Grace,the Law and Justification in 4 Ezra and the Pauline Letters: A Dialogue

Grace Merits Gratitude: The Rationale for Torah Observance in 4 Ezra

The author of 4 Ezra has been depicted as a theologian who has little room for ‘grace’ in his understanding of this present life and entering into the life to come. Bruce Longenecker regards the author of 4 Ezra as promoting Torah observance as ‘a type of legalism in which salvation is attained to by works of merit’ which earn God’s eschatological favor (Longenecker 1991: 270). The human problem ‘must be countered by human effort in accordance with the standard of the law’, with the result that, ‘in the eschatological age, God will (in his “mercy”) save the few who have proven themselves to be worthy of salvation by their works’ (Longenecker 1991: 270). The scare quotes around ‘mercy’ are telling: Longenecker signals his understanding that God does not show genuine mercy because the saved have measured up and earned their way into the world to come without the need for God’s mercy. The emphasis in his analysis falls on ‘earning the right of God’s “grace”’, which is the typically Protestant formulation of the straw-person opponent to salvation by grace rather than by works in some sense. ²

Longenecker contrasts the author of 4 Ezra with Paul by claiming that ‘for Paul, God’s grace is a present reality, whereas such is not the case for the author of 4 Ezra’ (1991: 270). Indeed, ‘for all intents and purposes, God’s grace is removed from the scene altogether’ for the author of 4 Ezra, since individuals must ‘forge their own salvation by works apart from a community identity’. ³ God’s ‘mercy is restricted to the bounds of the future eschatological age and is only available to those who merit his favour by their works in accordance with the law (that is, grace is available to those who have no need of it!)’ (Longenecker 1991: 271). God’s grace thus exists in 4 Ezra, according to Longenecker, only as ‘an eschatological reflex to those who have saved themselves by their works anyway’. ⁴

Such statements can only be made from the vantage point of a very limited (Protestant, theological) understanding of what qualifies as ‘grace’. From this vantage point, no consideration is given to the gift of life and of the provisions for this life as acts of generosity on God’s part. ⁵ I am reminded of how the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer acknowledges these gifts in a Eucharistic prayer: ‘We bless you for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life.’ These acts of grace, the author of 4 Ezra asserts, ought to have been—and ought still to be—sufficient to merit a full-bodied response of honor and obedience from the creature. ⁶

This comes to expression clearly in the author’s statements about those who will perish. For the author of 4 Ezra, the punishment of those who transgress God’s law and otherwise disregard God is an issue of honor. The angel Uriel repeatedly connects the destruction of the many with the dishonor that they have shown God and God’s law, explicitly suggesting that the former repairs, in effect, the latter.

Let many perish who are now living, rather than that the law of God that is set before them be disregarded! (7.20).

Then the Most High will say to the nations that have been raised from the dead, ‘Look now, and understand whom you have denied, whom you have not served, whose commandments you have despised’ (7.37).

When they had opportunity to choose, they despised the Most High, and were contemptuous of his law, and abandoned his ways. Moreover, they have even trampled on his righteous ones, and said in their hearts that there is no God—though they knew well that they must die (8.55-58).

It is ‘those who have shown scorn and have not kept the way of the Most High, who have despised his law and hated those who fear God’ (7.79), those who ‘have scorned the law of the Most High’ (7.81), who will experience a foretaste of their eternal punishment for seven days following their death and enter into this punishment for eternity at the end of the age (see also 9.9-12). ⁷ The author conceives of the punishment of the offender essentially as the restoration of the honor of the offended. ⁸

The reason for the vehemence of Uriel’s complaint about the behavior of the disobedient—the reason that the dishonor is so heinous—is that this dishonor has been shown to One who has lavishly benefited humankind. God did not seek to construct an impossible path to salvation and to condemn the vast majority of humanity; ⁹ on the contrary, God took thought for humanity’s good, but was repaid with rank ingratitude by those who ought to have honored and obeyed God out of gratitude for God’s many graces.

The Most High did not intend that anyone should be destroyed; but those who were created have themselves defiled the name of him who made them, and have been ungrateful to him who prepared life for them now (8.59-60).

The phrase ‘those who were created’ already invokes implicitly the topic made explicit in the following clause, namely, the topic of indebtedness to God and, therefore, of the impropriety of the response they have made to God.

