CLICK HERE FOR INDEX TO THIS SERIES ON ST PAUL

The question as to whether we humans are "saved" by faith alone or by our actions and adherence to the Law is still controversial in some quarters nearly 2000 years after the line was drawn between the two viewpoints. in today's lead commentary, Dr Ian Elmer takes us back to examine the origins of this on-going controversy which can be found in the time of St Paul. The commentary includes discussion of an interesting re-evaluation of the Jewish approach to the Law — "The Mosaic Law was not a means to salvation or redemption, but a response to Grace".

Justification by Faith

The conflict at Galatia proved to be a seminal moment in Paul's career. As I noted in the last commentary, it is at this point in our exploration of Paul's life that we encounter the genesis of one of the central tenants of Paul's Christianity — the concept of "justification by faith", which Paul saw as the alternative to justification by following the precepts of the Law.

Traditionally, Paul's rhetoric, especially in Romans and Galatians, suggest that he opposed the Mosaic Law because he viewed it as founded upon the concept of works-righteousness — that is, that one could earn one's entry into heaven by the performance of good works. In Paul's view, one could not be both saved or justified by the cross and required to follow the Mosaic Law to merit a righteousness that was already won by Christ on the cross.

This was not an insight that Paul found via direct revelation from God, but through the exercise of his intellect, especially in the heat of his battle with the Judaisers at Galatia. It was his reflection on that real historical situation in time and space that led him to the doctrine of justification by faith, which would become the cornerstone of his theology from then on. But there is another aspect to this development, which bears on how we view Judaism in Paul's time and his opponents at Galatia.

Paul and Second-Temple Judaism…

Since the time of Martin Luther's commentary on Romans, which sparked the works-faith debate in Christianity, we have interpreted Paul's arguments as being indicative of the failing of Judaism. More recent scholars have, however, questioned Paul's presentation of the Judaism of his day as "legalistic."

Studies by Jewish and Christian scholars — J. P. Sanders, Paul Watson, Alan Segel, Joacob Neusner, Geza Vermes to name but five — have stressed that Judaism was not a religion of works-righteousness. In Second-Temple Judaism obedience to the Law was seen as a response to the grace of God. As members of the Elect (chosen people) whom God had graciously offered a Covenant, Jews adhered to the Law as a mark of their membership in the people of God. The Mosaic Law was not a means to salvation or redemption, but a response to Grace.

How did Paul get it so wrong? Sanders (1977) argues that Paul, as a Diaspora Jew, simply did not understand Palestinian Judaism sufficiently well enough to catch the fundamental nuance between Law as response to Grace and Law as means to redemption. But Paul, as member of the Pharisees, would have been well-schooled in the scriptures. Plus Paul was closer to Second-Temple Judaism than we are; so I'm inclined to think that he knew more than we do.

Francis Watson (1986) and Heinki Raisanen (1987) would suggest that Paul is simply not consistent. Watson suggests that in the interests of missionary expediency Paul could and did play fast and loose with the facts. He was more than happy to misrepresent his opponents by stressing one erroneous reading of Judaism as normative for all Jews.

The author of Mark does much the same with the practices of the Pharisees in chapter seven of his Gospel — although the gentile author of Mark was probably as clueless when it came to references to Jewish ritual practices as he was with regard to the geography of Palestine. The same surely cannot be said of Paul. I would not completely dismiss the possibility that Paul is being untruthful — there is clear evidence elsewhere of his duplicity in other matters. But in this instance he is referring to data which would have been common knowledge.

Paul and Christian-Judaism…

Raisanen is probably on the best track when he suggests that Paul gives conflicting interpretations depending on the exigencies of the individual letters. It is impossible to arrive at a single overarching theology of Paul.

Every letter addresses specific issues, and Paul seems to have been flexible enough to change tack as the situation required. In was in the heat of battle for his Galatian coverts that Paul explicitly rejected the liturgy and ceremonial laws of Judaism, primarily because intellectually he saw that the salvific consequences of the Christ-event stood in complete opposition to the works-righteousness of Law-observance as advocated by his Judasing opponents.

