospel of Christ (2:16). The issue of the conditions of
communion between Christians of Jewish and pagan descent
was therefore seen as a practical test case of the reality of the
gospel. The concept of justification, of being righteous, defines
also to which community you belong. If justification is partly
determined by law, then circumcision and dietary laws define
the boundary between the just and the impious. If Christ is the
measure, then such “works of the law” are no longer in effect.
Then Jews and gentiles really have become one people, one
Body of Christ.

This historic occasion and its immediate consequences for the


issue of table fellowship now gives rise to a prolonged
argument about the relevance of the law, now that Christ has
come. Paul states as his major principle that the law actually
condemned me to death, and having died, I am resurrected
with Christ so that he lives in me. All therefore is based upon
grace, and the law can have no say in determining what
righteousness is. A second argument opens chapter 3. If the
Galatians already experienced the fruits of the new era through
the infusion of the Holy Spirit, they should remember that the
life in the Spirit they had been given was not earned by any
kind of obedience to commandments of any sort. Circumcision
does not grant the Spirit. Furthermore, the Torah states exactly
the same principle when it states that Abraham was justified
through his faith, and this was connected with the promise to
bless all the nations. So Abrahamic faith was received by the
gentiles through Christ, who sets them free from the law.

And yet another argument is brought forward: the law demands


obedience and grants life on condition of that obedience. Yet
nobody can say he is justified on the basis of law, we are
cursed because we did not obey, and besides, the prophet
Habakkuk states clearly that the “just will live by faith” (2:4).
How can we therefore become free from the curse of the law,
and on what is this faith based? The link is in the fact that
74
Christ, who is the object of our faith, became cursed under the
law. But He was resurrected as a sign of God’s approval of His
life, an argument which is not here, but can be adduced from
Rom. 1:4. And this life of Christ beyond the cross is, through
the Spirit, a reality within me (2:20). So by our participating in
the event of Christ, the curse is lifted and the blessing of
Abraham is bestowed upon gentiles.

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).

This also shows that man’s status is changed from being


enslaved under law to being freed in Christ; we are sons and
heirs to the promise. To try to remain obedient to the law while
in this new condition is a paradox. The law makes it clear that
the reality of being under the law is expressed in the birth of
Isaac: born from the free woman Sarah, out of God’s power
and promise. By reducing the Torah to the institution of law,
Israel has in fact changed God’s intention, as if it were not
Isaac, but Ishmael, and not Sarah, but Hagar who is the real
metaphor of the covenant of the promise. This view of the law
as demanding slave-like obedience and as defining the status
of men by circumcision and works is therefore actually a
distortion of its intention and function. If we as believers accept
the law after Christ has come with the intention of adding to the
righteousness of God revealed through it and made effective
through the Spirit, we in fact remove ourselves from the sphere
of grace (Gal. 5:4). We then pledge allegiance to an institution
that is proven to be without efficacy. Righteousness, given by
God, lies in a faith that works through love.

Such a life is not without ethics. We are to serve each other


through love, for in that unselfish service to others the demand
of the law is actually fulfilled. A life in the Spirit will produce a
behavior that is in harmony with the kingdom of God. The law
75
cannot add to but only detract from the reality of such a life
(5:18, 23). So when read like this, we can conclude that, to
Paul, the “ethics” of Christianity had become decisively different
from the Jewish matrix out of which it originated. Salvation in
Christ meant (1) the abolition of the boundary markers between
Jew and gentile, (2) the abrogation of the demands of the law
as such, and (3) the institution in its place of the presence and
indwelling of the Spirit that grasps the believer from within and
brings forth a fruit of salvation. The latter is then better
expressed in a Stoic lists of virtues and proper behavior than in
citing the commandments from Torah. Let us now look into the
letter with more attention to detail to see what all of this means.

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.

It is not unusual for Paul to take his incentive to write from a


specific “pastoral” and historical situation; in fact, as Beker
shows, Paul’s thinking is highly contextual, even in letters that
have been traditionally portrayed as doctrinal.54 This is certainly
the case in Galatians. Apparently the newly founded Galatian
congregations had received visitors from Palestinian
congregations, maybe even from James’s Jerusalem Church,
or perhaps from gentile Christian missionaries who wanted to

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).

The historical circumstances of the Antioch incident are now


skillfully used by Paul, perhaps to set it up as an analogy with
the situation the Galatians were in, but primarily to defend his
own authority. The Galatian Churches had been established by
Paul’s preaching (1:8), but they were hearing a different
interpretation of the gospel. So the issue of Paul’s authority had
to be raised. Paul insists that they were hearing an “other,” a
twisted, and even a “deviating” (2x) gospel. The gospel he had
brought to them was not an interpretation of a tradition he had
received but a revelation of Jesus Christ (1:12). Paul boasts
that after his encounter with a risen Christ on his way to
Damascus, he had no contact with the apostles in Jerusalem
but went to Damascus by way of Arabia, where he spent an
approximate three years in preparation for his mission. These
three years in Arabia with a risen Lord apparently are meant to
outweigh the unmentioned three years the apostles in

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.

Here we encounter our first problem, and we need to go into


this in order to appreciate the specific character of this letter
and the weight we ought to give to its doctrinal contents. If we
take the account of Luke in Acts to be more trustworthy in a
historic sense, all of this must be a deliberate exaggeration on
Paul’s part, since verses 3 and 8 of Acts 9 inform us differently.
Here it is stated that Paul saw Christ near Damascus and,
being blinded for three days as a result, he was brought by his
companions to Damascus without delay. Acts 9:19b intends us
to marvel at the power of the Spirit that made Paul such an
effective witness after having spent only a few days with
Ananias and the other disciples in Damascus. That of course in
itself raises doubt as to the nature of the account in Acts. It
remains puzzling that Luke tried to set up Paul’s authority in
this manner, while he contradicts the evidence of Paul’s own
letter which by the time of his (Luke’s) writing had been around
for some thirty years.

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.

The point of the Titus-passage is obvious: someone who was


not circumcised, though part of the new messianic movement
and living in a Jewish environment, need not be circumcised at
all, even when that failure to comply with Jewish law, for so it
would have seemed to the Pharisaic party (Acts 15) or the
Judaizers (Paul’s opponents in Galatia), and to the disciples of
James (in Antioch, cf. Gal. 1), who most probably all held on to
circumcision, brought difficulties along with it. Paul can thereby
contend that he had never before preached circumcision,
against his opponents’ apparent suggestions to the contrary. It
would have made his life a lot easier if he had done so (5:11).

The Jerusalem Church, Paul asserts, accepted his mission to


the gentiles in such a way that Paul alone bore responsibility
for it. Problems that would arise in the congregations founded

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.

In the Antioch incident, the consequence of this separation of


missionary fields becomes obvious when the two parties (Paul
and James) meet. Peter came to Antioch and ate with the
gentiles in some form of table fellowship. Apparently Peter
dropped all Jewish restraints in order to do so, because Paul
later refers to it with the term “livest as the nations” (2:14). That
seems to exclude the possibility, mentioned by Tomson, that
Peter conformed to an already established halakah that
enabled Jews to eat with gentiles, even if the latter still
practiced idolatrous rites.57 For if Peter had eaten with them on
the basis of halakah, that would not have constituted a breach
of his Jewish way of life, and the only thing remaining would
have been a dispute with the party of James about the proper
contents of the halakah. Tomson’s position would also need to
presuppose that James’s party favored the most rigid
interpretation of Jewish law, which seems improbable if we
remember that, whatever their Jewish positions were, they
were Christians and already acquainted with the notion of the
gentiles entering the covenant. So Peter’s eating with the
gentiles apparently occurred outside of Jewish halakah and in a
situation in which his gentile hosts did nothing to alleviate the
problems of idolatry and impurity that arose for a Jew in such a
situation. As Tomson states: “...the libation ritual undoubtedly
performed by his gentile host would not affect the Jewish wine
he would be drinking.” That would be the case for the specific
lenient halakah that prescribed the use of separate tables, the

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.

When members of the party of James arrive in Antioch, Peter


stops eating with gentiles. Paul states that Peter did this out of
fear for the circumcised, i.e., the Christian Jews. Paul’s
discontent with this act shines through forcefully in his
statement that “he [Peter] did not walk straightforwardly
according to the gospel.” This is a momentous statement! If
Peter did indeed act completely according to gentile custom
and disregarded the specific conditions of Jewish halakah for
communion with gentiles, adopted by the Jerusalem council,
this was the situation that Paul would refer to as “walk[ing]
straightforwardly according to the gospel.” Paul’s objection is
therefore not motivated by the decision to separate the
missionary fields, but by the fact that the one gospel, as he saw
it, should extend its freedom from the law to Jewish as well as
gentile believers, including the restrictions of table fellowship.58
Peter’s non-compliance with a prescription of Jewish law that
made a visible provision for communion between Jew and
gentile, thereby in principle accepting their distinct identity, is
set up as an example of Christian behavior for those out of the
circumcision! In the same vein, Peter’s compliance with Jewish
law after the men from James have entered the scene sends
the message that circumcision and keeping the law are
prerequisites for communion. That’s why Paul can interpret
Peter’s action as his wanting to Judaize the gentiles, to make
them submit to the Jewish way of life.

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.
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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.

But how does this incident relate to the matter of forced


circumcision for gentile believers? If it is only a matter of table
fellowship, it serves as an illustration of the general attitude of
Paul towards institutions in Judaism, and the prohibition of
eating with gentiles is treated just like the institution of
circumcision. And if it could be shown that Peter disregarded
the prohibition in order to have fellowship with gentiles, then it
is obvious that he would also have to accept that circumcision
was not to be imposed on gentile believers.59 So it seems to us
that Paul was extending his law-free gospel to include Jews.
And by default, if Jews were no longer under the law, then
gentiles need not submit to it either. So we must conclude that
the Antioch incident showed that Peter had adapted to pagan
customs that crossed the boundaries of Judaism, while it was
James and his emissaries who kept the Jerusalem agreement
in the sense that they maintained the validity of the Jewish law

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.
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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.

To Paul, however, Peter’s violation of Jewish law seemed


unimportant, or rather, it motivated him to state what must have
been to him the common principle of Peter’s act of eating with
gentiles outside of Jewish law and the ultimate consequence of
Paul’s gospel. In the more recent literature very different
pictures of this incident are given.

Tomson has argued that the Antioch incident showed a


difference of opinion between Peter and Paul, on the one hand,
and James, on the other, concerning a matter of Jewish law.
Peter and Paul would side with those more lenient teachers in
Israel who accepted that it was possible for Jews to eat and
drink with gentiles. First of all, their eating together could not
constitute a breach of purity laws because outside of Palestine
no issue of general purity could emerge, seeing that all Jews
outside of Israel were already ritually impure and had to submit
to a cleansing ritual before they could enter the temple on their
return. Secondly, there were ways to circumvent the prohibition
of table fellowship with regard to idolatry and food laws. A Jew
could drink his own wine at a meal served by his gentile host,
even if the latter did perform a ritual libation to his pagan deity,
if that wine was not handled by gentiles and was drunk at a
separate table. One could serve kosher foods or refrain from
serving foods forbidden to Jews. James would then be the one
to argue the more restrictive view that all such common meals
with a gentile host were forbidden on account of idolatry.60 On
the arrival of James’s emissaries, Peter would have felt their
criticism and withdrawn from table fellowship.

Notwithstanding the impressive display of knowledge and


insight that Tomson presents us with, we are not fully
convinced by his arguments. If he is right, Peter still could have
been following an acceptable Jewish halakah in his meals with
gentiles. But if that is the case, why would Paul have called his
previous actions: living according to heathen ways? We would

60
Peter Tomson, Paul, pp. 222-235
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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:

The whole sentence is charged with rhetoric and


functions as a power center of Paul’s argument
against forced circumcision in Galatia. It does not
describe Peter’s diet but the liberal attitude towards
the gentile brethren in which he used to be at one with
Paul, vis-à-vis Antioch but more so Galatia. At this
point the representatives of James disagreed, and
Paul seems to rhetorically adopt their speech, “live like
a gentile.” The sentence may then be paraphrased:
“Before, you agreed to live and eat as a Jew together
with the gentiles, and although some call that ’living
like a gentile’,why do you now separate and wish to
eat with them only if they become Jews?” This
interpretation concurs with our analysis of Paul’s
report on the Jerusalem agreement: the agreement
was based on mutual trust in view of Paul’s law-free
gospel to the gentiles and Peter’s law-abiding one for
the Jews. The conclusion is that here Paul does not
urge Peter to join him again in a non-Jewish way of
life. On the contrary: he urges for a Jewish life which
does not force gentiles to Judaize, in line with the
agreement.

Tomson’s solution necessitates an explanation of the


expression “live like a gentile” as without its plain force, and
even inaccurate as to Peter’s real position. It would imply that
Paul would use the language of the Pharisaic party (“though
some call that”) to describe and even exaggerate Peter’s
position. But there is no necessity to infer that from the text
itself. The context might in general give us the opportunity to
establish the force of an idiomatic expression, but in this case,
it is the expression itself that must aid us in determining the
context. To Paul, we might infer, the sharing of meals with
gentiles, even under the more lax of Pharisaic provisions,
constituted a step in the right direction. If Peter had already
consented to eat with gentile Christians, surely he could take
the next step of letting go of all forms of separation between
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Jews and gentiles.

Furthermore, Tomson’s approach changes the nature of the


conflict in such a way that it becomes almost unintelligible in
the light of the rest of the letter. The dispute is then not about
being free from the law, but about conflicting ways of being true
to the law, which is not in accordance with the main thrust of
the letter. It is difficult to accept that the proposed rereading of
the Antioch incident has the force to change the contents of
chapters 3 to 5 on its own merits. The halakhic incident that
Tomson reconstructed, that serves as the starting point of
Paul’s analysis is in his treatment of it transformed into the
actual topic of the letter, requiring us, on this insecure basis, to
relativize other statements that refer on their own to an
abolition of the law.

Let us first examine the issue itself again. If Peter was


participating according to a Jewish Halakah that made table
fellowship possible but maintained the restrictions for Jews in a
visible way, how could his action be taken to imply that all
gentile believers should Judaize? In such a case his previous
actions would have accorded with a strict observance of Jewish
law, and James’s emissaries would have had to accept that.
And why would James have objected to that, seeing that the
reported agreement in Jerusalem was intended to make such
table fellowship possible? Peter would then have been acting in
conformity with James’s basic opinion that the difference
between Jew and gentile could not be erased within the
Church, though they might differ on the degree and means of
their separation.

If, on the contrary, he acted completely like his gentile hosts,


with disregard for the Noachide conventions, and then after-
wards acted completely as a Jew once more, this would indeed
have been an affront to James’s emissaries and would have
had the implication that Paul ascribes to it. The change in his
attitude, then, has the force of a statement vis-à-vis the
Christians of gentile origin. Finally, the insertion of the passage
makes more sense if Peter’s attitude is similar, in Paul’s view,
to that of the Judaizers who are his main opponents in the
matter. After all, if even Peter was set free from the law and
showed this by abandoning ritual and/or food purity, this case
should make a stronger argument with a view to Paul’s later
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reasoning about the abrogation of the law as a principle of life
than does a mere statement that James and Peter conflicted
about a provision of the law.

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:

Despite the protests of some, “to live like a gentile”


need not mean a complete abandonment of the law.
Once again we are probably confronted with factional
language: “living like a gentile” was the accusation
which one sect within Judaism would throw at another
which denied or disputed its halakhot (as infix. 6.32-35
and Pss. Sol. 8.13). From the perspective of the men
from James, the modest level of law-observance in the
table fellowship at Antioch was tantamount to
abandoning the law altogether; the Jewish believers at
Antioch were already too far down the slippery slope
to complete apostasy. To maintain table fellowship at
a level governed, say, by the conventions later
regularized in the “Noachide laws” (Gen. 9:3, 4), was
quite inadequate for a child of Abraham, a member of
the covenant people governed by the law of the
covenant as distinct from the other nations.

“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.

Dunn has argued the case, in an article called “The Incident at


Antioch” (1980), that the expression “live like a gentile” did not
only mean: live without any observance of the law, but could
also comprise relative laxity, e.g., in the shape of the Noachide
lifestyle vs. the Sinaitic lifestyle. On the other hand, the expres-
sion “to live like a Jew” is also interpreted as a relative term: not
to live according to a well-defined set of rules, but rather to be
“more” observant as opposed to less observant.

But the issue cannot be settled in this manner: even if we


would suppose that Paul did not accuse Peter of first having
lived completely without law and now returning to the orthodox
extreme; even if Paul merely meant to say that Peter had
returned to a more Judaized way of life that made the breaking
of communion with Antiochian gentiles necessary, the point is
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that Paul attacks Peter on the principle that the gospel makes
the issue of obedience to law irrelevant, and he implies that any
observance of principles of the law as a basis for making
distinctions projects a message to the gentile Christians that
they are not acceptable. The Jerusalem Conference, on the
other hand, obviously accepts the application of Jewish law and
enforces the acceptance of Noachide rules (forbidding idolatry
of any sort as defined in Jewish doctrine), and thus it arrives at
an intermediate position.

We do not know what the party of James was responding to


and how they responded. But under the terms of Acts 15,
taking that as a previous event, James would have been right if
the Antioch gentile Christians were not keeping the Noachide
commandments that were commanded them, and if the Jewish
Christians there did nothing to change that situation. If gentile
Christians were in the majority in Antioch, they might have
celebrated with Peter the fact that they were freed even of the
minor commandments that were applied to them as semi-
proselytes, and so they would fall under the minimum
requirements of the Jerusalem Council. It is mainly because of
the apparent disobedience to the Jerusalem decision that is
described here that we have argued for the possibility that the
letter to the Galatians predates the Jerusalem Council and
provides a plausible cause for it to happen in the first place.

It seems clear that Peter’s response to James’s emissaries was


prompted by the legitimacy of their claim that the manner in
which he dined with gentiles constituted an act of idolatry which
was in fact covered by the Noachide commandments. Peter’s
fear of the circumcised is better explained by the presence of a
real case for this allegation than merely his deviation from a
minority view within Pharisaic Rabbinism or a Pharisaic faction
within the Church. It can be ruled out, though, that the issue
was particularly that of the Lord’s Supper, and that in Antioch
Jews and gentiles did not share a meal at all apart from that,
because the issue of the purity of the wine and the presence of
pagan ritual before its use would have become urgent in that
case, since the Lord’s supper meant in effect ”sharing one
table.” The subterfuge of separate tables and separate wine
was not enough in such a case. But if 1 Cor. 10:14-22 portrays
Paul’s position accurately, he would undoubtedly have agreed
89
with James, and he certainly would have considered any
libation practice around the Lord’s Supper as idolatrous.

So our conclusion must be that Paul showed that Peter, in


accordance with “the” gospel, i.e., Paul’s interpretation of it,
had not insisted on keeping Jewish law in whatever modest
form, including the shape it got in the Jerusalem Council’s
decision, while eating with gentiles in Antioch. If he did not
abide by the law even in that respect, why would the Galatians
want to return to a law that they were not subject to before? Or
to put the matter in Paul’s words: if Peter did not try to be
justified by works of the law, why would the Galatians? But
what does this expression mean?

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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?

Traditionally the “works of the law” have been explained as the


performance of the ritual and moral commandments that amass
merit before God. If the scale was ultimately tipped in favor of
good works, a person was acceptable before God in the final
judgment and merited the life of the world to come. The
common interpretation of “works,” therefore, is that they (1) are
deeds of outward obedience intended to earn merit before God.
As Luther explained it, God would be forced to respond with
grace to a deed of merit, an opinion that he ascribes to the
“Papists.” It has been recognized that Luther’s explanation
identifies Paul’s opponents in the letter with his own Catholic
contemporaries, though there is considerable doubt that Luther
even represented Catholic doctrine faithfully.

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.

So we are left with these two possibilities: either the phrase


“works of the law” refers back to what was at stake in the
91
Antioch incident in a narrow sense: table fellowship and the
boundaries between Jews and gentiles, and then “works of the
law” can mean those elements of the law that protect these
boundaries (see 2 above). That interpretation follows from the
contextual reading of the letter and from drawing heavily upon
the Antioch incident to explain the motive for Paul’s discussion
of the term. But it remains to be considered that although the
incident exemplifies the issue and motivates its discussion, the
doctrine cannot itself be restricted to the contextual usage. Yet
it is not possible to ignore the context altogether and to state,
with classical Reformed exegesis, that Paul intended to show
the absolute rejection of Jewish law (see 1 above).

If the Antioch incident is about Peter’s wavering between being


without law and being in conformity to the law, the issue here is
the law itself, but still with emphasis on that element of the law
that brought with it exclusion and strife. Without that emphasis,
Paul’s position on the law implies that he misunderstood 1st-
century Judaism as a whole. If Peter’s attitude is a con-
sequence of a difference of opinion on Jewish halakah with
James, works of the law are merely identity markers, and the
connection between the incident and Paul’s doctrine on law, as
outlined subsequently in the letter, is severed. How could we
evade the dilemma of overstating either the independence of
the doctrine or the context-related nature of the text? And do
we need to drop the traditional approach to the antithesis
between works and grace altogether?

This may be of fundamental importance to the question of


Paul’s ethics. If that ethics is born from the pragmatic
assumption that in Christ all boundaries between Jew and
gentile have been removed, then the Torah is no longer the
basic shape of obedience of the Church, since it was devised
as a means of separating a people unto God from the world of
the nations. That implies, ultimately, that Christian ethics
becomes a pneumatic ethos that derives its formal nature from
the principle of neighborly love, and its contents from the
situation, the example of Christ, and some awareness of ethical
values as in Stoicism. The eschatological background of the
apostle Paul serves to explain the lack of interest in developing
a more detailed ethical code. If, however, the law is abrogated
only with respect to the boundary markers, then the rest of the
law might still be a guide for the contents of ethical behavior,
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and obeying the commandments is still its basic form, though
perhaps now transformed by the impact of the New Covenant,
i.e., by the notion of a spirit-driven obedience. If the Torah is
seen as primarily involved in this separation of Israel, the whole
of the law must be abrogated; if the separation is just part of its
contents, its principle remains in effect. So what does it mean
that justification is not by works of the law? If justification is not
through the separating mitzvoth, in distinction to other ethical
rules, then justification by faith might refer to a life in obedience
to Torah under the principle of faith, in this case as it is
informed by Christ’s coming into this world and the
eschatological effect of His coming. If it is not by mitzvoth as
such, since it is assumed that all of them have a separating
purpose, then the whole principle of law is abrogated. Which is
it?

Let us turn to another element of this complex question. Can it


be said that “works of the law” defines a specific way of
obeying the law? Is it impossible for a man to live a life of strict
obedience and holiness? And would the attempt to lead that life
imply an “amassing” of merit to force God to acquit him? It is
most often understood in that way. Paul’s Pharisaic
background would mean that he was acquainted with the
opinion that justification was “earned” by deeds of
righteousness. However, Paul would then have learned from
Christ that (1) it was impossible to attain perfect righteousness,
since man’s heart was unable to achieve complete allegiance,
and (2) that Christ had come to reveal a righteousness that
consisted in the acquittal of all believers, above and beyond the
requirements of the law. So “works of the law” was taken as an
expression for the meritorious deeds by which the Pharisaic
Jews tried to impress God and win righteousness on their own;
a kind of outward obedience that merely strengthened or
covered the inner rebellion of man against God. The opposition
was between God’s free gift of righteousness in Christ and
man’s striving for self-righteousness as a refined element of
self-deceit and an expression of arrogance and pride. Later
proof for that conviction was sought by Christian theologians
going over the Rabbinic writings in search for claims of
salvation through merit. By quoting these writings selectively
with a method called proof-texting, and leaving out both the
context and the related passages, the conclusion was drawn
93
that Judaism taught salvation through merit and not by faith.
We need to go into this matter now and will return to the above
question later.

That the traditional view on the opposition between works and


faith is quite resistant to new insights can be illustrated from the
relevant passage in Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New
Testament, where it states with regard to “ergon” (work):

This gives us the Pauline understanding of the


contrast between faith and works. The (erga nomou)
which are at issue for Paul have become a means of
self-righteousness for the Jews. Hence they are no
longer an expression of the absolute requirement of
God—the law is this for Paul in Gal. 5:3—but they
spring from man’s arrogant striving after self-
righteousness (emphasis mine).

By no means, however, is it that self-evident that in the


1st century anybody, including Paul, would agree to
describe Judaism (and we must also ask: which
Judaism?) like this. The works of the law seems to
refer to the law in its aspect of specific commanded
acts, called mitzvoth in Hebrew. As such they can be
enumerated alongside the whole of Torah, prayer, and
earthly occupation, as in bBer. 32b Bar: “For four
things man needs constancy, and these are: the
Torah, good works, prayer, and one’s worldly occu-
pation.” To call this an “ethos of work” that Judaism
preserved “in spite of everything” is highly problematic
in our time, but it was quite persistent and natural
when most theologians had only Strack-Billerbeck to
teach them about Judaism. No effort is made to
understand what such a phrase would mean, and to
4th-century Rabbinic Judaism at that.

It is obvious that the theme of “reward and punishment” is


found everywhere in rabbinic literature. Several concepts of
reward coexisted. Some argued that the reward for performing
a mitzvah was the performance of another mitzvah, or a reward
in the world to come. Because just reward was a sub concept
of the concept of God’s justice and judgment was connected to
94
each human action, the notion of divine approval or rejection
had to be the logical outcome of any reflection of the value of
man’s actions sub specie eternitatis. Three remarks are in
order. First of all, the merit of a human deed was a free and
sovereign response by God and not an automatic part of
human achievement. Therefore it was considered inadmissible
to act in order to gain merit. Mitzvoth should be performed for
the sake of heaven. Secondly, God dealt with humans above
and beyond the strictures of justice. God’s quality of mercy
outweighed His quality of righteousness. Thirdly, the ‘merit” is
most often considered as the effect of a good deed beyond the
physical meaning of it as an action within creation, the meta-
physical meaning or effective moral influence, so to speak, of
human deeds. The effect of good deeds was then considered
helpful in aiding others who lacked the ability to perform in such
a way beyond the call of strict duty or in determining the moral
standing of a community. In all of this, rabbinic “theology” does
not equal the strict notion of a divine justice that needs full
compliance in every respect from every creature while at the
same time considering that man is unable, because of his inner
duality, to accomplish anything good. In fact, the concept of
Torah and the concept of Covenant must be seen as
interlinked. Full compliance with the Torah in the sense of mo-
ral perfection was never seen as a prerequisite of the Cove-
nant.

Now, let us take a close look at the context of this baraita (a


Mishnah not present in R. Judah ha Nasi’s collection of the
Mishnah) that Bertram quoted in his article on ”works of the
law.”

Whence do we know this of Torah and good deeds?


Because it says, Only be strong and very courageous
to observe to do according to all the law: “be strong” in
Torah, and “be courageous” in good deeds. Whence
of prayer? Because it says, “Wait for the Lord, be
strong and let thy heart take courage, yea, wait thou
for the Lord.” Whence of worldly occupation? Because
it says, Be of good courage and let us prove strong for
our people.

The context of this dictum, however, is exactly what Bertram


95
thinks is missing in early Judaism and is dominant in Paul: the
works of God that Paul was contrasting to the works of man.
Let us examine this quote. As is appropriate in the tractate on
prayer and blessings, the Gemara discusses the order of
priority between prayer, fasting, charity, and the like, and
inserts the baraita because it too is a statement on the order of
priority. But still, the context remains the efficacy of God’s
actions on which everything else is based, and that passage
we will quote in full here:

But Zion said, The Lord hath forsaken me, [taking up


the discussion of the relationship between prayer and
God’s actions – RAV] and the Lord hath forgotten me.
Is not “forsaken” the same as “forgotten”? Resh Lakish
said: The community of Israel said before the Holy
One, blessed be He: Sovereign of the Universe, when
a man takes a second wife after his first, he still
remembers the deeds of the first. Thou hast both
forsaken me and forgotten me! The Holy One, blessed
be He, answered her: My daughter, twelve constel-
lations have I created in the firmament, and for each
constellation I have created thirty hosts, and for each
host I have created thirty legions, and for each legion I
have created thirty cohorts, and for each cohort I have
created thirty maniples, and for each maniple I have
created thirty camps, and to each camp I have
attached three hundred and sixty-five thousands of
myriads of stars, corresponding to the days of the
solar year, and all of them I have created only for thy
sake, and thou sayest, Thou hast forgotten me and
forsaken me! Can a woman forsake her sucking child
[“ullah]? Said the Holy One, blessed be He: Can I
possibly forget the burnt-offerings [“olah] of rams and
the firstborn of animals that thou didst offer to Me in
the wilderness? She thereupon said: Sovereign of the
Universe, since there is no forgetfulness before the
Throne of Thy glory, perhaps Thou wilt not forget the
sin of the Calf? He replied: “Yea, ’these’ will be
forgotten.” 61

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.

