Abstract
This essay summarizes my book The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul in two main stages. First it describes the book’s distinctive account of a problem in modern Pauline scholarship in relation to several key debates and some of their most important representative figures—Wrede, Sanders, Stendahl, and Martyn. It then describes how the book offers in its first half (Parts I-III) an underlying unified and theological account of these issues—the unwitting release of Arianism within Paul’s interpretation in the specific form of a conditional conception of salvation in terms of a sequence of contracts. Following this the essay charts quickly the solution to this conundrum offered by the book’s second half (Parts IV and V): a non-contractual reading of all the texts in Paul that could generate a problematic contractual and conditional construal. This rereading concentrates on Romans 1-4 (1:16-5:1), and, within that passage, on the especially important 1:18-3:20, which is construed as a Socratic argument and thereby unconditionally in the broader setting of Romans.
Keywords
Introduction
The Deliverance of God—hereafter DG—is basically composed in a problem-solution fashion. Parts I-III articulate a major problem within Pauline studies as I see it and Parts IV and V a possible solution. This arrangement is complicated in DG by the presence of many different layers within each account; in both stages of the overarching argument we have to peel the proverbial onion. Nevertheless this short summary of the book’s argument will follow this basic outline, first defining a particular problem and then a possible solution.
Some current problems in Pauline studies
We can begin this summary of the problem as DG sees it with a brief rehearsal of several of the main difficulties besetting the interpretation of Paul in the modern period.
(1) In 1904 William Wrede articulated in a wonderfully lucid way a puzzling feature of Paul’s thought: 1 the presence of two apparently rather different systems or discourses of salvation, one revolving around motifs of “works” and “faith” and framed by the forensic notion of “justification,” and the other revolving around some notion of “participation” and hence emphasizing the sacraments, a more corporate notion of the church, and a rather different approach to ethics. Wrede did not go so far as to call the tensions generated by these widespread differences acute or irresolvable but later scholars have not been so restrained.
While focusing largely on the answers Paul supplies to questions raised by the Jewish law, Heikki Räisänen argued in 1983 that a clear-headed analysis of Paul’s diverse responses reveals a set of claims that are simply incoherent in relation to one another; the apostle offers various directives when dealing with the law and related queries that seem to have been concocted on the spur of the moment in an attempt to purchase momentary rhetorical advantage and nothing more. 2 Räisänen does not organize his concerns as tidily as Wrede because he is not convinced that Paul’s positions can be organized, but I suggest in DG that the contradictions that Räisänen tabulates do correspond by and large to the two discourses that Wrede identified. These two discourses offer different and essentially contradictory answers to the questions Paul addresses concerning the law. And I suggest further that relating these two discourses in Paul together coherently remains a major and largely unresolved issue within Pauline scholarship (see DG, pp. 177-88 and 193-95).
(2) In 1963 Krister Stendahl began to challenge the world of Pauline scholarship in relation to something Stendahl—a Lutheran bishop—called “the Lutheran reading” of Paul. 3 He was concerned, among other things, with a particular account of conversion as supposedly both advocated and modelled by the apostle in which an individual undergoes an agonizing journey under the law before coming to Christ. This ostensibly generates a consciousness of guilt until a point of release is reached—the moment of conversion—with the recognition that salvation is appropriated by faith alone. Stendahl opined that this retrojected too much of the biographies of Augustine and Luther into Paul. A sober consideration of Paul’s letters suggests that he did not recapitulate this journey himself either theologically or biographically. 4
(3) In 1977, E. P. Sanders published the watershed study Paul and Palestinian Judaism. 5 This book laid several difficult questions at the feet of Pauline scholars not the least of which was its reiteration of Wrede’s concern with two different soteriologies in Paul, although Sanders leant most heavily on Schweitzer’s brilliant articulation of this problem. (Schweitzer’s treatment appeared later than Wrede’s—in the English-speaking world in 1931. 6 ) But Sanders is most famous for drawing together definitively a longstanding concern of various scholars that Paul’s account of Judaism seemed to be wrong. When the Jewish sources contemporary to Paul are investigated in their own right—for example the Rabbinic corpus, suitably reconstructed—the apostle’s descriptions of Judaism, at least at times, seem unfair if not simply jaundiced. The Jews in Paul’s writings seem to be “legalists”—crabbed mercantile figures trying to earn their way into heaven with the spiritual equivalent of Brownie points. But the Jews in Paul’s day as attested by their own writings often do not seem to have been like this at all. They were well aware of their sin, were frequently confessional and repentant as well as kind and devoted to one another and to the poor, and so on, and Sanders documents these practices at length. 7