My suspicion is that works-righteousness was endemic amongst Paul's nemeses — Christian Jews. Since most of Paul's antinomian rhetoric is directed at his opponents, it must have been they who held that obedience to the Law was necessary despite the death and resurrection of Jesus. Given that the Christian community became a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural one the whole issue of righteousness (formerly understood in strictly Jewish terms of Election and Covenant) was crucial, leading to a polarization of views within the Christian community.

Christian Jews, like James and Peter, seem to have radicalized their "Jewishness" to a point where they advocated a sort of ancient form of the doctrine "Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus" — to wit, "outside the [Christian Jewish] church [and its adherence to the Mosaic Law] there is no salvation". Paul and the Law-free Christians went to the other extreme and claimed that "the Law was no more". Paul in Romans 8 even goes so far as to suggest that the Law was the cause of sin.

In short, what Paul opposed was adherence to outmoded Laws that served to set up boundaries between Jews and Greeks, men and women, slaves and freemen, barbarians and the civilized (Gal 3:28; Col 3:11).

Every society has laws on the books that have outlived their usefulness. Newspaper articles are often written about "prohibitions against men bearing their chests on Bondi beach". The same is true of the Church, I suspect. There are some prohibitions that have simply outlived their usefulness. A classic example is the penitential practices of the past where Catholics abstained from meat of Fridays — which has now been widened to encourage people to adopt more relevant and positive forms of penitential discipline.

One might wonder to what extent those who insist on adherence to the older prohibitions are doing so to perpetuate the old factional boundary markers distinguishing "us" Catholics from "them" Proddies?

Similar examples might be cited concerning religious habits or overt scapulars and miraculous medals. Don't get me wrong! I am not suggesting that there is no positive "sign" value in habits or religious paraphernalia — I am a big fan of the Miraculous Medal and the Brown Scapular. But when the overt "in-ya-face" use of such things is intended as a mark of superiority than I think we have missed the point. Similarly, when we use the Creed or the magisterium of the church to attack and malign fellow Catholics as "heretics" or "dissenters" we are missing the "spirit" in which Christians are meant to exercise Christ's teaching authority — as a means of uniting all in fellowship.

Christianity without Boundaries…

A year or two back, I wrote a commentary for Catholica on Galatians entitled Christianity Sans Frontieres. In that commentary I tried to demonstrate how Paul reacted to the works righteousness of his Christian Jewish opponents. Paul saw how clearly insistence on observance of the Law as the means of entry into the people of God was contrary to the Christian message and, in practical terms, even made it impossible for Gentile converts to share fully with Jewish converts the life of the Christian community:

"Paul equates the legalism and rule following that the Judaisers espoused as boundary markers separating Jew from Gentile with 'a yoke of slavery' (5:1b; cf. Rom 7:25). Paul is emphatic that this sort of nit-picking, legalistic Law-observance can only mean a diminution of the 'liberty' wrought by Christ (5:1, 13). Paul proclaims that the death of Christ has broken down all ethnic, social and gender boundaries between 'Jew and Gentile, Slave and Free, Woman and Man' (3:11; cf. Col3:28). For Paul, Christians should be sans frontiers — people without boundaries."

Paul did not, therefore, reject the Law per se. He probably felt that Jews who did not convert to Christianity should remain faithful to the Law, just as he had before his conversion. Rather, Paul rejected the idea that Christians should continue to adhere to the Law. For Christians, the death and resurrection of Christ rendered observance of the Law redundant — Jews who converted ceased to be Jews (defined by observance of the Law). For Paul the Law served only to demarcate "them" from "us" and, thus, with the universal application of the Christ event such boundary markers were no longer relevant. He was not critical of Judaism per se, merely of those Christians who wanted to remain Jewish by adhering to the Laws that marked them out as Jews. As J. P. Sanders (1997) put it, "The only thing Paul found wrong with Judaism was that it wasn't Christianity".

CLICK HERE FOR INDEX TO THIS SERIES ON ST PAUL

Bibliography and Further Reading:
For those who are looking for resources on Paul that are both reliable and readable, I can recommend the following:
H. Räisänen (1987), H., Paul and the Law. 2nd edn. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr.
E. P. Sanders (1977), Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion. London: SCM Press.
F. Watson (1986), Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles: A Sociological Approach. SNTSMS 56; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Photo Credits:
The headline image of St Paul has been sourced from an icon which you will find at: www.airmaria.com. Clicking on the other images will take you to the original source.

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©2008 Ian Elmer

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