Bertram, however, continues by giving us the Pauline doctrine


as a whole:

In opposition to them we can only point to the act of


God which creates faith in us. All thought of works
retreats behind this, and can emerge again only within
the community in relation to the working of the Spirit of
God in the apostle and in believers, since it is God
who works all in all (I C. 12:6). It thus comes about
that the word ergon, already suspect in the Old Tes-
tament, acquires in Paul a completely negative sense
whenever it is a matter of human achievement. For the
work of man cannot stand before the exclusive
operation of grace. If nevertheless there is reference
to good works in the message of the whole of the New
Testament, and this not merely after a human manner
of speaking, it is in virtue of a return to the legitimate
use of the term in revelation. It is true of fallen
humanity that its works are evil. [And here the
anthropological presupposition is inserted to make the
point – RAV] But the time of salvation restores the
situation as it was by creation. All man’s work is God’s
work through man. Thus the erga tou nomou, the
misunderstood and depreciated legal works of the old
covenant. are confronted by the erga tou theou of the
new covenant. Or rather by the one work of faith active

97
in love (Gal. 5:6: John 6:29). 62

It may certainly be true that Pauline doctrine emphasizes this


point; it may even be true that Judaism and Christianity differ
on elements of this because in fact they stand in different
covenants, but to state and imply that Paul’s adversary is the
Rabbinic doctrine of good works that does not recognize the
priority of God’s grace is flatly wrong.

In the first place it is wrong because it is anachronistic to


identify the Talmudic Judaism of the 4th century that is res-
ponsible for this subtle contextual exegesis as Paul’s partner in
dialogue. Having discarded the text as a direct historical source
of understanding, however, we must acknowledge that it still
may be a source of understanding a specific “pattern of reli-
gion,” as Sanders taught, but then the context as a whole, not
only fragments thereof, needs to be taken into consideration. In
the second place it is also short-sighted, since the above quo-
tation shows abundantly in what context of “God’s work” the
rabbis discussed this issue of “good works.” If on the other
hand the quotation is meant to emphasize the meaning of the
baraita alone, Bertram is presupposing or providing a context
that would give a meaning to a text that produces a connection
with his (Paul’s) issue. But the context provided is not to be
found anywhere outside his own interpretation of Paul. That
circularity can only be avoided by not immediately identifying
such terms as “good works” with “works of the law” in Paul, as
has been done, e.g., in Strack-Billerbeck’s collection of Rab-
binic references and parallels in the New Testament from which
Bertram is quoting. The use of Rabbinic Judaism, either to
identify what Paul had in mind or to identify the opponent that
Paul is fighting against, is doomed to failure if there is no
historical or theological exegesis that explains the connection in
a systematically coherent fashion.

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:

The phrase ta erga tou nomou belongs to a complex


of ideas in which the social function of the law is

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.

But this approach is also not without its problems. G. Kruse


notes that this approach resolves some of the tensions that
earlier exegetes like Sanders and Räisänen have pointed out
between, e.g., the positive and negative statements about the
law in Romans.63 It identifies the “works” of the law with the
mitzvoth, but within the perspective of the social identity of
Israel, i.e., “works” refers primarily to the food laws,
circumcision, and purity laws defining the barrier between Jew
and non-Jew. Kruse, who more than any of the other exegetes
quoted in this work has tried to maintain the traditional doctrinal
reading of Paul’s letter, agrees that such an interpretation must
be taken seriously. He comes to the conclusion, however, that
“works of the law” must mean “all that the law requires,” as
Dunn had allowed for as “not excluded” in a later response to
criticism on this point, since the statement that “all are under
the curse of the law” would then be restricted to all those who
believed that law defined the people of God (Kruse, 79). Paul
could hardly have been claiming these two things at the same

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.

But there are other problems in Dunn’s approach, as noted by


Stanley Stowers. He wrote concerning Dunn’s approach to the
intended audience of Romans:

Dunn’s reading, for example, assumes as a patently


explicit and obvious Jewish doctrine that God
punishes gentiles severely but mercifully overlooks
Jewish evil. I find the evidence vastly more complex
and, on the whole, very different from Dunn’s
assumption. We find no Jewish texts explicitly saying
that God will ignore Jewish sin because of the
covenant. One finds numerous examples of
confidence in God’s justice and mercy and ultimate
faithfulness to Israel. Many texts also unsurprisingly
assume that Jews are typically more faithful and more
pleasing to God than polytheists are, but Christian and
Moslem texts say the same thing about Christians and
Moslems. God’s justice and impartiality is also a
pervasive theme in Jewish texts. Indeed, the most
widespread view seems to hold that Jews are
punished even more severely and held to a higher
standard than gentiles, at least in this world. As 2
Macc. 6:14 explains, God shows his mercy to Israel by
continually punishing Jews in order to keep them in

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

If this is correct, then the major assumption of Dunn’s reading


of Galatians and Romans falls away: that Paul wrote with
Jewish-Christians in mind, who introduced the Judaist concept
of identity markers as means to entry into Christianity. If that
Judaist concept was not in Paul’s mind, and could not have
been in the mind of any 1st-century writer who had some first
hand knowledge of Judaism, then there could hardly have been
a Jewish-Christian faction who tried to Judaize on that basis.
Stower’s conclusion is that Paul wrote Romans with gentiles in
mind, who on the basis of their own Graeco-Roman
understanding of “law” as a principle both of ethical life and
social order, tried to integrate their “flawed” understanding of
the Torah into that own bias. The Jewish law served them as
the paradigm of the ideal constitution that they derived from
their own social and political background. Torah was then being
used to set up what we might call a pre-Constantinian “rule of
law” in the Church. Against that background, Paul wants his
gentile audience to understand that the Jewish law actually is
based on the principle of election and sovereign grace and is
understood as such by the Jews. The Torah they want to abuse
as “law” is actually speaking on the side of Christian faith,
especially where it speaks of Abraham’s faith and justification,
and even if this aspect of the Torah as “law” would stand on its
own, it could only contradict the reality of Christian life, because
then it would show itself as the basis of equal judgment over
both gentiles and Jews. The constructed partner in dialogue of
Romans 2 is then the champion of these gentile Judaizers and
as such a construction on Paul’s part to embody these gentile
reasonings in a vehicle to carry his case to his audience.

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.

So the identification of good works with meritorious deeds and


the narrowing down of that expression to boundary markers
have both run into serious trouble. It would be better to argue
that although the contextual meaning of the doctrine shows a
main emphasis on table communion and circumcision, the
“whole of the law” remains very much in Paul’s mind when he
writes about the “works of the law,”

G. Kruse has proposed a third possibility that avoids assertions


that Paul had no real insight into Judaism because he did not
presuppose that the Judaizers were trying to set up the Torah
as a means for salvation, or that he only speaks about identity
markers, by invoking the distinction first made by Sanders
between nomism and legalism. The “works of the law” must
refer to all that the law requires and not merely to those laws
that protect the social identity of Jews. That was the thesis of
Dunn against which Stowers argued. But the conclusion still
cannot be that these works are the means to acquire merit
before God. Paul’s conflict is not with Judaism in principle, but
“with those who, by the demands they were placing upon his
Galatian converts, were insisting that salvation depends upon
[or can be added to by, RAV] the observance of certain
demands of the law” (Kruse, 69). Kruse puts forward the
interpretation that we discussed briefly in our opening
paragraph when we quoted Beker’s description of Paul’s oppo-
nents. The issue would be the soteriological function of the
Torah for non-Jews.

In Kruse’s view, Paul and Peter were united in their rejection of


102
legalism; i.e., the conviction that fulfilling the demands of the
law was a prerequisite for salvation, but Paul disagreed with
Peter on the issue of nomism: Christian Jews and Christian
gentiles needed to comply with the demands of the law as part
of their Christian obedience, but in a separate manner, since
the law spoke differently to Jew and gentile. To this Paul
responded by arguing that Christian Jews had also lost any
relationship with the law, so they had become like gentiles in
that respect (Gal. 2:19). So, in this view, the works of the law
refers to the opinion that Paul protests throughout the letter: (3)
that the fulfillment of the specific commandments of the Torah
in itself leads to salvation or can add to salvation in Christ. In
doing so, Paul leaves the paraenetical function of the law aside
as probably self-evident.

In passing, we may note that this nomism that Paul rejected is


present in some way in Luther’s exegesis, where he states that
obedience to the Mosaic law in civil life is still a necessary
corollary of grace.66 Life under the law is a matter of works,
and life under the gospel is a matter of faith. A Christian is
under both! If this is true, then clearly the matter of the
antithesis between grace and works came into existence in the
16th-century Reformation, and not in the 1st-century debate
with Judaism. Paul’s rejection of legalism, however, the law
imposed upon gentiles, does seem to go along with his
rejection of nomism, the law as principle of life for Jews. From
the letter to the Galatians it cannot be shown that Paul
accepted an ongoing role of the Torah for Jewish believers, but
it cannot be completely ruled out either. We have to decide on
that question later.

If justification is based upon sovereign grace, even in Judaism,


and if this is the main polemical intent against Paul’s gentile
readers who misinterpreted the function of the law, then his

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.

Paul and Peter therefore had an argument only on the issue of


the ongoing role of the law for Jewish believers beyond the
issue of salvation. Apparently Peter, under pressure from
James’s disciples, by his withdrawal from community with
gentiles in which he abandoned all performance of the law,
makes the explicit statement in doing so that the law remains
valid for Jewish believers. His behavior shows that it matters
where one stands in respect to the law. That would imply a
message to gentile believers that they could perfect their faith
by adopting Mosaic law and submitting to circumcision.
Because of the burden under which that would place the gentile
Christians, and because of the impression it gives that a
Christian should be concerned with anything beyond that which
is vital in salvation (i.e., the life within the Spirit, as we will see
in Romans), Paul goes on to reject not only the necessity of
Torah for gentiles, but even for Jews. We must conclude,
therefore, that justification by faith means to Paul, in Galatians,
being set free from the law in its legalist sense, i.e., from any
righteousness that comes from obedience to a law or from
being part of the nation that received the law. But in that
respect, Paul did not say anything that was outside the
boundaries of 1st-century Judaism.

Enhancing Kruse’s statement (see above), we also hold,


104
however, that Paul rejected Peter’s nomism not only for
gentiles, but for Jews as well. And that is indeed a clear
breaking away from 1st-century Judaism.

That can be made clear from the following. If we read (with


Zuurmond) the genitive in “works of the law” in Gal. 2:16 as
saying: “the work that the law performs” (i.e., as a subjective
genitive ) then we have a perfect antithesis to the “faith of
Christ.” Law and Christ are then diametrically opposed as
forces (cf. 2:21) working within our lives. The force of the law is
seen to be working in a conditional way by demanding man’s
active consent and obedience (Gal. 3:12), in the statement,
“And ye shall observe my statutes and my judgments, by which
the man [on condition of the fact] that [he] does them [he] shall
live,” and as the standard of future judgment (Lev. 18:5). The
law is portrayed in its ultimate and eschatological effect as a
power that kills, for “I through law have died to law, that I may
live to God.” The problem is not of course the law, but the
inability of man. And we must remember that here, as is the
case in the letter to the Romans, “law” can only mean “Torah
itself.” So how can we be redeemed? The law only has
jurisdiction over a man during his life (cf. Romans 7:1), so the
identification of the believer with the crucified Christ means the
end of the validity of the law, both as a social identity marker
(cf. Eph. 2:14-15) and as a way of righteousness and salvation.
The law, though perfect in itself, has power over the living but is
unable to give life. It is Christ who now becomes the new
principle of life, through His Spirit that works within us. The faith
of Christ is then not our faith in Him, by which the opposition
would be made between what the law demands and what
Christ demands. The opposition is now between what the law
does: giving a way of life with a conditional promise of life to
those who comply with it, and the unconditional gift of the Spirit
on the basis of Christ’s “faith,” i.e., his trustworthiness and
loyalty to God unto death. Our faith as obedience is the effort to
cling to that faith of Christ as the new principle of our life.

If that is the case, Peter was indeed in conformity with the


Pauline gospel when he broke Jewish law at Antioch. The
principles of the right Christian way of life, according to this
letter, cannot be found in the teachings of the law, in
commandments and prohibitions that belong to the world
105
before the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. One of Paul’s
arguments is that the Galatians have already had such a
Christian way of life in the Spirit. How did they receive the
Spirit? Not because they performed the commandments or
realized any kind of condition, but because they heard the
preaching of the gospel and fell under the spell of the image of
a crucified Christ (Gal. 3:1-2). With this crucified Christ the
Galatians have identified themselves: they too have been
crucified with Christ, and now the principle of their life has been
changed. They no longer live, but Christ lives in them (Gal.
2:18-20a). But insofar as we can still speak of a life in the flesh,
the believers live through their faith in Christ’s death and
resurrection and His work (2:20b).

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.

But there is a major problem here. Most importantly, the Greek


translation changes the Hebrew original on three accounts.
First of all, the Hebrew word translated as “continue” (can also
mean “to uphold,” to consider something to be the standard.
Secondly, the Hebrew text speaks of “the words of instruction”
and not about “all” the words of the law, which would imply the
notion of a complete inventory of independent tasks and would
imply the idea that if one commandment is broken all are.
Thirdly, the Hebrew 9&9! (arur) does not mean retributive dam-

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)?

The same problems in connection with the translation can be


raised with regard to Paul’s second quotation. Nobody is
justified by the law, because it states: “the righteous will live by
his faith.” This quote from Habakkuk is present also in Rom.
1:17. But Habakkuk has no direct bearing on the matter of the
meaning of the law. The text refers to the difficult circum-
stances of the assault on Israel by the Chaldeans, who bend
the law and oppress all, during which time the righteous will
have to put their trust in God for their survival since the law and
its intrinsic moral order no longer protect them. Paul uses it to
imply that being righteous and therefore to live, to survive
judgment, is by faith, while the Hebrew text states that one who
is righteous by the standards of Torah will survive oppression
because of his emunah, his trust in God. He can then continue
by stating that the demand of the law is a conditional gift: he
who obeys it will live. Performance of the law precedes life as
its reward. (But that obviously contradicts the intent of the
passage.)

So Paul is stating that faith, not obedience, is a prerequisite for


108
justification, and through it man will survive the judgment, will
“live.” The opposition we had before between the works of the
law and the faith of Christ Jesus (Gal. 2:16) is worked out as an
opposition between being under the curse for failing to obey it
all, and being liberated from the law. How are we liberated from
the law? We read in 3:13 that Christ has liberated us from the
curse of the law by becoming a curse. By showing that the law
could only condemn him, i.e., Christ, the validity of the law was
nullified insofar as it demanded obedience to all of its precepts
as a condition of life, because one of its decrees has been
nullified by God. If one of its statements was rendered invalid,
then the whole loses its absolute validity. Of course this is very
much in keeping with Paul’s calling. He had an encounter with
a Christ who had kept the entire law and yet had to face death
on the Cross. He had acted in conformity with Jewish law by
persecuting a sect that turned out to be the body of this
resurrected Messiah. In both cases strict enforcement of the
law was counteracted by God’s own act. If righteousness under
the law could not keep Christ alive, and did not make Paul
righteous, then it could not save any Christian. That could be
called the demonstrative force of Christ’s death with regard to
the law, since it shows that the law lacks of efficacy to fulfill the
promise that those who obey it will live, the perfectly righteous
one actually died because of the Torah.

A secondary observation begins with the contention that


“ransomed” (must be given the full force of “paying a price to
liberate someone,” specifically the paying of a ransom for the
liberation of slaves. It answers the question of how the Messiah
could be the source of blessing for all the gentiles while at the
same time being cursed by God. Well, the answer must be that
he bore the curse instead of those who were under the curse
and set them free from it. That must of course refer to all who
identified with Him through faith, Jews and non-Jews alike.
Rom. 2:14 actually states that Jews and non-Jews alike are
under its curse. However, specifically “under the curse” were
the gentiles who lived outside the law and the blessings that
accompanied its keeping, so Paul might be thinking here
specifically of the acceptance of gentiles. This latter view, of
course, exerts a great attraction for those who argue that the
issue here is that of communion between Jews and gentiles (cf.
Kruse, 87). If gentiles entered the covenant community
109
because their curse had been lifted by Christ’s being cursed
under the law, then of course the law can have no role in their
being blessed as a consequence.

All of this leads up to Paul’s statement that the blessing of


Abraham did not come unto the gentiles because of the law,
and that is why the reception of the spirit is not based upon the
works of the law. Paul finds a close connection between the
righteousness of Abraham by faith before the giving of the law,
the blessing of the gentiles through him, and the reception of
the Spirit in fulfillment of the promised blessing, all outside the
sphere of the law. If all are redeemed by the fulfillment of a pro-
mise that was given before the law specified commandments to
be obeyed and identity markers to be used to separate Israel
from the gentiles, then Jews have become just like gentiles in
these final days.

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 the Torah as written law-code has no redemptive relevance


any more, neither with regard to entrance into the Church nor
110
(directly) with regard to the lifestyle of Christians. “Now that
faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor” (3:25). What
then are the consequences for the new life outside the sphere
of the law? First of all there is a change of status. Verse 3:26
informs us that “you are all sons of God by faith in Christ
Jesus.” All distinctions that were maintained by the law: Jew or
Greek, slave or freeman, male or female, have been abolished.
Not only did the law deal differently with all of these groups, it
maintained their separation through its provisions. Baptism, not
circumcision, is the sign of belonging to that new community.
All are one in Christ Jesus because each of them has “put on
Christ” (3:27). Paul explains what it means to have sonship in
3:5ff. First of all, as heirs to the blessing that was promised to
Abraham, we are no longer slaves under the law, but sons. We
have the “right of sons” (4:5). This refers to the notion of
freedom that is explained further in ch. 5.

Paul summarizes his view on Christian ethics in Galatians by


stating that we live in the light of the resurrected Christ. “I live
by faith, the [faith] of the Son of God, who has loved me and
given himself for me.” (2:20) That involves dying with Christ,
having put on Christ (3:27). All of this implies a particular way
of life that is characterized by the new freedom from the law
and righteousness on the basis of works. So the effect of
justification is at the same time (1) the constitution of a new
community that lifts the boundaries between Jew and gentile,
and in doing so invalidates the Torah as principle and shape of
obedience, and (2) the radical change within individuals who
have received the spirit. These two aspects are dealt with by
the Apostle as being completely connected.

Let us now look more closely at Paul’s reasoning in ch. 5. Vs. 1


takes up the notion of ransom of 3:13 and explains again why
Christian freedom is incompatible with submission under the
law. Christ has liberated us to become truly free. Circumcision
and its consequence, the demand to keep the entire law, is in
contradiction to this principle of freedom. Submission to the law
entails a kind of obedience that is like that of slavery. It is the
law that prescribes action and man should be ready to conform
to it. A life of freedom must be, put negatively a life without
such external motivations for action. We must not let ourselves
be put under a “yoke of slavery” again (5:1).
111
But then, after this impressive catalogue of arguments against
being under the law, Paul must warn his Galatian audience.
The freedom that they have from the law in its double aspect of
identity marker and tutor should not be abused. They should
become slaves to each other through love. If they act in
conformity with this principle, the law, insofar as it can demand
something from man, is actually fulfilled. The essence of the
law is: to love your neighbor as yourself (5:14). The entire law
is fulfilled, says Paul, in this one word or commandment. A life
that can be described as showing this (neighborly love) to be its
principle of behavior is actually the life that the law intended to
be lived. What is meant here? Is Paul setting up a spiritual
principle of the moral life over against mere outward obedience
to the Torah? Is life in the Spirit then a mere inward life?

The implications of this statement by Paul are enormous, as


becomes evident when we compare it to statements attributed
to Jesus in the gospel of Matthew. In Matthew 19: 18-19 we
hear Jesus say: “But if thou wouldst enter into life, keep the
commandments. He said to him, Which? And Jesus said, Thou
shalt not kill, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not
steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honor thy father and
thy mother and Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” This is
far from stating that the essence of the law is the
commandment to love one’s neighbor, though it is interesting
that the commandment of Lev. 19:18 here concludes a series
of commandments taken from the Decalogue. In Matthew
22:36-40, we are informed that the “great commandment” in the
law is first of all to love God, and secondly, equal to it, to love
your neighbor. Vs. 40 states that on these two commandments
the whole law and the prophets “hang”-- which means that all
commandments in their application must be interpreted from
the viewpoint of these two. Not only do we find that the es-
sence of the commandments is expressed in these two com-
mandments, or in the second part of the decalogue, but we can
also find that the keeping of these commandments provides us
with entrance into life. In such words, the content of the Torah
is transposed into the messianic Torah, changed in its
character and addressed to a new community with new
priorities, but not abandoned. Is Paul contradicting this?

Furthermore, Jesus’ sayings actually describe the same


112
conditional aspect of the law that Paul seemed to describe as
contrary to the promise. According to Matthew 23:3, Christ
wanted His disciples to conform to standard Jewish
interpretations of the law (“whatever they may tell you do and
keep”). Furthermore, it is obvious that Jesus did not state that
the conditionality of the law hangs on the law’s being either
fulfilled completely or not at all. In the practice of the law’s
provisions, it is not being blameless that counts, but accepting
all of it with regard to its objective: the love of God and fellow-
man. Here also, Jesus’ implicit view of the law seems contrary
to that of Paul. Finally, Matthew 5:17 makes it abundantly clear
that the Christ of Matthew’s gospel has not come to liberate
from the law or to make it void, but to fulfill it, which in its
context must mean: to uphold the standard of the law. (The
passage refers to the same text in Deut. 27:26 that we looked
at before.) We are told that to do away, i.e. abolish, not merely
disobey, with the least of these commandments, is wrong, and
that the righteousness of the disciples in the same sense must
surpass that of the Scribes and Pharisees, which would be very
difficult to understand if that righteousness were based on faith
alone instead of on works of the law.

Nevertheless, as we will see later, Jesus’ affirmation of the law


does imply a change of perspective with regard to the goal of
keeping the law and the conditions of its fulfillment. Doing the
Torah can no longer be directed at raising the holiness of a
minority, but should affect the whole of the life of God’s people,
and, in the eschatological vision, the whole of the world. We
contend, and try to show later, that this makes Jesus’ attitude
to the law conform to Paul’s rephrasing of that same reality. In
the eschatological situation, life in the Spirit is the same as life
under the law.

In the Galatians passage we discussed earlier, Paul uses the


same word for “to fulfill” (pleroosai) that Matthew used as a
translation of what was probably Jesus’ Aramaic equivalent of
the Hebrew jaqim of Deut. 26. He used the same word, but not
in the same sense of “upholding” or even, apparently, “doing.”
Fulfilling the law is “living a life in which the great moral
concerns of the law are exemplified” (G. Kruse, 104). The
entire law, from that perspective, can be reduced to one
general commandment as a rhetorical device. This must be:
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faith, which works through love (5:6), which can be expressed
in the language of the law as the commandment “love your
neighbor.” But it is not the form of the law at all that is sought
after here. It is not about a human faith that works and is
effective through love as if it were an alternative to the kind of
human conduct and activity that we have under the law, which
would then constitute a different kind of obedience, but the
power of Christ’s faith is working through a love that the Spirit
works in our hearts without our cooperation. Therefore Paul
can state that whosoever is led by the Spirit, who, in a way, lets
the image of Christ become the contents of his self-awareness,
is not under the law, not even the law that states “love your
neighbor.” But at the same time, such a believer is actually
fulfilling that same law by acting in conformity with its goal.

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
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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.

The exhortation that begins in 5:16 can therefore hardly be


called a commandment. It is a reminder of the principle of a life
that is already active (5:25a), and which can bear its fruit if we
do not obstruct it by changing our allegiance from the Spirit to
the law. If the flesh is crucified, the proper attitude is to bury it
and forget about it, not try to curb it by obedience to laws that
work against it. Not submission of the flesh by conforming to
the demands of the law, but living spontaneously the pattern of
life that the Spirit works inside the believer, and that is the
pattern of the life of Christ.

Paul is here very close to his statement in Romans 7:14-25 that


the law actually provokes desire by prohibiting it, in contrast to
the free gift of justification which evokes the desire (and gives
the ability) to live life in the power of the Spirit. If it is not a
commandment, but a description of what is actually taking
place, its exhortatory effect can only be awareness of what is
happening and giving up resistance to a work already under
way. What is left are general guidelines for what is proper
behavior in the Church, which are in a way descriptions of the
new Kingdom of God as it takes on reality within the com-
munity.

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:

19 Wherefore I judge, not to trouble those who from


the nations turn to God; 20 but to write to them to
abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication,
and from what is strangled, and from blood. 21 For
Moses, from generations of old, has in every city those
who preach him, being read in the synagogues every
Sabbath.

The commandment in vs. 20 was not the mere trifle it might


seem to us today. To abstain from the pollution of idols
involved not only abstention from all things offered to the idol in
the privacy of one’s home, or the refusal to participate in
idolatrous feasts demanded in ordinary civil life, but it even
ruled out participation in a domestic meal with friends and
relatives, at least as to the foods being eaten, and maybe even
with regard to the wine libations. Meat sold at the marketplace
very often had its origin in the temple. If one had to ascertain
117
beforehand what its origin was, it must have been obvious that
relying on Jewish kashrut laws was by far a better means of
procuring meat under this regulation, bringing the Christian
community closer to the synagogue in this respect. That this
was a real issue is obvious in Paul. Such incidents are referred
to in 1 Cor. 8 as well.

This sets us up with a clear-cut dilemma: (1) If the Jerusalem


Council took place before the Antioch Incident, then either the
gentiles in Antioch did not adhere to these instructions and
Peter did not object, or they did, and the emissaries of James
in Galatia shared the harsher opinion of the “brethren from
Judea” and not that of the James mentioned in Acts 15. (2) If
the Jerusalem Council was after the Antioch Incident, it served
as a way to settle such matters against Paul’s own view as
expressed in this letter. It would explain why Paul does not
mention this very important part of the agreement, since it
would also have settled the matter of table fellowship, and he
could easily have referred to that as part of the solution. As
matters stand now, Paul refers to the council only with regard
to the separation of missionary fields (Gal 2:9) and the
collection for the poorer brethren in Jerusalem (Gal. 2:10). So
we must conclude in either case that the decision described in
Acts 15 was not in Paul’s mind in Galatians, either because it
preceded it, or because Paul intentionally ignored it. A third
possibility could be that Luke for some reason distorted the
outcome of the Jerusalem Council, or combined various
sources into one, a possibility which we will ignore here for the
moment but cannot rule out.

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.

It is clear, then, that the decision by the Jerusalem Council


increased the application of Jewish law beyond its original
confines, while removing some of its more formal elements.
E.g., one could obtain recognition for this status as Noachide
by promising before a court of three judges to abstain from
idolatry, but apparently the matter of the status of being
Noachide was not decided in a court, but by entering the
Church.69 Furthermore, in the time that the New Testament was
written, the development of the Noachide Code was still in full
progress. The account in Acts 15 may well be the second-
oldest text relating to this subject. Around the year 100 B.C. we
already find in the Book of Jubilees (7:20, 21) a summary of six
commandments that were given to the sons of Noah (i.e. all of
mankind):

And in the 28th jubilee Noah began to teach his


children the ordinances and the commandments and
all the law that he knew, and he instructed his children
(1) to do justice and (2) cover their nakedness and (3)
to bless Him that had created them, and (4) to honor
father and mother and (5) to love one’s neighbor and
(6) to stay away from fornication and impurity and all
injustice.

Blasphemy and idolatry do not seem to be a part of this list, but


according to Guttmann they can be inferred from the comman-
dment (3) to bless the creator.70 Later, in Talmudic times, a list
of seven commandments became authoritative and was
worked out as the final say on the matter, but that does not

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.

What we have found so far is a Paulinist theology that is very


much concerned with safeguarding the essential notion that
justification is by faith, that Christian life could not be regulated
by any kind of imperative or commandment. What was left for
Jew and gentile alike was a life in the Spirit without any kind of
conditional imperative that formulated a precise behavior in
specific circumstances. We will study this notion of life under
the spirit further in connection with the letter to the Romans.
We will have to bear in mind, as a result of this chapter, that
Paul’s vision of complete lawlessness for gentile believers, in
the specific double sense that we explained above, was in fact
changed by the Jerusalem Apostles’ decree, though the
essence of Paul’s gospel of justification by faith and not by
works of the law was reiterated there, according to Luke. At
least we can say that to the Jerusalem Council proper Christian
behavior was very much also a matter of proper obedience to a
set of rules, the Torah for Jews and the Noachide Code for

121
gentiles.72

What then does righteousness mean, if it cannot be found by


the works of the law? And what is the relationship between
righteousness by faith and the Noachide commandments?
Paul’s argument seems to run like this: man is not justified by
works of the law, i.e., by what the law itself does. Man can
however be justified by the faith of Christ, that is by what the
faithfulness of Christ does. Our faith in Christ results in an
identification of myself with Him, so that His faith and life and
resurrection become my own; that is, I die because of the
workings of the law to which Christ Himself was subjected, the
effect of the law is death as the ultimate atonement for sin, but I
become resurrected with Christ because of this identification
with Him. Though convicted under law and condemned by law,
God gave evidence of the new thing He did in Christ through
His resurrection. Christ lives in me and my ”self” no longer
lives. The law brings me death, condemnation for my sins,
curse and not blessing. Being made one with Christ gives me
resurrected life, the blessing of Abraham, righteousness, and
the gift of the Spirit. In as far as the law brings me death, I die,
but with Christ. Insofar as the law brings me a curse, Christ
bore that curse. Insofar as the law demands that I perform the
commandments, I now live a life of faith in the Son of God (Gal.
2:20), which determines my life in the flesh, so I am no longer
under the law. The shape of a life that aspires to achieve
righteousness by performing a commandment as a condition
thereto is taken away. Justification is then clearly seen primarily
as it contains the results of life under the law. We might expect
to acquire it through the law (5:4), i.e., through a life of sub-
mission under a diverse whole of commandments, since the
law provides this as a way to achieve life: do this and you shall
live. But in this manner the law will not achieve its goal. Law
can only achieve its own lawful demand by punishing the
sinner. If we do not become perfect under the law by doing all
of its commandments, which is impossible on the basis of
Paul’s anthropology and understanding of the perfection of the

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.