Those who receive favors are obliged to show gratitude to the giver, which included the duty to show respect for, and increase the honor of, the giver. It included also the duty of showing loyalty to the giver and of returning the favor in some form. The return might never equal the favor, and it might rather take the form of service and obedience rather than a gift in exchange, but it was inseparable from receiving the gift in the first place. ¹⁰ And when the gift was life itself, such as God or the gods bestowed, the obligation was immeasurable. Aristotle bears witness to this when he writes: ‘no one could ever render the gods the honor they deserve, and a person is deemed virtuous if he or she pays them all the honor he or she can’ (Nic. Eth. 8.14.1). If persevering in maintaining a response that showed gratitude and loyalty meant loss of life itself, this was merely giving back as God had given in the first place. The ‘good’ person understands and fulfills this debt to God. ¹¹ Those who received the gift of life, but used it to dishonor their Creator through not worshiping him as he deserved and not living in the ways that pleased him, received God’s grace poorly and justly provoked God’s anger through their injustice toward him. ¹²

Thus the author looks forward to the day when those who have been ungrateful toward their Maker will be held accountable:

As many as did not acknowledge me in their lifetime, though they received my benefits, and as many as scorned my law while they still had freedom … must in torment acknowledge it after death (4 Ezra 9.9-12, emphasis mine).

The divine anger is the flipside of the divine intent to benefit—a relationship explicitly named by Aristotle as he discussed the circumstances under which people might typically feel anger. ¹³ The angel Uriel dwells on God’s beneficent intent and provision at some length, as well as God’s sorrow when his beneficence did not evoke a reciprocal disposition among God’s creatures:

For there was a time in this age when I was preparing for those who now exist, before the world was made for them to live in, and no one opposed me then, for no one existed; but now those who have been created in this world, which is supplied both with an unfailing table and an inexhaustible pasture, have become corrupt in their ways. So I considered my world, and saw that it was lost. I saw that my earth was in peril because of the devices of those who had come into it (9.18-20, emphases mine).

God’s provisions for humankind, however, did not stop at the physical. God did not leave human beings to grope about to find the way that might please God or to run the risk of falling by error into the way that would displease their Maker. Rather, God gave them the necessary instructions so that they might avoid punishment:

For the Lord strictly commanded those who came into the world, when they came, what they should do to live, and what they should observe to avoid punishment. Nevertheless they were not obedient, and spoke against him; they devised for themselves vain thoughts, and proposed to themselves wicked frauds; they even declared that the Most High does not exist, and they ignored his ways. They scorned his law, and denied his covenants; they have been unfaithful to his statutes, and have not performed his works. That is the reason, Ezra, that empty things are for the empty, and full things are for the full (7.20-25).

The author shares the widespread Jewish conviction that the giving of the law was an act of supreme grace, ¹⁴ although he appears to think that Gentiles, too, received knowledge from God concerning the law and, thus, how to live rightly and to honor the One. ¹⁵ The angel continues by saying that:

The Most High will say to the nations that have been raised from the dead, ‘Look now, and understand whom you have denied, whom you have not served, whose commandments you have despised’ (4 Ezra 7.37).

While God’s special interest in Israel is given considerable attention by ‘Ezra’, the author believes that all people have been given sufficient guidance by God in regard to how to make a fair return for the grace of life and sustenance—and thus have willfully refused to show gratitude. ¹⁶

There is, additionally, a very Qumran-like statement that shows God’s grace to be operative where individuals are able to come to the place where their hearts and practice align with God’s law:

I considered my world, and saw that it was lost. I saw that my earth was in peril because of the devices of those who had come into it. And I saw and spared some with great difficulty, and saved for myself one grape out of a cluster, and one plant out of a great forest. So let the multitude perish that has been born in vain, but let my grape and my plant be saved, because with much labor I have perfected them (4 Ezra 9.20-22, emphasis mine).

While the author lays a great deal of responsibility upon the individual for responding to God with due obedience, he also shows an awareness of success in this endeavor as also being dependent upon God’s sustaining favor—and significant investment in the individual (‘with much labor’). ¹⁷ God does not remove the ‘evil heart’ from the individual, as ‘Ezra’ would wish, but God nevertheless does show mercy by working alongside the individual to defeat it.

