397

 STRETCHING THE BOUNDARIES OF THE COVENANT:
THE NEW PERSPECTIVE ON PAUL AND

Stretching the Boundaries of the Covenant: The New Perspective on Paul and the
Abolishment of the Jewish Law in the Classic Christian Tradition.
After E.P. Sanders’ “New Perspective on Paul”, the overflooding “Paul and the Law”
discussions took a different path. The relationship between Judaism and Christianity in
the first three centuries were reexamined, focusing on the divergence between the two
and the role of the law in salvation. This work explores different perspectives on Paul's
view of the law, including the Classical Perspective, starting with Augustine through the
Middle Ages until 19th century German scholarship, in sight of the New Perspective on
Paul in the 1980s and recent works on Third Perspective that seeks to give biblical law
its proper place in the plan of salvation. The thesis concludes by highlighting the ongoing
debates and complexities surrounding Pauline studies and the interpretation of the law in
Christianity.
Key Words: Biblical Law – Paul and the Law – God's Covenant – New Perspective on
Paul – E. P. Sanders – Jewish Law – Comparative Religion – Sabbath, Circumcision and
Food Laws – Early Church – Ten Commandments – Abolition of the Law.
VI
ABBREVIATIONS
AD Anno Domini
CPP Classic Perspective on Paul
HTS Harvard Theological Review
LXX Septuagint version of the Bible
NPP New Perspective on Paul
NT New Testament
OT Old Testament
WWI World War I
WWII World War II
VIII
CONTENTS
TEZ ONAY SAYFASI II
INTIHAL YAZILIM RAPORU III
ÖZET IV
ABSTRACT V
ABBREVIATIONS VI
CONTENTS VIII
INTRODUCTION 1
I. The Origin of the Research Topic 1
II. The Subject Matter 3
III. Terminology 6
IV. Topic and Structure of the Thesis 8
PART I - Classical Perspective 9
1. The First 3 Centuries: 9
2. Pre-Reformation Perspective of the Law in Christianity 11
3. Post-Reformation Notions of Law. 12
PART II - New Perspective 13
4. The New Perspective of Law in Christian Tradition 13
5. Post New Perspectives of Biblical Law 16
V. Revised Literature 17
VI. Objectives 21
PART I - CLASSICAL PERSPECTIVE 22
Chapter 1 - The First Three Centuries 23
1.1 The Separation of the Ways 23
IX
1.2 70 AD as a Turning Point 32
1.2 The Law and the Church Fathers 37
1.3 The Law After Constantine 43
Chapter 2 - Classical Perspectives of Law in Christianity 48
2.1 East vs. West - Ideas of Law 48
2.2 Fundamental Distinctions of Law 55
2.3 Doctors of the Church, Scholasticism, and the Law 59
2.4 Reformation and Law 66
Chapter 3 - Post Reformation Notions of Law in Christian Traditions 76
3.1 17th and 18th Centuries Perspectives on Biblical Law 76
3.1.2 European Illuminism 83
3.2 19th Century Perspectives 84
3.3 20th Century Perspectives on Biblical Law 89
3.3.1 Covenantal Theology 90
PART II - THE NEW PERSPECTIVE 97
Chapter 4 - The New Perspective and the Contemporary Study of
Biblical Law 98
4.1 Kristen Stendhal’s Attack to the Basis of Lutheranism 98
4.2 E. P. Sanders and the New Perspective 100
4.3 James Dunn and the Covenantal Nomism 106
4.4.1 Sabbath 113
4.4.2 Food Laws 123
4.4.3 Circumcision 129
4.4.4 Jesus and the Law 135
4.4.5 Paul and the Law 145
Chapter 5. - NPP and the Contemporary Notions of Biblical Law. 151
X
5.1 Catholic / Orthodox Traditional Perspectives on Law 151
5.2 Protestant / Reformed Theology Responses to NPP 156
5.2.1 Their View on the NPP 158
5.3 Other Contemporary Perspectives of Law and Their View of the NPP
160
5.3.1 Paul Within Judaism Perspective 160
5.3.2 Noahide Law 163
5.3.3 Dispensational Perspective 164
5.3.4 Eternal Law 168
5.3.5 The Gift Perspective 170
5.4 A Third Perspective at Sight 171
Conclusion 174
References 178
1
INTRODUCTION
According to conventional Christian wisdom, the Jewish law has been abolished
by the event of Jesus' death, and Christians are consequently exempt from
adhering to the biblical laws, may they be the ten commandments or dietary rules
as Jesus’ followers are part of a “New covenant” with God. In the classical
Christian understanding, the concept of connection between God and humanity
is founded on God's promises of forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and His kindness
and mercy. It is an unmerited gift formalized in the so-called “covenant of grace”
that guarantees Christians a close connection with God and the reward of eternal
life. Jesus' death, burial, and ascension served as the foundation for this
covenant. Believers are given the gift of eternal life and peace with God through
the substitutionary atonement of Jesus. In this dynamic, Christians often see the
law becoming blurred by the doctrine of unmerited salvation, creating a tenuous
line between a law-free religion and a religion of the law of liberty. A Christian
theological system called "covenantal theology" is founded on the core idea that
God makes covenants with people throughout the Bible. It asserts that the
relationship between God and people is organized around several covenants,
ranging from the first covenant made with Adam and Eve in the Garden to the
last covenant made with Jesus Christ. This work shall focus on the importance of
the Biblical law to the Christian, bringing arguments of religious scholars, New
Testament exegesis scholars, and religious tradition’s leaders about the topic,
also comparing with the latest development of the Pauline Studies in academia.
I. The Origin of the Research Topic
The author lived in the Middle East for several years, and he realized that it was
common for Muslim friends to reject eating at his house due to an assumption
that every Christian ate pork and drank alcohol. The author, however, due to his
background in Adventist Theology, did not only not consume pork nor alcohol but
also had a set of laws that came quite strange to Muslims who had never heard
2
about the concept of Law in Christianity. Being exposed to religious studies in
Turkey, mainly works of other Christian and Islamic traditions, the author
endeavored to search the history of interpretation of the Biblical law. The author
realized that a large portion of the reading on religious studies frequently brought
up the topic of the law as a counterargument to the core doctrine of grace, as it
is known in Christianity. This duality picked the author’s interest, and as soon as
research began, it was discovered an inexhaustible supply of literature that
covered this very debate on the subjects of Pauline Studies, law, the concept of
faith, covenant, and grace. The author saw that neither contemporaneous
Christian traditions nor mainstream Christianity paid enough attention to these
widely debated academic problems. Most of the literature that was read pointed
to the Christian notion of grace as the primary distinction between the Jewish and
Christian traditions. However, when exposed to different religious ideas of law as
well as academic works related to the topic, a pattern started to emerge, called
by scholars “covenantal nomism,” which was the term coined by E. P. Sanders in
1977 in his book “Paul and Palestinian Judaism." 1 The term was used to describe
a form of religious belief based on an intimate relationship between God and his
people. This covenantal relationship is a legally binding agreement between God
and his people. The divinity would protect and provide for its human counterpart
if it obeyed his laws and commandments. Nevertheless, even more intriguing was
the socio-religious aspect of the term, which saw Israel as the chosen ethnic
group, where ritual norms as aspects of the covenant guaranteed acceptance of
the individual not only spiritually but also socially. This socio-religious perspective
is seen in many faiths, including classical Christian orthodoxy, Judaism, and
Islam. Law research spawned entire fields of study, such as the separation of
ways between Christianity and Judaism, legal tradition during the Middle Ages,
Pauline studies, and others. It was crucial to quickly explain some of the
discussions on these areas and how they would juxtapose with the law issue to
have a brief and focused study of abolishing the law in Christianity. The title
"Stretching the Boundaries of the Covenant" refers to modern scholarship's
1 E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion
(Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1977).
3
understanding of Paul, which sees the birth of the Christian tradition as related to
Old Testament promises about non-Jews' fate. The socio-historical approach to
the study of the New Testament assisted the author in recognizing a gap between
current discussions and popular debates of law, which exceeds the concept of
sola scriptura in the protestant understanding of the biblical scriptures. As an
Adventist, the author was inspired by this research topic, as he was exposed to
much of the Adventist literature, attempting to engage in the discussions between
law and grace in the New Testament. Commonly, even in the Adventist tradition,
scholars tend to see the law of the Ten Commandments in a legalistic, 19thcentury
framework, which sees Paul’s writings through the same lens as Luther
in a species of dialectic proposed by scholars of that age. This study aims to
produce a descriptive analysis of the concept of Law in Christian tradition, using
the present discussion of the New Perspective narrative as a jumping-off point.
II. The Subject Matter
When researching the abolishment of God’s law for Christianity, some topics in
Biblical history and exegesis should be considered. The first of these is the socalled
“Separation of the Ways” topic (a term used in academia to describe the
separation between Jewish and Christian traditions which began in the second
century). To understand how the Jewish and Christian traditions separated into
two different traditions is essential to understand the dynamics of the Second
Temple period and the early rabbinic period (roughly 515 B.C.E. to 590 C.E.) by
shared religious customs, occasional intermarriage, and the lack of a legal
framework defining the differences between the two religions. The nascent
Christian tradition initially saw itself as a sect within Judaism, not a distinct
religion. Traditionally, there was no explicit reference to separating the two until
the Council of Jerusalem in 50 A.D. According to traditional scholarship, the
Council of Jerusalem, convened by the apostles to decide whether Gentiles had
to observe the Law of Moses, marked a concrete separation between Judaism
and Christianity and has been cited by both Jewish and Christian sources to
illustrate the distinct identity of the two religions.
4
The centrality of Law as Fundamental Discussion
Another topic that was briefly overviewed was the historical fact of how
Christianity and the law have a lengthy and convoluted history together. Although
the law is typically not so often considered, the opposite fact is that it is neither
completely rejected by the majority. Christian philosophers throughout history
have contended that the law is a necessary burden. 19th-century scholars like
Ferdinand Weber concluded that if we contrast Christianity with Judaism, we will
see that Judaism was a religion that has in its center the law and righteousness.
And Christianity, on the other hand, had its basis in grace and freedom.2 Despite
Christianity in its various forms never completely renouncing the use of the Law,
It has never specified which laws are bounding after the event of the cross.
Instead, many commentaries, scholars, and church conventions have tried to
establish laws out of the New Testament writings (i.e., Jesus’s sayings and Paul’s
epistles), leaving an unclear existence of Laws by which a Christian should live.
Sola Scriptura and the Delimitation of the Discussion of Law.
By searching over the word Law, the researcher could not get more overwhelmed
by the number of available materials concerning the discussion; therefore,
delimiting the subject was crucial for this work. When discussing law, one should
be careful in picking sources due to the subject's relevance to many areas of
knowledge. This work tried to delineate the term using the concept of Sola
Scriptura that emerged after the Protestant Reformation. Sola Scriptura is a
Protestant Christian theological theory that holds Scripture (The Bible in the
Christian tradition, The Torah, Zabur and Injeel in the Islamic tradition, and the
Tanakh and New Testament in the Jewish tradition). It maintains that the Bible is
the exclusive source of ultimate authority for Christians and that all other sources
of authority and truth must be subordinated to it. Martin Luther (1483-1546), a
Protestant reformer, originally articulated the Sola Scriptura thesis in his 95
Theses of 1517. Luther said that the Bible is the only authoritative source of
2 Scot McKnight - eds B. J. Oropeza, Perspectives on Paul (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker
Academic, 2020), 107.
5
Christian theology and denied the necessity for any other source of authority,
such as the Church Fathers or Church tradition. It looked safer to delimit this work
according to Sola Scriptura's contents of the law, where only its content and
context are utilized by the discourse of Law instead of the whole interpretative
tradition accumulated throughout centuries.
Paul at the crossroads between Law and Faith
In this discussion concerning law in Sola Scriptura and its relevance for the
Christian, the third subject of Pauline's writings takes the stage. Paul is
considered the “Giant of the Faith '' in Christianity; he is the one who settled the
hermeneutical principles of typology of Israel’s history, which launched the basis
for the theological interpretation giving grounds to Christianity throughout the
centuries. Adolf von Harnack, a prestigious New Testament scholar of the 19th
century, said that the history of Christian theology could be understood as the
history of the reactions to Paul in the church by which such reactions created
turning points in history.3 And, as Magnus Zetterholm says, “the study of Paul has
been negatively affected by Christian normative theology.”4 The systematization
of Paul was a stumbling block to the study of law for centuries. From the early
fathers of the church up until the reform, the Law seemed unimportant in Christian
theology due to this systematization.
Abolishment of the Law vs. Changes of the Law
This work has tackled some Mainstream Christian scholars' opinions regarding
the law as still relevant and applicable to modern believers. However, they felt
that Jesus and the apostles in the New Testament had modified and
reinterpreted it. Although they believed that the law was binding, they also
believed that believers in the New Testament were given God’s grace and
internal spiritual power as they sought to live by God’s moral standards. They
stressed that Jesus and his teachings superseded the Old Testament law and
3 Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma (Little Brown and Company, 1961), 136.
4 Mark D. Nanos, Paul within Judaism: Restoring the First-Century Context to the Apostle, çev.
Magnus Zetterholm (Minneapolis (Minn.): Fortress Press, 2015), 31.
6
allowed people to act per their faith. The basis for this argument is that the
Moral of the New Testament can only be found in the Old Testament laws.
Covenantal Nomism as a Background Discussion
In the end, the author of this work endeavors to describe discussions concerning
the close relationship between covenantal nomism and the Ten Commandments
since they form the cornerstone of the Abrahamic covenant's moral rule. The 10
Commandments express one's dedication to the covenant, and the two ideas are
frequently combined. Covenantal nomism views the Ten Commandments as the
covenant's enforceable legal responsibilities to the compatriots and the
homeland, and the receiver of the covenant is required to show their fidelity to the
covenant by upholding them.
III. Terminology
Terms like Judaism, Christianity, and others sometimes have an overflow of
thoughts and interpretations associated with them, which impedes researchers
and especially historians from being clear. As Markus Vinzent says in “T&T Clark
Handbook of Early Christianity” concerning Jewish-Christian Relations:
“The field of research and the scholar’s perspective is additionally impacted by the fact
that when speaking of ‘Jewish’ and ‘Christian,’ the content of these terms is consciously
or subconsciously filled by the existence and experience of two so-called world religions,
which opens up a few potential pitfalls. The notion of ‘religion’ is highly problematic, and
so are the concepts of ‘Jewish’ or ‘Judaism’ and ‘Christian’ or ‘Christianity.’”5
It was used instead of the term “2nd temple religion” to distinguish it from the term
"Judaism," which has undergone several changes since the 2nd century CE.
5 Ilaria L. E. Ramelli vd. (ed.), T&T Clark Handbook of the Early Church: T&T Clark Companion
(London ; New York: T&T Clark, 2021), 25.
7
Likewise, terms such as the Old Testament and New Testament, due to their wide
usage in the West, will be utilized.
In this work, the word "Biblical Law" has multiple meanings; as far as the biblical
context is concerned, scholars have used the term "Law" to refer to the Torah as
a whole, the Ten Commandments of Exodus 20, the Ceremonial Laws of
Leviticus, and the Ritualistic Laws of Purity. The author tried to give a proper
context to every word's appearance. The primary goal in using the word “Law”
was not to escape all the possibilities of meaning in which the word was used
historically. Due to the multiple meanings of the word “Law,” perhaps the difficulty
of narrowing down one single concept to the word, much has been written,
making it difficult for the researcher to find a proper niche when talking about the
law.
The most accepted meaning of “law,” however, in biblical scholarship, is as a
synonym of commandments, and when one comes to think about
commandments, usually what is meant are the Ten Commandments, or the Ten
Words “Davarim”, written by the finger of God according to the scriptures (Exodus
31:18). These commandments are found by the first time in the book of Exodus
20, and are as the following:
1) “You shall have no other gods before me.”
2) “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or
on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship
them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the
parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a
thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.”
3) “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone
guiltless who misuses his name.”
4) “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all
your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do
any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor
your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the
heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.
Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”
5) “Honor your father and your mother so that you may live long in the land the Lord your
God is giving you.”
8
6) “You shall not murder.”
7) “You shall not commit adultery. “
8) “You shall not steal.”
9) “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.”
10) “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,
or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your
neighbor.”
A basic formulation of law will be taken as essential to this work, where the writer
shall make clear which law conversely would be the issue and subject of the
discussion. In this context, Law could be understood primarily as the Ten
Commandments or the sacrificial system and, for both, the Torah itself. When
researching about the law, the author noticed a vague concept in scholar's
comments. It was never clear which law or if the totality of the law was the main
issue for the discussion of the Pauline writings, as Paul himself is not clear given
the classical methods of interpretation. The author concluded that it is crucial to
look into and comprehend the Pauline texts' use of the notion of law in the work
as scholars maintained that the law should be viewed as a dynamic idea that is
constantly changing rather than as a static set of rules. The author contended
that Paul's usage of this idea of law in his writings is essential to comprehending
his theology and should be applied to his teachings. Additionally, he contended
that this concept needed to be interpreted in light of the historical period's social
and cultural settings.
IV. Topic and Structure of the Thesis
The thesis is historical research composed of three main parts: “First three
centuries Perspectives of Law,” “Classical perspectives of Law,” and third, “Postreformation
Notions of Law.” It is divided into two main parts with a total of five
chapters: Part I contains three chapters: Chapter One, “The First Three
Centuries,”; “Pre-reformation Perspectives of Law in Christianity,” and “The Postreformation
Notions of Law.” Chapter One addresses the issue of the law in the
early church and how the separation of the ways brought about changes to the
Christian worldview about the law. The Council of Jerusalem, the growing friction
9
between Jews and Gentiles, and how the church saw the concept of law at that
time. Chapter two is an overview of the classical theology understanding of the
law from the period of the fathers of the church until the pre-reformation. Chapter
three analyzes the understanding of Law in the protestant reformation and the
aftermath until the 19th-century Germanic illuminism, which considerably
changed the way Christians read Pauline's writings.
The Second Part of this work contains two chapters: Chapter 4, “The New
Perspective Law in the Christian Tradition,” and Chapter 5, “Contemporary
Perspectives of Biblical Law.” Chapter four concerns the New Perspective
revolutionary statements concerning law and how Law is viewed since the New
Perspective. Chapter five consequently continues to research how the New
Perspective has been seen by Christians and the outcomes of the research
matter. Chapter four introduces the concept of the “New Perspective on Paul,”
which was a new hermeneutical understanding of reading Judaism and Pauline
writings. Chapter Five is an overview of the aftermath of the New Perspective
effect on the Christian traditions.
PART I - Classical Perspective
1. The First 3 Centuries:
Around 50 CE, the early Christian church gathered at the Council of Jerusalem
to discuss a disagreement between doctrine and practice. The argument focused
on whether recent Gentile converts to Christianity should be permitted full
communion with Jewish believers or if they should be expected to follow entirely
Jewish law. According to church tradition, It ultimately determined that Gentile
converts were not required to follow all the laws of the second temple religion but
were expected to abstain from foods sacrificed to idols, and from fornication and
bloodshed, and were also encouraged to abstain from the meat of strangled
animals and to consume blood (Acts 15:20-30). Later, it became known as the
“Law of Jerusalem,” which was accepted and respected by Christians for many
10
centuries. Traditionally, Christianity sees this event as the main factor for
distinguishing a “law-abiding religion” from a “law-abolished religion.”
Discussions concerning the Law, especially in the interpretation of Paul, started
early in the 2nd century with the advent of Marcionism. Marcian tried to “clear”
Christianity from its Jewishness and wanted to abolish any Jewish-related
practice of Christians, defending that the God of the Jews was not the same God
of the New Testament. For Marcion, the Jewish Torah's entirety resembled a
merciless contradicting “god,” which he called Demiurge. On the other extreme
was the Ebionites (literally “the poor”), a group of Torah-keeping Jewish
Christians who also, in the 2nd century, defended that the law and the Torah were
central in the life of the Christian.6 Despite this vivid tension, the church fathers
tried to find a safer middle way to orthodoxy. In the writings of the Early church
fathers, we see an attempt to keep orthodoxy away from the “Jewish likeness,”
especially about “keeping the law” of the Old Testament, as well as rejecting
Marcian extreme ideas towards a Jewishness-free-religion. It was evident by the
Church Fathers' letters and admonitions that the church had a natural propensity
towards Jewish Practices. Therefore, the literature of the early Christian fathers
rebuked the church concerning it. However, according to scholars, these rebukes
were not against Judaism but rather an outward religion. Their utmost wish was
towards an ascetic life, focusing on matters of the heart, mainly in the aspects
often misrepresented and even forgotten of the law, i.e., justice, love, and faith.
It was only about the time of Constantine, the first Christian emperor, around the
4th century that we see a shift in the view of the Law by the Jewish-Christian
tensional relations. Constantine accepted the Christian faith in 313 CE and
promulgated the Edict of Milan, which proclaimed that Christianity was a religion
to be tolerated. By 325 CE, Christianity had become the official religion of the
Roman Empire. From a persecuted sect, Christianity passed to be a persecutor
of religions. Roman Christians, from now on, settled the basis for a gentile
Christian identity, free from the Jewishness of the gospel. Now, Christianity
6 Don N. Howell, “Pauline Thought in the History of Interpretation”, Bibliotheca Sacra 150/599
(1993), 303.
11
represented a purely non-Jewish movement that was aligned with the mightiest
empire in the world.7
2. Pre-Reformation Perspective of the Law in Christianity
For subsequent centuries, the separation between Judaism and Christianity was
further reinforced by various laws and prohibitions. In the 4th and 5th centuries,
Christian emperors began to impose anti-Jewish sentiments through laws that
punished those who converted to Judaism or “favored” the Jewish people. These
laws and their enforcement widened the religious gap between Jews and
Christians, and even rabbi Maimonides himself observed in “The Guide for the
Perplexed”8 (11th century C.E.) that religious antipathy had become so great that
it was impossible for members of the two religious communities ever to reconcile.
In the late 4th century, Augustine of Hippo configured the interpretation of what
would be the Millennial Medieval understanding of Law in the history of the
church. While Paul’s main interest seems to be how to include the nations in the
final salvation, Augustine changes the interest to the individual's salvation. He
sees Paul as having had the same experience as he had of conversion and
juxtaposed his own views on the Pauline writings.9 An important part of this
development was the so-called Pelagian controversy. His book “City of God” sets
a fundamental understanding of civic law that inaugurates the Middle Ages in
which the church developed its soteriology.
It was not until Martin Luther returned to Augustine and expanded the
systematizations of "Justification by Faith" in the 1500s. With the gospel of Jesus
replacing the law that foretold it, Luther's hermeneutic departs from the primordial
medieval tradition that had regarded the two testaments as a portrayal of two eras
of redemptive history.10 For Luther, each New and Old Testament contained
7 Craig Evans - David Mishkin (ed.), A Handbook on the Jewish Roots of the Gospels (Peabody,
Massachusetts: Tyndale House Publishers, 2022), 345.
8 Moses Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, çev. M. Friedlander (New York: Dover
Publications, 2000).
9 Matthew V. Novenson - R. Barry Matlock (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2022), 31-32.
10 Stephen J. Chester, Reading Paul with the Reformers: Reconciling Old and New
Perspectives (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2017), 117.
12
“Law,” the first given by the Creator aiming that man would perform, and the
second as a promise of God who recreates sinners as God’s children.11 Martin
Luther in Germany and John Calvin in France stipulated the main arguments
concerning the understanding of the Law for the Christian, where the Law was
part of an Old Covenant, given to Jews, and the Gospel as part of the New
Testament given to the world.
In contrast, without a proper Law, but with a unison concerning the obvious
existence of Sin, Christianity had to take different paths to explain the dynamic of
Sin. The only definition of Sin in the bible is “the transgression of the law.”12
Christianity had to re-examine its orthodoxy to make sense of Justification and
Salvation. In his predestination theology, John Calvin doubled down on
Augustinian Original Sin theology, creating a further problem to digest.
3. Post-Reformation Notions of Law.
The wave of the reformation flowed towards the whole world, and especially in
Germany, Lutheranism and Biblical scholarship diffused. The question that led
scholars was, “If there is no law, there is no Sin, and if there is no Sin, from what
should one be saved?” In the following centuries, the theological debates would
create what was called the “neo-orthodoxy” with prominent names like Karl Barth
(1886 -1968), who focused their theology mainly on the separation of the
individual from God but also rejected the original Sin dogma stated by the
Catholic Church.13
In the meantime, David Hume (1711-1776) shifted the Western perspective to an
anthropocentric view, arguing that humans have the power to shape their own
destiny. This shift paved the way for the modern concept of morality, which no
longer would be seen as a divine law but rather as a set of principles based on
human reason and logic.
11 Chester, Reading Paul with the Reformers, 2017, 117.
12 1 John 3:4
13 Raoul Dederen (ed.), Handbook of Seventh-Day Adventist Theology (Hagerstown, MD:
Review & Herald Pub Assn, 2000), 263.
13
In 19th century Germany, the theme of “Justification by faith” vs. “Justification by
works” gained prominence. Scholars in the Lutheran tradition went deeper into
the study of Paul and his theology. Around that time, the Tübingen School
became renowned for creating a foundational structure for the study of Paul. Their
methodology was the dialectic methodology of Hegel, which was being accepted
widely in academia. Its interpreters believed that all elements of history should be
seen in a perspective of (thesis) + (antithesis) = (synthesis). This concept greatly
influenced some of the most prominent New Testament scholars of the 19th
century and especially those of the beginning of the 20th century.
PART II - New Perspective
4. The New Perspective of Law in Christian Tradition
At the end of the twentieth century, after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in
1946/47, biblical law, Judaism, and the events of the first century got special
attention. Many books and articles have been published, and much has been
stated on the subject of Paul’s relation to the law. People started to revisit the
Jewish religion to understand what Judaism was in the times of Jesus. Lutheran
scholars started to see inconsistencies in how the Western eye would read Paul,
especially in contrast with the Theologians of the Germanic illuminism era. Kristen
Stendahl, a Lutheran pastor and professor of Harvard Divinity School of the
1960s, in his article “Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West.” argued
against the Lutheran reading/understanding of the Law and Judaism, denouncing
a misreading element in Pauline exegesis which was trying to understand Paul in
Lutheran shoes. His main argument was a counter position of Bultmann's
premises, especially against the idea that Paul went through a similar process as
Luther from Pharisaic Judaism to righteousness by faith, a “conversion” to
Christianity, which was deceivable and anachronistic. According to him, Jews
have never seen the law as a burden but as a blessing instead, especially
because they also had the concept of ‘Grace’ in the Old Testament as being
14
derived from the Covenant that God made with Abraham (also known as an
election, or unmerited gift).14
Sanders' works examining primary sources of Judaism and drawing from the
Stendahl perspective created what later scholars would call “The New
Perspective on Paul.” Before Sanders, most scholars worked from the
assumption that Paul’s theology contradicted common Jewish beliefs and
behaviors, especially Torah observance.15 This ‘New perspective,’ however,
brought a non-legalistic aspect of Judaism that had been lost due to the
Reformation. For Sanders, Paul’s whole discussion concerning the law is: ‘what
is wrong in Judaism and not a beginning of “Christianity.”16 In Jewish practices,
the temple laws were part of the Jewish daily life, where a sacrifice was to be
offered as an acceptable way in which one could be atoned for their breaking of
the law. In this new view, Paul regained his Jewishness long forgotten by
centuries of cultural misunderstandings and anachronistic readings. Paul was a
Jew, and thus Torah Observant, and died a Torah Observant Jew.17 The great
pinnacle of the Grace of God in the New Testament was himself part of what was
previously accused of legalistic religion. This view opened a vast number of
discussions concerning the role of the law for Christians. It was finally understood
that Israel's covenant relationship with God was never based on the merit of
obeying the Jewish law. Still, it was settled that Israel was elected, “an act of pure
grace,” therefore, salvation was assured to those within the covenant. The
obedience towards the law was not an attempt to enter the covenant but
“maintaining one’s status within the covenant.” 18 The same idea was also present
in the NT when Paul exhorts people to keep the commandments of God, or even
not to ignore the law, but to confirm it in life.19 Perhaps the Zenit of the claims of
14 Krister Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” Harvard
Theological Review 56/3 (July 1963), 199–215. See also: Thomas R. Schreiner, “‘Works of Law’
in Paul,” Novum Testamentum 33/3 (1991), 241.
15 McKnight - Oropeza, Perspectives on Paul, 267.
16 Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 52.
17 McKnight - Oropeza, Perspectives on Paul, 271.
18 Jouette M. Bassler, Navigating Paul: An Introduction to Key Theological Concepts (Louisville,
Ky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 2.
19 Romans 3:31
15
the New Perspective was that Paul was born, lived, preached, and died as a
Torah-keeping Jew. By recognizing this premise, many historical interpretations
have to be revisited. Martin Luther, as White, E. G., Morris, S. R. proposed,
became “a man for his time” whose desire was not to create a new movement in
Christianity but rather reform the Old known Church. Around that time, the
Germanic schools of interpretation were counterposed with many scholarly
works. For instance, scholars have stated that after this new methodological
approach was inaugurated, 19th-century theologians suffered ferocious
setbacks.20
In the 1980s, James D. G. Dunn, a respected and influential British New
Testament theologian, and N.T Wright, Pauline theologian, and Anglican bishop,
systematized E.P. Sanders' arguments in this dialectic, creating a “New
Perspective in Paul”. By doing that, Dunn set the tone for a new wave of reinterpretation
of the meanings of the Pauline Scholarship. For him, the fact that
the Jewish nation was set aside by these boundary marks, created an ethnic
boasting and pride by the Jews in keeping the Torah.21 The ethnic identity helps
us to understand Paul’s criticism towards the Jews who had placed their identity
in the Law. According to Dunn, we can see such criticism when Paul uses the
phrase “Erga tou nomou,” i.e., “works of the law” in Romans and Galatians. The
outcome discussions about the works of the law went on to gravitate around three
main issues, i.e., Sabbath, Food laws, and Circumcision. Dunn listed these issues
as being “boundary markers” that aim to separate Jews from Gentiles. According
to him, this separation, in a sense, created an identity.22 This concept in academia
spread quickly. Today, famous Pauline scholars like Pamela Eisenbaum agree
20 Howell, “Pauline Thought in the History of Interpretation”, 314; Magnus Zetterholm,
Approaches to Paul: A Student’s Guide to Recent Scholarship (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
2009), 33-40.
21 James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,
2006), 145.
22 James D. G. Dunn, The New Perspective on Paul (Grand Rapid, Mich: W. B. Eerdmans Pub.
Co, 2008), 131.
16
that “in the Roman era, it was particularly circumcision, Sabbath observance, and
dietary laws that identified Jews as Jews”.23
5. Post New Perspectives of Biblical Law
Around the same time E.P Sanders wrote his book, the New Testament scholar
F.F. Bruce also wrote the book “Paul the Apostle,” which is perhaps up until today
one of the most utilized books to instruct new theologians in denominational
seminaries worldwide. Despite Bruce lecturing on the old perspective, many
points were similar between both. For instance, he brings to memory the fact that
in the Torah of the Jews, despite having all the punishments for those who break
the law, it was also the way of salvation, given as the sanctuary system, which
would redeem the person that repented and had offered a sacrifice in the place
of the transgressor.24 It was a safe way to do theology away from the discussions
of the New Perspective. From this line of thought, the place of the Gentiles
became the focus of the New Testament scholarship.
The New Perspective on Paul and the Law has been met with various responses
from within the Christian community. Some have been receptive to the idea that
Paul's writings may not support the traditional view of the law being done away
with in Christianity. Others have critiqued the New Perspective, arguing that it
does not adequately consider the role of Jesus in fulfilling the law. Today, more
conservative protestants rejected covenantal nomism due to that shift in
language. Prominent evangelical scholars like D.A Carson, Peter T. O'Brien, and
Mark A. Seifrid, in their two-volume work “Justification and Variegated Nomism''
(2001), have put together papers rejecting the Covenantal Nomism idea, and this
work became a source for those who oppose it. Mark R. Fairchild, in his seminar
at the Uludağ University on May 24th, 2022, derived his opinion mostly from that
Traditional/Lutheran perspective.
23 Pamela Eisenbaum, Paul Was Not a Christian: The Original Message of a Misunderstood
Apostle (New York: HarperOne, 2010), 278.
24 F. F Bruce, Paul, Apostle of the Heart Set Free (Carlisle, Cumbria, UK; Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Paternoster Press; Eerdmans, 2000) First published in 1977.
17
In the meanwhile, in recent years, a third perspective has emerged by comparing
both classic and new perspectives. Kim Papaiouanou, Greek New Testament
scholar and writer, deriving from the Covenantal Nomism platform, sees Paul, for
instance, as considering the church the new Israel, a grafted branch into the root
of Israel, according to the fact that Paul consistently convicts people in the New
Testament according to Old Testament law. And as the Church is the continuation
of Israel, it ultimately can be benefited from the blessings of the Covenant with
Israel.25 Papaiouanou defends the idea that Paul was not trying to show that
Israel was replaced but rather that Israel was expanded beyond ethnicity and
national boundaries, and this can be seen in the way in which Paul develops his
parables to explain it.26 The idea of stretching the boundaries of ethnicity, race,
and social status became the core message of Paul in this new approach. Scott
McKnight, American New Testaments scholar, agrees with this theory, saying
that anyone who studies the historical Paul, should agree that for Paul, “the
church has been grafted into Paul’s Judaism.”27 This continuation of the church
is essential for the beginning of the Christian tradition. Mark D. Nanos, Jewish
New Testament scholar and writer, comments on the subject, saying that for Paul,
now “Gentiles are not guests anymore, but are members of the covenant.”28
V. Revised Literature
In order to write an essay on the history of Interpretations in the area of the History
of religions, one must draw from various sources from fields like Philosophy and
sociology but mainly from historical theology and the history of religions. This
work aims to construct an overview of the history of the Interpretation of Paul and
the Christian understanding of Law. A literature review of the Christian and
Jewish sources related to the discussion includes historical witness accounts,
25 Papaioannou - Giantzaklidis, Israel, Covenant, Law, 10. - The author offers as evidence the
fact that Paul was convicting a member of the Corinthian church of “porneia” – “adultery”,
means that he in no instance abrogated the Old Testament Law.
26 Kim Papaioannou - Ioannis Giantzaklidis, Israel, Covenant, Law: A Third Perspective on Paul
(Wipf & Stock Stock Publishers, 2018), 28-32.
27 McKnight - Oropeza, Perspectives on Paul, 123.
28 Mark D. Nanos, Paul within Judaism: Restoring the First-Century Context to the Apostle, çev.
Magnus Zetterholm (Minneapolis (Minn.): Fortress Press, 2015), 18, 296.
18
critical analysis, history, handbooks, dictionaries, commentaries, magazines,
newsletters, and other forms of informant literature.
After that break of seeing Paul anachronistically to the Jewish context of the first
century, scholars started to dabble in Paul's writings within Judaism. At the end
of the 1980s, renowned New Testament scholars such as the Finnish Häikki
Räisenen and the German Hans Hübner were involved in the debate over the
biblical Law in Paul. Despite trying to resurrect the classical perspective on Paul,
his works have significantly contributed to New Testament and Biblical studies.
Räisänen, in his work “Paul and the Law,” lists several theologians representing
different schools of thought in Pauline studies and his interpretations of Law,
showing that Paul was not a systematic theologian as most of the Pauline
scholarship was reading Paul's relations to the Law as systemic.29 He extensively
and systematically defines law in its various uses in Paul’s New Testament
writings, bringing a wide range of NT scholars' opinions to the Pauline
interpretation, especially defending the exclusive gains that Pauline scholarship
had after the New Perspective. Räisenen raises many questions concerning
Paul’s relationship to the law, which impacted Pauline's scholarship in the last
forty years, inviting scholars to deal with the apparent inconsistencies in Paul
concerning the Law. Räisenen became a key opponent of the New Perspective
approach and wrote extensively on the subject of the Law.
The 80s were naked by the work of James D. G. Dunn called, “The New
Perspective on Paul.” He wrote several journal articles on Paul and the law.
during that period, and they have been reprinted in two books. “Jesus, Paul, and
the Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians,” which was published in 1990 and
contains articles written between 1982 and 1988. Of particular interest for the
study of law would be his work “Incident at Antioch (Galatians 2:11–18);” “Works
of the Law and the Curse of the Law (Galatians 3:10–14);” “A Light to the Gentiles’
or ‘The End of the Law’? The Significance of the Damascus Road Christophany
for Paul;” and “Pharisees, Sinners, and Jesus,” and “Jesus and Ritual Purity: A
29 Marguerat, Paulo, uma teologia em construção, 19.
19
Study of the Tradition-History of Mark 7:15.” And they have contributed a bunch
for the author of this thesis. Also, W. D. Davies, in his book: “Paul and Rabbinic
Judaism: Some Rabbinic Elements in Pauline Theology” (1980), has richly
exploited the primary rabbinical sources to postulate a wide variety of similarities
between Paul and the orthodox Pharisaic Judaism of first-century Palestine.
After the 2000s, more studies were made towards this view. For instance, Martin
Brice, in his book “Christ and the Law in Paul” (2001), compiles a significant
number of expressions related to the law and pinches its multiple meanings in
different contexts in the time of the second temple religion. William Campbell’s
study “Paul and the Creation of Christian Identity” (2006); Pamela Eisenbaum’s
monograph “Paul Was Not a Christian” (2009); Brian Rosner in his book with the
same title “Paul and the Law” (2010) proposes an exegetically detailed way of
addressing Paul and his relationship with the Law.30
Brian Tucker’s two volumes on Paul in 1 Corinthians (2010 and 2011), “You
Belong to Christ” and “Remain in Your Calling”; David Rudolph’s monograph on
1 Corinthians 9 in 2011, “A Jew to the Jews”; and Kathy Ehrensperger’s “Paul at
the Crossroads of Cultures” (2013). Afterward, the interpretive work of Isaac Wilk
Oliver, “The Torah Praxis after 70 AD” (2013), added good rabbinical material
and explanation to that discussion.31 In the field of Old Testament scholarship,
Pamela Barmash edited the “Oxford Handbook of Biblical Law” (2019), which is
perhaps a checkmark on the study of Biblical law in the Old Testament. This work
offers a reevaluation and debriefs of the last decades of biblical Scholarship
concerning the Law and aims to recalculate a route forecasting the future of the
study of the law. After all these works, Paul’s theology, seeing outside the
conventional view, became robust. Despite all the efforts to paint a Paul outside
of the millennial Christian view, the mainstream Christian religions could not
grasp such ideas. To this day, prominent evangelicals are not aware of these
academic discussions and their importance.
30 Brian S. Rosner, “Paul and the Law: What He Does Not Say,” Journal for the Study of the
New Testament 32/4 (June 2010), 405–419.
31 Isaac W. Oliver, Torah Praxis after 70 CE: Reading Matthew and Luke-Acts as Jewish Texts
(Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2013).
20
In Türkiye, Muslim scholars have written about Paul and the law in a Muslim
perspective. Lately, Fuat Aydın “Pavlus Hıristiyanlığına Giriş” (Introduction to the
Pauline Christianity, 2012), gives a wide range of topics concerning Paul and his
theology.32 Şinasi Gündüz in “Pavlus: Hıristiyanlığın mimarı” (Paul the Architect
of Christianity, 2004), sees Paul as the one who sets the basis for the Christian
tradition.33 Others Turkish authors have also written about Paul in historical
perspectives, for instance Zafer Duygu in his book “İsa, Pavlus ve İnciller” (Jesus,
Paul and the Gospels, 2019) writes concerning Jesus and Paul discourses in
relation to the gospels.34
Recently in the west, a work by Scot McKnight, “Perspective on Paul: Five Views”
(2020), has brought together a more comprehensible systematization to the
historical understanding of the dispute between the perspectives. He categorizes
the debate into five perspectives of the Pauline interpretation: Catholic, Jewish,
Lutheran, new perspective, and most recent understandings of Paul and his
theology. He summarized his opinions by saying that “The New Perspective on
Paul” perhaps should be called “A New Perspective on Judaism.”35 Pamela
Eisenbaum’s work “Paul Was Not a Christian” (2009) also contributed immensely
with insights for this monographic work.
Concerning Post-New Perspective writings, Stephen Westerholm, “Perspectives
Old and New on Paul: The Lutheran Paul and His Critics” is a classic work of
analysis of the debate between the New Perspective and the Lutheran/traditional
perspective. He is a co-author of the book “Law in Religious Communities in the
Roman Period: The Debate over Torah and Nomos in Post-Biblical Judaism and
Early Christianity” which also summarized the main ideas of influential authors in
NT scholarship. John M. G. Barclay, in “Paul and the Gift” (2015), lays out rich
cultural background information that could help the New Perspective to flourish
32 Fuat Aydin, Pavlus Hıristiyanlığına Giriş (Eskiyeni Yayinlari, 2012).
33 Şinasi Gündüz, Pavlus: Hıristiyanlığın Mimarı (Ankara Okulu Yayınları, 2004). See page 162
for the discussion concerning Gündüz view on Paul.
34 Zafer Duygu, İsa, Pavlus, İnciller (Düşün Yayıncılık, 2019).
35 Scot McKnight - eds B. J. Oropeza, Perspectives on Paul (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker
Academic, 2020), 293, See footnote 17.
21
in the sociological realm. Kim Papaiouannou, in his book, “Israel, Covenant, and
Law” (2018), added terminology and insights on the applicability of law from the
Old Testament to the New Testament, which he called a third perspective.36
Recently published “The Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies,“ (2022) brings a
wide range of Pauline scholars to the table to discuss and summarize popular
views of the interpretation of Paul throughout the ages.