The righteousness that is demanded by the law can be


summed up in one word, according to Paul: thou shalt love thy
neighbor like thyself (5:14). So in terms of the law, the new life
in the spirit that is nothing but “faith working through love” gives
the righteousness that is all the law can possibly demand of a
man. By having the faith of Christ working inside me, a love has
become active in me that is the love of Christ (2:20), so I
achieve righteousness by a faith that works through love (5:6).
So by restating the goal of the law as the achievement of
righteousness (equal to life in 3:11-12 and with future redeem-
ption in 5:5), to be justified (more literally: be righteoused) must
mean being in a particular condition. It means being identified
with Christ, being set into a new realm where not the law, but
the Spirit reigns (5:18). It means being set on a new path of life
where the conditionality of performance has been replaced by
the unconditionality of a free gift. To be justified means: fulfilling
the law by adhering to its goal in a new way: not that of
obedience and submission, but allowing the Spirit of Christ to
do it inside of me.

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.

His opponents probably saw it differently. We can not be sure


how much of this theology was actually considered and
123
debated by the “pillars of the Church” in Jerusalem. The text in
Acts 15:12 indicates that Paul’s testimony was limited to
describing the great signs and miracles God was performing
through him and Barnabas amongst the gentiles. It is Peter
who raises the matter of the distinction between Jews and
gentiles. God has made no distinction between Jews and
gentiles, though it is said specifically of the gentiles that God
did something extraordinary to make their entrance possible:
He “purifies their hearts,” a clear reference to the covenant
written by faith in the hearts of Jer. 31. Salvation, Peter states,
is therefore in principle alike to gentile and Jew. And the barrier
between Jews and gentiles has been replaced by the coming of
the New Covenant in which the Spirit inscribes the demands of
the law in the hearts of both Jews and gentiles.

But then James in his concluding statement does not accept


this gospel as implying that the Jews should become like
gentiles, but prefers to find a way to uphold Jewish law and its
boundary markers, and by appealing to the gentiles to conform
to the Noachide commandments, he makes it clear that
gentiles can and should draw nearer to Israel because of this.
James’ quotation of Amos 9 speaks of the resurrection of the
House of David first, and only then of the conversion of the
gentiles. It seems clear that to the James of Acts 15 the
adoption of gentiles into the covenant-people implied a decisive
change in the way of life of gentiles, even beyond the require-
ments that were placed on the so-called God-fearers, who were
allowed to practice the civil rituals that were demanded of them.
The Noachide Code’s prohibition of idolatry would make such a
compliance with civil religion difficult, if not impossible.

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.

In Peter’s words in Acts 15:8-9, we therefore find the position


that is closest to that of Paul. But it is concerned only with
124
salvation and the gift of the Spirit, without making distinctions,
the purifying power of faith for gentiles and salvation by the
grace of Christ in the same manner. That position apparently
was deemed completely in accordance with the implementation
of the Noachide code as necessary and minimal requirement,
and the acceptance of circumcision for gentiles who so desired.
We must conclude, therefore, that if there is any credibility to
the statements made by Luke in Acts 15, the position defended
by Paul in Galatians was in profound disagreement with that of
James, and maybe even that of Peter. We have some insight
into how history favored the view Paul took: it would have been
an advantage in his mission to the gentiles to make no demand
of circumcision nor any other demand that could be explained
as an element of the Jewish way of life. And yet, the attitude
that was advocated by James did not fully depart from the
Church.

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.

The debate about the intent and structure of Romans 1-11,

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.

Since we are not attempting to provide a comprehensive


rereading of Paul’s letters in this study, we must give some
insight into the general presuppositions of our more detailed
exegesis of the passages that are vital to our line of inquiry.
The following attempts to establish the major decisions we
made to establish some consistent view of the general intent of
the letter to the Romans.

The letter to the Galatians was written by Paul to a Church he


had founded and knew, and in defense of both the contents of
his gospel and his apostolic authority against a “Judaizing”
faction and against the specific background of the Antioch
incident. In it, Paul presented a clear dismissal of the Torah as
principle and standard of the Christian life. In Romans, which
deals largely with the same theological issues, the situation is
decidedly different. In this letter Paul is preparing his visit to
Rome on his way to Spain, where he had not been before. The
main thrust of the letter seems to be a defense of his gospel of
justification by faith and not by works of the law against gentiles
in Rome who advocated acceptance of Jewish law, at the same
time emphasizing that with respect to salvation the gentile has
precedence over the Jew. The polemical thrust of the letter
makes it clear that this was one single position: a justification of
the gentile believer based upon some higher form of obedience
127
to law, whereby the Church replaced Israel as the people of
God. The polemic seems addressed to a particular brand of
Judaizers as well as to those who rejected Israel altogether,
which is probable, if the historical circumstance that Jews and
Jewish Christians who had been expelled from Rome in the
year 49 under Claudius “because of their constant disturbances
at the instigation of Chrestus,” and were now returning after
Claudius’s death in 54 to a Church that had become
dominantly gentile, has any bearing on this matter. A part of
this polemical situation is the continuing criticism that the
returning Jewish Christians probably made against Paul: that
with his gospel of lawlessness he in fact was preaching
immorality. Verses like 3:31; 5:20; 6:15 would not have been
possible in Galatians. There he had to fight against the charge
that elsewhere he had preached the circumcision! Because of
its literary character and the way it later became canonized,
Paul’s letter to the Romans is traditionally seen as the closest
we get to a theological discourse as such in the New
Testament. But, as we will see, in it Paul changes his view on
the role of the law as present in Galatians and adopts a far
more favorable attitude to its provisions.

The doctrinal part of the letter opens by stating the core


message of the gospel: that the righteousness of God is
revealed in it (1:17). To many students of Paul, this has been
without further consideration the core message of Paul’s
theology as a whole (Luther, Calvin; of the moderns, e.g.,:
Käsemann, Kruse) but not by all (e.g., J. Christiaan Beker
[1980] who emphasizes the “Triumph of God in Life and
Thought,” and Sanders, who sees Paul’s theology as deriving
from two main emphases: (1) the Lordship of Christ and (2) the
union of Jews and pagans within one Body of Christ).73 In
Romans, the importance of justification is not in dispute, but its
meaning and relative emphases are still not completely clear.
Do we find in Romans the doctrine of justification by faith
alone? Advocates will stress that the fundamental meaning of
justification is expressed in Romans 3 to 5, and that the
emphasis is on the legal, extrinsic character of the declaration
of righteousness. Opponents will stress that Paul uses a whole
range of expressions connected to the root “dika-” signifying
various connected notions such as liberation and “enablement,”

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.

Paul opens his argument with a statement on the condition of


the pagans, setting his “encoded” audience up for the first main
issue: the use of the law as a means of judgment on others.74
The righteousness of God is first of all revealed in God’s wrath
concerning ungodliness and unrighteousness.75 Though
mankind could have known the truth that God is creator and
therefore has a right to obedience (1:19, 21), mankind has
fallen into idolatry, for which they were punished by being given
up to harmful sexual and social vices that are a violation of
God’s creation and will therefore result in death as judgment
(cf. Rom. 1:28-31). This condition of mankind is universal;
nobody can claim to remain unaffected by it, neither Jew nor
pagan (2:3). The moralist audience of Paul has been tricked
into agreeing with Paul too soon. Certainly pagans live an
immoral life, but nobody can claim to be completely free from
sin. In principle, therefore, all will be held accountable for their
actions on the basis of “law”; i.e., a generalized principle of
obedience (2:6), and this goes for Jew and gentile alike, though
in different ways with regard to how the “law” was concretely
present for each one (2;10). The possession of the written law
for Jews (2:12) or the effective presence of the law-as-principle
in conscience for gentiles (2;15) will not in itself excuse anyone
on the day of judgment; it will rather bring out the culpability of
the offenders more sharply. To be a Jew and have knowledge
of the written law will not suffice to provide escape from
judgment based on that same law, and neither will being
without a written law and living by conscience. All of this does
not compromise God’s revelation in itself, since our injustice

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).

In contrast with the present revelation of God’s wrath, Paul


opens a new chapter in 3:21 by stating that “now,” in the
eschatological present, God’s righteousness has been revealed
outside of this misunderstanding of the law. Christ has been
made the propitiatory sacrifice in which God revealed His
righteousness in such a way that God actually acts in
accordance with it when He justifies the faithful. So man is
justified through faith, without works of the law, which is the first
major conclusion within Paul’s discourse (3:28). To be justified
then obviously means several things, which are not all
explained at once. In general it must mean here to escape the
wrath of God and to remain free from punishment for idolatry
and social vice.

According to Paul, such a principle of justification, that man


receives the status of acquittal for which God sovereignly
provides the basis Himself, can be found in the Old Testament
as well. Of Abraham it was said that “he believed God, and it
was reckoned unto him as righteousness” (Gen 15:6, quoted in
Rom. 4:3). Such righteousness obviously could not have been
achieved through keeping the commandments, or by knowing
and teaching the law, or by being a part of the community of
Israel. In fact, circumcision, the commandment that signifies as
no other the distinctiveness of Israel under the law, was given
only after the episode of Gen. 15. Paul combines the statement
about Abraham with a quote from Psalm 32:1-2, indicating that
the judicial declaration of righteousness, which is based on
Christ’s sacrifice, implies a total amnesty, a not accounting of
sin to man. In fact, God justifies the “ungodly,” so completely
sovereign is He in this justifying act of grace (4:5). In all of this
judicial metaphor a cultic image of Christ as the mercy seat (cf.
Lev. 16) and atoning sacrifice is operative, making the
declaration at once extrinsic to the effort of man (imputation),
but also making it a “real” declaration because of

130
• the effective revelation of God’s righteousness in Christ’s
death and resurrection, and

• through the identification of the believer with Christ, ma-


king him righteous as a condition he is in. Acquittal from
future judgment implies liberation from the power of sin and
from a view of the law that can only condemn. The priestly
declaration is not extrinsic, though it originates in the
sovereign will of God alone. The particular characteristic of
Abraham’s faith is explained in 4:17 as the faith in God’s
promise to give him a son, which is taken as analogous to
faith in Christ’s resurrection (4:25).

The fruit or the accompaniment of God’s declaration of


righteousness is reconciliation, peace with God (5:1, 10), and it
is again stated as based upon Christ’s death, now expressed
as a loving self-sacrifice (5:8). In a typological passage, the
cosmic scale of Christ’s sacrifice is made clear: mankind has
been in submission to the power of death, sin and an accusing
law, but now grace has intervened to procure the righteousness
that the law was unable to produce. All of mankind is included
in the justification unto life because God’s grace is offered to all
(5:18), even while only those who are identified with Christ’s
obedience will be made righteous (5:19).

Objections that can be made to such statements about the


conditions of receiving amnesty and righteousness are dealt
with in Rom. 6:1-8:39. If there is total amnesty for sin, then it
would seem possible that man remains a sinner in all respects,
trusting in God to pardon him for all his offences. It becomes
clear, however, that atonement through Christ means “dying to
sin” (6:2). The imputation of righteousness is based on the
identification of the believer with Christ in His death and His
resurrection to a newness of life (6:4). Being “righteoused”
means being set free from the power of sin (6:7; through death)
and becoming alive again through the power of grace (through
the resurrection). The objection to Paul’s teaching that it allows
man to remain a sinner because he is set free from judgment
does not hold up: the righteousness of Christ imputed to man
implies his death to sin and becoming alive again in Christ.
Being liberated from sin, man has become obedient to
righteousness (6:18).
131
A second objection directs itself to the function of the law in all
of this. If justification implies having died with Christ, the law is
no longer in effect, since it can rule only over the living (7:4).
The newness of life beyond the law implies bearing fruit before
God and being freed from the effect that the law has in inciting
rebellion against God’s will. (7:5) This does not imply that the
law actually effects sin (7:7), but it makes known what sin is,
and it turns out that in our normal state such knowledge
actually makes us desire it. More precisely: the power of sin is
such that it abuses the law and knowledge of sin to enslave
people under its power (7:8). The law in itself is good and
righteous, but its abuse by sin turns its effect into the opposite.
Finally, Paul grounds this perspective in a passage which deals
with the nature of mankind and can be called an anthropology
(Bultmann), though this is disputed by Stowers, Dunn, Sanders,
and others who see in this passage a reference to Israel before
Sinai. In both cases the passage is not to be taken as a
reference to Paul’s individual biography. In my flesh, my life
under the law, before my being renewed through Christ, there
is no good. Sin makes me do things that I do not want. I am
divided within myself and unable to comply with the law through
my own power. That dichotomy is not alleviated by the law,
which only expresses God’s demand that leads to
condemnation but does not give me the power to do good,
since it allows sin to reign over my life. So I need the life of
resurrection to escape this problem.

In the next passage (8:1-8:39), the consequences of life under


grace are dealt with. There is no judgment for those who are
“in” Christ, who have been identified with Christ on the basis of
His sacrifice. Christ does what the law was unable to do: make
it possible for the demand of the law to be fulfilled in those who
walk according to a new principle of life, that of the Spirit, i.e.,
of a life being determined by the “mind of Christ.” It does not
state that Christ made it possible for them to fulfill that demand
themselves, so it is obvious we are not talking about a renewed
obedience analogous to the obedience under law, i.e., the
obedience to the law that is developed in the teachings of the
gentile majority in Romans or was taught to them by the
returning Jewish-Christians. Yet it is possible to ignore the
newness of life in Christ and live according to the flesh (8:13),
indicating that the believer is able to respond to exhortation.
The imperative can be addressed to him as in 6:12-13: “Do not
132
yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness,”
“reckon yourselves dead,” etc. But this reckoning and yielding
is in its essence a being aware of the actual condition of the
renewed life and not a surrender of freedom under a demand
that comes from the outside, as is expressed by the concept of
slavery.

But of course our present lives do not completely express the


actual condition we are in. We have been redeemed in hope
and expectation; we are heirs to the promise (8:24). All the
circumstances of our life are, however, in accordance with our
calling, though that knowledge is hidden from us (8:28). God
has sovereignly justified us, so will He grant us also the triumph
over the powers that endanger us (8:38).

After the doxology of the love of Christ in 8:37-39, Paul turns to


a second major question, that of the place of Israel in God’s
revelation of salvation (9:1-11:36). The issue seems to be that
if pagans receive justification while remaining outside of Israel,
the promises to Israel would seem to have been revoked. But
Paul states as his major premise that it is impossible that the
word of God is without effect or made void (9:6). So it must be
shown that justification through Christ remains congruous with
the election of Israel and the privileges given them. Paul begins
by making a distinction between the natural descent of Israel
and the progeny of Isaac. The children of the promise made to
Abraham are the Israel that receive the promises made to
Israel. If Israel is based upon Abraham’s faith and his
exemplary act of faith in the offering of Isaac, then the
existence of Israel is actually based upon faith and promise,
and not on law and works. It is therefore based on the
sovereign will of God that revealed itself in Abraham’s election
before circumcision, his being made righteous based on faith,
the election of Isaac, and the rejection of Ishmael as the son
according to the flesh. And again, the role of Jacob is
expressed as a result of sovereign election, not of Jacob’s
merit. So the fact that gentiles have received righteousness out
of faith (9:30) is in accordance with the very principle of
righteousness as revealed in the history of Israel before Sinai.
Israel that tried to achieve righteousness under the law did not
achieve the law because it interpreted it as a matter of single
commandments, works of the law (9:31). Such works of the law
133
count as inherent righteousness, as opposed to the righteous-
ness of God that was unknown to them. But there is an
opposition between the principle of the Sinaitic law that makes
righteousness according to the law a condition of life, and
Christ, who gives renewed life in order to fulfill the requirements
of the law in the life of the believers (6:11, 8:4).

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).

After all of this is said, Paul can offer exhortation based on of


God’s mercy, displayed so totally in this gospel of justification
by faith and sovereign grace (12:1). The basic principles of
Christian ethics are congruous with what Paul developed
earlier as the basis of salvation. The spirit of Christ in us (8:9)
effects conformity to Christ: the living, holy, and God-pleasing
sacrifice of our lives (12:1). Because of this insistence on our
being united and identified with Christ, the metaphor of the
body of Christ can come to the foreground in 12:4, and the
specific exhortations of 12:9-21 seem to reflect the character of
Christ’s life as it is working in the life of the believer.

From this perspective of a community that imitates the


character of Christ (12:1) and takes on His position in the world
as Body of Christ (12:4), the role of government is mentioned in
chapter 13. Submission to authority is meant to show the
virtues of Christ incarnate in the Church, and it can be said that
even without their knowing, the governments of the world serve
God by creating an orderly society in which the Church can
show its character. Because Christ has conquered the forces of
sin, death, and law, no rebellion against government is needed
or useful.

It is enough to show the effective presence of mutual love in


134
which all the commandments have their summary and in which
the law is fulfilled (13:9). So chapter 13 deals with the
relationship of the Church to government and the general
demands of law, and chapter 12 deals with the inner nature of
the Body of Christ in this world. Chapter 14 deals with matters
of Christian life within the community: there should be tolerance
with regard to religious matters, apparently referring to the
ongoing presence within the Church of observant Jews and
non-observant gentiles. Dietary laws and religious festivals may
have been invalidated as a means of acquiring salvation or as
conditions of being righteous, but they might be a useful part of
the Christian life. The standard is Christ (14:6), and not a law-
like rule, but faith (14:23).

We must first of all come to an understanding of the principal


basis of Pauline ethics by discussing the meaning of
righteousness and justification in the doctrinal part of the letter.
Only by having a clear view of this major principle can we
understand what life in Christ means to Paul and how it is
effective in the Christian life in the practical circumstances that
are described in the exhortatory part of the letter from chapter
12 on. Let us turn then to the major proposition with which Paul
opens his discourse.

135
9. The condition of Jew and Greek
before God (Rom 1:1-2:27)

The thesis of the theological part of the letter is stated in 1:16-


17:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of


God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the
Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the
righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith;76
as it is written, “The one who is righteous shall live by
faith.”77

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.

The quote from Habakkuk 2 has this same ambiguity implicitly,


where it states ha-tzadik be’emunato jichjeh, the righteous will
live through his faith., and it is not directly clear whether
‘emunato refers to His faithfulness, i.e., God’s, or the
faithfulness of the righteous himself. So in effect Paul’s phrase
“from faith to faith” can be read as a small midrash on
‘emunato, exploring both linguistic possibilities and making it
serve his own purpose.78

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

becomes what this concept of faith can mean if notwithstanding obedience is


equalled to doing “works” without faith.
78
There are four versions in all of this Habakkuk verse. (1) The righteous by
his faith(fulness) shall live (Masoretic text). (2) The righteous out of my
faith(fulness) shall live (Septuaginta). (3) the righteous out of of faith(fulness)
shall live (Paul). (4) My righteous one out of faith(fulness) shall live. (Heb.
10:38). Cf. Dunn (1988), ad loc.
79
Cf. Schlatter, Romans (1935), p.42, where he mentions this possibility.
137
with the aid of the doctrinal distinctions of faith as assensus
and fiducia, which are not to be found elsewhere in Paul.

The quotation from Habakkuk presents some problems too.


Käsemann has translated the quotation as saying: he that is
righteous out of faith, will live. By faith is linked to righteous and
not taken as the principle of the life of the righteous. Käsemann
argues in his commentary on the verse that we have, not a
quotation from the LXX, but a free rendering of the MT that
transforms the meaning of be’emunato to fit the context of the
Church. Anders Nygren read along these lines in his
commentary in 1954 Schlatter argued along these lines as well
in 1935, but added an emphasis on the divine righteousness
working to bring people into the right relationship with God,
thereby stressing the (social) concept of covenant that turned
out to be so vital in contemporary scholarship. These
emphases are still there in Luke Timothy Johnson’s Reading
Romans, where he states that righteousness first of all means
God’s virtue of being “just,” that is, to stand in and to act from a
proper relationship to mankind.80 God is fair and impartial. From
the LXX the readers could understand that this righteousness
also implied God’s intervention on behalf of the weak and the
poor. It signified God’s establishing right relationships where
they did not exist before.

After having stated the general thesis of his letter, Paul


addresses the issue mentioned first: “to the Jew first and also
to the Greek.” This second section runs from 1:18-3:20. Paul
explains that all have failed to respond properly to God’s
revelation, so the wrath of God is revealed to be over the
gentiles in particular. The fictitious reader is supposed to affirm
this depiction of pagan folly and crime with relish. That was
exactly the basic argument for seeking a righteousness under
law to augment their gentile status as Christians. Paul’s
argument in itself runs like this: The unrighteousness of man
does not result from lack of knowledge, since mankind knew
God as creator (1:20), a very slight hint pointing toward his
larger thesis: that knowledge of the law will not help either. But
mankind has not acknowledged God and has fallen into
idolatry. On account of this idolatry, God has allowed them to
act without righteousness in their relationships, particularly

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.

Having developed the notion of man’s sinfulness on the basis


of his idolatrous rejection of God as creator, now Paul needs to
address a first possible counter-argument in the beginning of
chapter 2. You might say that you do not perpetrate the things
mentioned in 1:23-31, that you do recognize God as creator
and have not fallen into idolatry. That such an argument might
be perfectly acceptable if individuals are concerned is highly
likely. Paul himself states that he was blameless with regard to
the demands of the law. Paul’s rhetorical opponent here is not
an individual person, but a representative of either Jews or
Greeks who might state: “we” do not do such things. It is
necessary to see this before trying to make sense of Paul’s
statement in 2:1

Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, every one who


judgest, for in that in which thou judgest another, thou
condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the
same things.

If the argument were directed at concrete individuals, the


response might very well be: I myself do not “do the same
things!” But if the argument is directed at types of humanity, or
rather immediately against the Jewish condemnation of pagan
vices, it actually states: although you as a Jew might argue
generally that these things are not done by some or most of
you, being a Jew does not in itself mean that such sins do not
occur. If Stowers is right, we find here in actual fact not a Jew
as intended audience, but a gentile (“O man”) and fictitious
interlocutor. Instead of dealing with the “hypocrisy of the Jew,”
139
as traditional exegesis would have it, Paul deals with a
reconstructed ideal gentile, as he is seen from the perspective
of his gentile readers.81 And so the argument can be construed
as follows: the sins might not be the same, and not all of you
have incurred guilt for them, but there is sin nonetheless. The
“ideal” Jew that you gentiles would like to be is not a reality at
all. Being circumcised and having the law does not imply that
the “wrath of God” (1:18) cannot be directed at you, because it
still depends on what you do. To condemn the sins of others
will not lead to righteousness that can stand up in the day of
judgment (verse 3).

Verse 11 then reaches the first conclusion: there is no


“acceptance of persons” with God; all will be dealt with
according to their works and according to the covenant that is
valid for them: those under the law will be condemned by the
law, those outside of the law will be judged according to the
truth that can be known without the revelation in Torah (cf.
1:18-19). Both will be judged according to their effective
obedience. If in that sense Jew and gentile are alike, there is
no need to become “Judaized” and adopt the position of the
Jewish judge of gentile vices.

But there still is a difference between Jews and gentiles. Paul


explains it as follows

2:14. For when nations, who have no law by nature,


do the things of the [mosaic] law, [then] these, having
no [written] law, are a law to themselves; 15. who
show the work of the law written in their hearts, [in the
fact that] their conscience bears witness, and their
thoughts accuse or else excuse themselves between
themselves; 16. on the day when God shall judge the
secrets of men, according to my gospel, by Jesus
Christ.

In 2:14 Paul mentions non-Jews who “have no law, [but]


practice by nature the things of the law.” The decision to
translate “by nature” as an opposition to “practice,” as, e.g., in
Darby’s translation, is no doubt connected to the interpretation

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.

The problem is to what part of the sentence fusei belongs


here.83 It may state: If gentiles, who do not have the law by

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.)

Consequently we read as follows: Rom. 2:14 must mean that


the nations do not have the law because of their origin, and so
we read fusei (by nature) as the opposite of those who came
to the law by an act of conversion. What does the second
expression, “to be law unto themselves,” then mean? Paul
states that if they happen to do what the law prescribes for
them, they turn out to be a law unto themselves, that is, their
acting in conformity to what the law commanded Israel is not a
matter of standing under any written law, because as gentiles
they do not “have” the law. It is a matter of responding to “a”
will of God, not to what the known will of God in the Torah is.
Again, the crux of the argument is against the gentile
audience’s pro-Jewish assumption that obedience to God must
imply direct obedience to the written law. There can be
obedience to God without the law. All of this is in harmony with
minor Jewish teachings in pseudepigrapha like 4 Ezra, where it
states, in 3:33ff., that some among the nations have “fulfilled
Thy commandments.” It is obviously not meant to state that
miraculously they have obeyed the Torah without knowing it,
since that would weaken the argument Paul is seeking to make
here against his gentile readers.

It also seems to correspond with the more general notion that


non-Jews who keep the Noachide commandments can be
deemed “righteous amongst the nations.” This is unlikely,
however. The problem is that the Noachide commandments
were considered a written code that was based on oral tradition
after the time of Noah. The status of that code was still under
development within 1st-century Judaism, so it is hardly likely to
have been thought of as “known” amongst the nations at the
time of Paul’s writing. Besides, the code as it developed in its
early stage turned out to be more of a standard for the gentiles,
which defined conditions for Jewish-gentile communion, than
what it became in the Babylonian Talmud: a code of behavior
143
of the gentiles as their version of Torah. So, on the basis of this
verse, it can only be said that the gentiles sometimes acted in
apparent accord with rules of behavior that the Jews had as
written commandments, even though these gentiles had no
such written source. The argument is that the acceptance of a
written law code as such does not make a person righteous, it
still is only a matter of what you do.

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.

14 When gentiles who have not the law by nature, do


what the law requires, they are a law to themselves,
even though they do not have the law.
15 They show that the work of the law is written on
their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness
and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps
excuse them.
16 on that day when, according to my gospel, God
judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

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.

We must remember that Paul is not referring to the law as


such, but to the work (or effectiveness) of the law, which is
what the law had commanded them but which they did not
receive through tradition in a written form. It is not the law that
is written on their hearts, but the work of the law. What the law
requires, in 2:14, refers to the claim of the law as specifically
applied to them. That’s why it does not say ta erga tou nomou,
the works (mitzvoth) of the law), since a totality of separate
commandments is not what Paul had in mind. Neither the
mitzvoth, nor the Noachide commandments, which are a
written law for the non-Jews, but acting lawfully in general on
the basis of their required acknowledgment of the Creator, was
what he claimed for the non-Jews. To claim that all of the
Mosaic law would be fulfilled by non-Jews would be untenable.
It would imply that Paul had first reduced the law to a minor
portion of the ethical prescriptions, say the ten commandments.
But the intent of the passage is not to excuse gentiles, nor to
put their understanding of the law on a par with that of the
Jewish nation; the conscience of the nations would also accuse
them on the day of judgment. So Paul’s argument is directed at
two things: (1) there is a kind of obedience which is without the
written form of God’s commandment that is still discernible
even amongst non-Jews, and (2) even if man has the Torah to
guide him in these matters, only the factual obedience, the
deeds, will mean anything in the day of judgment. And both
those who are and those who are not in possession of a written
law stand accused of failing to meet its requirements.

If there are non-Jews who do what God requires without having


a written statute, then having the law would not make any
difference. It is all about the “works” (but the “works” in 2:6 are
not those of the law, and in 2:15 “the work,” in the singular,
145
means the general effective reality of law), the actual deeds,
that will be judged in the day of judgment. Paul is not stating
that they have their conscience instead of a written law that
informs them of this requirement, for in so far as there is a
demand, it was revealed by God in his Torah. A strictly oral
tradition was affirmed in Jewish tradition starting with Noah, but
this tradition was in accordance with and derived from
scripture. There is therefore no basis to think that Paul is
referring to Noachide law. He is actually only referring to the
fact that gentiles have a conscience, that they actually have a
knowledge of the difference between good and bad without a
written instruction, which he takes to be a mode of the
presence of “law,” even if it cannot be the law as the written
and studied Torah of Jewish experience. So it does not mean
that gentiles on their own accord could find what is right and
what is wrong, as Schlatter explains, but that they made such a
distinction at all without written law! The principle of obedience
to law as obedience to and recognition of God as their creator,
the argument from chapter 1, is present with them in the way
Paul describes in 2:14: they are a law unto themselves; in the
inner dialogue of their conscience it is expressed what Torah is
as instruction of law, rather than specifically what the law
commands, since that can only be understood from God’s
revelation. Of course one might object that surely some under-
standing of the prohibition of murder and theft and the like are
meant here. But even then the principle would not be
compromised that Paul is thinking about an analogue of the law
for gentiles as distinct from the posession of a written and oral
tradition as a mark of divine election.

The Greek word for conscience, (suneidesis), needs some


attention here, because its interpretation might decide the
question of the precise nature of this obedience without the
(written) law that Paul introduces here (and enhances
considerably later). It is part of a threefold explication of what it
means that the non-Jews are a law unto themselves. The
demand of the law is

(1) written on their hearts, i.e., known without formal


instruction, and

(2) their conscience (this knowledge accompanying all actions


with the judgment of right and wrong: [sun-eidesis]) acts
146
like a witness that testifies to that fact, and finally

(3) their thoughts accuse or excuse each other.

