Kinship By Covenant, Part 4: Why Then the Law?

“Paul has argued for a radically different view of salvation history from that of his Jewish opponents,” writes Scott Hahn in Kinship By Covenant. “The foundational covenant with God’s people was not at Sinai but at Moriah.” If the Abrahamic covenant takes precedence over the Mosaic, then the question Paul needs to answer is the one the apostle anticipates in Galatians 3:19, “Why then the law?”

The answer has baffled many commentators, but perhaps unnecessarily: “It was added because of transgressions....” Many argue that what Paul means here is that the law was given in order to accentuate Israel’s lawlessness and heighten their sin. Hahn, on the other hand, argues that the verse is more straightforward, that it means exactly what it says.

It seems that Paul, like Ezekiel before him (Ezek. 20), has recognized an important literary-historical pattern woven into the fabric of the Pentateuch, with its continual oscillation between narrative and law. The pattern is consistently the same: Israel sins and laws are added (p. 264).

The main episodes in this pattern of sin-to-law, Hahn argues, are Israel’s sin with the golden calf which led to the Tabernacle legislation and imposition of the priestly code, and the idolatrous apostasy of the second generation at Baal-peor which gave rise to the Deuteronomic “book of the law” being imposed on the people.

So, Hahn asks, what does Paul mean in v. 19 by “law”? Is it all law, or an additional body of laws that were added later?

Hahn insists that it must be the latter for a couple reasons that are suggested in the text itself. First, it makes more sense to think of the Deuteronomic covenant as being something that was “added” to something that came earlier (such as the Decalogue). Secondly, if “the law was added because of transgressions,” how does this comport with the view that sees the law as being the Sinaitic covenant? Nothing in the narrative of the giving of the Ten Commandments suggests that some set of transgressions occasioned the giving of the Decalogue. Plus, Paul says explicitly in Romans 4:13 that “where there is no law, there is no transgression,” meaning that whatever “law” the apostle intends in Galatians 3:19 must be given over and above some law already in existence.

The “book of the law” from whose curses Jesus redeems his people, therefore, is the Deuteronomic covenant in particular.

Discuss....

Kinship By Covenant, Part 3: Curses Rehearsed

Returning to our look at Scott Hahn's Kinship By Covenant, we now come to what is perhaps the most interesting and significant section of the book (for Reformed folks anyway). As we have seen, Hahn argues that Yahweh's initial covenant with Israel was a kinship covenant according to which the nation was constituted as God's firstborn son (Exod.4:22). After Israel's repeated rebellion and idolatry (particularly in the golden calf and Beth-peor episodes), however, Yahweh imposed on the second generation an additional covenant (the Deuteronomic) that was intended to reconfigure Israel's relationship with Yahweh into a more servile form, like that of a vassal to a suzerain rather than a son to a father. In Section Two, Hahn attempts to apply his findings to Paul's epistle to the Galatians, particularly chapters 3-4. Our goal over the next several posts will be to examine, bit by bit, the various NT passages (from Galatians and elsewhere) that bear upon this dictinction between the Sinaitic and Deuteronomic covenants.

Since there's loads of material to cover, my plan will be to keep my posts down to manageable, bite-sized portions. In this one I'll simply draw the reader's attention to Paul's Old Testament citation in Galatians 3:10: "For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, 'Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.'" The quotation is from Deuteronomy 27 in which the Deuteronomic covenant is ratified on Mount Ebal with an utterance of twelve curses, the last of which reads: "Cursed be anyone who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them" (v. 26). The following chapter records the blessings and curses attached to the covenant, but the balance hardly seems fair: there are 14 verses recording the blessings and 53 that rehearse the curses.

Since it is the Deuteronomic covenant in particular that threatens curses for disobedience and not the Sinaitic, Hahn argues, then it stands to reason that when Paul states that "all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse" he understands "works of the law" to refer to the statutes and ordinances that Yahweh imposed on Israel by the Deuteronomic covenant as they moved from infancy to rebellious adolescence.

