identifying Paul (again)

I'm currently reading through Tim Gombis's introductory volume, Paul: A Guide for the Perplexed (T&T Clark International, 2010). Of course, as I mentioned in a previous post, I read Rodrigo Morales's published doctoral dissertation, The Spirit and the Restoration of Israel: New Exodus and New Creation Motifs in Galatians (Mohr Siebeck, 2010), last week. So all things Paul have been on my mind these last few days.

Gombis's discussion of Paul is introductory and pitched at beginning ("perplexed") students, so of course there is lots of room to nitpick and complain about lack of nuance or precision. But the goal of the book isn't to provide nuance or precision; it's to speak in broad strokes and get people into the discussion. Details can come later.

So I hope it's clear that I'm not nitpicking here (or at least I don't think I am). And I should also disclose that I know Gombis personally, and I've found him to be one of the nicer, more congenial younger biblical scholars. I think he and I think a lot alike. But as Gombis briefly introduces Paul's letter to the Galatian communities, he attributes the problem Paul confronts to a "very conservative Jewish Christian faction . . . seeking to make certain that the Christian communities that sprang up in Asia Minor were thoroughly Jewish" (25). A little later, Gombis explains that Paul bristles against the claim that gentile converts "must adopt a Jewish way of life." I'm not sure what to make of Gombis's use of the term Jewish; even (or perhaps especially!) in an introductory volume such as this I think a little more nuance is necessary.

The problem comes down to this: If Paul sets out to correct the claims of the "agitators" (see Gal. 5.10) that gentiles "must adopt a Jewish way of life" (25), what should we think Paul set up as an alternative to that Jewish lifestyle? Should the converts remain gentiles? If so, we need to explain the continued negative references to gentiles in Paul's letters (e.g., Eph. 2.11–12; Gombis accepts Pauline authorship of all thirteen letters attributed to Paul). Should the converts become Christians? If so, we need to explain how Paul never uses the word Christian in any of his letters.

Since neither of these terms—gentile or Christian—will work for Paul, the question remains: What should we think Paul set up as an alternative to the Jewish lifestyle the "agitators" were advocating to Paul's gentile converts in Galatia? I think the only answer that will work, historically or theologically, is, Paul proposes a differently Jewish lifestyle to the universal Torah-obedience advocated by his opponents. If I learned anything from Morales (which I wouldn't expect Gombis to cite even if they weren't both published in 2010), Paul understands his vocation as "apostle to the nations/gentiles" in terms of bringing the blessing of Abraham to bear upon the nations of the Roman Empire, and this precisely because God has poured out his Spirit upon his people Israel and brought an end to their experiences of the covenantal curses (exile and, especially, death).

In other words, and to sum up Morales's point and wrap up this post, the problem Paul has with Torah in Galatians isn't that it's Jewish. The problem is that Israel has failed to keep the terms of the covenant and has brought upon itself the covenantal curses—exile and death (see Deut. 27–30)—rather than the covenantal blessings. But God has not abandoned his people or his promises to them; instead, Israel's messiah, Jesus, overcame the covenantal curses brought on by Israel's failure to observe Torah. (Notice the problem isn't Torah itself but the people's failure to keep Torah.) Now the gentile Galatian believers have a choice to make. Do they take on a Jewish lifestyle defined by Torah? Or do they take on a Jewish lifestyle defined by the blessing of Abraham, now unleashed on God's people in the aftermath of God's Spirit poured out on Israel and a new heart given them? This latter might be what we mean when we refer to a "Christian lifestyle," but we need to recognize (and teach others to recognize) that in all likelihood, for Paul, this was simply a better way to be Jewish.

a Pauline transformation of Jewish eschatology?