VI. Objectives
This work aims to: Firstly, explore the delineation the main points that create a
separation between the Jewish and Christian tradition, beginning in the in the first
three centuries, tracing key turning points through the Middle ages up until WWII
looking for the real cause of the division in the traditions. The work shall begin by
describing the main issues in the separation and its developments in subsequent
centuries. Secondly, the purpose of this work is to briefly touch on the
developments concerning the study of the interpretation of the law in the Christian
tradition, analyzing the importance of the Torah in the life of the Christian
throughout the ages and how the changes of the law in its various formats
happened historically. Thirdly, the author shall analyze how the New Perspective
scholarship co-relates the idea of expirations of the law and the existence of
possible methodological misconceptions derived from the old perspective.
Fourth, the author shall put forth attempts of recent scholarship to create a proper
place for the Torah in the life of the Christian looking from the perspective of
“boundary marks” coined by James G. Dunn;37 This work will show quotes from
Christian traditions, add comments, and compare the arguments concerning
these boundaries made by traditional scholars which adds light to the discussion.
36 Kim Papaioannou - Ioannis Giantzaklidis, Israel, Covenant, Law: A Third Perspective on Paul
(Wipf & Stock Stock Publishers, 2018), 20.
37 Dunn, The New Perspective on Paul, 2008, 131.
22
PART I - CLASSICAL PERSPECTIVE
23
Chapter 1 - The First Three Centuries
1.1 The Separation of the Ways
Recent New Testament scholarship defends, despite both Jewish and Christian
traditions evolving together, that they were more separate and hostile to each
other than similar. This notion was exacerbated in the German illuminism period,
and the dialectical interpretation of New Testament history emerged.38 Scholars
have tried to dissertate these similarities and differences in order to recognize a
clear boundary of separation between both traditions. German illuminism and
nationalism added an antisemite flavor to these discussions until the middle of
the 20th century. The German Theologian Adolf von Harnack proposed the
separation between Judaism and Christianity in terms of the historical Hellenistic
universalism versus a nationalistic Maccabean perspective of the second temple
period. Albert Schweitzer likewise saw a separation, but slightly different, in
matters of the legalism of the rabbis versus the eschatology of the apocalyptic
movement of the 1st century. Otto Pfleiderer, in his book “Primitive Christianity”
(1906), and Claude G. Montefiore in “Judaism and St. Paul” (1914), set the
arguments for Paul, as originally influenced by Gentiles, being the reason for the
proper separation between the traditions. Inasmuch, it was only after the 1st
World War, in 1934, that James Parks, in his book “The Conflict of the Church
and the Synagogue,” that the term “separation of the ways” was used for the first
time to address this field of study. Under that name, Historians and New
Testament scholars have been engaged in the topic of the separation since.
Bülent Şenay, the author’s advisor, in his doctoral thesis at Lancaster University,
dwelt on the topic in 1999. Boyarin proposes that the whole thing concerning the
separation of the ways was about a gentile-Christian identity construction.39
Religionists and Religious Scholars agree that Christianity and Judaism are two
distinct religions even though, in their early days, scholars classically saw
38 Walter Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel, ed. CrossReach Publications
(Independently published, 2017), 276.
39 Terence L. Donaldson, Gentile Christian Identity from Cornelius to Constantine: The Nations,
the Parting of the Ways, and Roman Imperial Ideology (Eerdmans, 2020), 70.
24
Christianity as a sect of Judaism. Primarily created by Jews who converted to a
new faith of the Nazarene. Culture, language, and territory were under the same
Conditions, which created difficulties for scholars to classify a sect within the
second temple religion. It has been established since the early stage of the
conversation that Christianity had humble beginnings as a marginalized
movement, and over time, the two traditions have become increasingly
separated. Daniel Boyarin uses the expression “twins in a womb,” referring to the
characteristically common birth of both traditions within the so-called “second
temple religion.” For him, both traditions always have had a twin relationship, and
instead of mother and daughter, they were twins.40 As Terence Donaldson says,
agreeing with scholars before him like Boyarin, “the construction of the Christian
identity shall always be understood in the scope of its separation from Judaism.”41
Judaism, being fundamentally a tradition based on the rule of the Law, implies
that the early Jesus followers, by being Jews, were acquainted with the rule of
law to be part of that tradition. Judaism was more related to the ruling of law, the
law of the land, jurisprudence, and rituals than spirituality, theology, and
proselytization. In this proposal, the second temple religion gave birth to Judaism
as we know it today, and also Christianity. Boyarin affirms that Judaism and
Christianity were part of one complex religious family for at least three centuries.42
Boyarin and Jewish scholars like Stephen Wylen and Daniel Berard agreed that
there were no major differences in beliefs, practices, or how both traditions see
the Bible. Wylen argues that Christians continue to attend synagogues together
with Jews for centuries.43 Eric Meyers adds archeological evidence for that,
saying that Jews and Christians lived together up to the 3rd and 4th centuries in
Rome.44 Berard says that Christians and Jews could not be easily distinguished
40 Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia, Pa:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 5.
41 Donaldson, Gentile Christian Identity from Cornelius to Constantine, 65.
42 Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism
(Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1999), 126.
43 Stephen M. Wylen, The Jews in the Time of Jesus: An Introduction (New York: Paulist Press,
1995), 190.
44 Eric M. Meyers, “Early Judaism and Christianity in the Light of Archaeology”, The Biblical
Archaeologist 51/2 (1988), 69-79.
25
before the 3rd century AD.45 Boyarin particularly tackles the subject in depth in
his book “Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity” (2006), showing that
the notion of religion in itself was not clear in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. In the
1st century, not all Roman practices had entered Christianity yet; therefore, most
of its beliefs remained similar to Judaism. Professor Ephraim Isaac, commenting
on the Ethiopian Jewish tradition, states: “Tradition maintains that when
Christianity came to Ethiopia, half of the population was Jewish and most of them
converted to Christianity.”46 Alan Segal, commenting on the similarities of the
Christian and Jewish belief in the 1st century, stated that "one can speak of a
'twin birth' of two new Judaism, both markedly different from the religious systems
that preceded them.”47 These historical facts were contradictory to the stance
taken by most theologians concerning the time in which the separation of the
ways happened.
Traditionally speaking, the council of Jerusalem had been the central point for the
differences regarding Law. Michael Wyschogrod brought to attention in 1991,
saying that if the event of Christ had changed the obligations of the Torah, there
would be no sense in discussing in the council of Jerusalem whether the non-
Jews should keep circumcision or observe the commands of the Torah in the first
place.48 According to the classic perspective, it was in the Council of Jerusalem
that the Church stipulated the differences between Jews and Gentiles in the
church.49 However, scholars of the New Perspective have showed otherwise, for
instance, for Jacques Doukhan, we should understand the separation of the ways
in a persecution context instead of the separation occurring in the 1st century.50
The main argument proposed by the New Perspective on Paul was that
45 Wayne-Daniel Berard, When Christians Were Jews (That Is, Now): Recovering the Lost
Jewishness of Christianity with the Gospel of Mark (Cambridge, Mass: Cowley Publications,
2006), 112–113.
46 Ephraim Isaac, “Is the Ark of the Covenant in Ethiopia?”, Biblical Archeology Review 19/4
(Temmuz 1993), 60-63.
47 Alan F. Segal, Rebecca’s Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Roman World
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986).
48 Jacques Doukhan, Israël et l’Église. Deux voix pour le même Dieu, 2010, 38.
49 Eung Chun Park, Either Jew Or Gentile: Paul’s Unfolding Theology of Inclusivity
(Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 1-8.
50 Doukhan, Israël et l’Église. Deux voix pour le même Dieu, 55.
26
Christianity was not the pioneer in many of its teachings, especially the one which
is considered central, i.e., the doctrine of the Grace, or as the Jewish tradition
calls it, “election.” By realizing that, scholars agreed that Christianity and Judaism
were very closely connected at their core, as the central understanding of
Christian tradition is that in the works and life of Jesus Christ, all men are elected
to be part of the covenant with God. An unmerited gift of an election that was
given to Abraham and now is completed and expanded in him. For many, up to
this point, there was no such thing as Christianity as a tradition, but rather a
primary, new version of a reformation within the Judaic tradition, which, after
trespassing the borders of Israel, gained a new name. The followers of Jesus
were only called Christians in Antioch,51 which also means that the Jesus
movement was still inside of the boundaries of Judaism up to that period.52
Presumably, there were different ethnic partitions and versions of Christianity,
according to language and ethnicity. The sect's existence became very common
in many major ethnic groups in antiquity. Paula Fredriksen, in her recent work:
“Paul the Gentile Apostle,'' examines how important and often disregarded is the
fact that every religion in the old times is intrinsically connected to the nationality
and ethnical aspect of the social life of the individual. To worship a god meant to
be part of a tribe, a culture, belonging to a group, which meant to be heir of
promises given to that people by the gods of that people. Stopping any of these
practices would turn to betraying their homeland and turning their back on one's
ancestry, which had catastrophic effects.53 Steve Mason, in his article “Jews,
Judaeans, Judaizing, Judaism: Problems of Categorization in Ancient History,”
distinguishes the Ethnic Jewish culture before Christianity categorizations from
our modern concepts of religion.
In this scenario, scholars have understood that the term Judaism in the first three
centuries had a connotation of cultural life and practices of the people of Judea
rather than a proper understanding of Religion. The term “Judaism” is rather
51 Modern Antakya, in Hatay Türkiye. It was the first place that Christianity flourished outside
the lands of the Jews.
52 Acts 11:26
53 Paula Fredriksen, Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 71.
27
anachronistic.54 According to Novensen, not all Jews were practicing such
cultural norms of “Judaism.”55 It means that not only people who lived inside the
boundaries of Judea lived like the people of Judea, but also many people who
lived outside of Judea, in the Jewish diaspora, but still adopted the customs of
the Judean people. The term “Judaism” only concerning religious forms is said to
be “narrowly restricted.” 56
The Terms ‘Religion,’ as well as ‘Christianity’ in itself, were terms constructed
way before our modern concept of religion and Christianity, and Early Christians
defined it differently than our contemporary definitions. For the early Christians,
defining the boundaries of the new community was crucial, and it could not be
made by language or ethnicity. Thus, due to this complexity, the term became
analogous to whether the individual had the right practice, “orthodoxy,” or false
practice, “heresy.” 57 This unclearness in the boundaries for both Judaism and
Christianity caused huge discussions in academia in the last decades. According
to Boyarin, modern notions of religion were a Christian orthodoxy invention after
the writings of the early church fathers.58 Up until that point, neither followers of
Jesus, Jews or Gentiles, nor non-followers of Jesus, Jews or Gentiles, could set
a clear line of distinction between ritual, sacrifices, and nationalities. The civil
duties of an individual were closely related to ritualistic practices, nowadays
attributed to religion.
In Boyarin’s view, the West colonized the Jewish faith, picking what suited what
came to be known as Christianity.59 Concluding from this perspective, a gentile
is anyone who was not born into the Jewish ethnicity. And perhaps more
importantly, anyone who did not practice the ritualistic aspect required of the
Jewish ethnicity. Paula Fredriksen adds light to that:
54 Ramelli vd., T&T Clark Handbook of the Early Church, 20.
55 Matthew Novenson, “Paul’s Former Occupation in Ioudaismos”, Galatians and Christian
Theology: Justification, the Gospel, and Ethics in Paul’s Letter, (2014), 37.
56 Matthew J. Thomas, Paul’s “Works of the Law” in the Perspective of Second Century
Reception (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 95.
57 Boyarin, Border Lines, 2006, 17.
58 Boyarin, Border Lines, 2006, 13.
59 Boyarin, Border Lines, 2006, 1.
28
“The Hebrew word for non-Jew there, ger, came into Greek as prosēlytos. Eventually,
“proselyte” will mean an outsider who voluntarily and fully assumes Jewish ancestral
customs, in our terms, a “convert.” Originally, however, this word, like its Hebrew correlate
ger, indicated a resident alien or stranger, a non-native living in a land not his own.
(Hebrews were gerim in Egypt, Lev 19.34; Num 15 refers to the ger ha-gar, a non-Jew
living in the Land of Israel.)60
Christian writers of the 2nd century usually show a much more homologous
movement than the actual settings of Judaism and Christianity. For instance,
Jerome, a priest of the 5th century, says that the Nazoreans, “followers of the
Nazarene, or Christians,” were to be found in all synagogues of the east among
the Jews and that they consider themselves both Christians and Jews, but
according to Jerome they were nor “Christians nor Jews," showing his early
opinions actually, trying to separate these movements, what are actually very
present since the early days of Christianity.61 According to Origen, a Christian-
Hellenistic apologist of the 2nd century, Jews and Christians attended the
synagogues together.62 It seems to be continued up until the patristic period of
the Church. For instance, Justin Martyr, in his work “Dialogue with Trypho'' dated
from 150-160 AD, considered Jewish Christians to be typical and authentic
Christians. They even obeyed the Torah and practiced circumcision. Justin
regarded these Christians as “kinsmen and brothers''.63 Whatever they may have
been accused among their communities of being followers of Jesus, back in that
time, sociologically speaking, many still identified with Judaism.64
Nickelsburg lists at least three facts that led to thinking about the early Christians'
identity as Jews: (1) They thought of themselves as being Jews, even as selfunderstanding
as well as ethnicity; (2) these Jewish Christians oriented
60 Paula Fredriksen, Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 66.
61 Boyarin, Border Lines, 2006, 25.
62 Origen, Homily on Lev 5:8
63 J. C. M. Van Winden, Philosophia Patrum, “An Early Christian Philosopher: Justin Martyr’s
Dialogue with Trypho.,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 1/Brill (January 1, 1971), 46–47.
64 Donaldson, Gentile Christian Identity from Cornelius to Constantine, 66.
29
themselves by their relationship to Jesus of Nazareth and thereby defined
themselves over against the rest of the Jewish people; (3) Within a few decades,
even as Christianity, these people retained much from the categories and
traditions of its mother religion.65 Despite this idea, in the classical perspective, it
was often perceived in unison among scholars and community leaders that the
council of Jerusalem around the year 63 AD was the starting point of the
Hellenized version of Judaism. In other words, New Testament scholars like
Elaine Pagel and Bart D. Erhman tended to see the Christian beginnings as a
rejection of traditional second temple religion, adding Hellenistic elements to it,
where the first council of the church of Jerusalem was a reformation of the old
Judaic traditional idea that was Hellenized, making it more palatable to foreigners.
This view became widespread and is currently adopted by many NT Scholars.
Kim Papaiouannou, in his presentation on November 17th, 2022, at the Annual
Council of the Adventist Theological Society, claimed that the Council of
Jerusalem was more about ritual laws than laws that held moral values. He
argued that the idea of ritual purity existing in the 2nd temple religion was the
main obstacle for a gentile to practice any law regarding the temple, where both
moral and purity laws were intertwined. As he argues, The Pharisees protested
in Luke 15:2 because Jesus "receives sinners and eats with them." Their concern
was not that Jesus' morality would be tainted by bad company. Instead, because
these Jews did not observe purity rites, they were in constant contextual
contamination. It added light to what Paula Fredriksen had once stated: that in
the Diaspora, Jews were no longer practicing sacrifices as it was only closed
related to the temple in the city of David, and already in the 1st century, had a
religion that was obliged from the daily practices for the temple. Which gave
backing to gentile Christians to abstain from ritual laws of the temple.66 However,
she states that inevitably, even early Christians were Judaizing in the sense of
their resemblance to the Jewish customs.67 The Italian scholar Giorgio Jossa, in
his book “Jews or Christians? The Followers of Jesus in Search of Their Own
65 G. W. E. Nickeisburg, “Jews and Christians in the First Century. The Struggle over Identity,”
Neotestamentica 27 (1993), 365–366.
66 Fredriksen, Paul, 61.
67 Fredriksen, Paul, 71-79.
30
Identity” (2006), also adds light to this argument by arguing that the Jewish temple
was the most significant and most meaningful boundary marker between Judaism
and Christianity.”68 The laws of the temple and its centeredness in the second
temple religion were perhaps what difficulties the relationship between Jewish
ethnic people and people of another ethnicity that had not agreed to enter
Judaism by circumcision and by practicing ritualistic purification. In Chapter 5, we
shall demonstrate how purification rituals in relation to the law could create a third
perspective on Paul.
According to historian Shaye J. D. Cohen, "the separation of Christianity from
Judaism was a process, not an event," which the church became "more and more
gentile, and less and less Jewish." 69 And due to the intrinsically related aspect
of rituals to its nationality, ritualistic practices like circumcision lost its meaning,
and the new movement ceased to be part of a “Jewish religion.” 70 The religion of
the second temple consists of values, principles, and traditions developed over
millennia among the Jewish people. It is the foundation of the monotheistic faith
tradition, which has emerged in nuances of Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox
Judaism.
The core teachings of Judaism are the Ten Commandments, which are found in
the Hebrew Bible or “Torah.” From the Ten Commandments, other divine
commandments, “mitzvot” and the Jewish Law “Halakhah,” were derived. These
teachings are found in the Oral Torah and compiled and codified in the Talmud,
Midrash, and other rabbinic literature. Judaism encourages believers to study and
observe the laws and commandments in order to establish and maintain a
relationship with God. Judaism also stresses faith, which includes accepting the
concept of God, that God is one and incorporeal, and that God communicates to
human beings through prophecy. Jews practice several rituals and customs that
reflect their deep connection to their religious teachings. These rituals include the
observance of the Shabbat (the day of rest), participation in prayer services, the
68 Donaldson, Gentile Christian Identity from Cornelius to Constantine, 143-148.
69 Shaye Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, Third Edition (Louisville, Kentucky:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2014), 169.
70 Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, Third Edition, 166.
31
performance of blessings before and after meals, and the exchanging of gifts.
Judaism identifies six major holidays that commemorate significant events in the
history of the Jewish faith.
Francis Watson outlaid a sociological approach to separating Judaism from
Christianity in the book “Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles.” According to him, in
summary, Paul tried to keep both religions united, but due to these different
sociological issues, they split. In his arguments, he makes clear that probably the
main issue of the division was the law.71 Many scholars agree, however, that this
schism over the law was unlikely given the amount of historical evidence available
of Christian communities upholding the law from the 2nd century onward. For
instance, Augustine documented that Christians usually kept the Sabbath.72
According to Codex Theodosianus, a compilation of the laws of the Roman
Empire under the Christian emperors since 312 AD, Christian believers only
married and gave marriage to Jewish people according to the law.73 Therefore,
due to these unclear sets within Christian and Jewish beliefs, the border of these
separations becomes too tenuous, making it harder for the historian to delineate
what actually caused the split. Irenaeus (135-202 AD), the disciple of the apostle
John, recommends the keeping of the Ten Commandments as a prerequisite to
the Christian life, as it incorporated the natural laws for both Jews and Gentiles
still in the second century.74 A popular viewpoint is that persecution of Jews and
Christians multiple times until the 3rd century exacerbated the causes for the
parting of the ways and that attempts to separate Christianity from its Jewishness
led to the parting of the ways later in the following centuries. This persecution
became clear historically due to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Scholars
agree that Jews and Christians lived in Palestine together up until 70 AD; after
that, they dispersed throughout the Roman Empire, and in some places, they
71 Watson, Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles, 1989, 21–38.
72 Augustine, Epistle 54.2
73 Codex Theodosianus 16.8.6
74 Irenaeus, ‘Contra Haeresis IV’. Ιωάννης Κ. Διώτης and J.-P. Migne, eds., Patrologia Graeca 7
(Αthens: Centre for Patristic Publications, 2002), col. 1009,1012.
32
continued to live together in the diaspora up until the Jewish Persecution by the
Roman Empire.
1.2 70 AD as a Turning Point
From the Babylonian exile in 586 BC to the European Holocaust in 1939–1945
AD, Jews still have in their memories the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. as perhaps
one of the most dramatic moments of Jewish history. This was perhaps one of
the most memorable episodes of persecution ever happening to the Jewish
people. The national capital of the Jews and the temple were destroyed by the
Romans. All sects of Judaism were now in jeopardy, while orthodox pharisaic
Judaism survived thanks to the smart trick of Yohannan Ben Zakkai, who faked
his death in order to be released from the gates of Jerusalem and flee to other
territories. Jewish tradition is that Ben Zakkai, a pacifist, lived in Jerusalem in 68
CE during the city's siege by the Roman General Vespasian. The Zealots, who
preferred death to submission to Rome, were in charge of Jerusalem, which also
controlled Masada. The Zealots rejected Ben Zakkai's pleas for surrender, so he
pretended to die and had his followers transport him out of Jerusalem in a coffin.
Ben Zakkai emerged from the coffin as they arrived at Vespasian's tent. He
requested that Vespasian set aside a location in Yavneh, near contemporary
Rehovot, where he might establish a modest school and study Torah in peace
after having a vision, some would say, a cunning political insight, that Vespasian
would soon be emperor. Vespasian vowed to fulfill Ben Zakkai's wish if the
prophecy came to pass. Within a year, Vespasian was crowned emperor and
honored his promise, allowing the institution to be founded after the war.
The school Ben Zakkai established at Yavneh became the center of Jewish
learning for centuries and replaced Jerusalem as the seat of the Sanhedrin.75 As
the sect that survived the destruction of 70 A.D., Pharisaism became Orthodox
Judaism. This sect had the preeminence of restructuring the Jewish religion. The
sect, under the command of Yohanan ben Zakkai, fled the hills of Yavneh, and
from there, they had the opportunity to ‘clean’ Judaism according to their own
75 Naomi E. Pasachoff et al., A Concise History of the Jewish People (Rowman & Littlefield,
2005), 92–94.
33
customs and perceptions. We've been told that after the Jews had come back
from captivity in Babylon, a rethinking of the Jewish identity was in place up until
the time of the revolt in the 2nd century BC. Judaism of the second temple became
a religion that has its basis in a meritocracy. To be Jewish did not necessarily
mean to keep laws and live according to the cultural Jew practice, but actually to
be born within the bloodline of Abraham. Perhaps one can argue that it could be
the advantage of Christians who remembered the words of Jesus concerning the
last days of Jerusalem that kept them safe after the destruction of Jerusalem in
70 AD. They fled to the mountains while taking advantage of the short period of
relief that the Zealots gave to the doors of Jerusalem due to the loss of the city's
siege by the Romans in 69 AD.76 Jewish Christians fled mostly to Antioch and
Anatolian lands. John and the remaining apostles left Palestine for their lives and
settled in many cities in Anatolia, especially close to the Aegean Sea.
Moreover, Christianity stretched the boundaries towards Antioch and started to
spread west in Anatolia. The Greek cities under Roman rule were a refugee for
the new movement for a little time. The language of the movement became
Greek, and its costumes and traditions started to be more identifiable with the
Greek culture rather than the Jewish one. After the year 70 AD, however, Jews
were expelled from Jerusalem, which made this praxis impossible. As a result,
Jews became more and more focused on the Torah instead of the temple. For
Paul, the laws of the temple being accomplished in Jesus meant that these laws
gained a bigger, spiritual, and heavenly meaning. Due to the sufferings of the
people of Israel in Babylon, the Jewish Rabbis created oral laws that would serve
as a guide to apply the Biblical law. They understood, around the time of the
prophet Ezra, that Israel failed to fulfill the covenant that God had made with
Moses and their fathers in the desert, and consequently, they were led into
captivity as a natural outcome of their disobedience. Jewish jurists came up with
interpretations of the Law which the objective was to create boundaries that
ensured the “accidental breaking” of God’s law and even to create a safe zone
76 Samuel Rocca, The Forts of Judaea 168 BC–AD 73: From the Maccabees to the Fall of
Masada (Osprey Publishing, 2013), 9.
34
away from it in order to not be thrown away from the covenant.77 A total of 613
laws were created by rabbinic scholarship as an attempt to ratify an ordinance for
each commandment in the law of Moses, being 365 positive commands and 248
prohibitions.78 Only in the sabbath commandment, there were around 39 kinds of
works that were forbidden.79 God had promised that if they did not keep the
covenant, they would surely face the consequences.80 As a consequence of their
unfaithfulness in the relationship, the temple was destroyed in 586 BC by the
Babylonians, and the core of the Jewish life praxis was transposed inevitably from
the temple and the sacrificial system to the Torah itself.
The Rabbis stipulated these oral laws/traditions out of zeal for the biblical law and
for God.81 In the attempt to keep Israel separated from the wicked praxis of the
foreign lands, these laws were hardened on the people by the leaders of the
synagogue. In the time of Jesus, these laws were still traditionally oral. Those
who were candidates for the Rabbinic office would visit the schools from an early
age in order to learn not only the Torah but also the sayings and oral traditions of
the Rabbinic tradition. The Sadducees, along with their adversaries, the
Pharisees, maintained rigorous halakhic purity principles, with specific emphasis
dedicated to the Temple. They also intended to keep laypeople out of the sacred
zone. They, for example, condemn the Pharisees for allowing the people to touch
and desecrate the Temple Menorah during the celebration.82 They also stress the
priesthood and the high priest's importance in regard to the laity and sages. New
Pharisaic cultic rituals were rejected, including the libation of water on the altar at
77 Roy B. Zuck et al., A Biblical Theology of the New Testament (Chicago: Moody Publishers,
1994), 49.
78 David A Dorsey, “The Law of Moses and the Christian: A Compromise,” Journal of the
Evangelical Theological Society 34 (September 1991), 321.
79 James Dunn, Unity and Diversity in the New Testament: An Inquiry into Character of Earliest
Christianity. (London: SCM Press, 1977), 67.
80 See Leviticus 20 and Deuteronomy 28; in Leviticus 26-39-43, The covenant is still valid even
if the people break it, because God is the one doing the covenant. We see the same example in
the book of prophet Oseah, where even being betrayed he keeps the promises and relationship
towards the wife.
81 Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Pharisee". Encyclopedia Britannica, 20 Aug. 2020,
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pharisee. Accessed 14 July 2023.
82 Talmud: Hagigah 3:35
35
the Feast of Tabernacles.83 These priestly perspectives see the Temple worship
as the center of religious faithfulness, and they are proud of the vast walls they
have erected around the sacred space. Nothing should detract from this ideal
environment, and no one should dispute the priestly authority as long as the
ceremonies are performed correctly. As a result, religious tolerance cannot be
expected from Temple institutions. According to the Sadducean Temple
philosophy, the Temple religion is regarded from the priests' practical standpoint
and is connected with sacrifice and, notably, purity. The current cult is held up as
a model, and the serving priests are the only intermediaries between God and
His people. This priestly style might be classified as realistic, literal, and
performative.84
Naturally, Christianity had to adapt to the Hellenistic worldview, which is
evidenced by the apostolic fathers and even more by the apologists of the church
from the 2nd century onwards. Early Christian thinkers, such as Origin and
Augustine, used the language and concepts of Greek philosophy to explain
Christian beliefs and doctrines. On one hand, this allowed Christianity to become
more accessible to a wider audience and to engage in philosophical debates with
other religions and worldviews. On the other hand, it bought Christendom a oneway
ticket away from Hebrew thought and perspectives. It was after later
developments of the Jewish religion that these distinctions started to appear. The
Construction of orthodox Judaism by the rabbis in Yavneh “Jamnia” reflected in
the creation of the Christian identity.85 It is stated in the Babylonian Talmud that
the “minim benediction” was instituted in Yavne.86 The liturgical code created by
the Jews around that time, which appears as the number 12th in the 18th
benediction, “Shemoneh Esreh”, stipulated the scrutinizing of heretical ideas
among the Jewish cycles, especially in the synagogue.
83 Talmud: Sukkah 3:16
84 Eyal Regev, The Temple in Early Christianity: Experiencing the Sacred (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2019), 9.
85 Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia, Pa:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 28.
86 Berakhot 28b-29a, The Babylonian Talmud: Translated into English for the First Time, with
Introduction, Commentary, Glossary and Indices, çev. A. Cohen (Cambridge University Press,
2013), 190.
36
“For the apostates (meshumaddim), let there be no hope, and uproot the kingdom of
arrogance (malkhut zadom), speedily and in our days. May the Nazarenes (hanaẓarim/
noṣrim/notzrim) and the sectarians (minim) perish momentarily. Let them be
blotted out of the Book of life and not be written together with the righteous. You are
praised, O Lord, who subdues the arrogant.”87
This curse was applied to several kinds of people or groups, i.e., Jews who
apostatized to Christianity, Christians themselves, the enemies of the Jews, and
the governing authorities of the Christian world.88 In one view, introducing this
form of the curse functioned to 'smoke out' the “minim.” If a reader faltered in
reciting the prayer, i.e., to curse oneself would be tantamount to thanking God for
bringing about their own destruction, they would fall under suspicion and risk
expulsion from the congregation.89 Around that time, Jewish persecution started
in Rome under the emperor Domitian. Jews and Jewish customs were banned in
Rome, and Christianity as a Jewish sect was also inevitably constrained to adapt
its Jewishness to gentile practices.90 This event accelerated the move away from
anything perceived to be “Jewish.”91 The fact that the Jews were persecuted
inside Jewish sets and outside in the Roman world launched Christianity on an
unavoidable path. Or Christianity would compromise its principles or be
extinguished by Rome.
Jews were at a disadvantage in this case concerning cultural matters. Judaism
was an ethnicity more than a Religion. While Christianity was taken as a
decentralized movement containing all kinds of ethnic groups, Gentiles-Jews
could not adapt their practices to a new lifestyle. They could not work in public
settings nor reach nobility by their own means. Their adaptation was in the trading
market in the streets and countryside of Anatolia and Europe. From this
87 Raimo Hakola, Identity Matters: John, the Jews and Jewishness (Leiden ; Boston: Brill
Academic Pub, 2005), 46.
88 Ruth Langer, Cursing the Christians?: A History of the Birkat HaMinim (Oxford ; New York:
Oxford University Press, 2011), 3.
89 Joel Marcus, “Birkat Ha-Minim Revisited”, New Testament Studies 55/4 (Ekim 2009), 526-
533.
90 Samuele Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath to Sunday: A Historical Investigation of the Rise of
Sunday Observance in Early Christianity (Biblical Perspectives, 1987), 95.
91 Sigve K. Tonstad, The Lost Meaning of the Seventh Day (Berrien Springs, Mich: Andrews
University Press, 2009), 302.
37
Hellenization of the Christian movement, people who could not stand the
Jewishness of the gospel started to rise in an attempt to purge Christianity from
all kinds of Jewish Practices. The willingness to separate the Orthodoxy of Jesus
from the Jews and Jewish practices in the first and second centuries led believers
to create their own version of Religion, which ended up being Christianity,
emancipated of anything Jewish. We shall see how Hellenistic Christianity helped
the Western mindset to construct a perspective of law in the next chapter. But for
now, we shall see how the church fathers understood the concept of law in their
attempt to create orthodoxy.
1.2 The Law and the Church Fathers
As the separation was not clear up until the 3rd and 4th centuries, the task of
putting a delineator regarding Christians and Jews over the law also became
difficult. Due to the multicultural setting and the vivid presence of the Jewish
debates all around the Roman Empire, hetero teachings, or heterodoxies, started
to rise within the Christian belief. We can trace the surge of heterodoxies in
Anatolia from Montanists in Papuza (modern Uşak/Turkey) to Marcionism
(Originally from Sinop / Turkey). Orthodox Christianity also condemned the sect
of the Ebionites for joining the observation of the Sabbath, according to the law
of the Jews, but, interestingly enough, they had as a difference, the observation
of the Sabbath after the manner of Christians.92
The tone in the language of the early church fathers against heretical movements
was clear, and they were in the endeavor of setting the foundations for the
orthodoxy in the second and third centuries. Inasmuch, they tried to create a
balanced view between Law and Gospel and to show that dichotomies, in
general, were against the orthodoxy.93 Ignatius of Antioch (108 -140 AD), one of
the disciples of the Apostle John, while going to Rome to be executed, wrote a
letter to the Magnesians asking for the people, among other things, not to
continue to live according to Judaism (i.e., second temple religion). Otherwise,
92 Joseph Bingham, Origines Ecclesiasticæ: Or, The Antiquities of the Christian Church, and
Other Works, of the Rev. Joseph Bingham (William Straker, 1834), 7/46.
93 Howell, “Pauline Thought in the History of Interpretation”.
38
they would have fallen from grace.94 The same can be noticed in ‘The Letter to
Diognetus’, an apologetic Christian letter used widely in the 2nd century, which
was written around the year 130 AD. It says that Christians were allowed to
distance their practices from the “silliness and pride” of the Judaic practices, i.e.,
trying to stand up to the election of God only by keeping certain external
practices.95 Despite that, the Biblical Law that Ignatius of Antioch advocated for
was based on his interpretation of scripture and adherence to the teachings of
Jesus Christ.
In particular, Ignatius taught about the importance of following the Ten
Commandments and living a moral life. He also taught about being humble and
obedient to God, loving and caring for one another, being peaceful, and
abstaining from anger and envy. Overall, Ignatius’ view on the Christian life was
very much grounded in the foundation of the Bible, and he was careful to stay
true to the values and teachings within it. He was a proponent of Christian
orthodoxy and urged Christians to obey the commands of the Bible. Ignatius
espoused the importance of the Mosaic Law, which he referred to repeatedly in
his writings. He believed that keeping the commandments of the Law of Moses
was essential for salvation and that Christians must honor the Law in its entirety.
He also stated that, despite the perfection of Jesus Christ's teachings, it is
impossible for any Christian to be saved without being circumcised in accordance
with the Law of Moses. He also warned against any teacher who would lead
people away from the Law of Moses as a part of their Christian teaching. In his
writings, Ignatius also encouraged believers to follow the Law in everyday life,
including the observance of holidays and honoring the Sabbath.
Justin Martyr, writing about the middle of the second century, distinguished two
groups of Christians of Jewish origin. One of them was moderates who remained
within the church and, especially in the Diaspora congregations, exercised a
moderate Jewish influence on the formation of Christian doctrine and morality;
94 Michael W. Holmes (ed.), The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations
(Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker Academic, 2007), 208-209.
95 Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers, 700-701.
39
and a second group, which were some extremists who refused to live with those
Gentile Christians who would refuse to not incorporate the Jewish law into their
faith in Christ.96
Due to this tone, much of what existed from the Roman persecution of Jews in
the previous centuries took shape after Christianity became a state religion. Such
stigma of the Jews perpetuated much in the Christian world, creating an anti-
Jewish sentiment. This sentiment developed about 50 years later in the writings
of the orthodox bishop Melito of Sardis (100-180 AD). For Melito, Christ himself
was prefigured in the Passover lamb and, therefore, brought the Jewish festival’s
ritualistic nature to an end. According to him, the Jews who keep celebrating
Passover have made a serious mistake and have rejected the lamb whose death
Brings salvation. Melito illustrates his argument as an architectural model, which
we use to build a house, but as soon as the house is built, we can destroy the
model. The law was a model for Jesus, who destroyed the necessity of the Law.
Melito was the first to record in the Christian literature a lashing against the Jews,
saying that they rejected the one they should be expecting, and because Jesus
was not only the promised Messiah, but he was also himself, God. Therefore, in
Melito’s antisemitic ideas, Jews were responsible for the death of God's “deicide,”
in his own words: “God has been murdered; the King of Israel has been put to
death by an Israelite right-hand.”97
Despite this extreme, many movements rose with different views of law. For
instance, a sect called the Nazarenes, dated around the 2nd century, was
regarded as Orthodox Christianity that kept the Torah and circumcision. They
believed in the high Christology and also regarded Paul's writings to be authentic,
and according to scholars, they were the true heirs of the church in Jerusalem.98
Another well-known sect was the sect of the Judaizers. Scholars have debated
about this sect concerning whether it was orthodoxy or heterodoxy, beginning in
96 Hans-Joachim Schoeps, Jewish Christianity factional Disputes In The Early Church (Fortess
Press, 1968), 10.
97 Nanos, Paul within Judaism, 2015, 36.
98 Petri Luomanen, “Nazarenes,” A Companion to Second-Century Christian “Heretics,”
(January 1, 2005), 280.
40
the Antiochian incident where there was a conflict between Peter and Paul
regarding the treatment of Gentiles. In this perspective, Peter, as an apostle, was
setting an orthodox treatment concerning gentile converts. In this view they
needed to become Jews before adhering to the new faith. Judaizers believed that
a Gentile needed to be circumcised before believing in Jesus.99 As Michele Muray
stated:
"From Paul's perspective, by withdrawing from the Gentile table fellowship, Peter was
sending a message to the Gentile believers of Antioch. The message to Antiochene
Gentile Christians was that they were to Judaize."100
To counter this idea, Paul wrote to the Galatians, who required the new believers
to practice circumcision and other Jewish emblems to profess their faith in Jesus.
In this scope, the law of Moses, or biblical law, was implicitly understood as a
whole, and whatever form of obedience to the law should be, as the classical
approach sees it, regarded as heterodoxy. New Testament scholars came to see
the Judaizers as anyone who kept the law idea, which modern protestant scholars
still hold. For instance, in the well-known Eerdman’s commentary on Galatians,
Charles R. Eerdmann writes:
In fact, until the end of his evangelistic ministry, Paul had to fight the teachings of the socalled
Judaizers, which often conflicted with his preaching. According to the Judaizers,
faith in Jesus Christ was only a part of the gospel. The other was obedience to the law of
Moses, and especially circumcision, which went back to the time of the covenant between
God and Abraham. Therefore, salvation could only be achieved through a combination of
faith and works, grace and law, which was directly opposed to the message of Paul, who
preached salvation by grace alone, through faith in Jesus. The apostle's entire reaction
against the Judaizers was motivated by his understanding that God, in order to justify
man, requires nothing of him, unless he accepts, by faith, what Jesus accomplished on
the cross (Gal 2:16). But that didn't seem to be understood by opponents.101
99 F. L. Cross - E. A. Livingstone (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford ;
New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 912.
100 Michele Murray, Playing a Jewish Game: Gentile Christian Judaizing in the First and Second
Centuries CE (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2004), 33.
101 Charles R. Erdman - Earl F. Zeigler, The Epistle of Paul to the Galatians (Westminster John
Knox Press, 1981), 45-46.
41
With the arrival of heretics in the second century, the capsule into which lawabiding
Christians were placed became increasingly difficult to break. Marcionism
was possibly the most prominent 'heretical' movement during this time of the
church. Marcion hated Judaism and especially the “Jewish God,” as he called
“demiurge”.102 We can trace an anti-Jewish sentiment growing from the early 2nd
century AD onwards, especially with Marcion's movement against the Jewish
roots of the New Testament. For instance, Marcion decided to Fast on the
Sabbath day, only to go against what the ‘God of the Jews’ commanded.103 His
intent was to reject the lawgiver as he rejects the law. Marcion understood that
he needed to free Christianity from the crises of the Law, and therefore, he should
offer a simpler, non-syncretic view of Christianity to the Hellenistic population.104
Adolf von Harnack, at the beginning of the 20th century, even connected
Marcion’s desire to reform and ideals of cleaning Christianity from its Jewishness
to many similarities in the theology of Martin Luther.105 What many claimed to be
misconceptions but, as a result, ended up creating Hitler Germany.
Another prior document to Marcion that evidences this sentiment is an epistle
claimed to be written by Barnabas.106 According to NT scholars, the epistle of
Barnabas was popular and widely read in the 2nd century and also it was added
to one of the most famous old sources, i.e., Codex Sinaiticus, dated from the 4th
century. Barnabas writes strictly against Judaism, claiming that this religion has
always been and is a false religion. In his understanding, there was never a
covenant between God and Israel because in Sinai, when God gave the law to
Moses, Israel rejected it, and Moses broke the law right there in front of the
102 Demiurge was a lesser god who was one of the forces of evil, responsible for the creation of
the despised material world and was wholly alien to the supreme God of goodness. See
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Demiurge". Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 Apr. 2013,
103 Bingham, Origines Ecclesiasticæ, 7/47.
104 Adolf von Harnack, Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God, trans. John E. Steely - Lyle D.
Bierma (Durham, N.C: Labyrinth Press, 1990), 12.
105 W. H. C. Frend, “Church Historians of the Early Twentieth Century: Adolf von Harnack
(1851–1930),” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 52/1 (January 2001), 83–102.
106 The Epistle of Barnabas was traditionally understood to be written by Paul’s companion
Barnabas, but disregarded as being unlikely so by most church historians.
42
people, which was not then renewed.107 The author of the Epistle of Barnabas
also advocates that the Jewish nation failed to interpret the Law given to Moses.
The Epistle says that because they were hardened head and heart people, they
read the Law literally instead of figuratively in order to keep the high standards
before God and ended up in constant disobedience before him. Barnabas gives
numerous interpretations of Jewish Law. For instance, concerning the food laws,
he argues that the law for not eating pork was not meant to be literal. Actually,
the law says that we should not live like a swine pig, who shouts loudly to its
owners while hungry and is silent when they are full. In his perspective, Christians
should not only pray to God when needed and be silent when everything is well.
For Barnabas, it is the Christians who are the people of the Covenant, the people
of God, not Jews, and the Old Testament is a Christian book, not Jewish.108
Around the same time emerged a sect of Antinomian Gnostics, founded in the
second century by Prodicus, a heretic of whom no definite information has come
down. They claimed, as the sons of the highest God (not of the demiurge), and
as a royal race, to be bound by no laws. Their primary approach to the
scriptures was to deny any kind of law from the Jewish religion. They rejected the
Sabbath and all external ceremonies as something fit only for those who stood
under the sway of the Demiurge.
Church fathers were busy stipulating boundaries for orthodoxy, concepts like
virtue, righteousness, and uprightness delineating various concepts of law in their
writings. However, they do not give a clear meaning of the law, which we assume
is the same as a Jew would have seen it. Despite the word ‘lawlessness,’ is often
used by the early church fathers; however, its definition was not clear, and it is
subject to further studies.109
107 Philip Schaff, Ante-Nicene Fathers: Volume I. Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and
Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts vd. (Grand Rapids, 2017), 229. It is important to notice that
later on in Exodus 31:18 God ordains Moses to prepare two tablets of stones as a punishment
for what he had done, and God himself wrote again in the tablets with his own finger.
