Flesh and Achievement in Phil 3

I have little sympathy overall with the work of Heikki Raisanen, but he makes some shrewd comments on Paul’s argument in Philippians 3. As he points out, several of the items on Paul’s list of “fleshly” advantages are things that he has received through no work of achievement of his own, for he had nothing to do with his own circumcision, his membership in Israel or the tribe of Benjamin, his status as a Hebrew of Hebrews. As Raisanen says, “What Paul renounces according to Philippians 3:7ff is his whole covenant-status as a Jew, which includes reliance on the divine gifts bestowed uniquely on Israel as well as the confirmation of those gifts by his own obedience.” Thus, the Bultmannian notion that Paul is renouncing the law because it encourages pride in one’s own performance doesn’t wash in the passage.

Also, in this passage the “righteousness from the law” (3:9) refers to the advantages that Paul could claim based on both his Jewish heritage and his performance of Torah. We can reason backwards: Paul says he does not have a “righteousness of my own derived from the law,” and this is what he counts as loss and as s*** (vv. 7-8). Specifically, this “righteousness” from the law consists in the various advantages that he lists in verses 5-6. Righteousness in this passage thus refers to status within the people of God, as well as performance demanded by that status. It would appear that the righteousness that he has by being in Christ would include these two dimensions as well, both the status as a member of the covenant people and the righteous life that comes from it. Both of these are found “in Him,” and come “from God.”

Raisanen seems correct to say that here at least Paul’s rejection of Torah-righteousness is more christological than anthropological. For the “righteousness that is from the law” is in part a gift of status and membership among the people of God, as is the righteousness that comes by faith. The key difference between Torah-righteousness and Christian righteousness is not that one is a gift and the other an achievement; for Paul must recognize that both are gifts. The key difference is that Torah-righteousness has been superseded because of the coming of the eschatological righteousness of God in Christ. Further, the Jew-Gentile issue is lurking near the surface here. As Paul describes his Torah-righteousness, it is clearly something that pertains only to Jews. But Christ-righteousness is open to all.

Elsewhere, of course, Paul has other criticisms of the law, or at least of the way the law can be coopted to the purposes of sin and death (Rom 7). The Law is not only superceded because its telos has come in Christ, but also because it was “weak” and had been turned into a means for death. But in Philippians 3, Paul seems concerned only to contrast old and new, without commenting on the weakness or limitations of the old.