I have been reading the published version of Rodrigo Morales's PhD dissertation (Duke, 2007), The Spirit and the Restoration of Israel: New Exodus and New Creation Motifs in Galatians (WUNT 2/282; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), which I'm reviewing for IBR. This is an excellent little book (only two hundred pages) that is very clearly and logically structured, cogently and carefully argued, and concisely written. As a brief introduction, Morales proceeds in three basic steps:

• First, he briefly establishes the Status Quaestionis of the role of the Spirit of God in Paul and, especially, his letter to the Galatians. At a pivotal point in the letter Paul asks, "Was it by works of the Law that you received the Spirit? Or was it by hearing of faith?" While the answer is clear (Paul simply could not be proposing that the Galatians received the Spirit via Torah-observance!), the significance of the Spirit for Pauline thought and rhetoric is not. Morales argues that the connection between the outpouring of God's Spirit and the restoration of Israel provides the key to understanding Paul's argument in Galatians.
• Second, he surveys the intersection of God's gift of his Spirit and the promise of Israel's restoration among the prophetic Hebrew biblical writings (specifically, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Joel) in Chapter 2 and among Second Temple Jewish texts in Chapter 3. His aim is not to identify how Paul reads either biblical or extracanonical texts but rather to assess how Paul takes up and employs themes and concepts current among (roughly) contemporaneous expressions of Jewish thought. Key among these themes are, among others, new creation and new exodus imagery, the heart and its need for renewal, and the sonship of God's people.
• Third, Morales turns to Galatians 3–4 (Chapter 4) and Galatians 5–6 (Chapter 5) to bring the material from previous chapters to bear on the exegetical discussion. I am currently at the beginning of Chapter 4, so I cannot say very much at all about Morales's hermeneutic or exegetical work. But his handling of the texts in Chapters 2–3 has been responsible and cautious, and so I don't anticipate problems here.

Except . . .

Morales makes a comment almost in passing (it's even in a footnote) regarding the shift in late-Second Temple Judaism from metaphorical understandings of "resurrection" (and of "death," too) toward literal interpretations. He says, "The key transformation that Paul brought about was the idea that one figure would be raised in the middle of history, and that others would somehow participate both anticipatorily and ultimately in that eschatological life" (79, n. 5; my emphasis). I have some problems with the phrase "middle of history," because I'm not sure that helpfully frames Paul's rhetoric. Would Paul affirm the present as "the middle of history"? Or would he see in Christ's resurrection the dawning of the new age and the fading of the old? But given the complexities of the dynamics of what are commonly referred to in Christian theology as the "now-and-not-yet" (complexities which Morales recognizes), we likely won't solve that problem here.

But I have bigger problems with the idea that this was, somehow, a "key transformation" for which Paul was responsible. I'm not at all opposed to the idea that individuals affect, sometimes dramatically, how and what their cultures think. And clearly Paul is one of those individuals. But after reading Jerry Sumney's essay, "'Christ died for us': Interpretation of Jesus' Death as a Central Element of the Identity of the Earliest Church," pp. 147–72 in Reading Paul in Context: Explorations in Identify Formation (FS William Campbell; Edited by K. Ehrensperger and J. B. Tucker; LNTS 428; London: T&T Clark International, 2010), I'm a bit more suspicious of the image of Paul-the-theological-revolutionary than I previously was.

Certainly Paul takes this idea—viz., that the future resurrection was inaugurated and even is proleptically exprienced in Christ's resurrection—and advances it considerably. But here's the question Sumney has taught me to ask: Is it really likely that the pre-Pauline church had not already developed some idea of the inaugurating/proleptic/"middle of history" resurrection of Jesus? How would the earliest Christians, whom Paul the Pharisee (who almost certainly accepted the notion of bodily resurrection in the age to come even before his experience on the Damascus road) saw fit to persecute, have connected their eschatological ideas of resurrection with the experiences of Jesus as raised "according to the Scriptures" (see 1 Cor. 15.3–5)? Is it not more likely that this was one of the ideas Paul found incomprehensible, and so he sought to stamp them out from Israel? Can't we understand the failure of the disciples to understand Jesus' so-called "Passion predictions" in Mark's Gospel (almost certainly later than Paul's letters) as suggesting that this very point caused problems for Jesus' followers prior to their experiences of Easter?

Of course, I'm only raising questions; I have very little to offer by way of answers. In many areas Paul was almost certainly theologically avant-garde. But in some areas—perhaps in many areas—Paul inherited ideas from those around him, whether Jewish, Greek, or even early (or proto-)Christian influences. In the balance of things, do we really want to think that Jesus' earliest followers had to wait for Paul to come around before they began wrestling with the connection between pre-Christ[ian] eschatological ideas about resurrection and the Easter Event? I find this very unlikely.

Still, to end on a positive note, Morales's book is very easy to read. Even if you find it difficult, the thesis he's pursuing (and the evidence he considers) is well worth the effort it takes to access his argument.