If we take it this way, we derive the plain meaning from


classical Greek, where sunoida is used non-reflexively
according to the expression: sunoida tini ti: to share knowledge
of something with someone else. Their knowledge of (the fact),
then testifies with others, and is a sign of their shame and their
awareness of being set under judgment (suneidesis,
summarturein). Such a witness (which obviously could be the
same person who knew his own deed) could then either be for
the prosecution or for the defense, depending on what he
knows. The sequel that speaks of their accusing or excusing
each other in thought makes a logical follow-up. As each
person, in his own conscience, with perfect knowledge of the
facts, accuses or excuses himself, so the judgment which they
fear is a perfectly right and true judgment, their thoughts
bringing the verdict. In its reflexive sense it would refer simply
to being aware of one’s own actions, which leads to a tension
since actions can be viewed from different and opposite
viewpoints, and that allows for the kind of tension between
good and bad that is characteristic of moral self-awareness.
Now this we take to mean that to Paul the fact that the gentiles
have a conscience is in itself a testimony to the fact that they
are sensitive to the distinction between good and bad and
therefore are in general subject to requirements that are
analogous to those of the written law. The (written) law is
effective, has an ergon, in so far as non-Jews make moral
distinctions at all. Having a conscience means being divided in
oneself; the ethical dimension shows itself as a tension. And it
is in this tension that the reality of the law can be seen.

It is interesting to note, in passing, that there is no direct


equivalent for this concept of conscience in the Hebrew of the
Old Testament. In Psalm 139:23 it is actually God who is called
upon to be a witness to the inner thoughts, where it states:
“search me, O God, and know my heart; prove me, and know
my thoughts.” If God is the inner witness of my thoughts, then
connected to this is His word as the standard of my behavior
and the source of knowledge of good and bad. God’s word is
close to man, in his mind and heart (Deut. 30:14), so that the
147
Torah, and not an inner faculty of man, performs the function
that is ascribed to the inner (reflexive) conscience in Greek
thought. Might this be the actual context of Paul’s passage? His
first step is to affirm that it can be said that, even without the
written law, the non-Jews make a distinction between right and
wrong and have a conscience, in the sense that they too live in
the tension between right and wrong. If that is the case, then it
is not only the actual possession of the (written) law that allows
people to have the work of the law , that which makes man
stand accused or excused, actually within themselves. Their
very being testifies to an effective presence of the law, ana-
logous to the memorized and studied law that conveys God’s
word as a non-reflexive, “outer” witness of our inner thoughts
and acts. Apparently Paul is disputing the contention that the
possession of the written law is to be identified with standing
under the efficacy of law, taken as expression of God’s will. He
is denying that the law’s only effectiveness is through the
possession of a written Torah. And of course he must do so, if
he is to contend that faith in Christ actually fulfills the same
function.

Paul has prepared the way by arguing that gentile idolaters


show evidence of the presence of the law in their consciences
and experience the tension of right and wrong. He has
established that no general status under law, but only actual
deeds, are the proper subject of final judgment. Now Paul can
return to the main line of his argument, started in 2:1. There is
no excuse for those who judge others but do not comply with
the law themselves. So if this “man” calls himself a Jew, no
matter whether such a person is a Jew by birth or by
conversion, or a Christian semi-proselyte or Judaizer, he has
many things to boast of. Knowledge of God’s will, discernment,
instruction in the law are all his. On that basis he can be a
leader of the blind gentiles and new Christians who know
nothing about the law. There is profound truth to this in the
expectation of his audience, since the law really is the
embodiment of knowledge and truth. But the criterion of
righteousness cannot be the knowledge of the law, but must be
the effectiveness of that knowledge. If sin is still present and
death still reigns in such a life under the law, then the law will
be shown to be ineffective. And since the argument can be
made that both Jews and gentiles, with or without law, do sin
and are under judgment of death, the gentile Christian who
148
intends to adopt Jewish law after the Pharisee fashion as an
enhancement to his faith is severely misguided.

Therefore it must be said as a matter of principle: circumcision,


the sign of this being under the law, only has meaning in the
doing of the law (2:25). If those who have not been
circumcised, the non-Jews who do not have the law by nature
from 2:14 and the not circumcised “by nature” in Rom. 2:27--
can achieve the requirements of the law, it is shown that the
possession of the law is ineffective. The judging man of 2:1 will
then be judged himself by the uncircumcised who does the law.
Paul is setting up a moral standard that overrides being
circumcised or being in possession of the law. And by that
standard, though secondary to what the law is demanding
differently from gentiles and Jews, there is absolute equality
between the two. “The single most important theme of Romans
is equality of Jew and gentile.” 87 In the matter of sin, there is
really no difference.

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?

We come now to a major element of our argument, which is


Paul’s treatment of imputed and/or infused righteousness.

But now apart from [a] law righteousness of God is


manifested, borne witness to by the law and the
prophets; 22 righteousness of God by faith of Jesus
Christ towards all, and upon all those who believe: for
there is no difference; 23 for all have sinned, and
come short of the glory of God; 24 being justified freely
by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ
Jesus; 25 whom God has set forth as a mercy-seat,
through faith in his blood, for shewing forth of his
righteousness, in respect of the passing by the sins
that had taken place before, through the forbearance
of God; 26 for shewing forth of his righteousness in the
present time, so that he should be just, and justify him
that is of faith of Jesus. 27 Where then boasting? It
has been excluded. By what law? of works? Nay, but
by law of faith; 28 for we reckon that a man is justified
by faith, without works of law. 29 Is the God of Jews
only? is he not of nations also? Yea, of nations also:
30 since indeed there is one God, who shall justify
circumcision on the principle of faith, and
uncircumcision by faith. 31 Do we then make void law
by faith? Perish the thought: rather we establish law.

This second part of Paul’s theological argument runs from 3:21-


5:20. The subject of the whole passage seems to be that there
is no distinction between Jew and gentile in the matter of
salvation. 3:21-3:30 is devoted to the question of how
righteousness was revealed in Christ and its relationship to the

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.

In the opening verse of our passage, a principle is introduced


that refers back to 1:16-17, where Paul states that the
righteousness of God was revealed in the gospel. It was
outside of the gospel where God’s wrath was revealed through
law and conscience and was exercised in His judgment upon
all sinners, Jews and gentiles. So what is the meaning of this
concept of righteousness? In 1:16-17 the essence of the gospel
was explained as the righteousness of God revealed on the
basis of faith.

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.

To further emphasize that God’s being is not compromised by


this way of showing His righteousness, verse 21b states that
the law and the prophets bear witness to this righteousness.
There is no total breach with the prior history of salvation. Still,
it is not the law as is understood by Judaism that bears this
witness, nor is it merely a reference to those citations within the
Old Testament that are taken as prophetic with regard to
Christ. So it might refer to the whole of the OT, understood as
promise which aspect of the Old Testament is restored by
Christian faith, since the OT, according to him, confronts us so
far only within the religious perversion of salvation by works, or
to the center of Torah: the Day of Atonement, or more
specifically to the story of Abraham (Kruse, p. 189)

Such righteousness of God is achieved by the “faith-obedience”


of Christ and is intended (effective) for all who have faith, who
believe.93 The ground of our justification, which because of the

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.

We have repeated here the common statement that Paul’s


language of the courtroom in chapter 2 implies that justification
here means a declaration of being set free from judgment.94 In
opposition to that Sanders has stated:

“This [the occurrence of logidzomai, to “reckon” 11


times in chapter 4 and in 3:28 - RAV] does not mean,
however, that Paul thinks of righteousness as being
fictitiously imputed to those who have faith, while they
remain sinners in fact.”95

Now it may certainly be true that it is not correct to say that


righteousness is merely or fictitiously imputed, and it may be
true also that Paul does not always refer to righteousness in
this sense. Sanders showed in his discussion of Paul’s letter to
the Galatians that the Greek verb diakaiomai means “to regard
someone who is right as being in the right.” It involves a
declaration or acknowledgment of innocence. Wherever this
verb is used in distinction to condemnation, in a specific judicial

greatest antithesis is present as in the text. Dunn, however, argued strongly


against that, on the grounds that Romans 4 deals with the believer’s faith in
extenso. To him, the faithfulness of Christ was not in the apostle’s mind
(Dunn, Romans [1988], ad loc.)
94
Käsemann, 1974, p. 86; Schlatter, 1935, p. 143)
95
Sanders (1991), p. 67.
153
context, this is the meaning that we should assume (e.g. Rom.
5:18). It then becomes the equivalent of acquittal with a basis
in reality. And this is true in all cases of the usage of the verb in
the active moods. But Sanders argues forcefully for a
difference in the meaning of righteousness when used in
passive moods. With the exception of Rom. 2:13; 1 Cor. 4:4,
6:11, “being righteoused” means the same as being set free
from (the power of) sin and not merely being declared free from
guilt. It has the connotation of something that actually happens
to a person and not merely a declaration extra eum.96 This is
particularly helpful in restoring some balance in the discussion
about justification that has been obscured so much by the
emphasis on a believer’s being simul justus et peccator, for
such an approach does not imply any transformation of the
Christian and makes God’s declaration ineffective in the
present world. When Paul states in 4:5 that God justifies the
ungodly, this certainly does not mean that the ungodly remains
what he is or that he will only be transformed into his real
condition in the future.

This other meaning of the passive mood of dikaiomai is most


often passed by in the translations. In Rom. 6:7 we read: for he
that has died is justified from sin (Darby), He that is dead is
freed from sin (KJV), Denn wer gestorben ist, der ist
gerechtfertigt und frei von der Sünde (Luther, ...justified and
freed from sin, combining the choices of Darby and KJV). But
from Sanders’s perspective, the point gets lost that having
been justified (dedikaiootai) is equivalent to what is stated in
6:6b: “no longer slaves of sin.” And this last expression
prompted KJV to choose and Luther to add the concept of
being freed.

But even in our passage, where the active sense of diakaiomai


is dominant (the passive in 3:24 is probably equal in meaning
to the active mode in 3:26) and the judicial language is obvious,
there is also reference to the mercy seat and the day of
Atonement. Could it be that what we call judicial language is
usually distinguished too strictly from the priestly language of
atonement and sacrifice? The blood that is brought into the
Holy of Holies not only atones for the sins of the people, and
sets them free from judgment, but it also purifies them. (Cf.

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.

This can be clarified further by returning to the verb logidzomai


for a moment. It is crucial in the next chapter of Romans, where
we find the quotation from Gen. 15:6: “And Abraham believed
(had faith) in God, and it was reckoned to him as
righteousness.” The Greek passive elogisthè used here is the
translation both of the Hebrew va-jachsheveiha (in the active,
kal) in Gen. 15:6 and the Hebrew techashev (in the passive,
niph’al) in Psalm 106 (105): 31. When applied to reward in the
New Testament, the Greek word keeps its classical Greek
sense of “accounting,” reckoning in the commercial sphere.
When taken in conjunction with grace (cf. 4:4), the Greek word
is moved beyond its classical usage and into conformity with its
status as the translation of the Hebrew (chashav). So how did
Paul understand the passage in Gen. 15?

The law is quoted to make clear that the righteousness that


God revealed in Christ without law has been witnessed to by
the law and the prophets (3:21). In fact, Paul makes the claim
that this revelation actually confirms the law. The general
principle of this revealed righteousness is stated in 3:28: we
“reckon (an ordinary usage of logidzomai in the sense of
thinking] that a man is justified by faith, without works of the
law.” The “without works of the law” must mean that doing the
155
commandments is not a prerequisite for obtaining justification.

The question arises: on what grounds then was Abraham to be


considered a righteous person? Obviously Abraham could not
have acquired that status by doing the works of the law, since
the commandments had not yet been given, an issue the rabbis
resolved by stating that Abraham and the other patriarchs living
before Sinai either conformed to the commandments already
given (Noah), or did the law without having to know the written
law, or even that the law was already being studied in its form
of oral teaching. Now Gen. 15:6 states in the LXX that
Abraham believed, had faith in God, and that “it was reckoned”
to him, put on his “account,” as righteousness. This cannot
mean that Abraham’s faith was a different work of the law that
equaled all the other commandments put together. The
“reckoning” in the one case is according to obligation, when
reward is at stake, and in this case it is according to grace. So
Paul reads Gen. 15:6 as saying that Abraham’s trust in God
was sovereignly declared by God to be righteousness, to
establish Abraham as a righteous man, i.e., that fact alone
made Abraham “do the right thing” in accordance with the
proper relationship to God. This sovereignty is expressed also
when Paul speaks of justification of the ungodly in 4:5. The
quotation of Psalm 32 immediately following can be seen as an
illustration of the declarative function of this reckoning, when
David calls the man blessed to whom God will not reckon his
sin. So the ungodly is declared righteous without any condition
in his fulfilling the demands of the law, but only conditioned on
his affirmation of God’s sovereignty.

Now we can restate our question. What does it mean to say


that God declares a man righteous and imputes righteousness
to him without works on the basis of faith, i.e., the
acknowledgment of divine sovereignty? And most importantly,
what is the extent of this declaration? Is it “merely” legal, a
legal fiction that has no bearing on reality? Let us consider the
weight of the Hebrew formula. In his “Die Anrechnung des
Glaubens zur Gerechtigkeit” (The reckoning of faith as
righteousness) Gerhard von Rad argued in 1951 that the
expression chashav lo is taken from a cultic sphere rather than
a legal sphere.97 In Lev. 7:17-18, e.g., the Torah states that if

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.

Von Rad then argues that the language of Gen. 15:6 is


deliberately taken from the cultic sphere with the intent of
setting up an opposition between priestly teachings on
atonement and the teachings of the Elohist. Here it is
emphatically not the priest who declares the condition of

1965, pp.130 -136.


157
righteousness, but God in His sovereign grace, and such a
declaration is not based upon a condition being met as in
Ezekiel 18. “The event of ’imputation’ is now moved to the
sphere of a free and personal relationship of the LORD with
Abraham.”98 But is this dialectical tension toward the cultic
language really intended? And why should we rule out the
possibility that it is completely analogous to the declaration in
Ezekiel? Strictly speaking, the cultic usage of chashav would
only imply that this single act of faith and trust, mentioned in
Gen. 15, of faith in the promise of God made in 15:4-5 warrants
a declaration of righteousness. The fact that it is God and not
the priest who pronounces it does not in itself imply that its
basis is God’s sovereignty, as if that fact on its own would imply
that nothing in Abraham was its material cause.

Furthermore, the context indicates that this act of faith by


Abraham was of crucial importance in Abraham’s life. So
maybe we should enlarge the scope of this declaration. Could it
not be that the declaration of righteousness is indeed an
affirmation of the character of Abraham’s life that was
epitomized in his unfailing trust in God? The act of faith need
not have been considered an isolated event. Abraham’s life
made God the truth (he’emin be- implies a total submission and
confidence, whereas he’emin le- would mean a simple
acceptance; all are related to the concept of ‘emet, truth,
stability) and in so doing, the word could very well express on
its own a condition similar to that in Ezekiel 18. If we can glean
from Genesis the meaning of such a declarative justification,
then we would have to say here that God affirms the
righteousness of the believer who by his act of faith and trust in
Christ identifies himself with Christ, “eats the meat on the day”
(Lev. 7), and can therefore be declared righteous. Since faith
involves identification with Christ, imputation of Christ’s righte-
ousness to the believer involves God’s declaration of the be-
liever’s being made righteous.99 It would, however, be the who-

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.

If read like this, we avoid the one-sided emphasis on the legal


“fiction.” To be “out of the faith in Christ” (3:26) means putting
one’s faith in Christ’s sacrifice, affirming God’s righteousness
as revealed therein. It means accepting God’s promise to be
truthful. All that has been expressed in the classic notion of
faith as “assent”, as affirmation of the facts of God’s redemptive
action in this world. But beyond that, it also means living in
accordance with those revealed facts of God’s salvation. God
now declares such a believer righteous, for that is what the
believer actually becomes, not in himself and autonomously,
but because of his identification with Christ’s sacrifice. It would
not mean that his act of faith deserves such justification as an
automatic response, since faith is not a “work of the law” but an
analogy to a sacrificial act, and in that respect repentance,
conversion, and moral commitment belong to it as well. This
approach also alleviates the problem of the strange usage of
dikaioun, since it can retain its proper meaning of declaring
righteous those who have been made righteous. But it also
retains the most important notion: that this righteousness is not
earned by complying with the law, but received by identification
with Christ’s sacrifice. The condition is not the sufficient cause
for the declaration, but it still is a condition to be met before the
constitutive declaration can take place.

According to Bultmann, there was no difference of opinion


between Paul and early Judaism on the forensic nature of
justification. Both maintained that, especially in the
eschatological judgment, a person was declared righteous or
unjust and that the prerequisite of being declared righteous was
righteousness! Righteousness, to both, signified a condition of
redemption. The issue was how this righteousness was to be
achieved and what the declaration actually meant. In the Old

uses commercial expressions like he’elah ke-ilu. It might also be motivated by


the fact, that Gen 15:6 uses kal, whereas in later rabbinic thought it would be
more common to use a passive mood to express an activity of God.
159
Testament, 2 Sam 19:20 reads: “let not my Lord impute iniquity
unto,” in parallelism to “do not remember.” So there is a plea for
an acquittal without any basis in compensatory merit. Here
only the forensic or at least an extrinsic meaning is brought into
play, but of course here the issue is not the imputation of
righteousness unto the ungodly. In other words, the imputation
has a declaratory meaning, but is not without basis in reality.
He goes on to say that the main difference lies in the fact that
Paul does not see this righteousness as a future condition but
as already attributed to man on the basis of faith before the day
of judgment. The future in Rom. 5:19 takes its reference point
from the “now” of Rom. 3:21, and the future tenses in Rom 3:20
(will not be justified) and 3:30 (will justify) are gnomic or logical
in nature.100

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.

I think that Bultmann has correctly established that to Paul the


eschatological judgment or acquittal is effective in the present,
but he has underestimated the reality of that present
effectiveness by at the same time considering the full reality of
the judgment to remain a future event. Now either the being
made righteous or being constituted as righteous is a future
event, and then justification primarily involves the certainty now
that there will be no condemnation then, or it is a present
reality, characterized by the contents of the eschaton, which
then implies the transformation of man in accordance with the
contents of the declaration. If the eschatological event is in the
present tense, at least to the Church, it includes the

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.

It has been argued that the forensic meaning of justification is


not only present in Paul, but also in the gospel of Luke. In Luke
7:29 we find the expression used to denote the fact that the
people accepted John’s baptism as coming from God. They
justified God, did justice to Him, by acknowledging that baptism
to be a “counsel of God.” Although God is the object of the
justification, it is clear that to “do justice” means to ack-
nowledge a situation, and not to pronounce a verdict. Luke
10:29 and 16:15 use the term to denote an action of self-
justification, i.e., to find grounds for acquittal on the presumed
charge that some commandment has not been obeyed. In Luke
10:29 the question is put, “Who then is my neighbor?” The
question serves no other purpose, we are told, than to justify
the questioner. That such a question must be asked would
involve an affirmation of the difficulties involved in complying
with the command to love one’s neighbor, and that would serve
as a continuous ground for acquittal. In Luke 16:15 the word
dikaiountes is again used together with heautous, themselves,
so the point is self-justification.

To justify God and acknowledge His counsel seems to be the


opposite of justifying oneself and finding excuses for not
obeying the commandment. All in all, this can hardly serve as
grounds for the idea that justification is a divine action which is
present in faith, though there are overtones of forensic usage in
all of these. Where God is the object, the declarative function
of the word does play a role, but the basic meaning of
acknowledging something as righteous is central to the
argument. Where human beings are the object, again, forensic
overtones are heard, but the main point is to evade guilt by
referring to extenuating circumstances: who is my neighbor?
And in the case of the Pharisees in Luke 16, it is Jesus who
characterizes their whole moral intent as seeking for grounds
for moral acquittal.
161
We are left with one passage that may be interpreted as
referring to justification by God through faith, and that is the
parable of Luke 18:14. The prayer of the publican is simple and
direct: God, have mercy on me, as sinner. Jesus then states in
verse 14 that this one returned home, having been justified.
Reformed biblical scholar Byron Curtis argued about this verse:

“The tax-man is a sinner, who freely confesses he's


'guilty as charged’. But God nonetheless declares him
‘justified’, so that he goes home acquitted of his guilt. It
is beyond reasonable doubt that Luke 18.14 is forensic
in nature.“101

I cannot find this argument persuasive. The point of the parable


is explained in verse 9: he spoke also to some who trusted in
themselves that they were righteous and made nothing of all
the rest of men. The Pharisee is not considered unrighteous
because he lacked faith, but the point is that he considered his
righteousness as something he could earn on the basis of his
condition and could be confident about within himself. That self-
confidence made him disparage all others who stood convicted
under his standards of exclusion and the insistence on Levitical
holiness that went along with it. Jesus shows thereupon that
righteousness (which can be considered standing in the proper
relationship to God) is always a matter of divine action, even
for the publican who can do nothing but pray for grace. It is a
matter of humility before God and of remembering that
salvation rests entirely on God’s grace.

The very things that make Paul’s mention of justification into a


forensic image are missing here: that divine grace is given on
the basis of Christ’s sacrifice which revealed the nature of
God’s righteousness (Rom. 3:20), and that faith is the act of
identifying with this sacrifice and the basis or even means of
justification (Rom. 5:1), on which basis God will grant acquittal
in the future judgment (Rom. 5:19) and sanctification according
to it in the present (Rom. 8:4, 10).

The doctrine of justification of the ungodly is also stated

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.

But the main change in the terminology is apparent in 5:19,


where Christ’s obedience leads to “the many [that] will be
constituted righteous.” This verse presents us with quite a
problem. By taking “will be constituted” (katasthesontai) as
referring to an eschatological future, the plain meaning of
dikaioi, righteous ones, can be made to refer to the ultimate
result of justification beyond the present age.104 To be
(intrinsically) righteous is then no element of the present state
of the believer. Our future condition is acquittal, which means
that all present efforts at being righteous are the more futile,
since not even in that future state of affairs will we be able to
obtain such righteousness. If we would take it as a being
justified in a forensic sense, the future tense is obviously meant
to refer to the present: our acquittal then frees us now. But if we
take the basileusontai of verse 17 as its correlate and as a

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

But is it necessary to maintain the forensic meaning of


dikaiomai? Just as the present tense of chapter 7 is at the
same time a reference to the past, this future tense can be
construed to mean the breaking in of that future in the present
of Christian life. The present state of Christian life is temporally
shifted from the present of the state of affairs in this world; the
Christian way of life is proleptic in essence! So though referring
to a future, this eschatology is not temporally removed from our
present, since it is the same “time” as the “now” of Rom. 3:21.
And if the word dikaios is read as the opposition of the reality of
all those who have sinned in Adam, it can hardly refer to that
passive state of being declared pardoned. If this is correct, the

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).

Bultmann argues that Paul’s thesis of the present reality of


righteousness does not take away from its forensic-
eschatological sense. God expresses His judgment now, and
then the result of that judgment can only mean amnesty and
never ethical perfection. The reality of being justified is that
man is not considered as if without guilt, but he is really
righteous, be it only in the formal sense of being acquitted in
the judgment. This would mean that dikaios in our verse refers
to being acquitted and not to any intrinsic righteousness. But
the righteousness that is ours is in essence a matter of the right
relationship with God.106 So Bultmann stresses on the one hand
the reality of justification; on the other hand he excludes from
this righteousness the idea of ethical quality.

What then has made this other way of viewing righteousness


possible? We need to find the logic of the argument, if we are

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

In passing we may note that this can be the response to the


claim that the doctrine of justification by faith does not provide
the proximate basis of Paul’s ethics.108 The argument has been

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.

But even if this logic holds, how can we determine this


conclusively? If we follow the traditional division of the letter,
taking chapters 1- 4 as dealing with (extrinsic) justification and
chapters 5-8 as dealing with sanctification, the issue is
resolved. Rom. 5:19 can then only express a reality from the
standpoint of sanctification and is therefore doctrinally sepa-
rated from the earlier chapters. Still, it would remain a problem
that chapter 5 uses seven times a word derived from dik-,
translated as: (having been) justified (2x), justification (2x),
righteousness (2x), the just (1x). It is also connected to the
former chapters by the “therefore” (oun) of 5:1. It functions as a

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.

So what follows in the chapter can then be read not as the


future outcome, but the inner reality of justification. “Having
been justified” means that “we have peace,” “have received
access,” ”stand in this grace,” and “rejoice in this hope.” Only
then do we find a restrictive formula: “not only this,” but going
beyond all that justification signifies, we also “rejoice in our
tribulations,” connecting joy with endurance, endurance with
character, and character with hope, verse 5 then returns to
justification again: hope does not shame, because, and this
refers back to justification as its basis, we have the love of God
in our hearts.

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)

There is good reason to hold that the passage 6:1-8:39 is all


about objections, seeing that we find several real questions and
answers, e.g., in 6:1, 15; 7:1, 7, 13. The question that opens
this third part makes perfect sense after the 5th chapter has
been read:

6:1. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin


that grace may abound?

After having stated in 5:21 that “grace might reign through


righteousness,” and in particular in 5:20 that “where sin
abounded grace has overabounded,” the objection might be
raised that Paul’s version of the gospel would imply logically
that sin is of no consequence any more. The question states
this hyperbolically: to sin means in fact making grace abound
more. What shall we say with regard to the problem of sin, if we
have now been told that grace increases with sin, i.e., that no
“amount” of sin is unpardonable, that sin cannot resist grace?
In essence the very same argument came to the fore in 3:7: if
my sin actually makes God’s justice abound, why am I still
judged and condemned for it?

7 But if through my falsehood God’s truthfulness


abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned
as a sinner?
8 And why not do evil that good may come?, as
some people slanderously charge us with saying.
Their condemnation is just.

So the argument of the “slanderers” is that a position that holds


that God’s revelation of righteousness in Christ, which leads to
forgiveness for all sins, an atonement not conditioned by the
activity of man, actually leads to complete immorality. ”Sin
gives God the opportunity to manifest his generosity to man,

170
sin cannot be such a bad thing after all.”110

Now according to Dunn this question must arise for another


reason as well. In Judaism, the place for a sinner to go in need
of atonement was the Torah, which provided in the Temple Cult
the means for atonement. In early Pharisaic thought, God’s
forgiveness for sins was an element of His dealing with Israel
under the Covenant. But the means for this atonement were
given to Israel and not to mankind as a whole. Under the
Torah, commandment and grace were held in balance, but both
were given to Israel alone. However, in the second and third
chapters Paul had developed his main position: that judgment
would make no difference between those under the law and
those outside of the law. The Torah was posited as an
indictment against both Jew and gentile. So it is Paul who
disconnected the bond between the Torah-as-law and the
Torah-as-grace. The Torah-as-grace was only “testifying” to the
righteousness that has now been revealed, that makes no
difference between Jew and gentile in the indictment and as a
consequence makes no difference between the two with regard
to grace. Paul has to sever this link between law and grace
because the Torah confines grace to those under the law, i.e.,
to Israel. God’s promise to Abraham could not be fulfilled, since
the Torah did not reach the gentiles, the relatively large
numbers of semi-proselytes that did not cross the last boundary
of circumcision were evidence of that. If the Church chose to
cling to circumcision and food laws, this would not guarantee
that more Jews would convert to Messiah Jesus, but it would
continue to block the entrance of gentiles into the new
covenant.

But, even apart from these pragmatic considerations, the basic


experience that Paul brought with him on his theological
journey pointed in another direction. Paul had been prosecuting
Jewish Christians who had already allowed gentiles to enter
into the synagogue-based Churches without demanding
circumcision and adherence to food laws. That was such a
deviation from Jewish practices that the early Church, as seen
in the case of Stephen, was considered a threat to Judaism.
The conflict at that time was not about the identity of Jesus, but

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.

On this basis Paul could not answer the objection by reiterating


the validity of the law, which would also imply that the boundary
markers which divided Israel and the gentiles were still in place.
But how then could there be a basis for a Christian morality, if
the law had no role to fulfill? Paul answers by referring to three
things: (1) what has happened to the believer in baptism, (2)
what is actually involved in the reception of grace, in jus-
tification, and (3) what new kind of exhortation could take the
place of the commandment of the Torah?

(1) what has happened to the believer in baptism

Paul asks the relevant question: “By no means! How can we


who died to sin still live in it?” The general answer is that we
have died to sin. Verse 10 states that Christ has died for sin
once and for all, and Paul goes on to explain that we have died
with Him. There are obvious connections to the former chapter.
In our former life, we show the characteristics of Adam and
share in the general condition of mankind as explained in 5:12,
17 (the reign of death) and 5:19 (the status of sinner). If Christ
is the gift of grace (5:15), and if we have received the
superabundance of grace and the gift of righteousness (5:17),
then that is the cause (cf. 5:19) of our justification unto life
(5:18). But what is the nature of this connection? In the
previous chapters, including chapter 5 where we might have
expected it, no mention is made of our participating in Christ’s
death. Still, it was clear that the “deed” of righteousness (5:18)
and Christ’s death for sinners (5:8) that justifies us (5:9)
changes our status. We will live and rule as kings (5:17)
because of Christ’s death. But the reason for that is still unclear
in the previous passages. Justification has been dealt with up
to now in almost exclusively forensic terms. Only 5:5 mentions
the Holy Spirit that has been given us, but in that context, the
172
consequences of that fact are not developed. Paul’s statement
in our verse that “we have already died to sin” is really a new
aspect of the issue.
.
3 Do you not know that all of us who have been
baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his
death?
4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into
death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by
the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness
of life.
5 For if we have been united with him in a death like
his, we shall certainly be united with him in a
resurrection like his.