(4) In 1997 J. Louis (Lou) Martyn published one of the most crafted and insightful commentaries on Galatians ever penned. 8 In it he consistently advocated an “apocalyptic” reading of Paul, meaning by this, essentially, the maintenance of a central, generative emphasis on the unconditionality of Paul’s relationship with Christ. This was a divine revelation, unsought for and unanticipated and hence as shocking in certain respects as it was surprising. This “apocalyptic” reading—argued with such elegance and learning—challenged any alternative accounts of Paul—and certainly as the apostle expressed himself in Galatians!—whether that alternative was “Lutheran,” a more modern form of Lutheranism as found in Bultmann, or a reductionist account that read Paul in terms of cultural and/or sociological factors. It also repudiated any account that sought to place Paul within a larger salvation-historical frame in order to understand him, although this challenge must be understood precisely. “Do we tell the story of Israel in order to understand the story of Christ in Paul?, or, Do we tell the story of Christ in order to understand the story of Israel?”, we might ask. Martyn—following Käsemann’s lead—strenuously rejected the former position as foundationalist and politically somewhat dangerous, and affirmed the latter. 9
The foregoing is not a complete account of “the problem” in modern Pauline studies as DG articulates it—far from it—but it is certainly sufficient trouble for the day. These are deep, ongoing, and painful problems in the apostle’s interpretation that render much of his current description scandalously incoherent and occasionally sinister.
A (big) problem—covenant versus contract
The genesis of The Deliverance of God lay in some essays on various key theological dynamics by the Scottish Reformed theologians T. F. and James B. Torrance, and by their colleague Alasdair I. C. Heron. And we need to pause momentarily to consider their insights before tracing their illuminating connections with the foregoing difficulties in the interpretation of Paul. 10
These essays were a revelation to me. I learned two things from them in particular.
First, I learned about a collision between two fundamentally different modes of doing theology within the tradition of the church. One was indeed theology properly speaking since it was oriented by the self-revelation of God in Christ, mediated by the Spirit, but one was at its root not theology at all properly speaking since it began its truth claims about God with truth criteria and analogies derived by human beings from within the human situation. The former approach is well represented by Athanasius and is accurately summarized in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creeds, while the latter approach can be represented by Arius. 11 This approach has taken diverse specific forms through church history depending on the actual analogy posited—this can vary considerably—but it is characterized consistently at bottom by “foundationalism,” which is to say, by the self-sufficient construction of an epistemological foundation by scholars that takes place prior to any revelation in, by, and of Christ, thereby enabling the recognition and judgment of that event when it arrives. Athanasius termed any such claims “mythology,” not “theology,” because they were essentially just guesses, and he had little time for the way such claims in Arius overrode the clear information that has been supplied to us graciously in Christ, God having taken some pains and come some distance to do so!
It is largely self-evident, once the force of these distinctions and their different types of claims have been appreciated, that there can be no compromise between them. They are fundamentally and radically different ways of deriving the truth about God. The triumph of one is the death of the other and vice versa. Nevertheless, sadly, these dynamics have jostled with one another through the history of the church. Every tradition seems to battle to and fro in these terms. For inexplicable reasons—although thereby confirming a key part of its narrative—the church has periodically reinvented Arianism, catalysing another round of debate and struggle between the defenders of orthodoxy and the often well-intentioned but nevertheless destructive advocates of heretical foundationalism. And just this dynamic plays out constantly and crucially within the interpretation of Paul. But a little more needs to be said in this relation before we turn to the apostle’s interpretation specifically.
I learned a second set of critical insights from the essays by James B. Torrance. These made a distinction between a “covenantal” and a “contractual” mode of salvation, which he traced masterfully through the history of Scottish Presbyterianism. In these studies Torrance demonstrates how Arianism arises in a specifically modern form when salvation is analogized in relation to a contract. This analogizes God in relation to a judge presiding over a modern Liberal society and hence to a figure characterized primarily by western predilections for retributive justice. It understands the Christian as a contract-keeper, who grasps the contract of salvation by initiating an act (or acts) and fulfilling its stipulated condition(s), thereby analogizing the Christian in terms of the modern Liberal individual and citizen, and non-Christians in terms of contract-breakers or criminals. And so on.
