Compare these Pauline verses. First, Romans 3:21-22:
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. (RSV)
But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. (NIV)
But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference. (KJV)
There’s one key difference between them. Do you see it? The difference sticks out even more clearly when one compares the three versions of Galatians 2:15-16:
We ourselves, who are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet who know that a man is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ, and not by works of the law, because by works of the law shall no one be justified. (RSV)
We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified. (NIV)
We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. (KJV)
Both the popular NIV and the once standard RSV speak of being justified by “faith in Christ Jesus.” But the queen of all English translations, the King James Version, speaks instead of being justified by “faith of Jesus Christ.” The Greek phrase is pisteōs Iēsou Christou, which can be translated as either “faith in Jesus Christ” (objective genitive) or “faith(fulness) of Christ” (subjective genitive). Most English translators have gone with the first option, but an increasing number of exegetes now believe that the latter represents St Paul’s intended meaning. Isn’t it curious that the version of the Bible that has most profoundly informed English-speaking Protestant Christianity, the King James Version, also chose the latter; yet we English Bible readers long ago forgot it. I have not come across a discussion of why the KJV translators decided on the subjective genitive. Perhaps they were influenced by the Vulgate translation, which also renders the phrase as a subjective genitive. I don’t know. What I do know, or at least suspect, is that if pistis Christou is properly rendered as either “the faith of Christ” or “the faithfulness of Christ,” then our understanding of St Paul and his teaching on justification will be dramatically affected.
For the past two weeks I have been ruminating on Romans 3:21-26, with particular attention to the theme of justification or rectification. If we wish to fully grasp the significance of justification in this text, we probably should first take a look at the Apostle’s earliest discussion of justification in his Epistle to the Galatians:
We are by nature Jews, not “Gentile sinners.” Even we ourselves know, however, that a person is not rectified by observance of the Law, but rather by the faith of Christ Jesus. Thus, even we have placed our trust in Christ Jesus, in order that the source of our rectification might be the faith of Christ and not observance of the Law; for not a single person will be rectified by observance of the Law. If, however, seeking to be rectified in Christ, we ourselves have been perceived to be sinners, then is it true that Christ has become a servant of sin? Absolutely not! For, as the incident in Antioch reveals, the way in which I would show myself to be a transgressor would be to rebuild the walls of the Law that I have torn down. For, I have died to the Law, through the Law, in order that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but rather Christ lives in me, and the life I now live in the flesh I live in faith, that is to say in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up to death for me. I do not nullify God’s grace! For if it were true that rectification comes through the Law, then Christ would have died for no purpose at all. (Gal 2:15-21 [Martyn translation, The Anchor Bible: Galatians])
As we see, J. Louis Martyn has also adopted the subjective genitive rendering of the pistis Christou: a person is not rectified by observance of the commandments of Torah but by “the faith of Christ Jesus.” Christ himself, in his faithfulness to the Father and obedience unto death, is the source of our rectification. Paul places before us two alternatives—rectification through human activity and rectification through the act of God in his Son. Paul also speaks of the faith of the believer, but as Martyn notes, he places it in a “decidedly secondary place” (p. 252). Our faith rests upon the faith of Christ. Jew and Gentile alike stand before God with empty hands.
Paul is not doing abstract theology. He is addressing a controversy that is threatening to destroy his apostolic work in Galatia. The Teachers have seduced his churches with a false gospel that contradicts the heart of his own gospel message. If the Teachers are right, Paul tells his Galatian converts, then Christ died for nothing! The situation he confronts is even more serious than what he confronted in Antioch. Whereas in Antioch the question was “With whom may we eat?” here in Galatia the question is “Must we become Torah-observant Jews in order to be saved?”
In response to his opponents, Paul does not pose two different human possibilities—either obedience to Torah or faith in Christ; rather, he poses an antinomy between human act and divine act, between human doing and the atoning work of the Messiah. The latter has the power to rectify, to make things right; the former does not. Understanding this antinomy of the new creation “is crucial,” Martyn writes, “to an understanding not only of Galatians but also of the whole of Paul’s theology. God has set things right without laying down a prior condition of any sort. God’s rectifying act, that is to say, is no more God’s response to human faith in Christ than it is God’s response to human observance of the Law. God’s rectification is not God’s response at all. It is the first move; it is God’s initiative, carried out by him in Christ’s faithful death” (p. 271).