Discuss....

Kinship By Covenant, Part 2: Israel's Original Sin

Continuing our look at Scott Hahn's Kinship By Covenant, the author in Part Two of his book applies his overview of the Old Testament covenants to the three New Testament pericopes that explicitly deal with the theme of covenant in familial terms: Luke 22, Galatians 3-4, and Hebrews 1-9. For our purposes here I will focus primarily on Hahn's thoughts on Paul's letter to the Galatians.

Hahn tips his hat to E.P. Sanders, insisting that Sanders is largely responsible for the recent "paradigm shift" in Pauline studies and the focus on the centrality of covenant in the apostle's thought. But Sanders is somewhat shortsighted, Hahn argues, in his failure to do justice to Israel's plight to which divine grace is the solution. "Sanders," writes Hahn, "underestimates the degree to which the sins of Israel had introduced tensions and discontinuity into the covenantal relationship." He continues:

Sanders paints a picture of first-century Judaism in which covenant is primary, but there is no internal tension or predicament for which Paul's Gospel of Jesus Christ provided the solution. Thus his famous but hapless conclusion: "This is what Paul finds wrong with Judaism: it is not Christianity." However... a large portion of first-century Judaism embraced considerable internal tension: God's people were under a curse (cf. Gal. 3:10) because of past transgressions (the golden calf and subsequent infidelity) and in need of eschatological deliverance. Paul claims this deliverance has taken place in Christ (pp. 240, 241).

In fact, Hahn, echoing F. Weber, proposes that "the incident of the golden calf was to Israel what the fall was to Adam," a "virtually unpardonable offense... the evil consequences [of which] were never exhausted" (emphasis original).

As I pointed out in my last post, Hahn is of the opinion that it is not the Sinaitic but the Deuteronomic covenant specifically that Paul has in mind when he speaks of the "curse of the law" from which Christ has redeemed his people. It is this covenant, imposed in response to Israel's idolatry, that is called "the book of the law," and it is this covenant that not only threatens curses the likes of which are found nowhere in the Sinaitic, but also promises that the covenant will be broken and the curses will be enacted (Deut. 30:1). In a word, the Deuteronomic covenant was "intended to fail and thus invoke a new initiative of mercy (the circumcision of the heart) from God, which Paul sees realized in Christ" (p. 249).

And just to whet your appetite for our next post, it is the Deuteronomic covenant that Paul had in mind when he wrote in Galatians 3:19, "Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions."

Discuss....

Which Kind of "Works" Do Not Justify?

Both Catholics and Protestants agree with the bare assertion that justification is by faith. It's not the "fide" in Sola Fide that causes so many problems, it's the "sola." The disagreement, in other words, is over whether it is faith alone that justifies. Exchanges like this, therefore, are not uncommon:

Protestant: "We are justified by faith."

Catholic: "I agree, but not by faith alone."

Protestant: "Why, then, does Paul always insist that we are justified by faith and not by works?"

Catholic: "Well, in those passages Paul is not really contrasting faith and works, but faith and works of the law."

Protestant: "What are 'works of the law'?"

Catholic: "'Works of the law' are those specifically Jewish ceremonial laws like circumcision and dietary restrictions. Those are the kinds of works that do not justify."

Protestant: "Have you been reading the Bishop of Durham?"

I would agree that issues like circumcision and table fellowship provide the immediate context for a book like Galatians, and I will even concede that Protestant exegesis has not always been careful to give due attention to the issues that occasioned this epistle's writing.

What we must also point out, however, is that table fellowship was only the springboard to Paul's ultimate concern, and not his ultimate concern itself. So in Galatians 3 Paul contrasts "the works of the law" with "hearing with faith," equating the former with "flesh" and the latter with "Spirit" (vv. 3-4). He then quotes the familiar Genesis passage that "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness" (v. 6). Now if ta erga tou nomou (the works of the law) is a technical phrase denoting Jewish ceremonial practices like circumcision, then does the patriarch's "justification apart from works" necessarily preclude those Spirit-wrought acts of faith, hope, and love?