In light of these texts, not to mention the cultural context of the author of 4 Ezra (that is, a culture in which the social logic of reciprocity is part of the individual’s socialization from childhood), ¹⁸ it seems unjust to speak of his promotion of Torah observance as merely a matter of individualistic legalism, as a means of ‘earning’ God’s grace. Rather, the author promotes close observance of the Torah as a matter of making a fitting response to the God who gave life, who fitted human beings with reason, and who gifted Israel (at least) with the law. ¹⁹ Showing respect for God through obeying God’s commandments is a response to God’s initiating grace in ‘our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life’, to borrow language once again from the Book of Common Prayer. ²⁰

Grace and Forgiveness in 4 Ezra

While the author of 4 Ezra is rigorous in his view of what constitutes covenant faithfulness, it is not the case that he believes God to require perfect performance or sinlessness. God remains merciful and gracious in the theology of the book (7.132-33). ²¹ Sanders claims, however, that

One has here the closest approach to legalistic works-righteousness which can be found in the Jewish literature of the period; for only here are the traditional characteristics of God—he freely forgives and restores sinners and maintains the covenant promises despite transgression—denied … We noted that in Qumran men, even the elect, were considered to be ‘in sin’ in the sense of being participants in human frailty, but that human frailty as such did not condemn. Means were provided for atonement of most transgressions, and the elect were not ‘lost’ despite being ‘in sin’. In IV Ezra, however, the human inability to avoid sin is considered to lead to damnation (Sanders 1977: 418).

Sanders gives the impression that God, according to 4 Ezra, allows room neither for mistakes nor for the transgressor to find mercy rather than condemnation. He claims that, according to the author, ‘it is better for transgressors to perish than for the glory of the law to be besmirched by having mercy on them’ (Sanders 1977: 416).

It is true that the author, in the voice of Uriel, is passionately concerned about upholding the honor of God, which is flouted by those who disregard God’s law: ‘Let many perish who are now living, rather than that the law of God that is set before them be disregarded!’ (4 Ezra 7.20). But the author gives no indication that God will not, therefore, be merciful to those who acknowledge God’s honor by repenting, an act by which the mortal creature renounces his or her arrogance and returns to a proper place of obedience and respect in regard to God and God’s law. ²² The assumption of both seer and angel is that God will and does have mercy on the penitent, who turn away from a course of life that enacts ingratitude toward the Creator and lawgiver and turn toward a life that is regulated by God’s commands. Uriel excludes only cheap forgiveness, which allows the recalcitrant to slide by in the judgment without restoring God’s honor. The angel justly affirms that God’s honor must be upheld in such cases.

Sanders does acknowledge that ‘the possibility of repentance is mentioned briefly by the angel (9.12; cf. 7.82), but the point is that transgressors have not repented’ (Sanders 1977: 415). This is accurate, but it misses the more essential point: underlying both passages is the fundamental conviction that repentance would be effective for restoring the sinner’s relationship with God and avoiding the grisly fate described by Uriel. ²³ The souls of the ungodly are grieved after death ‘because they cannot now make a good repentance so that they may live’ (7.82, emphasis mine). Those who did not acknowledge God in their lifetime through proper reverence and obedience, though they received God’s ‘benefits, and as many as scorned my law while they still had freedom, and did not understand but despised it while an opportunity of repentance was still open to them, these must in torment acknowledge it after death’ (9.10-12, emphasis mine). The implication of both texts—and, indeed, the illocution of both locutions—is that the present moment is a God-given opportunity to make a good repentance, since there is no opportunity after death. The point is therefore not, simply, ‘that transgressors have not repented’: the point (the illocutionary force) is that one should now repent of any failures or tergiversations in regard to one’s commitment to obeying God’s commands, while the opportunity for repentance exists and the eternally disadvantageous outcome can be avoided. ²⁴ God is thus indeed ‘gracious to those who turn in repentance to his law’ (7.133).

Sanders’s comparison of the author of 4 Ezra with the community at Qumran bears further examination, though perhaps leads to a different conclusion. The Community Rule combines an astounding rigor in regard to a Torah-regulated life with humility of spirit before the One who alone is truly righteous.

As for me, I belong to wicked humankind, to the company of unjust flesh. My iniquities, rebellions, and sins, together with the perversity of my heart, belong to the company of worms and to those who walk in darkness (1QS XI 8-9, Vermes translation).

It must be remembered that these words come from the lips of a person whose lifestyle shaped around observance of the Torah could only be described as radical. This is the community whose members, when Jesus asked the rhetorical question, ‘What person is there among you who has a sheep and, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not grab it and pull it out?’ (Mt. 12.11; compare Lk. 13.15), would have said, ‘We wouldn’t’ (CD 11.13) and ruined the moment. The author of 4 Ezra, in Ezra’s voice, gives expression to the same sense of solidarity with sinful humanity:

We and our ancestors have passed our lives in ways that bring death; but it is because of us sinners that you are called merciful. For if you have desired to have pity on us, who have no works of righteousness, then you will be called merciful … For in truth there is no one among those who have been born who has not acted wickedly; among those who have existed there is no one who has not done wrong. For in this, O Lord, your righteousness and goodness will be declared, when you are merciful to those who have no store of good works (4 Ezra 8.31-32, 35-36; see also 7.46).