I know that the reflexive response to this exegetical analysis is to immediately raise the philosophical question of free will; but we need to temporarily bracket this concern and simply allow the Apostle to speak. If we do not, we will miss the apocalyptic power and significance of Paul’s good news.
(Appropriate period of times passes while the reader contemplates what “apocalyptic” could possibly mean in this context … Theme song from Jeopardy plays in the background.)
Okay, we are back. If you’re still uncertain about St Paul and “apocalyptic,” take a look at Lou Martyn’s essay “The Apocalyptic Gospel in Galatians.”
So what about free will? How do we understand what Paul means when he speaks of trusting in the faith of Christ? We are anticipating discussion of Romans 5-8, where Paul makes clear that he understands humanity as having been enslaved to the powers of sin and death, a slavery from which we have been liberated through the death and resurrection of the Jesus Christ. Perhaps we should think of this bondage as existential rather than metaphysical. Did Paul understand humanity is no longer bearing the image of God, as no longer possessing the faculty of free will? I don’t think so. But humanity was enslaved nonetheless—hence its impotence to make things right through any kind of Torah observance and moral and ascetical action. In Christ God invades the world to rescue a subjugated mankind. This is why at the conclusion of his letter Paul can proclaim: “As for me, God forbid that I should boast in anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the cosmos has been crucified to me and I to the cosmos. For neither is circumcision anything nor is uncircumcision anything. What is something is the new creation” (Gal 5:14-15).
Martyn offers three further reflections on the mystery of divine and human agency in Galatians:
First, trust in the faithfulness of Christ is a human deed. Christian believers are summoned to put their trust in Christ and his saving work within the community of faith:
One trusts Christ Jesus as the Son whom God sent into the world to give his life in behalf of us, and as the one whom God then raised from the dead, causing him to become the fully trustworthy Lord of the cosmos. This trust, being directed toward the risen Lord who is influentially present in the worshiping community, has about it the character of a confessional prayer, spoken not in the Lord’s absence, but rather in his presence. There, in his presence, the worshiper knows this cosmic Lord to be the one who fully determines his own life, not least his future, as he lives in the community of faith (1 Thess 4:14; 1 Cor 15:22; Rom 10:9). Belief involves, then, face-to-face obedience, together with the certainty of a hope that is faithfully sustained through thick and thin (cf. Gal 5:5; Rom 8:31-39). (pp. 275-276)
Second, trust in the faithfulness of Christ is more than a human deed. God’s saving work in the death and resurrection of Jesus precedes the human act of faith, and it is the actual event of gospel proclamation that makes possible and generates the response of faith. “Did you receive the Spirit because you observed the Law,” the Apostle asks the Galatians, “or as a result of the proclamation that has the power to elicit faith?” (Gal 3:2). The preaching of the apocalyptic event of Jesus Christ is itself an apocalyptic event. As Paul declares in his Epistle to the Romans, the gospel “is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom 1:16).
“Those who believe in Christ are not puppets,” Martyn elaborates, “moved about and made to speak by others. But, just as these persons are not puppet believers, so they are not believers as a result of an act of their own autonomous wills, as though the gospel were an event in which two alternatives were placed before an autonomous decider, and faith were one of two decisions the human being could make autonomously. … Thus when Paul speaks about placing one’s trust in Christ, he is pointing to a deed that reflects not the freedom of the will, but rather God’s freeing of the will. In Christ, the Son of God whose faith is engagingly enacted in his death, God invaded the human orb and commenced a battle for the liberation of the human will itself. And in the case of believers, that apocalyptic invasion is the mysterious genesis of faith in Christ” (p. 276), as Paul himself personally experienced in his encounter with the risen Lord.