108 Schaff, Ante-Nicene Fathers, 228.
109 The word in Greek ‘Anomo’, translated as “lawless” and “lawlessness” appears 23 times
only in the apostolic fathers. See Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers.
43
1.3 The Law After Constantine
At the beginning of the 4th century, Christians already had a robust prejudice
against the law and practices of the Jews. We can see it in Anti-Jewish Laws
written around 312 AD in the Theodosian Code110. Meanwhile, in 313 AD, Roman
Emperor Constantine had a dream that changed the fate of the forbidden
movement. Many Church fathers in the Constantine Era saw the days of
persecution and, in a little while, were seen as very prestigious people in the
empire due to the conversion of Constantine. Due to the Roman culture of
leadership and authority, the church became heavily sensible to the influences of
the empire. Now, to become a leader in the church did not mean only to become
a spiritual guide to serve the people, but rather a charismatic leader aiming to
gain political influence. One of the most famous changes regarding the law and
Judaism happened in the year 363-364 AD in the council of Laodicea. The
Council of Laodicea, a collection of canons from around 365 AD, was mainly
intended to regulate public worship in churches and ensure uniformity in the early
Christian faith. In that council, the 4th commandment of the 10 commandments
was abolished. The Canon 29 of the record says:
“Christians must not Judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day,
rather honoring the Lord's Day; and, if they can, resting then as Christians. But if any
shall be found to be Judaizes, let them be anathema from Christ.”111
The council canonized many laws, rules, and regulations, which have become
core beliefs and doctrines of the Christian faith. Some of these rules changed
over time as the Christian religion and the theology surrounding it developed. For
example, the Council of Laodicea outlawed the use of images in churches, which
was later overturned with the advent of the teaching of the Divine Image in
Christianity. The Council also enforced a prohibition against the use of pagan-
110 See Theodosian Code (16.8.1; 16.9.2; 12.1.100; 16.8.18)
111 Henry R. Percival - Henry Wace, The Seven Ecumenical Councils Of The Undivided
Church: Their Canons And Dogmatic Decrees Together With The Canons Of All The Local
Synods Which Have ... From The Writings Of The Greatest Scholars, ed. Philip Schaff
(Benediction Classics, 2011), 314.
44
influenced pagan customs, including the observance of certain feasts and the use
of astrology, which were later declared permissible.
Around the same time, John Chrysostom (347 - 407 AD), Archbishop of
Constantinople, wrote the “Adversus Judaeos” complaining about Christians who
were keeping a tight connection with Jews. John Chyrsostom’s “Adversus
Judaeos” criticism concerned Jewish converts to Christianity who still observed
Jewish customs, even after their conversion. He was upset with their continuing
involvement in Jewish law and practices, stating that these practices were
unbefitting to true Christians. He argued that the two religions were incompatible,
and that observance of Jewish law was an act of apostasy. Chrysostom's work
also includes several passages of inflammatory anti-Jewish rhetoric, accusing
Jews of being foolish, blind, or perverse and refuting any Jewish interpretation of
scriptures with which he disagreed. Despite all that, John Chrysostom believed
that the law was an expression of God’s will and love and that by observing it, a
Christian would become closer to God. Chrysostom argued that the law was
made up of a set of principles that would lead to a happy and successful life. He
emphasized the importance of humility and obedience to God’s law and the
importance of using one’s intellect and resources to discern the proper application
of the law. Chrysostom also argued that the law must be understood as a whole,
and each part should be interpreted in light of the overarching principle of love for
God. Lastly, Chrysostom argued that one must not be afraid to face the
consequences of violating the law. He teaches that there is freedom in obedience
to God’s law and that following the law despite the consequences is essential in
the Christian life.
From the end of the 4th century onwards, theologians started to revisit church
history to protect and transmit orthodoxy in various forms, usually culturally
anachronistic to the gospels and the early church. Eusebius of Caesarea, a
church historian from the 4th century, gives an interesting reason why Christians
should reject the law and Jewish customs:
“Because God has done what the law could not do, we reject Jewish customs on the
ground that they were not meant for us and that it is impossible to accommodate them to
45
the needs of the Gentiles, while we gladly accept that the Jewish prophecies contain
predictions about ourselves.112
We see that the common opinion of the Mosaic law among the first three firstcentury
Christian writers and clergy was that it was ineffective as the sole method
of righteousness and was excessive in its intricacies. But as Philip L. Reynolds
explains, they did not imply that Christian communities should not utilize these
laws and other standards to promote proper living.113
In this period, Judaism had been walled with a doctrine of protection against
Christianity, and Christianity likewise protected against Judaism in all its forms.
As a consequence, the 5th-century discussions concerning the human nature of
Jesus overshadowed the discussions concerning the law. By the 6th century, the
wall was so well established between the two traditions that in the 6th Century,
Gregory the Great (540 - 604 AD) came to say that the Antichrist would come to
renew the observance of the Sabbath.114 As we shall see, the Sabbath
observance did not stop there, nor did the law as a whole by Christians. However,
a path had been carved that would not be easy to be erased. From then on,
Christianity had everything to do with distancing its practices from the Jewish
tradition as well, and we see the tendency of mainstream Judaism to try to build
a wall against Christian interpretation more and more to protect its tradition from
Christianity. This attitude continued towards the Middle Ages.
Attempts to change the perspective of Law from the Decalogue or from the Old
Testament perspective within the Church can be seen around the 4th century as
well. Ambrosiater, an unidentified Latin biblical commentator who lived in Rome
around the end of the fourth century, wrote the first comprehensive Latin
commentary on Paul's letters, which is still available in several translations or
recensions, as well as a collection of Questions on the Old and New Testaments.
Ambrosiaster discussed the rule of law and justice. In truth, he was a thinker
112 Gerald L. Bray - Thomas C. Oden (eds.), Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture:
Romans (Downers Grove, Ill: IVP Academic, 2005), 203; Eusebius of Caesarea, The Proof of
the Gospel, ed. Paul A. Boer Sr, trans. W. J. Ferrar (Independently published, 2019), 44.
113 Philip L. Reynolds (ed.), Great Christian Jurists and Legal Collections in the First Millennium
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 7.
114 Bingham, Origines Ecclesiasticæ, 7/46.
46
whose mind was influenced in various ways by legal concepts. He was fascinated
by theoretical concerns about the genesis and nature of the many systems of
regulation under which humans have lived: natural law, Mosaic law, church
canons, and national laws such as the Roman Empire. Ambrosiaster was one of
the first to use the term "natural law" or "law of nature" (he used both terms),
which were inspired by Paul's discussion in the Letter to the Romans, particularly
Romans 1:20 "Ever since the creation of the world, God's invisible nature,
namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that
have been made", as well as Romans 2:14-15 "When Gentiles who do not have
the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves... They
show that what the law requires is written on their hearts". For Ambrosiaster, the
natural law required both a fundamental knowledge of God and a feeling of moral
uprightness, both of which were, in theory, available to all humanity.115
Augustine, drawing from the same perspective, wrote the book called “The City
of God.” In this book, Augustine introduces his two-cities historical paradigm,
which he used to explain the link between Christianity and secular governance.
As some scholars have understood it, the publishing of this book created a
fundamental basis for what we call the Christian middle-ages. He sets the
fundamental belief of the importance of atoning for sins appointed by the Natural
law, mostly known as the “original sin”. In this period, clergy played the role of
interpreting and announcing the law of God rather than encouraging the free
study and application of scriptures. A sociological shift was at hand, and the
church rapidly gained much influence due to emperors and leaders becoming
Christian throughout the Roman Empire. This evidently makes the claim that, in
other words, their differences were not perceived theologically but socially. The
Separation of Ways classically juxtaposed different and similar theological
aspects of each tradition, also known as boundary marks, which were much more
related to sociological issues than to theological subjects. Scholars have
preferred to base the separation upon factual historical persecution other than
later associations with the law and its applications. The boundary marks concept
115 Reynolds, Great Christian Jurists and Legal Collections in the First Millennium, 255.
47
became, as we shall see in the following chapters, the main point by which
mainstream Christian tradition, wants to be divided from the Jewish religion, and
perhaps delineations of faith from late Jewish attempts of constructing an
orthodoxy far away from Christian image and likeness. A Western concept of
religion was impregnated in the original Palestinian worldview of religious life and
made it the only way of accessing truth.
In this chapter, we have discussed how a miscellaneous faith and form of belief
in first-century Palestine region ended up becoming two individual traditions with
harsh orthodox teachings against each other in the following centuries.
Continuing from this perspective, we shall see in the following chapter key
background elements for the Western concept of law and how they influenced
the Western Christian tradition in its understanding of the Pauline writings and
the Law.
48
Chapter 2 - Classical Perspectives of Law in Christianity
2.1 East vs. West - Ideas of Law
Kristen Stendhal, in 1963, was the first scholar to call the attention of academia
to the differences in perspective between the Eastern and Western theologies
concerning the Law. In his HTS article “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective
Conscience of the West,” he shows how there is a gap between the Western and
Eastern mindset concerning Biblical interpretation in its basic dogmatics, for
instance, in fundamental beliefs of Christianity like law and Justification.116
In the Western society's mindset, Law and Ethics have been a field of study since
the pre-Socratics. Roman law was a thing that any Roman citizen would be proud
of because of its fairness and the ethical bond of justice and right. Despite all the
glory of the Roman Empire in the past, the fate of its citizens changed
considerably after the advent of Christianity. The arrival of Christianity had a
tremendous influence on the future of Roman residents, which ushered in an era
of enormous cultural and socioeconomic revolution throughout the Roman
Empire. Christian ideas challenged or even superseded many conventional
Roman norms and institutions, including the legal system.
Though the idea of law was completely different from East to West,
anthropological studies in the last century have revealed that the concept of Law
and Covenant are usually misunderstood by the West as far as what the second
temple period mosaic was concerned. First of all, scholars like W.L. Knox
understood that Paul used a very adapted language towards Roman and Greek
societies to explain the new events that took place in Jewish history.117 This fact
shows that Paul was on the edge between Western Greco-Roman and Eastern
Jewish culture, allowing him to interchangeably navigate his claims on both sides
of the ancient world spectrum in which the Jewish divine law was an alien concept
116 Krister Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West”, Harvard
Theological Review 56/3 (Temmuz 1963), 199-215.
117 Wilfred L. Knox, St Paul and the Church of the Gentiles (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2008), 126-149.
49
to the Roman jurisprudential system. Pauline's writings are full of legal language,
in which he describes the concept of faith and works through the lens of a Judge.
Jews were used to keeping Divinely commanded laws as second temple Judaism
believed in an ongoing covenant treaty for a millennium. Romans, on the other
hand, lived where the rule of the law was more important than the ruler. The idea
of guilt/innocence in Western society was alien to the Palestinian Jewish
Honor/shame worldview. The Palestine Jewish Honor/Shame worldview,
dominant at the time of Jesus and the early Christian church, was not as
preoccupied with the notion of guilt or innocence. Instead, this worldview
emphasized keeping one's dignity and avoiding humiliation. Disputes and
disagreements were commonly settled through dialogue and mediation rather
than through formal judicial processes in this cultural setting. The main issue was
not deciding who was guilty or innocent but rather mending relationships and
maintaining honor. Mark A. Noll, in his church history book “Turning Points”
(2012), emphasizes this difference between Eastern and Western approaches to
the Christian faith.118
In the centuries following the Pauline letters, as soon as Christianity extended
across the Roman Empire and beyond, many of its greatest theologians and
apologists, surprisingly coming from legal backgrounds, took a legalistic
approach to theological difficulties with them. Key theologians and apologists like
Tertullian, Basil the Great, Ambrose, and Augustine were Roman lawyers. As a
result, dozens of commentaries on the systematic theology of scripture started to
emerge. Apologists started to see theology as a legal court to criminalize different
perspectives, and theologians saw it as the core issue for the innocent ability of
human beings through the actions of God. These theologians viewed theology as
a method of comprehending and implementing God's rule to human activity, and
they frequently framed theological discussions in terms of guilt and
righteousness. Pauline's writings were read under the Western individualistic
118 Mark A. Noll, Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity (Grand Rapids,
Mich: Baker Academic, 2012), 123.
50
framework which personalized the notion of Salvation in a contrast between
innocence and guilt.
Reformation doubled down in this narrative. John Calvin was also a lawyer, and
he led the reform in the same spectrum as previous Christian lawyers. The idea
of Guilt vs. Righteousness became the center of Western theology, creating a
different highlight in the purpose of the theology. Calvin stressed human
sinfulness and the necessity for supernatural grace to make people righteous in
God's view. This stress on guilt and holiness became a primary focus of Western
theology, influencing how many Christians believe about sin, redemption, and
God's character. While some have criticized this legalistic approach to theology
as being overly rigid and focused on guilt and punishment, it has also had a
profound influence on Western culture and thought, influencing everything from
how Christians have approached moral issues to the development of Western
legal systems. The contrast to the Western mindset would be the one that Eastern
churches adopted or remained. Christianity grew differently in the East. Eastern
theologians did not understand the Gospel via Roman law. Rather, the Eastern
world was engulfed in the shame-honor dynamic in countries ranging from the
Middle East to the Far East. Eastern Orthodox theology did not address sin, guilt,
or redemption explicitly. They were more concerned with whether or not a man
could stand in the face of God, as well as our connection with God and the people
around us.119 The social-ritualistic aspect of the law remained central in Eastern
theology which the law was seen as the ritualistic aspect of liturgical worship.
The fundamental theological assumption of both Eastern and Western
Christianity has been undoubtedly built over the expiatory sacrificial Jewish
system/law relations to the Roman law, which intends to replace the transgressor
of the law with a guiltless ransom, canceling the cost of the debt. This perspective
grew more and more after the systematization work of the academic period of the
church. The Western Christian tradition brought about the entire treatises and
specified every little inch of its boundaries. From Augustine, skipping the early
119 Roland Muller, Honor and Shame: Unlocking the Door (Philadelphia, Pa.: Xlibris, 2001), 51.
51
and high Middle Ages, to the scholasticism period, the emphasis on the expiatory
sacrifice shaped the religion of the West. Cross, sacrifice, and atonement of
Christ became the center of Western Christianity, adding a perfect emphasis
contextualizing the Eastern religion to the Western Roman mind. In the Eastern
tradition, the ritualistic nature of the law was emphasized, trying to enchant the
narrative mystic concept of humankind standing face-to-face with God. Both
worldviews have their roots in the Jewish faith, as it is meant to be understood
biblically.
The Jewish faith has its core belief, as it could be summarized, as a breach of
fidelity towards the originator of the law and his ruling. God and his rules are
considered the essence of Jewish identity and salvation. Violating these
regulations is considered a breach of faithfulness and can result in estrangement
from God and the community. On the other hand, Jewish theology emphasizes
the possibility of repentance and atonement for those who have broken God's
rules, as well as the value of forgiveness and kindness in sustaining God's
covenantal connection with his people. Accustomed to these standards, the
apostle Paul, a Jew, contextualized the Jewish praxis to the gentile understanding
of Law and ethics. Paul's perspective was affected by his Jewish upbringing, but
he also acknowledged the cultural and linguistic disparities between Jews and
Gentiles. He attempted to transmit the gospel message to his audience in an
approachable and relevant way to his audience. From this scope, many Scholars
in multiple Christian traditions believed that the law did not play an essential role
in Paul’s ethics. However, as an expert in Jewish law, Paul's relevance is affirmed
by Tom Holland, who says:
In the churches that Paul had labored so hard to establish across the span of the
Mediterranean, his was the understanding of God’s purpose that was destined to prevail.
Never before had Jewish morality and Greek philosophy been fused to such momentous
effect. That the law of the God of Israel might be read inscribed on the human heart,
written there by his Spirit, was a notion that drew alike on the teachings of Pharisees and
Stoics – and yet equally was foreign to them both. Its impact was destined to render
Paul’s letters – the correspondence of a vagrant, without position or reputation in the
affairs of the world – the most influential, the most transformative, the most revolutionary
ever written. Across the millennia, and in societies and continents unimagined by Paul
52
himself, their impact would reverberate. His was a conception of law that would come to
suffuse an entire civilization. He was true – just as he proclaimed himself to be – the
herald of a new beginning.120
As time went on, the cultural and linguistic divisions between Jews and non-Jews
led to a widening rift between the Eastern and Western branches of Christianity.
Theological disagreements on matters like God's essence, the church's role, and
the scripture interpretation resulted in a progressive divergence in doctrine and
practice between East and West.
Nonetheless, due to the mosaic multicultural nature of the community of
believers, the plausibility of the cultural clash was inevitable. We see early on how
Paul would write to the churches in Asia. These misunderstandings also
contained difficulties concerning language, worldview, and authority
perspectives. A well-established cultural difference was the fact that Paul
addressed Westerners in his legal-moral logic to make sense of culture, a reason
that was not so clear in the East, creating a clear emancipation of the nature of
the community already in the first century.121
As the Church grew, the natural path was to divide the faith between social groups
and languages. The Christian faith came into contact with various cultures,
languages, and social groupings as it expanded throughout the ancient world. As
a result, separate communities of believers emerged, each with its customs,
traditions, and theological emphases. We see evidence of these distinct
communities in the New Testament, particularly in the book of Acts. For example,
in Acts 6:1, we find the establishment of separate linguistic communities, such as
the Hellenistic Jews and the Ethiopian eunuch. In Acts 8:4-25, we observe the
formation of various cultural groupings, such as the Samaritans.
Scholars agree today that the main schism between the Eastern Orthodoxy and
Western Catholic traditions was a problem of cultural misunderstandings at first,
mainly because the hermeneutical pre-concepts of East and West were different
120 Tom Holland, Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind (Hachette UK, 2019), 112.
121 Daniel Marguerat, Paulo: Uma teologia em construção (Edições Loyola, 2011), 468.
53
in the first place, and the glasses by which they read the scripture were already
essentially diverse. These hermeneutic background concepts later in history
caused what we call the Big Schism. One of the significant contributors to that
event was the heavy influence of Hellenism in the first century. Philo of
Alexandria, a notably prolific Hellenistic Jew of the 1st century, interpreted the
Jewish scriptures allegorically, and as a result, for many Christian writers,
allegories that derive from platonic philosophy became crucial for understanding
Jewish literature.122
After him, another big name: “Origen of Alexandria” (185–254), became the most
influential theologian of early Christianity and a prominent figure in the
development of the Hellenistic Christian tradition. Though born into a Christian
family, Origen developed his interpretation of the Bible, often combining ideas
from Greek philosophy and Neoplatonism. In doing so, he laid the foundation for
what later became known as Hellenistic Christianity. Origen, further in his life,
went to study under Clement of Alexandria and, together with Clement, wrote
voluminous commentaries on the Scripture. His knowledge of Hebrew and Greek
was made evident due to his work titled the “Hexapla.” 123 While Clement was a
rationalist humanist, Origen broke away from his tutor’s approach by interpreting
the Scriptures mysteriously and allegorically. He argued that the Bible could be
interpreted on different levels, and he emphasized applying Greek philosophical
understanding to the study of the Scriptures. Despite all that Hellenistic
background, Origin is said to have consulted Jews in their interpretations,
especially those passages that were not clear.124
The influence of Origen was also felt in the writings of Jerome, an important figure
in the growth of early Christian scholarship, (also known as Saint Jerome) Jerome
122 Everett Ferguson, Encyclopedia of Early Christianity: Second Edition (Routledge, 2013), 35–
36.
123 The Hexapla is an extensive treatise written by the early Christian scholar Origen of
Alexandria (c. 185–254 AD) wherein Old Testament books exist in six versions: Hebrew,
Hebrew in Greek letters, the Septuagint Greek, the Septuagint Greek in Hebrew letters, the
Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Syriac Peshitta. He hoped that his work would help Greekspeaking
Christians to better understand the original Hebrew text.
124 John G. Gager, Who made early Christianity? the Jewish lives of the Apostle Paul (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 7.
54
was a priest, theologian, historian, and scholar from the 5th century, best known
for his translation of the Bible into Latin also known as the Vulgate. He believed
that biblical law should be interpreted in an allegorical way and that a spiritual
application of it was ultimately more important than a literal interpretation. Jerome
extensively studied the works of Origen, and it was through Jerome’s writings that
Origen’s ideas were disseminated throughout the Christian world. The
introduction of philosophy into the interpretation of the Scriptures was a
noteworthy contribution made by Origen and Jerome to the development of what
later came to be known as Hellenistic Christianity. Jerome argued for the
importance of following the teachings of Christ and for the need to obtain a
Christian education. He argued against the superstitious interpretations of the law
in ancient Judaism and argued for a more spiritually rewarding interpretation of
the law. By using Greek philosophical ideas, Origen and Jerome sought to explain
some of the core beliefs of Christianity. Influenced by Platonism, Origen believed
that the divine Logos was the architect of the universe and the ultimate source of
all knowledge. Jerome created an authoritative Latin version of the Bible and his
writings on the development of the Christian faith helped form the basis of
Augustinian theology. Through their varied and influential works, Origen and
Jerome provided the foundations for the development of Hellenistic Christianity.
For reading the New Testament after all the tradition that has been loaded into
the text, we have to agree with Martin Hengel that Judaism in the Second Temple
period was influenced significantly by Hellenism.125 Such judgment does not
falsify the fact that the Old Testament shaped NT and Paul’s theology. Especially
after Paul’s encounter with Jesus, he probably started to see the Old Testament
with new eyes.126
125 Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine during the
Early Hellenistic Period (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2003).
126 Michael F. Bird - Thomas R. Schreiner (eds.), Four Views on the Apostle Paul (Grand
Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 15.
55
2.2 Fundamental Distinctions of Law
We can see these distinctions in the law in Christianity from the time of Origen in
the 2nd century onwards. Origen in his commentary on Romans, argues that Paul
is the one who makes this distinction between carnal and spiritual, and therefore
to keep the law is impossible.127 The allegorical view opened an opportunity for
gentile Christians to find a way in the Hebrew Bible and to adapt the Christian
message from Judaism to the Western mindset. Origin, devoted a fair number of
writings deriving his theology from allegorical Judaism. Due to this fact,
interpretations of the law were given a more allegorical flavor to it with time.
Together with both categorizations and distinctions between laws, allegory was
placed as a prominent aspect of the law. It is important to establish the fact that
both Early Christianity as well as Early Rabbinic Judaism were much less
“orthodox” and less theologically homogeneous than modern, post-enlightenment
Judaism and Christianity. Early Christianity and Early Rabbinic Judaism were
both highly diverse movements, with a variety of beliefs, customs, and practices
that were often in conflict with each other. Both movements were characterized
by a lack of strict orthodoxy and a great deal of theological variety. This is in stark
contrast to the more homogeneous religious frameworks of modern Judaism and
Christianity, which are usually based on a single belief system and practice. This
is especially true for Judaism, which, in the early Middle Ages, moved towards a
more unified set of beliefs and practices.
Maimonides in the 11th century said that it is impossible to divide the law.
However, a historical division of law has been made by the Jews since the 1st
century. Judaism was not a homogenous religion, and it implies different kinds of
distinctions of Law. Sanders argues that there were different kinds of distinctions
and systematization of law already in the rabbinic tradition.128 Salime Leyla
Gürkan in her work “Yahudilik” (Judaism, 2017), gives details about these
distinctions, especially about the rabbinic tradition, which can also be understood
127 Gerald L. Bray - Thomas C. Oden (eds.), Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture:
Romans (Downers Grove, Ill: IVP Academic, 2005), 202; Charles Hodge, A Commentary on
The Epistle to The Romans (Andesite Press, 1997), Vol 3, 294-296.
128 E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 250.
56
as “oral traditions'' concerning important topics of the Torah.129 These oral
traditions were only written after the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD, called Mishna
today by Judaism. In the time of Paul and Jesus, these traditions were believed
by the majority of people to be contained in the Torah. The written tradition and
the oral tradition were dynamically and interconnected in which one influenced
the other, Birger Gerhardson shows that the oral tradition contributed significantly
to the surging of the Jewish Religion in the late centuries.130 Moore argues that
Rabbi Shammai in the 1st century AD made the first distinction between written
Torah and Oral Torah.131
Another distinction that Scholars have argued was that the religion of the second
temple made no distinction between Mosaic Law and God’s Law. Hays argues
that this kind of distinction between laws violates proper hermeneutical methods
and argues that these distinctions are inconsistent and arbitrary.132 However, the
lack of distinctions also creates a problem for Christians. As Joshua Ralston, a
religious scholar, recently pointed out some inconsistencies concerning the law
in the Christian interpretation:
“Distinctions are necessary to make sense of Scripture’s various affirmations that Jesus
has not overturned (Matt. 5:17) the perfect law of the Lord (Ps. 19:7), which is established
forever (Ps. 111:8), and also that the law has been in some way “abolished” in Christ
(Eph. 2:14–15). Neither antinomianism nor strict legalism is the most coherent Christian
possibility.”133
Furthermore, In the Hebrew Bible, we have the account that YHWH himself made
such a distinction by writing the Law of the 10 commandments in tablets of stone
129 Salime Leyla Gürkan, Yahudilik (İsam / İslam Araştırmaları Merkezi, 2017), 92–105.
130 Birger Gerhardsson - Jacob Neusner, Memory and Manuscript with Tradition and
Transmission in Early Christianity, çev. Eric J. Sharpe (Grand Rapids, Mich. : Livonia, Mich:
Wm. B. Eerdmans-Lightning Source, 1998), 19-32.
131 George Foot Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era, Volume I (Harvard
University Press, 2014), 258.
132 J. Daniel Hays, “Applying the Old Testament Law Today,” Bibliotheca Sacra 158/629 (2001),
23–24.
133 Joshua Ralston, Law and the Rule of God: A Christian Engagement with Shari’a (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2020), 195.
57
with his finger.134 These tablets were placed in the Ark of the Covenant, a wooden
box covered with gold, and placed in the most holy place (Kodesh HaKodashim)
inside the tent of the sanctuary in the desert.135
Attempts to categorize and make distinctions between OT laws are usually not
seen as fair by scholars of the classical perspective. Brian S. Rosner argues that
“Paul generally deals with law as a unity.”136 However, some characteristics of
each OT Law should be sorted out since the main points of Christian theology
are also distinguished by a systematic approach to theology.137 Systematic
theology, in its essence, is the categorization of scripture according to determined
doctrine. For instance, the Jewish Scholar Pamela Barmash recognizes that “the
genre, function, and significance of the Decalogue, as well as its special place
within the Hebrew Bible, are self-evidently from its basic formulation.” 138
Protestant scholars also inevitably ended up making distinctions between laws,
for example, in the book "Old Testament Law for Christians," Roy E. Gane
attempts to clarify the idea of divine principles from the frequently perplexing legal
code of ancient Israel, distinguishing between time-bound cultural aspects of
Israelite law and aspects of the divine value system that applies to all people
everywhere, and demonstrating the ethical relevance of Old Testament law for
Christians in modern times.139 And as Rolf Noorman stated: “Ptolemy the Gnostic,
and Irenaeus have made so many distinctions between laws that these
134 Exodus 31:18
135 See 1 Kings 8:9. The sanctuary was divided into three parts, 1) the court, or entrance where
the purification rites and the sacrifices were made; 2) inside, or the holy place, where the
incense was burned requiring that only Jewish priests entered to minister in the sanctuary, 3)
the Most Holy Place, where only the High Priest could enter once a year, which was in the day
of expiation (Yom Kippur). See Exodus 24-30. Cross - Livingstone, The Oxford Dictionary of the
Christian Church, art. Tabernacle.
136 Brian S. Rosner, “Paul and the Law: What He Does Not Say”, Journal for the Study of the
New Testament 32/4 (Haziran 2010), 50.
137 Walter C. Kaiser Jr et al., Five Views on Law and Gospel (Grand Rapids, Mich: Zondervan
Academic, 1996), 189.
138 Pamela Barmash (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Law (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2019), 135.
139 Roy E. Gane, Old Testament Law for Christians: Original Context and Enduring Application
(Baker Academic, 2017).
58
distinctions cannot be reduced to the opposition between “moral law” and
“ceremonial law”.140
As the reformers returned to the Bible in the 14th Century, there were not many
definitions possible to use in relation to the Law. In their study of scriptures alone,
they understood different types of law. Calvin, for the first time, divided the biblical
law into three main parts: Moral, Civil, and Ceremonial, which encapsulated the
law in the salvation issue.141 They interpreted the term “Mosaic Law” by
distinguishing between moral, civil, and ceremonial laws. They defined moral
laws as dealing with timeless truths regarding God's intention for human ethical
behavior. Christopher J. H. Wright later suggested five categories for these
distinctions: criminal, civil, family, religious, and charitable types of law.142 Civil
laws are those that deal with Israel's legal system, including the issues of land,
economics, and criminal justice. An example of civil law is Deuteronomy 15:1, "At
the end of every seven years you must cancel debts." Ceremonial laws deal with
sacrifices, festivals, and priestly activities. An example is in Deuteronomy 16:13,
which instructed the Israelites to "celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles for seven
days after you have gathered the produce of your threshing floor and your
winepress."
Brice, as well as other scholars, such as Räisenen, Schrage, and Sanders,
agrees that Paul made an implicit distinction between moral and ceremonial
law.143 According to this distinction, the ceremonial law encompassed the Jewish
religion's ritual and sacrifice activities, but the moral law covered the ethical
mandates and ideals found in the Ten Commandments and elsewhere in the
Hebrew Bible. This divide permitted theologians to argue that, while Christ fulfilled
and abolished the ceremonial law, the moral code remained in effect and
continued binding on Believers. This viewpoint had a tremendous impact on
140 Rolf Noormann, Irenäus als Paulusinterpret: Zur Rezeption und Wirkung der paulinischen
und deuteropaulinischen Briefe im Werk des Irenäus von Lyon (Mohr Siebeck, 2019), 66.
141 Stephen De Young, Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century
(Ancient Faith Publishing, 2021), 234.
142 Christopher J. H. Wright, An Eye for an Eye: The Place of Old Testament Ethics Today
(Downers Grove, Ill: Intervarsity Pr, 1983).
143 Brice L. Martin, Christ and the Law in Paul (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Pub, 2001), 34.
59
Protestant theology, particularly in the Reformed tradition, and it is still relevant
in some places today. For instance, Theologians of the Adventist tradition, who
usually agree that the Law was not changed, also had an attempt to hold up the
idea that ceremonial laws and the moral law were distinguished, and Jesus only
abolished the ceremonial laws. This issue becomes irrelevant in light of the New
Perspective, as we will see in the second part of this work.
2.3 Doctors of the Church, Scholasticism, and the Law
As we have seen, the unclear view regarding the law in the first three centuries
of the Christian tradition caused many problems with its interpretation. Natural
law became famous in the 4th century, creating a problem for theologians to
define and interpret the various laws of the Bible. In the West, Augustine, and
his zeal for interpreting the biblical text in Latin (the only language that he knew),
constructed the theology that gave the basis for the Middle Ages catholic
orthodoxy and assumptions in matters like Original Sin, Natural law, and others.
This view directly opposed how Eastern churches emphasized their theology of
Salvation. While in the West, Roman Law, Pax Romana, and other matters ruled
the worldview of the church, in the East, the old traditional Semitic worldview of
“honor vs. shame,” the “possibility of standing in front of God,” led the perspective
of the Eastern churches. Augustine's readings of Paul gave initiation to the
dichotomies of “Law vs. Grace”, and “Letter vs. Spirit”, which later on shall
become the bulk of Martin Luther’s anachronistic view of theology144 The Original
Sin doctrine formulated by Augustine shaped the way that Christianity as a whole,
read the Bible. Nevertheless, in recent years, mainstream Christian traditions,
despite of they be derived from a reformist movement, still constructed their basis
in Augustinian Western traditional theology, going even further to the point of
coming to understand that the ransom did not only pay the price for the
punishment of the law but also the law itself, which made the law to expire.
144 Joshua Ralston, Law and the Rule of God: A Christian Engagement with Shari’a (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2020), 9.
60
For Augustine, the commands served the purpose of disclosing the human
inability to keep the law of God without divine grace.145 In the counterpoint to the
Augustinian theology, Pelagius, (390-418 AD), a Romano British theologian,
raised the argument that God made humanity and is therefore fully apprised of
human capacities. As God created humanity, it is inconceivable that God would
ask anything of humanity unless humanity already had the capacity to achieve
it.146 Pelagius argued that Christians could do what God had requested of them
in his commandments as they were capable of doing it by having the gift of free
will; otherwise, God would be unjust in requiring obedience to something
impossible to obey.147 Augustine went against Pelagius' ideas, saying that
humans cannot please God as they have a corrupted nature due to the original
sin. Therefore, salvation is only possible through God’s grace, and the Law was
finished in Christ. The view of the ‘Original Sin’ was born from this discussion,
which ended up in the orthodoxy books of the church. For Augustine, humans are
born corrupt, due to the sin that Adam and Eve committed in the Garden of Eden.
Therefore, doctrines like the “Immaculate Conception of Mary” and also “the
Infant Baptism” turned out to be necessary for the salvation of the individual. The
Original Sin doctrine was developed throughout the ages in Catholic
scholasticism and the subject of the Nature of Sin in the reform and revisited in
the 20th century as the key aspect of the neo-orthodoxy of Karl Barth and others.
In his work “Homily on the Letter of John to the Parthians,” Augustine shows a
new significance of the Law of God. He connects the Law of God and what Paul
says about the Law of Christ. To him, the Law of Christ was works of charity
because Jesus is the end of the law, which meant He was God. The End of the
law was the end of self-justification through religious ritualism, but now the just is
the one who performs acts of charity.148 This view permeated and overtook
145 Alister E. McGrath, The Christian Theology Reader (Malden, Massachusetts: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2016), 351.
146 McGrath, The Christian Theology Reader, 351.
147 Nanos, Paul within Judaism, 2015, 38.
148 Augustine, Homilies on the Gospel of John, Homilies on the First Epistle of John and
Soliloquies: Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. Philip Schaff
(Kessinger Publishing, LLC, 2004), böl. 4: 1-18.
61
Catholic theology as a whole. After Augustine, motivated young theologians
throughout the empire, mirrored their study of theology on his concepts. Schools
of interpretation adopted Augustinian views and doctrines. This period was the
beginning of what was later called scholasticism.
Scholasticism was the wave that brought a certain systematization to the Western
scenario. It was a form of interpreting, categorizing, and making distinctions
between Old Testament laws and doctrines. During this period, much has been
introduced as new ideas concerning the nature of the Law of God, Natural law,
etc. For instance, Anselm of Laon (1117 AD) and William of Champeaux (1070-
1121 AD), at the beginning of the 12th century, proposed the distinction between
the two revealed Biblical laws: 1) the Old Testament and 2) the New Testament
continually before them. Their study of scripture also brought up questions that
prompted them to delve deeper into the concept of law. The first chapters of
Genesis tell of men like Abel who lived virtuous lives and offered acceptable
sacrifices to God after the Fall, but before God gave Moses the Ten
Commandments and even before he commanded Abraham to circumcise himself
and his male descendants—that is, before the old law. Anselm and William
resorted to the concept of natural law to explain how such morally acceptable
lives were conceivable, drawing from the notion that was provided by the apostle
Paul in Romans 2:14–15: “For since the Gentiles, who have no law, do naturally
the things which are of the law, they themselves are in this way a law for
themselves—they who show the work of the law written in their hearts.” 149
Jerome, Origen, Augustine, and Ambrose, all these church doctors, debated
Paul's comment, and their debates were compiled during this period. The biblical
narrative history was divided into three periods, and each of them had its own
law: 1) the period of natural law, which lasted until God issued particular
commandments to the Jews (circumcision, and later the Ten Commandments);
2) the period of the old law; 3) and the period of the new law, which Christ
149 Fred D. Miller Jr - Carrie-Ann Biondi (ed.), A Treatise of Legal Philosophy and General
Jurisprudence: Volume 6: A History of the Philosophy of Law from the Ancient Greeks to the
Scholastics (Dordrecht: Springer, 2015), 271.
62
proclaimed. The old law replicated natural law in its moral precepts (as did the
new law), but it also contained figural regulations (such as circumcision and food
rules) and promises (such as Christ's coming prophecies). Natural law and
ancient law not only permitted people to live decent lives; they also allowed them
to be rescued (even if they had to wait until the Crucifixion to join paradise). Just
as baptism might atone for original sin for Christians, natural law (through gifts
and sacrifices to God) and the old law (by circumcision) included the remedies
required to make individuals fit to be rescued. They maintained that the trust in
Christ required for salvation need merely be broad confidence in God as a
righteous judge who would reward the virtuous and punish the bad.150 In this
systematization, a name sticks out of the multitude, a man who shifted the way
the Catholic church approached knowledge: Thomas Aquinas, one of the most
famous doctors of the church, came to write huge volumes of systematic
theology, in which he distilled the gospel, the law and philosophical issues
regarding the Christian faith. The traditional catholic definition of law comes from
Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274 AD), who said about the law:
“It [the Law] is nothing other than an ordinance of reason for the common good
promulgated by the one who cares for the community.” 151
He opened up the idea of law by reason, creating a status of scriptural law and
adjusting reason into the equation. Natural law, according to Thomas Aquinas, is
a moral law that is inherent in human nature and may be grasped by reason.
According to Aquinas, natural law is universal and unchanging, and it is founded
on the premise that humans have an underlying sense of good and evil. Natural
law is drawn from God's everlasting law and exhibited in the order and purpose
of the natural universe. Aquinas is not clear, however, if this eternal law was the
same law revealed in the Old Testament. He assumes, therefore, that humans
have a natural tendency to pursue the good and avoid the bad, and that this
tendency is the foundation of natural law.
150 A Treatise of Legal Philosophy and General Jurisprudence, 272.
151 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Volume I-II, q. 90. a. 4
63
According to Aquinas, this concept of law gives a framework for making moral
judgments and analyzing human conduct. It is founded on an objective
knowledge of human nature and the natural environment, rather than artificial
laws or cultural conventions. Aquinas thought more generally, saying that natural
law is available to everyone, independent of religious views, and serves as the
foundation for a just and orderly society. In this context, Thomas Aquinas applied
a deep understanding of the meaning of specific “boundary markers” as the
Sabbath. He believed the Sabbath day was holy because it allowed time to
recognize and celebrate God’s acts and presence in our lives. He also recognized
that on the Sabbath day, people need rest, and it was a day to be spent not just
in church, but also in contemplation, prayer, and study of Scripture. With this in
mind, Thomas Aquinas wrote, “Therefore is it written: ‘Remember the Sabbath
and keep it holy’ (Exodus 20:8). In keeping it holy, one does not do anything else
on that day, but attends to God” and “on the Sabbath, we should rest from our
daily occupations so that we may be free to contemplate the divine works and
human life under the divine law.” 152
In addition, Thomas Aquinas believed that individual actions to honor the Sabbath
were important. He wrote that “Sabbath observance is a necessary part of every
Christian’s life and that it should include all activities and everyday routines, not
only attending church.” Thomas Aquinas acknowledges that work and study can
still be pursued on the day of the Sabbath, but they should be pursued with the
look of devotion and worship to God. He stated that the day should be spent in
“celebratory activities” and in such a way that individuals are happily sacrificing a
portion of their own interests to give attention to God. Overall, Thomas Aquinas
taught that the Sabbath should be a day of rest, study, and worship for believers.
People should pause, turn their attention to the Lord, and acknowledge Him and
all the good works He has done.
Thomas Aquinas found in the traditional food laws of the Old Testament, spiritual
meaning, and value. Aquinas believed that the dietary laws found in the Bible not
152 Thomas Aquinas, "Whether it is lawful to work on the Sabbath day?" Summa Theologiae,
Second Part of the Second Part, Question 122, Article 4.
64
only provided the Jewish people with a way to remain safe but upheld Jewish
traditions and reverence for God. Aquinas argued that observing the food laws
was a means of caring for one's body and soul, a contemplative path to holiness
through understanding, appreciating, and fearing God. Through this reverence
for God, Aquinas believed that people could be kept from harm and kept safe
from sin. Aquinas reasoned that since one had to abstain from forbidden foods,
avoiding them was an act of self-restraint that allowed believers to better serve
God and the Church. Aquinas argued that keeping the food laws was a way to
take care of oneself physically, morally, and spiritually.153 In Catholic thought,
although God’s will can be known through the natural law, the divinely revealed
laws in the Bible are needed because original sin has darkened the human
intellect and inclined the human will to sin in what is known as concupiscence.154
In addition to the natural law and the divinely revealed law, there are also human
laws, which, according to Aquinas, could be just or unjust. Human laws are “just”
if they correspond to the natural law and promote the common good; they are
“unjust” if they violate the natural law and injure the common good.155 Catholics
are called to love God and neighbor and to follow the other commandments of
God as interpreted by the Church’s teaching authority (the Magisterium), which
resides in the bishop's and the Pope’s authority.156 All law finds its first and
ultimate truth in the “eternal law.”157 This means that the natural law participates
in the eternal law—that is, the order of creation in the mind of God—because the
natural law is made for rational creatures with a nature ordered toward certain
ends. The Old Law contains certain natural law principles, according to Catholic
theology. For instance, each commandment of the Ten Commandments is either
a specific application of a natural law concept or, in the case of the Sabbath
commandment, a direct declaration of natural law. These natural law principles
of the Old Law also apply to non-Jews since the natural law is eternally binding
153 Aquinas, "Whether the precepts of the Old Law concerning food were reasonable?" Summa
Theologiae, Second Part of the Second Part, Question 102, Article 5.
154 USCCB, Catechism of the Catholic Church (USCCB Publishing, 2011), arts. 405 and 1264.
155 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Volume I-II, q. 96 a. 4
156 USCCB, Catechism of the Catholic Church, arts. 2032, 2038.
157 USCCB, Catechism of the Catholic Church, art. 1952.
65
on all people and never changes. Paul and the gospel authors frequently refer to
the Jewish law throughout the New Testament because of this. The significance
of Natural law has been well debated and discussed in academia for the last
century, especially due to the influence of philosophers like Kant and others. The
idea that human beings were following it for good was dismissed by David
Hume’s theory of “ought to,” and later on, Kant replaced it with the “hypothetical
imperatives.”