Like the author of the beautiful psalm that concludes the Community Rule, the author of 4 Ezra depicts even Ezra as lamenting his own complicity, along with the rest of humanity, in sin.

The angel tells him—without, however, refuting his statements that all human beings have fallen short to some extent—that he is nevertheless still among the righteous and that his humility about his standing before God (born of his awareness of his sinfulness) is a credit to him (8.48-50). We should, at the very least then, not accuse the author of promoting ‘a religion of individual self-righteousness’ (Sanders 1977: 409), since the model person whom he holds up for emulation (Ezra, the righteous scribe who restored Torah-observance in Israel) was himself devoid of a ‘self-righteous’ attitude (contrast the caricature of the Pharisee in the Lukan parable, 18.9-14). Ezra is specifically praised for his refusal to acquit himself in God’s sight:

You have often compared yourself to the unrighteous. Never do so! But even in this respect you will be praiseworthy before the Most High, because you have humbled yourself, as is becoming for you, and have not considered yourself to be among the righteous. You will receive the greatest glory, for many miseries will affect those who inhabit the world in the last times, because they have walked in great pride (8.47-50).

But unless we are to judge this to be false humility, the author also shows that it is hardly the case that perfection is required—only perfect commitment and wholehearted desire to honor God by doing God’s law (under the aegis of which commitment and heartfelt devotion the inevitable failings can be forgiven). ²⁵

Longenecker goes further than Sanders in the discounting of the grace of repentance in 4 Ezra. In his dissertation, he interprets the 70 esoteric books given alongside the public 24 (the canonical Hebrew Scriptures) in Episode VII (4 Ezra 14) as a ‘private law’ that teaches and legitimates the author of 4 Ezra’s rejection of ‘the law’s provisions for repentance of, and atonement for, transgression—an aspect which cannot be included in the law which the author wants to uphold, since, for him, transgressions themselves rule out the possibility of salvation altogether’ (Longenecker 1991: 274).

I find no evidence in the text, however, to suggest that the author rejected atonement and sacrifices as effective for dealing with transgressions (i.e., by repairing the dishonor shown to God in transgression, this dishonor being a major concern of the author). The destruction of Jerusalem would be easily enough explained by the plethora of what the author would have considered willful transgressions of the law, for which there were no provisions for atonement, and of negligent transgressions for which atonement was not made. It is not necessary to assume that he would have regarded sacrifices as ineffective per se.

The author is actually fairly quiet on the topic of sacrifices and atonement. The two times he does speak of them, however, it is positively:

As for [the woman] telling you that she was barren for thirty years, the reason is that there were three thousand years in the world before any offering was offered in it. And after three thousand years Solomon built the city, and offered offerings; then it was that the barren woman bore a son (4 Ezra 10.45-46; see also 3.23-24).

The period prior to the offering of sacrifices is compared to a time of barrenness: it was only with the consecration of the Temple and the initiation of the sacrificial cult that Zion bore fruit (‘a son’). The apocalypse is conspicuously devoid of any prophetic rant against the efficacy of those sacrifices, despite the precedents the author had for this in the Hebrew Bible (and in distinction from early Christian discourse, for example, as evidenced in the sermon of Paul’s colleague, the author of Hebrews). ²⁶

Longenecker’s support for his proposition that the author rejected the viability of repentance is even more problematic. The author gives no indication that the esoteric books are ‘private law’ without which, moreover, the 24 books (which include the ‘public law’) are ‘insufficient for salvation’ (to use admittedly Protestant language) and subject to misunderstanding. We should not assume that the author of 4 Ezra operated with the same concept of a written and an oral law as did, for example, the voices preserved in Pirke Aboth. Looking back to Sinai, he writes that God told Moses ‘many wondrous things, and showed him the secrets of the times and declared to him the end of the times. Then I commanded him, saying, “These words you shall publish openly, and these you shall keep secret”’ (14.5-6). From this, one might more naturally conclude that the secret revelations did not concern ‘law’ at all, but rather apocalyptic topics such as the author of 4 Ezra himself addresses (‘the secrets of the times’ and ‘the end of the times’), as are also summarized immediately following in 14.10-18. These esoteric books, then, would—like 4 Ezra itself—contain valuable supplements to the Torah and ‘revealed knowledge’ that facilitates ongoing commitment and obedience to the Torah (as in Stone 1990: 441). ²⁷