The connection between baptism and death was made in other


strands of Christian tradition as well. In particular, in Mark
10:38-39 it is Jesus who refers to his coming crucifixion as the
“baptism” that he is to be baptized with. All believers must be
baptized with this baptism. Paul himself had stated in Gal. 3:27
that to be baptized unto Christ implied having “put on Christ.”
As Dunn explains, the formula “in(to) the name of” signified a
formal act of transfer from one dominion into another. That
certainly was the usage in the baptism ritual, where the believer
was baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit, or into the name of Jesus Christ. But the expression “into
Christ” has even stronger connotations than this change of
dominion, as it signifies the fact that “their lives and destinies
and very identities became bound up with Christ.”111 We have
here then a further aspect of justification; beyond the
acceptance of the faithfulness that Christ has shown unto His
death and the trust in the God of Jesus Christ who can work
beyond death, we now have a metaphor of participation.

The range of this metaphor of participation is difficult to


establish. Since it can be explained as having died with Christ
and being resurrected with Him, it follows that it implies that the
pattern of Christ’s life (obedience to God, acceptance of death
as consequence, a renewal of His life through resurrection and
living from the power and motivation of the Spirit) becomes the

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.

A secondary element to this metaphor is that the mode of


participation is not individual, but corporate. There is a decisive
usage of “we” in these verses, and the whole range of texts on
baptism is laden with references to the whole community of the
baptized as being one through baptism. By being baptized, the
believer takes his place in this world amongst those who have
identified themselves with Christ and thus joins a single
corporate entity. The moral impetus of baptism involves a
change of orientation (the pattern of Christ’s life, death and
resurrection) as well as a change in social identity (becoming
part of the community) and the view on corporate, social life
that is connected to it. Paul’s exhortations on the issue of
Church life in chapters 12 and 14 show this corporate nature of
morality in clear terms.

2. what is involved in the reception of grace

Nevertheless, the act of baptism is not the reality, but a sign. It


signifies a decision: to take one’s place within the community of
the redeemed. But it is not in itself the reality. That reality is
expressed in the following verses.

6 We know that our old self was crucified with him so


that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might
no longer be enslaved to sin.
7 For he who has died is freed from sin.
8 But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we
shall also live with him.
9 For we know that Christ being raised from the dead
will never die again; death no longer has dominion
over him.
10 The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but
the life he lives he lives to God.
174
The identification with Christ implies an identification with
Christ’s death and along with it a complete reversal of values.
What had seemed to be life-giving to the “old man” has now
turned out to be part of the Adamitic condition of mankind.
What seemed a loss of self and life turns out to be liberation
and a new life. The “old man,” the way of life the believers had
before conversion, which was dominated by (fear of) death and
(weakness towards) sin, has been crucified. I.e., Christ’s life
has shown that God ultimately will step in to recognize and
reward a life that has been faithful and obedient without the
fear of death, to give it the eternal life that is intrinsically
congruent with God’s nature. This identification with Christ
implies that “the sinful body is destroyed”; i.e., it loses its power
and is rendered inactive. This is to be taken literally, since we
should not think that “body” here refers to the physical aspect
of human life. As Dunn explains, sooma stands for the
embodiment of man in his social relationships. Adopting Christ
as Lord means a clean break from all the relations we had in
this world that would keep us under the power of sin and death.
To have died in that sense is as much experiential as a matter
of doctrine.

The newness of life should not be expressed only in terms of


death, not only in negative but also in positive terms. Sharing
Christ’s death means that our former life has been rendered
inactive and useless. If that is all that justification can bring, it is
hardly worth it (cf. 1 Cor. 15:14). But if it means sharing
Christ’s resurrection as well, a matter of hope and expectation
and not yet a fully realized promise, the transformation is com-
plete. The experiential connection is not severed, however.
Although it is true that Paul’s emphasis here is on the “escha-
tological tension” expressed in the repeated antitheses be-
tween the aorist of the meaningful fact and the future tense of
expected events, the hope for sharing in Christ’s resurrection is
affirmed by the “newness” of life that is already here and now.
That newness of life is at the same time a promise and
expectation based on Christ’s work, and a commandment or
imperative for us. Verse 8 expresses as an expectation of our
faith that we will live with Him. Verse 11 then expresses the
exhortation to consider it trustworthy that this is already the
case: we are alive before God and dead to sin. This is a
175
description of the situation of those who have been made
righteous. From verse 12 we have the exhortation that draws
upon the basic act (having died with Christ), runs through the
expectation that is linked to it (we will live with Him), and
returns to the present (we are alive before God). On that triple
basis of fact, expectation, and present condition, and the
tension between its temporal modes, the exhortation must then
be to act in accordance, to draw a practical consequence and
act like we will be and no longer act as we are, since what we
are has been pronounced dead and weak before God.

3. the new kind of exhortation

The contours of the foundations of Christian morality now come


into focus. Faith has made us identify with Christ. Baptism
means we express our participation in His death, which
reverses the standard by which we live and takes us out of the
dominion of sin and death. The hope for the resurrection, and
its certainty of through Christ’s resurrection, allows us to
consider ourselves as already dead and buried and resurrected
before God. The unseen reality of the new post-resurrection
situation, which robbed death and sin of their power, is now a
motivational force for Christians who live in a world that is still
determined by these forces.

11. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin


and [must consider yourselves] alive to God in Christ
Jesus.

Understanding this reality makes possible the exhortation that


immediately follows it. The believer is dead to sin, though the
passions of his body, his belonging to the environment, can still
reawaken his old life. So, no longer in bondage to sin, but still
submitted to the power of death, the believer is “to draw [his]
vital energies and motivations from God in Christ.”112

12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to


make you obey their passions.
13. Do not yield your members to sin as instruments of
wickedness, but yield yourselves to God as men who

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.

Though freed from the power, the environment still provides a


possibility to be tempted again by the still-active passions of the
body, to act in accordance with the reality of the old world. But
in Paul’s mind, such a relapse is no longer a necessity. It is not
the power of sin itself that entices a Christian to sin, but the
possibility of acting as if the believer still has sovereign liberty
in himself. So Paul again emphasizes the new situation as
“under grace.” Such a situation must be understood properly. In
a way, justification might in itself tempt one to disobey the
commandment, since it removes the fear of condemnation. If
grace has already set me free, why worry at all about
obedience and sin?

14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you


are not under law but under grace.
15 What then? Are we to sin because we are not
under law but under grace? By no means!
16. Do you not know that if you yield yourselves to any
one as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one
whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or
of obedience, which leads to righteousness?

So the answer lies in the awareness that sinning indubitably


leads to a restoration of the former bondage. The actual con-
dition of a believer under grace, his response to it in practice,
does indeed effect his situation in practice also. Sin as such still
leads to death, not as eternal condemnation, but in the
believer’s subjective experience of the quality of his life under
the influence of despair and meaninglessness.

17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once


slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to
the standard of teaching to which you were committed,
18 and, having been set free from sin, have become
slaves of righteousness.

Liberation from sin is not the restoration of the Adamic


condition. It is a new condition of submission to God in Christ
177
that fills the space previously taken in by the powers of sin and
death. Obedience from the heart no doubt refers again to the
basic notion of the new covenant of Jeremiah, replacing the law
written on the heart with the law obeyed through or by the
heart.

19 I am speaking in human terms, because of your


natural limitations. For just as you once yielded your
members to impurity and to greater and greater
iniquity, so now yield your members to righteousness
for sanctification.
20 When you were slaves of sin, you were free in
regard to righteousness.
21 But then what return did you get from the things of
which you are now ashamed? The end of those things
is death.
22 But now that you have been set free from sin and
have become slaves of God, the return you get is
sanctification and its end, eternal life.
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of
God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

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.

In 7:7-26 we have the development of the function of the law


and the answer to the question of whether the law that made
sin known and became the instrument of sin was inherently
sinful, the answer being that the law is intrinsically holy and
righteous. The problem is not the law, but man. And the
problem of man can only be solved through transformation by
the Spirit. The passage as a whole therefore develops the
statement of 7:5, where it is said that the passions work
through, with the aid of, the law.

Then, in a second statement, the life in the Spirit is brought


forward. So we are discharged from the law and dead to it,
released from captivity under it (7:6), not only to be acquitted,
but to serve God in a new manner, which Paul announces in
178
7:6 as “the new condition of the Spirit” and not the “old state of
the letter.” This latter part is developed in chapter 8:1-17, on
which we will focus our attention in this paragraph. If my life in
the flesh turned out to be unable to fulfill the righteous demand
of the law, then I need to be transformed by the Spirit. Then it
would seem that the law, which is holy and righteous and good,
is still discarded! We might then be released from the power of
guilt and death, but the law would still condemn our lives since
we could still not attain its standard. Does that express an
intention on Paul’s part to get rid of the law?

The first sentence of the passage 8:1-17 makes the connection


between justification and new life. Kruse rightly points out that
“justification and new life in the Spirit might be able to be
separated in discussion; they cannot be separated in
experience.”113 But we hold that even a separation in
discussion goes beyond Paul’s language and argument. In the
course of this letter, it becomes increasingly more difficult to
separate the two “in discussion.” That there is no condemnation
for those who are in Christ does not refer to justification only
with the phrase “no condemnation,” which is of course a
forensic term, but also by “being in Christ,” which is the
language of our condition, of the reality of the Spirit, or, as we
think Paul alludes to, the language of identification with Christ’s
sacrifice of Rom. 3.

The connection therefore is not only experiential, as if


sanctification and justification are in themselves unconnected in
the sense that the former is the objective condition of the latter,
but also with regard to what this one, indivisible act of God
brings about.114 Verse 2 brings this out clearly when it argues

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.

Still, the forensic element of the statement remains important. It


helps to insure that the extrinsic origin of being made righteous,
the essential element of imputation, is not lost to sight. And that
also conforms to the fact that the new condition is derived
extrinsically. The transformation that we have here is never a
possession of the believer that separates him or her from its
source and grants him a return to an autonomous way of life.
The language of life in the Spirit, Christ in us, although not
forensically extrinsic but rather intrinsic, does not refer to a
renewal after which man is able to stand on its own and
resume his life as if nothing had happened. Käsemann has
rejected, in our opinion with solid basis, that the new life of the
Christian would imply reinstitution of the law under new
conditions. Because “ceremonial law” and ethical demand are
never separated in Paul’s thinking about the Torah, the
passage could never refer to a restoration of its function.115 So
“law” in this passage means “Herrschaftsfunction”, the so-
vereignty of the principle.116. To Paul the law in its Jewish use is
not reinstated, since it does not give power and commands
obedience; therefore it condemns without enabling us to obey.
So in as far as Paul understands the life of obedience under
law as an autonomous human effort to obey specific precepts,

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.

So the opening argument is clear: there is no condemnation for


those who are in Christ, who have been liberated from the
necessary connection between sin and death. The law of
Moses was unable to do this. The condemnation of sin by the
law only set up the commandment as a standard of perfor-
mance and brought death as a consequence. Sin had to be
condemned in such a way that its power was defeated. That
which was impossible for the law, God had accomplished by
sending His son in the likeness of the flesh of sin (verse 3).

The translation of this verse (8:3) is difficult. The function of “in


which” is not clear, and the whole sentence appears to be ana-
coluthic, since there is no verb in the present tense connected
to ho theos (God). We might read like this: “because of what
was impossible in the law, in which it was weak through the
flesh (i.e., the fact that it could only condemn sin by sentencing
the sinner but could not transform the sinner) God has made
possible. We then complete the sentence by the opposite of
“impossible,” so God and the law become the agents here, by
sending His Son in the likeness of the flesh and as a sin-
offering (following LXX usage of the term and not: because of
sin, which is superfluous) He has judged the sin the flesh.” The
notion of atoning sacrifice is expressed four times in the letter
to the Hebrews (10:6, 8, 18; 13:11), in the first three instances
as a clear derivation from LXX Ps. 40 (39):7-9. ”Likeness of
the flesh” might imply a distinction from humanity, since Christ’s
flesh was not the same as sinful flesh, but like flesh that be-
came corrupted by sin. So it might here express the same
thought as in Phil. 2:7: en homoioomati anthroopoon, in the
likeness of man. As in 1:23, the likeness does not imply iden-
tity, but similarity, which allows for representation.

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.

What then is the consequence of all of this? The hina-phrase in


verse 4 expresses God’s intent. In us who walk according to
the Spirit, the just demand of the law is actually being fulfilled,
even beyond the satisfaction given to the law by our death with
Christ. Paul uses diakiooma here, as in 1:32 and 5:16, with the
meaning of demand, and not like dikaioosis (judgment).117 The
just demand of the law might mean here: (1) the love of the
neighbor and (2) the judgment of God over sin or (3) in its
narrowest sense: the law as seen from the perspective of the
10th commandment. We will look at these possibilities in turn.

y The just demand of the law is summarized in the


commandment to love the neighbor. In Gal. 5:14 Paul
stated that the whole of the law is fulfilled in the
commandment to love one’s neighbor. Gal. 5:16 calls upon
us to walk in the power of the Spirit. Kruse (pp. 218-219)
has argued in favor of this interpretation, citing three major
arguments: (a) the notion of the spirit comes to the fore in

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.

y The just demand of the law is the judgment on sin.


Schlatter maintains that dikaiooma is the opposite of
katakrima: the justifying judgment of God. Justification
happens through the condemnation of sin and therefore it
is the establishment of the law and not its annulment (Rom.
3:31). However, dikaiooma is not only the commandment of
righteousness, but also its restitution through the
justification of the believer. Our justification is based on the
condemnation of Christ, so that we believe, and it happens
(is a reality) through the reality of the Spirit in which we
believe. There is one divine act: giving Christ up to death
as a sacrifice for the many who believe, accompanied by
the efficacy of the Spirit of resurrection.

y The just demand of the law is summarized in the


commandment not to covet. The third possibility is quoted
in Kruse (218). Ziesler maintained that the dikaiooma refers
to the 10th commandment, which Paul had in mind
throughout 7:7-25. Kruse argues against this by stating that
the 10th commandment functioned as a paradigm of the
entire law. Rom. 7:7 does indeed introduce the 10th
commandment as an illustration for the effect of the law
with regard to mankind under the power of sin.

We favor Kruse’s interpretation in (1) because we find the


parallel between Gal. 5 and our passage a convincing
argument indeed. He also accepts the use of dikaiooma in the
plain sense and does not overemphasize the opposition to
katakrima as Schlatter did in our opinion. Käsemann agrees
183
implicitly by translating: the legal demand of the law (Rechts-
anspruch des Gesetzes).

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.

Our next observation must be of verse 13, where Paul


introduces a new concept: sooma. The concept is taken to
mean the whole of the human being as creature, the seat of
volition and passion, without the connotation of sinfulness.
Romans 8:12 first of all defines our situation in life with an
image derived from civil law. We are debtors; we stand under
an obligation. The term ofeiletès is used figuratively for a
variety of obligations. In Gal. 5:3, someone who opts for
circumcision becomes a debtor to the law and can be required
to perform according to its dictates. It is as if he signed a con-
tract and now has to perform a duty. Being freed from sin and
death, we are obligated not to live according to the flesh, which
stresses the negative meaning: in verse 13, to put to death
(mortify) the deeds of the body.118 All acts that lead to death in

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.”

So it seems we have reached a point now from where we can


express Paul’s view on the ethical life of the justified. We have
found that since both Jew and pagan are under condemnation,
they can only escape judgment if God accepts Christ’s sacrifice
as the basis of judgment. Those who have identified with him
are set free from judgment and can already experience the fact
that they are acquitted. But identification with Christ also im-
plies the reception of the Spirit, the gift of a new life. We have

transformation in the Spirit only allows us to abstain from what is incongruent


with our new status but does not enable us to act positively in accordance
with the intent of the Spirit. That positive side is expressed only as an
accomplishment of the Spirit in us.
185
died unto the demand of the law, so that we are no longer
under its verdict; we are set free from the power of sin which
threatens our moral life and from the power of death which
reigns in our body. Having been set free, the Spirit of Christ can
now act in us so we are justified also in the sense that we are
made righteous, not in the sense that we are now enabled to
do the law from our autonomous capability, but in the sense
that God can fulfill the demand of righteousness through, not in,
us. The most visible sign of that is the love for our neighbor in
which the claim of the law is summarized. The ethical life of the
believer is therefore most adequately present in an attitude of
receptivity, in which the works of the body are being ignored or
put to death, since the body is dead on account of its
identification with Christ.

The previous section has shown how the righteousness that


comes from God implies the believer’s death and resurrection
in the Spirit. God justifies man on the basis of his sharing in the
life of Christ, who in His faithfulness unto death revealed God’s
righteousness. The status of the law has changed dramatically
because of this: from the covenanted condition that leads to life
for the obedient it has become, because of sin and human
weakness, the source of desire, the cause of death and
despair. I know the law is good, says Paul’s alter ego in chapter
7. And because it is good, it shows my inability to be righteous
on my own. Fortunately God justifies beyond the law (8:33).

This raises a third important issue, that of the status of Israel


(9:1-11:36). Manifold are the privileges of Israel (9:4-5a), but
the highest of them all is the one that actually changes the
perspective on Israel’s former history and status before God:
the coming of Christ. If the consequence of Christ’s coming is
then that man is redeemed outside of the law and its demands,
what is the value of the promises to and the covenant with
Israel? Are the promises annulled by the coming of the
Messiah?

As Paul explains, the giving of the law need not be seen in


contradiction to the revelation of righteousness in Christ. God
has always been sovereign in the dispensation of His promises.
The election of Jacob who became Israel was based on God’s
elective grace, and not on any previous obedience to law. The
privileges and achievements of Israel are ultimately all linked to
186
the same sovereignty that reveals itself in the righteousness of
faith. If God intended to acquire for Himself a people, consisting
of Jews and gentiles, on the basis of faith in Christ, then that is
His sovereign will, and who could object?

If that is the case, it explains the quite paradoxical turn of


events that Paul mentions in 9:30. Pagans who did not strive
for righteousness have received it through faith, or better: have
received a righteousness that is based solely upon God’s
faithfulness. Israel, however, who pursued righteousness
through the law, has not acquired such righteousness. Paul
states that they did not even reach such a law. Why not?
Because apparently they did not fully comprehend its nature.
They removed the principle of faith that was contained in it and
were left with a principle of works.

This notion of righteousness through works figures prominently


in both Galatians and Romans. In Gal. 2:16 we hear about the
“works of the law” that will not justify man and will certainly not
give the Spirit (Gal. 3:2). Those who are trying to achieve
perfection by doing the works of the law are in fact under the
curse of the law (Gal. 3:10). The law, seen as a demand for
works without faith, can only condemn. It requires full
compliance, since whoever who has broken one command-
ment has broken all. In Romans we find seven references to
works of the law: no flesh will be justified on the basis of it
(3;20), Abraham’s justification was not on the basis of works
(3:27; 4:2), and neither is the election (9:11; 11:6). And then
there is the reference here in 9:32. It is obvious that Paul is
arguing that Israel misunderstood the law, for he claims that
they did not know the real nature of the sovereign righte-
ousness of God (10:3). Had they known, they would not have
excluded the principle of faith from their effort to obey the law
and would not have interpreted the law in terms of works.

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.

This act of faith does not evoke a declarative judgment of


acquittal alone. It is also connected to our participation in Christ
and the gift of the Spirit. These three elements of the initial
movement of grace within us cannot be separated. The
participation in Christ implies our dying with him and being
resurrected with Him in the newness of life. The gift of the Spirit
implies sharing His life, and being controlled by that Spirit. But
there is an aspect of “not yet” in all of this. We have been given
the Spirit in a world that, though already under control of the
Messiah, is not yet fully realizing the Kingdom. Within the
believer this is evident from the struggle between the Spirit of
Christ within us and our own flesh. By remembering that we
have actually died with Christ, implying that the interests of the
flesh no longer have a place in the new reality of the Kingdom,
we can “mortify” it, thereby allowing God’s spirit to work within
us.

We must turn now to the most important question of what the


content of this new life in the Spirit really is. Is it determined in
its contents by Christ as such, i.e. as a mode of imitation? After
all, it is His Spirit, and we participate in His life. Christ is the
188
“New Torah,” so we could emphasize the aspect of Christ as
the teacher of righteousness. The basis for Christian ethics
might then be the embodiment of God’s decrees in the
Kingdom as exemplified in Jesus’ obedience in life. But the
essence of God’s will would then be fully revealed only in the
self-surrendering love of Christ on the Cross. That self-
sacrificing love could then become the primary image in which
the ethical ideal is portrayed. Imitation of Christ could refer to
both these elements of course. But we might also construct an
opposition between these two, creating a gap between the
teachings of the “historical,” pre-resurrection Jesus of Nazareth
(implying that we follow Him or become the disciples of this
Teacher), and the post-resurrected, glorified Christ (that we
through the power of His Spirit can imitate).

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.

We turn now to the text of Romans 12ff. to seek an answer to


this question in the environment of Paul’s paraenesis. This
exhortatory section is immediately linked to the preceding one
by the “therefore” (oun) of verse 1. In Rom. 12:1, Paul cites the
“compassions” of God as the foundation of the exhortations
that follow, undoubtedly meaning that this was the character of
God he had been displaying in the first 11 chapters of his
letter.119 Since all have been trapped in disobedience by sin and

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.

In this exhortatory part of his letter, Paul draws the ethical


consequences of his exposition of the meaning of the law for
gentiles, the new life in the Spirit, in short, all that justification
by grace was shown to imply. The gentiles are called to a new
shape of obedience.

translation of the abstract plural as a divine attribute: compassionate. Paul


seems to play here on the plural, since it may denote in Greek a plurality of
acts.
120
The Greek latreia expresses both hired labor and cultic service. Both
meanings enforce each other here: the cult qualifies the ethics in the sense
that notions of dedication and sacrifice, embodied in the gospel, are not a
motivational power, but shape the form of ethics in itself. It also means that
the cult is approached from ethics as well: ethics qualifies the cult in the
sense that our worship is part of our moral dedication. The precise meaning
however, can only be explained with reference to chapters 12 and 13 .
190
The new obedience forms a precise counterpart of the pagan
vices that have been listed in the first chapter. That gives a
macro-structural connection between the last and the first part
of the letter. Stanley Stowers puts it like this:

Chapter 1 tells of the ungodly and unacceptable


worship of idols. These people worshipped (latreuein)
the creation instead of the creator (1:25). They thus
dishonored their bodies (1:24). The readers in 12:2 are
to renew their minds. In the first chapter, gentile minds
became base (28), their reasonings confused, and
their sense darkened (21). Verse 3 of chapter 12
exhorts to a realistic humility as a basis for behavior,`
while 1:22 and 30 accuse gentiles of false claims to
wisdom, hubris, arrogance, and pretentiousness. As
1:28-31 lists a long string of antisocial vices, so 12:4-
13:10 spells out a counter list of social virtues. The
first chapter speaks of enslavement to desire and
sexual passion; 13:8-14 elicits a freedom from sensual
gratification; the latter chapters call for a reversal of
precisely the degeneracy depicted in 1:18-32.121

The structure of the letter therefore is basically circular: the


righteousness revealed as wrath over pagan vices is by its
revelation as sacrificing grace effecting a reversal of these
vices in the life of the Church. It shows also that the exhortatory
part is not an addition to an already complete doctrinal letter,
but a major aim of the letter. Yet, Stowers argues that the basis
of chapters 12 and 13 is to be found in a single concept that
expresses the basis for the righteousness revealed: Christ’s
faithfulness.

The opposition to chapter 1 only partly explains the


construction of 12. The best traditional accounts have
12-15:13 exhorting readers to the new life described in
1-11 and thus connect the parts of the letter only in the
most superficial and abstract way. I, however, want to
argue for a genuine internal coherence between the
discourse and thought of the two sections. If 1-11 finds
its focus on God’s righteousness being made good

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

If that is correct, elements of the exhortation must be referring


back not only to the list of vices, but to the positive character of
Christ as revealed in His life and death. We might see in the
renewal of thought in verse2 a reversal of the “confused
reason” of 1:28, but the exposition of verses 3-8 goes beyond
the reversal. The community that is ordered along the lines of
self-control, according to the measure of faith that reaches
each member in particular, is an organism. It is the one body of
Christ, which implies that each member sees the other in the
social character of member of the body of Christ, as part of
Christ. And in that organic concept, the different charismata are
like specific organs or functions within the whole that are wor-
king toward the common goal: to express the life and death of
Christ in the form of a social community. The measure of faith
can be easily recognized as an element of the previous
discourse. The metaphor of the body is not new either, since
we are “in Christ,” according to Rom. 8:1, which expresses a
similar thought. And the rest of chapter 12 can be looked at in
the same manner. The apotheosis of the passage in verses 19
and 20, with respect to love for the enemy, feels like a sober
and pragmatic consequence of Christ’s attitude towards us,
who had been “enemies” of God (Rom. 5:10).

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 reference to “bodies” is important too, since this was the


term Paul used for the concrete existence of the believer within
his social environment, as well as after his being united with
Christ in His death. In Rom. 8:13, Paul adds the notion that the
deeds of the body must also be mortified and brought under the
power of Christ’s death. The idea of ”sacrifice” must mean a
rendering of our lives to the service of God through death, i.e.,
through our identification with the death of Christ, as being
dead to sin. But the force of that lies in the resurrection, not in
the death itself, and certainly not in the “body” as such. So it is
not enough to speak of sacrifice in the weakened sense of a
commitment of our power. We are not seen by Paul to have
any. The basis of our living in service is certainly our “death” in
the sense of the acknowledgment in faith of our powerlessness.
It points towards a source of power that is different from the
“life in the flesh” and does not exert itself from within towards
the world, but allows the power of Christ to move from the
outside into the inner man. But what does it mean that, on the
basis of our death as identification with Christ’s death, we
follow the life-pattern of Christ in His obedience unto death?

The “sacrifice” is further determined as “living, holy, and


acceptable” to God. The term “living sacrifice” obviously is
meant in distinction from the animal sacrifices that served to
represent the possibility of communion between God and man.
They needed actual moral submission (repentance,
conversion) to achieve atonement, and had no efficacy in
themselves. In this sense, the temple cult as a whole
represented to Paul a means to obtain the “forbearance”
through which sins were “passed by” (cf. 3:25). The death of
the animal represented the dedication of a human life: as
193
completely as the animal was given over to God in its death, so
completely would man rededicate himself to keeping the law. In
that perspective, calling Christ’s death a sacrifice means
understanding His death as being an expression of God’s
moral demand, and not as a cultic ritual of atonement by direct
analogy. The prophets, after all, had argued against a sacrificial
cult that had severed the links between ritual and moral
dedication.124 Furthermore, it would set us up for the im-
possibility of a human sacrifice, unheard of in the Old
Testament and early Judaism, and we would miss the more
important connection with Jewish thinking on the merits of
martyrdom. Here Christ sacrifices Himself by responding so
completely to the demand of the law that his death became an
inevitable response by a world that was in bondage to sin and
death and dedicated to the pursuit of power. In that sense,
Christ’s life as a whole was sacrificial, because the moral
dedication that was intended by sacrifice was in Him provoking
His death as a response of the ungodly powers. In that sense,
Christ was indeed a “living sacrifice.”

The expression “living sacrifice” as applied to believers does,


however, also imply a distinction from the sacrifice of Christ.
His death brings life. His death, and our participation in it,
makes it possible for God to fulfill the claim the law has on us,
instead of our dedicating ourselves completely to God by our
own efforts. Following Christ on the basis of identifying
ourselves with Christ does not put us in the same position. In
other words: Christ’s death and our moral commitment are not
linked in the way the beliver’s sacrifice under the old covenant
was intended to bring that connection about. There is a reverse
analogy between the ritual that signifies and presupposes
moral dedication, and Christ’s death which removes the
bondage of sin and grounds our dedication. Christ’s death is
not a cultic sacrifice in the sense that its atoning effect lies in
the satisfaction it gives to a God demanding punishment.
Christ’s death is the outcome of the conflict between a world
governed by sin and the New Man who complied fully with
God’s will.

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.

On top of that, His resurrection implied that believers who


identify with Him adopt the way of life that is dedicated to God
completely and has divine sanction even beyond death. So the
analogy is reversed: the death of Christ is the outcome of moral
dedication to God, and a counter-concept to the sacrifices
under the old covenant that provided the basis for such moral
(re-) dedication. The antithesis between sacrifice and service
that could arise where humans failed to achieve the moral
dedication that was presupposed in the sacrifices, and that is
so prominent in a prophet like Amos, is overcome in Christ’s
sacrifice. And that leads to the first conclusion: that Christ’s
surrender unto death implies that our dedication to God no
longer requires “our” sacrificial death by proxy, or, in a way, by
identification, that we have passed through it. But having gone
through death, having received justification and being
transformed by the spirit, we are now enabled to imitate the
pattern of Christ’s life of dedication ourselves. We must be
careful here: “we” as a community are “enabled” to conform to
this pattern of life. The major and primary effect is not that all of
us separately have been given the ability to do so, so that we
as individuals can now lead better lives.

The second principle of our moral renewal is expressed in


verse 2. There should be no conformity to this world, but we
should have a reform of thought, i.e., our way of hearing and
understanding must be renewed as well. Through the renewal
of thought we are able to recognize what the will of God is .125
Both statements are passive: the body of sin becomes a living

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.