The protestant tradition rejected these definitions as in the realm of philosophy,
the idea of Law gets considerably schizophrenic and can be understood from an
endless number of perspectives. According to Geisler:
“Moral laws don’t describe what is; they prescribe what ought to be. They are not simply
a description of how men behave and are not known by observing what men do. If they
were, our idea of morality would surely be different. Instead, they tell us what men should
do, whether they are doing it or not. Thus, any moral “ought” comes from beyond the
natural universe. You can’t explain it by anything that happens in the universe, and it can’t
be reduced to the things men do in the universe. It transcends the natural order and
requires a transcendent cause.”158
However, the idea of law can be interpreted decently inside of the boundaries of
Revelation. Perhaps the applicability of it could be the target of philosophical
implications and discussions, but the essence and nature of the law are received
by Abrahamic religions. The catholic understanding of Natural Law created by
Aquinas created a schism of the orthodox traditional revelation doctrine, and it
drove the eyes of scholars towards the realm of philosophy to explain scriptures,
especially in the applicability of laws based on the scriptures. Based on these and
other issues, the next stream of theology would break with such amendments and
return to the scripture to understand simple matters of law and truth.
158 Norman L. Geisler - Ronald M. Brooks, When Skeptics Ask: A Handbook on Christian
Evidences (Baker Books, 2008), 14.
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2.4 Reformation and Law
As Natural law became the essence of Western theology, Luther, being a lawyer
and jurist, could not get his mind around philosophical issues to interpret the
scriptures. He disagreed with the concept of Natural law from the perspective that
Natural law was above biblical law. For him, scripture was the ultimate source of
authority of God and for his church and not the opposite. According to the
Reformer, divine law manifests itself in two ways: first, as a set of severe
demands that we cannot fulfill and through which we are faced with our sin, and
second, as the "Christian law," or the rule of love. Natural law, therefore, becomes
an autonomous source of practical reasoning, anchored not in some
metaphysical human nature, but in the common interest of all people in
maintaining peace, order, and fairness.
As a counterpoint, the reformers stipulated the principle of “Sola Scriptura” (only
the scriptures), which revolutionized the Christian religion. Martin Luther rejected
the interpretive tradition as authoritative revelation and placed the biblical
scriptures as the only rule for the Christian faith and practice.159 Jesus’s breaking
up with the pharisaic tradition also influenced the Lutheran scripture reading in
the 14th century. As Luther discovers the freedom in the molded pages of the
bible during the Middle Ages, he understands that tradition did not play an
important role in Jesus’ teachings; he abides by the “sola scriptura” only by the
scripture principle. He based this theory on the episode when Jesus was tempted
by Satan. In all the accusations, Jesus answered with the sentence: “It is written,”
condemning all kinds of traditions or sayings concerning religion and quoting
directly from the Holy Text. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but from every
word that comes out of the mouth of God.”160
Catholic Scholars have advocated that the doctrine of Sola Scriptura is
indefensible.161 Keith A. Mathison, in his book “The Shape of Sola Scriptura,”
159 Maarten Wisse, Contra et Pro Sola Scriptura (Brill, 2017), 19–37.
160 Matthew 4:4 quoting Deuteronomy 8:3
161 Keith A. Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2001), 12-
13.
67
brought up important topics concerning the advent of Protestant Theology and
the concept of Sola Scriptura: Why does Christianity have so many variations if
they all read the same scripture?.162 In the Early Church, there was no visible line
of distinction between Scripture and Tradition, much less concerning the Law.
Despite Jesus having diminished tradition in the vista of the Scriptures, the
subject of Law was covered with a tangible perspective of the tradition. Not many
customs and adaptations to biblical law were changed in the first centuries. It was
only by the time of the apostolic fathers that the “Instituted church” felt the need
to have a written collection of tradition concerning the doctrine that the church
already practiced sprang from tradition.163 Clement's extortion concerning abiding
by the church elders in his epistle, shows that the community did not have easy
access to the message in written form, but they relied mostly on the bishop for
learning the scriptures, affirming their authority.164 This mindset created a
fundamental belief in the catholic mindset that the Church (Institution) is the
placeholder of God’s favor, the unique body of believers holding up the flag of
Christianity that had the authority to teach the orthodoxy. This became a
fundamental belief, and their authority was above the scriptures, meaning the
Institution could even change laws. Martin Luther battled ferociously against this
claim. Commenting on the authority of the church to change laws, he said the
following:
"They [the Catholics] allege the Sabbath changed into Sunday, the Lord’s Day, contrary
to the Decalogue, as it appears, neither is there any example more boasted of than the
changing of the Sabbath day. Great, say they, is the power and authority of the church
since it dispensed with one of the Ten Commandments."165
162 Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, 14.
163 Lee Martin McDonald, The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2006), 48-49.
164 Cross - Livingstone, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 363 “Clement of Rome”.
165 Philipp Melanchthon, The Augsburg Confession: The Confession of Faith, Which Was
Submitted to His Imperial Majesty Charles V at the Diet of Augsburg in the Year 1530
(Independently published, 2022), art. 29, par. 9.
68
Luther wrote extensively in his commentary on Galatians, for instance, against
the idea of using the law as a way to seek salvation.166 When it comes to the
Sabbath law, which in his catholic view was the third commandment.167 Despite
all the unclear statements concerning the law, Luther seems to validate the
Sabbath of the creation when he states:
“…God did not sanctify to himself the heaven nor the earth nor any other creature. But
God did sanctify himself on the seventh day. This was specially designed by God, to
cause us to understand the seventh day is to be especially devoted to divine worship. For
that which is appropriated to God and exclusively separated from all profane uses is
sanctified or holy.”168
Luther compares Gal 3:19, where Paul says the law was added because of
transgressions, to Rom 5:20, where Paul says sin came to increase the trespass."
The Law was established for the purpose of violation, for it to be and abound, so
that this man, having learned about himself via the Law, would seek the help of
a gracious God. Without the Law, he is unaware of his guilt and believes he is
sound.169
Later on, in his discourses on the catechism, he disagrees with the fact that the
commandment of Sabbath or its law was given to every human being, but rather
its external observance was given only to the Jews.170 This view was developed
also by his heirs. Luther’s unclear statements became clear by the tradition of the
Protestant faith. For instance, within the Protestant perspective of Law, the
Baptist tradition was prominent in the discussion. Dr. Edward T. Hiscox, Author
of "The Baptist Manual," made this statement before a New York ministers'
conference on Nov. 13th, 1893:
166 Martin Luther, Commentary on Galatians (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform,
2012), 64-98.
167 Martin Luther, A Treatise on Good Works (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, LLC, 2010),
80.
168 Luther, The Collected Works of Martin Luther, 7/5431.
169 Chester, Reading Paul with the Reformers, 2017, 115.
170 Martin Luther, Luther’s Large Catechism, trans. Friedrich Bente - William Herman Theodore
Dau (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017), 20.
69
"To me, it seems unaccountable that Jesus, during three years intercourse with his
disciples, often conversing with them upon the sabbath question, discussing it in some of
its various aspects, freeing it from its false glosses, never alluded to any transference of
the day; also, that during forty days of his resurrection life, no such thing was intimated
early Christian history as a religious day, as we learn from the Christian fathers and other
sources. but what a pity that it [Sunday] comes branded with the mark of paganism and
christened with the name of the sun god, when adopted and sanctioned by the papal
apostasy, and bequeathed as a sacred legacy to Protestantism!"171
Luther broke with the Catholic millennial tradition of interpretation and advocated
the idea that no one could be saved by keeping the law or doing good works as
was required by Catholic theology. For Luther, Righteousness by Faith was
central to Paul’s theology. For him, Paul was living in a legalistic time, where the
Jews were trying to impose their tradition on the Gentiles. This view created the
dichotomy between Law and Gospel, where one cannot exist with the other. In
his mind, those who tried to keep the law were ignoring the Gospel, and therefore,
those who accepted the gospel should reject the law.172 In this perspective,
soteriology has a complete shift. The Law is understood as “objectifying” salvation
and forbidding one from relating it to the gratuitousness of the Christ event.173 For
this reason, the notion of grace is understood as being the opposite of the notion
of Law. Better explained from a ‘freedom vs. bondage’ perspective. Inevitably, for
Luther, anything that resembled a work toward salvation was anathematized. His
conclusions shaped the reformers' theology after him to reject anything related to
Jewish practice. For the reformers, the only theme of the entire Pauline corpus is
grace.174
171 Carlyle Boynton Haynes, From Sabbath to Sunday (Review and Herald Pub Assoc, 2005),
93.
172 Friedrich Bente, Concordia Triglotta. Triglot Concordia: The Symbolic Books of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church, German, Latin, English. Published as a Memorial of the
Quadricentenary Jubilee of the Reformation Anno Domini 1917 by Resolution of the Evangelical
Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and Other States (Concordia Publishing [Northwestern],
1921), 503.
173 Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, trans. Ray Brassier (Stanford,
Calif: Stanford University Press, 2003), 75.
174 Stephen J. Chester, Reading Paul with the Reformers: Reconciling Old and New
Perspectives (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2017), 81.
70
Luther, being versed in Jurisprudence, understood the Pauline expression “works
of the law” as works of obedience to God’s law, or at least good works of some
kind. Despite his prominence in Protestant Theology in his time, Luther would be
heavily criticized by New Perspective historians. For most New Perspective
historians, Luther’s stress on justification by faith alone led to disregarding the
value of good deeds and obedience to God's instructions.
Another name that rose in the meantime was Ulrich Zwingli, a reformer in
Switzerland around the same time as Luther. He disagreed with Luther
concerning the Gospel and Law. For him, the law expressed God's desire for a
moral and pure life, a method for the Christian to please God and express
gratitude to Him for salvation. Thus, Reformed theology emphasized
sanctification and Christian discipleship in a way that Luther did not. In terms of
the relationship between church and state, Zwingli forged a deeper bond between
them than Luther.175 Zwingli and Luther had a contention between the two
reformers was the sacraments. Zwingli considered the "ordinances of baptism
and supper” to be symbolic ceremonies rather than actual means of grace. He
contended that earthly goods cannot transfer spiritual blessings, citing John 6:63:
"...it is the spirit that gives life, the flesh profits nothing". Only the Spirit, through
faith, nourishes and strengthens the soul. Above all, the sacraments are a
testimonial the believer provides to the Church about his faith. God's covenant
with the faithful. They symbolize spiritual reality, declaring and honoring Christ's
redemptive deed, but they do not transmit grace. Ceremonies are required for
their instructional and encouraging value, but faith, redeeming grace, and the
presence of the Holy Spirit do not rely on them. Baptism, like circumcision in the
old covenant framework, is a ritual of introduction into the new covenant. Children
born to believing parents are already included in the covenant. Baptism is merely
a symbol and mark of election and admission into God's people. It neither saves
nor strengthens faith nor does it provide grace. Zwingli declared in “An Exposition
of the Faith,” which he addressed to Emperor Charles V before the Diet of
Augsburg (1530), that baptism requires the individual's faith to be baptized or the
175 Alderi Souza de Matos, Fundamentos da Teologia Histórica (Mundo Cristão, 2008), 152.
71
parents who present it. Believers' children are baptized since they are already
members of the Church. The redemption of children who die before reaching the
age of reason depends on election rather than baptism. All baptized children are
assumed to be saved, but they must confirm their choice by publicly professing
their faith.176
John Calvin, another leading reformer in France, advocated that “the purpose of
the Law is to drive men to Christ”, the law was driving men to see the perfection
of God and to tell that men could not reach that perfection. According to him, the
law convicts us of sin and salvation, and by demonstrating God's justice, it
persuades them of their own sinfulness, giving them no rest until they are forced
to seek the charity of Christ.177 Calvin thought that God sent the Law to humanity
to show them what is good and evil and to condemn them of their wickedness.
The Law demonstrated to humanity that they could never accomplish
righteousness on their own by unveiling God's ideal of perfection. This awareness
was intended to push them to seek redemption in Christ, who was the only one
who could supply the remission of sins and the righteousness that humanity
needed. Calvin felt that the Law, in addition to convicting humanity of sin,
demonstrated God's justice. The Law revealed that God was absolutely just and
just in all his ways by punishing sin and upholding the norm of righteousness.
This insight was intended to increase the believer's respect for God's love and
mercy, as well as to motivate them to seek redemption in Christ. Ultimately, Calvin
considered the Law as a crucial tool in God's plan of redemption, intended to
convict mankind of sin, show them the purity of God's nature, and force them to
seek salvation only in Christ. As Chester points out an outcome of Calvin’s
thought:
“God created all rules, including civic laws, to prevent breaches. Every law was, therefore,
created to prevent sins. Does this imply that the Law validates misdeeds when it restrains
them? In no way. I don't stop from murdering, committing adultery, stealing, or engaging
in other crimes out of choice or out of a desire for virtue, but rather out of fear of the sword
176 Roger E. Olson, História da Teologia Cristã (Vida Editora, 2003), 411-418.
177 Chester, Reading Paul with the Reformers, 2017, 115.
72
and the executioner. As a result, refraining from sin is not a sign of righteousness but
rather of wickedness.''178
According to Chester, Calvin recognizes a dual pattern in the ministry of God's
word when expounding Paul's texts, and he explicitly interprets the killing letter
and the life-giving Spirit in 2 Corinthians 3:6 as a contrast between law and
gospel: "It is the function of the Law to show us the disease without offering any
hope of a cure, and it is the function of the Gospel to provide a remedy for those
in despair." 179 Consequently, while the believer's good acts are not meritorious
and do not result in jus-tification, they are necessary for salvation. Nevertheless,
as the quotations above demonstrate, they are not merely organic, with excellent
trees yielding good fruit on their own. Calvin takes their nature as a prerequisite
of salvation very seriously, even if it is a requirement that the genuine believer
will fulfill. This has implications for the nature of covenant as a key theological
term in Calvin's thought.180 The Encyclopedia of Religion and Knowledge, written
in the year 1911, says:
”Calvin tried to arrange all festivals according to the New Testament, but in so doing
he had to introduce many " necessary " innovations — Sunday (from the seventeenth
century, first among the Puritans, = the Sabbath) as the only holy day (no more
saints' days, and scarcely a trace of Christmas), no pictures or images, no candles,
no altar (only a table), no vestments, no organ, no hymns (only the Psalms), no
liturgy, or a most meager one. Lutheranism, on the other hand, retained all of the
old and familiar services that could be interpreted as Evangelical and modeled its
liturgy for Sunday and for the Eucharist on the service of the masses. The
Reformed Lord’s Supper, on the contrary, is held to be based simply upon the apostolic
pattern.”181
The Law was given “to curb sin”; in other words, Law is for the lawless, and those
who obey it won’t be restricted. In his biblical commentary, Calvin states the
following:
178 Chester, Reading Paul with the Reformers, 2017, 116.
179 Chester, Reading Paul with the Reformers, 2017, 120.
180 Chester, Reading Paul with the Reformers, 2017, 301.
181 Samuel Macauley Jackson, The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge
(Forgotten Books, 2018), 299.
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It now remains for us to see what Christ condemns in the Pharisees, and in what respect
his interpretation of it differs from their glosses. The result is that they had changed the
doctrine of the law into a political order and had made obedience to it to consist entirely
in the performance of outward duties. Hence it came, that he who had not slain a man
with his hand was pronounced to be free from the guilt of murder, and he who had not
polluted his body by adultery was supposed to be pure and chaste before God. This was
an intolerable profanation of the law, for it is certain that Moses everywhere demands the
spiritual worship of God. From the very nature of the law, we must conclude that God,
who gave it by the hand of Moses, spoke to the hearts, as well as to the hands and to the
eyes. True, our Lord quotes the very words of the law, but he does so in accommodation
to the view which was generally taken of them by the people. “Till now, the scribes have
given you a literal interpretation of the law, that it is enough if a man keeps his hands from
murder and from acts of violence. But I warn you, that you must ascend much higher.
Love is the fulfilling of the law, (Romans 13:10). 182
The unison of the reformers was “Paul preached against the Jewish law.
Therefore, the law is done away with, however, we have a law”. This contradiction
intrigued Scholars as they attempted to summarize the traditional view of the
reformist theology concerning the law: (1). Paul underwent a typical conversion
from one religion to another, in this case, from Judaism to Christianity. (2) As a
result of this conversion, he preached against Jewish Law, against Judaism, and
Israel. The content of this negative teaching was that the Law, the old covenant
with Israel, was no longer the path to salvation, for Jews or for Gentiles. Indeed,
God had never intended it to be. God had rejected the Jews/Israel as the chosen
people. (3) The radical antithesis between Judaism and Christianity is
represented as a decisive transition from religious particularism to religious
universalism. (4) Most traditional interpreters maintain that Paul’s attacks against
the Law are founded on a sound understanding of ancient Judaism. (5) Paul
transcended Judaism. There remains a deep ambivalence as to whether Paul the
convert can in any way be understood against the background of ancient
Judaism.183 In this discussion, Evangelicals condemned the subjective idea of
182 John Calvin, John Calvin’s Bible Commentaries on The Harmony of The Gospels Vol. 1,
trans. William Pringle - John King (Jazzybee Verlag, 2017), 201.
183 Abel Mordechai Bibliowicz, Jews and Gentiles in the Early Jesus Movement: An Unintended
Journey (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 30.
74
picking and choosing which laws are normative for Christians. Many writers, for
example, assert that the Ten Commandments represent God's eternal,
unchanging will for all people but then hedge on the fourth commandment,
proposing that it be modified.184 These discussions would become more and
more acidic as the centuries after the reform brought historical criticism to the
table, as we shall see in the next chapter.
The Augsburg confession, which summoned the Reformer's dogma concerning
Law and grace, states:
“It is also taught among us that we cannot obtain forgiveness of sin and righteousness
before God by our own merits, works, or satisfactions, but that we receive forgiveness of
sin and become righteous before God by grace, for Christ’s sake, through faith when we
believe that Christ suffered for us and that for his sake our sin is forgiven, and
righteousness and eternal life are given to us. For God will regard and reckon this faith
as righteousness, as Paul says in Romans 3:21-26 and 4:5.”185
As a consequence of this unison concerning the Law, Pauline's writings and the
Law came to be understood almost universally as “Paul’s attempt to free
Christianity from its Jewishness.” It was clear by that time, especially after all the
built-up tradition of enmity against the Jewish custom and practices, that the
Jews, beyond killing God, created a pagan religion offensive to God. The idea
that God had given the law to the Jews and the Grace to the Christians became
a common thread almost analogous to what is believed to be the message of
Jesus. Slowly, western civilization set a stigma that Judaism was a “graceless”
religion, based on the law, trying to buy God’s favor, which is paganism at its
core.186
184 David A Dorsey, “The Law of Moses and the Christian: A Compromise”, Journal of the
Evangelical Theological Society 34 (Eylül 1991), 321.
185 John H. Leith (ed.), Creeds of the Churches, Third Edition: A Reader in Christian Doctrine
from the Bible to the Present (Atlanta: Westminster John Knox Press, 1982), 69.
186 Nanos, Paul within Judaism, 2015, 34.
75
In this chapter, we have discussed the intrinsic cultural differences in the
understanding of law between East and West. Culturally, the differences in
perspective played a role in determining the view of Law in different contexts.
These differences determined fundamental distinctions between laws. The
allegorization common to the Hellenistic approach to the scriptures helped
theologians to develop a notion of Natural law in the West. Natural law created
an ambivalent view of law, which ended up being counterpointed with the reform.
The reformation brought the principle of Sola Scriptura and rediscovered the
“doctrine of Salvation by faith alone” within the Bible. For Lutherans and
protestants, the Reformation brought back a perspective that had been lost
concerning the understanding of the Bible in European theology. Within the Sola
Scriptura principle, it became a hard task for Protestants to advocate such a
change or invalidation of the Jewish law, which created a necessary interpretation
of the meaning of law in the protestant framework. The arguments for the
changing of the Law within the Bible, lead NT scholars to numerous volumes of
exegetical work and an overwhelming amount of literature trying to give the real
meaning of the text in its morphological and cultural contexts.
76
Chapter 3 - Post Reformation Notions of Law in Christian
Traditions
3.1 17th and 18th Centuries Perspectives on Biblical Law
Throughout the 17th century, some of the most important aspects of biblical law
debate were: 1. The view that the Bible is the ultimate authority on moral and
ethical matters, as well as a comprehensive foundation for human behavior. 2.
The significance of understanding and applying biblical law in accordance with
the larger context of the Bible as well as reason and reasoning. 3. Recognizing
that biblical law was not always static or unchanging and that it needed to be
implemented in a way that was relevant to the changing conditions of the
moment. 4. The necessity of justice, mercy, and compassion in administering
biblical law, rather than just adhering to rigorous legalistic standards.
Scholasticism in the protestant world starts creating certain standards and
methods of doing theology and interpreting the scriptures. Together with this
scholasticism, we see a missionary movement starting with the Puritans in the
New World of America and Anglicanism in the UK, trying to translate the bible
into different languages and into different cultures. Concepts of law and grace are
well established from the Protestant Reformation through dogmas and church
confessions and passed onto new Christian communities. Although Catholic
scholasticism was the marriage of the Church with Greek philosophy, Protestant
scholasticism was the divorce, where Theology became a subject that should be
tackled in the sola scriptura perspective.
Various religious organizations and denominations had varying interpretations
and applications of biblical laws, and there was much controversy and debate.
Yet, throughout this time period, some of the significant viewpoints included:
Puritanism, Anglicanism, Calvinism, and Pietism.
Puritans believed that the Bible was the ultimate authority and source of law and
that it provided a comprehensive framework for human behavior. They advocated
for strict adherence to biblical law, particularly with regard to moral issues such
as sexual ethics and social justice. One of God's promises in the covenant,
77
according to the New England Puritans, is to bless not just people, families, and
churches, but also the community that is devoted to him. They felt that the
blessings promised to Israel in the new covenant (the second part of the covenant
of grace) extended to them as God's people. It was required to do so by
conforming societal institutions to God's rule (theonomy).187
Among the pioneers of Puritanism was Thomas Goodwin (1600 -1680 AD). He
dealt extensively with the issue of morality for the Christian in the Sola Scriptura
in his book “The Living Morality of the Christian” (1651) Also, William Gouge,
wrote about specific issues on the law and what should be the attitude of the
Christian towards it. In his book “Of Domesticall Duties“ (1622), He says that the
role of the Christian is to live a life according to the Law of God. His concept of
the ‘law of God’ was also unclear as he wrote the book “The Sanctification of the
Sabbath” (1641). Which he does not agree that the Law was changed, but the
opposite, that the Law cannot change; however, from the sola scriptura
perspective, the sanctified day was changed: From the seventh day to the first
day.
Anglicans, however, believed in a more moderate approach to biblical law,
emphasizing the importance of reason and tradition alongside scripture. They
believed that the Bible provided general principles for moral behavior, but that
these principles should be interpreted and applied nuancedly. They divided
opinions with Catholicism only in the matter of authority of the church. Despite
Catholics believing in the authority of scripture, they also recognized the
importance of tradition and the teaching authority of the church. They believed
that the Bible provided general guidelines for moral behavior, but they rejected
the idea that the church had the authority to interpret and apply these guidelines
in specific situations. The law for them was more related to the virtues rather than
a formal code in scriptures.
Calvinists held a similar view to Puritans in that they believed in the authority of
the Bible, but they emphasized the sovereignty of God and the predestination of
187 Matos, Fundamentos da Teologia Histórica, 191.
78
the elect. They believed that God's law was absolute and unchanging and that it
applied equally to all people.
In the end of the 17th century, a movement started in Germany that was named
as Pietism. History frequently displays a pendulum movement, or action and
response. Just as Arminianism responded to Reformed or Calvinist orthodoxy,
Pietism was a reaction to Luther's extreme orthodoxy. Naturally, there were two
opposing reactions: Arminianism in theological terms and Pietism in spiritual
terms. The movement was a robust endeavor in the 17th and 18th centuries to
rejuvenate and invigorate Lutheranism with the goal of completing the
Reformation, that is, giving those components that were allegedly absent in
Luther's work. Although Pietism enthusiasts frequently use the expression “Law
of God,” it is uncertain if they really understood the Law of God as the 10
commandments or the Torah as a whole. Their emphasis was on a visible
religion. August Hermann Francke, theologian of the 17th century, emphasized
the following characteristics of this new way of life: difficulties, bearing the cross,
obedience to God's rule, faith, and joy. This would be filled by five practices: soulsearching,
daily repentance, prayer, listening to the Word, and sacramental
participation.188
Richard Baxter (1615-1691), a Puritan theologian and writer, argued that the Law
for Paul was that the Gospel is a new law that requires faith and repentance from
humans and that good deeds are necessary for final justification. This view is
called Neonomianism. In this view, Jesus solved the human problem concerning
the law, and then he introduced a new covenant in which God accepts the
individual's obedience even if this is imperfect. Finally, Neonomianism also
teaches that there is a difference between initial and final justification and that
the latter depends on good deeds. He writes:
In our first Believing we take Christ in the Relations of a Saviour, and Teacher, and Lord,
to save us from all sin, and to lead us to glory. This, therefore, importeth that we
accordingly submit unto him, in those his Relations, as a necessary means to the
188 Matos, Fundamentos da Teologia Histórica, 200.
79
obtaining of the benefits of the Relations. Our first faith is our Contract with Christ. And
all Contracts of such nature, do impose a necessity of performing what we consent to
and promise, to the benefits … Covenant-making may admit you, but it's the Covenantkeeping
that must continue you in your privileges.189
Baxter's writings gained attention due to opposers of the New Perspective,
which tried to find historical attempts to decentralize righteousness by faith in
Pauline's writings.
Baxter's ideas influenced the great name of Puritanism, John Wesley (1703-1791
AD). Wesley was an English priest, theologian, and evangelist who led the
Methodism revival movement inside the Church of England. He held that the law
and the gospel function in tandem in the Christian's life, and that the law is defined
as devotion to Jesus' precepts, particularly the Sermon on the Mount. He also
preached that Christians should continually renew their commitment to God and
strive to progress in righteousness. Wesley's significant contribution was his
conviction in Christian perfectionism, sometimes called total sanctification. In his
theology, he emphasized regeneration (conversion) and sanctification over
justification, emphasizing the experiential part of the Christian life. He defended
infant baptism, but only as a preventive measure or as a memorial ritual. His most
contentious doctrine was about sanctification. This is a process whose objective
is full sanctification or Christian perfection, a state in which the person no longer
deliberately transgresses God's law but acts out of love. In his dissertation “A
Plain Account of Christian Perfection” (1767), he characterized "perfection in
love" as something that happens instantly, as a consequence of gradual effort,
and "by a simple act of faith," either immediately or long after conversion. He
attributed every Christian experience to grace and asserted that faith, not human
labor or attempts, is the single tool that develops virtue in human life.
Simultaneously, he maintained that grace may be rejected and that faith is simply
the free decision, empowered by prevenient grace, not to resist but to rely
completely upon God's favor. Again, despite Wesley mentioning God’s law
189 J. I. Packer, The Redemption and Restoration of Man in the Thought of Richard Baxter
(Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2001), 257.
80
constantly in his writings, it does not seem that he completely clears out a perfect
parallel between God’s Law and any other concept different from biblical law.
Nevertheless, in his mind is in the interior experience of sanctification, which is
the goal of the Christian, and not an overview of law as a set of rules.
Sanctification, in his understanding, is the pure act of Love towards the other. He
observes: “Love is the fulfillment of the law, the end of the commandment.' It is
not only `the first and greatest command, but all the commandments in one.”190
Close to the end of the treatise, by answering some questions concerning the
law, he writes:
How is Christ the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth?' (Rom.
10:4.) "ANSWER. To understand this, you must understand what law is here spoken of;
and this, I apprehend, is, (1.) The Mosaic law, the whole Mosaic dispensation, which St.
Paul continually speaks of as one, though containing three parts, the political, moral, and
ceremonial. (2.) The Adamic law, that was given to Adam in innocence, properly called
`the law of works.' This is in substance the same with the angelic law, being common to
angels and men […] But Adam fell, and his incorruptible body became corruptible; and
ever since, it is a clog to the soul, and hinders its operations […] Consequently, no man
can perform the service which the Adamic law requires. "And no man is obliged to perform
it; God does not require it of any man: For Christ is the end of the Adamic, as well as the
Mosaic, law. By his death, he hath put an end to both; he hath abolished both the one
and the other, about man; and the obligation to observe either the one or the other has
vanished away. Nor is any man living bound to observe the Adamic more than the Mosaic
law. 191
John Wesley, despite not entering the details regarding Law and the Pauline
interpretation, he stated: "Perhaps there are few subjects within the whole
compass of religion so little understood as this." With this sentence, he introduced
his 1749 sermon on "The Original, Nature, Property, and Use of the Law," now
conveniently available in John Wesley's Fifty-Three Sermons.192
190 John Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (CreateSpace Independent Publishing
Platform, 2013), 3.
191 Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, 40-42.
192 John Wesley, John Wesley Fifty Three Sermon (Nasville: Abingdon Press, 1983), 426.
81
The influence of the reformers did not stop there. With the advent of the protestant
believers becoming organized, confessions and creeds began. The Westminster
confession, made by the reformers of the Church of England in 1647 declares
seven main statements concerning the law: (1) “God gave to Adam a law, as a
covenant of works” (2) “This law, after his fall, continued to be a perfect rule of
righteousness; and, as such, was delivered by God upon mount Sinai in ten
commandments, and written in two tables”; (3) “Beside this law, commonly called
moral, God was pleased to give to the people of Israel, as a Church under age,
ceremonial laws, containing several typical ordinances, partly of worship,” (4) “To
them also, as a body politic, he gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together
with the State of that people;” (5) “The moral law doth forever bind all, as well
justified persons as others, to the obedience thereof; and that not only in regard
of the matter contained in it, but also in respect of the authority of God the Creator
who gave it”” (6) “Although true believers be not under the law as a covenant of
works, to be thereby justified or condemned; yet is it of great use to them, as well
as to others; in that, as a rule of life, informing them of the will of God and their
duty, it directs and binds them to walk accordingly;” (7) Neither are the
aforementioned uses of the law contrary to the grace of the gospel, but do comply
with it.
The same confession states that the Sabbath was the seventh day of the week
from the beginning of time until the resurrection of Christ and that it was then
altered to the first day of the week.193
VI. Neither prayer, nor any other part of religious worship, is now, under the Gospel, either
tied unto, or made more acceptable by any place in which it is performed, or towards
which it is directed: [John 4:21] but God is to be worshiped everywhere,[Malachi 1:11, 1
Timothy 2:8] in spirit and truth; [John 4:23] as, in private families[Jeremiah 10:25,
Deuteronomy 6:6-7, 1 Peter 3:7, Acts 10:2] daily, [Matthew 6:11] and in secret, each one
by himself; [Matthew 6:6, Ephesians 6:18] so, more solemnly in the public assemblies,
which are not carelessly or willfully to be neglected, or forsaken, when God, by His Word
or providence, calls thereunto.[Isaiah 56:6-7, Hebrews 10:25, Acts 13:42, Luke 4:16, Acts
2:42]
193 C. Matthew McMahon - Therese B. McMahon, The 1647 Westminster Confession of Faith
With Scripture Proofs and Texts from the 1611 King James Bible. (Puritan Publications, 2011).
82
VII. As it is the law of nature, that, in general, a due proportion of time be set apart for the
worship of God; so, in His Word, by a positive, moral, and perpetual commandment
binding all men in all ages, He has particularly appointed one day in seven, for a Sabbath,
to be kept holy unto him:[Exodus 20:8-11, Isaiah 56:2-11] which, from the beginning of
the world to the resurrection of Christ, was the last day of the week: and, from the
resurrection of Christ, was changed into the first day of the week,[Genesis 2:2, 1
Corinthians 16:1-2, Acts 20:7] which, in Scripture, is called the Lord's Day,[Revelation
1:10] and is to be continued to the end of the world, as the Christian Sabbath.[Exodus
20:8,10, Matthew 5:17-18]
VIII. This Sabbath is to be kept holy unto the Lord when men, after a due preparing of
their hearts, and ordering of their common affairs beforehand, do not only observe a holy
rest all the day from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly
employments and recreations, [Exodus 20:8, Exodus 16:23-30, Exodus 31:15-17, Isaiah
58:13, Nehemiah 13:15-22] but also are taken up the whole time in the public and private
exercises of His worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy.(Isaiah 58:13)
Meanwhile, the confessions were being made in America and some parts of
Europe. European academics were on the edge of a revolution of thought without
any precedents. The subject concerning the Law saw a shift in the human
perspective as the 17th century approached. Immanuel Kant, G. W. Leibniz, John
Locke, and David Hume, among others, enrolled Europe into a different view of
Natural law and an abandonment of the classical views of religion and life. For
them, rationalism, social contract, and human interaction were the way of
morality. In his book “The Crisis of the European Mind: 1680-1715”, Paul Hazard
investigates the cultural and philosophical transformations that happened in
Europe between 1680 and 1715. Hazard contends that this time constituted a
movement from the old to the new, from the classical to the modern, and from the
religious to the secular. He investigates how many elements, such as the
discovery of other worlds, the growth of science, the challenge of skepticism, and
the formation of new literary forms, all led to the European mind's crisis and the
birth of the Enlightenment.
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3.1.2 European Illuminism
18th-century Scottish philosopher, historian, and economist David Hume's
contributions to philosophy, notably in the fields of epistemology and ethics, had
a major role in the understanding of Law in the Western civilization. The term
"empirical" refers to Hume's philosophy, which holds that all knowledge originates
from experience. His observations concerning the shift of understanding of Law
culminated as a checkpoint mark regarding the shift from the theocentric
worldview, based on the religious law, in which God is viewed as the center of all
things, to an anthropocentric one, in which people are viewed as the center of all
things. According to this philosophy, Human experience and reason are more
important. He maintained that our perceptions are the source of our knowledge
of the universe and that we should base our opinions on facts and observation
rather than on metaphysical or theological doctrines. This focus on human reason
and experience can be understood as a component of a larger movement toward
an anthropocentric worldview.
It should also be noted that Hume was critical of many conventional religious
ideas. In "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion," (1779), he advanced
arguments against God's existence based on the issue of evil and the design
argument. These criticisms may have aided in the shift away from a theocentric
worldview. Around that time, Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher, is most
known for his deontological ethical theory, which holds that morality is determined
by responsibilities and that one's actions are moral if they are motivated by duty.
Kant believes that the only good thing in and of itself is "goodwill." The will is what
propels our activities and establishes the intention of our acts. It is beneficial when
it performs in accordance with its responsibilities.194 The categorical imperative is
central to Kant's conception of moral law. Kant expressed the categorical
imperative in a variety of ways. His universalizability principle states that for an
action to be legal, it must be conceivable to apply it to all people without causing
a conflict. The second formulation of the categorical imperative, Kant's concept
194 Piers Benn, Ethics (Psychology Press, 1998), 101.
84
of humanity, asserts that humans must never treat others as a means to an aim,
but always as ends in themselves.195
Kant argued that "the moral law"—the categorical imperative and everything that
it entails—could only be discovered by reason. It was not imposed upon us from
without. Instead, it is a rule that we must impose on ourselves as rational
beings.196
3.2 19th Century Perspectives
In the 19th century, European liberalism and the anthropocentric trend were at
their peak, especially in Germany. This movement sought to create a unified and
democratic German state. Its goal was to bring the various German states into
one unified nation and ensure the rights of all citizens regardless of ethnicity,
religion, or social class. It advocated for civil liberties, individual rights, and
religious tolerance. Supporters of the Germanic liberalism movement argued for
greater freedom of the press, free speech, and economic rights, as well as the
right to vote regardless of property ownership. However, similar experiences
happened in the church. German liberal theology, which emerged in the 19th
century, tried to reinterpret conventional ideas in the context of contemporary
science and philosophy. This movement, which was marked by an emphasis on
human freedom, equality, and development, gained appeal as a challenge to
orthodox Calvinistic theology. It was influenced by Hegelian Idealism, Kantian
criticism, Romanticism, and Idealist philosophy. Wilhelm Schleiermacher,
Albrecht Ritschl, and Friedrich Schleiermacher were the key players in this
movement. They highlighted the value of upholding moral principles, religious
experience, and the potential of personal revelation in the pursuit of truth. Instead
of mindlessly adhering to a church's teachings, the movement emphasized that
individuals must take charge of their own lives and make their own judgments.
195 Benn, Ethics, 95.
196 Roger Scruton, Kant: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press,
2001), 114.
85
Action and participation in social, political, and economic improvement were
promoted by this movement. Numerous concepts from German liberal theology
of the 19th century became pillars of contemporary Protestantism.
As a result of German liberalism, Some Lutheran theologians in 19th Germany
created a clear antisemite version of Paul and rejected anything that was related
to the Law. Ferdinand Christian Bauer became the main scholar of this period to
study Paul. Bauer took the Hegelian way of doing history and applied it to the NT.
He placed Paul representing the reaction to Judaism as the “thesis”, James and
Peter represented the “antithesis” and the “synthesis” was the Johannian
community in the 2nd century, which for the 19th century liberal critics of the bible,
was the community responsible for the authorship of the book of John and the 3
epistles. For Bauer, to shape Paul as a “thesis' ' in this Hegelian scheme, Paul
needed to be understood as the one who breaks entirely with the Jewish customs.
Even though Baur's reading of Paul was not widely adopted, the historical issue
he pointed out came to characterize Paul's interpretation for most of the
nineteenth century and into the twentieth. The link between Jesus and the Jewish
church on the one hand, and Paul's apparent Hellenism on the other, was the
source of this issue. Paul's theology and that of the other apostles' connection
were questioned by Baur, who also gave Protestantism an alternative
interpretation of Paul's theological core. Paul's core doctrine of justification by
faith was widely acknowledged, but Baur asserted that Paul was more concerned
with the Spirit.
The reactions against it did not come only from the New Perspective, for instance,
even in the 19th century, the English famous three Christian theologians also
known as the “triumvirate of Cambridge '': F.J.A. Hort; B.F. Westcott and J.B.
Lightfoot took a unison strict position against this view. Also, Albert Schweitzer in
Germany denies such understanding, too. Other schools of interpretation of Paul
started to surge after this reaction to Bauer’s writings. Schweitzer inaugurates a
new type of school to see Paul more as an apocalyptic or mystic writer. Despite
Schweitzer's efforts to draw attention in other directions, an antisemite Paul
continued to be redrawn in the writings of liberalist Germans. Ferdinand Weber
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wrote about the Jews that Paul had interlocutions, and in doing it, he inserts the
antisemitic view of Bauer in the intertestamental apocalyptic writings. For him,
books of the intertestamental Judaic books like 4 Esdras and 1 Enoch had a
soteriological nature based on merit, in which the judgment of God was imminent.
Scholars agree today almost unanimously that Weber had his presuppositions
wrong. However, at his time, it already had grown so much that it influenced the
beginning of the 20th-century German theology that ended up being very anti-
Jewish and anti-law. This can be seen in the famous dictionary of Kittel of 10
volumes that was the standard theological dictionary in Germany for a long time,
but today was disregarded by academia because its organizer, Gerhard Kittel,
was the greatest ideological theologian for Adolf Hitler.197
As scholars have seen this construction, they mostly concluded that Paul
becoming a reformer replacement of Judaism with Christianity would inevitably
lead to Paul being the anti-Jewish pivot-head. In her book "Paul Was Not a
Christian”, (2009), Pamela Eisenbaum, a Jewish biblical scholar, concluded that
the traditional interpretation of Paul was the source of antisemitism. This
antisemitism was born in the Roman times, but it was strongly emphasized in the
19th century. Some of the key aspects of the 19th-century scholarship were
Jesus and Paul did not agree concerning the Law. Paul was seen as giving a
message other than Jesus' message, and therefore both would not agree on
matters of justification. As a summary of these thoughts, Jack Hughes lays out in
his article three different ways in which the law was understood before the New
Perspective, and it is still understood in the popular realm. The view of (1) No-
Law; the view of (2) an Old-Law-Edited; and (3) a New-Law;
In the 19th century, researchers engaged in a comprehensive and diverse study
of Paul, proposing numerous interpretations of his teachings Paul's antinomian
views, which were hostile to the Law of Moses, were the main focus of earlier
research on him. He is best understood as a foe of first-century Judaism. He was
said to have converted from Judaism to Christianity and became an advocate for
197 Max Weinreich - Martin Gilbert, Hitler’s Professors (New Haven; London: Yale University
Press, 1999), 53.
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the idea that redemption is only possible via faith, as opposed to the meritorious
acts of the Law that Paul's day Judaism required. These works asserted that Paul
and Judaism, whether Hellenistic or Palestinian, shared a fundamental antithesis,
and that this antithesis served as the foundation and functional hub of Paul's
conception of redemptive history.
Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792 -1860 AD), German theologian and founder of
the Tübingen school of thought, had adopted the Hegelian method of scholarship
prevenient to the zeitgeist of the post-enlightenment German liberalism of that
time to study Early Christianity’s history.198 Baur, in his famous article “Die
Christuspartei in der korinthischen Gemeinde'', published in the Journal “Tübinger
Zeitschrift für Theologie'' (1831), and also in the later work, “Paulus der Apostel
Jesu Christi'' (1845), sees the first-century events in a thesis-antithesis-synthesis
scope which sets the leading principle for his research. In his view, the church of
Jerusalem, ruled by Thomas and Peter, was a Torah-keeping church (thesis),
and the gentile churches, founded abroad by Paul, were Torah-free (antithesis),
which resulted in Paul writings to Corinthian and Galatian churches (synthesis).199
These arguments led Tübingen scholars to assume that even some letters of Paul
that did not bring these disputes should be considered illegitimate. Despite the
criticism and “deconstructioning” principles which the Tübingen School was built
upon, it had well-established the idea that the theology of Judaism and
Christianity were completely distinct.