These new Arian analogies added sharply relevant cultural echoes to the foundationalist systems preceding them in church history and they have continued to resonate with many modern social contexts beyond their original settings in the sixteenth century and just beyond. It is, in short, a form of foundationalism with particular allure in a modern, post-European, essentially Liberal setting. But Torrance’s analyses allow us to see that a foundationalist analogizing of salvation in contractual terms enjoys a further advantage in relation to Paul.
The western tradition preceding the sixteenth century could already speak of salvation, however inaccurately, as a sequence of two contracts, and this can be known usefully as the western “order of salvation” or ordo salutis. The first contract in the sequence was a rather moralizing and legalistic construct that was supposed to collapse under the weight of human sin. And this collapse into confession allowed a critique of overly optimistic, single contract systems as found in Pelagius and his followers for being naively moralizing. So the ordo seems to do constructive theological work in this relation in figures like Augustine. 12 The second contract that rescued the humbled sinner was generally ecclesial, however, and we see this clearly when Augustine speaks in these terms. Sinful individuals could be saved by joining the church and fulfilling a range of conditions made available there. Faith numbered among them of course but they included sacramental participation and many other corporate practices.
In the sixteenth century, however, the saving conditions were narrowed down by certain Reformers in certain writings and situations to faith alone, the principal justification for this being a particular reading of some of Paul’s texts. (Some of those ecclesial practices were now seen to be deeply problematic!) And this gave this particular, contractual variation of the western ordo a formidable exegetical basis in scripture. Neither the leading Protestant Reformers nor the Reformation as a whole are generally reducible to this set of considerations—to this Protestant variation on the western ordo—but it is present in them at times, perhaps most clearly and consistently in Melanchthon, 13 with which realization we can turn back to the modern Pauline debates.
The surprising correlation
The first major explanatory suggestion of The Deliverance of God, which dominates its first half, is that deep down the difficulties within Pauline studies noted earlier are all variations on the age-old collision between Athanasianism and Arianism although in the specific form of a collision between an Athanasian reading of Paul and his construal at certain points in the contractual terms favoured by some Protestants in terms of salvation sola fide.
The participatory discourse noted by Wrede is generally construed in terms either close to or explicitly evocative of a Trinitarian, Athanasian reading, but the forensic discourse in Paul is usually construed in explicitly conditional and contractual terms. That there is a clash here is consequently hardly surprising. But the contractual discourse proceeds, as we have just seen, from a harsh initial contract to a gentler saving one. And the descriptions of the generic Jew and of the outsider offered by the harsh initial contract can now be seen to generate the nasty descriptive dynamics noted by Sanders. (Jews and outsiders of course stay within this contract; they never move on to the second kinder, gentler one.) The progression between the contracts by a generic individual, from guilt to faith, generates the agonized introspective account of conversion lamented by Stendahl. And the existence of the entire arrangement, which begins with and depends on general revelation from both the world and the individual’s conscience in the first contract, clashes with any central emphases in Paul on grace, unconditionality, and revelation, as affirmed by Martyn. The latter need no prior preparatory stage or vestibule and indeed reject any such approach.
In short, an awareness of certain critical soteriological and theological dynamics—although one of the two is not worthy of that name—opens up a significant new perspective on much modern Pauline scholarship. Many of the field’s most important and intractable problems are, it seems, caused by an underlying set of assumptions—that Paul should be construed in certain texts in essentially unconditional, participatory, and hence Athanasian terms, but in other texts in essentially conditional, contractual, and hence Arian terms. It is these two construals, and the contractual one in particular, that generate all the difficulties we noted earlier. And DG thereby generates a particular account of “the problem” in Pauline interpretation 14 —a rather larger and deeper one than we might first have suspected—at which point we have to ask exactly where the problem resides within Paul himself because clearly we need to try to resolve it.
The problem’s textual location in Paul
The answer is surprisingly simple once we focus on it precisely. As we saw earlier in relation to Wrede, Paul’s “forensic” texts have often been interpreted in a conditional and hence contractual way. By “forensic” Wrede simply meant the texts in Paul that utilize a distinctive vocabulary that could also occur in an ancient courtroom setting. Hence it is often translated today with courtroom connotations with words like “justification.” (Paul actually uses the Greek verb dikaioô frequently in these texts, which is often translated “[I] justify”, along with the cognate substantive dikaiosunê, often translated “righteousness”.) But these forensic texts tend to articulate a distinctive antithesis as well: the famous opposition that “justification is not by works of law but through faith.” And at first glance this antithesis could well be a summary of the two contracts operative in sequence in the western ordo. Moreover, on further investigation, it becomes apparent that the texts freighting this vocabulary are distinctively concentrated within Paul’s corpus: in Romans 1-4, 10, Galatians 2-3 (specifically from 2:15 on), and Philippians 3 (especially verses 6 and 9). Only terminological vestiges occur elsewhere in places like 1 Corinthians 1:30, 6:11, and 2 Corinthians 5:21.