The aim of this understanding is the answer to the question,


“What is the will of God?” According to Käsemann, as well as
Schlatter,127 the answer to that question must be found in the
varying circumstances of life, and the answer to that question
implies testing of that answer and an immediate affirmation of
that will. But the argument can be developed in two different
directions. When the believer judges the answer in accordance
with his renewed thinking, the result will be such an affirmation
of the divine will. The three attributes of the divine will that are
mentioned here might be merely apposite equivalents.128 It
would then state that the divine will is the good, the acceptable,
and the perfect. They are of course maximum qualities. In that
sense, the righteousness striven for is the ultimate that God
demands, because God can demand it of sinners who have
been made righteous. They might, however, also qualify the
sense in which the divine will is sought for. By using renewed
thinking, the good etc., that which is found can be recognized
as the divine will. The mention of the divine will in this context
then moves closer to being the motivational force behind the
informed judgment on the ethical demand. We can easily
recognize the classic dilemma of Plato’s Eutyphron in this
difference. In the one case, (1) whatever God wills is the good,
the acceptable, and the perfect. In the other, (2) whatever we

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?

The form of our obedience is at stake in this exegetical


dilemma! Käsemann argues that "will" refers to a specific
decision in a concrete situation. The reference to the three
attributes of God’s will is meant to curb the Enthusiasmus of
those who would identify the moral command with the ability to
decide and the immediate spiritual awareness of God’s will.
Inspired obedience at the spur of the moment, in response to
each and every situation as it occurs, must have some guiding
principles. The congruence between my will and that of God
cannot be complete, making necessary a reasoning process
that is guided by the understanding of what is good,
acceptable, and perfect. Käsemann argues that the three
attributes are guidelines toward finding the will of God, but
cannot be identified with it. So, in opposition to (1), Käsemann
appears to deny that God’s will can be equated with the
attributes. And he weakens the second argument by stating
that the attributes are guidelines, and not the substance of our
ethical decisions.

But is that indeed what Paul is saying here? Of course the


good, the acceptable, and the holy can be seen as references
to the law in its capacity to instruct us in the divine will (12:2). In
a way it can be seen as a higher mode of the law that is in itself
called holy, just, and good in Rom. 7:12. Still, his goal is not
the reestablishment of the law as system. But there can be no
doubt that Paul presupposes that the law would still have some
function in the Christian life: its requirements, after all, are
being fulfilled in the Christian life, according to Romans 8:4.
How the law should be used we should try to determine from
the next passage.

In 12:3-15:13 Paul draws out the implications of this living


sacrifice for various aspects of Christian living: 12:3-8, the inner
structure of the Church with regard to differences in faith and
grace among them, the concept of the organic unity of the
Church; 12:9-21, love in action, present in particular in the
adoption of a completely non-violent attitude; 13:1-7, sub-
mission to the state, as a witness to it; 13:8-10, love of fellow
197
believers as a way of showing a better community than the
state with its power of sword can guarantee; 13: 11-14, life in
the light of the imminent end; 14:1-23, no judging or causing
fellow believers to stumble; 15:1-13, following the example of
Christ in accepting others.

There is a remarkable difference of opinion about the contents


of these admonitions. According to Käsemann, the admonitions
in chapter 12 are directed against exaggerated enthusiasm.
Similarly, Otto Michel argues that in 12:3 the exhortation is
directed against the charismatics. That would explain why Paul
stresses notions of sober thoughtfulness, which is one of the
Aristotelian virtues. Not to think more highly of yourself than
you ought to think sounds indeed like a caution against Gnostic
exaggeration or against the kind of spiritual enthusiasm also
found in 1 Cor., in which charisma would bestow personal
status. But the motivational clause in verses 4 and 5 makes it
clear that polemics is not the prime intent; indeed, Paul’s
emphasis is on the solidarity of the members of the Church as
a way to exercise the righteousness by faith that the entire
letter is dealing with.

Though the believers are different in many ways, these


differences are the result of the measure of faith, not
quantitatively, but qualitatively. They share in each other’s life
because their life has become that of Christ. They have died to
the ways of the world in which position and rank determine
one’s social status and effectiveness. Not all members have
the same office, but these “offices” are not seen as levels of
hierarchy. To look at each member of a community as
someone who has a personal contribution to make to the whole
puts an end to the kind of hierarchical structure that might
distinguish each person in a collective by social or political
status. It is not power that determines the status, but service to
the whole. Proleptically, the official of the state is also dealt with
in this manner (Each member has a specific office according to
the measure of his faith, based on his gifts, according to the
grace that is given, i.e., completely dependent upon God’s work
in man and not on the development of natural abilities. The
different gifts are summed up in verses 5-8 together with the
principle that guides their development. But it is important to
remember that all of these different gifts come from one and
the same grace; the will of God is one and the same good, and
198
what is required of us constitutes one service of God. Not only
the context but also the content makes it clear that Paul is
speaking of the one principle of love as the commandment for
Christians.129

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.

The exercise of righteousness that is the fruit of transformation


through the Spirit is a dedicated life governed by the principle
of nonconformity to the world and an attitude of submis-
siveness. It involves a life within a community, structured
around the principle of love and unselfish service to others, and
love for the enemy and suffering with regard to the outside
world. So how is the relationship to be worked out in a society
within which Christians are a minority? What is the relation
between Christian life and the powers of the state? There is no
doubt that the passage in Romans 13:1-8 is not a separate
discourse that strayed into Paul’s treatment of the principle of
Christian love.130 It is an integral part of the ethical discourse

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.

The structural connection between chapters 12 and 13 has


been put nicely by J. H. Yoder:

In the structure of the Epistle, chapters 12 and 13 in


their entirety form one literary unit. Therefore, the text
13:1-7 cannot be understood alone. Chapter 12 begins
with a call to nonconformity, motivated by the memory
of the mercies of God, and finds the expression of this
transformed life first in a new quality of relationships
within the Christian community and, with regard to
enemies, in suffering.. The concept of love then recurs
in 13:8-10. Therefore, any interpretation of 13:1-7
which is not also an expression of suffering and
serving love must be a misunderstanding of the text in
its context (italics mine). There are no grounds of
literary analysis, textual variation, or style to support
the claim that we have here to do with a separate
chunk of teaching which constitutes foreign matter in
the flow of the text.131

In his short exposition of the contents of the entire letter leading


up to chapters 12 and 13, he stresses the calling of the gentiles
and God’s continuing concern for “ethnic Israel.” The point of
the letter, according to Yoder, is the overcoming of the hostility
between Jews and gentiles by the creation of community,
“reaching even to the nuts and bolts of financial sharing and
missionary support.” From that perspective he develops a
reading of Rom. 13 within the context of the whole letter, not as
a separate statement, and certainly not as the center of what
the New Testament has to say about the meaning of the state
and its power. To Yoder, the connection between the former
chapters and chapter 13 lies in the social-political dimension of
the letter as a whole, and the social ethics of chapter 12 in
particular.

The problem that is of great concern to any Christian is of


course Rom. 13:1-7, which seems to imply submission to a
government that, as instituted by God, has the right to make

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

Anders Nygren argues this possibility: the anticipatory,


eschatological attitude would lead to a denial that a Christian
lives in this present eon. Being set free from the present ruling
powers would then lead to an anarchist attitude. The difference
is simply that the exousiai, as dominating and demoniacal
powers, have been reduced to mere worldly powers; Christians
do not need to put their trust in them to achieve the good. That
would be the reason Paul uses the same word, exousia, for
demoniacal powers as for worldly government. The freedom of
the Christian would then be exercised in the free attitude with
which he can approach the government and measure it by its
own standard. To Nygren, all government is in principle institu-
ted by God, and only God can give the government power.133
This would lead, however, to a life in duality: being on the one
hand religiously committed to the ethics of the new kingdom,
and on the other hand standing in compromise with the realm
of the old world.

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.

Michel (1955) speaks quite similarly here. According to him, the


state acts as the protector of the divine law and judges on
matters of right and wrong. Good is the “general good” that
pagans could know about through their consciences; evil is the
disruption of social life. The sword is only the power of justice.
All Christians have a duty towards the state. The state could
rightfully demand taxes (both direct taxes like an income tax,
phoros, and indirect taxes, telos, e.g., levies) but also respect
and tribute. The institution of the state is based upon divine
law, therefore its retributive justice, including the death penalty,
is within its divine prerogative.

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

Yoder then makes an interesting point of exegesis. Normally


verse 6 reads: “For that reason you also pay taxes, because
they (RSV and NIV: the authorities) are ministers of God,
[insofar as they are, Yoder] attending to this very thing.” We
take "ministers" to be the nominal part of the predicate, and
then have to search for the subject of they are, which we think
we found some verses ago: the authorities. Then the text is
saying that the representatives of authority are "attending to
this very thing."

But what if the nominal part is in fact the plural subject,


referring to Christians? The text would then read: “For that
reason you also pay taxes, because [you, as] ministers of God
are also attending to this very thing.” Christians also devote
themselves to approval of the good and the reprimanding of
evil, with good and evil understood in the individual sense of
the personal well-being of all. Christians should have no
restrictions in their doing well to all, so that would include
proleptically the servants of the state! It seems obvious that the
state can then command obedience insofar as it serves the
same goals as Christians do. We find it quite unconvincing,
however, to assert this about the state and not about its
officials. The expression “authorities” can better be read as
“officials” to prevent the next problem from arising. Yoder
concludes:

Romans 12-13 and Matthew 5-7 are not in contra-


diction or in tension. They both instruct Christians to

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

But can we really maintain that Christians should submit to all


governments merely because they are there? Is it that the state
must be affirmed because it does some good for its citizens,
then we affirm the whole because of the goodness of some of
its elements? It is one thing to reject the possibility of violent
rebellion, but is this non-violence in the face of power wielded
by the state really based upon the principle that the state is
there and has a general function to fulfill? And does this
function imply the abstract realms of judicial, economic, and
political power, which would then be represented
paradigmatically in these verses? Alternatively, can we read
the text in such a way that the connection between chapters 12
and 13 becomes even clearer than in Yoder’s argument? For
as things stand now, Paul would be changing his perspective
from the individual obligation to love the neighbor and the
enemy to affirmation of the state insofar as it does good. This
proves to be quite unnecessary if we let ourselves be guided by
a reading proposed by Strobel.

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.

To apply the concept of the modern state, with its centralized


power and the right to warfare and death penalty, to the
submission to the “authorities” in Romans 13 has long been the
standard practice. We propose a different avenue, by starting
from the assumption that the reality of the state is nowhere else
to be found as in the specific actions of individuals who act in
conformity with the standard of the state and in a way produce
its reality by doing so. The state is present whenever an
individual justifies acts of government over others on the basis
of the concept of the state, i.e. on the basis of the idea that a
particular action is both necessary for the preservation of the
state and beneficial to the wellbeing of a particular (national)
community and serves their interests. If we start from the idea
that the state is a reality only in specific actions of individuals,
we can begin to understand the moral weight of the exhortation
that Paul addressed to the Romans on this subject. Only then
can we find the biblical foundation for the Mennonites’
insistence, that the “state”, far from expressing a divinely
ordained political order in which all human beings live and are
required to give their allegiance to, is actually a framework of
justification for specific individual actions that may or may not
be at odds with Christ’s teachings. An institution outside the
perfection of Christ. Ultimately the political order must be
measured by the moral order that grounds its reality.139

It is vital to make the distinction between the abstract concept


of state and the notion of the state-official. Strobel, quoted in
Käsemann’s commentary (p. 338), argued that Paul used
138
Emil Brunner, Das Gebot, p. 484
139
Cf. also Emmanuel Levinas, e.g. in “Liberté et Commandement”, in
Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 58, p. 266 (1953) who argues that the
discourse of the encounter (i.e. the moral order) constitutes a relationship
between individuals that precedes the institution of the rational law and is the
effort to involve someone in a dialogue without using violence. The – exercise
of violence and power rest precisely on the refusal to join in that dialogue.
207
specific terminology of Hellenistic political life that would imply
that Paul is not talking about the state, but about its
representatives. The “governing authorities” (verse 1140)
specifically refers to Roman officers of state. The expression
“rulers” in verse 3 perhaps refers to magisterial power, and
“ministers” refers to appointed representatives of an authority. If
that is so, the jus gladii, the power, or better, right of the sword,
in verse 6, refers to control over life and death, i.e., (capital)
punishment, but also to the system of rewards and privileges
that went along with that power in the emperor’s repre-
sentatives. It refers in Roman perspective, therefore, to judicial
power as it is put into the hands of officials. The word itself
therefore points to a basis for the legitimacy of actions to the
benefit of others or against others that otherwise would be acts
of violence.

If the language that characterizes the authority is in this sense


morally neutral (it refers to individual acts in a political
perspective), then by contrast the references to obedience
(submission as hupotassesthai is to fulfill an existing duty) and
to the goal of government, the “good” cannot be political but
must indicate a moral response. The application of love for the
enemy to the civil servant in a way detaches this servant from
his own political order of legitimacy and looks upon him as a
possible resident of the Kingdom of God. In the same vein, the
”servant who executes wrath” (RSV) or the “agent of wrath,”
might be the prosecutor or district attorney in a legal sense,
and the concept of the legitimacy of the state’s violence would
be far removed from Paul’s thought. This would fit in very well
with the general intent behind the passage to show how life
within a hostile society is possible. It also makes the part about
tax collection fit in nicely with the rest: the tax is paid because
we recognize proleptically the intent of its collector to do good
to all. And finally, this interpretation makes sense of the “all” in
verse 7: this must refer to the officials themselves. The con-
clusion from all of this must be that Paul’s exhortation is
contextual and not directly based upon a theological-

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

We have argued that submission to the functionaries can be


seen as an applied case of the love for the enemy in 12:20-21.
His presence is not simply affirmed as an empirical reality,
though the powers “are” simply there, as 13:2 states, with the
word @×F4" (being) implying a moral neutrality, but they are
seen as a means to act proleptically according to the values of
the coming kingdom. That God has set them in their place does
not mean that there is any kind of moral legitimacy to their
being there, nor does it mean that the principle of statehood in
itself is affirmed, but only its existence within the context of the
coming Kingdom which is already a present reality. The Church
should, by accepting this reality of the state only insofar as
there are persons acting under its principle, accept the situation
in which God has set her. If resistance against such bearers of
authority, in whom “the powers are concretized personally”
(Käsemann), is motivated by the effort to become emancipated
either individually or collectively, such authorities become
obstacles to political autonomy or social emancipation. If the
Church does resist violently because she judges the state to be
less than adequate, she is in fact showing hatred for the
“enemy,” since every effort to emancipate politically will
immediately make the officers of the state into enemies, which
will make it necessary to resist them violently, even though she
might argue that the necessity for violence results from their
behavior and attitude, in order to achieve political goals. Read
in that way, on the level of encounter with the representatives
of government, political and violent resistance is not simply
forbidden by the legitimacy of the state but is per se impossible
for the Church. It is the commandment to love the enemy that
prohibits violence to the officials of the state. It is not an
acquiescence in the legitimacy of that state in so far as it does
not hinder the practice of religion.

In itself, this presentation of Paul’s ethical exhortation with


209
regard to the powers of the state powers does not exclude
Yoder’s claim that Christianity is a social ethic. It only brings us
closer to understanding that Paul in his presentation of that
ethic did not construct an abstract ontology of the state, but
tried to put into the language of politics the very fundamental
demand of love for one’s enemy as taught by Jesus Himself.
The passage can be understood as a refutation of Zealotism.141
Political rebellion against Rome was based upon affirmation of
God’s rule as the concrete alternative to human rule, i.e., as in
basic conflict with it. The Maccabean revolt, which was its
forerunner, was justified with the argument that when the
religious existence of the people of Israel was threatened, a
rebellion against foreign powers was the only way ot be faithful.
The Zealots applied that principle to the political independence
of Israel, perhaps because they saw in it a means to obtain and
secure the former. So if Rome governed the world, then God
was excluded, and only human action could reinstate God in
His rightful place. Human government was always an
occupying power where only God could rule. For the same
reason, the Zealots called it an injustice to pay taxes to such a
“foreign” government.

The opposite of that position would be the acceptance of


worldly rule without reservation. But Paul did not just reverse
the Zealot position, and neither had Jesus. His argument
against the Zealots is that God already does rule, albeit without
deposing a faulty human government, and not in the perfect
way of the coming Kingdom. But the governmental powers are
still subject to God’s judgment and are under God’s control
insofar as they provide the basic conditions of a stable society.
That, however, is no reason for their acceptance. Christians do
not deal politically with the state; they deal with it morally, in
their dealings with the representatives of the state.142 The

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.

In this respect, the Pauline exhortation proves to be similar in


nature to the parenetical material that the Church ascribed to
Jesus. In Mark 12:13-17 we find such paraenesis embedded in
a controversy between Jesus and the Zealots. By this
procedure of “embedding” the question, whatever Jesus was
teaching becomes connected to the Church’s question as to
who was handing down that teaching.143 The Zealots were
refusing to pay the taxes because to do so would mean
acknowledging the Roman Emperor as their sovereign. Jesus’
reply aims at rejecting the presuppositions of that approach.

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.

So it is all right to pay the taxes needed to provide police and


judicial functions within society, while at the same time Jesus
commands us not to make use of that force and those rights
under law. In Matthew 5:38 we find that we should not resist
those who perpetrate evil. We should “love the enemy,” i.e.,
present our left cheek to those who smite us on the right cheek.
Nonresistance and love for the enemy are correlative, and the
point of this nonresistance is expressed by Paul in Rom. 12:21
to be no less than the victory of good over evil.

But is all of this connected to the expectation of the immediate


coming of the Kingdom? Are we right to argue that the main
perspective is the Kingdom that has already been established
instead of the referring to the eschatological expectation.
Goppelt argues that though nonresistance is in direct
conformity to the coming kingdom, there is now, under the
present conditions, also reason for resistance. Because the
Kingdom of God is still invisible, “history must be maintained
with respect to its hidden and its visible coming.” Now there is a
new character to resistance: one who has found the freedom
not to resist will resist injustice with the aid of power and law
without hating or despising the enemy: “He suffers because he
has to resist. This new way to resist is also a behavior in

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

But one must agree with Yoder that such a perspective on


Christian ethics actually destroys Christ’s mission. “The cross is
the extreme demonstration that agape seeks neither
effectiveness nor justice and is willing to suffer any loss or
seeming defeat for the sake of obedience.”146 Goppelt calls it a
“conformity with the sermon on the mount” to resist evil by
seeking an effective response or to use violent means in order
to establish justice, because the “old world” still is there and the
Kingdom is hidden. The individual can do so because he is part
of the society around him, and Christ’s mission is to effect
salvation, and His commandments are only “indirectly” realized
through the process of salvation from within the society. So the
new eon, according to Goppelt, is not entirely separated from
the old. Jesus’ demand for a new kind of life is balanced by His
acceptance of the legality of the old. Basically Goppelt defends
this view because of an exegesis in which Jesus taught that the
imperial taxes should simply be accepted.

Part of the problem might be that Goppelt envisions an


individual in this situation and asks whether it is possible for
any single human being to act in conformity with Christ. But the

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.

There is good reason for us to do so. In the words of Yoder:


“Christ is not only the Head of the Church; he is at the same
time Lord of History, reigning at the right hand of God over the
principalities and powers. The old eon, representative of human
history under the mark of sin, has also been brought under the
reign of Christ (which is not identical with the consummate
kingdom of God, 1 Cor. 15:24).”147 We may therefore expect
that the evil, which is inherent in the power of the state does
not simply create chaos but is made subservient to God’s
purpose. In Yoder’s words: “The characteristic of the reign of
Christ is that evil, without being blotted out, is channeled by
God, in spite of itself, to serve God’s purposes.” So we would
confirm the state, not as created or instituted by God, but at
least as a means by which God brings order and gives “room
for growth and work of the Church.” Yoder may say that in such
a way the violence of the state is not redeemed or made good,
but is made subservient to God’s purposes. It may ultimately
serve some good, and in that respect at least it earns some
legitimacy.

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!

Yoder presupposed that the authorities mentioned in Romans


13:1 (and the parallel passages in 1 Tim. 2 and 1 Peter 2) refer
to the state as such. Romans 13, of course, has been most
often interpreted like that, and we have quoted another solution
above. But how can we possibly identify the “kings and people
in high places” in 1 Tim. 2 with the state? 1 Peter 2:13 speaks
about human institutions and mentions the emperor or his
governors. Again, with Käsemann, we must say at least that
the powers are personalized, though we prefer to state that the
powers are being seen on the level where they are represented
by individuals. In Romans 13, we would have to accept that
Paul changes from his perspective on Christian morality, the
application of love for the enemy, to the perspective of the
state. But we find the position persuasive that the terminology
of Romans 13 points toward the embodiment of the state in
bearers of authority who continue the intersubjective framework
of chapter 12. The point might be, then, that we never accept
the state as such, but always and only specific people who use
power, on the presumption that they do so with the object of
doing good. It would mean that the state, per se, is mentioned
only in Revelation 13 in the typical language of apocalyptic
prophecy: the beast coming from the sea. The powers that
govern the world are personalized, and only when the system
dominates all the people in it and the intersubjective
perspective of Romans 13 cannot be employed any longer, the
state is envisioned as “beastified,” in the language of the
Apocalypse.

We must come now to the question of what kind of response


Paul expected from his paraenesis, what kind of obedience is
implied in all these specifications of the commandment of love.
In general, we have found both in Galatians and in Romans
that the way of life of Christians is determined by a threefold
freedom: freedom from sin, from death, and from (an incorrect
interpretation of) the law. It is not freedom from all restraints,
since the believer is liberated to a new service. But this service
seems to be rather paradoxical. “The servant of Christ” is at the
215
same time a freedman of the Lord (1 Cor. 7:22). We are freed
as was Israel: in order to obey. For Christians more particularly:
to lead a life in the Spirit that allows God through us to fulfill the
claim the law has on us (Rom. 8:3).

What character does this new Christian imperative have?


Bultmann and others have argued that, to Paul, the imperative
follows the indicative. Let’s use this idea for a moment. In our
passage we might look at 12:1 as a case in point. The
exhortation is motivated “by the mercies of God”; the “sacrifice”
is reference to Christ’s sacrifice for us (Rom. 5). The
“indicative” of what God has done in Christ not only serves as a
motivating force; it also expresses a reality in which we already
share. The gift of the Spirit turns an eschatological future into a
present reality. The spirit therefore can be expressed both as
the power by which the believer can act in obedience and the
standard by which he measures his acts, combining indicative
and imperative. Gal. 5:25 expresses this duality: “If we live in
the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.”

As Beker puts it, this connection between indicative and


imperative is meant as a polemical stance towards Jews and
Jewish Christians because it “eradicates the works of the law
and any fearful striving for acceptance in the last judgment, as
if the Messiah had not already come.”148 If the nature of
righteousness is at stake, as in Romans and Galatians, Paul
will emphasize the indicative, but where there is danger of the
exaggeration of the “exclusive celebration of the indicative”
Paul stresses the imperative, as in 1 Cor. Nevertheless, it
would be wrong to see Paul’s ethic only in this tension between
indicative and imperative. Beker explains this issue by making
reference to the debate between Bultmann and Käsemann:

“Ernst Käsemann has inserted a new dimension into


the discussions. With Bultmann, he locates the heart
of Paul’s gospel in " the righteousness of God," but he
disputes Bultmann’s interpretation of it.’The
righteousness of God’ has an apocalyptic derivation
and denotes both God’s power and His gift. It
expresses God’s cosmic claim on the world, which is
proleptically made manifest in the lordship of Christ

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

So how does Beker see things? Beker considers the ethical


necessity for Christians as closely linked to the apocalyptic
expectation of the divine indicative, which he sees in
Käsemann’s correction to Bultmann’s existentialist approach.
But to Beker, Christian ethics is definitely aimed at the future
cosmic-theocentric affirmation of Christ in the final redemption.
All of the activity that Christians are commanded to do is
defined as redemptive activity, pointing toward its final
consummation in the future kingdom. So it is not the indicative
itself that motivates obedience, but more precisely the
indicative and “pattern” of the eschatological judgment, and the

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.

The problem with Beker’s approach is that if eschatology


grounds ethics, all ethics of necessity becomes an interim ethic
(the final indicative even swallowing up the imperative), and
man simply has to await the coming of the new kingdom to see
his obedience evaporate into thin air, along of course with any
thought of merit. The imperative then has meaning only as long
as Christians are still living within the old world, and only for
that world. Christian ethics can then easily become the ethics
of the present age, to which the element of a redemptive
scheme provides only the hermeneutic and the motivational
background. That is so because it is held at the same time that
the apocalyptic vision of the future kingdom cannot be
expressed in terms of precise behavior or values. Congruence
between ethical acts today and the apocalyptic indicative
cannot be established with certainty, only some tendencies or
probabilities might be construed that give some direction to
ethics.

The basic flaw in this scheme of things is this: to Paul the


righteousness of God is revealed in the faithfulness of Christ to
the God of the covenant. Jesus’ dedication to God’s kingdom

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.

Beker’s argument in connection with the expression sooma


(body) in Rom. 12:1 overlooks the obvious. If we are called to a
reasonable service not in conformity to this world, and to a
renewal of our thoughts which makes us “prove what is the will
of God, the good, the acceptable and the perfect,” then our
“imperative” is rooted in the character of God’s will and not
partly based on our solidarity with the present world while
hoping for a better one. The latter would constitute a principle
of obedience besides that of God’s relating to humanity through
the Cross of Jesus Christ and would invoke a separate source
of motivation for ethics. To put it in the simplest of words: we
obey God because Christ died for us, and in our obedience we
constitute a separate community of the faithful, dedicated to
obedience, accepting suffering, maintaining Christ’s position in
this world as nonviolent love. At the Cross, solidarity with the
present world is expressed as suffering love, not as moral
dedication to improve it. There can be no solidarity with the
world without going through its judgment.

The expression “mercies of God” is also, as we have explained


earlier, not so much a reference to the deeds of God, even if
surely God’s revelation of righteousness in Christ reveals that
character, but a name of God taken from the Old Testament.
So chapter 12:1-3, if understood in the scheme of indica-
tive/imperative, grounds our obedience in the God who chose
to be Mercy and not in any particular activity of God with
reference to this world, present or future. It does not allow us to

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

The first passage we need to examine now is chapter 13:8-14,


where the fulfillment of the law and the eschatological condition
are mentioned together after the general exhortation to love
each other. Ridderbos reads it like this: do not be in debt to
others, i.e., do what is required with regard to others and
(therefore) love each other. The statement then refers to
existing obligations of the same order as those of the
government in verses 1-8. That makes sense, especially
because the word ofeile can mean debts, but also obligations,
which brings it closer to the Hebrew technical expression
chajav and because it makes a bridge between verses 8 and 9.

Nevertheless it is quite unnecessary to think of existing


obligations within the society where Christians need to live,
which would imply that Paul was thinking first of financial
obligations and then enlarges the scope of the word to include
all societal obligations. It makes better sense to read it like this,
with Käsemann: Do not accept any burden or obligation (and
thereby become formally indebted) with regard to others except
the obligation of the commandment of love. The only formal
“debt” we have is that of love. The motivational clause then
makes perfect sense: whoever loves the other has fulfilled the
law, which must refer to the Mosaic law, and which in the
context stands for the sum total of what can be required of us
with regard to others. Everything that we might take on as a
formal duty is already contained in this one commandment. So
we are not to bring ourselves under the specific command-
ments of the law, but can profit from the law if we see it as a
way to discern what the commandment of love requires us to
do. Read like this, the passage again warns against bringing
the law into play as a formal rule of obedience.

But even so the law here gains a positive meaning as expres-


sing God’s will, even if our new status implies that it does so
without directly and formally prescribing what we are supposed
to do, and without connecting obedience to the promise of life.
The different context of redemption in Christ changes the

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.

Every commandment in the Old Testament therefore is


included in the commandment of neighborly love, and the
radical nature of the love commandment is applicable to each
and any of these. In that sense, the law is not reduced to the
commandment of love as if other commandments are annulled,
but all of these commandments are seen as concretizations of
the demand of love, and the latter is used as the principle of
their exegesis. That is the first step we need to make here.

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.

Secondly, they are all bound to the imitation of one particular


aspect of Christ’s life that Paul mentioned in Romans 5 (Christ
died for us while we were all enemies) and is now expressed
ethically in 12:14, 17, 19 and 20: love for the enemy, in the real
Old Testament sense of providing for his needs, the prohibition
of revenge, aspiring for the good of all people.

Thirdly, as Paul explained in the preceding sections: Christians


are not ”under” the law in the sense that their autonomous
freedom is being commanded to obey, necessitating a qualified
response in accordance with the measure of power and the
depth of our understanding of that law. Inner will power and
knowledge would then become the basic traits of a life in
obedience under law. Instead, power is derived from the Holy
Spirit, and our status has changed since we have died
according to the principle of the law. The new life fulfills the
demands of the law, not by our aspiring to obey in a free
response, as if our condition had not altered, but by allowing
itself to be governed by the Spirit of Christ and by the
communal process in which Christ is embodied.

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.

That implies, however, no criticism of the law as such. Israel


(that is, the element of Pharisaic Judaism that Paul has in
mind) did not attain that law because it did not approach it from
the viewpoint of faith (“creaturely faith” as Dunn puts it, as in
Abraham’s case, a faith that trusted in God’s ability to go
beyond human capability) but from the viewpoint of formal
obedience and works (Rom. 9:31, 32). That error consisted in
establishing their ”own” righteousness instead of trusting in
God’s faith: His righteousness in remaining loyal to the
Covenant and promise (10:3). In that sense, Christ is the end of
the law, because now the righteousness of the law that is
required is established through faith in Christ, both by
establishing a new covenantal relationship and by an ongoing
life of faith. It is not that the law has simply vanished. To be the
end of the law means to be its apex, its fulfillment, in the sense
that all that the law was trying to establish has become visible
in Christ.