The reconstitution of the written Scriptures is undertaken so that generations after ‘Ezra’ will have adequate warning, ‘that people may be able to find the path, and that those who want to live in the last days may do so’ (14.22). The illocutionary force of this within the ‘real’ world of the author and his audience is to commend the reading of, and the alignment of one’s life with, those written Scriptures, along with supplemental, esoteric texts (such as, perhaps, 4 Ezra itself). It is by no means clear, however, that the author regards the traditional Scriptures to be insufficient. The words spoken concerning the esoteric texts—that ‘in them is the spring of understanding, the fountain of wisdom, and the river of knowledge’ (14.47)—are probably to be heard more as a commendation of esoteric writings alongside the canonical 24 that are regarded as salvific by all parties (those included in both the ‘public’ and the ‘private’ audiences envisioned by the author) rather than as an exclusive claim over against the 24 (such that the 70 books alone contain the spring of understanding). Such a reading would be in keeping with the ‘myth of origins’ that the author creates for these texts, both exoteric and esoteric (one that rivals even the most extravagant legend created to commend the authority of the Septuagint alongside the Hebrew text as an adequate representation of the Scriptures).

Earning Grace for the Age to Come?

It remains for us to talk about ‘grace’ in the age to come. It is natural for Christian readers to focus in on the author of 4 Ezra’s use of key terms like ‘faith’ and ‘works’ in connection with what qualifies one for entrance into the age to come (or, ‘salvation’). These, of course, often appear in binary opposition in early Christian texts (e.g., Rom. 3.27-28 and Gal. 2.15-16, where Paul refers explicitly to works of the Torah; cf. Eph. 2.8-9). The author of 4 Ezra appears to vacillate between the two in his assertions of what has salvific value before God:

[B]efore those who stored up treasures of faith were sealed, then I planned these things … (6.5)

Do not include yourself with those who have shown scorn, or number yourself among those who are tormented. For you have a treasure of works stored up with the Most High, but it will not be shown to you until the last times (7.76-77).

For the righteous, who have many works laid up with you, shall receive their reward in consequence of their own deeds (8.33).

It shall be that all who will be saved and will be able to escape on account of their works, or on account of the faith by which they have believed, will survive the dangers that have been predicted, and will see my salvation in my land and within my borders, which I have sanctified for myself from the beginning (9.7-8).

The one who brings the peril at that time will protect those who fall into peril, who have works and faith toward the Almighty (13.23, emphasis mine). ²⁸

The interchangeability of these two terms suggests their interconnectedness in the author’s mind. They are not two separate, opposing paths to deliverance, but rather complementary facets of a single path. ²⁹ ‘Trust’ toward God entails the doing of the ‘works’ that God approves; trust towards God and the doing of the law are entirely and necessarily compatible. ³⁰ What this means, however, is again that the author of 4 Ezra is not promoting a merely legalistic version of Judaism. It is understood as a response to God’s grace and as a means of embodying trust (and/or loyalty) toward God.

God rewards those who do what is good and right. This is a truism that appears throughout the Hebrew Bible (Job 34.11; Ps. 28.4; Prov. 24.12; Isa. 59.18; Jer. 25.14), Second Temple Jewish literature (Sir. 35.24; 4 Macc. 13.13-17; 1 Enoch 1.9) and the New Testament (Mt. 25.31-46; Rom. 2.6-11; 2 Cor. 5.9-10; 1 Pet. 1.17; Rev. 20.12). From this point of view, welcoming people into the life of the age to come or life beyond death is a divine response to human behavior. We ought not, however, to leave out of this equation the fact that this salvific behavior itself is, for the author of 4 Ezra, a response to the initiating divine grace (whether the just and proper response of honoring the divine benefactor or the unjust response of failing to honor God’s name or to obey God’s rules for the life that God gave). From this perspective, welcome into the age to come is not merely ‘an eschatological reflex to human merit’, but the ongoing favor of the divine benefactor to those who have proven themselves grateful recipients of God’s grace (just as condemnation is the result of proving oneself ungrateful). ³¹