But our account of the problem has indicated that its root is a particular description of salvation in terms of two contracts, the first one universally failing and the second one appearing more generous and manageable and hence appealing. So we need to scan this family of texts for a discussion that is detailed enough to give rise to a full-fledged theory of salvation in these terms and only one such text is apparent: Romans 1-4. Only here do we find a text that seems to articulate explicitly an account of salvation in contractual and conditional terms, thereby unleashing that discourse within Paul’s broader description. The rest of Paul’s distinctive justification texts can be read fairly in this way but they do not necessarily have to be so read; quite a bit of information needs to be assumed around the margins for any complete theory of salvation in these terms to be described by them. But Romans 1-4 seems to lay things out fully and unavoidably—at least as many modern interpreters have read it. So we can safely conclude that a contractual reading of this particular text in Paul is the root of the entire problem and therefore potentially of its solution as well.
If Romans 1-4 can be read decisively in an unconditional and non-contractual way then all the problems generated by a partial commitment on Paul’s part to Arian contractualism will be eliminated. However, since the theory works foundationally and hence forward, from a description of a universal plight to its Christian solution, it is actually the articulation of the first contract in the model that will prove decisive. This will be enough to launch it. Hence the construal of Romans 1-3 is especially critical. If this text in particular can be reread in unconditional terms then the contractual account of Paul’s gospel is undone. It is a giddy prospect. But is a solution in these terms remotely possible? Fortunately, the comprehensive account of the problem supplied by DG can help us once again, this time with the light it sheds on some of the hermeneutical dimensions of the situation that have not been considered very much thus far in our discussion.
Some important hermeneutical dynamics
It is important to recall at this juncture that the Arian construal of Paul in specifically contractual terms has real strengths. It gives clear answers to a range of important questions that Christians tend to ask concerning God, the work of Christ, sin, and so on. It provides a relatively straightforward road map for evangelism (however problematic that turns out to be ultimately). It lays claim to various important texts in the Bible, et cetera.
The contractual Protestant variation of the western ordo in Paul also possesses something of a church historical pedigree. Indeed, it tends to lay claim to the entire Protestant heritage asserting that this construct is the account of the gospel that was retrieved by Luther, Calvin, and the other great founders of Protestantism, from Catholic corruption by careful scrutiny of the Scriptures. (DG again gives a more complete account; see ch. 8, pp. 247-83.) And it is important now to appreciate that these dynamics create powerful interpretative expectations. Indeed, DG asked its readers to take careful account of their own locations and the contributions those might be making to their readings of Paul, suggesting that these are an important part of the broader interpretative situation but are generally being overlooked (see esp. chs. 7 and 9, pp. 221-46 and 284-309.)
We should note first that any interpreters located within traditions endorsing this Arian variant—and sadly there are many, encompassing both Liberal and Evangelical persuasions—expect Paul to talk about the western ordo at any appropriate moment in his texts. So such interpreters will tend to read any vaguely appropriate antithesis in Paul’s texts forward, as an account of the two contracts in the ordo in sequence (see e.g. Gal. 2:15-16). And they will almost certainly read Romans 1-4 as articulating this “gospel” in definitive terms, 1:18-3:20 articulating the universal plight in which humanity finds itself under the first contract, and 3:21-4:25, anticipated by 1:16-17, articulating the solution provided by the easier second contract that is appropriated by faith alone. But DG has some further observations to make about this situation.
1. As for all advocacies, DG observes that a hermeneutic of generosity is operating in relation to its positive claims. Indeed, the book goes on to detail how the Reformation’s endorsement of this model has been portrayed too generously; the Protestant Reformation is by no means reducible to this particular construction of salvation. Although it can be found in the writings of the great Reformers, Luther is a far more complex theologian and exegete than this model suggests and Calvin is only vestigially committed to it. (Melanchthon is another matter, but even he is not universally so committed.) Hence much that the great Reformers wrote can actually be used to oppose the ordo.
