Puzzling Passages in Paul: Forty Conundrums Calmly Considered

I

Paul and the Law

Chapter 1

Are Christians antinomians?

(Romans 7:6; 10:4)

In Romans 7 : 6 , Paul says, Now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, and in Romans 10 : 4 , he says, Christ is the end of the law. Don’t these verses suggest that Christians are entirely free from the law, or, in modern theological terms, that Christians are antinomians? N. T. Wright observes on the word end (Greek, teleios ) in 10 : 4 : usually translated ‘end,’ this can, like the English ‘end’ itself, mean both ‘cessation, termination,’ and ‘goal, fulfilment.’ At this point lexicography can offer us options, but exegesis must decide which better fits the flow of thought. ¹

How can Paul assert what he does in Romans 7:6 and 10:4, and yet write in Romans 7:12, The law is holy, righteous, and good? How can he also say that the law comes from God and leads to life (7:10 and 22)? Paul appears to reflect an ambiguity that also occurs in the Gospels. In Matthew 5:17, Jesus says, Do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly, I tell you, not one stroke of a letter will pass from the law until all this is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. On Paul, D. E. H. Whitley asserts:

St. Paul’s statements about the Law would appear to be in flat contradiction with each other. In its favour, he says that it is one of the privileges of Israel (Rom.

9

:

4

), and that it has been a kind of tutor (paidagōgos) in charge of us till Christ should come (Gal.

3

:

24

). Against it, he urges that it intruded, to multiply [i.e., with the effect of] law-breaking (Rom.

5

:

20

), and that those who rely on obedience to it are under a curse (Gal.

3

:

10

).²

How can Christians simultaneously be obliged to obey the law and also be told that they are free from the law, which leads only to death? In broad terms, the Lutheran tradition regards the law as a negative force. In this tradition, the New English Bible (NEB) translates, Christ ends the law, and (perhaps ironically, for a Catholic translation) the Jerusalem Bible (JB) translates, the Law has come to an end with Christ. Likewise, the King James Bible/Authorized Version (KJV/AV) and the English Standard Version (ESV) both favor end. On the other hand, the Calvinist tradition regards the law as largely positive. The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) translates, The law has found its fulfilment in Christ, and the New International Version (NIV) translates, Christ is the culmination of the law. N. T. Wright comments that after a period of huge popularity, the Lutheran interpretation is now declining in favor, partly because of Paul’s intensely Jewish background, and partly because of the varied meanings of telos. How convincing is this recent reaction against the traditional view?

Part of the answer is that the law is used to convey different meanings in both Paul and the other New Testament texts. Israel regarded God’s revelation of the law to them as the greatest possible privilege. The law, after all, revealed what conduct was pleasing to God. A supreme example of this is the Ten Commandments. Exclusive worship of the one God and utter loyalty to him is what God expects from his covenant people, as the first three commandments assert; so is the fourth commandment, namely to observe one day in seven as a day devoted to him.

The fifth to the tenth commandments are likewise revelations of God’s will for humankind. To honor one’s parents, to refrain from murder, adultery, theft, and false testimony also reflect his will for human beings. To covet, as Paul later expounds, is to engage in a very deep source of dissatisfaction that leads to various kinds of sin. In as far as obeying the law signifies obedience to the declared will of God, Christians are no more freed from the law than Israel. My uncle, Dr. Ernest Kevan, wrote a book that he entitled The Grace of Law. He argued that grace and law amounted to the same thing, citing especially the Puritan Anthony Burgess (1600–1663) and other Puritans in defense of the moral law for Christians.

Other examples of this positive use occur in Paul. Whiteley, again, writes: "In respect of content the Torah included stirring accounts of what God had done for Israel. The fact that the legal ordinances were set in the framework of the Exodus makes it fair to say that the law was not mere ‘moralism,’ but included the moral requirements of God, placed in a framework of salvation-history, and in particular of God’s covenants with his people."³ The law, he continues, was the expression, whether oral or written, of Israel’s daily way of life, and was the means of keeping alive their sense of God. After the exile, much changed. With the destruction of the temple and its sacrifices, only one thing remained: the law and its regulations. The law seemed to become "the link with God."⁴ Paul the Rabbi never lost sight of these two differing conceptions of the law.

But law has other meanings also. W. D. Davies, in his essay Paul and the Law identifies four distinct meanings of the law: (i) the commandments (mitzōt); (ii) accounts of Israel’s history; (iii) the cosmic function of Torah, especially in the Wisdom tradition; and (iv) Torah as an expression of total culture, the whole of the revealed will of God in the universe, nature, and society.⁵ Sometimes the law is further used almost metaphorically to mean principle or rule. Paul can speak of the law of the Spirit of life (Rom 8:2). In Romans 7:21 the NJB actually translates: So I find this rule: ‘that for me, where I want to do nothing but good, evil is close at my side.’ The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) renders the same verse: So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. Clearly here law means rule or principle as the NJB implies. Law in Romans 7:23 repeats this use.

A mass of scholarly literature witnesses to Paul’s varied uses of the law. These include, for example, F. F. Bruce, James D. G. Dunn, Heikki Räisänen, E. P. Sanders, H-J. Schoeps, Graham Stanton, M. Winger, and many others.⁶ All demonstrate Paul’s varying concepts and attitudes to the law.