To answer this question we have to inquire as to why, according to Paul, circumcision and other works of the law were of no avail. The answer to this question comes a few verses later, in v. 10:

For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, "Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them."

We see from this passage that, for Paul, the "works of the law" include but are not limited to ceremonial rites like circumcision, but extend to "all things written in the book of the law." Furthermore, the effect that the demands of the law have on us is to say, "Cursed be everyone." The conclusion, therefore, is that the "works of the law" that play no role in our justification are any human works whatsoever, whether ceremonial or moral, and the reason they play no role is because of our sin which brings about the law's "curse."

So yes, we are justified by works, but those works are Christ's, and not our own.

The Authority of the Gospel and the Hermeneutic of Suspicion

I realize that I claimed to have wrapped up our Sola Scriptura discussion, but it's my blog and I can do whatever I want (so there). But in order to keep my word, immediately after I finish this final word on the subject I will move on to Sola Fide.

One of the most significant ramifications of Galatians 1:8-9 is that there is not only authority that Paul demands, there is authority that makes demands upon him. Whether or not he could have ever preached another gospel, the fact remains that if he did he would have brought the curse he uttered down upon his own head. In other words, Paul was a servant of the gospel, a minister of the Word of Christ.

Now if it is the gospel that creates the church rather than the other way around, then the Protestant Reformation may not be quite as scandalous as Catholics consider it. As the unbroken priestly succession stretching from Aaron to Caiaphas demon-strates, the mere existence of the form does not guarantee that the power of godliness is also present.

Lastly, there is a profound "hermeneutic of suspicion" with respect to the gospel on the part of Catholics that seems, at least to this renegade Protestant, unhelpful. Obviously the Bible has its deep and mysterious passages, but we still maintain that although "All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all," it is still true that

"... those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them" (WCF I.7).

Jesus' sheep hear his voice, and this applies not just to those sheep who belong to the Church's Sacred Magisterium. Yes, the church needs ministers to expound the Word, but I still maintain that it is possible, first, for the duly ordained shepherds of the flock (from Rome or Geneva) to go astray, and second, for the sheep to recognize and reject the voice of the stranger.

A Tale of Two Struggles

I just preached on Romans 7:14-25, and it really struck me this past week how different the struggle in this chapter is from the one described in Galatians 5:16-18.

The former is a struggle between who the subject is and who he desires to be. The latter, on the other hand, is a struggle between who the subject is and who he was but is no longer.

In Romans 7, the "wretched man" says the following about himself: he is carnal (v. 14); he is sold as a slave to sin (v. 14); he has been taken captive by indwelling wickedness (v. 23); and he is powerless against temptation (v. 18). In a word, when the war is waged between his will-power to obey the law and his native corruption, the best defense he can muster is the ability to serve God in his head while sinning with his body (v. 25).

The subject of Galatians 5, however, has been "for freedom set free" by Christ (v. 1), is "called to freedom" (v. 13), is "led by the Spirit" and is consequently "not under the law," for he "belongs to Christ Jesus" (v. 24), has "crucified the flesh" (v. 24), "lives by the Spirit" (v. 26), and is therefore called to "walk by the Spirit" (v. 26).

Furthermore, the struggle in Romans 7 is a battle between ego and nomos ("I" and "law"), while the conflict in Galatians 5 is between sarx and pneuma ("flesh" and "Spirit").

And finally, in Romans 6:14 Paul draws the direct connection between being under the Mosaic law and being under sin's dominion. Now if the subject of Romans 7 explicitly claims to be under sin's dominion, we have no choice but to conclude that he is therefore under the Mosaic law. The Galatians, however, are explicitly told that they are not under the law, but rather, they are led by the Spirit.