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.

Two elements of the new covenant are of importance here:


first, the notion of having the law put “in their inward parts” and
written ”in their heart” (Jer. 31:33). A typical interpretation of
these words along the lines of the a priori convictions
concerning the meaning of the law and the new Covenant can
be found in C. F. Keil’s commentary on Jeremiah.155 One of the

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:

“The law, with its righteous demands, can only humble


the sinner, and make him beseech God to blot out his
sin and create in him a clean heart (Ps. 51:11ff.); it can
only awaken him to the perception of sin, but cannot
blot it out. It is God who must forgive this, and by
forgiving it, write His will on the heart. …the forgiveness
of sins is a work of grace which annuls the demand of
the law against men. In the old covenant, the law with
its requirements is the impelling force; in the new
covenant, the grace shown in the forgiveness of sins is
the aiding power by which man attains that common life
with God which the law sets before him as the great
problem of life…. “

It is important to realize that this is a commentary on the words


of Jeremiah 31:31, that deals with a new covenant for Israel
and Judah. The last part of verse 34 reads: “…for I will pardon
their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more.” It is the
final clause of the passage, opening with “behold days come..”
(verse 31) The order of thought seems to be like this:

(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.

In James Dunn's view, Paul uses the word heart, kardia, 52


times in Paul’s writings) in its Hebrew sense as the seat of
emotions, thought and will. God searches the heart (Rom 2:15)
and obedience should be from the heart (Rom. 6:17; 10:9-10).
Faith was “an expression of deeply felt commitment.”156 Now, it
is not immediately clear in what relationship the text of

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

Likewise in Romans 8, though the indwelling of the Spirit


describes a new reality of mankind and a new relationship to
God, the moral content remains the same. It is the requirement
of the law that is met through the Spirit, though the mode of
being of the law under the old covenant (the letter, that needs
instruction) becomes powerless because of the flesh (Rom.
8:3).

The danger here is of turning the mode of enablement into the


contents of the demand. If we stress, with James Dunn, that
Christ’s death was a means to an end, i.e., “the end of a people
‘who walk in newness of life’ (Rom. 6:4), who ‘serve in the new
life of the Spirit’ (Rom. 8:4),” then we wind up losing sight of the
concrete contents.

Dunn concedes that the contents of this walking in the Spirit is


righteousness. “Such conduct fulfills the just requirement of the
law.” 158 But this reference to the law is based on the former
transformation of that concept as the “law of the Spirit of life,
the law no longer restricted and defined in terms of the flesh.”159
The law in Romans 8:2 is the same as the law that led to death
and condemnation, the “law of the Flesh,” but now connected
to the “inner parts” of those who delight in that law (Rom. 7:22),
who have been strengthened by the Spirit of Life that dwells
within them – at the same time killing the flesh in the
identification with Christ on the Cross.

At this precise moment we must be careful. Life in the Spirit

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

But Dunn assumes that the meaning of ”law” in these cases is


actually the equivalent of “God’s will.” Law of faith, law of the
Spirit, and law of Christ can be rendered as: God’s will
accessible through Faith, doable because of the Spirit and
executed under the sovereignty of Christ. In place of the
specific demands of the law, there is a reduction to a single
"just requirement" that is equaled to “doing God’s will,” thereby
going beyond the status of written law that has specific rules
and regulations.

Now this can certainly be defended as an appropriate


interpretation of Paul. After all, we have found in Rom. 9:31 an
opposition between a search for a law of (that leads to)
righteousness that was not based on obedience in faith but on
the teaching and learning of specific tasks and living according
to rules, the “so-called works.” Rom. 8:4 does speak of a single
“requirement,” and 8:14 seems to stress a being led by the
Spirit as if from within (cf. 8:9-10) that is distinguished from a
life in submission under the law. The aim of all of this is to
strengthen the notion of obedience not diminish it. Paul is after
a form of heteronomous or rather theonomous obedience.

What is left of the function of the law can then be summarized


in this manner: (1) the guiding, instructing function of the written
law is taken up in the exhortations of the spirit-led life, and (2)
the law is still a written source of understanding and finding the
exhortatory demand exemplifying God’s will in specific
situations. But the final word is no longer in the written statute,
but rather the opposite: the law keeps its function as source of
ethics only where it can be interpreted along the guidelines of

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

I argued that Paul was trying to express a notion of a a strict


theonomous obedience and only for that reason had to reject
an approach of the Torah as a codex of rule-like Laws. What
are we talking about? What does “theonomous” obedience
mean? It seems to mean that every divine command is an
absolute and must be obeyed because it comes from this
divine source. Since Kierkegaard, the paradigm of such an
absolute submission in contemporary theology has been the
story of Abraham. When Abraham was commanded to sacrifice
his son, Abraham obeyed. The divine voice is narrated as an
absolute commandment. Now, the case can be made that the
divine will is embodied in a Scripture and not in a practice of
hearing divine voices, what Scripture tells us to do we must
obey as if we heard from the voice of God directly. Both
Abraham’s narrated obedience and our possible obedience to
the text of the narrative might be called theonomous if an
assumption with regard to the authority of the source is the
direct foundation of the obedience. But there is this distinction
between a voice heard and a Scripture being read that we must
take into consideration now. Any text involves interpretation in
order to be heard. This necessity of interpretation has an
impact on the presupposed absoluteness of the divine com-
mandment.

Let us first take the notion of theonomous obedience a bit


further. Mennonite Christianity defends a theonomous and
revealed (inscribed) morality. Theonomous obedience is an
answer to the basic question of ethics: how to choose between
alternative actions, especially if we are uncertain about which is
the best. The moral dilemma, as it is often stated, is about
choices, and it presupposes human freedom to choose. The
principles and value concepts by which these choices are
guided can be derived from many possible sources: mysterious
ones, like the inner voice of conscience, or such basic realities
as the instinctive need for solidarity within a group, self-
preservation, or, closer to the reality of the person making the
choice, utility and personal need. Moral choices differ from
other acts of liberty because they need a standard by which a

230
moral agent judges his actions to be either good or bad.

To find such a standard in the conditions of the exercise of


human freedom itself has been the ultimate goal of that type of
philosophy that we call German idealism. The original impetus
for this quest lies in ancient Greek philosophy. It was argued
that political liberty implies that a commandment can be obeyed
because those who obey it have freely consented to do so.
Political authority can then be exercised in the form of a
commandment, but still be considered based on the liberty of
the citizens. Reason provides a rationale for such an
obedience, since it makes it possible to understand that the
one who is commanding is in fact doing so with the interest of
those who obey as his primary motive. Tyranny is that form of
commandment, that defies logical analysis and is based on the
self-interest of the ruler, so that liberty is turned against its own
interest. To obey a despot makes a mockery of political
authority. Heteronomous obedience can be defined from this
perspective as that kind of obedience that does not find a
reasonable ground in the interest of those who obey it and
serves no other purpose than that of the authority. In effect, the
reasonable commandment can only be obeyed, if a free
consciousness commands itself to obey. The external law and
the rational institutions of society are at the same time an
expression of the liberty of human beings who consent and
have rational motivates for their obedience, and yet at the
same time, being external, these laws and institutions are alien
to the exercise of liberty itself. That liberty should command
itself to obey the political authority, to safeguard its own
exercise in the long-term is expressive of this ambiguity.

In that same tradition the Enlightenment philosophy sought to


defend the principle of liberty as guaranteeing both the political
order and the inner moral freedom of individuals. Immanuel
Kant sought for the highest principle of morality in the way an
action by an individual can become a natural law without
destroying the human community and the freedom of others.
“Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the
same time will that it should become a universal law.” That is
because, in the end, the moral agent would destroy his own
possible freedom by acting against it. Safe-guarding the exer-
cise of liberty for the long term becomes an ultimate motive for
231
all actions that seem in the short-term to restrict the exercise of
freedom. The absolute (categorical) imperative must therefore
be: to make the guiding principle of your private action such
that it can be thought of as a natural universal law of behavior.
If a specific action does not obstruct the freedom of others or
disrupt ordered society, it passes the test, and the action can
be considered good. Does such a way of thinking allow for
theonomous obedience as a principle of ethics?

The notion of theonomous obedience must be clarified further.


The submission of freedom under the will of another subject
has as its motive the continuation of that exercise in the long-
term. In so far as freedom-in-obedience still refers to itself – by
commanding itself to obey, by accepting the rational motive of
self-interest – such an obedience leaves the autonomy of
liberty intact. A divine commandment interpreted according to
this political concept of freedom, must then also be understood
to be in one’s own interest and would imply an internal
acceptance of a restraint in the outward exercise of the will. In
Kant’s perspective, the acceptance of the liberty of other sub-
jects is only possible, insofar this acceptance can be under-
stood as the ultimate cause of the self-preservation of my own
liberty. In Hobbes’ view, it was the power of the King (=state)
that made it possible for free subjects to live together, precisely
because they gave up on their inherent right to defend their
own interests and liberty with force. The sacrifice of liberty to
the state for the common good, preserved the liberty of all
people in a community. Again, all heteronomy of external
restraint was ultimately acceptable because it referred back to
the autonomy of liberty as its inner goal. The restraint in
question was a force, a violence, that defended the liberty and
welfare of all, against the opposition of an individual liberty that
broke free of the commonality and usurped powers already
given up to constitute society. In fact, the state could be
conceived as the status of an armistice between rivaling liber-
ties, a truce that maintained a provisionary equilibrium between
citizens.

Must we say then, that all heteronomy is as such bad, unless it


can be referred back to autonomy as its source? In 1796 Kant
wrote a treatise on the relationship between the sciences,
called in German, Der Streit der Facultäten. In the first chapter
he discusses the relationship between the theological and the
232
philosophical sciences. After admitting that a book of law that
was congruent with the dictates of practical reason would be of
ultimate importance to guarantee “temporary and eternal well-
being” to all citizens, he stumbles over this problem. A book of
law, such as the Bible might be, would need verification of its
authority. It has to be verified by a rational affirmation that God
was its author, and only then could it be authentic. How can
this verification happen?

We would need to be certain that in it we are hearing the voice


of God. But is this possible? For one thing, if God spoke to a
human being, how would this human being know that it was
God and not someone else? A finite mind cannot judge the
infinite. God cannot be known with certainty by man at all, so
how could His voice be recognized as such? The other way
around, however, is possible. According to Kant, we have a
method of recognizing that it is not God whose voice we hear. If
God were to command anything that contradicts a moral law,
we can be sure that voice is not God’s. The moral demand
precedes all knowledge of God and serves as a basis to
recognize that something is not God’s revelation. We can now
say why this must be so: because this recognition of the moral
value of a divine commandment allows for the grounding of
such a commandment on the rational insight that ultimately my
own liberty is being affirmed. Accepting a pure externality of the
commandment would not only threaten the exercise of liberty
itself, which is conceived as the condition of fulfilling the
commandment in the first place, but it would also obstruct the
obedience to the commandment: without a free will to respond
to a commandment, the commandment is not a commandment.
The externality of a commandment in Kant’s view must, by the
nature of liberty itself, be conditioned by a free and rational
response to a moral concept or rule.

Such a formal basis for ethics goes against the foundational


notions of Christian ethics, especially when it emphasizes that
a moral action is in essence a self-affirmation of autonomous
reason. But maybe we could construe Christian ethics as a
“material” ethics (i.e. a particular value-system that uses a
symbolic language to refer to basic principles) that needs the
same formal basis that Kant described as the foundation of all
ethics? N. H. Søe argued in 1965 that the distinctive idea of
233
Christian ethics lies in the fact that the question about the Good
is taken as the question about God.161 If only God can be called
good (Mark 10:18), perfect (Matth. 5:48), loving (1 John 4:8, 6),
and holy (1 Peter 1:16), then “God, His will and His work are
also the Good.” We have encountered the very same idea in
our discussion of the commentaries on Romans 12:2. To
discern the “perfect, holy, and acceptable will of God,” we must
“know” God in His attribute of compassion. The argument con-
tinues by stating that God cannot be known, as Kant stated, so
that it is necessary to accept that God must reveal Himself to
humanity, which Kant of course denies. Acceptance of our
corruption by sin is correlated to the acknowledgment that only
because God reveals Himself can we know anything about
Him, and therefore it is on the basis of revelation that we know
the Good.162 All ethics, according to the Danish Lutheran
theologian, is revealed. On the basis of this foundational notion
of revelation a particular ethics can then be developed.

But then Kant’s question returns to haunt us. How do we know


God reveals Himself? Sure enough, Søe denies that revelation
can be demonstrated to non-believers. It can only be a
revelation to believers who have received not only the contents
of that revelation, but have also been enabled to hear God’s
voice through the Holy Spirit. Because he does not claim
universal rationality for the claims of Christian ethics, he can
hope to dispense with the kind of formal proof that Kant
demanded for ethical principles. The only avenue that remains
open to Christians is to affirm that they have a particular bias
which will ground a specific way of behavior that is reasonable
only to them. Only the ”assumption” therefore of God’s
revelation brings us into the situation of Christian ethics; only
by ignoring Kant’s question does Christian ethics even begin to
operate. The result would be that Christian ethics is a minority
view on the Good without rational argument. It would prefer,
like the “idiot” in “scientific sense,” as Kant puts it, the
assumed authority of Scripture above the light of reason that
tells us what the good in itself must be. Against Kant’s
argument for a priority of the moral demand which gives us a
standard of revelation, Søe simply turns things around.

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.

Now this solution may take us around Kant’s problem, except


that it does not infer the material good from the reality of
freedom that is called upon to affirm it, nor does it content itself
to identify formally the good with the self-affirmation of freedom.
Neither does it simply identify the good with the written record
of Scripture, nor does it claim without foundation that such a
divine norm is positively given in Scripture. It seems to ground
the particular character of Christian ethics upon a particular use
of human freedom: the freedom to adopt a concrete system of
ethics that contains historical value-symbols of the basic
principle of ethics in a community. We will see later that
ultimately that is what Stanley Hauerwas seems to be arguing
for. The Christian ethics may then materially be different from
Kantian ethics, but still it depends on its formal basis in the
notion of individual liberty. And worse, the Kantian standard still
becomes the criterion for what is valuable in such a particular
ethics.

If Kant is right that a biblical standard for morality precludes


knowledge of the good, Paul is wrong that we need to discern
the “perfect, holy and acceptable will of God” in order to know
what is good. Knowledge in the sense of rational insight would
be annulled by the very acceptance of biblical authority, and
biblical ethics would imply irrationalism. Kant wrote an
important footnote in this context to make his point clear. When
Abraham was ordered to “slaughter” his son by God, he should
have answered: “I know for sure that I should not kill my only
beloved son, that is absolutely certain; that you, this apparition
are God, of that I am not sure and I may never be sure, even
when this voice came booming down from heaven.” 163
Certainty and knowledge should have been the guiding
principles of Abraham’s decision, in Kant’s view. The autonomy
of cognition is now added to the autonomy of conscience and
inner faith. Only when conscience and faith can present a
principle of action, a rule of behavior, that is at the same time
possible to understand with certainty by an individual con-
sciousness as in congruence with a principle of (practical) ratio-

163
Kant, Akademie Textausgabe, VII, p. 63 footnote, [my translation].
235
nality, i.e., possibly universal, can such a principle be adopted.

One could argue against such “ethical idealism” that it ignores


the corruption of human nature as well as the specific nature of
divine revelation. Both, however, are part of revelation and only
accepted by those who believe. There are no rational, con-
clusive arguments by which one can demonstrate the reliability
of such principles.

How does one defend against the Kantian counter-argument?


One strategy is to be found in the work of Stanley Hauerwas.
First of all, one might attack the claim to universality that is so
apparent in Kant’s ethics. Kant may have a right to ask
questions concerning the universal nature of moral arguments.
Such questions may even betray that ethics in all cultures
shows recurring and typical problems. But as soon as one tries
to answer these questions, one “necessarily draws on the
particular convictions of historic communities to whom such
questions may have significantly different meanings.”164 Such a
relocation of moral questions from universal human reason
toward the concrete community transcends both the Lutheran
philosopher and his theological counterpart. Søe was as
interested in finding in God the absolute ground for Christian
ethics as Kant is trying to find the absolute ground in the moral
nature of humanity. By positing that all concrete ethics is
necessarily relative to a historic community with its own
narrative and methods of incorporating the ethics embodied in
such narrative, the Kantian standard no less than Søe’s
particular Christian and revelatory ethics loose their foundation.
Kant’s morality can now be deconstructed as based on the
specific narrative of the Project of the Enlightenment in
Western Europe, as Søe ’s attempt is based on the project of
the Reformation and the state Church of Lutheranism, if we
indeed live in a world of “moral fragments” in which no moral
argument can definitely solve any given moral problem.165
Connected with this is the modern human experience that tells
us that we are condemned to freedom, as Sartre puts it. There
is no “essence” given that we can refer to in deciding the shape
of our behavior. Yet at the same time we feel that our lives are

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.

However, Christian ethics cannot simply become part of this


fragmentariness. Its value does not depend on social
functionality, but on some concept of ultimate truth. Hauerwas
emphasizes the narrative nature of the founding convictions of
Christianity, theological convictions in themselves signify ways
of behavior and are not mere cognitive persuasions. Narratives
ground traditions, traditions inform communities.166 And in the
last analysis, ethics depends upon “vital communities sufficient
to produce well-lived lives.”167 This grounding in history and
community is vital to Hauerwas’s argument. The command-
ment is not sufficient as foundation for ethics, in that Hauerwas
agrees with Kant. Christian ethics contains a definitive story
that helps us envision the world. The world that we can see is
the world we must act in. We need to change in order to see
the world, since we must acknowledge first that we are sinners.
Only through this view of the world as corrected by the basic
Christian stories do we see it as it is. And these basic stories
are present only in a community of story-tellers who try to act in
conformity with the stories they tell each other.

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. .

That may be called “true” as a statement of fact with regard to


the people who hold to it, but it cannot be true in the rational
and universal sense.

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.

By extending the moral agent from the individual to the specific


community, by moving from the Bible as book of law to the
historical narrative, we still have embraced and affirmed a form
of irrationalism in the Kantian perspective, not shown its truth.
That is why Hauerwas needs the recourse to a critique of
Kantian universalism, that is why he needs -–as a subterfuge –
the affirmation of post-modern fragmentariness. Only if we
grant that all material ethics is relative to a social group, can we
maintain any kind of truth for the Christian community. In a
way, we then still affirm Kant. If it were not for the claim that
Christian stories involve the claim for truth, and the idea that
claims to universal morality are nothing but generalized
particular claims, Hauerwas would be doing nothing but
explaining and describing a particular given ethical frame of
mind, peculiar to Christian communities. But the task of
Christian ethics to make normative statements is then
completely undercut. Hauerwas, however, still insists that the
task of Christian ethics is both descriptive and normative. Such
normativity must then necessarily be far removed from what we
normally would understand ethics to accomplish.

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.

Kant’s claims for a universal and rational morality, no less than


Søe’s claims for universal absolute knowledge of God as the
principle of Good and Hauerwas’s references to the coherent
narrative that informs the lived ethics of a vital community, must
each reject Abraham’s choice to obey his God. To all of them,
Abraham is a murderer and possibly an idolater. If God is a

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.

The notion, attributed to Hans Denck, that to know Christ


means to follow Him in life is a reversal of the order of rank of
cognition and obedience, theoretical and practical reason.169 If
obedience is to be theonomous, it must provide a way out of
the circular reasoning that constructs human autonomy
everywhere, for the Kantian counter-argument will make us say
at every step along the way, “How do I know all this?”
assuming that knowing the demand somehow qualifies that
demand as immanent and autonomous. To understand a
commandment as revealed and God-given would imply

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

In this book we do not have the opportunity to discuss in depth


the movement of “narrative theology” and its implications for
ethics. Just this one remark about our position towards it must
suffice. The importance of narrative in the sense of knowledge
of the story of God’s actions with Israel is not being minimized
by our stress on commandment and obedience. It is also true
that the easiest way to see the differences between the ways of
the Church and Israel is to look at their founding narratives,
e.g., how these are celebrated in worship and practiced to
become the major incentive for ethical behavior. It is also true
that a general understanding of the intent of the commandment
can be gleaned from the narrative framework by itself, and it is
again true that the character of our being as the recipient of law
is given through narrative. Yet, if narrative ethics were to imply
a precedence of the question who we are above the question
what we are to do, the matter would not be so simple any
more.171 After all, in narrative, the transcendence and
sovereignty of God is a characteristic of an “agent” in the story.
The story is about what God does and how humans respond.
The position of a commandment becomes problematic if it must
derive its meaning from our discourse on its narrative frame-
work.

McClendon explains the notion of “narrative mode” with an


example taken from Frank Kermode.172 If we say: “the King died
and then the Queen died,” we have a factual report, presup-
posing monarchy and social structure, but not yet a story. But if

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.

Against this emphasis on narrative we would maintain the


imperative as the revelatory mode of the moral demand. We
hold that only on the basis of the divine imperative can we read
the narrative as an explanation of its possibility. When God
gives the commandment to Adam and Eve not to eat from the
Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the serpent’s question
evokes commentary on the commandment (Has God said, thou
shalt not eat from any tree?). Its explanation ascribes a motive
to God incongruent with the divine origin of the commandment
(God’s jealousy is incompatible with the gift of life). The motive
was not jealousy, but protecting love as explicit in the
commandment itself. The question finally denies the cones-
quence of disobedience (thou shalt not die) explicitly stated in
the commandment as God’s motive, to protect man from death.
What we see here is that the narrative we have before us
allows us to understand the basic issue of human obedience.
But that obedience is itself narrated and not embodied within
the narrative itself. There is no “pattern” of behavior or ”cha-
racter” to be emulated. There is a commandment that defines a
situation, and a narrative (within the narrative) proposed as an
alternative framework, which destroys the original protective
intent of the commandment.

The narrative actually shows that the commentary on the


commandment, which takes it up in a narrative context of divine
jealousy and gives immortality, contradicts the divine impe-
rative itself. If Eve had taken the commandment literally, its
own context would have shown that it (1) granted access to all
the trees, without which no tree would have been permitted,
and (2) equally sovereign, God forbade one Tree in order to
protect man from death. The narrative explains that the “tra-
243
dition” by which Eve was informed about the commandment
provided a weakness of which the serpent could make use. To
Eve, the commandment was given as tradition only, and she
herself had tried to “protect” the given tradition by adding the
commandment not to touch (3:3), or perhaps Adam had found
it wise to do so. The point is that the narrative shows the vulne-
rability of a commandment when it is being interpreted from
within a narrative framework. Only the divine commandment in
itself ”fitted” reality and was proper behavior for humanity. So
what the narrative here actually shows is that the command-
ment rules the narrative, or, that a narrative must be measured
by the commandment it seeks to explain.

We can return now to our question regarding the experiential


veracity of the primacy of the commandment. Could God’s
voice then be heard only within the immediacy of an individual’s
experience? Kierkegaard thought that made Abraham into the
single most lonely man in history. Such a pristine and
immediate relationship with God must of its own nature be a
unique event. The problem is that the nature of the demand
would then be completely unique to the situation in time and
place in which the individual experiences it. It would be a
unique divine demand, but not a commandment, let alone a
rule of behavior. In fact, the intent of the passage is most often
constructed to the contrary, to show to Abraham that God does
not require human sacrifice, probing his response to the
commandment and accepting Abraham’s intent while at the
same time refuting his submission to it. Along those lines, the
unique event of an immoral divine demand is avoided. In such
an interpretation, the immediate and literal content of the
commandment is e.g. subverted by assuming a double intent
on the part of God. While demanding a sacrifice, God is
actually probing (only) Abraham’s submissiveness.

If that is true, and if we are to hold on to the contradiction


between God’s commandment and the moral law, Abraham
must have known that such was the case. When it is stated that
Abraham and Isaac went “together,” this might be an allusion to
the fact that Abraham had explained the divine ruse to his son.
Reason alleviated the disconcerting element in the narrative in
this manner, and the story could no longer threaten our
autonomy nor our image of a God who is in harmony with our
view of the good. We can even second-guess God’s intention
244
to be ultimately in accordance with moral reasoning, and in
complying with commandments and ethics we “know” that God
has an ulterior motive in giving us His law.173 Since we seek a
way to justify God, we must identify all divine actions as
intrinsically good. The human metaphor of pedagogy comes to
mind in this reinterpretation: God lied about his true intentions
to Abraham, tested him, and taught him a lesson in doing so.
The lie was justified because of the goal: to test Abraham’s
faithfulness.

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?

First of all, testing is too broad a term in this context. It is stated


that God nissah, put to the test, in the sense of bringing
something to a higher position.174 Abraham was given a task
that up till then he might have been unable to perform, but
“after these things” (22:1) he might have been ready for it. At

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.

The manner of this necessary abandonment or new separation


is not understood fully if only the material act of killing this son
is emphasized. God commands Abraham to bring up
(ha’aleihu) the elevated (o’lah). The concept of sacrifice in the
sense of making something holy (sacer facere) by destroying it,
thereby giving it to God by withdrawing it from human use and
taking it out of existence, is not the primary intention. Abraham
has to make Isaac rise above the natural position wherein he
was set, and thereby Isaac becomes dedicated fully to God and
to the promise that operates through him and following
generations. That this would entail killing him is an intentional
paradox. How could Abraham have understood this divine
command? If Isaac could be born beyond Sarah’s reproductive
capacity, so Isaac could have been ”elevated,” brought to his
purpose, in any way God deemed fit. And in a sense, the
“killing,” as a symbol of the abrogation of Isaac’s natural state,
can be read as referring to the election and specific purpose of
Israel as a people in this world. The literal meaning then
becomes a metaphor of the symbolic.

Nevertheless the narrative moves forward within the literal


meaning. Abraham “chopped the wood” (22:3), indicating he
understood the offering to mean building a fire, i.e., in any case
to involve an offering of a living being. We take that to mean
that Abraham intended to kill his son and so perform the
offering, and we assume ordinarily that that is in fact the only
246
possible interpretation of the commandment. But it is an
interpretation, even supposing that Abraham’s understanding of
the commandment had been determined by an unknown
sacrificial theology of the Chaldees that Abram had taken with
him from Ur. Did the test imply God’s willingness to allow
Abraham to find out how the “lifting up” and the separation
were to be carried out? Or did it imply finding out whether
Abram was capable of leaving his paternal culture? The
ambiguous divine command and Abraham’s action must be
seen in their tension.

But does the story indeed assume that Abraham correctly


interpreted the commandment? In verse 6 Abraham takes the
wood, the fire, and a knife with him as he goes up the mount to
“prostrate” himself and his son before God, Abraham intends to
perform an act of complete submission to the divine will. That
divine will was understood by him to imply killing his son, and at
the same time was accepted by him as an “offering,” i.e., a full
dedication of Isaac to God and His purposes above the
possibilities of nature. But the commandment gave the key to
the meaning of the act, the act itself, horrendous to Abraham in
his natural love for his son, was considered because of this
divine indication that it was an act of submission to and
compliance with the same divine will that had given the promise
and would be faithful in that and had made possible Isaac’s
birth. Both were equally beyond human capability. The
commandment was not “pristine” or absolute, as Kierkegaard
imagines. It contradicted a history between God and Abraham
in which mutual loyalty and trust had been put to the test. It
destroyed the promise and a covenant because of the way
Abraham interpreted it.

Yet Abraham was perhaps acquainted with the idea of child


sacrifice. That was part of his “narrative framework” as well.
And in that “narrative” framework, the commandment went
beyond all his former experience in giving an interpretative
framework for Abraham’s action that in turn reinterpreted all of
former history. The sovereignty of God, expressed in that
former history, was now revealed as going even beyond its
narrative determinacy. It, and not that history, defined Abra-
ham’s situation. Still, Abraham had to interpret it to deduce the
proper action. The commandment remained “Torah,” never
247
becoming prescriptive law. Abraham understood that he was to
give up Isaac according to the full measure of his human
possibilities. To Abraham this meant killing his son. How God
could realize His promises with a dead Isaac was beyond
him.175 But God was equally beyond Abraham’s grasp for that
matter, and so was the promise.

We can see how Abraham interpreted the commandment when


we take a further look at Isaac in verse 7, who asks the obvious
question. “Where is the lamb for the offering?” If they had taken
a lamb, it would have been Abraham’s interpretation of the
primacy of the promise as he understood it that had laid the
foundation for his acts. A narrative ethics indeed! Reasoning
that Isaac could not be killed as a part of the offering, he would
have brought a substitute himself. As Menno put it, Abraham in
this respect “had laid aside all reasoning and wisdom and
followed not sense nor flesh.”176 But Abraham, though obviously
reckoning with the possibility that dedicating Isaac fully to God
would mean sacrificing him on the altar, does not interpret the
command from his own perspective. He allows the command to
interpret and judge his own actions and responds by giving it
the full destructive meaning it could possibly have. In a way he
takes it literally, i.e., he interprets it according to the plain sense
it must have on the basis of his own religious understanding.
This becomes clear in Abraham’s reply in verse 8, where he
states that “God will choose the lamb for Himself as an
offering.” Abraham’s submission leads him to be ready for
whatever God chooses to do, and if the voice had remained
silent, he would have killed his son. The former commandment
in its ambiguity, because it had left open the manner of the
offering, is echoed in this verse.