In Romans 7:14–25 we see what Fitzmyer calls, The cry of human beings enslaved by the law.⁷ But even here on this one specific subject Paul betrays two opposing attitudes to the law. In 7:14, he calls it spiritual, in 7:16 it is good, and in 7:22, Paul delights in it (Fitzmyer’s translation, and NRSV). Yet the law produces an internal conflict, which makes Paul exclaim: Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? (v. 25). Through the law, humankind or Israel is in bondage to sin (7:14, Fitzmyer’s translation; sold into slavery under sin, NRSV), and I do not do what I want (7:20). Paul expounds the victory through Christ in chapter 8, where it is clear that the Holy Spirit becomes the positive and effective personal force that takes over from the negative, if originally unintended, effects of the law. Through the Spirit, God has done what the law could not do (Rom 8:1–7).

Wright concludes, In 10:4 Paul does not intend to declare the law’s abrogation in favour of a different ‘system,’ but rather to allow the Messiah himself to be the climax of the long story of God and Israel, the story of told tales, in which it plays a vital, though puzzling part.⁸ This appears to do justice to the various meanings and nuances that Paul appears to ascribe to the law. It also coheres with the verdict of W. D. Davies: It was only a messianic event of revelation and cosmic significance that could have induced Paul to reassess the Law as he did.⁹ The conclusion is that Paul in no way encouraged Christians to ignore the law of God, even though Davies admits (perhaps with tongue in cheek), To Christians in Galatia Paul would have appeared to be an antinomian, but to those in Corinth a disciplinarian, if not an incipient legalist!¹⁰

1. Wright, The Letter to the Romans,

655

.

2. Whiteley, The Theology of St. Paul,

76

.

3. Whiteley, The Theology of St Paul,

77

.

4. Whiteley, The Theology of St Paul,

78

.

5. Davies, Paul and the Law,

4

.

6. Bruce, The Curse of the Law; Dunn, Theology of Paul the Apostle,

128

–

61

; Dunn (ed.), Paul and the Mosaic Law; Räisänen, Paul and the Law; E. P. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People; Stanton, "The Law of Moses and the Law of Christ: Gal.

3

:

1

—

6

:

2

"; and Winger, By What Law? The Meaning of Nomos in the Letters of Paul.

7. Fitzmyer, Romans,

472

–

79

.

8. Wright, The Letter to the Romans,

658

.

9. Davies, Paul and the Law,

8

.

10. Davies, Paul and the Law,

9

.

Chapter 2

Did God give the law to increase sin?

(Romans 5:20)

Paul writes, But law came in, with the result that the trespass multiplied; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more (Rom 5 : 20 ). The puzzle is how to square this with Paul’s statement elsewhere that The law is holy, and the law is spiritual (Rom 7 : 12 , 14 ). Increasing sin does not seem like a holy or spiritual purpose. I have elsewhere in this book addressed the varied meanings of the law (e.g., in Rom 10 : 4 , Christ is the end of the law). ¹¹ However, even Paul’s contrasting declaration, Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more (Rom 5:20b) seems to confirm that the purpose of the law being given was so that sin increased.

The NRSV translation came in is said to represent the Greek term pareisēlthen, allegedly a double compound indicating the intervention of an interloper. Danker proposes to slip in, to come in as a side issue, and Sanday and Headlam suggest to come in as a sort of afterthought.¹² Jewett comments, Sin is a usurper, but grace is triumphant.¹³ Cranfield, however, disputes the negative overtone of the word. It simply reports, he says, the undisputed fact that the law was given at a later date than Adam’s fall.¹⁴

The key point, however, is that what the law increased was not sin but the awareness of sin as sin. Paul explicitly writes: What should we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet’ (Rom 7:7). Paul describes the dilemma that faces humankind: If I do what I do not want . . . sin dwells within me (7:20). Before the arrival of the law of Moses, even the narrative in Genesis 1–3 illustrates the point that until God’s command came to them our first parents would not have been conscious of sin as sin. In Cranfield’s phrase, one purpose of the law was that sin might be known as sin . . . in the sense of becoming manifest as sin . . . [as] conscious and willful disobedience.¹⁵

N. T. Wright comments, What ‘sin’ would have meant in the early dawn of the human race it is impossible to say other than a turning away from obedient relationship with the loving Creator.¹⁶ But with the coming of the law of Moses, it became clear that [t]o be a ‘sinner’ is, to be sure, more than a mere status. It involves committing actual sins.¹⁷ By contrast, he continues, Christ’s active obedience deals with people’s sins. Anders Nygren comments, It is God’s will that, where there is sin, it be made manifest (Gal. 3:19).¹⁸ But he then adds concerning Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more (v. 20), [t]hereby the situation is entirely changed.¹⁹ Finally, Käsemann clinches the point. He writes, "Paul finds in the law no legitimate answer to the question of eternal life. . . . The pious who set themselves under it also stand under the reign of Adam. . . . To this there corresponds afresh the eschatological extravagance of grace in the hyperbolical [Greek] hyperperisseuein [superabound]."²⁰

11. Are Christians antinomians? (chapter

1

).

12. Danker, BDAG,

774

; and Sanday and Headlam, Epistle to the Romans,

139

.

13. Jewett, Romans,

389

.

14. Cranfield, Epistle to the Romans,

292

.

15. Cranfield, Epistle to the Romans,

293

.

16. Wright, The Letter to the Romans,

526

.

17. Wright, The Letter to the Romans,

529

.

18. Nygren, Commentary on Romans, 226

.

19. Nygren, Commentary on Romans,

227

.

20. Käsemann, Commentary on Romans,

158

.

Chapter 3

If it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin yet I delight in the law

(Romans 7:7, 22)