So yes, two very real struggles are depicted in these texts. But one is from the perspective of a carnal slave who wishes he could be spiritual but can't, while the other is from the standpoint of a Spirit-led son who keeps forgetting who he is, and falling back into what he used to be.

Spirit, Flesh, and Christian Schizophrenia

The locus classicus of the flesh/Spirit battle is found in Galatians 5:17ff. Before anything is positively said about this passage, we must beware of interpreting this text in the light of our individual experience. Our existential concurrence with the "struggle" we perceive in this verse notwithstanding, it is exegesis, not experience, that must guide our hermeneutics. Gordon Fee writes:

"The flesh-Spirit contrast in Paul never appears in a context in which the issue has to do with 'how to live the Christian life'; rather, it appears in this case in an argument with those who have entered into the new eschatological life of the Spirit, but who are being seduced to return to the old aeon, to live on the basis of Torah observance, which for Paul is finally but another form of life 'according to the flesh' (cf. Gal. 3:3; 5:17-18; Phil. 3:3-6)."

In this semi-eschatological context in which Torah has expired and is no longer operative, Paul argues, the "law of the Spirit of life" is sufficient for holy living. "Flesh" versus "Spirit," therefore, do not refer to an internal/external or spirit/matter dualism, but an eschatological dualism between this age and that which is to come. Michael Horton writes:

"It becomes clear that this two-age model is concerned not with two worlds or realms, but with two ages, one inferior to the other not for any necessary or ontological reasons but for situational and ethical ones.... To be 'in the Spirit' is not to be ontologically spiritual as opposed to physical, but to be 'in Christ' rather than 'in Adam,' to belong 'to the age to come' rather than to 'this present evil age,' to be 'children of the resurrection' of whom Jesus Christ is the 'firstfruits.' The age of the Spirit is not contrasted with that of the flesh, says Ridderbos, 'first and foremost as an individual experience… but as the new way of existence which became present time with the coming of Christ.... This being in the Spirit is not a mystical, but an eschatological, redemptive-historical, category.'"

The crux of Paul’s flesh/Spirit contrast, therefore, is not that there exists within the individual believer an unceasing battle between his good and bad natures (rendering him somewhat of a spiritual schizophrenic), but that the believer, who is pneumatikos (spiritual), is called to live according to his spiritual identity and heavenly citizenship. This is new covenant sanctification, and is given the apostolic designation of "walk[ing] by the Spirit, and [not gratifying] the desires of the flesh" (Gal. 5:16)

Heaven and Earth, Abraham and Moses

We've been talking about how Paul could say, on the one hand, that the law's purpose is to stop every mouth and silence the boasting of man, but then on the other hand claim that he was blameless with respect to the law's demand for righteousness.

I think he meant what he said in both cases. Accordingly, in neither case was he talking about a Pharisaical or legalistic perversion of the law. Let me explain....

In Paul's allegorical interpretation of Abraham's family, he likens the patriarch's handmaid, Hagar, to the covenant made at Mount Sinai, which both produces bondage and points to the present, earthly Jerusalem. Sarah, however, corresponds to "the Jerusalem which is above," and points to the heavenly and eternal realities promised in the Abrahamic Covenant.

This is key to having a properly formed covenant theology. The Abrahamic Covenant promised a heavenly reward that is received simply by faith in the coming Messiah. The Mosaic Covenant, on the other hand, promised earthly, temporal, and typological rewards (long life in the land). And further, to retell the story of Adam's failure and typify the work of true Israelite and second Adam, the earthly blessings promised in the Mosaic Covenant were gained by obedience to the law. The principle that Paul extracts from the Mosaic Covenant is "Do this and live" (Rom. 10:5; Gal. 3:12; cf. Lev. 18:5).