At the beginning of the 20th century, W. Wrede, a Tübingen theologian, built upon
Bauer's ideas in his work “Paulus” (1907). For him, Jesus' theology concerning
the Law was not the same as that of Paul, saying that Paul developed a New
theology apart from the one of Jesus. A dichotomy between Jesus' claims and
Paul's was settled. It was not long until the existentialism of Heidegger took over
the mindset of theology. Rudolf Karl Bultmann (1884 - 1976), perhaps the most
198 Hegelians dialectic was an interpretive method in which the contradiction between a
proposition (thesis) and its antithesis is resolved at a higher level of truth (synthesis). Bkz:
Collins Dictionaries, Collins English Dictionary, 2015, art. Hegel.
199 Bruce N. Kaye, “Lightfoot and Baur on Early Christianity”, Novum Testamentum 26/3 (1984),
193-224.
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famous theologian of the 20th century, was a close friend of Heidegger, and his
existentialist theories influenced Bultmann in the interpretation of the NT.200 For
Bultmann, what Paul set out to do was to focus on the individual in the quest for
being. He brought the NT to a myth discourse where the “vorverstandnis” of the
law was more important than the law itself. Bultmann doubled down in the
reformistic aspect of Paul’s writings, where he assumes that Paul was leading
with legalism.201
Ninian Smart summarizes the zeitgeist of the 19th century regarding the theology
of Paul with the quote:
It is undeniable, and no arts can long conceal the fact that Christ proposed, in the most
emphatic manner, to his followers, the highest ethical ideal, corresponding to the new
theoretical religious knowledge, and further developing the Old Testament precepts. It is
likewise equally certain, that in his name are announced to all, who believe in him, grace,
and forgiveness of sins; that is to say, pardon for every moral transgression. These are
two phenomena, which, as they stand in direct opposition one to the other, require, in
consequence, some third principle that may mediate their union. The third conciliating
principle, as it is to unite the two, must be akin alike to law and to grace, to the rigid
exaction and to the merciful remission. This is the sanctifying power that emanates from
the living union with Christ; the gratuitous grace of holy love, which, in justification, he
pours out upon his followers. In this grace, all law is abolished because no outward claim
is enforced; and, at the same time, the law is confirmed, because love is the fulfillment of
the law; in love, law, and grace become one.202
The historical and cultural setting of the New Testament study after the 19th
century has undergone extensive revision as a result of World War II. The
aftermath of the 19th century is understood today to be one of the reasons for the
antisemitic attitudes of the Nazi German and the horrors committed against the
Jews in WWII. Researchers started paying more attention to the conflicts,
patterns, and modifications that occurred in the area as a result of Hellenism, the
200 Laurence W. Wood, Theology As History and Hermeneutics: A Post-Critical Conversation
with Contemporary Theology (Emeth Press, 2005), 113.
201 John M. G. Barclay, Paul and the Power of Grace (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans,
2020), 52.
202 Ninian Smart vd. (ed.), Nineteenth-Century Religious Thought in the West (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1985), 140.
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Roman occupation, and the Jewish factions of the period. Further study, however,
to trace the same categories in today’s politics and geographical conflicts in
Palestine region and other places.
3.3 20th Century Perspectives on Biblical Law
Before WWII, the efforts were to make Christianity away from Judaism; after the
war, the opposite happened with the works of the notable Albert Schweitzer
(1875-1952). The focus of his studies was to rebuke what Bultmann, and the
German theologians had said about how away Christianity was from Judaism.
Until this point, Paul's theology was taken as disconnected from Jesus's
teachings/reality. It was Schweitzer, in his book ‘Geschichte der Paulinischen
Forschung’ (1911), that proved that the dichotomy and opposition between Paul
and Jesus were inadequate and did not reflect the reality of the facts. Later, in his
‘Die Mystik des Apostels Paulus’ (1930), he asserted that Paul was also
apocalyptic like Jesus and that Paul wanted to rework the eschatology of Christ
rather than counterpoint it. Schweitzer's historical importance lies in the fact that
his thought paved the way for the Jewish approach to Paul, expressed primarily
in the emphasis on the eschatological aspect of Paulinism. The new road opened
up by Schweitzer was expanded by more recent scholars, such as the Jews C.
G. Montefiore and H. J. Schoeps, for example. They tried to understand Paul's
thinking through a Jewish prism, distinguishing between Paul's Hellenistic
Judaism and Palestinian Pharisaism, considered more legalistic by the apostle.
This event ended up broadening towards the always ongoing debates concerning
the biblical Judaic Law and its legitimacy for the Christian.203
The first half of the 20th century saw the emergence of a wide variety of
theologies throughout the world in the field of biblical studies. In examining the
relation of such theologies to the biblical Law, it can be seen that there was a
general movement away from literal interpretations of the Law as a set of detailed
regulations for religious practice and morality. Instead, modern theologians
203 Nanos, Paul within Judaism, 2015, 33.
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embraced different understandings of the Law which viewed it more as an
expression of the divine-human relationship or as a source of spiritual and ethical
wisdom. This shift in understanding allowed for greater diversity and creativity in
how the Scriptures were interpreted and how the Law was understood.
Contemporary theologians have also sought to explore how the Law of Moses
intersects with and impacts other aspects of human life and culture, such as
economics, gender, politics, and ecology. As a result, the 20th century has
witnessed the emergence of various new interpretations of the biblical Law and
its wider implications. Theologians created frameworks to better explain
theological endeavors and ideas. One of them, perhaps one of the most famous,
is called Covenantal theology.
3.3.1 Covenantal Theology
Understanding the arguments of the 1980s regarding the reality of Covenantal
Nomism was made possible by scholarly discussions on the covenantal elements
of the Old Testament narrative. In the debate about the law, it is necessary to
have a look at the background assumptions concerning the Covenant. The
theology of the covenant is the idea that God chose Israel to be his special people
through the patriarch Abraham around the year 2000 BC. The idea of a particular
connection between God and humankind based on mutual promises and duties
is a key element in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and Jewish tradition.
German Old Testament scholar Walther Eichrodt was the first to introduce the
covenant theology principles, which altered how the Old Testament was
understood. His seminal work, Theologie des Alten Testaments, 2 vol., was
published in 1933 in German and in English under the title "Theology of the Old
Testament" in 1957.204 The foundation of Eichrodt's work was the Old
Testament's covenantal character between God and "his people," "the world,"
and "mankind." By employing this technique, he maintained both the historical
nature of the revelation and the unity of the Old and New Testaments while
succinctly presenting the profound, systematic knowledge of the Old Testament
204 Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Walther Eichrodt". Encyclopedia Britannica, 16
May. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walther-Eichrodt. Accessed 7 June 2022.
91
in dialogue with the narrative part of it. Due to the importance of the covenantal
agreements in the Tanakh, this perspective became essential for biblical
scholars. Scholars traced up methodologies of study and systematized the
Jewish scriptures that were present in the days of Paul. One of these
methodologies of the study of the Tanakh is a widely accepted one called the
theology of the covenants. This framework was developed from the word
“covenant” in Hebrew ‘berit’ which appears in the Tanakh in Genesis 6:18.205 The
term was usually used as a contract of loyalty between two parts in the Biblical
parts. According to biblical scholars, the biblical narrative stands on the point that
it is Yahweh who uses the suzerain-vassal format to create a contract with
mankind.206
The covenant with Abraham is one of numerous recounts in the Hebrew Bible,
and it symbolizes the start of God's particular connection with the people of Israel.
God told Abraham that he would be the father of a great nation and that his
descendants would inherit the country of Canaan, according to the biblical story
(modern-day Israel) as a symbol of the covenant, Abraham and his descendants
were expected to fulfill God's commands and circumcise their male children.
Theology of the covenant, on the other hand, changed over time, with different
biblical writers and Jewish traditions emphasizing different parts of the covenant.
For example, the covenant with Moses at Mount Sinai established Jewish
religious rules and rites, and the covenant with David created the Davidic dynasty
as Israel's legitimate ruler. In Christian theology, the agreement with Abraham is
sometimes viewed as a foreshadowing of the new covenant made by Jesus
Christ, which gives redemption to all people, not only the Jewish people. In both
Jewish and Christian thinking, covenant theology shows a deep and nuanced
understanding of God's relationship with humans.
205 Old Testament scholars have discussed whether or not there was any kind of covenant
before Genesis 6.
206 Two basic types of covenants existed in the ancient Near East: the parity treaty (between
equal parts) and the suzerain/vassal treaty (between a greater and a lesser party. The Suzerain
(greater party) provided benefits such as military protection and habitations in the land to the
lesser party (i.e., the vassal); According to Sandra Richter, YHWH uses the same format in the
covenant with Israel in Exodus 20; See Sandra L. Richter, The Epic of Eden: A Christian Entry
into the Old Testament (Downers Grove, Ill: IVP Academic, 2008), 73.
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The Hebrew Bible frequently references these agreements. Scholars have
debated whether these covenants were separate from one another; for example,
the following categorization is typically used: (1) The covenant with Adam was
based on Grace; (2) the covenant with Noah was based on Salvation; (3) the
covenant with Israel was based on the Law; (4) the covenant with David was
based on the Promise; and (5) the relationship with Jesus was based on Grace.
Therefore, as the human part of the covenant was unsuccessful in bringing about
their part in the agreement, God would constantly create new agreements with
other nations, and in theory, the basis of the covenant would change according
to the time and culture in which the agreement was made. This view, later on,
would create the biggest argument that protestants use today to advocate the
invalidation of the biblical law, i.e., the dispensational theology of grace. In this
view, as Jesus created a new covenant, exclusive from all others, an age of grace
sets in, taking away the possibility of being saved by keeping the law. Everyone
in that age is only receiving the gift of salvation from God only through his Grace,
which presupposes that before Jesus's death on the Cross, i.e., in the old
dispensation, one could only attain salvation by works of the law.
Richard L. Mayhue, in examining the book of Hebrews, concludes that there are
only two covenants instead of many; they are only called the Old and the New
covenant, which the New is actually the eternal.207
LaRondelle in his book “Our Creator Redeemer” justifies that in the biblical
narrative, God was not breaking and renewing every other covenant with the
people, but rather he is ratifying, conducting mankind throughout the Hebrew
bible always in the same covenant. The Abrahamic covenant is often the
background covenant in the Old Testament narrative. God in Genesis 12 invites
Abraham to leave his family, friends, and city to enter into a new covenant with
himself. Abraham was chosen, and elected by Grace, and he was counted as
accepted by faith, leaving everything behind and taking heed of the covenant.
The promise was that in accepting to be in a covenant with God, Abraham would
207 Richard L. Mayhue, “Heb 13:20: Covenant of Grace or New Covenant? An Exegetical Note”,
Master’s Seminary Journal 7/2 (1996), 251-257.
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be blessed to be a blessing to other nations. God is the one who restores the law
in the heart, unilaterally. The one who created the covenant is the one who can
redo it.208 And being the Suzerain in the Covenant, God is the one who would
establish the legal code of the covenant. The covenant would also have written
the advantages that the vassals would have if they kept the legal code of the
covenant, and also the punishment that vassals would suffer if they had the legal
code broken. This covenant consists of blessings and curses for those who
keep/break it.209 Before being given, there was an explanation that this covenant
would be conditional to Israel’s behavior: “Now if you obey me fully and keep my
covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession…”.210 since
the promise concerning a new covenant is very vivid in the Old
Testament/Tanakh, we see that Israel has no merit in this election.
Only Yahweh is the primary source of the choice and the fulfiller of it. Israel has
no part in the action of the election but accepts/rejects it. God chooses Israel by
his own mercy and grace, despite their obeying the laws of the covenant or not.
For instance, the prophet Ezekiel wrote: “And say to them: ‘This is what the
Sovereign Lord says: On the day I chose Israel, I swore with an uplifted hand to
the descendants of Jacob and revealed myself to them in Egypt. With uplifted
hand, I said to them, “I am the Lord your God”211 In the very statements of the
Decalogue, God promises to keep his covenant for generations of those who
obey it, and even have mercy on those who reject it.212 Therefore, the covenant
between God and man is not in the law itself but in the promise of God, to Adam,
Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David. As all the covenants were broken by the
human part, therefore the basic understanding of the Christian faith is that God
sent his son to firm the contract from the human side.213 The covenant is between
God the Father, and God/Man the Son. This covenant would continue to exist for
208 Jeremiah 31:31-38
209 Similar treats of blessings/curses were found in the contemporary nation of the Hittites. See
Hittites in Donald J. Wiseman, Peoples of Old Testament Times (Oxford: Titles Distributed by
Oxford U, 1973), 197–228.
210 Exodus 19:5
211 Ezekiel 20:5
212 Exodus 20:4-6
213 John 3:16
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all peoples and nations, inviting them to co-exist in the treaty beyond the pact
with the Jewish Nation.
Moreover, from the New Perspective, the dichotomy ‘Law vs Grace’ becomes
obsolete, and it is now understood as ‘Law + Grace’.214 For Peter Richardson,
The Law was Israel’s path to life, and a distinction between Law and Grace
inevitably misrepresents Judaism. Therefore, for Paul, as well as for the Jews,
Law is not found without grace.215 The law gains a new role when we look by this
scope, for instance, in Deuteronomy 4:5-8, it says:
“See, I have taught you decrees and laws as the Lord my God commanded me, so that
you may follow them in the land you are entering to take possession of it. Observe them
carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear
about all these decrees and say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding
people.” What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord
our God is near us whenever we pray to him? 8 And what other nation is so great as to
have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you
today?”216
These laws were given the role of keeping the people away from breaking the
covenant. A role of regulation instead of one of Justification. The laws would
regulate the social life of Israel, but not do one thing: To guarantee a place in the
covenant of Israel.217 So, it would not matter if you kept the law or not if you were
meticulous in doing it or not. As long as you were not part of the covenant, you
were out. Paul, commenting on the role of the Law, says that “the law was added
because of the transgressions”.218 It means that the Law was not the goal of the
covenant, but the Law was pointing to the covenant, which was made with people,
214 Schreiner, “‘Works of Law’ in Paul,” 242.
215 Peter Richardson - Stephen Westerholm, Law in Religious Communities in the Roman
Period: The Debate over Torah and Nomos in Post-Biblical Judaism and Early Christianity
(Waterloo, Ont., Canada: Published for the Canadian Corp. for Studies in Religion by Wilfrid
Laurier University Press, 1991), 63.
216 Deuteronomy 4:5-8
217 Marguerat, Paulo, uma teologia em construção, 250.
218 Galatians 3:19
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and it should be written in the heart of people219, which could be understood as
voluntary obedience to his laws as evidence of allegiance to Yahweh. The
Covenant was based on the promise rather than on the law. The Law only had a
finishing role in the chain of process of the covenant, and it did not give it a
primary role in it.
Therefore, for the traditional Christian movement, Jesus is the central figure
concerning the covenant nomism. He is the borderline of the past covenant made
with Jewish people towards all nations. In Jesus, as advocated by the early
church as the true seed of Abraham, all the nations of the earth would be
blessed.220 He stretches the covenant of Abraham onto all mankind, and
therefore, those who are born again, traditionally speaking as baptism, are born
into the covenant. It is not by keeping the law that one can enter the covenant,
but only by the merit of Jesus becoming human and sealing the pact of the
covenant from the human side that gives the human being the chance of entering
the covenant with God. The author of Hebrews calls, therefore, Jesus as the
author and finisher of a believer's faith.221 Paul shows that the covenant with
Abraham is actually the same as the covenant with Christ, ending up therefore
the existence of a pseudo dichotomy of grace and covenant in this sense.
As the faithfulness of Jesus is the one who creates the covenant, those who are
inside of the covenant should keep avoiding the breaking of the covenant. Paul
says that by the “Faithfulness of Jesus,” one shall be justified. The expression
“pistis Christou” found in Galatians 2:15 has been a huge debate in Pauline
scholarship, and in the past, it had been understood as “faith in Jesus,” however,
nowadays it passed to be understood as “faithfulness of Jesus” which gives a
centrality to the person of Jesus, meaning that the work to be done is not done
by the believer agent, but rather by Jesus, who is understood to be the promised
219 Deuteronomy 6:6-10, the context of this text is allegiance to the God YHWH, and therefore
the translation of the “Shema Israel, Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad” (verse 9) has been
debated for over half a century now. According to Jewish scholars the best translation would be
“‘The Lord is our God, the Lord alone” See John Barton - John Muddiman (eds.), The Oxford
Bible Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 142.
220 Genesis 22:18
221 Hebrews 12:2
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seed of Abraham, the one who also ratifies the covenant.222 Scholars of the NPP
have juxtaposed the Hebrew language as the source of Pauline’s theology and
found out the that the word “Faithfulness” or “Pistis'' in the Greek, is relative to
the word “Emunah'' in the Hebrew, the same one used in Abraham’s context. It is
important to note that in Western culture, the concept of faith generally places the
action upon the subject rather than its object, as in 'faith in God.' This word,
according to the Dictionary of Strong’s, has a relative connotation of
responsibility; instead of being a passive action, it should be understood as “faith
that works' ' or “active faith' '.223 Therefore, Pistis and Emunah are related to the
same meaning.
Paul, in his epistle to the Galatians, asks them to repent of their attempt to keep
the law to acquire a position within the covenant, which was not possible for
anyone even before Jesus' death. The Galatians were also Gentiles. But they
were trying to pay by the gift that was given to them, seeing of the law as an
entrance ticket for those who are newly coming to the church in that area. For
them, to accept the gift or the ticket for entering into the covenant with God, they
needed to become Jews first. We shall see that mainstream Christian traditions
diminished this very doctrine by focusing on the nature of the pact. The dichotomy
between covenants created the settings of the dispensation of Law (Old
Testament) vs. Grace (New Testament) that is still followed in most Christian
traditions.
222 See M. C. Easter, “The Pistis Christou Debate: Main Arguments and Responses in
Summary,” Currents in Biblical Research 9/1 (2010), 33–47.
223 James Strong, Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary of the Bible (Miklal Software Solutions, Inc.,
2011), pt. “Emunah.”
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PART II - THE NEW PERSPECTIVE
98
Chapter 4 - The New Perspective and the Contemporary
Study of Biblical Law
4.1 Kristen Stendhal’s Attack to the Basis of Lutheranism
The 20th century brought a massive light regarding biblical scholarship. Much has
been discussed concerning the kinds of laws applied by the 1st-century mindset.
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls reshaped how Judaism is understood.
Christian scholars had inasmuch reshaped the way Christianity related to
Judaism as being sprouted out of Jewish roots. Formerly, Judaism happened to
be understood as a legalistic religion, and the New Testament would reaffirm this
idea as we often see Jesus, Paul, and the disciples warning against religious
pride often resemblant in Jewish practices. As scholars have seen Paul within his
time and culture, they started to see resemblances of the background narrative
that derived such notions of kinship, ethnicity, and law as primordial to
understanding his theology.
Kristen Stendahl, a German Lutheran scholar, had a revolutionary insight into this
topic. According to him, Christianity without Judaism was non-existent, Jesus
outside of Judaism was an invention of the reform. For him, such attempts to
create a distinct narrative for Jesus and says that the main cause of the German
criticism against the Bible in the 19th century was because Europe had created
a “European Jesus” which was unrealistic and anachronistic. Stendahl criticizes
such mistakes of interpretation in European academics like Bultmann and
others.224 In his own words:
“Rudolf Bultmann's whole theological enterprise has one great mistake from which all
others emanate: he takes for granted that basically the center of gravity-the center from
which all interpretation springs-is anthropology, the doctrine of man. This might, in fact,
be so, but if it is so, it certainly devastates and destroys the perspective of Pauline's
thinking.”225
224 Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West”, 208.
225 Krister Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles and Other Essays (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1976), 23-24.
99
According to this new perspective, Judaism in the 1st century was not legalism.
This idea that it was legalistic was a 14th-century ideology which was
anachronistic to the 1st century. When Jews stipulated laws and were ferocious
about it, it was actually a matter of “how someone inside the covenant should live
and not be fallen from it.” The whole conversation is often misunderstood by
scholars who do not define what legalism is, and why keeping the law does not
automatically mean to be a legalist. Robert Sloan, in his article “Paul and Law:
Why the Law cannot save,” addresses the subject by … perspective. In his own
words:
“Instead of reading Paul against the background of Luther's struggles with "pangs of
conscience," the new perspective has focused upon more sociologically oriented issues
relative to the relationship of Jew and Gentile as matters uppermost in the experience of
Paul.” 226
Stendahl creates a humble beginning to a more sympathetic view of first-century
Judaism, which, as previously debated as theology, now becomes a sociology of
religion. The dichotomy of the sociological view and theological view was
perhaps, as R. Ward Holder argues, the history of an interpretation in the letter
of Romans in the Western civilization shows us a culture created due to the fact
that Western settings had the inclination to see Paul’s writings in a more juridical
perspective. While the East would emphasize more soteriological themes, the
West emphasized the juridical aspect of the relationship of humanity to God.227
The suggestion that Paul was Torah observant probably is the most difficult
proposition to digest for traditionally oriented scholars since it strikes at the heart
of Lutheran theology, which, as we have seen, has been extremely influential
when it comes to Pauline scholarship.228 The non-satisfaction in admitting that
Luther had probably misread Paul started to grow.229 The topic was controversial,
226 Robert B. Sloan, “Paul and the Law: Why the Law Cannot Save”, Novum Testamentum 33
(1991), 35.
227 R. Ward Holder, A Companion to Paul in the Reformation (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2009), 33.
228 McKnight - Oropeza, Perspectives on Paul, 271.
229 Holder, A Companion to Paul in the Reformation, 96-97.
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and some scholars even accused Luther of Antinomianism.230 Inasmuch, a
certain avoidance of the new topic of the NPP happened in theological schools.
4.2 E. P. Sanders and the New Perspective
E.P. Sanders revolutionized the study of the New Testament by revisiting the
Rabbinic Material found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In his research, he doubled
down on the Stendahl view of a non-legalistic Judaism of the 1st century. He
argued that the Jewish view of the Law was not related to salvation or performed
as an attempt to obtain salvation by any means, rather the zeal of the law was
related to the fact that the Jewish people were already heirs of the promise made
to Abraham. They were keeping the law not to be saved but rather because they
were elected, or as westerns would see, “they were already saved.” At the end of
his book, he addresses this perspective of Judaism and Paul. As a natural
outcome, due to the heavy tradition that Pauline's writings have accumulated
throughout the years, the task of seeing Paul in his Jewish context was certainly
surprising and excited many scholars and became a nightmare to others. Aware
of the probable further discussion that his thesis would bring in academia,
Sanders dedicated a chapter to tackle the problem of the Law in the Jewish
mindset related to the New Testament and Paul. This opened the discussion
concerning the Law in Christian tradition; later in his life, Sanders wrote the book
“Jesus and Judaism” in which he delineates scholarly debates on the relation of
law from a Jewish Jesus perspective, also becoming a landmark for biblical
scholarship.231
This ‘New Perspective’ became known as a new methodological approach to
the biblical writings, as an attempt to take off the Medieval Catholic and Reformed
glasses of reading the scriptures, and trying to “delutheranize” Paul and read the
230 Reinhard Hutter, Bound to Be Free: Evangelical Catholic Engagements in Ecclesiology,
Ethics, and Ecumenism (Grand Rapids, Mich: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2004), 134-
142.
231 E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 245.
101
scriptures according to the light of recent discoveries about 1st century
Judaism.232 This nebulitic conglomeration of methodologies called “New
Perspective” caused an earthquake in the “city” of the New Testament, and the
fundamental dichotomy to the reformist thought “Law vs. Gospel” was proven
false, and the theological positioning of Paul regarding the Jewish soteriology
became doubtful.233 Today, scholars of the New Testament agree that a new era
has begun, advocating that we should use the terms “Before the New
Perspective'' and “after the New Perspective” Pauline Studies.
The Study of Paul up until the 1970s had been based on three traditional
assumptions: (1) the center of his thought is a polemic against the Law; (2) the
Law for him no longer had a practical meaning; and (3) ancient Jewish literature
is no source for explaining his letters.234 It was finally then when E. P. Sanders,
in his landmark contribution to Pauline studies with his book “Paul and Palestinian
Judaism,” shifted the understanding of Paul in light of a new understanding of
Judaism itself.235 Sanders revisited Jewish Second Temple and early rabbinic
texts (i.e., 300 BCE–c. 400 CE), and offered a “counterimage” of Judaism as a
“religion of grace.”236 In a direct refutation of Professor W. D. Davies, Sanders
links Paul to Palestinian Jewish texts from 200 BCE to 200 CE rather than
rabbinic literature. According to Sanders' analysis, Paul's time was characterized
by a "covenantal nomism"—a pattern in which "the gift and demand of God were
kept in a healthy relationship with each other." 237 According to himself,
Covenantal Nomism is "the covenant requires as the proper response of man his
obedience to its commandments while providing means of atonement for
transgression," one's place in God's plan is formed based on the covenant.238
232 Francis Watson, Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles: A Sociological Approach (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989), 18.
233 Daniel Marguerat, Paulo: Uma teologia em construção (Edições Loyola, 2011), 11–14.3
234 Peter J. Tomson, Paul and the Jewish law: halakha in the Letters of the Apostle to the
Gentiles (Assen [Netherlands] : Minneapolis: Van Gorcum ; Fortress Press, 1990), 1.
235 E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion
(Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1977).
236 Barclay, Paul and the Power of Grace, 52.
237 Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 427.
238 Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 75.
102
Despite all these difficulties in understanding the meaning and applicability of Law
in Paul, Covenantal Nomism could solve a number of issues. For instance, as
E.P Sanders describes, instead of maintaining a reformed view of Law, it would
be much more realistic to say that Paul actually regarded the law within the scope
of the Covenant as any other 1st-century Jew. Israel was supposed to keep the
law as heirs of the election. Then, they would be keeping the law not to enter in
the covenant with God, but to not be rejected from this covenant. The means by
which someone is “Justified,” so to say, in Judaism, is due to the promise of God
to Abraham in Genesis 12. In the New Perspective, the word church means
“covenant community” rather than an institution of salvation. Being in the
“covenant community” does not guarantee perpetual salvation to the individual,
but only those who were saved by faith, like Abraham, are part of the community.
To remain in the “covenant community” means to obey the law of God, regardless
of time, space, language, or ethnicity.
In his findings in researching the Dead Sea Scroll, Sanders unfolded a significant
relationship between the Dead Sea Scrolls text 4QMMT and the New Testament,
notably the writings of Paul. This connection is known as the "Halakhic Letter" or
"Halakhic Letter" text. The text 4QMMT is recorded by six manuscripts, all of
which are relatively incomplete, and it suggests that the Community of the
Qumran writings regarded it as an authoritative work. The term "works of the law"
appears frequently in 4QMMT and Paul's writings. Paul used the phrase "works
of the law" (ergon nomou), which is most likely a translation of the words "ma'ase
haTorah," which is only in 4QMMT C 272. The twenty-four existing precepts
described in the passage's body, primarily activities that cross the limits between
the pure and impure, are the "works of the law" referred to in the last lines of
4QMMT.
The similarities in language between the sectarian text from Qumran and the
writings of the apostle Paul, mainly as seen in Galatians 32, have been the
subject of several research due to this link. It sheds light on an interpretation of
Paul that situates him in the context of Second Temple Judaism. Dunn called this
connection and the research results “Boundaries of the Covenant.” According to
103
Dunn, the idea that has resulted from Covenantal Nomism was coined to
characterize the ‘Jewish self-understanding’s or, more precisely, the
understanding of the relation between God and his people Israel as it comes to
expression consistently within Judaic literature.239 When Paul says, “We are no
longer under law, but grace,” he does not say, “God previously placed people
under law, but now He has placed them under grace.” Rather, the opposite, he is
saying that “God never placed anyone under law, neither Jews, nor gentiles, but
we (Jews) have placed ourselves under law, but now the truth was revealed, we
understood that we are where we should be all along, under grace”240 The bulk
of Jewish theology in the 1st century was that those who were outside of Judaism
were lost. For Paul, the grace of God was that God had spoken with other peoples
at the same time, and they understood that salvation was not only for the Jews
but for non-Jews also. Paul emphasizes that he himself was shown an
“apocalypses,” revelation from God.241 For Sanders, Paul advocates salvation by
grace only to the Gentiles exactly the same as it was for the Jews, i.e., through
an election, or in Christian terms, “Grace.” The logic is that “God’s action in Christ
alone provides salvation and makes everything else seem, in fact, worthless.242
In Paul, one can be considered justified - accepted by God - only apart from works
of the Law'. According to Raisanen, scholars traced an inconsistency in Paul’s
comments on Romans 2, as if he contradicted himself in saying that the Gentiles
mentioned there were not the Christian ones. So, logically, the law would apply
to gentile Christians in Paul’s speech.243
As difficult and striking as it may sound to traditional scholars, especially for
adepts of Lutheran theology, Paul was a Torah-observant Jew, and trying to take
the Jewishness of Paul away from him is an equivocal maneuver. The first thing
that Paul would do when he arrived in a city was to look for Jews in the synagogue
239 Dunn, The New Perspective on Paul, 2008, 173.
240 Hughes, “The New Perspective’s View of Paul and the Law,” 267.
241 Galatians 1:1-12
242 Richardson - Westerholm, Law in Religious Communities in the Roman Period, 66 cf.
Sanders, pg. 485.
243 Heikki Raisanen, Paul and the Law, 107.
104
of the city.244 The gospel message would become popular among Jews if, of
course, the message was understood and accepted. And if the city did not have
a synagogue or did not accept his message, he would rent a private local in the
city to teach and plant a church as happened in Ephesus.245
Consequently, the Covenantal Nomism coined by E.P. Sanders shifted this into
a dialectic. It was understood that Jews did not keep the law to enter or to create
the covenant, or to be saved as popular understood, but as an effort to make
Israel abide by the covenant, that they should not cancel the covenant in which
they were already heirs by right of kin. In the words of Longenecker:
“The “covenantal nomism” of first-century Judaism understood Torah observance not as
merit-amassing, but as a gladsome response to a loving God who had acted on his
people’s behalf and who asked that they in turn identify themselves as his people by
keeping his ordinances.246
The “New Perspective on Paul” represents one of the sharpest challenges to
traditional Protestant readings of Paul. It also articulates one of the clearest
Pauline theological responses to racial and ethnic divisions. This dialectic format
replaced the stigma of Judaism being understood usually in legalism with what
was called by E.P Sanders as “Covenantal Nomism.” A more sociological aspect
to Paul rather than theological, a horizontal problem (man-man) rather than a
vertical problem (God-man). Terms like “Justification” shifted to be understood
not as one’s status before God but as one’s status before the Community. One
would belong to the people of God because they believed rather than had been
born in the Judaic ethnicity. The fact that the term and concept of “religion” were
constructed only in later Christian writers shed light on the fact that ‘Jewishness’
was more related to ethnicity than religious practice. No one could
excommunicate a Jew, as he was born and remained in the status until his death.
Similar to what is associated with nationality nowadays. For this reason, Jews
244 McKnight - Oropeza, Perspectives on Paul, 271.
245 Acts of the Apostles 19:8-9
246 Richard N. Longenecker, Galatians - Word Biblical Commentary (Zondervan Academic,
2017), 41/86.
105
were used to adversarial ideologies within their nation, which were passive to
criticism and rebuke of the nation's leaders.
In the epistle of Romans 1:18-3:20, Paul argues the fact that nobody can be
justified before God by “works of the Law.” According to Räisenen, this verse
should be understood not only by Paul writing to Roman Gentile Christians but
also to Jews, especially since they boasted about the Torah.247 However, Peter
Richardson commented on E.P. Sanders' perspective, saying that Jews were, in
effect, good protestants and champions of grace centuries before the
Reformation.248
The covenantal nomism perspective created a background discussion
concerning the meaning of the term “works of the law,” often found in Pauline
writings.249 This term was coined by E.P. Sanders in the late 1970s. According to
him, the "structure" of covenantal nomism can be described as follows: (1) God
has chosen Israel and (2) given the law. The law implies (3) God's promise to
maintain the election and (4) the requirement to obey. (5) God rewards obedience
and punishes transgression. (6) The law provides for means of atonement, and
atonement results in (7) maintenance or re-establishment of the covenantal
relationship. (8) All those who are maintained in the covenant by obedience,
atonement, and God's mercy belong to the group that will be saved. An important
interpretation of the first and last points is that election and, ultimately, salvation
are considered to be by God's mercy rather than human achievement.250
Furthermore, the discussion concerning the Law after the New Perspective took
a more covenantal shape. The Law is now understood as a reaction for those in
the covenant. Usually, when one speaks about the abolition of the law, it is
presumably but not so obvious that one is speaking about the Sabbath, dietary
laws, and circumcision, but as we saw, these issues become clear in the new
247 Heikki Raisanen, Paul and the Law, 97.
248 Richardson - Westerholm, Law in Religious Communities in the Roman Period, 63.
249 I shall devote some time to explain the discussion involving the term ‘works of the law’ in 1.5
250 Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 422.
106
perspective. Paul could not have disregarded the Law as he was a Jew. It
ultimately marks a solution to the problem of Law in Paul.
4.3 James Dunn and the Covenantal Nomism
As scholars concluded that the distinctions between Christians and Jews in the
first three centuries were not clear theologically but rather sociologically, a new
attempt to classify these sociological boundaries started to emerge.251 James
Dunn, grows into this discussion, bringing to the table a suggestion regarding the
term “works of the Law” revisited by Sanders in the previous decade. According
to scholars, Dunn’s attempt to exegetically construct a more comprehensive
meaning of the term erga tou nomou, “works of the law” used by Paul, perhaps
created more controversies in academia than solutions. He tried to synthesize
the idea by saying that “for Paul, works of the Law are everything in the law that
by practicing someone can feel justified.” In this sense, Paul created a “boundary
mark” between the two faiths, an entrance and exit from one tradition to another.
He argues that Paul deliberately argued against "works of the law" and in favor
of redemption that was not limited by Jewish culture when he made this claim.
He asserts that both Paul's in-depth explanations of justification by faith, found in
Galatians 2:1–3 and Romans 2:1–21, dealt with this "social function of the law."
Though these systematizations and natural divisions and classifications of law
are inevitable within a tradition, the new perspective brought many possibilities
for understanding the basic necessary dynamics of the law in Paul’s writings.
James D. G. Dunn ended up coining a term which, among other things, became
a didactical reductionist approach to poorly understanding the distinction between
Jews and Gentiles in the first three centuries. The term that he used, “Boundary
marks'' was recognized by his critics as an attempt to diminish the concept of
works of the law and as a disfavor of Pauline's interpretation. Nevertheless,
despite the term being rebuked even by later editions of his book “New
Perspective on Paul,” quickly the concept of the works of the law was widespread
among scholars and adepts of the classical perspective on Paul. Today, the
251 Magnus Zetterholm, The Formation of Christianity in Antioch: A Social-Scientific Approach to
the Separation between Judaism and Christianity (London ; New York: Routledge, 2003).
107
expression works of the law become analogous, at least to popular Christian
circles, to the Sabbath, food laws, and Circumcision. Scholars of Pauline Studies
have been revisiting Dunn’s work with criticism concerning the issue. As Watson
says, the view of the boundary marks is an anachronistic 20th-century approach
to classify a subject that Jews of the first century had done. He says that perhaps
it can also be referred to as a Jewish style of life in general, but we do not have
a clear picture of how this separation would be concerning these boundaries that
Dunn accidentally stipulated.252 The boundary marks issue overstimulated the
search for the “Separation of the Ways”. Boundary Marks were not helping to
maintain the big picture that the New Perspective had brought concerning the
Jewish Practices and society of the first century. According to Dunn's perspective,
Paul's rejection of justification "by works of the law" was not so much a response
to Jewish legalism as to his fellow Jews' belief that the law was still a barrier
separating Christian Jews from Christian Gentiles. This viewpoint gives a new
insight into Paul's teachings on the law and justification by highlighting the social
and ethnic aspects of his theology.253
In all these opinions regarding the term, we tend to narrow down the meaning of
“works” related to “law.” Actually, more precisely, the attempt to see how the law
works. James Dunn has brought up that the word “law" in Paul, “nomos,” literally
means “Torah,” as a result, when it comes to considering its meaning throughout
the conversation.254 According to Dunn, when Paul refers to the "works of the
law," he refers to the customs of circumcision, dietary restrictions, and Sabbath,
which set devout Jews apart from Gentiles. This fundamental Jewish selfunderstanding—
the notion that God's recognition of covenant status is tied to,
even reliant upon, adherence to these specific regulations—is precisely what
Paul was challenging when he rejected the possibility of "being justified by works
of the law"255
252 Francis Watson, Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles: Beyond the New Perspective (Grand
Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 2007), 21.
253 James D. G. Dunn, The new perspective on Paul (Grand Rapid, Mich: W. B. Eerdmans Pub.
Co, 2008), 9-11.
254 Papaioannou - Giantzaklidis, Israel, Covenant, Law, XIII.
255 Colin G. Kruse, Paul’s Letter to the Romans (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2012), 18.
108
According to the Jewish New Testament Commentary: The Hebrew word “Torah,”
literally “teaching, doctrine,” is rendered in both the Septuagint and the New
Testament by the Greek word “nomos,” which means “law.” Greek has had a
more direct and pervasive influence on English and other modern languages than
Hebrew has, and this is why in most languages one speaks of the “Law” of Moses
rather than the “Teaching” of Moses. It is also part of the reason why the Torah
has mistakenly come to be thought of by Christians as legalistic in character. If
we use our modern understanding of Nomos as a legal code, inevitably, Paul
becomes an antinomian. Dunn comments extensively on Paul’s use of ‘Nomos,’
according to him:
“The use of nomos in 3.27-31 has caused unending puzzlement: should we take nomos
in v.27 as a reference to the law or translate 'principle'? And how can Paul claim in v.31
to be 'establishing the law'? The centrality of the law in Ch. 7 has been recognized, but
how and whether that insight facilitates the exegesis of 7.14-25 in particular is a matter
of unresolved controversy, with the meaning of nomos in 7.23 and 8.2 disputed in the
same way as in 3.27. In the obviously crucial resumptive section, 9.30-10.4, there is equal
controversy over the meaning of nomos 'dikaiosynis’, 'law of righteousness' (9.31), and
‘telos nomou’, 'end of the law' (10.4). And in the paraenetic section, the claim that love of
neighbor is a fulfillment of the law (13.8-10) causes further puzzlement to those who think
that Paul has turned his back on Judaism and its law.”256
Therefore, the usage of the word Nomos in a first-century Jewish context
probably will be better suited as a translation of the Torah altogether. It gives a
better understanding of why Paul was so worried about Gentile Christians running
to be circumcised to enter the temple and receive an atonement by the Jewish
sacrificial system. Which usually is the very work that the Torah requires. The
“requirements of the Torah” to enter into a covenant with God lost its significance
as now people could enter straight into the true covenant with Jesus, from which
Abraham was merely a symbol, or tutor, “paidagogos” incumbent of leading
people towards the New Covenant.
256 James D. G. Dunn, The New Perspective on Paul: Collected Essays (Mohr Siebeck, 2007),
134.
109
The word "works of the law" has allegedly been misconstrued, according to
scholars. They contend that Paul criticizes legalism, not the Torah when he refers
to being "under the law" or the "works of the law". Although the word "Torah" is
sometimes rendered as "law," in Jewish thought, it primarily refers to teaching,
direction, and education rather than legal regulation2. As a result, rather than the
Torah itself, the phrase "works of the law" may refer to a legalistic interpretation
of the Torah.257 The same is required for the interpretation of terminology like
"works of the law," "grace," and "faith" in relation to salvation in Christ. The
Reformers establish a strong consensus on these terminology and concepts,
which limits the interpretations that may be given.258 But now, with the possibility
to understand their word in other contexts, biblical scholarship has a new chance
to write history on interpreting the biblical scriptures. For Dunn, for instance, the
often found “works of the law” in Paul were nothing less than the boundary
markers that were discussed in the previous chapter.259 In his view, Paul is
against the law only in the sense that it separates Jews and Gentiles 260
Douglas Moo, in his work “A Theology of Paul in his Letters” (2021), doubles
down on James Dunn's view and tries to conciliate both visions (soteriological
and ecclesiological). In the counterpoint, Lloyd Gaston, in his article: "Works of
Law as a Subjective Genitive,” later compiled in his book “Paul and the Torah,”
opposes the interpretation proposed by Dunn concerning the expression ‘works
of the law’ saying that the works of the law are evil, especially when Paul utilizes
the phrase “the law works wrath” in Romans 4:15. Marguerat, replying to James
Dunn says that the covenantal Nomism includes a synergic aspect that makes
obedience a necessary validation of belonging to salvation.261 Thomas R.
Schreiner, in 1991, went against Dunn’s arguments, saying that Paul was not
trying to set boundaries to separate Jews and Christians, but that the Jews were
257 John L. Meech, Paul in Israel’s Story: Self and Community at the Cross (Oxford, New York:
Oxford University Press, 2006), 9.
258 Chester, Reading Paul with the Reformers, 2017, 64.
259 Gerhard H. Visscher, Romans 4 and the New Perspective on Paul: Faith Embraces the
Promise (Peter Lang, 2009), 245.
260 Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle.
261 Marguerat, Paulo, uma teologia em construção, 267–292.
110
failing in doing so, as no one could be saved by works of the law, which are good
according to Paul.262 Schreiner, a reformed scholar, is still a key scholar opposing
the New Perspective.
Perhaps one of the greatest difficulties instead of defining ‘works of the law’ in
Pauline's writings is to define what is, in fact, “legalism” in the reform movement.
Legalism is understood to be the action of keeping the law looking forward for
justification. In that case, the Law is the starting point to attain Salvation.