It is also not the case that ‘grace is available to those who have no need of it’ (Longenecker 1991: 271), since mortals who live obediently in this life are still very much in need of the eschatological grace of resurrection from the dead and the grace of life beyond death. The eschatological age itself is brought into being by an act of God’s gracious provision for the righteous. Precisely because the present age has been corrupted and cannot bring about the good things that God has promised to God’s faithful ones, God has prepared a second age in which God’s beneficence can be fully manifested as God would wish. ³² Adam’s transgression and the sins of those who have followed him have so corrupted the present world that it is now a place of trial and difficulty that must be successfully navigated, but the one who does so will arrive at the world to come, which has not been corrupted and which can contain God’s promises (4.27; 7.3-16). ‘For this reason the Most High has made not one world but two’ (7.50). The gift of life beyond death or life beyond the present age are not gifts to be taken for granted in any theological schema, and if they are granted only to those who have demonstrated their gratitude for past benefits (and thus amassed a ‘treasure of works’ or ‘treasures of faith/faithfulness’ with God), they are still gifts granted to mortals, who have no natural claim to immortality.

4 Ezra and Paul in Conversation about Grace

These observations about 4 Ezra are relevant to reading Paul in several ways, as the following pages will attempt to demonstrate. First, Paul also does not assume that God’s ‘grace’ has only to do with forgiveness of sins (‘looking the other way’ in regard to human transgressions of God’s righteous decrees for how to live the life that God gave). Second, Paul also assumes that God’s favor all but demands human response in terms of ‘actual obedience’ and not some vague loyalty, and that the failure to respond appropriately jeopardizes one’s place in God’s favor. As a corollary to this second point, one’s experience of eschatological (or post mortem) favor, the favor of life beyond death or life in the resurrection, hinges on how one responds to God’s initiating favor in the sphere of this life or this age. Third, God’s grace is indeed manifested in forgiveness, with a corresponding emphasis, then, on responding to God’s forbearance by repenting and changing one’s heart and life to align with the response God seeks from God’s (new) creations.

Paul shares with the author of 4 Ezra the conviction that God’s grace is already operative in creation, with the result that all people owe God a debt of gratitude for their enjoyment of life itself. He also shares the latter’s conviction that the majority of, if not all, people have defaulted on this obligation. In Paul this comes to expression most clearly in Rom. 1.18-26, where Paul speaks of this default leading to the deserved experience of God’s anger and punishment. First, creation itself bears ample witness to God’s ‘unseen qualities, his eternal power and divine nature’, such that all people, even those who have not received the special revelation of the law, are ‘without an excuse’ (Rom. 1.20). Despite this revelation, the majority of human beings have ‘exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for images in the likeness of moribund human beings and birds and animals and reptiles … They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and they revered and worshiped the creature in place of the Creator’ (1.23, 25). In this way, ‘they did not honor him or return thanks to him as God’ (1.21). The unstated premise here would be the commonly acknowledged conviction that God or the gods, as creators and sustainers of life, merit reverence and obedient service. ³³

Paul shares the conviction that human beings have not only showed contempt for the Creator, but also for the Creator’s decrees. Gentiles had innate knowledge of this (Rom. 1.32; see also, more positively, 2.14-16), which they nevertheless suppressed. ³⁴ Jews received the Torah as an expression of the Creator’s will for their regulation of the gift of their lives, but also brought contempt upon the Creator through disregard for God’s law (rather than enhancing God’s reputation through ordered and consistent obedience): ‘You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by transgressing the law? For “the name of God is slandered among the nations on account of you”, as it is written’ (Rom. 2.23-24, citing Isa. 52.5). While Paul has been shown to draw upon Hellenistic Jewish anti-Gentile rhetoric in Rom. 1 (such as appears also in Wis. 13.1-10; 14.12-31), it is a point of interest that Paul’s turn in Rom. 2.1, attacking a position that takes pride in election apart from due diligence in actually keeping God’s commandments, is not unique to him, but shared by other Jewish authors such as the author of 4 Ezra.

Paul also differs significantly from 4 Ezra in his assessment of God’s gracious initiatives. According to Paul, God has taken a fresh and supremely generous step toward the recalcitrant in order to make the way back for them easier to traverse, to facilitate repentance and walking in newness of life (Rom. 5.6-11), so that they might again stand in favor with God (5.5). While not relinquishing God’s righteousness or commitment to justice and to God’s own honor in the world, God has nevertheless issued a fresh and winsome invitation to people in the person, and especially in the self-giving death, of his Son to turn from their response of dishonor and ingratitude, accept the new standing in favor that is being offered, and make a fittingly grateful response with their hearts and lives. ³⁵

Paul nevertheless shares with the author of 4 Ezra the conviction that the present age is the opportunity for repentance, and that repentance in its fullest sense is essential if one wishes to ‘be kept alive’ and ‘obtain mercy’ (4 Ezra 14.34) before God when he comes as judge.