But think about it: How could God expect Israel to obey his law in that complete, perfect, Romans 2 sense? Weren't they fallen and sinful? On that standard, wouldn't they have gone into exile the moment they crossed the Jordan?

Of course. This is why, in order to maintain the theocracy and tell the Adamic story they were supposed to tell, the "righteousness" God required of Israel consisted of having a relative measure of national fidelity to the law's demands.

The mistake of the Pharisees, then, was not that they thought the law demanded works (which it did) or that they thought they had earned the righteousness that Moses demanded (which they did). But their mistake was that they confused the relative fidelity required by the national covenant to retain the earthly land, with the perfect fidelity required by the creation covenant to secure the heavenly land.

And as I hope to flesh out later, conflating the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants (the way the New Perspective on Paul does) is an easy way to morph law and gospel into golawspel. And that doesn't save anyone....

Remarks on "Sarx"

We've been looking at the warfare between "Spirit" (pneuma) and "flesh" (sarx), and my argument has been that Romans 7 does not describe this battle (the struggle there is between the Jew and the Mosaic law that binds him). The battle in Galatians 5, however, does effect us as New Covenant saints, but the warfare is not an internal struggle between the good and bad sides of our nature, but a clash on a more cosmic scale. Let me explain....

In the Old Testament, the word for "flesh" (baśar) denoted physical corpses (Gen. 2:21, 23) and, by extension, came to connote humanity and its frailty (Gen. 6:12; Ps. 78:39). Paul's use of "flesh," however, rarely denotes "physical bodies," but often describes the human condition (life kata sarka or en sarki). Flesh, in this sense, is not pejorative but simply descriptive of natural human existence.

Where Paul's use of sarx is unique, however, is in its eschatological formulation. Because the resurrection of Christ ushered in the power and dynamic of the age to come (which the apostle calls "Spirit"), everything associated with "this present age," including Torah, has passed into the realm of "flesh" (Eph. 1:14; 4:30; II Cor. 5:5, 14-17; Rom. 7:4-7). Christian living, therefore, is described by Paul as "walking not according to the flesh [this present earthly age] but according to the Spirit [the heavenly age to come]."

Paul's use of sarx, therefore, highlights the progression from anthropological creatureliness (humanity) to theological creatureliness (sinful humanity), and finally, to eschatological existence (life in accordance with this age).

New Covenant saints, therefore, are "Spiritual" (pneumatikoi), not spiritual schizophrenics with an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. Our calling is to live out our heavenly citizenship in the here and now, being seated in glory while standing in the path of sinners.

Or as the beloved German reformer put it: Simul iustus et peccator.

Spirit, Flesh, and Spiritual Schizophrenia

How often have we heard that, living within each believer, is a "good nature" and a "bad nature" which contantly vie for our allegiance? Sometimes the following illustration is used to bring the point home:

"The good part of us (the spirit) and the bad part of us (the flesh) are like two dogs in a fight. Which will win? Well, obviously the one we feed the most."

[Insert warning against secular music here.]

This principle certainly makes sense on the canine level, but is it Pauline? Is it really the case that we each have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other? And further, is the NIV's rendering legitimate, which translates sarx (flesh) as "sinful nature"?

I'll elaborate in future posts, but for now I'll just state my position: Neither the battle within the "wretched man" of Romans 7 nor the warfare between the "Spirit" and the "flesh" in Galatians 5 has anything to do with an internal struggle within the believer. The former is indeed an existential struggle, but not one that New Covenant saints need concern themselves with (see my post on Postmortem Remarriage below). The latter, Galatians 5, is a struggle in which believers engage, but the warring categories (flesh and Spirit) are not internal but external, not micro but macro, not individual but eschatological.

To live under a two-dogs-fighting paradigm for sanctification betrays a woefully under-realized eschatology. If we accept this as normative for the Christian life, we may as well put a bumper sticker on our car that reads, "Christians Aren't Perfect, Just Forgiven."

Thoughts?