Third, trust in the faithfulness of Christ is trust in the God who is active in the gospel:
What Paul says about God’s deed in Christ he also says about the proclamation of this deed, reflecting his convictions that God is the immediate and irreplaceable author of the gospel, and that the gospel is itself an invasive event, not merely the offering of a new option. It is in the gospel-event that Christ’s faith elicits our faith. Thus, Paul can even include faith in the list of the fruit that is borne by the Spirit of Christ (5:22), suggesting that the act of trust does not have its origin in the human being. On the contrary, as we have noted, that act springs from the proclamation of the risen Lord. It is incited by the preached message (Gal 3:2; Rom 10:17). It is empowered by the Spirit. (pp. 276-277)
Just as salvation is not an existential possibility for us—we do not save ourselves; we do not heal ourselves; we do not liberate ourselves from Satan and the powers of the world; we do not raise ourselves from death—so faith itself is existentially impossible for a humanity enslaved by the powers of sin and death. Trust, too, is a grace of the apocalyptic invasion. If we think that we have believed in Christ by our own power and autonomous decision, then perhaps we have attended one too many revivalist tent meetings. We are not righteoused by our faith in Christ; we are righteoused by the faith of Christ.
Martyn’s exegesis of Galatians opens up fresh possibilities for theological reflection on the Incarnation. I am reminded of St Gregory of Nazianzen’s famous saying “For that which he has not assumed he has not healed.” Surely this assumption must include the diseased human will, which is healed, purified, liberated, and sanctified through our Lord’s obedience unto death. In the Incarnation, the eternal Son not only comes to us as God in love and grace; but he also representatively offers to the Father, as our great high priest, in our human nature, the perfect life of obedience and faith that we were unable to offer. As St Athanasius wrote, Christ became our Mediator that “he might minister the things of God to us and ours to God.” The Son and Messiah thus fulfills in himself the covenantal vocation of Israel and of all created being, and by the Spirit we are granted participation in his freedom and faithfulness.
Eclectic Orthodoxy 
Father Ted Bobosh wrote about this very subject today on his blog as well.
http://frted.wordpress.com/2013/08/22/the-faith-of-jesus-christ-ii/
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What a coincidence! Thanks for the link.
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My pleasure. 🙂
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When you say Paul ‘poses an antinomy between human act and divine act, between human doing and the atoning work of the Messiah’, aren’t you still viewing the matter in terms of God’s prior act and … Pelagianism? — and thus equating Torah with Pelagianism?
Stop blaspheming the Torah (and Jews) by calling it ‘Pelagianism’ and ‘works righteousness’!
Paul poses an antinomy, not between a human and a divine act, but between *two divine acts*: the Torah, and the Messiah’s faith. God gave both; which is the way that he ultimately ‘justifies’ us, that is— and this definition is crucial— which is the way he *counts us as members of the covenant he made with Abraham* when he originally counted him as ‘justified’? How does he count *us* as his people? Through Torah-keeping, or through our trust in the Messiah’s faithfulness?
The Torah marked out the nation of Israel as God’s own. But in doing so, it also separated them from the other nations. Yet God promised Abraham that he would be the father of many nations. How is this to be realized? By everybody getting circumcised and keeping Sabbath and kosher? By everybody joining the separated?
No, Paul takes God’s *promise* seriously: ‘Now the promises were made to Abraham and his seed. It doesn’t say, “And to seeds”, as of many; but as of one, “And to your seed”, which is the Messiah. And this I say: that the Torah, which came four hundred and thirty years later, cannot annul the covenant in the Messiah that was confirmed by God beforehand, so as to make the promise of no effect. For if inheritance is from the Torah, it’s not from the promise: but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. What does the Torah do, then? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made…’ (Ga 3.16-20).
We’re going to have to set aside the whole tiresome attempt to make Paul be talking about ‘works righteousness’ vs ‘faith righteousness’ if we want to see what he’s saying when he contrasts faith in Israel’s Torah and faith in the Messiah’s faithfulness. He’s talking about whether God displayed his *ultimate* righteousness (dikaiosyne) through the Torah, or through an act of righteousness (dikaioma) that makes righteous (dikaioun) those who put their trust in him— that is, in what he’s doing in and through his Messiah, Jesus. Why Jesus? because of his faithfulness, which God vindicated by raising him from the dead.