In sharp contrast to all this stands verse 9, in which we see


Abraham acting according to his own interpretation of the
command. Building an altar, laying the wood in order, binding
Isaac, and laying him upon the altar, all of that is Abraham’s

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.

The angel of God intervenes, as one can imagine, because the


slaughter of Isaac was not in reality the manner in which
compliance with the commandment was demanded. But how
do we deal with the reason given in 12b? “For now I do know
249
that you fear God and did not withhold thy son, thine only son
from me.” There is no way to evade the consequence of these
words: that Abraham was indeed put to the test and that his
submission to the divine will and his acceptance of the view of
life that the commandment implied, against all his moral
reasoning, was indeed part of his own ”elevation.” If the intent
was “not to withhold his son,” then the lamb can be offered as
substitute for that son. Abraham is not praised for intending to
”slaughter” his son, but for the affirmation behind it that he
would not withhold Isaac in the face of God’s imperative. If on
principle man would give his life, his future, fully into the hands
of God, even accepting a God acting against all reason, then
there can be an acceptable substitution. Or, better, the system
of Torah in which atonement is reached through the
intermediary of sacrifice is based upon the full dedication of life
into the hands of God, against all natural instincts of self-
preservation and seeking assurance of one’s own future. In
this manner the basic notion of intermediary sacrifice can be
set up as a model of all obedience, including obedience to the
specific laws of the Torah. Behind all of them is the intent to
dedicate all life to God, equal to giving up what we might call
our rights, our possession of our lives, our natural bonds of
community. If there is the ability and intent to give that all up,
there is the basis of obedience to the specific rule, that
substitutes for full submission to God and enables obedience
out of faith. Heteronomous obedience to the revealed
commandment of God is the substitute God gives for the full
weight of absolute submission He is entitled to demand.

Against Kant, we must hold that the commandment given by


the divine voice is not incompatible with anything within the
order of moral reasoning precisely because it is not an item
under scrutiny in that order at all. The commandment is neither
a known fact before the tribunal of reason nor is it to be
critically weighed within the framework of a narrative
understanding of God’s intent, but it constitutes in itself a
separate order of cognition that precedes moral discourse. It is
in opposition to any autonomously known moral order as such.
Seeing Isaac as the lamb, and his sacrifice as an ”elevation”
toward his purpose, is a cognitive act that is in contradiction to
all of Abraham’s moral and practical persuasions. And indeed,
the interpretation that Abraham gave of this commandment was
flawed. His actions, based on his own assumptions about what
250
the required offering meant, do show his submission, but also
show that there was a need for instruction from God to explain
the meaning of self-dedication as something else than returning
life to God by destroying it. The story grounds the need for the
full development of Torah as an instruction in heteronomous
obedience. Abraham, in a way, implies by his actions that the
full dedication of a human being to God can only be in his real
death on an altar, and cannot be exercised by way of finding
the good through moral reasoning. The Torah is precisely that
way of hearing God’s voice in an ordered manner and within a
peoplehood that makes dedication through obedience possible.
By substituting the lamb for Isaac, God shows that, in a human
life, total submission is exercised beyond itself, and this
substitution for total self-dedication or submission in the
symbolism of the cult becomes the basis for specific obedience
under Torah.

In a way Abraham was right: our total submission does require


our ”death.” But this death must be “symbolical,” in order for
God to fulfill His purposes on earth with humanity. The promise
of Abraham is fulfilled by and through a people that has gone
through the Binding of Isaac, that has symbolically died to its
natural instincts of self-preservation, and has renounced its
own moral instincts as the basis for its morality. Theonomous
obedience therefore requires basic submission to God in such
a way that His commandment becomes the binding cognitive
framework for its application. Without the revelation of the
divine will, both as to basic values and manner of execution, it
would be our interpretation of the commandment that would
lead to the concrete act of obedience. In Abraham’s case, that
would lead to an inability to discern what the concrete will of
God really was.

There are other conclusions to be drawn. One of them is that


the result that God desired in the testing of Abraham was
achieved, notwithstanding Abraham’s inability to fully grasp the
nature of the test. His obedience was affirmed because it
represented the highest possible form of submission in the light
of what the commandment revealed to him about the world. But
the goal of the commandment was achieved by the prohibition
of the angel, the intermediary, therefore, who stated that
Abraham should not ”slaughter” his son. The second and
251
negative commandment belied Abraham’s interpretation of the
divine command and gave a new one, and it proved Abraham’s
faith that God Himself would provide a lamb for the sacrifice to
be right. The effort to comply with the commandment through
an interpretation that gave full weight to the “otherness” of the
commandment was the correct attitude towards God, even if it
led to a distortion of what God truly wanted.

In examining the story of Isaac’s offering we have found a


common ground between Judaism and Christianity.177 We must
now turn, however, to the specific characteristics of Christian
obedience. The binding of Isaac does not in itself sufficiently
explain the specific road of Christian ethics and the eccle-
siology that surrounds it. The Church has its “own com-
missioned witness to the world.”178 The Church believes that
God’s righteousness was revealed in His faithfulness to the
promise by accepting Abraham’s submission as the founding
event of all obedience to Torah. By restoring Isaac and
accepting the substitute, the Torah came to define the witness
of the Jewish people for all times. James takes this trust and
obedience to be the cornerstone of Christian faith as well. But
there is more to be said. The Church also accepts that God’s
righteousness was revealed in the obedience of the one faithful
son of Abraham, Jesus of Nazareth. Here there was no
substitute, and Christ was left alone by all to die on the Cross.
But in the resurrection God proved to go beyond death here as
well. What God began in Abraham, He continues in the Torah-
centered life of the Jewish people, and He continues that in the
”gentile stones that were made into the sons of Abraham,” the
Church.

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.

Fackenheim’s main argument is this: Abraham was not isolated


from the human race, but his testing was for the benefit of
humankind. God did not need to find out who Abraham was by
giving him this demand. The midrash Genesis Rabbah that

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.

Abraham’s faith, in that sense, is a basic principle of the Torah


as the sum total of divine commandment that has ultimate and
absolute character. But not only the commandment as such,
but also God’s intervention and the gift of the lamb to be
sacrificed in Isaac’s stead, is part of that basic principle of
Torah. Without adherence to the manner in which God
demands obedience, a manner that is revealed and can be
construed to be just an ethics with a particular application but
without inner necessity, only complete and absolute submission
could be the principle of religious ethics. And because such a
submission could never be realized, we would have to resort to
accepting a man-made ethics that, while being secondary and
relative in itself, would in fact reign as a secondary God. Only if
a particular and concrete ethics is the revealed substitute for
the principle of absolute submission, and only if the former is
then understood as a free divine gift, can there be such a thing
as a revealed religious ethics. What Fackenheim seems to be
arguing is that only by making a connection between Abra-
ham’s obedience and the fullness of the Torah can the Torah
be a concrete demand of God. Without that connection there is
only the absolute principle of the creator’s right to demand
anything on the one hand (the suspension of the ethical), and
human concrete ethics (guided by political expediency and
common life) without any possibility of mediation on the other,
unless we find that absolute in other terms, as Kant did, e.g., by
constructing human freedom as that principle.

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.

“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.” 182

Surely, in such an approach Abraham is not set apart from the


rest of humanity. His faith shows the pattern of obedience that
Christians are called to with explicit reference to Abraham.
Fackenheim would have agreed with Menno that the ultimate
meaning of the Akeidah is love .183 When Menno wrote: “So
entirely was this pious man dead to himself that he denied all
his lusts, his will, and mind, and loved his God alone,”184 these
words are echoed in those of Fackenheim: “…the original
Akeidah was motivated neither by fear nor by hope, but rather

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

There is a second analogy between Menno’s treatment of


Abraham and that of Fackenheim that we must go into before
centering on the differences. Both would agree that the
Akeidah will not be repeated in the life of the believer. But
Fackenheim makes it clear that there is an absolute moment in
the life under Torah which may lead to the ultimate sacrifice.
Martyrdom, or Kiddush Hashem (sanctification of the Name of
God), was a perpetual possibility. Seen from the point of view
of Isaac, the Akeidah is a self-sacrifice (if the Midrash is right to
emphasize that Isaac went willingly and accepted Abraham’s
obedience as valid for himself) on the basis of a commandment
heard from others (i.e., received by tradition), and not received
in the pristine and private dimension of Abraham’s encounter
with his God. Jewish martyrdom is grounded on the refusal to
obey any human commandment that would invalidate the
Torah as such, i.e., murder and profaning the Name by idolatry.
If the only choice is that between death and apostasy or
murder, acceptance of death is the only option. As Fackenheim
remarks, according to Kant, a man must preserve his life “until
the time comes when He expressly commands us to leave this
life.” Apostasy is not a danger that must be evaded at all costs.
But if the Torah (summed up in the negative by idolatry and
murder, both transgressions that invalidate it) is to be kept even
at the cost of one’s death, then Isaac is not a historically unique
person, but the pattern of faith, as important as is Abraham.
Fackenheim can then make a connection with modern Jewish
martyrdom by explaining that giving up oneself and one’s
children when faced with this manner of persecution is the
“reenactment” of the Akeidah and a moment that testifies to the
continuing basis of Torah obedience.

This connection between the (faith of the) Akeidah and


martyrdom was expressly there in Menno’s vision as well,
though here it was mediated by the more general concept of
obedience in faith ,and the martyrdom was expressed around
two centers of attention: following the footsteps of Christ and
the apostles, and adhering to the foundational concept of the
believer’s Church: adult baptism. That is why this specific
episode in Abraham’s life was not singled out to become the

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

If Fackenheim and Menno stand in agreement, both in the


notion of absolute obedience out of love and the connection
between Akeidah and martyrdom, what is the difference
between their respective views on obedience, apart from the
obvious difference that for the one the statute of that obedience
is the Torah and for the other it is the law of Christ? It must be
this: that to Menno, Abraham’s obedience to God is seen as a
pattern that was fulfilled in the obedience of Christ, which may
now serve as a model of our imitation of Christ, whereas in
Judaism, the Akeidah is taken up as a principle in the life of
obedience of the Jewish people to Torah. Circumcision and the
Covenant with Abraham’s descendants according ”to the flesh”
bring the Akeidah to completion. Judaism turns from the
present of a life under Torah and in constant danger of
martyrdom to the Akeidah as its foundational principle, whereas
Christianity turns from its life under the gospel first to the Cross,
and only then is it able to discern its connection to Abraham.
When Menno states that “obedient, faithful Abraham received
his son as a type of the resurrection,”187 this mediacy of Christ
between Menno and Abraham is theologically expressed.

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

Secondly, in the Christian assessment, the principle of


Abraham’s faith is subjectively reenacted in the believer’s
acceptance of the gospel as commandment but objectively
replaced (“fulfilled”) by the self-sacrifice of the new Isaac on the
Cross; in Judaism, it is reappropriated objectively as the event
that merited the Covenant of Moses and inherently motivates
obedience to the Torah, and subjectively reenacted in the
martyrdom of the people that emulates Isaac.

In other words, the Akeidah is the analogy of the foundational


function of the Cross in Jewish ethics; Jesus’ life and teachings
function in the roles of both the Akeidah and the Torah in
Christianity. So Abraham is received subjectively and
objectively in Judaism; subjectively received in Christianity as
well, but objectively surpassed or reinterpreted. We should not
think lightly of this difference in the basic form of the Christian

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

Despite Anabaptist insistence that obedience to the law of


Christ was the first requirement of the life of faith, no
evangelical law was proposed that functioned analogously to
the Jewish concept of Torah. If, however, obedience was the
prime requisite, and discipleship the essence of faith, this
would lead to the question of how we would know the will of
God. As C. Norman Kraus explained:

Faith in Scripture for the second generation Ana-


baptists, then, meant acceptance of it as the moral
authority for life (ital. mine) rather than subscription to its
authoritative doctrine. They were not primarily con-
cerned with correct theories of inspiration which would
guarantee the Bible's rational authority. Neither were
they under any logical compulsion to formulate a theory
that would eliminate all the effects of human co-
operation in its production and thus keep its authority
purely objective. Scripture's authority rested on the fact
that it was God's covenant with man, and it was an
authority to be obeyed rather than defined.190

Obedience to Scripture did not imply having a correct doctrine


as to its inspired status. The Bible was seen primarily as an
instrument of finding the will of God in Christ. This did not in
any way lessen the authority of Scripture, Christians were
supposed to “regulate and conduct themselves only in accor-
dance with this blessed gospel of Christ.”191 “Inspiration” refers
to the high status of Scripture as a guide to knowledge of
Christ, but it did not intend to express any supernatural quality
of perfection, nor did it mean to put literalism in any shape to
the fore as the deciding hermeneutical framework of reading
Scripture. The locus of authority remained firmly in Christ Him-

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.

Ben C. Ollenburger maintained that, to Anabaptists,


(1) Scripture was authoritative for Christian behavior without
limitations, but it was not applicable to the sphere of public
life, as the magisterial Reformation held;.
(2) The New Testament as such was the guideline for Christian
behavior, and not the Old Testament; there was a prior
understanding of the primacy of a Christological
hermeneutic;.
(3) A prior commitment to Christ was held to be a prerequisite
for understanding Scripture.
(4) This commitment to obedience was the only prerequisite;
no theological learning and interpretative skill could equal
that.192

In sum, Ollenburger is stating that obedience to Christ is the


cognitive paradigm of reading Scripture for a community. “It is
the task of the congregation, not the priest or the scholar, to
discern the shape of the kingdom and the pattern of obedience
as we together heed Christ’s call.”

The specific brand of Anabaptist Biblicism, defined by its emph-


asis on obedience to Christ, the supremacy of the New
Testament over the Old, and the congregational procedure of
discerning God’s will together did not lead to an emphasis on
the concrete will of God as written commandment.

Because it did not, it can be presented as a legitimate continuation of


that tradition to come up with a different view on the role of Scripture.
Instead of being the canonical a priori of all contemporary
discernment, it becomes a record of early theology. As J. Denny
Weaver puts it, (J. Denny Weaver, “Perspectives on Theology,” in
Swartley (1984), p. 19.) Mennonite theology is “the continuation of
the task of reinterpretation visible in the Bible. It is one more attempt
to restate what it means to be God’s people in yet another context
and cosmology.” So now the “events” of history are interpreted in the
Bible, and theology is a continuation of that process of interpreting

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.

Moral commandments, like the duty to love the enemy, and


ordinances, like baptism, were both obeyed to the letter, but
their interpretation occurred not in the academic’s study but in
congregational life. But there are distinctions to be made.

First of all, great emphasis was laid on the distinction between


two kinds of obedience. Early Anabaptists like Michael Sattler
made a distinction between servile obedience and filial
obedience. On the whole, the difference was expressed in this
way: concern for one’s own life and the hope for reward may
lead to servile obedience. The motivation for obedience is not
intrinsically connected to the one who demands nor to the
essential character and motivation of the commandment given.
But that is only a first stage in the development of faith. Such a
life may in its turn lead to obedience out of love for God without
concern for reward: filial obedience.

The role of the law as written commandment is now somewhat


unclear. Its primary function is to make us aware of the
judgment of God (as Lutherans would argue), but it also
compels us through fear to “not do, counsel or agree to
anything which...God, the righteous judge, hates in His soul
and has forbidden in His holy Word.”193 Luther, Calvin, and
Menno therefore agree on the prosecuting function of the law.
According to Luther, that role of the law remained effective
throughout the Christian life. To Calvin, however, the law could
help Christians on their road to greater perfection. In Calvinism,
the law was highly valued for its pedagogical use. According to
Menno Simons, however, the regenerating and enabling power
of God’s Spirit would make it possible for believers to obey all
the commandments of God, making the written law a
secondary source of enlightenment. 194 Though in principle
Menno would have accepted the Calvinist understanding of the
law as a source for discernment, in that role it was surpassed
by the new type of knowledge available under the new
Covenant, which followed from having the Spirit of Christ in the

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.

But what does the expression “commandments of God” mean?


It did not mean to Mennonites that the prosecuting and
pedagogical use of the law are transcended and the Mosaic
law set up again in full force as a norm for life. The
commandments of God are first of all Christ’s commandments,
given under the New Covenant and explained under its
provisions.195 There is no direct continuity or analogy between
Mosaic law and evangelical law in its contents. Yet, Christ’s
teachings were considered to be “law” in very much the same
way as the Old Testament was “law,” in the sense that both
were simply to be obeyed because God had commanded it, the
characterization of the evangelical law as appealing to filial
obedience being merely one of the differences that were
observed between the two covenants and their definitions of
the relationship of the believer to God. In other words, the
Mosaic law was seen in effect as the expression of the
Pharisaic mode of thought (and the attitude of works-
righteousness rejected by Paul), and not as having received a
new status under the messianic covenant. Such a
hermeneutical transformation was still beyond the visionary
power of the 16th century, in which Torah primarily meant “law”
and the meaning of law was seen as analogous to the law of
the state.

The Mosaic law was therefore understood to demand servile


obedience, because it was connected to governmental autho-

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.

The 16th century Anabaptist vision of life as evangelical


obedience to the law of Christ entailed an opposition, or at least
a discontinuity, between gospel and (Mosaic) law. How would
one remain faithful to their vision and at the same time correct
their vision of the meaning of the law in the New Testament?
We have found after all in the letter of James and in the gospel
of Matthew a different perspective on the role of the law. The
term “law,” as John Toews put it, “is a multi-valent word, the
valence of which must be determined in each text and con-
text.”196 Acquaintance with the Jewish literature contem-
poraneous with the New Testament is a vital prerequisite of this
contextual determination. If the law is not superseded in its
contents by the gospel, if Christ’s teachings affirm its validity as
a principle of obedience, if the Jerusalem Council by adopting
the Noachide laws for gentile Christians extends its use by
adding elements of Jewish oral tradition, if Jewish Christians
are still expected to keep the law,197 the acceptance of Christ’s
teachings and commandments de jure involves an acceptance
of the Mosaic law as an ongoing source for Christian obe-
dience. The prosecutory and pedagogical use of the law then
fall short both of the intrinsic meaning of law (as Torah,
instruction, it is infinitely more than “law”) and its formal validity
for the Christian community as source of enlightenment on
what the “holy, good and acceptable will of God” really is.

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:

In the teachings of Jesus the Torah of God as


interpreted by the Messiah is normative for the disciple
community and expresses itself most clearly in love of
God and the neighbor.198

Jesus affirmed the permanent validity of the law; He fulfills it by


bringing its liberating intentions to light with regard to the poor
and the oppressed. The law, correctly understood, should be
obeyed. Love of God and neighbor are defined as the
hermeneutical matrix for this messianic Torah. It is clear that
Jesus did not dispense with the law and that he called His
disciples to a greater, not a lesser, obedience to it. If Anabaptist
obedience is about following Christ, this obedience to the
Mosaic law is part of their commitment.

How will we deal, then, with Paul’s statement that righteous-


ness was revealed in Christ apart from the law? We cannot
give a full account of the meaning of this statement, and we
have already made some effort to explain its meaning in a
different context in our chapter on Romans. But we will note
here that the righteousness revealed in Romans 3 is primarily
God’s offer to enter into a covenant relationship with gentiles,
not by incorporating individuals into Israel by means of the law,
but apart from the Torah, by allowing the blessing of Abraham
to become a reality for the faithful from the nations. The gift of
the Torah to Israel was, after all, only the first part of God’s
promise. In Christ His promise was fulfilled by bringing the
nations under the “wings of the Divine Presence.” God who
gave the Torah to Israel also called the gentiles to obedience,
not directly to the Torah, but to the embodiment of the Torah in
the Jew, Jesus of Nazareth.

Before we go on, we need to summarize our present point to


highlight its importance. The Anabaptist vision of the hetero-
nomous source of obedience is, first, Christological. Authority
resides in Jesus as the Messiah. The Bible is a means by
which to find the concrete meaning and contents of that
obedience – and in fact, such an obedience to Christ is in its

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.

The principles of discipleship and the authority of Christ,


however, do include formally the validity of the law as the
source for our understanding of the divine will. In our day and
age, we have increased our understanding of the different
nature of Torah in comparison to Roman law, with which it had
been almost identified. Meinrad Limbeck199 e.g. has argued that
obedience in the terms of the Old Testament was basically a
“hearing”, a careful and attentive noticing of something to the
effect that it became a basis for future actions. Jesus also does
not call to submission (obedience in this restricted sense) but to
a new attentive listening to what was already present in the law
and became fully clear in His ministry (Mark 4:9 e.g.) To fulfill
the law never meant political compliance, i.e. to command one-
self to obey the will of another subject in order to safeguard
one’s own liberty for the future, but to heed a warning or accept
an invitation to act in a way that enhanced life. Obedience in
the Torah never implied a factual submission under a pure
external word, since the word that was heard came from the
Creator who was more “internal” that I could be to myself.

Filial obedience to the Mosaic law, resting upon Jesus’


affirmation of its eternal validity, must then be a principle of any
Anabaptist understanding of the law of Christ. By accepting
Christ’s law as the formal principle of obedience, Menno would
have been led to a reappraisal of the Torah if it had not been
for the identification of Torah with (Roman) law and the doctrine
of its various usages prevalent during the Reformation. If

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.

If the Bible as text was only a means to find concrete obe-


dience to Christ, and if the Mosaic law was not seen as being
embodied in Christ’s life or teaching, there still remained one
avenue open to a concrete development of what Christ’s law
was about. The pattern of Jesus’ life as the perfect form of
human obedience to God must be in itself the “law of love” that
God had commanded the Church to follow. Obedience only be-
came concrete as discipleship, not in any formal sense, but in
the concrete sense of “following after the pattern of His life.”
This meant that God called the gentiles to a form of obedience
that was not contained in the Torah as written, nor in the oral
Torah, but in the “embodied Torah,” the Word that became
flesh.

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.

The Christian community is first of all an extension of Christ’s


presence on earth, it is the body of Christ. Therefore, the
believers’ community shares His fate in this world. Christians
participate in the suffering of Christ (1 Peter 4:13-14; Rom.
8:17), there is communion with His suffering (Phil. 3:10; 2 Cor.
1:7). Such suffering is not to be construed as a historical
incident that would allow us to say that keeping the faith under
threat of persecution is all that matters, and that when
persecution ceases, the suffering is over. As Yoder states we
should not identify the course of history with Providence.200 The
Constantinian domination of the world by the Church, and the
acceptance of the state in the Reformation, were violations of
the call to suffering. In the Anabaptist experience, suffering was
considered part and parcel of the Christian life. Sometimes it
was even expressed as a condition of salvation, especially in
the apocalyptic vision of Balthasar Hubmaier, who wrote in his
“A Christian Instruction”: “What is the nearest way by which one
can go to eternal life? Hans: Through anguish, distress,
suffering, persecution and death, for the sake of the name of
Christ.” Christian living is “bearing the cross.”201 The effort to

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) .

According to Menno Simons, therefore, suffering is a charac-


teristic of the true Church; it is one of the notae ecclesiae.
Conformity with the path of Christ will inevitably lead to it. It
derives from the fact that Christian obedience is nonconformity
with the world and the continuing task of the separate com-
munity. In that perspective, suffering is not a result of the spe-
cific social and historical situation in which the Church or the
individual believer find himself or herself. Neither is it limited to
an inward experience of guilt and sorrow. Suffering in this
perspective is the result of nonconformity to the world, and that
presupposes that there is no perfection of the world that would
take it away. The powers of this age may change their modus
operandi and thus change the specific mode of suffering. There
may be regional differences in the kind of suffering to which
Christians are subjected, but it can never vanish completely.
Suffering is “participation in the victory of Christ over the
powers of this age.”202 As Paul states in Phil. 2:8, the example
of Christ is obedience unto death.

One might argue that there is no specific way of life in the


modern West that would imply suffering for Christians. But, to
quote just one example, Paul’s insistence that brethren should
not seek justice from the (Roman) courts, but should try to work
out their own differences among themselves, is linked to the
notion of suffering as well. As Paul states in 1 Cor. 6:7, it is a
“fault” that brethren have (law-)suits before the courts. “Why do
you not rather suffer wrong? Why are you not rather defrau-
ded?” (6:7b) To evade suffering resulting from the mistakes of
the believers among themselves, one might want to use the
power and the violence of civil society to force one’s own rights.
However, in doing so, the old system is strengthened, state vio-
lence is applied, and the body of Christ is compromised. Yet,
the result of trying to settle differences within the congregation
might be that someone is robbed of his rights under civil law; is
”defrauded.” But the alternative is that the life of the con-

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.

And other instances could be mentioned. Christians would not


be able to work in a sector of industry that is connected to
warfare and/or implies the use of force against anyone.203 Their
choice of occupation might be more limited because of their
choice to follow Christ. Also their political participation would in
principle be impossible, because it would lend credence to the
system if they worked inside it. It might even follow that in Wes-
tern democracies they would not validate the system of majority
power by casting their vote, not even if their vote might make a
difference or could be seen as support for a “moral” candidate.
The notion that there could be a government that is less evil
than another because of Christian participation in the affairs of
the world ignores the reality of the Kingdom of Christ and the
implicit judgment of a world that, as system, crucified Christ.

The notion of suffering as a result of the nonconformist ethics


of the Church leads to the question of what the mission of the
Church really is. Whatever it is, it can never be the fusion of
Church and society. We have found, in our discussion of
Matthew 5 that the metaphor of salt does not refer to the in-
fluence of Christians within society, but refers to the vulnera-
bility of the Church because of its contact with the world.
Salting society as a means of preserving whatever good there
is among the bad is not the purpose of the Church. (“Salting”
the whole must mean preserving the whole, i.e., including the
bad.) To be the visible city on the hill, however, is its purpose,
and that purpose can be described as witnessing to the world.
J. H. Yoder stated on several occasions that the Church does
not have a mission, but is the mission. As he put it, “The
Church’s responsibility to and for the world is first and always to

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.

If the Church is visible in that these people keep their


promises, love their enemies, enjoy their neighbors,
and tell the truth, as others do not, this may
communicate to the world something of the recon-
ciling, i.e., the community-creating, love of God. 205

So first of all Christian ethics is in itself mission. Obedience to


Christ’s commandment will lead to glorification of the Father in
heaven when it is clear that only His authority is recognized in
the behavior of the Church, as we have learned in Matt. 5:16.
And such a witness is basically and intrinsically linked to the
social ethics of the Church, 1 Pet. 2:9 affirms that the Church is
called to be a priestly kingdom, in order “that ye may set forth
the excellencies of Him who has called you out of the darkness
to his wonderful light.” Through brotherly love (1 Pet. 1:22),
through good deeds (1 Pet. 2:12), by suffering for Christ’s sake
(1 Pet. 2:19), and all the other specific virtues mentioned in this
letter, it is shown that this community of the faithful is indeed a
“holy nation” that belongs to God as His property (1 Pet. 2:9).

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:

• while going [out on the basis of Christ’s authority], make


disciples of [or better: teach] all the nations [whereas before
the resurrection they were warned not to go into the “way of
the nations” (Matt. 10:5)];

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];

• instructing them [continuously, as it is a present participle]


to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.

Teaching the gospel, baptizing disciples, and instruction in the


law of Christ are the components of the mission. One should
not downplay the connection between Christ’s authority and the
words for discipleship and commandments. The sovereign
power of Christ is not part of the gospel, but its basis.
Becoming a disciple is an acceptance of that sovereignty,
expressed in the obedience of baptism. And the Christian life
that it sets out to establish is obedience to the commandments
of Christ. Teaching the commandments is not equal to
catechetical instruction in the doctrine of the gospel. The
missionary statement in Luke 24 explains the contents of the
teaching or kerugma that is first mentioned in Matthew. When
Christ “opened their understanding, to understand the
scriptures,” the gospel can then be summarized in two sen-
tences:

• It was appropriate for Christ to suffer and to rise from


among the dead the third day,

• Repentance and remission of sins should be preached


[keruchtenai] in his name to all the nations, beginning at
Jerusalem.

The gospel of John contains another missionary statement that


emphasizes Yoder’s point that the Church is the mission. “As
the Father sent me forth, I also send you” (John 19:21b). In
verse 23 of the same chapter, the mission of the Church is
shown to be about forgiveness, and the Church has been given
the power to forgive in practice. It can be read as a further
explanation of how the “remission of sins” that Luke had
mentioned functions within the context of the congregation.

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.

We cannot go into the dimension of ecclesiology beyond the


short remarks we have given above within the confines of this
inquiry. It must suffice for the moment to conclude that the
ethical demand of the New Testament, comprising the Mosaic
law as the primary written source for moral discernment, and
the Noachide law as a source and model of halakhic reasoning,
providing an example of such moral discernment, and finally,
the understanding of the redemption in Christ through the
Cross as the basic pattern of righteousness, are given to the
Church as a whole.

It is in the community of the faithful, that put their trust and


hope for redemption on a glorified and risen Christ alone, that
Christian ethics turns out to be social and political ethics. In
addition, precisely because this communal ethics is based
upon a transcendent act of redemption of divine origin, such an
ethics is always embodied in a morality that can be imposed
upon individuals, or rather, that liberates people to become
individuals. The liberated community can then by no means
become a new oppressive power.

To show the possibility of such an historical enterprise the


Mennonite Church has been called. It can only fulfill its mission
by returning to a life of committed obedience to the divine com-
mandment as revealed in Scripture. Only through such obe-
dience will it know its Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

273
274
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