Moreover, this hermeneutic of generosity extends to the grip of the construct on Paul’s texts. In particular, when we turn to consider the crucial exegetical moment in the entire situation, namely, the decision that 1:18-3:20 is an articulation by Paul of a universal problem conceived of in contractual terms on which basis the gospel is later preached, we tend to find the mere assumption that this is the case—that this simply must be the case—rather than argumentation or evidence that establishes it. At its crucial point then the exegetical basis for the presence of the western ordo in Paul turns out to be astonishingly fragile. But this has been obscured by the strong expectations of Pauline scholars that it just must be this way. (Many seem to think, however mistakenly, that the truth of the gospel depends on it.)
2. Just as advocates of the western ordo seem to be affirming its presence in Paul overly generously, assuming as true what they need to prove, they tend to defend these assumptions with various complementary acts of suspicion. In particular, they tend to overlook the problems that their reading generates, and some of these have already been tabulated—the clash between a construal of Paul’s “forensic” material in contractual terms over against the more unconditional, participatory material found elsewhere as noted by Wrede; the construal of “the Jew” in harsh mercantile terms as noted by Sanders; the characterization of conversion in individualistic and rather agonised terms as noted by Stendahl; and the clash between any approach articulating a mandatory vestibule prior to conversion and the unconditional “apocalyptic” revelation of Christ as noted by Martyn. These are serious problems, and they are generated especially by the construal of Romans 1-3 in contractual terms, but the construal’s advocates treat them with suspicion if not with flat denial.
Much much more could be said at this point, and DG tries to supply a complete account of the situation. (The construal of Romans 1-3 in terms of the ordo generates further difficulties “on the ground” so to speak, that is, localized difficulties within the specifics of the actual text, but there is not enough space to consider those here—rather unfortunately!; see ch. 11, pp. 338-411; also chs. 2 and 3, pp. 36-95.) But hopefully enough has been indicated by this point to confirm the basic hermeneutical suggestions of DG that advocates of the western ordo in Paul tend, on the one hand, to assume rather too easily the truth of their contractual construal of key texts like Romans 1:18-3:20, and, on the other hand, to mask the acute problems that attend it. But our hermeneutical detour, exposing processes of generosity and suspicion, thereby leads us to a point of somewhat unexpected but real optimism.
It may be that the construal of all the key texts in Paul in terms of the ordo is nothing more than an overenthusiastic projection and hence an anachronistic misinterpretation. Paul may have been saying something rather different all along, a possibility we should now turn to consider briefly in this summary’s final sections.
DG basically argues this case in three stages in the second major half of its argument: first, it offers a detailed alternative construal of Romans 1-3 in highly contingent or circumstantial (i.e., practical) terms that solves the problems generated by the contractual approach (chs. 13-14, pp. 469-600); then, second, it repeats this process for Romans 3-4, the text usually held to undergird decisively the second contract based on faith, offering a more apocalyptic, unconditional, and participatory account of faith (chs. 15-18, pp. 601-761); then, third, it assesses whether this alternative construal of Romans 1-4 is “transferable” to the rest of Paul’s briefer justification texts (chs. 19-21, pp. 765-929), concluding that it is and hence that the contractual reading of Paul can successfully be eliminated. Unfortunately, there will only be time to gesture towards those detailed discussions here, concentrating, moreover, on the first and most important issue, which concerns the interpretation of Romans 1-3.
A solution in three stages—first, rereading Romans 1-3
One way of entering into a more successful alternative reading of Romans 1-3 is to consider some of the problematic assumptions of the usual approach and then correct them—something we have of course already been doing to a degree. So here we should add to our developing critique the fact that the usual reading of Romans 1-3 understands it essentially as the beginning of a systematic theological treatise, Paul laying out here a universally compelling argument for salvation almost for ecclesial posterity. 15 Moreover, the central part of this opening argument turns on a Jewish figure, exposing and humiliating him (see esp. 2:1-5, 17-25). But subsequent church tradition has had little difficulty believing that Paul had good reasons for turning in this way on a generic Jew, thereby preparing the way for a gospel that would lie beyond law-observance and most Jews and for a church located beyond the synagogue. (Sixteenth century Protestants who viewed Catholics as a variation on legalistic Jews found this reading congenial as well.)
Now I fully expect Paul’s letter to speak in powerful theological terms to ecclesial posterity. However, when reading him in historical critical mode we must distill his theological insights from the practical advice that his letters were providing to local churches in his day. And, despite the challenges of doing so, Romans is best understood in such practical terms. 16 So DG argues in chapter thirteen that this letter anticipates the arrival at Rome of the Jewish Christian missionaries who have been causing trouble for Paul in Galatia (cf. esp. Rom 3:8; 6:1; and 16:17-20), as well as in Corinth (see Acts 18:12-17) and Macedonia (see Phil 3:2-11)—a highly practical situation that he needs to address. And if Paul is countering another missionary gospel in Romans, a new perspective is opened up on his arguments in Romans 1-3.