‘The Torah is holy, and the commandment holy, and righteous, and good’ (Rom 7.12). So if the Torah is ‘righteous’, then they actually were righteous who kept the Torah— for example, Moses and the prophets. But the Torah simply was not how God *ultimately* intended to fulfill his *promise*! And so to insist that the Torah is necessary or sufficient, now that the promised one has come, is to oppose God’s ultimate righteousness in the name of God’s (provisionally) righteous Torah!
So, ‘knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Torah, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we [Jews] have believed in Jesus the Messiah, that we might be justified by the Messiah’s faith, and not by the works of the Torah: for by the works of the Torah shall no flesh be justified’ (Gal 2.16).
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“When you say Paul ‘poses an antinomy between human act and divine act, between human doing and the atoning work of the Messiah’, aren’t you still viewing the matter in terms of God’s prior act and … Pelagianism? — and thus equating Torah with Pelagianism?”
The short answer, John, is no. For the long answer, you would need to work your way through Martyn’s commentary on Galatians (as well as a bunch of other material I could recommend to you).
The first point to be made is that in Galatians Paul is responding, not to his fellow Jews in general–he is thus not presenting a critique of Judaism in itself–but is responding to Christians Jews who are subverting his churches. But more importantly, you have missed the radical eschatological significance of the death and resurrection of Christ, as understood by Paul. A new creation has invaded the world, a new creation of life, grace, and power. As a result, the domain of Torah is now dramatically relativized. In fact, in Galatians Paul says things about Torah (things that he would later modify or correct in Romans) that would no doubt have led his Judaizing opponents to cry out, “Blasphemy!”
“Stop blaspheming the Torah (and Jews) by calling it ‘Pelagianism’ and ‘works righteousness’!”
First you make false inferences and put words into my mouth, and now you accuse me of blasphemy. I will give you the shadow of the doubt and assume you did not mean what your words say. This is your first and last warning. I certainly do not expect my readers to agree with everything I write–quite the contrary–but I do expect them to engage me in discussion with civility and graciousness. Accusations of blasphemy, heresy, heterodoxy, etc., are not permitted by anyone on my blog. You come into my home, you abide by my rules.
I admire your zeal for Wright’s presentation of Pauline theology and the history of salvation; but no matter how many times you reiterate your arguments, and no matter how much you raise the volume, I still do not find them utterly convincing. And I’m not the only one who does not. A lot of scholars, of various denominational stripes, do not find Wright convincing on every point. And I’m not just talking about his Reformed critics, who are clearly objecting to his arguments based on their confessional commitments. Wright is just one New Testament scholar out of thousands and thousands. I’m not about to swallow him hook, line, and sinker. This is in no way to diminish his accomplishments. I feel the same way about any theologian or scholar. Wright’s great strength is breadth of his vision. This is also his great weakness.
“Paul poses an antinomy, not between a human and a divine act, but between *two divine acts*: the Torah, and the Messiah’s faith. God gave both; which is the way that he ultimately ‘justifies’ us, that is— and this definition is crucial— which is the way he *counts us as members of the covenant he made with Abraham* when he originally counted him as ‘justified’? How does he count *us* as his people? Through Torah-keeping, or through our trust in the Messiah’s faithfulness?”
If your, or Wright’s, formulation of justification–i.e., God’s forensic declaration of who God’s people are–is “crucial,” as you as write, then Wright’s project fails. This is precisely the point where Wright has failed to persuade his colleagues, Protestant and Catholic, including many who are sympathetic to the New Perspective. When I read Paul, I find him struggling to talk about the the kingdom of God that has now arrived in Christ and the Spirit but which still remains a kingdom for which we must wait. He takes words from his inherited tradition, like “justify,” and strains and breaks them. Christ and his Church is something new, both continuous with and yet radically discontinuous with historic Israel. How could it be otherwise? Jesus of Nazareth has been raised from the dead! The Spirit has been poured out! Jews and Gentiles now share in the messianic banquet. The end times are here. The Church now lives an eschatological existence. Paul isn’t trying to win a debate with his fellow Jews on whose “badges” of righteousness will be recognized by God at the final judgment. That makes it sound like another internet argument about whose church is the true and only church. The gospel is far more exciting and transformative than that!