However, Paul says that by fulfilling the works of law, no one shall be saved.263
This is a clear understanding by every Christian tradition and oversaturated by
Reformist theology. Legalism is not, however, the act of doing the works of the
law in itself, but doing so, to be saved. In this context, for N.T. Wright, Paul’s view
on Judaism's faults is pure legalism. He is probably drawing from the events that
Jesus himself lived against the Pharisees.264
Moreover, scholars have argued that if Paul were to preach an eventual doctrine
that would dismiss the works of law in any sense, he would have literally entered
into a needless contradiction. The fact that if the law could be abolished, the very
concept of sin would be dismissed as the absence of law results in the absence
of transgression of the law. The Works of the Law and the Law are different in
this sense. With no transgression, logically, a sacrifice would also be
unnecessary or even repentance, resulting in a catastrophic reality for Christian
theology. Why would the works of the law be the same as a sacrifice if the
breaking of the law would be dismissed by the abolition of the Law altogether?
The point is that it is vitally important for Christian Theology to understand the
role of the law primarily in Judaism than its connection to the sacrificial system
and the atonement for sin. It is often taken for granted that Paul ‘was a pharisee;
his understanding of the Lamb and religion was very literal and conservative, at
least until the point when the same Jesus was on the way to Damascus.265
262 Schreiner, “‘Works of Law’ in Paul,” 217–244.
263 Galatians 2:16
264 Mark D. Nanos, The Mystery of Romans: The Jewish Context of Paul’s Letter (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 1996), 88–95.
265 Acts of the Apostle, Chapter 9
111
According to himself, nobody could be better knowledgeable about Judaism than
himself. Being a scholar and versed in the Jewish understanding of the law, Paul
was educated in the best school of Judaism at that time.
Since the Reformation, Protestant exegesis has traditionally regarded Paul's
statements about "the works of the law" to refer to Jewish attempts to earn merit
with God to be justified. Bultmann argued that the mindset driving such an effort
was flawed. People would not be justified even if they complied with all the law
requirements since the underlying mentality was immoral. Jewish historians, in
particular, raised objections to this picture of first-century Jewish views during the
twentieth century, but these were long ignored. In recent years, a sizable number
of NT scholars have concluded that, at least in theory, first-century Judaism was
not a religion whose salvation was reliant on keeping the law. Currently, fresh
approaches are being taken to interpret Paul's allusions to the "works of the law."
266
Another view that is getting more validity is that for Paul, ‘works of the law’ are
“works related to the temple”, especially because more than half of the verses of
the Tanakh are related to the temple. Notice that these are ceremonial laws as in
previous categories, but it does not necessarily mean that all the ceremonial laws
were related to the temple. The act of sacrifice and atonement pictured in the
laws of the Tabernacle are traditionally taken as representing Jesus’ life and
death throughout the Tanakh.
Papaioannou, in his book “Israel, Covenant, and Law, as being a native Greek
speaker and biblical scholar, states that the word “Nomou” in the words of Paul
is usually better understood as Torah, the expression “works of the law,” i.e.,
“εργα του νομου” (Erga tou nomou) should logically mean “works of the Torah.”267
This fact can also be understood in Galatians 2:16. It is not necessarily a legal
code that Paul is talking about when he mentions the word Nomos, but according
to Papaioannou, the meaning of the word “Nomos” carries a much broader sense
266 Kruse, Paul’s Letter to the Romans, 174.
267 Papaioannou - Giantzaklidis, Israel, Covenant, Law, XIII.
112
when it comes to Paul’s usage of it.268 In general, the term “law” refers to the
legislative aspect of the Old Testament, expressed mainly in the first five books
of the Bible, the Pentateuch.269 Papaiouannou recently presented a paper at the
Adventist Theological Society annual assembly (November 2022) where he
presented the term “works of the Law” as ritual laws of the Sanctuary. For him,
the very idea of having to “work” the “law” is directly connected to the imagery of
the second temple religion's necessity of applying practically the statutes of the
Torah to be ritually purified. The Law worked for him in the ritualistic aspect of the
Torah. In addition, Papaioannou, in criticizing Dunn’s boundary marks term, calls
attention to one of the left-out markers that Dunn did not place as the boundaries
of Judaism and Christianity, i.e., the second commandment.270 As in the old
times, every non-Israelite had images, statues, and idols. It is intriguing to know
that a Gentile needed to give up on the images and idols but not on certain
commandments like the Sabbath or food laws.271
Biblical Scholars have advocated for the hermeneutical principle in the book of
Hebrews as a transferring of the sacrifices and ritual system laws from the earthly
sanctuary to an existing heavenly sanctuary, which was not made by human
hands (Acts 7:48), the one that Moses saw in the wilderness (Exodus 25), and in
the one that Jesus entered once for all (Hebrews 9:12). The sanctuary being in
heaven also solves a number of problems that evangelicals and mainstream
Christianity ignored concerning the law and the Torah. For instance, Jesus'
sacrifice is symbolized as only the beginning of the atonement when the sinner
would bring the burning offering to the temple (spotless lamb) (Exodus 12:5, 13:2
and 1Peter 1:19) and the priest would take the blood into the tend to sprinkle it in
the altar and also in the curtain that made the division between the first part of
268 Papaioannou - Giantzaklidis, Israel, Covenant, Law, 76.
269 Zuck et al., A Biblical Theology of the New Testament, 30.
270 The Second commandment reads: “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of
anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow
down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the
children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but
showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.
(Exodus 20:4-6 NIV)
271 Papaioannou - Giantzaklidis, Israel, Covenant, Law, 20.
113
the sanctuary (Holy place) and the second (Most-Holy place), which the Highpriest
only could enter once a year, where was the ark of the covenant, containing
the decalogue and the Torah. (Hebrews 9:4). This whole theology and typology
gained a new meaning (broader and real) when Jesus was born. The sanctuary
was a prefiguration of the Messiah. Now that the Messiah came, the sacrificial
system, the temple rituals, and the intercession were all transferred to the spiritual
realm. After 40 days of resurrections, Jesus ascended to heaven and entered the
holy place on the 50th day (exactly the same day as Pentecost), effectively
ending the earthly temple system and the need to return to Jerusalem to build a
new temple.
4.4.1 Sabbath
The first and perhaps the most controversial boundary mark that is worth
mentioning is the seventh-day Sabbath. The Sabbath is within the Decalogue or
“10 Commandments”; its origins remount the Creation narrative of Genesis 1,
where God creates the heavens and earth and rests on the seventh day of his
work.272 Perhaps the most controversial command in the Decalogue is the
Sabbath, which is the only one that is completely rejected. All other commands
are accepted indirectly as still in vogue for the Christian. When one talks about
God’s law in the Bible, the Seventh-Day sabbath is central. Having a central place
in the Jewish life, the Sabbath couldn’t be more controversial by the fact that
Jesus himself claimed to have authority over the Sabbath.273 Preachers,
theologians, and spiritual leaders have spent decades debating the Sabbath.
Different interpretations of the Sabbath and its practice eventually divided
Christianity into different expressions. The majority of Protestants, especially in
Europe and in the USA, believe that they still follow the Sabbath, resting on
Sunday. However, this does not happen in other countries and languages in
which the word “Sabbath” is the name of a specific day in the week. For instance,
in Spanish, the word “Sabbath” is translated as “Sabado,” which is the name of
the seventh day. It becomes hard for Christian protestant denominations of these
272 Genesis 1 and 2:1-3
273 Mark 2:23-27
114
countries to replace Sunday rest, as recognized as a holy day by the Catholic
Church.
This expression later on became analogous to Sunday, as the name of the day,
in Latin, became “Dies Domini” and in Greek, “Kyriake Hemera,” which up until
today is thought to be the true “day of the Lord.” David W. T. Brattston, in his
book: “Sabbath and Sunday among the Earliest Christians,” utilizes a range of
arguments to try to show that the Day of the Lord is not the same as the Jewish
Sabbath of the Fourth Commandment, which in his opinion was transposed to
Sunday, or the first day of the week. He implies that such changes were already
accepted by the early church fathers historically, and therefore, Christians have
the backing of history to claim such changes.274
Scholars, on the other hand, have gotten this argument stuck in a wall of
evidence, particularly scriptural evidence, that confirms that the Jewish Sabbath
is, in fact, the Day of the Lord. Furthermore, this expression becomes very
important later in history since the claim “Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath,”
understood within the Jewish context, has divine implications, as “the Lord of the
Sabbath” in the Old Testament is the Godhead itself. 275 This understanding was
an important doctrinal point of the Christian faith and was formerly understood as
the core of Christian doctrine due to its Christological implications. Scholars have
concluded that when Jesus claims to be the Lord of the Sabbath, he is also
claiming to be divine.276
Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestant Christians, in general, argue that when Jesus
called himself the Lord of the Sabbath, he was actually saying that the Sabbath
ceased to be an ordinance and thus became a symbol of Jesus' authority to
change the law (i.e., the day from the seventh to the first day of the week, or the
eighth day as the Catholic tradition advocates).277 Oscar Cullman, reading John
274 David W. T. Brattston, Sabbath and Sunday among the Earliest Christians, Second Edition:
When Was the Day of Public Worship?, 2017, 7-13.
275 Leviticus 19:30; Ezekiel 20:12 and 20; Exodus 20:8-11
276 Evans - Mishkin, A Handbook on the Jewish Roots of the Gospels, 114.
277 Iain D. Campbell, On the First Day of the Week: God, the Christian and the Sabbath (Day
One Publications, 2005), 95.
115
5, concludes that Jesus taught that it was not important to observe the Sabbath,
therefore by “breaking the law,” he justifies the “non-observance of the Sabbath.”
278
As Jesus says, he focuses on the resting necessity of humanity and abolishes
the law of the 4th commandment. However, nothing in this pericope outlaws the
sabbath observance, as Barton says: “Jesus is not setting aside the law but, in
traditional Jewish fashion, placing one divine imperative over another for the
moment.”279 Others concluded that Jesus actually is not changing the law here,
but according to the prophecy of Isaiah, “he is making the law great.” 280
David C. Sim concludes that for Matthew, “the sabbath law is valid and must be
obeyed, but that it can be overridden in special circumstances.”281 Francois P.
Viljoen says that the Torah holds a central position in Matthew's Gospel, and it is
still Torah-Observant.282 Larondelle says that:
“Christian Jews kept the Sabbath not according to the Jewish traditions, however, but as
Jesus had exemplified it. It is, therefore, not justified to say that Jesus violated the
Sabbath commandment. He rather gave it His Messianic interpretation as the divine
intention of the Sabbath.”283
Also, commenting on Matthew 12:11-12, LaRondelle ratifies that Jesus exposed
the superficial nature of the many Sabbath rulings (halakhot) of the Pharisees
while maintaining the “lawfulness” of the Sabbath commandment.284
278 Oscar Cullmann, The Christology of the New Testament (Philadelphia, Pa.: Westminster,
1989), 152; Oscar Cullmann - A. Stewart Todd, Early Christian Worship, 2018, 92.
279 John Muddiman - John Barton, The Gospels (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press,
2010), 49.
280 Isaiah 42:21
281 David C. Sim, The Gospel of Matthew and Christian Judaism: The History and Social Setting
of the Matthean Community (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 137.
282 Francois P. Viljoen, “The Torah in Matthew: Still Valid, yet to Be Interpreted Alternatively,” In
Die Skriflig/In Luce Verbi 50/3 (March 23, 2016), 1–10.
283 Hans K. Larondelle, Our Creator Redeemer: An Introduction to Biblical Covenant Theology
(Berrien Springs, Mich: Andrews University Press, 2005), 82.
284 Larondelle, Our Creator Redeemer, 81–82.
116
According to the ‘Sola Scriptura’ tradition, the patriarchs considered the Sabbath
as a holy day since the beginning of creation.285 The commandment starts with
“remember,” which denotes something that was forgotten by the Israelites.286
Before Abraham was born, the seventh-day sabbath was well-known according
to the Torah. Moses asks Pharaoh to release the Israelites so that they could
“rest” in the desert.287 This affirmation has a covenantal meaning as the word
(Shuv), ‘repent,’ or ‘to turn back,’ is the same root as the word (Shabbat), which
means rest. Before the Sinai, God warns the Israelites to keep his Sabbath and
even inquires of them, saying, “How long you will be reluctant in keeping my
laws?”.288 God makes the sabbath commandment as evidence of his people’s
obedience to him.289 For Kaufmann, Sabbath was indeed the only Jewish festival
that was attached to the Creation narrative of Genesis 1 and 2.290 The Sabbath
was the sign of the covenant with Israel for being delivered from Egyptian
bondage291 As Abraham Joshua Heschel, a Jewish philosopher of the 20th
century, affirms that the Sabbath is to be understood to be the temple of God in
Time, that it comes to all nations and tongues, especially to the poor, that cannot
travel.292 Heschel starts this argument by saying that the sabbath, as a palace in
time, shows man its finite nature; since those men cannot change time, the
sabbath is a sign that God rules over it, and even more, that it is a foretaste of
eternity.
The idea of the Sabbath being also aimed at foreigners is found in the prophecies
of the Old Testament. The third portion of the Book of Isaiah, chapters 56–66,
discusses the new heavens and earth prophecies. In Isaiah 56, together with
messianic predictions, Isaiah is mainly concerned with integrating eunuchs and
285 Genesis 2:1-3
286 Exodus 20:8-11
287 Exodus 5:5; Jeremiah 31:2
288 Exodus 16
289 Ezekiel 20:12 and 20
290 Yechezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel: From Its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile,
trans. Moshe Greenberg (New York: Schocken Books, 1972), 117.
291 Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel, 306.
292 Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath, Its Meaning for the Modern Man (New York, NY:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 12.
117
outsiders among God's people. It underlines that entry into God's house of prayer
will be granted to anybody who obeys God, observes His Sabbath, and upholds
His covenant.293 According to this prophecy, the people of all nations should lay
hold of the new covenant by resting on the Sabbath. Jesus' comment regarding
the sabbath, “The Sabbath was made for man,” recalls the idea that the Sabbath
is indeed a holy day gifted from God to the people of all nations before the first
Jew, Abraham, existed.294
In fact, Acts 13:13 shows a Sabbath-keeping Christianity. The Sabbath was the
day that Paul would meet the people. He claimed to be disputing with Jews for
more than 52 sabbaths.295 Theologians claimed that Paul did not really keep the
Sabbath, but actually, he was going to meet the Jews on the sabbath in the
synagogue. This argument fails as we see that he would usually go to more
secluded places to pray on the Sabbath.296 In counterpoint, scholars have used
verses that seem to insinuate that Paul abolished the sabbath, perhaps the
strongest in Galatians 2:16. According to Papaioannou, the Sabbath in Paul,
especially in Galatians 2:16 is directly connected to the sacrificial system297.
Galatians epistle was written around the year 57-58 AD, during his 3rd missionary
trip; it was directional to the people who lived in the region of Galatia, modern
Ankara, Turkey. The common understanding of these passages when it uses the
word “sabbaton” is usually understood by theologians as “rests” or “holidays”
concerning the laws related to the sacrificial system.298
David W. T. Brattston advocated this change as being made by the early church
and appealed to scripture to show a supposed observance of a first day with the
text of Revelation 1:10. According to him, John is explicitly mentioning Sunday,
293 Isaiah 56
294 Mark 2:27
295 Acts of the Apostles 18:8-11
296 Acts of the Apostles 16:13-30
297 Papaioannou - Giantzaklidis, Israel, Covenant, Law, 11.
298 Francis D. Nichol (ed.), The Seventh-Day Adventist Bible Commentary; The Holy Bible with
Exegetical and Expository Comment (Washington: Review and Herald Pub. Association, 1987),
6/929-932.
118
signaling that the day of rest had already changed in the time of John299. Also, S.
R. Llewelyn, in his article” The Use of Sunday for Meetings of Believers in the
New Testament” (2001), makes the exact inference by trying to find the change
of the day within the scriptures. The Westminster Confession perpetuates the
same idea, which I shall discuss in the following chapter. The word used in
Revelation 1:10 is “Kyriake Hemera,” which is applied anachronistically, as the
word for Sunday in modern-day Greek has the same meaning as “The day of the
Lord,” or in Latin, “Dies Domenica.” However, we do not have any historical
evidence that supports that John, nor the fathers of the church are talking about
the first day of the week. As a Jew, John was most probably referring to the same
day that Jesus claimed authorship: “The Son of man is the Lord of the
Sabbath”.300 In the writer’s culture and surroundings, the seventh-day sabbath is
the only day that was sacred according to the biblical background, and according
to this understanding, the Sabbath of the seventh day is the day of the Lord.301
The changing of the law was evidenced partially by the slow process that Sunday
took part in as the new sabbath for the catholic faith. Samuelle Bacchiocchi, in
his doctoral thesis, showed how this change took place; later on, his thesis was
published as a book called “From Sabbath to Sunday.” Bacchiocchi says that
Paul's recommendation that the Christians gather on Sunday was more practical
than theological. He argues that Jews, as much as Christians, would not engage
in financial computations during the sabbath. Therefore, they would spend the
Sabbath rest. Still, soon after sunset, on Sunday (Saturday night nowadays), they
would gather and eat together and contribute financially to the other members of
the church302. Scholars usually interpret Luke’s narrative in acts of the apostles
as having a basis for a simple ignored anachronistic error. Luke did not utilize the
Roman computation of time but rather the Jewish one, taking as a basis the fact
that Jews and Gentiles met together.303
299 David W. T. Brattston, Sabbath and Sunday among the Earliest Christians, Second Edition:
When Was the Day of Public Worship?, 2017.
300 Matthew 12:8
301 Genesis 2:1-3; Exodus 20:8-11; Matthew 12:8 and Luke 6:1-5
302 Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath to Sunday, 96–97.
303 Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath to Sunday, 98–100.
119
Protestant scholars have agreed that the Sabbath law was transposed to Sunday,
or in Latin, “dies domenica,” meaning the day of the Lord. D.A Carson, in his book
aiming to defend Sunday observance, wrote: "And so, all the other things that
one must observe on the Sabbath, these things we have transposed to the Lord’s
Day." 304 Though this opinion is very popular among evangelicals, scholars affirm
that the Jewish sabbath morning gatherings shed light into the development of
Christian worship.305 Bacchiocchi calls attention to a document called
“Constitutions of the Holy Apostles” dated to the year 380, containing some of the
Apostle traditions which mention the Sabbath several times.306
Origen claims that Christians should keep the Sabbath but without the Jewish
regulations, engage in spiritual work, and gather in their communities to listen to
the reading of the word.307 Gregory of Nyssa claims that the Sabbath and the
Sunday are sibling days: If one does not keep the first, it is also against the
second.308 We see that pattern all the way to Athanasius, and the Church held
spiritual meanings concerning the Sabbath. Athanasius claims that the Sabbath
and Sunday were important.
The Sabbath because it was the primary day for acquiring knowledge of God, confession,
and abstaining from evil. It contrasted with the “Lord’s Day,” which symbolizes the ‘new
creation’ where God restores the old creation.309
Athanasius is also quoted as having affirmed the Sabbath doctrine in Christianity,
we have evidence that the Oriental churches kept observing the 4th
commandment according to church historians:
304 D. A. Carson, From Sabbath to Lord’s Day: A Biblical, Historical and Theological
Investigation (Eugene, Or: Wipf and Stock, 2000), 282.
305 Markus Vinzent, Christ’s Resurrection in Early Christianity: And the Making of the New
Testament (Farnham, Surrey, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011), 197.
306 Samuele Bacchiocchi, Divine Rest for Human Restlessness: A Theological Study of the
Good News of the Sabbath for Today (Berrien Springs, Mich.: Biblical Perspectives, 2001), 36.
307 ‘In Numeros Homilia XXIII’. Ιωάννης Κ. Διώτης and J.-P. Migne, eds., Patrologia Graeca 2
(Αthens: Centre for Patristic Publications, 1988), col. 749.
308 Ιωάννης Κ. Διώτης and J.-P. Migne, eds., Patrologia Graeca 46 (Athens: Centre for Patristic
Publications, 1997), col. 309c.
309 ‘De Sabbatis et Circumcisione’. Ιωάννης Κ. Διώτης and J.-P. Migne, eds., Patrologia Graeca
28 (Athens: Centre for Patristic Publications, 2002), cols. 136C-140A.
120
"The ancient Christians were very careful in the observance of Saturday, or the seventh
day...It is plain that all the Oriental churches and the greatest part of the world observed
the Sabbath as a festival...Athanasius likewise tells us that they held religious assembles
on the Sabbath, not because they were infected with Judaism, but to worship Jesus, the
Lord of the Sabbath; Epiphanius says the same." Antiquities of the Christian Church, vol.
II Book XX, chap. 3, sec.1, 66. 1137,1138
In the same book, Joseph Bingham states that many Christian writers confirm the
fact that Churches would meet on Saturday for communion service.310 For
instance, Cardinal Gibbons, in a Catholic period article, once wrote, "...the
Redeemer, during His mortal life, never kept any other day than Saturday.”311 The
Sabbath-keeping practice of Jesus is a well-established truth among Catholic
scholars. It is well established that this accommodation of the church customs
took place. However, protestant scholars usually place its start in the time of
Constantine (272 -337 AD). He was the first emperor who became a Christian
and started the effort to adapt Christianity to the gentile practices throughout the
empire smoothly. As a result of these accommodations, Constantine set a
precedent for establishing Sunday and the day of rest for Christianity. He
commands:
“On the venerable day of the Sun, let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest,
and let all workshops be closed. In the country, however, persons engaged in agriculture
may freely and lawfully continue their pursuits because it often happens that another day
is not suitable for gain-sowing or vine planting, lest by neglecting the proper moment for
such operations, the bounty of heaven should be lost. (Given the 7th day of March,
Crispus and Constantine being consuls each of them the second time.)” Codex
Justinianus, lib. 3, tit. 12, 3312
The Canon 29 of the Laodicean Creed reads: "Christians must not Judaize by
resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day, rather honoring the Lord's
310 Joseph Bingham, The Antiquities of the Christian Church, 2 Volumes (Eugene (Or.): Wipf &
Stock Publishers, 2006), 851.
311 Cardinal Gibbons, The Catholic Mirror, Sept. 2, 1893
312 Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Volume 3/380
121
Day; and, if they can, resting then as Christians. But if any shall be found to be
Judaizers, let them be anathema from Christ”.313
A book titled "Things Catholics Are Asked About" by Rev. Martin J. Scott answers
numerous inquiries and subjects about Catholicism at the beginning of the 2nd
century. To reinforce the belief of purgatory as stipulated by the authority of
Catholicism, he states:
"Nowhere in the Bible is it stated that worship should be changed from Saturday to
Sunday. Now the Church, instituted, by God's authority, Sunday as the day of worship.
This same Church, by the same divine authority, taught the doctrine of Purgatory long
before the Bible was made. We have, therefore, the same authority for Purgatory as we
have for Sunday." 314
Reverend Jeremy Taylor also states the same idea with the quote:
“The primitive Christians did keep the Sabbath of the Jews... therefore the Christians, for
a long time together, did keep their conventions on the Sabbath, in which some portions
of the Law were read: and this continued till the time of the Laodicean council.” 315
Adding to this view, Standish states:
"Nor can we imagine anyone foolhardy enough to question the identity of Saturday with
the Sabbath or seventh day, seeing that the people of Israel have been keeping the
Saturday from the giving of the Law, A.M., 2514 to A.D. 1893 (to the present day) ..."316
Martin Luther, the founder of the protestant movement agrees that the Sabbath
was present from the beginning and throughout all the first centuries narrative.317
The practice of keeping the sabbath continued even after the first schisms of the
ecumenical church, which is evidenced by the rejected sect of the Nestorians.
Nestorians eat no pork and keep the Sabbath.318 In the European ghetto, it was
313 Philip Schaff (ed.), Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Second Series, Volume XIV the Seven
Ecumenical Councils (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2007), 14/314.
314 Martin J. Scott, Things Catholics Are Asked About (P.J. Kenedy, 1927), 136.
315 Jeremy Taylor, The Whole Works Of Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor, Volume 9 (Nabu Press,
2011), 416.
316 Colin D. Standish - Russell R. Standish, The Lord’s Day (Hartland Publications, 2002), 287.
317 Luther, The Collected Works of Martin Luther, 7/5432.
318 Johann Jakob Herzog - Philip Schaff, The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia Of Religious
Knowledge (Andesite Press, 2015), art. Nestorians.
122
common to find people going against Catholic theology. For instance, in the prereformation
period, the followers of Waldo, who had severely faced persecution
by the Catholic Church and had fled to the Northern Italian Alps, also held
standards of the applicability of biblical law differently from the current orthodox
belief. A fifteenth-century manuscript, published by church historian Johann
Döllinger, “History of the Sects,” reports that Waldensians in Bohemia: “do not
celebrate the feasts of the blessed virgin Mary and the Apostles, except the Lord’s
Day. Not a few celebrate the Sabbath with the Jews.”319 Perrin, in his classical
book written in 1624, says that because the Waldensians observed no other day
of rest, but the Sabbath days, they called themselves “Insabathas.” 320 We have
much evidence of the Law being kept in Europe during the Middle Ages; for
instance, Canon 26 of the Council of Elvira in Spain, reveals that the Church of
Spain at that time kept Saturday, the seventh day.
"As to fasting every Sabbath: Resolve that the error be corrected by fasting every
Sabbath."321
This council resolution is in direct opposition to the policy the church at Rome had
inaugurated, that of commanding the Sabbath as a fast day to humiliate it and
make it repugnant to the people. This fact is evidenced also in the eastern
churches, which also were beyond Roman control and delighted freedom in the
matter of religion. Pet Heylin, in 1636, wrote a book, “History of the Sabbath'',
compelling many quotes from the Middle Ages concerning the Sabbath. About
the eastern churches, he says:
"It was the practice generally of the Eastern Churches; and some churches of the
west...For in the Church of Millaine (Milan); it seems the Saturday was held in a farre
esteem... Not that the Eastern Churches, or any of the rest which observed that day, were
inclined to Iudaisme (Judaism); but that they came together on the Sabbath day, to
worship Iesus (Jesus) Christ the Lord of the Sabbath." (Original spelling retained)322
319 Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger, Beiträge zur Sektengeschichte des Mittelalters (Beck,
1890), 2/662.
320 Jean-Paul Perrin, Luther’s Forerunners: A Cloud of Witnesses (London: Newbery, 1624), 7–
8.
321 Gian Domenico Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, 1759, 2/210.
322 P. Heylin, History of the Sabbath (London: T. Cotes, 1636), 73–74.(internet archives)
123
Ernesto Ferreira records the sabbath keeping during the Middle Ages, which,
according to him, discredits the idea that the church would not usually keep the
seventh day.323 For instance, in the fifth century AD, a church historian called
Sozomen wrote:
“The people of Constantinople, and almost everywhere, assemble together on the
Sabbath, as well as on the first day of the week, which custom is never observed at Rome
or at Alexandria. There are several cities and villages in Egypt where, contrary to the
usage established elsewhere, the people meet together on Sabbath evenings, and,
although they have dined previously, partake of the mysteries.”324
The idea that the Sabbath was a vivid line of separation between Jews and
Christians is a widely known idea. However, the amount of evidence staking in
the last century shows that sects of Christians, as well as Jews, kept the seventhday
sabbath during the classical age and beyond, such commandment of the law
was dismissed by scholars as a Jew-only and the modern understanding of the
Sabbath as being a Judeo-Christian feature.
4.4.2 Food Laws
In the scope of boundary marks coined by Dunn, the next mark usually
undertaken is the laws concerning food, or in Hebrew, ‘kashrut.’ When Kristen
Stendhal shifted the minds of contemporaneous scholars to the fact that we
should free Paul from the anachronistic sentiments mentioned before, he did not
go further in his delineations concerning food laws and laws of the Kashirot, for
instance, in his pivotal sentence relating to the issue, he says:
“The doctrine of justification by faith was hammered out by Paul for the very specific and
limited purpose of defending the rights of Gentile converts to be full and genuine heirs to
the promises of God to Israel. Their rights were based solely on faith in Jesus Christ. This
was Paul’s very special stance, and he defended it zealously against any compromise
that required circumcision or the keeping of kosher food laws by Gentile Christians. As
323 Ernesto Ferreira, A Verdade Cristã - À Luz da Razão, da Revelação Divina e da Tradição
(Maxishield International / Publicadora Servir, 2013), 68.
324 Salminius Hermias Sozomenus - Edward Walford, The Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen:
From AD 324 to AD 425 (Evolution Pub & Manufacturing, 2018), Book 7, Ch. 19.
124
the apostle to the Gentiles, he defended this view as part and parcel of the special
assignment and revelation that he had received directly from God. In none of his writings
does he give us information about what he thought to be proper in these matters for
Jewish Christians.”325
It is evident that Stendahl saw the food laws as requirements of the Jewish
heritage towards the Law. Today, not many studies have been conducted on the
relation to purification laws in the New Testament. However, scholars have
agreed that some aspects of the purifications were very present in the NT
writings, especially due to their Judaic nature. The Kashirot was a vivid law in the
first century. Starting from the Torah food laws in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy
5, the laws of food evolved from principles of which food one should eat to how,
when the food should be eaten, and later with whom should be eaten in rabbinic
traditions.
It is not new the claim that Jesus broke the laws concerning food; perhaps one of
the most mentioned verses in relation to Jesus allowing the consumption of
unlawful foods in the New Testament is Mark 7:1-23.326 Mark added a brief
parenthetical remark, which is unrelated to Jesus’ intention in the passage: “Thus
he declared all foods clean.” Instead of breaking the food laws of Leviticus 11, he
was rejecting the expansionist Jewish pharisaic traditions of his day.327 Scholars
have debated the issues for years now; for instance, Eike Muller, in his Doctoral
Dissertation at Andrews University, summarized scholars’ opinions relating the
food laws intertextually related to this passage.328 Matthew Thiessen, in his book:
“Jesus and the Forces of Death”, (2021), adds up to the discussion by claiming
that Jesus, as a Jew, never opposed the cleanliness demands of the Law.
According to him, Jesus used a Rabbinic style of interpretation of the law where
he emphasized less prioritized but important aspects of the law above the
ritualistic aspect of the law.
325 Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles and Other Essays, 2.
326 Parallel passage also found in Matthew 15:15-20
327 Barmash, The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Law, 419.
328 See Eike Mueller, Cleansing the Common: Narrative-Intertextual Study of Mark 7:1-23
(Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews University, Doctor Of Philosophy, 2015).
125
An episode, however, that is worth mentioning is the one which was documented
in Acts chapter 10. In this episode, Peter goes to the house of Cornelius, a
Gentile, only because he was given permission in a vision. While there, he
declares how, as a faithful adherent to the Law of Moses, he was not supposed
to be there among Gentiles. The disciples were also Jews, in the very strict sense
of the word, which means that according to the law of the Pharisees, as a Jew,
you could not associate with a Gentile. When Peter returned home, the other
apostles had heard about his visit and were irate. Then he said to them, "You
know how unlawful it is for a Jewish man to keep company with or go to one of
another nation. But God has shown me that I should not call any man ‘common
or unclean.”329 to uncircumcised men and ate with them!”. They confronted him
about his disobedience to the “Law” (oral law), which confirms that the Law
(Torah) was still practiced by the Early Church.330 Peter seemingly had breached
the Law in doing so. However, it was the common Jewish understanding of the
law that was in vogue, their oral traditions, and not the clean-unclean principle,
which would forbid any interaction with the Gentiles. Peter called the food that
was clean, mixed with the unclean as ‘common’ which meant that it was made
unclean by association. As David B. Woods says: “The point here is that it was
not, in fact, unlawful for Peter ‘to associate with or to approach a foreigner’, nor
was Peter pronouncing the Law null and void by doing so. Instead, God had
revealed to him that Gentiles are not intrinsically unclean and thus, the taboo of
associating with them was invalidated”.331 Paul was even rebuked by bringing
gifts to the church in Jerusalem from gentile lands, which were taken “unclean
donations”, not because of the type of it but for its origin.332 It is important to
consider that Luke wrote the book of Acts of the Apostles in the late 70s AD,
which means that the law of the kashrut was still in vogue for Christians, even
after the council of Jerusalem.
329 Acts 10:28
330 Acts 11:2–3
331 David B. Woods, “Interpreting Peter’s Vision in Acts 10:9-16,” Conspectus : The Journal of
the South African Theological Seminary 13/03 (March 2012), 183.
332 Acts 22
126
Another matter considered when talking about the food laws is the subject of
eating meat sacrificed to idols. A careless reading of the text of Romans 14 and
1 Corinthians 15 can create an ambivalence in the exegetical meaning of the
passage. According to mainstream Christianity, passages like the ones
mentioned above, “Jesus making everything clean” and “Peter, in his vision of the
sheet coming down from heaven in Acts 10:28”, plus the passages of Paul saying
that those who eat no meat are weak, the food laws became irrelevant for
Christians.333
For Tomson, Paul’s theology of the Law can only be really understood in his
practical position on food and table matters. According to him, Dietary foods had
a central place in Judaism, having fundamental significance in both religious and
social circles, which is often dismissed by Paul’s readers. Tomson says that it is
hard to imagine Paul being ‘indifferent’ to Jewish dietary laws. In his opinion, he
would either have to reject them entirely with Judaism, (which is unlikely in his
view), or he would accept them as a central fact and build a Jewish-gentile joint
within the church.334
Food laws bring religion to a daily basis, structuring the religious experience of
the individual and their identity. In the Jewish tradition, dietary laws were part of
the concept of “Sanctification” or “Kedoshah,” which meant a distinction between
the common. It ultimately implies the concept of “clean vs. unclean,” which is the
sphere by which the law communicates.335
Some Christians argue that the dietary restrictions are no longer binding because
they are part of the Old Covenant, which has been replaced by the New Covenant
in Jesus Christ. Authors and famous preachers like Billy Graham, John Piper,
and others support the argument that food restrictions are no longer binding on
Christians today. They may also reference several New Testament scriptures that
imply that all foods are clean or appropriate for Christians. Usually, the text they
use in their approaches is Mark 7:14-23, which records Jesus saying that nothing
333 Romans 14:1-23
334 Tomson, Paul and the Jewish law, 221-222.
335 Tomson, Paul and the Jewish law, 221.
127
that enters a person from the outside can defile them, but only what comes out
of their heart. Some bible translations add the extra wording to the Greek original
manuscripts to the sentence “He declared all foods clean.” Scholars have
debated the usage of the word “declaring” in the verse as it does not appear in
the phrase “καθαρίζωv πάντα τὰ βρώματα.” The Greek words in this sentence
are καθαρίζωv, πάντα and βρώματα. They mean “to clean,” “all,” and “foods,”
respectively. That is, “all foods are clean.” The wording: “He declared” is implied
by the translators. The critical word in this sentence is καθαρίζων since the word
describes the foods as being clean.336
Another text that supports this idea is Romans 14:1-23, which advises Christians
not to judge or despise each other over matters of food and drink but to follow
their own conscience and seek peace and edification. As well as Colossians 2:16-
17, which warns Christians not to let anyone judge them by what they eat or drink,
or by a religious festival, a New Moon celebration, or a Sabbath day. These are
a shadow of the things to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.
Jiri Moskala published in his dissertation “The Laws of Clean and Unclean
Animals in Leviticus 11: Their Nature, Theology, and Rationale” (1998), an
intertextual analysis that reveals the major reason for this food restriction is
religious, namely reverence for the Creator. His exegetical, theological, and
intertextual research demonstrates that under this umbrella, other key qualities
like health, respect for life, holiness, natural repulsiveness, and a barrier against
the penetration of paganism were the most relevant aspects of Israeli culture.337
Based on a comparison of all the Pentateuchal unclean laws, he also showed
that it is well-founded like these laws to choose specifically the dietary restrictions
regarding clean and unclean food as binding for Christians because the
uncleanness of the unclean animals is permanent and falls under the category of
the natural uncleanness, thus being a part of the universal law, a significant piece
336 Reuben Swanson (ed.), New Testament Greek Manuscripts: Mark (Sheffield: William Carey
Int’l Univ Press, 2005), 115.
337 Jiří Moskala, “The Laws of Clean and Unclean Animals of Leviticus 11: their Nature,
Theology, and Rationale (an Intertextual Study)”, Dissertations, (01 Ocak 1998), 150.
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on the legitimacy of these dietary constraints the need to distinguish between
clean and unclean food for Christians.338
Jiri Moskala mentions the topic of Purification rites and their importance to the
second temple religion. Although the rites of purification are not specifically
discussed in his work, it does explore the notions of cleanliness and
uncleanliness in the Old Testament, which are closely tied to purification rites.
The Law of Purity (Leviticus 11–16), a portion of the Priestly Code, contains most
of these rituals. Many old materials are utilized in this postexilic codification of
ceremonies to highlight both the Israelites' independence from heathen peoples
and the sanctity of Yahweh.
This ritual played a crucial role in the worldview of the people of the 1st century.
For instance, the need to visit the temple was attached to the idea of Purity.
Immersion in a mikveh, a ceremonial bath, was one of the common ways to
achieve ritual purity. All Jews had to undergo this cleansing before they could visit
the Temple or take part in certain holidays. We see in the New Testament
accounts some disagreements concerning the purity laws regarding the dealing
or relation with the non-Jews (Acts10-11;15 and Matthew 8). The New Testament
gives an insight into how these laws were comprehended during the second
temple religion and the new interpretation that was being given by Jesus and his
followers. These laws had the goal to deal with impurity related to the temple.
One could not participate in the temple events while in a condition that was
considered impure. Some examples of the laws of purification were after
childbirth and after healing from a disease. The law of purification after childbirth
appears in Leviticus 12; this law required a woman who gave birth to a son to be
ceremonially unclean for seven days, and then to remain in the blood of her
purification for thirty-three days. If she gave birth to a daughter, the periods were
doubled. At the end of her purification, she had to offer a lamb and a pigeon or a
turtledove as a sacrifice. In the New Testament, we see that Mary, the mother of
338 Jiri Moskala, “The Validity of the Levitical Food Laws of Clean and Unclean Animals: A Case
Study of Biblical Hermeneutics”, Journal of the Adventist Theological Society 22/2 (01 Ocak
2011).
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Jesus, followed this law when she presented Jesus at the temple and offered the
prescribed sacrifice (Luke 2:22-24). This shows that Mary obeyed the law of
Moses and that Jesus was born under the law (Galatians 4:4). Leviticus 14 talks
about the law of purification of lepers. This law required a person who was healed
from leprosy to undergo a ritual of cleansing that involved two living birds: cedar
wood, scarlet, hyssop, water, oil, and blood. The priest had to sprinkle the blood
and water on the leper seven times, pronounce him clean, and offer a sin offering
and a burnt offering for him. In the New Testament, we see that Jesus healed
many lepers and told them to show themselves to the priests and offer the
required sacrifices (Matthew 8:2-4; Luke 17:11-19). This shows that Jesus
respected the law of Moses and that his miracles fulfilled the law (Matthew 5:17).
The law of purification for bodily discharges (Leviticus 15), required a person who
had any abnormal discharge from his body, such as semen, blood, or pus, to be
unclean until evening. He had to wash his clothes and bathe in water. Anyone
who touched him or his bed or anything he sat on also became unclean. A woman
who had her menstrual period was also unclean for seven days, and anyone who
touched her or anything she sat on became unclean. At the end of their
uncleanness, they had to offer two turtledoves or two pigeons as a sacrifice. In
the New Testament, we see that a woman suffering from a hemorrhage for twelve
years touched Jesus’ garment and was healed (Mark 5:25-34). Jesus did not
rebuke her for touching him, praised her faith, and called her daughter. This
shows that Jesus was compassionate and merciful to those who were considered
unclean by the law and that his power made them clean (Mark 7:14-23).
4.4.3 Circumcision
Another ‘Boundary Mark’ usually considered to divide Jews and Gentiles,
according to Dunn, is “circumcision.” In the classic perspective, Circumcision is
not much debated or taken into examination. The New Perspective, however,
brought a whole new meaning to the subject. Milah “circumcision,” or, brit milah
“the covenant of circumcision,” consists of the removal of the foreskin from the
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genital organ of a baby boy, with the purpose of initiating him into the “covenant
of Abraham.” The term appears in Genesis. 17, where Abraham and all his male
heirs are told to practice circumcision as a sign of the covenant that God
established with the people of Israel. This was given as a physical ritual of
initiation into the covenant made with Yahweh. Circumcision is thus performed
also on male converts to Judaism, regardless of their age. Already, circumcised
male converts undergo a shortened form of the ritual entitled hatafat dam, literally
“a drop of blood.” In this ritual, a single drop of blood is drawn from the male
genitalia as a representation of circumcision, which is performed not merely as a
surgical procedure but as a religious act that brings about entry into the Jewish
covenant.339
The whole discussion started when the believers in Galatia demanded
circumcision to become a follower of Jesus in Galatians 5:2; 6:12 and 13). Paul
exhorts them vehemently against such praxis and according to mainstream
Christian tradition scholars, the focus of Paul was to say that Paul’s opponents
had neglected the meaning of the Cross because the “present evil age” was
“passing away”340 Matthew Thiessen in his book “Paul and the gentile problem”
(2016), provides a new explanation for the apostle Paul's statements about the
Jewish circumcision in his letters to the Romans and Galatians.
Paul's arguments against circumcision and the law in Romans 2 and his reading
of Genesis 15-21 in Galatians 4:21-31 belong within a stream of Jewish thinking
which rejected the possibility that gentiles could undergo circumcision and adopt
the Jewish law, thereby becoming Jews. Paul opposes this solution to the gentile
problem because he thinks it misunderstands how hopeless the gentile situation
remains outside Christ. The book's second part moves from Paul's arguments
against a gospel that requires Gentiles to undergo circumcision and adoption of
the Jewish law to his own positive account, based on his reading of the Abraham
Narrative, of how Israel's God relates to Gentiles. Having received the Spirit
339 Jacob Neusner vd., Encyclopedia of Judaism: Supplement I (New York: Continuum
International Publishing Group Ltd., 2003), 89.
