Paul and the Law

Veronica Koperski has a useful (if overly detailed) overview of current debates on Paul and the Law in her 2001 Paulist Press volume, What Are They Saying About Paul and the Law? . Refreshingly, Koperski does not simply review the same old cast of characters, but includes fairly extensive treatments of Reformed NT scholars like Thielman and Silva. She focuses on interpretations of Philippians 3, which also breaks out of the normal routine of concentrating almost exclusive attention on Romans and Galatians. A few summary points:

1) Describing the “Lutheran” view that the NPP writers are writing against, Koperski concentrates not on Luther but on Bultmann. For Bultmann and his followers, the opposition of two kinds of righteousness is “an opposition between an attitude of (prideful) human effort and humble acceptance of a gift from God.” Bultmann views the Law and Judaism as a system that encourages boasting in one’s merits, in contrast, Koperski says, to Luther, “who distinguished between the Jews and Paul’s opponents on the one hand, and the ‘heretics’ of his own day on the other. Luther could at least find undserstandable the ancient Jewish devotion to the Law because it was given by God.” (Unfortunately, she offers no citations from Luther to back this up.)

2) She summarizes the options for understanding Paul and the law under three headings, each of which is designed to explain why Paul criticized the law. Bultmann’s is the first of these; the problem with the law is that it’s a system of human effort and encourages pride; Paul’s opposition to the law is an opposition of “Human Effort vs. Gift of God.” For Sanders and others, the contrast is “Through Christ vs. not Through Christ”; there is nothing wrong with the law per se, but now that Christ has come trying to achieve righteousness through law is wrong. For Dunn and others, the key problem is the restrictiveness of the Law and especially of first-century interpretations of the law, a restrictiveness that prevents Gentiles from sharing in the blessings of God; thus, the opposition is “Particular vs. Universal.” She also recognizes and discussions scholars who combine these positions in various ways, identifying Westerholm and Byrne as writers who in various ways maintain a basically Bultmannian view of Paul’s critique of the law while accepting that Sanders scored some points by offering a more accurate portrayal of Judaism.

3) Koperski gives a lot of air time to Moises Silva’s work on Galatians. Silva is critical of Sanders and the NPP because it “results in (1) an underrating of ‘legalistic’ elements that are not only present in early Judaism but endemic to the human condition, and (2) the creation of false dichotomies.” (I remember reading or hearing Silva express his astonishment that Sanders was considered revolutionary for spending so much time in the Jewish sources; Silva’s comment was something like, “I thought that was basic equipment for a NT specialist.”) Yet, Silva also recognizes that Paul has multiple targets – sometimes attacking individual legalism and self-righteousness, at other times attacking Jewish exclusiveness and national pride, and “he concedes that exegetes who shift attention . . . to the Jew-Gentiel question undeniably have a point.” Galatians 3 is in fact about the question of who the sons of Abraham are, and not merely about Abraham’s personal justification by faith; Protestant exegesis historically has failed to recognized the prominence of this issue. Silva sees Paul’s gospel as essentially eschatological, and notes that this is the gravamen of his opposition to Judaizers: “Paul has characterized message of the Judaizers as belonging to an earlier stage of salvation history. He thus effectively argues that a manner of existence founded on works of the Law is obsolete from an eschatological perspective. According to Silva, the Law is “flawed” only in the sense that it “cannot impart life” and because “righteousness is not by Law.” Silva argues that righteousness and life are two aspects of the same reality for Paul, both gifts rooted in the resurrection of Jesus.