Fr Aidan
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Dear Father Aidan and all readers of this blog,
I thought you might all be interested in the following excellent summary of Douglas Campbell’s “The Deliverance of God”:
http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.ca/2010/09/deliverance-of-god.html
I’m can’t say that I buy into everything that Campbell says. Nevertheless, it is an interesting point of view that, I think, can help us get a better grasp on the teaching of the Apostle to the Gentiles.
Ed
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Thanks, Ed, for the link. I’m honestly not sure what to make of Campbell. I support his campaign to abandon the justification by faith model and embrace an apocalyptic-participationist model (what I have presumptuously called the new creation model). I also find much of Campbell’s exegesis very challenging. But his more radical proposals, especially the one which casts Rom 1:18-3:20 into a diatribal format (see “Was Paul a Diatribilist?), may be just too bold and radical for me to accept. I’d like to accept it for a couple different reasons; but the internal evidence simply isn’t strong enough, as far as I can tell.
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Agreed Father. Nevertheless, there is one thing about Campbell’s thesis that got me wondering if he wasn’t on to something. He argues that Paul’s statements about pagan humanity clearly knowing that God exists and what he demands of them and being without excuse make no sense of the real facts. How could pagans know, first, that there is one and only one God and, second, what this God commands of them? And if they can’t know this, how can they be without excuse? I am reminded here of our Lord’s words to the Pharisees to the effect that if they had been ignorant of the truth they would be excused. Moreover, the attitude of our Lord on the cross to those who were crucifying Him was to plead for their forgiveness on the basis of their ignorance. So, when Paul says that the pagans are without excuse, is this his own belief or is it that of his invisible interlocutor? Note here that I’m not saying that the pagans are not in bondage to sin or that they are not in need of saving grace. Paul himself states this all later in his letter to the Romans. Rather, I’m wondering if the assertion of their cold-blooded culpability is really Paul’s or some other teacher with whom he is in dialogue.
On the face of it anyway, it seems a contradiction to hold that human beings are under the power of sin and death and then to go on and say that they are without excuse for behaving like people who are under that power.
Ed
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I’m with you, Ed. Campbell has raised good questions for us. If he is right, then a more coherent reading of the letter becomes possible, and we no longer need to think of justification as an “escape,” provided by the atoning death of Christ, from the retributive wrath of God (i.e., the justification model). I just wish that the internal evidence of the letter was stronger for a diatribal readng of 1:18-3:20.
Let me know what you think of my next article, where I will be discussing justification as deliverance/liberation.
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Fr Aidan,
Wright relates that it was while he was sitting in bed reading Galatians (in Greek of course) that all the tumblers fell into place, and it suddenly came to him (although living in Romans & the other Pauline writings for as long as he did/has done would say to me that it wasn’t necessarily all that sudden…) that the dik- words were about covenant membership on the basis of the faith/fulness of Christ. So your quote of Galatians and discussion of it is quite pertinent.
Here are some things with which I think Wright would agree:
-“God’s rectification is not God’s response at all. It is the first move; it is God’s initiative…”
Wright believes that the Incarnation was not “plan B” but rather that God intended to unite himself with humanity from the beginning, and that in the fullness of time he took care of the enslavement of humanity as well. In Orthodox terms, the ultimate problem is our loss of Communion with God and all that goes along with that. The Law was good in that it was the provisional way God established of maintaining and restoring Communion among the Israelites, holding them together as a people, and between Israel and God, until its fulfillment – and that it also pointed to its fulfillment, though Israel was in the same boat as the rest of humanity, with darkened understanding.
-“…we need to temporarily bracket this concern and simply allow the Apostle to speak. If we do not, we will miss the apocalyptic power and significance of Paul’s good news.”
Wright would lean more toward “eschatologic,” but as this is connected to “apocalyptic,” I think he would go there. And his whole scheme comes from simply allowing the Apostle to speak.
-“We are anticipating discussion of Romans 5-8, where Paul makes clear that he understands humanity as having been enslaved to the powers of sin and death, a slavery from which we have been liberated through the death and resurrection of the Jesus Christ.”