340 Michael F. Bird - Thomas R. Schreiner (ed.), Four views on the Apostle Paul (Grand Rapids,
MI: Zondervan, 2012), 23.
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(pneuma) of Christ, gentiles are incorporated into Christ, who is the singular seed
of Abraham, and, therefore, become materially related to Abraham. But this
solution raises a question: Why is it so important for Paul that Gentiles become
the seed of Abraham? His main argument is that Paul believes that God had
made certain promises to Abraham that only those who are his seed could enjoy.
These promises can be summarized as being empowered to live a moral life,
inheriting the cosmos, and hoping for an indestructible life.
Paul calls attention to the fact that Abraham was circumcised after his election
even, that faith is bigger and more important than circumcision, as the Jews had
forgotten about it.341 In verse 13, Paul better explains as follows: “It was not
through law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would
be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith.”342
LaRondelle, commenting on this issue, says:” This faith in all God’s words was
the nature of Abraham’s faith. Abraham did not have an abstract faith with some
additional works of obedience; he had a faith that worked after he had been
justified by faith alone.”343
Wenham further explains that In the OT, faith involves both believing promises
and obeying commands; it is the latter aspect that both Hebrews and James
emphasize in their comments on the life of Abraham; “By faith Abraham
obeyed”;344 “Works completed faith.” 345 That the two sides of faith—belief and
obedience—are not incompatible is recognized by Hebrews.346
Scholars have understood that grace was the same as the Jewish concept of
entering into a covenant. People would enter the covenant by faith, meaning they
were part of the saved people by doing so, exactly like Abraham was. In the New
Testament, faith and works do not change. Law and obedience are present in the
New Testament, perhaps more clearly in the epistle of James. According to
341 Romans 4:11-25
342 Romans 4:13
343 Larondelle, Our Creator Redeemer, 29.
344 Hebrews 11:8
345 James 2:22
346 Gordon John Wenham et al., Genesis 1-15, (Word Biblical Commentary) - Volume 1, ed.
David Allen Hubbard - Glenn W. Barker (Zondervan Academic, 2014), 335.
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Neusner, the real purpose of the circumcision already in the OT is the
circumcision of the heart, symbolizing the real zeal for the law. The promise
already appears in Deuteronomy 30:6: “God will circumcise your heart,” and it
was remembered and reaffirmed sometime later by Jeremiah (Jer. 9:25).347
If not for Paul's perspective, Christianity would offer salvation only within
Judaism.348 The New Perspective on Paul claims that Paul believed that Judaism
could not attain the wholeness of salvation any longer, which is why Jesus
expanded it to all the world. In addition, Paul, as a diasporan Jew, had no problem
understanding the right way of living conformed to the Torah without its ritualistic
aspects as he was a diaspora Jew himself. Paul grew up away from the temple
and its practices, having his religious practices turned to the Torah readings more
than the temple.349
The attempt to be righteous by circumcision was to enter the covenant with God
through Abraham instead of entering in the same covenant with God through
Jesus Christ. Paul says explicitly that to those people, Christ died for nothing and
that they have forgotten the meaning of the Cross of Christ.350 Mark D. Nanos
says that circumcision was a rule of entrance into the covenant rather than a
requirement of law as a response to the covenant. In his own words:
“Paul’s opposition to ergōn nomou was only to the rites involved in proselyte conversion
(circumcision and related “acts/works”), not to Jewish behavioral norms for Jews or even
for non-Jews more broadly. Paul was not against good works or Jewish works or markers
of identity—for Jews; he was against the imposition of conversion to Jewish ethnic identity
(the works/rites of proselyte conversion) for these non-Jews since they were (according
to the gospel) already members of God’s family as non-Jews, through Jesus Christ. They
were already practicing the good works within Judaism as non-Jews, although not the
specific “works/rites” of circumcision that would render them, Jews, thereby bearing
witness to the arrival of the awaited age of the reconciling of the nations alongside
Israel”351
347 Neusner vd., Encyclopedia of Judaism, 89.
348 Bird - Schreiner, Four Views on the Apostle Paul, 186.
349 Fredriksen, Paul, 35-36.
350 Galatians 2:21 and 3:1
351 Mark D. Nanos, Reading Paul within Judaism (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2017), 18.
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Jewish ritual impurity had to do mainly with the Temple. Gentiles could not access
the temple as they were considered ritually impure. Dining with an unclean person
resulted in ceremonial contamination for a clean person. For instance, in Luke
7:39, Simon the Pharisee questions Jesus' prophecy after allowing the wicked
woman Mary to touch Him. It was a ritual, not a moral protest.
Circumcision to the Jewish identity and the assurance of God's acceptance was
also especially related to the Temple. Since the pilgrimage of the first forefathers
of Israel in the desert, Israel had the temple as its main center of religion and
activities. Israelites would live in the temple, doing morning and afternoon
sacrifices daily. The Temple was the core identity of the Jewish nation before its
fall in 70 AD and around the time that Paul wrote his letters. It is important to call
attention that Jerusalem, at least the temple, was a restricted area for circumcised
Jews. Archeologists in the 19th century found a tablet from the 1st century
containing “The Temple warning inscriptions,” written in Koine Greek, posted
outside the Jerusalem temple gates. Today, this tablet is on display in the Istanbul
Archeological Museum, which reads:
“No stranger is to enter within the balustrade round the temple and enclosure. Whoever
is caught will be himself responsible for his ensuing death.”352
It is evident that the attendance to the temple was made only by Jews, even those
who believed in Jesus. We see an episode in Acts of the Apostles which … had
to be circumcised by the pressure of the Jews.
As the acceptance in the temple was only to Jews, Jesus’s gentile followers
around that time could not attend such meetings. Paul had to write consistently
to admonish such pressures. In Epistle to the Romans, he writes:
Circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law; but if you break the law, your
circumcision has become uncircumcision. So, if those who are uncircumcised keep the
requirements of the law, will not their uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? Then
352 Elias J. Bickerman, “The Warning Inscriptions of Herod’s Temple”, The Jewish Quarterly
Review 37/4 (1947), 387-405.
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those who are physically uncircumcised but keep the law will condemn you who have the
written code and circumcision but break the law. A person is not a Jew who is one
outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical. Rather, a person is
a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart — it is spiritual
and not literal. Such a person receives praise not from others but from God.353
As a result, it becomes well accepted in the text, especially after the council of
Jerusalem in 50 AD, that circumcision was not a precept of law that should be
continued by gentile Christians for obvious reasons. There was no moral
character to it or covenantal requirements to it. This fact is perceived in the
language by which Paul addresses the Galatians. His harsh words towards the
Galatians show how contradictory it would be to require circumcision from those
who have accepted the sacrifice of Jesus but have not been born into a Jewish
family.
Protestants had a long hermeneutical problem to solve the content of the epistle
of James. For instance, Martin Luther famously said that could not understand
how the epistle of James was in the New Testament. In his own words: “Therefore
St James’ epistle is really an epistle of straw, compared to these others, for it has
nothing of the nature of the Gospel about it.”354 The Purpose of the covenant was
never to make Israel a special people, but rather to deal with sin and bring about
salvation from Sin.355 Today, most Christian traditions are neutral on the subject,
not requiring it nor forbidding its practice.356 and many see baptism as a proper
sign for a child to enter the dispensation of grace and simultaneously “fulfill” this
practice.
353 Romans 2:25-29
354 Devin Rose, The Protestant’s Dilemma: How the Reformation’s Shocking Consequences
Point to the Truth of Catholicism (Catholic Answers, 2014), 67-68.
355 N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of
Christianity? (Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997), 118.
356 John Paul Slosar - Daniel O’Brien, “The Ethics of Neonatal Male Circumcision: A Catholic
Perspective”, The American Journal of Bioethics 3/2 (01 Mayıs 2003), 62-64.
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4.4.4 Jesus and the Law
Jesus was a Jew, and for 18 centuries, this truth was not taken seriously by any
scholar.357 However, scholars like Paul Zahl questioned the Judaic context in the
1st century in his book “The First Christian,” he affirmed that Jesus was more
Christian than Jew.358 Geza Vermes, in his book “The Religion of Jesus,” affirms:
“The Jewish law was not restricted to rituals but its corpses the holistic life of the
Jew. Did Jesus reject these laws? The synoptic gospels, our main source of
information about his life, do not support that theory.”359 Kummel has linked
Jesus' crucifixion to the possibility that he alienated some Jewish officials by
publicly defying the law.360 It is evident that Jesus breaks up with the tradition,
and he did not fully agree or perform these rabbinic ordinances.361 However,
Jesus did not oppose the law, as E.P Sanders states: “Any view that holds that
Jesus opposed the law faces difficulties in light of the history of the early
church.”362
Jesus calls attention to the goal of the law that was added as behavioral limits,
but that was not all. The goal of the law was Love; the real meaning of the law is
the “to-do’s” and not the “don'ts”. The tradition would fog out the real meaning of
the law. For Jews, the law was important, as the borders of a country set the limit
of a settled culture, language, and economy, but the limits were not all of what
the country could offer. If one stayed only at the border, one would probably miss
the most important part of it. Jesus' main teachings came straight against the
practices of the Pharisees. According to Flavius Josephus, during the Second
Temple period, the Pharisees were a Jewish social movement and a school of
thought in the Levant. They were Hasidean spiritual descendants who developed
as a unique community immediately after the Maccabean uprising, around 165-
357 Walter Homolka, Jewish Jesus Research and Its Challenge to Christology Today (Brill
Academic Publishers, 2016), 1-4.
358 Paul F. M. Zahl, The First Christian: Universal Truth in the Teachings of Jesus (Grand
Rapids, Mich: Wm. B. Eerdmans-Lightning Source, 2003).
359 Geza Vermes, The Religion of Jesus the Jew (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 19.
360 Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 246.
361 Luke 11:37–54; Matthew 23:1–39; Mark 12:35–40 and Luke 20:45–47
362 Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 250.
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160 BCE. The Pharisees thought that the Law that God revealed to Moses was
divided into two parts: the Written Law and the Oral Law—that is, the prophetic
teachings and the oral traditions of the Jewish people. They interpreted the Law
in accordance with its spirit, and when a law was outgrown or overtaken by
changing circumstances, they gave it a new and more acceptable meaning,
seeking scriptural support for their acts through a complex system of
hermeneutics.363
Jesus often disputes with them in the gospels throughout his ministry of 3 and
half years. His position was always centered on the spiritual meaning of the text,
while the Pharisees were that the law is the border for the kingdom of God. Jesus
was not abolishing the limits of the kingdom of Israel, but rather, he was
broadening the borders, making it suitable for those who did not originally have
access to it as they were not of the kin or ethnic domain. The church, or “Ekklesia”
in Greek, was the “community called out” of the nations, of the world, of their old
lives. By the end of the first century, the church was all around the ancient world,
and, according to Luke, reaching the frontiers of the living world.364 It is impossible
to tell the ethnical percentage of the early church, but by getting a basis from the
New Testament, especially from the book of Acts, the church consisted of Jews
and Gentiles alike.
One of the texts historically used to advocate that Jesus abrogated the law is
Matthew 5:17-18. “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the
Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you,
until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a
pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.”
Classical Christian theologians already have discussed this verse. Augustine in
his reply to Faustus, a Manichaeist, Augustine identified six ways in which Jesus
fulfilled the law: 1) Jesus personally obeyed the law; 2) he fulfilled the messianic
prophecies; 3) he empowered his followers to obey it; 4) he brought forth its
genuine meaning; 5) he disclosed the true purpose behind the rituals and
363 Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 2021, art. 17.42.
364 Colossians 1:5,6 and 23
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ceremonies; 6) and he added new instructions that advanced the Law's
intentions.365 One possible interpretation of Jesus' sayings in Matthew 5:17, “I did
not come to abolish the Law (Torah) but to fulfill it”, was that he was the living
interpretation of the Torah. The very meaning of the word Law in this context
could be understood as being a reference to the Torah. By fulfilling the Torah,
Jesus proves his messiahship and role in Jewish eschatology. Early Christians
understood the messiahship of Jesus inside their Jewish umbrella, “in the Law
‘Torah’ and in the Prophets ‘Nevi’im’”, years before Paul or any of the disciples
had written the first book of the NT. The reference to "the prophets" implies that
the significance of Jesus for Mosaic law can only be grasped in the context of a
greater picture, namely, the fulfillment of the entire Torah, defined broadly,
including the prophets. Christianity, as the term refers, should be understood as
the movement of Jesus, the “Christ” equivalent Greek expression to the Hebrew
word ‘Messiah’. Christ in many NT passages, refers to himself as being foretold
in the “Law and the Prophets”366. For the first-century church, we see a clear
understanding of the Messiah Jesus as being the Torah incarnate, or the New
Law as Uwe describes.367 The statement of John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth,
and the light” adds to that perspective. In the mind of a first-century Jew, this
claim was totally referencing the Torah, like in Proverbs 6, where the Way is the
Torah.
However, the contemporaneous position of mainstream Christians is still that the
law was fulfilled, which also means that the law was “abolished.” For instance,
Roy B. Zuck argues that the term “to fulfill the law” means that Jesus did not
destroy the law, but it made it past tense, like the prophecy in Micah 5:2, which
was fulfilled by Jesus in Matthew 2:6.368. In other words, “making the law past
tense” is the same as abolishing it. Schreiner agrees with this statement, as well
as many other scholars, in saying that even Paul saw Jesus as the true fulfillment
365 Saint Augustine of Hippo - Aeterna Press, Reply to Faustus the Manichaean (Aeterna Press,
2015).
366 Luke 4:16-21; 16:16; 24:27; 24:44; John 1:45.
367 Uwe Kühneweg. Das neue Gesetz : Christus als Gesetzgeber und Gesetz : Studien zu den
Anfängen christlicher Naturrechtslehre im 2. Jahrhundert. Marburg : (Elwert, 1993), 64
368 Zuck et al., A Biblical Theology of the New Testament, 50.
138
of the Torah.369 We can see this claim in John chapter 1, the Logos of God, or in
the Quran, the Word of God “Kalimatullah”370, which for the first century Jew is
often understood as ‘Torah’ itself. However, starting from Katip Çelebi a Muslim
scholar, in commenting about the law in Christianity around the year 1630 AD,
said that Christians changed the law despite Jesus having said that he did not
come to change it.371
Scholars have indeed argued that Christians are 'not under the law but under
grace.' This implies that the believer has been "liberated from condemnation and
curse," as well as "from the vein pursuit of righteousness through works of the
law."372 Deriving from this perspective, Michael Eaton lists 4 different ways in
which Jesus fulfilled the Law/Torah: 1. “Jesus fulfilled the principles and precepts
of the law.” 2. “Jesus fulfilled the programs and prophecies of the Scriptures.” 3.
“Jesus fulfilled the patterns and pictures of the scriptures.” 4. “Jesus fulfills the
psalms and proverbs”.373 Christian tradition argues that Jesus actually fulfilling
the law, means that there is no obligation now for Christians to keep the law. The
use of the term fulfilled is taken as a synonym for abolishing. Also, at the end of
the book of Matthew, Jesus says on the Cross, “it is fulfilled.” 374 Jesus’ statement
in saying that the Law would not be abolished until everything is ‘fulfilled’ means
that Jesus accomplished everything on the Cross, and therefore as Zuck
proposes, he was making it past tense. Evangelical scholars have used the
argument that Jesus came to fulfill the law, insinuating that, therefore, the law
does not need to be fulfilled again by anyone who is in Jesus, which is illogical
for the very context of the other passages like Matthew 3:15 and Matthew 27:45-
46. Zack C. Philips, in his doctoral work at Duke University, dissertated over 300
369 Thomas R. Schreiner, “Paul’s Place in the Story: N. T. Wright’s Vision of Paul,” Journal for
the Study of Paul and His Letters 4/1 (2014), 1–26.
370 Surah 3:45 and Surah 4:171
371 Katip Çelebi, Mizanü’l - Hakk Fi İhtiyari’l-Ehakk, trans. Orhan Şaik Gökyay - Süleyman
Uludağ (Kabalcı Yayınları-kampanya, 2008), 175.
372 Heikki Raisanen, Paul and the Law (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock Pub, 2010), 83.
373 Michael Eaton, The Way That Leads to Life (Fearn: Christian Focus, 2001), 46.
374 Matthew 27:45-46
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pages only about the term “fulfillment,” which is found in the gospel of Mathew.375
Hans Dieter Betz, in his commentary on Galatians published in 1979, comes to
the conclusion that ‘Doing’ and ‘Fulfilling’ of the law are two separate things.376
Rosner dedicated a full chapter of his book to explaining these dynamics between
fulfilling the law and obeying it.377
In the counterargument, Barton, commenting on this particular verse, says: “In
denying the suspicion that Jesus abolishes the Torah, these verses look
forwards, not backward, for no such suspicion could arise from what has gone
before. They introduce 5:21–48 and declare that the so-called ‘antitheses’ are not
antitheses: Matthew’s Jesus does not overturn Moses or set believers free from
the law.378 In this context, we can suggest that when Jesus is talking about
“fulfilling” the law, we can never understand that the word means “to do away with
the law”, but rather to give a “full meaning” of the law. In fulfilling the law, Jesus
does not alter, replace, or nullify the former commands; Rather, he establishes
their true intent and purpose in His teaching and accomplishes them in His
obedient life. Jerome, commenting on this verse, says: “Fulfill” means to bring
the Law to perfection, and to give it that finality the Pharisees believed it
possessed. The meaning of this word cannot be taken only by doing a word study,
but as well as considering its context. Donald A. Hagner, in the famous Word
Biblical commentary concerning this text, says:
“The precise meaning of “πληρῶσαι”, “to fulfill,” is a difficult question that has produced
much debate. The verb means literally “to fill to the full” (from Aramaic מ לא , mĕlā˒, “fulfill,”
rather than קוּ ם , qûm, “establish,” which is never translated by “πληροῦν” in the LXX).
From this basic meaning comes such derivative meanings as “accomplish,” “complete,”
“bring to its end,” “finish.” “Fulfill” here hardly means “to do,” although Jesus in his conduct
is faithful to the true meaning of the Torah. “Complete” is congruent with the stress on
375 Zack C. Phillips, Filling Up the Word: The Fulfillment Citations in Matthew’s Gospel (Duke
University, 2017).
376 Betz et al., Religion Past and Present, Volume 1, ed. Hans Dieter Betz et al. (Leiden;
Boston: BRILL, 2006), 275.
377 Rosner, “Paul and the Law,” 141.
378 Alternative interpretations of this passage are often motivated by a desire to bring the gospel
of Matthew closer to the writings of Paul; but the NT appears to have more than one judgment
on the status of the Torah, and we should read Matthew on its own terms. See: Barton -
Muddiman, The Oxford Bible Commentary, 853.
140
fulfillment in and through Jesus but wrongly connotes that Jesus has come simply to add
something to the law. The meaning in this instance cannot be determined by word study
alone but must be established from the context and in particular, must be consonant with
the statement of verse 18.” 379
The lens of the opposition of Jesus towards the law is something that intrigues
biblical scholars. It is not easy to put together a clear picture of Jesus coming to
fulfill a law that he rejects completely.
For N. T Wright, in his famous contribution made in his Ph.D. dissertation “The
Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology” " he sees Jesus
as the Climax of the Law instead of being the “End” meaning the finishing of the
Law380 The argument of fulfilling having similar meaning as “to abrogate”
becomes obsolete if we turn the page backward into Matthew 3:15. The word
πληρῶσαι is again in use, however when Jesus says that we shall “fulfill the
baptism”, most of the evangelicals agree that this command is not to be finished
or done away with but to be an example to be followed. Kümmel says that Jesus
openly opposes the law, and therefore he offended the Jewish leaders, which
later caused his death.381 For Rordorf, the act of Jesus picking up wheat to eat
on the Sabbath, because his disciples were not dying of hunger, or in any danger
of life, means that Jesus was breaching the Sabbath.382 For Eduard Schweizer,
Jesus, in his entire conduct, again and again, ostentatiously transgressed the Old
Testament commandment to observe the Sabbath and had little concern for the
Old Testament laws relating to ritual purity.383 For E.P Sanders, the fact that
Jesus was led to death because of this episode can even jeopardize the
379 Donald A. Hagner, Word Biblical Commentary Vol. 33a, Matthew 1-13 (Nashville: Thomas
Nelson Inc, 1993), 105.
380 N. T. Wright (ed.), The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993).
381 Werner Georg Kümmel, “Äussere Und Innere Reinheit Des Menschen Bei Jesus,” Das Wort
Und Die Wörter W. Kohlhammer (1973), 35–46.
382 Willy Rordorf, Sunday: The History of the Day of Rest and Worship in the Earliest Centuries
of the Christian Church (Westminster Press, 1968), 62.
383 Eduard Schweizer, Jesus (London: SCM Press, 1978), 32.
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established fact that Jesus was Rabbi; in his words, he was probably rather a
charismatic healer figure in the first century.384
E. P. Sanders, as well as NT scholars, seem not to see a clear distinction between
Jewish Law and Jewish tradition.385 According to scholars, Jesus, the unitary
aspect of the law dismisses the discussion. However, it is clear that Jesus was
not opposing the law but the Jewish traditions concerning the law.386 He revered
the law of Moses and required that his followers did so too, perpetually, but he
was not willing to accept the ways many of the Jewish teachers and traditions of
the day taught adherence to the law.387
He points out, however, that Jesus was lifting up the purpose of God, or the
principle behind the command, assuming that he did oppose the law somehow,
bringing an ultimatum instead of looking to the form in which it should be applied
to that age and people. He calls the argument a “line of defense.” 388 Keener, in
his commentary on the NT, says that Jesus doesn’t oppose the law but rather an
“illegitimate interpretation” of it, which stresses the law in its regulations more
than in its character.389 According to Walvoord and Zuck, Jesus was not
presenting a rival system to the Law of Moses and the words of the Prophets, but
actually, he presents that Jesus, in contrast with the Pharisees’ traditions, is
giving the real meaning of the law.390 Fulfilling the law meant actually, in a
Messianic framework according to the messianic prophecies of the prophet
Isaiah, to make the law great. Jesus was a Jew who was loyal to the law.
According to Hippolytus (236 AD), Jesus taught the pure "righteousness of the
law" ‘dikaiosyne ek nomou’ thus seen by the Early Christians as a reformer, who
384 E. P. Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah: Five Studies (London : Philadelphia:
Trinity Press International, 1990), 3.
385 Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 247.
386 D. A. Carson et al., The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 8, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein
(London: Zondervan, 1984), 147–148.
387 Pamela Barmash (ed.), The Oxford handbook of biblical law (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2019), 668.
388 Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 248.
389 Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (Downers Grove,
Illinois: IVP Academic, 2014), 57.
390 John F. Walvoord - Roy B. Zuck, The Bible Knowledge Commentary Gospels (David C
Cook, 2018), 30.
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made the Law great.391 Vermes says that if the gospel writers intended to change
the gentilic community into accepting the abolition of the Sabbath legislation
through simple healing in it, they failed completely.392
In fact, as E.P Sanders says, “The history of the early church poses difficulties
for any view which holds that Jesus opposed the law. The question then becomes
how firm the passages depict him in opposition to it.” 393 One could go even further
to the bigger picture and argue that if Jesus broke the law, how could he have
saved those under the law in the first place? Or if the law could be abolished, why
couldn’t he abolish it before dying, so that he would not need to pay a price of
ransom, as the law had been done away with? Questions like these arise due to
a fundamental logic contradiction. The breaking of the law is a sin. And sin is the
transgression of the law.394 Kim Papaiouannou, in his article “John 5:18: Jesus
and Sabbath Law: A Fresh Look at a Challenging Text,” exegesis the passages
in that are often used to say that Jesus broke the law. His conclusions are that in
Jesus doing so, he was actually setting the say of the Sabbath free.395 By the
same logic, one can say that Salvation is salvation from Sin. If the law is done
away with, therefore, there is nothing like Sin. If there is no Sin, what is the point
of this whole discussion in the first place? Summarizing the opinions related to
this verse, Hagner simplified scholars’ opinions in 3 categories: (1) To do, or to
obey the commandments of the Old Testament; (2) a reference to Jesus’ life
and/or the accomplishment of the salvific acts of Jesus’ death and resurrection
“fulfillment of prophecy”; (3) teaching the law in such a way as to (a) “establish”
or “uphold” the law and (b) add to and thus “complete” the law.396
Another popular argument that is constantly used to advocate the abolishment of
the Law is the one that says that ‘Jesus summarizes the law.’ In other words, as
391 Hans-Joachim Schoeps, Jewish Christianity Factional Disputes In The Early Church
(Fortress Press, 1968), 76.
392 Vermes, The Religion of Jesus the Jew, 21.
393 Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 250.
394 1 John 3:4 NIV
395 Kim Papaioannou, “John 5:18: Jesus and Sabbath Law A Fresh Look at a Challenging
Text”, (ts.), 244-261.
396 Hagner, Word Biblical Commentary Vol. 33a, Matthew 1-13, 105.
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he summarizes it, in the mainstream protestant understanding, Jesus would be
reinterpreting the law, or abolishing the old commandments to give a new
commandment in a summarized version. The 10 commandments become two
commandments: “Love God and love others'' However, this idea can be easily
forgotten in the Old Testament as we see verses like Leviticus 19:17-18 “Love
your neighbor as yourself”, which were nothing new to the Jews but a pinnacle
by which the law actually operates.
One more view that is usually derived from Martin Luther’s glasses and nurtured
by the German Liberalism of the 19th century is the idea that the law was a burden.
Martin Luther came to say that the book of James, in which the law has a central
place, was a “book of straw” and that Christians were not obligated to keep it.397
Bultmann argues that the Jewish Zeal in observing the law is no less than the
gentile wickedness/passions in life “according to the flesh.” 398
This view led commentators to conclude that the law was a burden to the Jews,
who had no other way than to keep it to its generations. The law perhaps should
be as Dunn emphasizes, that human failure is not the law’s fault.399
A good illustration, perhaps, of how the law should apply both in the Old and in
the New Testament is that the law is like a mirror, the mirror shows you your
faults, but it does not clean you from them. Robert A. Sungenis, in his book “Not
by Faith Alone: The Biblical Evidence for the Catholic Doctrine of Justification”,
gives the Catholic view of Salvation in which he dialogues with Protestants in
their accusation of the Catholic church using this principle for beneficiation only
the institution, and forgetting about the true principle of good works.400
Protestant scholars like Norman Geisler and Ralph Mackenzie affirmed that
“while affirming the necessity of grace, Catholicism denies the exclusivity of grace
397 This statement is found in the introduction of the book of James in his German translation of
the Bible in 1537.
398 Rudolf Bultmann - Robert Morgan, Theology of the New Testament, trans. Kendrick Grobel
(Waco, Tex: Baylor University Press, 2007), 242.
399 James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,
2006), 157.
400 Sungenis, Not by Faith Alone, XXV.
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as a condition for receiving the gift of eternal life. This, in the eyes of historic
Protestantism, is a false gospel”.401 Therefore, the meaning of ‘works of the law’ is
not the same as of ‘good works’ in catholic tradition.402 Sanders seeks to show that
both the 'quantitative' view (i.e. The view that works are wrong because it is
impossible to fulfill the law in its entirety) and the 'qualitative' view (i.e., the view
that to attempt to fulfill the law leads to the sin of boasting in one's own
achievements) are false. Paul rejects the law not because it has any inherent
defects but simply because it is something other than Christ.403 The ultimate sin
therefore finds its extreme expression in human boasting, i.e., Jews on the Law404
and Greeks on wisdom.405
It is usually admitted by Western scholars, specifically of mainstream Christian
traditions, that the apostle Paul has abolished the law and its idiosyncrasies. The
term used since the reformation for showing how one can be made right before
God is called Righteousnesses by Faith. According to this widespread idea, the
covenant with God now did not require any keeping of law by the covenant
members. However, Paul, as a man of his time, especially for being a Jew, did
not intend or engage in the activity of abolishing or changing any given Jewish
law or covenant. He actually advocated a greater understanding of the law that
took over in the early church. Rosner affirms that Paul recognizes the law being
the ‘embodiment of knowledge and truth.’ 406
Before Sanders's work, scholars had as a platform of discussion the idea that
Paul’s theology contradicted common Jewish beliefs and behaviors, and this
opinion, as the natural course of history, eventually ended up creating an anti-
Jewish religion, which contrasted a false dichotomy of a “life under the law”
versus “a life under grace”.407 Jesus' emphasis on the need for inner obedience,
401 Norman L. Geisler - Ralph E. MacKenzie, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements
and Differences (Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker Academic, 1995), 502.
402 McKnight - Oropeza, Perspectives on Paul, 80.
403 Watson, Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles, 1989, 17.
404 Epistle of Romans 2:17,23
405 1 Corinthians 1:19-31
406 Rosner, “Paul and the Law,” 205.
407 McKnight - Oropeza, Perspectives on Paul, 267.
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the elevation of the love command suggests that he may have operated with a
similar distinction. The commandment "Love your neighbor as yourself", is a good
example of moral law outside of the Decalogue.408 We can often see in Jesus'
discourse this kind of distinction, like in Mark 7:1-23.409
4.4.5 Paul and the Law
Historically, due to the centrality of Paul to the Christian interpretation of the law
in the discussion, scholars have widely spoken and examined Paul’s view of the
Law. Heikki Räisänen's "Paul and the Law" (1987) is a detailed examination of
the Apostle Paul's remarks on the Torah. The book critically examines a large
corpus of scholarly literature on the topic. Räisänen contends that the tensions
and self-contradictions in Paul's Torah declarations cannot be explained away by
dialectical interpretive methods or development theories. He contends that these
conflicts must be considered genuine contradictions and indicators of Paul's
unresolved theological issues. The book demonstrates that Paul's politicized,
negative criticism of the law is unique to him, unprecedented in the New
Testament, and unrivaled in Jewish thought. Räisänen shows his readers that
Paul had an erratic, if not inconsistent, interpretation of the law, which became
the leading work showing essentially a comprehensive and critical assessment
of Paul's complex and frequently contradictory relationship with the Mosaic Law.
In the meantime, the New Perspective brought a new light towards Pauline's
writing as a whole, and this light shined in the way the direction of Paul's
understanding of Law. The centrality of Pauline's writings to Christianity
concerning the law is undoubtful. Scholars have often agreed upon Paul’s
Jewishness and binding to the Torah up until the end of his life and ministry.
However, the interpretation of Law in Paul is perhaps one of the most discussed
subjects in New Testament scholarship and Pauline Studies. Due to the lack of
408 Leviticus 19:18
409 Walter C. Keiser, 33, “God’s Promise Plan and His Gracious Law” 3/Evangelical Theological
Society Journal (1990), 289–302.
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systematization in Pauline's writings concerning the law, a range of
interpretations has been made throughout the centuries.410 For many of them,
Paul undoubtedly contradicts himself numerous times concerning the word Law.
Since the New Perspective places Paul in a Jewish context, it became
unthinkable to see him denying the Torah until his death. One of the key questions
that Scholars have tried to understand is what Paul meant by the word “Nomos”
or “law” in his writings. According to traditional scholarship, Paul always used the
word “law,” referring to some parts and aspects of the Jewish Torah, but to other
scholars, the opposite is true. i.e., to the whole Torah.
According to Brice and others, Paul uses the word “Nomos” similarly to its use in
the LXX, which is the same as the Torah.411 Concerning the issue of Paul and the
Law, Brian Rosner says that interpreting Paul’s view of the law is one of the
“knottiest puzzles” in the study of the New Testament. The same Paul that imparts
dazzling statements like ‘the law is holy, just and good’ or even ‘we uphold the
law’ and also rhetorically asks ‘Does the law not speak entirely for our sake?’, is
the same Paul that holds that believers in Christ ‘are not under the law’ or that
‘the law brings death and works wrath’ and says that ‘Christ is the End of the
Law’.412 N.T. Wright's Ph.D. dissertation, "The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and
the Law in Pauline Theology," is a detailed exegesis of Paul's understanding of
the law in light of Christ's death and resurrection. According to Wright, Paul
considered Jesus' death and resurrection as the pinnacle of Israel's covenant
history. Paul came to a different understanding of the function of Jewish Law from
this standpoint. This shift in perspective serves as the foundation for Paul's
teachings on the law and its place in the lives of believers. The book examines in
depth what must be considered part of Paul's core structure, as well as how it
relates to other themes. It provides a fresh look at Paul's teachings and their
consequences for Jewish and Gentile believers. For Wright, Jesus is the End of
the Law, meaning that he is the Climax, the finality of the Law, and not in the
410 E. P. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1983),
143.
411 Martin, Christ and the Law in Paul, 22.
412 Rosner, “Paul and the Law,” 239.
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sense of end. The theory that says that Jesus finished and put the law to an end
is misguiding and wrong according to him.413
Greg L. Bahnsen says that there is ambivalence and apparent conflict in the New
Testament attitude towards the Old Testament law, as Paul declares in 1 Timothy
1:8, "But we know that the Law is good, if one uses it lawfully"414 Kim
Papaioannou states in his book commenting on earlier biblical writers, Paul
apparently contradicts himself in a number of ways and perhaps that’s why even
Peter said that his early readers criticized, saying that it was too difficult to
understand him.415 Bibliowiocz lists the “anti-Israel, anti-Law,” and also the “pro-
Israel and pro-Law” statements of Paul.416 This difficulty remained further as
already we see in the 3rd century a man by the name of Porphyry, one of Paul’s
critics, claiming that “Paul displays the ignorant person’s habit of constantly
contradicting himself and he is feverish in mind”417. Schweitzer, in 1930, in a fairly
audacious comment, said that Paul believed that the law was actually given by
daemons, and for this reason, those who obeyed it were giving allegiance to the
devil.418
Despite all these negative aspects highlighted by the classical perspective,
scholars started to pay attention to the statement Paul uses to praise the law.
Many scholars agree that only with the New Perspective on Paul that the subject
of the Law is completed, as it seemed to be missing pieces for more than 500
years. E. P. Sanders, seeing that the subject of Law was inevitably taking a
central place in the discussion after the book “Paul and Palestinian Judaism”,
(1977), considered writing a new volume that would bring the topic of Law in
depth. His book “Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People” published in 1983,
contained some drawbacks as the topic drew attention. In his attempt to explain
413 N. T. Wright (ed.), The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 139.
414 Jr et al., Five Views on Law and Gospel, 93.
415 Papaioannou - Giantzaklidis, Israel, Covenant, Law, VIII.
416 Abel Mordechai Bibliowicz, Jews and Gentiles in the Early Jesus Movement: An Unintended
Journey (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 22.
417 Heikki Raisanen, Paul and the Law (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock Pub, 2010), 2.
418 Albert Schweitzer, Die Mystik Des Apostels Paulus. (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1930), 71.
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the complexity of the Pauline view of Law, Sanders concluded that it is
considerably relevant to understand Law in Paul’s view as the central part of his
theology before the encounter with Christ and that this center became Christ
himself, not replacing the law, but as giving the full meaning to it.419
Paul sees the law as prefiguring or appointing Jesus. Paul uses, in some places,
the term “paidagogos”, more precisely translated as “tutor,” which was a good
imagery developed for Paul to explain the role of the Law in Galatians. According
to Dunn, the Paidagogos was a servant slave who would have the duty of bringing
the child back and forth from school, and his/her responsibility concerned the
safety, education, correction, and good manners of the children.420 In other
words, the role assigned to the Law is to be Israel's protector in the immaturity of
her youth in the face of the attractions and seductions, particularly the idolatry,
impurity, and depraved moral values of the pagan world.421 In this understanding,
the Catholic Theology of eternal law is correct and accurate. Because the Torah
pointed to a bigger and higher Law, which is in the heart, we can understand that
the Torah requirements are no longer useful. The problem remains in what we
should do with the Torah now. This question was answered by Paul himself in
Romans 3:31: “Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather, we
uphold the law.”
Paul belonged to the mainstream of first-century Pharisaic Judaism, He claims to
have been trained in Jerusalem under Ga-maliel.422 This aspect changes Paul's
understanding again as Paul stops being seen as a convert to Christianity but
rather as a Jew who accepted the call of the Messiah on the Emmaus road. For
Paul, in Philippians 3:1-5, he claims that he was blameless concerning the Law.
Circumcised, zealous, and faithful. At the same time, Paul counts all this
zealousness as waste (verse 8). In this passage, the distinction between the
literal application of the law versus the spiritual, “deeper meaning” of the law is
419 Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 151.
420 Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle, 141–142.
421 Marguerat, Paulo, uma teologia em construção, 249.
422 Acts 8:1-3; 22:2-5; 23:6; 26:5, 9-12; Gal. 1:13-14; Phil. 3:56.
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clearly seen. Raisanen says that Paul offers an empirical argument that those
under the law do not actually keep it totally.423
As W. D. Davies says, for Paul the Christian, Christ is the new Torah. Classically,
due to the belief in “Jesus as the New Torah,” Christianity created a
methodological lens of “abolishment of the Old Torah.” This idea is often sought
to be advocated biblically. However, scholars of the Old Perspective struggle to
converse between the issue of Sola Scripture silence concerning any
abolishment of the 10 commandments. For instance, Barnabas, Paul’s
companion, did not advocate nor attempt to abolish the law either. In fact, around
the year 46 AD, Paul and Barnabas met in Antioch of Pisidia, on a Sabbath day,
went to the synagogue, and there lectured the Word of God to the Jews. "When
the Jews went out of the synagogue, the Gentiles begged that these words might
be preached to them the next Sabbath," which really happened, because "on the
next Sabbath almost the whole city came together to hear the word of God." 424
About four years later, when Paul and Silas came to the city of Philippi, we were
told that "on the Sabbath day, we went out of the city to the riverside, where
prayer was customarily made;”425
Finally, Paul ingeniously clarifies the attitude that should be in a believer's heart.
This idea is concretized when he uses the example of Abraham, who was saved
by faith and, at the same time, kept the law according to Genesis 26:5. Abraham
did not keep the law to enter into a covenant with God, but rather God chose
Abraham, not according to his merits, but by Grace. This is formulated by Paul in
the phrase “righteousness by Faith.” 426 At the same time, Abraham is taken as
obeying the laws and statutes of God.427 The question here is: how could the
father of the Jewish nation have kept the law centuries before the law was given
in Mount Sinai? If there was a law, which law was it? If it was Moses who wrote
423 Heikki Raisanen, Paul and the Law, 96.
424 Acts 13:42 and 44
425 Ernesto Ferreira, The Christian Truth (Publicadora Servir / Maxishield International, 2012),
62.
426 Genesis 15:6, Romans 4:3, 22; Galatians 3:6 and James 2:23.
427 Genesis 26:5
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the Torah, as traditionally believed, Moses could not be speaking about other
laws than the Deuteronominian laws. God promised a big offspring to Abraham
before any kind of ordinances or requirements of the law. In Paul’s mind,
Abraham, the utmost respected example to be followed in the Jewish mind, was
chosen among other gentiles, not by abiding’s of law but by the law of the heart,
i.e., Faith. Due to this fact, Paul defends the idea that the Gentiles, who were also
like Abraham, could enter into a covenant with God by the promises made in the
Old Testament, like in Isaiah 56 and others. Gentiles, or anyone ethnically non-
Jew, were also invited to enter the covenant, live in the land, and abide by God’s
laws. We see this fact since the beginning of Israel’s history as people like Caleb,
Ruth, and others. These people were foreigners, often from enemy tribes, but
were granted places within the borderlines of the nation.
The problem of the early church then becomes not if someone should keep the
law or not to be a Christian, but whether the Law was only meant to be to Jews.
Judaism was ethnicity above all but also a set of customs and values that were
often not found in the Torah but rather in the Rabbinic Tradition. Paul’s concern
with Gentiles keeping the law was not about people trying to keep the 10
commandments, but actually, people trying to behave like Jews to get the favor
of Jews, especially by sacrificing in the temple. If this was the case, Jesus'
sacrifice did not mean anything.
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Chapter 5. - NPP and the Contemporary Notions of
Biblical Law.
5.1 Catholic / Orthodox Traditional Perspectives on Law
Historically, as we shall see in this following chapter, ‘Christian Orthodoxy’428
taught that the law of the Old Testament, especially the Decalogue, was not
abolished by Jesus or the apostles, rather that the church in its absolute authority
changed the law.429 For instance, the Sabbath in the catholic tradition has been
placed as the “eightieth day of the week,” i.e., the first day of the week.430
The Catholic church was prone to accept the NPP because it argued that Judaism
is not a legalistic religion. The Catholic Church has asserted that the NPP
supports rather than negates the conventional interpretation of the law. It
asserted that the law is a means of grace and that it should now be implemented
with compassion and understanding rather than out of fear and retribution.431
According to them, E. P. Sanders was right in his remarks, as James D. G. Dunn
did when speaking about the works of the law, However, they see that the Church
is the “Ship” in which the Covenantal Nomism is offered to gentiles. Catholics
usually contend that Christians should make an effort to adhere to the Church's
teachings and that it should serve as the principal interpreter of the Law. They
also contend that rather than being used to oppress and punish, the law ought to
be utilized to advance justice and peace. This is due to the Church's authority
given by Jesus to create a space in the world to forgive sinners. The sinner must
abide by the church's laws and sacraments to be saved.
Catholic Scholars throughout the ages have often claimed the authority of the
church to justify its primacy and deeds, especially the authority for any official
428 I shall use the term ‘Christian Orthodoxy’ to describe the overall perspective of Christianity
before Constantine and It should not be mistaken by only referencing the current traditional
Orthodox Church.
429 John Laux, A Course in Religion for Catholic High Schools and Academies (Benziger
Brothers, 1936), 1/51.