The figure being targeted in the text (see 2:1-5, 17-25) would now no longer be—mercifully—a generic Jew but a somewhat pompous rival missionary who is urging Paul’s converts from paganism to convert fully to Judaism, a possibility that Paul of course regards with horror. The argument of Romans 1-3 consequently folds onto this figure, trying to humiliate his position. Moreover, it does so most effectively if Paul and this figure do not share their opening assumptions (i.e., 1:18-32), but, rather, if Paul cleverly exploits inconsistencies in his opponent’s rhetoric to humiliate him in a technique that his ancient readers would have recognized quickly was Socratic. It turns out then that the argument’s ringing opening paragraph in 1:18-32 could well be a presentation of his opponent’s aggressive opening proclamation—an opening that turns out to rebound onto this preacher’s own head (see esp. 2:1-5; 3:19), undermining all his subsequent claims. (Paul cleverly and ruthlessly presses the implications of the premise of desert here into several embarrassing outcomes for his rival.) 17 And this construal, worked out in detail, turns out to solve all our problems with this text, whether great or small, thereby lending us some confidence in its original likelihood. 18
This reading resolves the concerns of Wrede, Sanders, Stendahl, and Martyn. Paul’s rival can now be seen to be committed to the problematic conditional premises that clash with the apostle’s more characteristic unconditional and participatory material elsewhere, rather than Paul himself; it is indeed precisely his rival’s conditionality that upsets Paul. Such conditions overlook the grace of God revealed in the gospel. The ghastly legalistic portrait of the generic Jew that has done so much damage in the history of the church can therefore now be abandoned (at least insofar as it is generated by this family of texts—the “works of law” discussions). Paul is attacking a Jewish Christian missionary—nothing less than this and nothing more. There is consequently no guilt-ridden introspective individual either who struggles through to a point of preparation for the gospel; indeed, the gospel can now simply arrive as a gospel, an euaggelion, which is to say as a declaration of good news rooted in God’s revelation (cf. 1:17; 3:21). Our major difficulties as previously enumerated seem then to be over. (And DG also documents how multiple local textual problems have been resolved as well; see pp. 593-600.)
This then is the first and most important stage in the solution to our difficulties that DG offers. But the solution is not as yet complete. If we have resolved the problems usually dogging interpretation of the phrase “works of law” in the context of Romans 1-3—by attributing that position to a rival Jewish Christian gospel and not to Judaism per se—we still need to read the other side of the antithesis constructively. And this includes Paul’s famous claims concerning “faith.”
A solution in three stages—second, rereading faith
It is possible to read many of Paul’s “faith” texts in a contractual way understanding “faith” to be a condition that individuals must fulfil by some act of will or choice in order to grasp or appropriate salvation (see 1:16-17; 3:22-4:25; 10:9-13; and so on). And this turns Christian salvation into a contract, and suggests in turn and by implication finding another harsher preparatory contract before it. In this way then the entire western ordo can be activated retrospectively from Paul’s faith discussions.
But there is something suspiciously modern about this whole approach. It resonates strongly with the emphasis in western modernity on the autonomous individual, a resonance probably reaching its apogee in the account of Paul’s gospel found in Bultmann. 19 Furthermore, Paul’s faith texts do not need to be interpreted in this overtly and strictly individualistic and conditional way.
For the last fifty years scholars have debated the interpretation of several ambiguous genitive constructions in Paul that have usually in recent times been translated faith in Christ (see esp. Rom 3:22, 26; Gal 2:16 [2x], 20; 3:22; Phil 3:9, and perhaps also Eph 3:12 and 4:13). 20 But these could all equally well be translated as the authors of the AV chose to do so long ago on purely grammatical grounds as the faith of Christ. And this reading would solve our problems. It suggests that Paul’s faith texts and argumentation are working in terms of assurance rather than of appropriation.
That is, within this reading Paul is not saying in these passages that the exercise of faith is how Christians “get saved.” He is arguing that people who evidence this faithfulness are evidencing—in fulfilment of Scripture—an important feature of Christ himself and therefore can be assured that they are indeed already saved. Their faith proves that they are participating in the one who was faithful before them, but he has been resurrected so they are themselves clearly “destined for glory” as long as they continue to hang on—in faith! And this is an important argument to make in a local church situation where Christians are being intimidated and having their salvation called into question. But is this the right reading?