Wright sees Rom 8 as the center of the whole book. He sees the antitype of the Cross & Resurrection in the Exodus of Israel. The New Creation (as the ultimate appropriate Comm-union of God and God’s creation) is the point, which is definitely existential. The Christian answers to Wright’s Jewish worldview questions (Who are we? Where are we? What is wrong? What is the solution?) would, by extension from the reality of the Resurrection, tip the scale much more toward the existential – and cosmic. It was much more than a battle for the human will; that was certainly included, but not so much the ultimate point. Our darkened will and difficulty obeying are symptoms of the problem. (Remember that Zechariah, Elizabeth, Joseph the Betrothed and Simeon were all described as “righteous” – so righteous can’t mean “totally obedient/sinless.”)
-“it is the actual event of gospel proclamation that makes possible and generates the response of faith… The preaching of the apocalyptic event of Jesus Christ is itself an apocalyptic event.”
Wright is right with you/Martyn on that.
-“In the Incarnation, the eternal Son not only comes to us as God in love and grace; but he also representatively offers to the Father, as our great high priest, in our human nature, the perfect life of obedience and faith that we were unable to offer… The Son and Messiah thus fulfills in himself the covenantal vocation of Israel and of all created being, and by the Spirit we are granted participation in his freedom and faithfulness.” Yes, and… it’s also more than obedience and faith He offers, and rescuing our wills is part of the package, not the point. Again, it’s much more “cosmic” and includes “all of the above”. Human disobedience is the symptom of the ultimate problem of lack of Communion as made possible in the New Creation by the destruction of death in the Passion of Christ.
A point of difference/clarification:
“Whereas in Antioch the question was ‘With whom may we eat?’ here in Galatia the question is ‘Must we become Torah-observant Jews in order to be saved?'” Wright would see these two as being so substantially related that they are basically the same question. And the definition of “saved” would be much more congruent with the Orthodox definition of delivered, restored, healed:
“A word is necessary at this point about the meaning of the term ‘salvation’ in the context of the Jewish expectation… Even in the wisdom literature, which speaks of the righteous possessing immortal souls… there is continual concern with the actions of Israel’s god *within* history, and the immortal souls of Wisdom 3 are assured, not of a non-physical bliss, but of new responsibilities in renewed creation…
“Rather, the ‘salvation’ spoken of in the Jewish sources of this period has to do with rescue from the national enemies, restoration of the national symbols, and a state of shalom in which every man will sit under his vine or fig-tree. ‘Salvation’ encapsulates the entire future hope. If there are Christian redefinitions of the word later on, that is another question. For first-century Jews it could only mean the inauguration of the age to come, liberation from Rome, the restoration of the Temple and the free enjoyment of their own Land… If this was to happen, Israel’s god had to deal with her sins. The end of exile, in fact, would be seen as the great sign that this had been accomplished. The promise of forgiveness and that of national restoration were thus linked causally, not be mere coincidence (Zeph 3.14-20)… The means by which this was to be accomplished were variously conceived. In differing ways, sacrifice, suffering, and the experience of exile itself were held to carry redemptive significance.
“The age to come, the end of Israel’s exile, was therefore seen as the inauguration of a new covenant between Israel and her god…the post-exilic and then the post-biblical writings gave varied expression to the belief that their god would soon renew his covenant… The *idea* of ‘covenant renewal’ focused attention on these same events seen *in a particular light*. When Israel finally ‘returned from exile, and the Temple was (properly) rebuilt, and reinhabited by its proper occupant – this would be seen as comparable with the making of the covenant on Sinai. It would be the betrothal of YHWH and Israel, after their apparent divorce. It would be the real forgiveness of sins; Israel’s god would pour out his holy spirit, so that she would be able to keep the Torah properly, from the heart. It would be the ‘circumcision of the heart’ of which Deuteronomy and Jeremiah had spoken. And, in a phrase pregnant with meaning for both Jews and Christians, it would above all be the ‘kingdom of god’. Israel’s god would become in reality what he was already believed to be. He would be King of the whole world.” (NTPG 300-301)
Dear Father, please consider the above in light of what the scriptures say viz. Holy Week and its lead-up, including the words of Jesus regarding the Temple. Then also consider all the liturgical themes and words of Holy Week and Pascha: bridegroom, Adam’s exile from God, the Lord coming into his Kingdom precisely as he is dying on the cross, the cross as the demonstration of the forgiveness of sins, the Lord resting in the tomb as the Creator resting on the seventh day of Creation, Pascha as the Eighth Day and inauguration of the New Creation/the Life of the Age to Come, the rescue and liberation of humanity from death, Let God arise (as the risen Christ! within history!), let His enemies (death and corruption and everything in the human heart that keeps us enslaved to death, Rom 7.24-8.4) be scattered, the Paschal Canon… Hear the reverberations… To me, they are near-deafening… (Have you read the Barker article yet?)