You who judge those who continue to do such things as these and who continue to do them yourself, do you think this—that you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you despise the wealth of his goodness, forbearance, and patience, unaware that God’s goodness leads you to repentance? (Rom. 2.3-4)

While Paul’s use of words from the μετάνοια group is admittedly limited (Rom. 2.4; 2 Cor. 7.9-10; 12.21; 2 Tim. 2.25), ³⁶ it is as incorrect to deny repentance a part in Paul’s scheme of salvation (as does Sanders) as to deny that 4 Ezra promotes repentance in the ‘here and now’ of its author (Sanders 1977: 546). Paul uses other language to speak about repentance as a major process in the lives of believers. If we think about the decision to render μετάνοια as ‘a change of heart and life’ in the recent Common English Bible translation, for example, it becomes immediately evident that ‘repentance’ thus defined is a major component of Paul’s scheme. Paul’s language of stripping off and clothing oneself afresh (Rom. 13.11-14; Col. 3.5-17), of the old self and the new self (Eph. 4.17-18, 22-24), of dying to sin and rising to newness of life (Rom. 6.1-23), of turning away from one’s former commitments and practices in favor of new ones (1 Thess. 1.9-10; 1 Cor. 6.9-11) all express the dynamic equivalent of repentance. Moreover, as we have already seen, such a change of heart and life is as essential for Paul (Rom. 8.13-14; Gal. 5.19-21; 6.7-10; 1 Cor. 6.9-11; Eph. 5.5-6) as it is for the author of 4 Ezra.

God’s new act of grace is not limited to the forgiveness of sins, though this is certainly an important component of it (as Paul expresses in Rom. 3.23-25; 4.6-8). Christ’s giving of his life on behalf of others redeems them from sin, but also, and just as importantly, secures for them the gift of the Holy Spirit (Gal. 3.2-5, 13-14; 4.6-7; Rom. 8.1-11). This Spirit is the God-given solution to the problem variously spoken of as ‘Sin’ as an almost apocalyptic, external power (Rom. 7.7-24) or as the ‘flesh’ with its ‘passions and desires’ (Gal. 5.16-25), a more explicitly internal adversary to submission to God’s decrees. Paul proclaims that God has in fact made available the help for which the author of 4 Ezra cried out, with the result that the ‘evil heart’ (or Sin or the ‘passions of the flesh’) no longer poses such a challenge to faithful obedience and, thus, to the attainment of the good that God longs to give the righteous in eternity. ³⁷

Grace must nevertheless still be met with grateful response in Paul as in 4 Ezra. God expects people not just to receive his gifts, but to make the use of, and the response to, his gifts that shows an appropriate assessment of their value—in this case, a life for a life: ‘He died on behalf of all in order that those who continue living might no longer live for themselves, but for the one who died on their behalf and was raised’ (2 Cor. 5.15; cf. also Rom. 6.4-5). This is a purpose statement—one answer, at least, to the question ‘Why did Christ die for us?’ The answer is stunning in the scope of the claim laid upon each beneficiary of this favor: so that we would live no longer for ourselves, but for him. Paul had in fact articulated something similar in Galatians, applying this conviction to himself in his statement about the results of encountering Christ’s self-giving love and placing his trust in that relationship:

I died to the Torah through the Torah in order that I might live to God. I was crucified together with Christ; it’s no longer me living, but Christ living in me. The life I’m living now in the flesh, I live in faith toward the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me (Gal. 2.19-20).

Paul speaks of the Son of God who, out of love, ‘gave himself up’ for Paul; Paul speaks now of giving up the remainder of his life so as to let that same Son of God live in and through him. Only a life given back shows the giver that we have properly valued his gift to us—his death on our behalf. ³⁸ But this very giving back to God effects the transformation of the believer’s life that allows him or her to live in a manner that is actually righteous in God’s sight, thus in a manner leading to his or her justification in the fullest sense—that is, justification as ‘acquittal’ as a result of having been ‘brought in line with God’s righteousness’. The God who ‘shows no partiality’ to Jews over Gentiles cannot then be expected to show partiality to another group just because they claim to be friends of God’s Son.