The argument is complex and finely balanced. But, somewhat ironically, the best argument for the correctness of the individualistic contractual reading of faith seems to be the individualistic contractual reading of Paul’s “works” texts. We know that faith is an individual act that appropriates salvation because we need some saving contract that is easier to fulfil than the contract of works that all have just failed. And of course we have just called that construal into serious question. So with its collapse the individualistic and conditional reading of faith tends to collapse as well.
However, further hints in the data—once we know to look for them—also suggest that a Christocentric construal of these texts is the right one. So for example in Romans 12:3, 5, and 6, “faith” is clearly a gift (cf. also 1 Cor 13:2; Gal 5:22), one alongside many that together facilitate a full participation together in the body of Christ. But what gift of virtue can we receive from the Spirit that is not ultimately rooted in Christ?! Our hope, obedience, and love come from Christ, so why not also our faith?
Note, this does not eliminate either personal freedom or Christian faith. But it roots those phenomena in Christ himself and suggests that Christians derive them by way of participation. We are only faithful because Christ is faithful before us and on our behalf (as is God the Father of course). But we are faithful because of that deeper and stronger reality. And with this alternative approach to faith discussions in Paul, the second obstacle to reading him consistently in participatory terms has been avoided. 21
A solution in three stages—third, transferring the rereading
It remains only to suggest then in concluding that the readings developed in detail in Part IV of DG for Romans 1-3 and 3-4 prove to be transferable to all the other texts in Paul that echo their distinctive terms and antithesis—notably Romans 10, Galatians 2-3, Philippians 3, and more isolated texts like 2 Corinthians 4:13. (DG makes this case in Part V, or chs. 19-21, pp. 765-930.) Indeed, an astonishing sense of simplification and integration begins to take hold in Paul’s letters as these texts can now be seen to bed down comfortably as descriptive of one aspect—distinct but not separate—of the salvation that the apostle describes so often elsewhere in more overtly participatory terms. Paul’s “forensic” texts tell us in particular that this salvation is a release from some sort of bondage and captivity (cf. Rom 6:6-8; Gal 3:24). Elsewhere Paul will describe a salvation in similar terms as it releases us from pollution and filth (cf. esp. 1 Cor 6:11). But these descriptions all articulate aspects of the one process of salvation that is being announced by the gospel. Neither Christ nor salvation can be divided in Paul as it turns out (1 Cor 1:16).
It is only appropriate to note in the end that Paul’s famous appeals to “the righteousness of God” affirm in like manner that God is for us (cf. Rom 1:17; 3:21-26; 8:28-32, 37-39). God is our King who consequently wants to rescue us, “his” subjects, from our extremities (cf. Ps. 98:1-3) and, moreover, who has done so decisively in Christ, whom he has lifted up into eternal life and in whom we too are lifted up. (The Spirit figures centrally here as well.) This is Paul’s gospel—a wonderful thing—and it is now incumbent upon us to try to grasp it and preach it with a modicum of the clarity that he once did. We should abandon our modern conceits and illusions and lay hold once more on its message of grace; this, at any rate, is the broader task that The Deliverance of God is trying to facilitate.
Coming Next Month
In the next edition of The Expository Times, Francis J. Moloney offers the second part of his survey of “Recent Johannine Studies”, focusing on Monographs. Walter V. Cirafesi asks: “‘To fall short’ or ‘to lack’? Reconsidering the Meaning and Translation of hystereo in Romans 3.23”. The Book of the Month is The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies, edited by Peter Hayes & John K. Roth and reviewed by K. Hannah Holtschneider.
Footnotes
1
W. Wrede, Paul (translated by E. W. Lummis; London: Philip Green, 1907). Note, Wrede was by no means the first to work with this distinction.
2
H. Räisänen, Paul and the Law (2nd edn; Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1987 [1983]).
3
See “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” Harvard Theological Review 56 (1963), pp. 199-215. This and many other key related studies are collected in Paul Among Jews and Gentiles, and Other Essays (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976).
4
Stendahl leaned heavily at this point on Phil 3:6 (“. . .as to righteousness under the law, blameless. . .” [NRSV]), and, like many, read the negative scenario of Rom 7:7-25 in generic, not psychological, terms. He concluded that Paul was a fundamentally happy Jew—although this conclusion is not as firmly established as he needs it to be.