Dana
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Fr. Aidan, have you read Hays’ work on this topic? I think you’d enjoy it, if not.
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No, Gabe, I haven’t had the pleasure yet of reading Hays’s work on the faithfulness of Christ. I know that his scholarly contributions have been very important on this topic. The book you cite is always the first book cited in the footnotes! I may just have to break down and order it through ILL.
Hays also contributed the article on justification for the Anchor Bible Dictionary, but I do not have access to that piece. I wish he’d write a commentary on Romans. 🙂
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Are you referring to the 6-volume Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary? I have access to that via my job at Logos Bible Software. I can email you his entry if you’d like?
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Thank you, Gabe. I quickly read through the article, paying attention to his discussion of Paul. It appears that Hays takes a line very close to that of Wright.
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Wow! With all the scholarly participation, I almost hate to chime in, but I did want to say hello and thanks for sharing the link to your blog with me, Fr Aiden. 🙂
You said: “Thus when Paul speaks about placing one’s trust in Christ, he is pointing to a deed that reflects not the freedom of the will, but rather God’s freeing of the will. In Christ, the Son of God whose faith is engagingly enacted in his death, God invaded the human orb and commenced a battle for the liberation of the human will itself. And in the case of believers, that apocalyptic invasion is the mysterious genesis of faith in Christ” (p. 276), as Paul himself personally experienced in his encounter with the risen Lord.”
It’s so cool to see this here! He whom the Son sets free SHALL be free indeed. If we were born free as so many insist, then why do we need setting free? It is only because of His intervention that we can see clearly enough to receive the sweet and reject the bitter. It isn’t about whether a free willed person will choose what is good or not, but about setting the enslaved and beleaguered captive will free enough TO choose that which is good.
Thanks again, and blessings — Cindy
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Thanks for stopping by, Cindy.
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I talked about this post on my blog yesterday (I see it in the pingback below) and wondered about the discontinuity that Martyn spoke about.
Father Kimel was kind enough to comment, saying “I think that Martyn is posing a discontinuity between resurrection life and fallen existence. See his article “The Apocalyptic Gospel in Galatians.” The life of the kingdom is something new. When it breaks into the world through the preaching of the gospel, it slays and raises to new life. I’m not sure what Martyn’s denominational commitment is, but the influence of both Barth and Kasemann upon his exegesis is clear.”
I like much of what Martyn says, even as I said the following to Father Kimel:
“…Interesting stuff, to be sure, but also makes me very uneasy in that it always leaves one wondering what one does with – how one responds to – the current moral landscape (see my last series on the theology of facts vs the theology of rhetoric). One person’s sin and oppression (either patriarchy or homosexual acts, for example) is intimately connected with that which constitutes another person’s liberation.”
For me, that is a real concern here.
Also, I would simply point out that Martin Luther was pointing the distinction between doing and faith in his famous Galatians commentary, well into his efforts to Reform the Roman Catholic church. Of course for Luther, he was talking about our faith, but the whole point was that this is something that we first passively receive – over and against all human doing….. we receive Christ’s person, His work, His faithfulness, His faith – for our salvation. This is something God works in us, and that we then continually exercise, never moving beyond the importance of regularly receiving God’s grace in word and sacraments in repentant trust.
I am starting a six part series expanding on what Father Kimel has discussed here, really unpacking and looking critically (but ultimately favorably) at the Lutheran understanding of free will. I would be honored if any reading this here would consider giving my series a chance and commenting with pushback and questions: http://wp.me/psYq5-KA
Blessings in Christ,
Nathan Rinne
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