Failure to respond in a manner that appropriately values Christ’s selfless investment in the believer and the efficacy of the Spirit as an inner guide and power against sin and the flesh, on the other hand, jeopardizes one’s place in God’s favor (such that even a return to or embracing of the Torah becomes an affront to the honor and generous investment of the One who secured the Holy Spirit for his client-followers, as Paul expresses in Gal. 2.21; 5.1-6). Failure to allow God’s gift to have its full, transformative effect in the life and practice of the believer and believing community, moreover, also puts at risk one’s enjoyment of the eschatological favors of life and welcome into the kingdom of God (Gal. 5.13-14, 19-21; 6.7-9; Rom. 8.13-14).

Is ‘inheriting the kingdom of God’ (Gal. 5.21) or ‘eternal life’ (6.8) an ‘eschatological reflex’, then, on God’s part to those who have sown appropriately or ‘put to death the deeds of the flesh’ (Rom. 8.13), that is, to those who have merited salvation? No more in Paul than in 4 Ezra, for living in line with God’s righteousness is merely the human response to God’s initiating favor, the appropriate response that allows one to continue in favor to the end and, thus, to receive God’s future benefactions as well as experience his initiating and sustaining favors. In Paul, the ‘sustaining’ favor is far more pronounced than in 4 Ezra, and comes to expression wherever Paul speaks of the activity of the Holy Spirit, or Spirit of God, or Spirit of Christ in the lives of the believers and the believing community. Yet we remember that it is also not absent in 4 Ezra, for God is at work ‘perfecting’ those who are themselves responding well to God’s gift of life (4 Ezra 9.22).

Troels Engberg-Pedersen captures the operation of grace and response in Paul’s theology of salvation with exceptional clarity:

Christ had the very specific role in the Christ event of enabling human beings to respond to the event in the way they were meant to by God. When Christ, the mediator, bent down in love and gave himself up ‘for my sake’ (2.20), that is, by his suffering (vicariously) in order to bring ‘me’ help in a situation which was negative for ‘me’ (compare 1.4 and 3.13), then ‘I’ responded in kind and through that response came to live for God and so ‘live’ (2000: 145 emphases original). ³⁹

In Paul’s reckoning, the transformation of the believer still takes place ‘by grace’, since God’s (re-)initiating grace mediated by Jesus is responsible for provoking and even, through the gift of the Spirit, empowering and effecting the life-changing response.

For Paul, as for the author of 4 Ezra, ‘grace’ is not operative as forgiveness without repentance, acceptance by God without the human response of a change of life and realignment with God’s righteousness. ⁴⁰ Paul exhibits a very similar pattern of religion in this respect. He would disagree sharply, of course, on what constitutes the focal act of grace that necessitates human response—not merely creation, and certainly not (any longer) the giving of the Torah, but the new initiative of God’s favor shown in Jesus’ self-giving death. ⁴¹ He would therefore also disagree concerning the manner of response—no longer aligning one’s heart and practices with the stipulations of the Torah, but with the leading of the Holy Spirit so that Christ can live through the disciple. They are in complete agreement, nevertheless, that a response is required, that this response involves one’s overall life and practice, and that responding poorly jeopardizes one’s ongoing experience of divine favor.

Conclusion

The idea of God’s initiating favor—God’s grace—is very much present in the author of 4 Ezra’s conception and experience of this present age and hope for the age to come. The absence of Protestant expressions of ‘grace’ as a subset of soteriology (e.g., God’s mercy towards sinners, particularly those who do not repent and change their practice) does not mean the absence of God’s grace in the present age, nor does it mean that obedience is motivated by a desire to ‘earn grace’ for the age to come. We should rather inquire concerning how the author understands God’s grace to be operative, not look for a particular expression of grace and, not finding it, conclude that grace is therefore lacking in the author’s theology.

For the author of 4 Ezra, reverence for the One God and regulation of one’s practice by Torah observance are appropriate and necessary responses to the gift of life, of being sustained in this life, and of receiving God’s instruction for how to use the life given. God is so committed to bringing further benefit to those who have shown themselves grateful that, when this age became corrupted by the fruits of ingratitude, God prepared an age to come in which his beneficence could be fully experienced by those who responded well to God’s gifts in the present age. God is merciful, in that he remains a God of second chances—those who make good use of the God-given opportunity to repent and begin to show God the honor that God’s gifts deserve will be forgiven and accepted, and avoid the punishment that awaits the recalcitrant. Without minimizing the very important points of difference noted above, it is necessary to recognize that Paul agrees with the author of 4 Ezra’s understanding of God’s grace and the importance and shape of human response to a far greater extent than scholars like Sanders and Longenecker would allow.