5
Subtitled A comparison of patterns of religion (Philadelphia: Fortress).
6
The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (tr. W. Montgomery; New York: Seabury 1968).
7
Given time I would note here as well the connections between this concern and the more general issue of alterity in Paul, that is, the harsh construction of the generic non-Christian or outsider. The nasty portrait of the Jew seems to correspond to the nasty depiction of the non-Christian in certain important respects. This then creates a space (so to speak) for sinister race and gender dynamics to coexist alongside Paul’s “gospel” without suitable exposure and challenge.
8
Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 33A; New York: Doubleday, 1997). It was supplemented by an important collection of essays: Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1997).
9
In a celebrated debate with Stendahl, Käsemann repudiated overly salvation-historical accounts of Paul as naively redolent of National Socialism; see his “Justification and Salvation History in the Epistle to the Romans,” in Perspectives on Paul (tr. M. Kohl; London: SCM, 1971), pp. 60-78.
10
See (i.a.) Alasdair Heron, “Homoousios with the Father,” in The Incarnation: Ecumenical Studies in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed A. D. 381 (ed. T. F. Torrance; Edinburgh: Handsel, 1981), pp. 58-87; James B. Torrance, “Covenant and Contract, a study of the theological background of worship in seventeenth-century Scotland,” Scottish Journal of Theology 23 (1970), pp. 51-76; and “The Contribution of McLeod Campbell to Scottish Theology,” Scottish Journal of Theology 26 (1973), pp. 295-311. I was informed of their existence and helped to understand them by the son of James, Alan J. Torrance, whose own studies are very much worth consulting as well: see esp. his Persons in Communion: An Essay on Trinitarian Description and Human Participation with special reference to Volume One of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1996).
11
This is not necessarily entirely fair to Arius himself but we will use him, as Heron does, as an exemplar of a particular theological model given a certain reading. The point is not to condemn Arius then but to illustrate a certain approach to epistemology involving God-talk.
12
Augustine is complex but see, e.g., the development of his views on justification through various versions of the ordo to an unconditional position in Propositions on the Epistle to the Romans; Miscellaneous Questions 66 and 67; On Nature and Grace; Sermons 151–59; On the Spirit and the Letter; and Letter 37: To Simplician.
13
Demonstrating these claims is the principal burden of ch. 8 in DG.
14
Informed by these distinctions, more explicitly theological tensions can also be detected within many descriptions of Paul’s views of politics, election, atonement, ethics, ecclesiology, and the law.
15
Melanchthon famously asserted this explicitly—that Romans is a compendium doctrinae Christianae (Loci Communes 2.1.7)—and yet, while this has been universally repudiated by modern scholars in formal terms, it nevertheless continues to characterize their approaches in detail.
16
See esp. The Romans Debate (ed. K. P. Donfried; Peabody MA: Hendrickson, 1991 [1977]).
17
I suggest in DG that 1:18-32 is specifically an instance of prosôpopoiia or “speech in character” (i.e., acting). This suggestion has encountered a lot of resistance. But it is important to appreciate that the truth of a Socratic construal of Romans 1-3 does not really turn on it; a Socratic construal can still work without such a specific recommendation for 1:18-32.
18
Shorter and more accessible versions of this critical alternative construal can be found in my study “Natural Theology in Paul?: Rereading Romans 1.19-20,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 1 (1999), pp. 231-52; and Chapter 11, “Rereading Romans 1.18-3.20,” in my The Quest for Paul’s Gospel: A Suggested Strategy (London: T & T Clark International [Continuum], 2005), pp. 233-61.
19
See esp. his Theology of the New Testament (2 vols; tr. K. Grobel; New York: Scribners, 1951, 1955). Bultmann arranges his treatment of Paul’s thought under two headings: “Man Before Faith” and “Man Under Faith”—the western ordo (suitably embellished!) (see DG, pp. 292-95).
20
Useful ways into this debate are Richard B. Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ: The Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1-4:11 (2nd edn; Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 2002 [1983]); and Michael F. Bird and Preston M. Sprinkle (eds.), The Faith of Jesus Christ: Exegetical, Biblical, and Theological Studies (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2010).
21
More accessible accounts of this debate can again be found in my Quest for Paul’s Gospel; see esp. chs. 9 and 10 (“The Meaning of ‘Faith’ in Paul’s Gospel” and “The Coming of Faith in Paul’s Gospel: Galatians 3” respectively), pp. 178-232.