430 James R Hughes, “The Sabbath: A Universal and Enduring Ordinance of God,” (2020), 31.
431 McKnight - Oropeza, Perspectives on Paul, 181.
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change of biblical laws. In other words, the change is justifiable with the church's
authority, and vice-versa. Despite the claim being congruent with the action, the
Church has no scriptural basis to change any biblical law from the protestant
perspective. Protestants, for instance, take very seriously the second
commandment of Exodus 20, verses 4 and 6– “you shall not make graven
images…” – and apply to their theology to this day. According to this thought, the
catholic position in relation to the law is consistent; as of custom, they still have
the 10 commandments in an interpreted way.
The Ten Commandments summarize God's moral law as presented in the Bible.
In the Catholic Church, the Ten Commandments are part of the Catechism, which
is a compendium of the teachings of the Church. The Catechism also provides a
detailed explanation of the Ten Commandments, discussing their meaning and
significance for Christian life. Nonetheless, they are modified from their original
state by the church throughout the years. Here are the Ten Commandments as
they are presented in the Catechism:
1. "I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods before me."
2. "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain."
3. "Keep Sunday and festivals."
4. "Honor your father and your mother."
5. "You shall not kill."
6. "You shall not commit adultery."
7. "You shall not steal."
8. "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor."
9. "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife."
10. "You shall not covet your neighbor's goods."
In the book of Exodus, the Ten Commandments are given by God to the Israelites
after he delivers them from slavery in Egypt. These commandments serve as a
summary of God's moral law and provide guidance for how his people are to live.
They are an important part of the Old Testament and are still relevant and
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applicable to Christians today. Here are the Ten Commandments as they are
presented in Exodus 20:
1. "You shall have no other gods before me."
2. "You shall not make for yourself an idol or worship any other god."
3. "You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God."
4. "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy."
5. "Honor your father and mother."
6. "You shall not murder."
7. "You shall not commit adultery."
8. "You shall not steal."
9. "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor."
10. "You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor."
Comparing with the catechism commandments, we see that: 1. The second
commandment of the biblical commandments referent to images is obliterated in
the catechism version; 2. The fourth commandment related to the Sabbath rest
is changed into Sunday and festivals; 3. The 10th commandment of the bible is
split in the catechism version between the 9th and 10th. The 10th commandment
of the Bible says, “Do not covet anything,” while the catechism commandment
splits the 10th command into 2 parts: “Do not covet your neighbor’s wife” and “Do
not covet your neighbor’s goods.”
Catholic Theologians vehemently defended the authority of the church to change
or redefine orthodox doctrines of the Church. For instance, concerning the
change of the Sabbath as a day of rest, as it is required in the 4th commandment
of the Decalogue, Fr. John Laux, perhaps one of the most renowned Catholic
scholar and apologists of the 20th century, once affirmed:
"Some theologians have held that God likewise directly determined the Sunday as the
day of worship in the New Law, that He Himself has explicitly substituted the Sunday for
the Sabbath. But this theory is now entirely abandoned. It is now commonly held that God
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simply gave His Church the power to set aside whatever day or days she would deem
suitable as Holy Days. The Church chose Sunday, the first day of the week, and in the
course of time added other days as holy days." 432
Reverend Stephan Keenan, in his book “A Doctrinal Catechism,” answers to
some of the questions that non-Catholics ask, including the basis that the Catholic
Church uses as authority to do such a change:
"Question: Have you any other way of proving that the Church has the power to institute
festivals of precept? "Answer: Had she, not such power, she could not have done that in
which all modern religionists agree with her-she could not have substituted the
observance of Sunday, the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday, the
seventh day, a change for which there is no Scriptural authority."433
Peter R. Kraemer, catholic priest, and scholar, admitted in 1975:
"Regarding the change from the observance of the Jewish Sabbath to the Christian
Sunday, I wish to draw your attention to the facts: "1) That Protestants, who accept the
Bible as the only rule of faith and religion, should, by all means, go back to the observance
of the Sabbath. The fact that they do not, but on the contrary, observe the Sunday,
stultifies them in the eyes of every thinking man. "2) We Catholics do not accept the Bible
as the only rule of faith. Besides the Bible, we have the living Church, the authority of the
Church, as a rule, to guide us. We say, that this Church, instituted by Christ to teach and
guide man through life, has the right to change the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament,
and hence, we accept her change of the Sabbath to Sunday. We frankly say, yes, the
Church made this change, made this law, as she made many other laws, for instance,
the Friday abstinence, the unmarried priesthood, the laws concerning mixed marriages,
the regulation of Catholic marriages, and a thousand other laws. "It is always somewhat
laughable, to see the Protestant churches, in pulpit and legislation, demand the
observance of Sunday, of which there is nothing in their Bible.”434
432 Laux, A Course in Religion for Catholic High Schools and Academies, 1/51.
433 Rev Stephen Keenan, A Doctrinal Catechism, 2016, 174.
434 Darmonica Alexander, Hold On, Someone Is on the Other Line! (Xlibris Corporation, 2011),
228.
155
Cardinal Gibbons a famous cardinal in the 19th century, once wrote:
"But you may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single
line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious
observance of Saturday, a day which we never sanctity."435
The Catholic teaching as it is written in the catechism regarding the change of the
Sabbath day is held as follows: 1)."Question: Which is the Sabbath day? "Answer:
Saturday is the Sabbath day. 2). "Question: Why do we observe Sunday instead
of Saturday? "Answer. "We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because of the
Catholic Church in the Council of Laodicea. transferred the solemnity from
Saturday to Sunday." 436
In the last centuries, Catholics were more prone to openly admit the nature of
their power and authority to change biblical laws; however, in recent years, we
see a shift in this discourse. Though still admitting the authority of the church, the
clergy and catholic theologians transferred the event of the abolishing of the law
to an earlier stage of history. For Instance, Robert A. Sungenis, in his book “Not
by Faith Alone: The Biblical Evidence for the Catholic Doctrine of Justification”,
mentions in the footnotes lost quotations of Jerome that would support that
change in an early stage of the church, and for this reason, could not be
quoted.437 We see a syncretic movement in the arguments concerning Law from
Catholic and Protestant traditions that the change was made upon Dunn’s
boundary marks. However, recent studies on the law show the observance of the
Sabbath is evidently not made by the apostles, as the Greek Orthodox church
hymnography holds evidence concerning the Sabbath Law inherited from the
apostles:
“You have made every eternal Sabbath, to give us your complete and holy resurrection
from the dead . . . the king of the ages, carrying out the redemption through sacrifice, in
435 James Gibbons, The Faith of Our Fathers (Baltimore, MD. New York: R. & T. Washbourne,
1917), 89.
436 Peter Geiermann, Convert’s Catechism of Catholic Doctrine (Rockford, Ill.: Tan Books &
Pub, 1977), 50.
437 Robert A. Sungenis, Not by Faith Alone: A Biblical Study of the Catholic Doctrine of
Justification (Santa Barbara, CA: Queenship Pub Co, 1997), 596.
156
the grave keeps the Sabbath rest, giving us a new Sabbath rest. In Him we shout, arise
God and judge the earth . . . and God blessed the seventh day, for this is the blessed
Sabbath, this is the day of rest, in which the only begotten Son of God, rested from all of
His works, and through the death, with His flesh kept the Sabbath”438
Despite all the historical evidence, mainstream Christianity holds the position that
the law was abolished right after Jesus died in the Cross, especially the Catholic
tradition. If not by Jesus, the law was certainly diminished and excluded by Paul
and therefore taught by the Church fathers and the clergy as orthodoxy. The
Roman church has been rooted in this argument of authority for advocating any
change or misinterpretation of the scriptures.
5.2 Protestant / Reformed Theology Responses to NPP
The Protestant perspective could also be called the reformed, or Lutheran
perspective. Lutheran scholars had to reexamine Luther after the New
Perspective to redeem him from the claims made by adepts of the New
Perspective accusing Luther of Antinomianism.439 Luther’s views of Paul’s
writings gained the stigma of Antisemitic and connected to the roots of Hitler's
actions in the Second World War. Later, German Protestant theologians and
nationalists took up and magnified Luther's anti-Jewish views, using them to
create a racialized and anti-Semitic understanding of Christianity and German
nationality.440 Westerholm, commenting on why we should put Luther in his place,
even said in 1988: “Students who want to understand Paul but feel they have
nothing to learn from a Martin Luther should consider a career in metallurgy.
Exegesis is learned from the masters.”441
Hughes does not see this either when he criticizes N.T. Wright and E.P Sanders.
For him, these authors of the New Perspective completely disregarded the notion
438 Οικουμενικό Πατριαρχείο, ed., Ιερά Σύνοψις Και Τα Άγια Πάθη (Αthens: Αστήρ, 1962), 591–
592
439 Holder, A Companion to Paul in the Reformation, 96-98.
440 Ericksen, Theologians Under Hitler (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).
441 Stephen Westerholm, Israel’s Law and the Church’s Faith: Paul and His Recent Interpreters
(Grand Rapids, Mich: Wm. B. Eerdmans-Lightning Source, 1988), 173.
157
of an evident Legalism.442 Churches started to be outrageous regarding the NPP.
Kent L. Yinger even described some attitudes from evangelicals warning their
members against NPP literature and books.443 The New Testament Emeritus
Professor of Manchester University Robert H. Gundry condemns the New
Perspective on Paul in his essay: “The inferiority of the New Perspective on Paul”,
published in his book “The Old is Better” (2010). He argues that Judaism was
preoccupied with its legalistic agenda. Furthermore, Paul was not preoccupied
with the Palestinian Second temple religion’s obsession with the legal system,
but rather with spiritual purity that comes from Grace instead.444 Lutherans start
viewing Luther as being resolved eschatologically. The conflict between the "two
words" of God, Law, and the Gospel is resolved eschatologically in Luther's
philosophy. In other words, sin is the source of this dualism between the Gospel
and Law.445 Which results in the problem being solved only unilaterally to the
Gospel side, as Holder argues.446 In this viewpoint, Luther saw the Law as God's
demand for righteousness and obedience, while the Gospel was God's gift of
redemption and forgiveness through trust in Christ. Luther saw the conflict
between Law and the Gospel as being founded in the human condition of sin.
According to Luther, sin had damaged human nature and made it impossible for
humanity to properly follow God's Law. This meant that the Law could only
condemn mankind as sinners and could neither save nor justify them. On the
other hand, He thought God had offered a remedy to the dilemma through the
Gospel. Humans might be reconciled to God and gain forgiveness of sins via trust
in Christ. This faith, according to Luther, was a gift of God's grace, not something
mankind could earn on their own. This tension between Law and the Gospel,
according to Luther's eschatology, would be fully resolved at the end of time,
when Christ came and established his kingdom. Believers would then be entirely
442 Hughes, “The New Perspective’s View of Paul and the Law,” 271.
443 Kent L. Yinger, The New Perspective on Paul: An Introduction (Eugene, OR: Cascade
Books, 2010), 40.
444 Robert H. Gundry, The Old Is Better: New Testament Essays in Support of Traditional
Interpretations (Wipf and Stock, 2010), 200.
445 Bernhard Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology: Its Historical and Systematic Development, çev.
Roy A. Harrisville (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1999), 192.
446 Holder, A Companion to Paul in the Reformation, 97.
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and completely rescued from sin and death and enter eternal life with God. The
Law of Moses requires active righteousness based on command compliance; the
Gospel of Christ, on the other hand, talks of passive righteousness imputed by
grace through faith alone. The Law of Moses, with its demands, can only operate
as a revelation of divine anger against sinners, but the Gospel of Christ, with its
message of divine mercy, conveys the Good News of redemption.447
5.2.1 Their View on the NPP
Lutherans tended to see the New Perspective as a response primarily to 19thcentury
German liberalism rather than to Martin Luther’s theology. But in fact,
despite Luther’s accomplishments being enormous and still reverberating to this
day, the anachronistic soteriological concepts of Luther also became obliterated
altogether due to the New Perspective.
Reformed theology, which is a tradition within Protestantism that emphasizes the
sovereignty of God and the authority of the Bible, has had a mixed response to
the New Perspective on Paul. Some Reformed theologians have embraced the
insights of the New Perspective and have incorporated them into their
understanding of Paul's theology. Others, however, have been more skeptical
and have questioned the validity of the New Perspective's interpretive framework.
Overall, the relationship between Reformed theology and the New Perspective
on Paul is complex and nuanced. While there are areas of agreement and
disagreement, both perspectives offer valuable insights into the theology of Paul
and the nature of salvation.
Protestantism is a diverse tradition, and there is no unity in a "Protestant
perspective" on the law and the Ten Commandments. However, many Protestant
Christians believe that the law, including the Ten Commandments, is an important
part of God's revelation to humanity and serves as a moral guide for human
behavior. Protestants view the law as being fulfilled or "done away with" in Christ,
and believe that Christians are not under obligation to keep the law in the same
447 Holder, A Companion to Paul in the Reformation, 112.
159
way that ancient Israel was. They may see the law as being fulfilled in Jesus, who
perfectly obeyed it and who, through his death and resurrection, achieved the
forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life for all who believe in him.
The zeal towards the Second Commandment has raised some questions in the
Protestant interpretation of the validity of the Law according to scholars,
especially the Decalogue. This commandment is surely understood, in the
Catholic Church’s perspective as well as in the Orthodox Church’s perspective,
that the images inside of the church are not for worship but for veneration. In their
perspective, this distinction is crucial for a proper understanding of Catholic
Theology.448
Looking from the general protestant perspective, Professor Thomas C. Oden, in
his book, “Justification Reader” (2002), tries to explain this dichotomy between
Law valid and abolished:
“It is not that the law is blandly relaxed or dishonestly set aside. Rather, the law
is declared to be fulfilled in an even stricter sense by the Judge himself, by his
own sacrificial offering of himself as he himself fulfills the requirements of the law
for us! This happens by inputting or crediting to the believer by God himself the
perfect righteousness of his representative and guarantee: God the Son, Jesus
Christ (Rom. 10:3-9).” 449
As the quote might also state, many Protestants, however, may see the law as
being a perpetual moral guide for Christians and may emphasize the importance
of obedience to the law as a way of expressing gratitude to God and living a holy
life. Overall, Protestant views on the law and the Ten Commandments vary, but
many Protestants believe that the law serves as an important part of God's
revelation and as a guide for Christian living. Despite the idea of law being always
present in Christianity, the specificity of which law, or how it exists in its form, is
lacking in the Protestant Tradition. The term "biblical law" or "the law of God"
448 Thomas Carson, The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd Edition (Washington, D.C.: Gale
Research Inc., 2002), vol. 7, p. 325.
449 Thomas C. Oden, The Justification Reader (Grand Rapids, Mich: Wm. B. Eerdmans
Publishing Co., 2002), 37.
160
usually refers to the divinely inspired teachings on morality and faith that are
found throughout the Bible, including the Ten Commandments and other more
specialized teachings. The teachings lay out a code of ethics based on Christian
morality and educate believers on how to interact with God and one another. It is
unclear which laws are supreme or not, which contributes to the diversity of
Christian faiths.
5.3 Other Contemporary Perspectives of Law and Their View of the
NPP
The New Perspective opened the gates of the flood of biblical interpretation in
religious studies. With this flood, Paul started to be studied in all areas of
knowledge: Social, political, historical, and psychological. This avalanche of
research started to place Pauline's writings to be examined under a wide range
of perspectives. Some of them are Paul within Judaism, Paul as an eschatological
visionary, Paul as a Roman citizen, Paul as the apostle to the Gentiles, etc. We
shall describe some of these perspectives in the following.
5.3.1 Paul Within Judaism Perspective
For years, scholars have thought that Paul had gone through a “conversion” to
Christianity, which implied that he broke with Judaism. From the classical view,
Paul indeed could only have broken his ties with Judaism to become who he
became as champion of Christianity.450 Agreeing to this, famous bible
commentator Gordon D. Fee, commenting on the episode of 1 Corinthians where
Paul says, “to eat whatever is sold in the market,” states: “It is hard to imagine
anything more un-Jewish in the apostle than this.” 451 Comments like these
created many problems for the developing faith, Paula Fredriksen summarizes
three key aspects of an era of studies in Paul in her article “Paul, the ‘convert’,
found in the Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies (2022):
450 C. K. Barrett, A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians (HarperCollins College
Div, 1968), 240.
451 Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, Revised Edition (Grand Rapids,
Michigan: Eerdmans, 2014), 482.
161
1. Paul constructed his mission within, not against, Judaism. Therefore,
‘con-version,’ if used to describe his transition from persecutor to apostle,
should not be understood as his move from one religion to another. Better,
Paul’s experience should be described as his ‘call.’
2. Paul’s transformation had nothing to do with a sense of personal
sinfulness and frus-tration with the Law. Rather, its focus was his
receiving his commission to be an apostle to the nations.
3. Paul’s frame was utterly eschatological. He lived and worked, he was
convinced, within history’s final hours. 452
As Magnum Zetterholm, a Jewish scholar, argues, the Paul within Judaism
Perspective is the “natural development from E.P. Sanders’s new interpretation
of the nature of ancient Judaism.”453 The notion that Paul never ceased being a
Jew changes the whole narrative as this perspective says, the notion that Paul
left the Jewish practices after he became the Apostle to the Gentiles. The “Paul
within Judaism Perspective” aims to reconsider the narrative looking to Paul as a
Torah-abiding Jew. This goes against the notion that Judaism was considered by
Paul a legalistic religion. Paul does not let his religious practices in any moment;
on the contrary, he shows that he is blameless concerning the law, as stated by
Paula Fredriksen in her article “Paul the Convert” found in the Oxford handbook
Pauline Studies (2022).
Paul the convert, the centerpiece of this reconstruction of Christian beginnings,
was severely contested by three Scandinavian historians in the middle of the
twentieth century. Johannes Munck, in Paulus und, die Heilsgeschichte (1954),
argued in opposition to the high-contrast picture of 'Hebrews' versus “Law-free
Hellenists” against seeing Paul as opposed to a conservative, Law-observant
'Jewish Christianity' (as represented by James and Peter); and against viewing
Paul's 'Christianity' as in some way against Judaism, all of the views that had
been promulgated especially by Baur and the Tübingen School454
452 Novenson - Matlock, The Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies, 34-35.
453 McKnight - Oropeza, Perspectives on Paul, 174.
454 Novenson - Matlock, The Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies, 33.
162
After the New Perspective, Pauline Studies had its door open to scholars of the
Jewish tradition. Recently, works in the Pauline studies made by Jewish scholars
took prominence in the area, especially in the attempt to see Paul from a Jewish
perspective. Scholars like Magnum Zetterholm, Pamela Eisenbaum, Mark D.
Nanos, Paula Fredriksen, and Caroline Johnson Hodge, to name a few, have
contributed significantly to the understanding of Paul and have been quoted in
this work.
The New Testament teachings of the apostle Paul stress his dedication to sharing
the gospel with both Jews and Gentiles. Paul, a Jew himself, did not allow his
Jewishness to stand in the way of his mission to the Gentiles. Instead, he
understood his role as spreading the good news of Christ's love and redemption
to everyone, irrespective of their ethnicity or place of worship. Paul frequently
discusses the shared faith of all followers of Christ, irrespective of their prior
religious affiliations, throughout his letters. He states that "there is neither Jew
nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" in
Galatians 3:28. Paul's missionary strategy is encapsulated in this passage. His
trust in Christ was more important to him than being a Jew. And it was this religion
that he aimed to spread among the Gentiles, not in his capacity as a Jew speaking
to non-Jews but as a Christian communicating to other Christians. For Gaston,
Paul uniquely addresses non-Jews, i.e., he never addresses Jews in his letters,
nor does he say how a Jew should relate to the Torah from now on; his argument
is that Paul’s negative statements on the Torah were motivated by the conviction
that the Torah indeed will bring death to those outside a covenantal relationship
with the God of Israel.455
By this perspective, the theory coined by Hyam Maccoby in the late 1980s and
fiercely advocated by Şinasi Gündüz in Turkey, that Paul was a “Mythmaker'', or
“Architect of Christianity,” also turned obsolete. Paul was born a Jew, spoke to
Jews, and died as a Jew. He intended not to create or architect Christianity by
any means but rather reform his own beloved religion, Judaism. Pamela
455 Lloyd Gaston, Paul and the Torah (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1987),
100–107.
163
Eisenbaum, in her book “Paul Was Not a Christian,” emphasizes the Jewishness
of Paul and how he was a Torah-keeping law until his death.456 Gager asks the
question, “Did Paul create Christianity?” “Not only did Paul not make early
Christianity, but he also had no conception of what we call Christianity.” 457
Paul's strategy serves as a potent illustration of inclusion and love, proving that
the message that he believed to be carrying would break down all borders of race,
tradition, and culture. It served as a reminder that everyone was welcomed,
accepted, and invited to join the God family in Christ. Jesus is seen by Paul as
the Old Testament's fulfillment, and as such, He represents the "New Creation."
Paul states in 2 Corinthians 5:17, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new
creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!" This implies that He saw
a new way of life and a connection to God is developed through Jesus. For
instance, Jesus explains the deeper meaning of various Old Testament rules in
the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). Not only should one refrain from murder
and adultery, but also from harboring resentment or desire. In this way, the
teachings of Jesus might be considered a "new law"—not a substitute for the Old
Testament Law but a more in-depth and thorough interpretation.
5.3.2 Noahide Law
Historically, the Noahide Law is a set of laws systematized by Rabbinic Jews in
the Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin referring to what God gave to all those non-
Jews who had repented of their “gentileness” and wanted to do the will of God.
Non-Jews (gentiles), according to current Jewish law, are not bound to convert
to Judaism, but they must keep the “Seven Laws of Noah” to be guaranteed a
position in the afterlife, the final recompense of the virtuous. Judaism has seen
Christians under this status, attributing the Christian movement to the Noahide
covenant.458
456 Eisenbaum, Paul Was Not a Christian.
457 Gager, Who made early Christianity?, 12.
458 Isidore Singer, The Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. 7: A Descriptive Record of the History,
Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People From the Earliest Times; Italy-Leon
(Forgotten Books, 2018), 648-650.
164
According to Campbell, the Noahide law was a much-reduced, generalized set of
commandments applicable to all since the time of Noah459 which is made known
also in the New Testament in Acts of the Apostles 15:29.460 The fate of the
Gentiles is discussed in rabbinic Judaism through the doctrine of the Noahide
Commandments. This rabbinic doctrine is derived from a midrash on the flood
narrative in which God makes a covenant with all humanity, not just Jews, never
again to destroy the world. In the Rabbinic midrash tradition, the Noahide
Commandments include monotheism, avoidance of murder, organizing courts
and promulgating justice, avoiding incest, theft, and blasphemy, as well as
avoiding eating the flesh of living creatures and, sometimes, recognition that the
Lord, the God of Israel, is the one true God. These ideas can be derived from the
Noah story in Genesis if they are read together with the rules for sojourners,
principally in Leviticus 17-26. These two passages are associated because they
point to the origin of the laws for the legal treatment of resident foreigners.461
While Jews are expected to keep all the laws of the Torah, non-Jews are
expected to keep only these seven laws. A non-Jew who keeps these laws is one
of the “hasidei ummot ha-olam” (the righteous of the nations of the world) and
therefore guaranteed a place in the world to come.462 Scholars disregarded this
Noahide tradition as it is probably derived from the proper chapter 9 of Genesis
(verses 8-11) such statements.463
5.3.3 Dispensational Perspective
Dispensationalism originated in the 19th century, but it gained significant
popularity in the 20th century, particularly in North America. It is often associated
with a premillennial eschatology, which holds that Christ will return to Earth before
a literal thousand-year reign and that there will be a rapture of believers prior to
459 Genesis 9:1-7
460 Douglas A. Campbell - N. T. Wright, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of
Justification in Paul (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2013), 90.
461 Alan F. Segal, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992), 195.
462 Joyce Eisenberg vd., The JPS Dictionary of Jewish Words (Jewish Publication Society,
2001), 117.
463 Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles (New Haven London: Yale University Press,
1998), 557.
165
a time of tribulation. Some key beliefs of dispensational theology include. A strictly
literal interpretation of the Bible, particularly concerning prophecy and the end
times; 2. A distinction between Israel and the church, with a special focus on the
future role of Israel in God's plan; 3. The belief that the church age is a
"parenthesis" in God's plan for Israel and that God will return to his dealings with
Israel after the church is raptured; 4. A focus on the importance of human free
will and the individual's responsibility to respond to God's grace.
Dispensationalists believe that the Mosaic Law, which includes the Ten
Commandments and other Old Testament laws, was given specifically to the
nation of Israel and is not binding on Christians in "the age of the church," which
is also a “New dispensation;” According to this viewpoint, the law was fulfilled in
Christ's death and resurrection, and Christians are now subject to the "law of
Christ," which is a law of love and grace. As a result, from a dispensationalist
standpoint, the church's age has rendered the Mosaic Law ineffective for
Believers. Wayne G. Strickland, professor of theology at the Multnomah School
of the Bible, claims that his dispensationalist view is that "the age of the church
has rendered the law inoperative." 464 By looking at scriptures in dispensations, it
is like understanding that God creates different non-interdependent covenants
with other people throughout the history of the Hebrews.
This view became popular with the work of John Nelson Darby. Darby’s
comments on the Bible were popularized at the beginning of the 20th century in
the West, and it contributed significantly to the growth and acceptance of
dispensationalism. The distinction and division concerning the biblical books
were also adapted to this view, where the Jewish scriptures, or Tanakh, were
understood as the “Old Pact” and the writings of the apostles of Jesus as the
“New Covenant”; such distinctions were only made after the 2nd century with
Mellitus of Sardis, which used the term “Palaia Diatheke” to refer to the books
written before the coming of the Messiah.465
464 Greg L. Bahnsen, Five Views on Law and Gospel (Zondervan, 1996), 259.
465 Rodrigo Silva, A Bíblia De Álef a Ômega: Um Guia Para Entender Como a Bíblia Chegou
até Nós (Ágape, 2020), 19.
166
Summing up from the theology of the covenants approached in the first chapter,
a dichotomy in the understanding of scripture was created to explain that the Bible
taught a unique place for Israel and that the Church could not fulfill it. It is a
dichotomy that aims to divide the grace of Christ into two, one for Gentiles and
one for Jews. The theology of dispensations has helped Christian theologians to
better systematize this dichotomy between law and grace. For instance, dividing
the periods into dispensations facilitated the importance and the need for a
change in the system by which God dealt with people in the scriptures. Currently,
theologians throughout the world still commonly hold this view. Traditionally,
scholars have seen dispensationalism as a period of time concerning the
relationship of God with humankind. The Nelson New Illustrated biblical dictionary
defines seven dispensations: (1) Innocence, from Creation to the Fall of Adam
and Eve and God’s sending them out of the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:24); (2)
Conscience, the covenant with Adam, ending with the judgment of the Flood
(Genesis 9); (3) Human government, the covenant with Noah, extending to the
time of Abraham; (4) Promise, from Abraham’s call (Gen. 12:1) to Moses; (5)
Law, from the giving of the Law to Moses (Ex. 19:8, 20–31) to the death of Jesus
Christ; (6) Grace, from the death and resurrection of Christ to His Second
Coming; (7) Kingdom, the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth and the
thousand-year reign of Christ over the nations.466
Hughes claims that people who understand Paul’s writings by the
Dispensationalist theology have difficulties understanding the New Perspective.
The reason for this is that they usually do not understand the covenant theology,
which makes it difficult to see the continuity of the church as being the “Israel of
God.” 467 As Papaioannou mentions, there are two views by which protestant
scholars have seen the church's relationship with Israel. The first is the idea that
Israel, as a vineyard, was cut out by God as it did not produce fruits.468 The
466 Ronald F. Youngblood et al., Nelson’s Illustrated Bible Dictionary: New and Enhanced
Edition (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2014), 322.
467 Jack Hughes, “The New Perspective’s View of Paul and the Law,” The Master’s Seminary
Journal 16/2 (2005), 271.
468 Papaioannou - Giantzaklidis, Israel, Covenant, Law, 26.
167
second idea was that God did not touch the old vineyard but planted a new vine,
which is the church.
This view gave the origin to a dispensationalist interpretation of the Bible, which
finds a place for modern Jewish Zionist movements in interpreting covenantal
nomism. This idea created a safe haven for the existence of Judaism in Palestine
for Christians, especially for supporting Zionist movements without the need to
adapt to the new perspective. It creates a political sphere for Jews of the 21st
century to co-exist with Christian tradition without maculating the traditional
Christian interpretation of Pauline's writings. However, according to
Papaioannou, none of them are good ways for the perspective concerning Paul’s
view. He advocates for a perspective that portrays in the parables of Paul that the
church was actually grafted in the existing vineyard that was Israel.469 This
perspective fits perfectly with the NPP and gives a theological and scriptural flavor
to the debate.
Dispensational theology inevitably created a dichotomy between Law and Grace.
In the popular protestant mindset nowadays, the law is antagonistic in relation to
Grace. To have a functional dispensation of Grace and the traditional
understanding of Sola Scriptura, Protestant Christians had to resort to biblical
backup for the non-relevance of the Law after the Cross. Jesus was the Messiah
who brought grace to Jews and Gentiles. Before Jesus, anyone should seek
salvation through “works of the law,” which was basically the performance of the
individual in keeping the commandments of the Torah. But now, Jesus
inaugurated an era of “free entrance into heaven” for those who accepted his
sacrifice on the cross. Protestants called this perspective “Dispensation of
Grace.” Everyone who dies and has accepted the sacrifice of Jesus automatically
has their faults canceled and enters heaven from this moment on. Before that,
one would be measured according to the Torah (often only Jews), and Gentiles,
as assumed, were completely lost even before their birth. Therefore, the law had
a diminished role after the cross for the protestant milieu.
469 Papaioannou - Giantzaklidis, Israel, Covenant, Law, 29-35.
168
5.3.4 Eternal Law
George R. Knight, starting from the principle that the law was not abolished,
makes a distinction between “LAW,” which he writes in capital letters as holding
an eternal significance to it, trespassing the temporal aspect of it, and “law” in a
cursive letter, which symbolizes the temporal aspect of the law in the Bible. The
10 commandments (laws) are an expression of Love (LAW), which is also the
character of God.470 In this sense, God had not given the LAW only on the
mountain to Moses in Exodus 20, but rather the “law,” which was a form of “LAW,”
which is eternal. The LAW was actually given in the Garden of Eden to Adam and
Eve in a covenant relationship. God had them in his garden, and they were made
to take care of the plants and the animals under the protection and love of their
Creator.
Adventists had an altogether interesting relationship with the law from its
beginnings. The movement was born of the so-called “great disappointment” in
the 1840s when William Miller started to preach throughout the US and Europe
the imminent coming of Jesus with the clouds of heaven, based on the book of
the prophet Daniel. William Miller himself was a Baptist who had accepted the
Baptist view of the law in the Old Testament. The Anabaptists also did not have
much discourse on the issue. Still, we understand that Joseph Bates, as soon as
he introduced the seventh-day Sabbath to the growing movement, accepted it,
and it became a fingerprint of Adventism. The church was organized in 1863, and
a little after, in 1888, for instance, the general council of the Adventist church
assembled in Minneapolis. The still-on-growth movement was challenged by two
young theologians, Waggoner and A.T. Jones, who claimed that such distinctions
were not ever made in scriptures and also in Judaism. They actually argued that
the law in Galatians was indeed the Decalogue. Despite this strong claim scaring
the believers in the meeting, Waggoner and Jones showed a different
interpretation of the law that later on was even applauded by Ellen G. White
herself.
470 George R Knight, I Used to Be Perfect: A Study in Sin and Salvation (Berrien Springs, Mich.:
Andrews University Press, 2001), 29.
169
Barclay, in his commentary in Matthew, draws a line to what kind of religion the
New Testament calls the believer to perform. According to him, a religion of “thou
shalt nots” is bound to fail.471 Seventh-day Adventists understood this dilemma
after 1888. Ellen G. White focuses on the Bible’s positive points of the Law. A
Law that leads people to righteousness, or a law that sets boundaries for the
moral behavior of society. It would be fair to give an example of this discussion
that I found in the book Robert J Wieland, published in 1988 as a tribute to the
100 years of the 1888 General Assembly: “Suppose I meet an alluring temptation
to commit adultery. If I say "no” because of fear of herpes or AIDS, or fear lest
the pastor or church board or conference administration hear of it, or that my wife
will learn of it -I have done the right thing for the wrong reason. This would be an
"under-the-law" motivation. But if I say "no" as Joseph did in Egypt, "How can I
do this great wickedness and sin against God?" because I can't stand the idea of
bringing shame and disgrace on Christ, to add to His pain - I am constrained by
a new motivation; I am "under grace."472
The concept of God having a proper Law has been well noticed since the time of
Abraham (Genesis 26:5); however, some scholars agree that the same law was
present in the garden of Eden since the Sabbath was also there (Genesis 2:1-3).
The very concept of Sin in the bible is understood as the transgression of the Law
(1 John 3:4). And could not be only given in the Sinai. Joseph kept the law
hundreds of years before the Sinai.473 The concept of Judgement is also present,
and with that comes the necessity of having a law.
According to Old Testament scholars, the prophecies concerning the coming of
Messiah and the end of the dispensation of the Jewish people were prophesied
through the prophet Daniel from chapters 8 to 10. These prophecies are crucial
for Christians and the origin of Christianity. However, due to the end of the time,
prophecy in Daniel would be advocated in the year 34 AD according to Christians
471 William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew: V. 2 (Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, 1965),
57.
472 Robert J. Wieland, Grace on Trial: The Heart-Warming Message of 1888 and It’s Power to
Change Lives (The 1888 Study Committee, 1988), 55.
473 Genesis 39:9
170
and Messianic Judaism. This interpretation has been completely disregarded by
mainstream Judaism. From this perspective, nobody can live in perfection if there
is no moral conduct pattern. What was required of Abraham and also of Joseph
implies pre-existing moral principles.474 In the understanding of the Eternal Law
perspective, the law reflects God’s character and can’t be changed or touched by
mere mortals. God did not create it, but rather, he translated it into
commandments.
5.3.5 The Gift Perspective
“The gift perspective” was launched as a development of the New Perspective on
Paul by John M. G. Barclay in his book “Paul and the Gift” (2015). Barclay
examines the anthropology of Paul’s time by studying how presents and gifts
were used in various cultures. The recipient of a gift owes the giver a debt of
gratitude, and the gift giver would usually expect reciprocity back in that time and
region. Although there is typically much more, the requirement is to demonstrate
thanks at the very least. According to him, this is a fundamental theme of
Galatians, as Paul emphasizes the paradox of grace: "Paul's theology in
Galatians is significantly shaped by his conviction, and experience, of the Christgift,
as the definitive act of divine beneficence, given without regard to worth."475
The focus of John M. G. Barclay's book is on divine gift-giving, which, according
to Barclay, is centered and completed in the gift of Christ for Paul. He provides a
fresh evaluation of Paul's theology of the gift that the Christ-event represents, as
expressed in Galatians and Romans 12. The term most English translations of
Paul's writings interpret as "grace" is the same word first-century Greek speakers
used for common gift exchanges, and Barclay contends that Paul portrays God
as the ultimate gift provider and Jesus Christ as God's definitive, climactic gift to
humanity.
The patronage culture in the Roman Empire would also hold to that
understanding and give a nuanced background for this aspect of the culture. In
the ancient Roman Empire, the practice of patronage was quite common.
474 Derek Kidner, Introdução e Comentário - Gênesis (Vida Nova, 2006), 119.
475 John M. G. Barclay, Paul and the Gift (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2015), 350.
171
Wealthy or influential people, known as patrons, gave chances and financial
assistance to those of lower social status, known as clients. The foundation of
this system was the Roman notion of fides or loyalty. Patrons gave their
customers gifts of food, land, and other amenities in appreciation for their
devotion. In this way, it's possible to think of the Roman Empire's patronage
system as the social incarnation of the idea of grace. In this system, presents
were given out of kindness and interpersonal connections rather than because
the recipient had earned or merited them. The patrons' gifts might be viewed as
grace or undeserved favor. They were provided out of the patron's goodwill and
as a token of their connection with the client rather than in payment for goods or
services.
5.4 A Third Perspective at Sight
A third perspective on Paul is a term that has been used by some scholars to
describe a view that differs from both the old and the new perspectives on Paul.
One example of a third perspective on Paul is the book Israel, Covenant, Law: A
Third Perspective on Paul by Kim Papaiouannou. In this book, Papaiouannou
argues that the main point of contention between the old and the new
perspectives is the place of biblical law in salvation. He claims both perspectives
have misunderstood Paul's view of the law and its relation to the covenant and
Israel. He proposes a different view that gives biblical law its due place in the plan
of salvation and the life of the believer without compromising the grace and
faithfulness of God in Christ. He creates a dialectic in which the Old perspective
is the (Thesis), the New Perspective (Antithesis) and a temple factor in both
(Synthesis). For him, the third and most crucial premise is that Paul's criticisms
of the law, which appear in Galatians and other places, are not directed at a
specific body of legislation but rather at the rituals associated with the Abrahamic
and Sinai Covenants, including Circumcision and sacrifice, all of them related to
the temple. For Papaiouannou, Paul sees the Church as the continuation of the
faith of Israel, now in a heavenly antitypical temple reality in which he calls “the
172
third perspective.”476 In this view, the New perspective of Sanders and Dunn and
the Old perspective of the Luther and Bultmann, focused their religion away from
the Temple. The Second Temple's destruction in 70 CE had a significant
influence on the Jewish people, especially concerning the ceremonial elements
of the Torah. The Temple in Jerusalem, where sacrifices were made, purification
rites were carried out, and sacred festivals were observed, served as the hub of
Jewish religious life until it was destroyed. Ritualistic aspects of the law,
especially the purification laws, lost their meaning for diaspora Jews initially but
later after the temple's destruction in Jerusalem. These rites could no longer be
carried out as intended once the Temple was destroyed. While the Reformation
viewpoint claimed that salvation is a free gift unmerited by human labor, the new
perspective contends that the law is an essential component of the process of
salvation. While there are similarities between the two perspectives,
Papaioannou viewpoint has a distinct perspective on Paul and the law, aiming in
giving the biblical law its proper position in the redemption plan and the believer's
life, building on Paul's self-identification as a Christian and the Christian
perspectives on the covenant. Hence, if Paul sees the church as the true Israel
of God, anti-nominalism becomes very weak. Paul seems to indicate that it
doesn't matter if you keep all the requirements of the law or not if the intention of
your heart is not according to the law. He amplifies the law of the heart as being
more crucial than the law itself and the one which Jews should be focused on
instead of concentrating on the letter of the Law. Papaiouannou proposes that
the Law is the key element to understanding the relation between the Temple
ceremonies and the Justification by Faith. Most of the Old Covenant laws were
related to traditions by which the continuation of the covenant was guaranteed.
For Papaiouannou, “Works of the Law” was associated with the ceremonial
aspects of the law or even temple-related laws. According to him, the best
translation of “Erga tou nomou” would be “works of the Torah,” in other words,
the practical and ceremonial aspects of the Torah. Papaiouannou brings to the
memory that Paul was well acquainted with the idea that the faithful Israel of God
was not the only the nation of Israel. The Theology that Paul draws from the Old
476 Papaioannou - Giantzaklidis, Israel, Covenant, Law, 21.
173
Testament is that God has a chosen, remanent people, prophesied by the
prophet Isaiah saying that “though the number of the sons of Abraham be as the
sand of the sea, only the remnant will be saved.”477 For Paul now, therefore, only
those who have believed are the ones who are saved.478
In the book “Pauline Perspectives: Essays on Paul, 1978-2013” by N. T. Wright.
Wright collects essays on various aspects of Paul's theology, such as his use of
Scripture, his view of Christ, his understanding of justification, his vision of the
church, and his hope for the future creating a spectrum to which every
perspective should see Paul. Wright argues that Paul's theology is shaped by his
Jewish and apocalyptic background, his encounter with the risen Christ, and his
missionary vocation. He also argues that Paul's theology is relevant and
challenging for today's church and progressive world. One can see that more
deeply in his recent work “Paul, a biography”, in which he paints a picture of Paul
to within all perspectives.479 The approaches concerning the Theology of the New
Testament regarding Paul’s view of the universal salvation of the creation,
including non-believers, become the basis for Paul’s ethics and the key to
interreligious dialogues and the socio-scientific theories of Paul. The ‘ordo salutis’
of the gospel acquires an “announcement” shape to itself instead of an “invitation”
towards other religions, as much as law becomes a natural outcome of the ones
who have faith that the “announcement” is true. In Paul, Jesus is the agent
responsible for stretching the covenant once made with Jews towards the non-
Jews, and those who have responded to the announcement have been given the
honor of being grafted into the branch of Israel, containing all the promises given
to Abraham.
477 Romans 9:27
478 Papaioannou - Giantzaklidis, Israel, Covenant, Law, 29.
479 N. T. Wright, Paul: A Biography (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2018).
174
Conclusion
It is a complicated endeavor to discuss how Judaism and Christianity differed in
the first three centuries. In the early decades of the Christian Era, Second Temple
Judaism and Christianity steadily drifted from one another. Christianity was first
a movement within Second Temple Judaism. The most significant divergence is
between Jewish and Christian recognition of Jesus as the Messiah, foretold in
Jewish tradition and the Hebrew Bible. Early Christianity differentiated itself by
concluding that non-Jewish converts to Christianity did not need to observe the
Jewish oral law or the Jewish tradition embedded in the second temple religion.
The process of divergence wasn't smooth or rapid. Early Christians and Jews
probably shared many ideas and customs as well as their culture and worldview,
and there might not have been a distinct separation between them. As we have
seen, the division between Judaism and Christianity during the first three
centuries may not be as stark as previously believed. The degree to which these
differences were acknowledged and stressed in the first three centuries
presumably varied greatly, even though there were undoubtedly significant
differences between Judaism and Christianity. One may argue that the idea of an
"artificial" separation oversimplifies a problematic historical process. Today's
academics are still debating this subject. In addition, the Apostle Paul's ideas on
the law within the framework of Jewish tradition have been newly understood
thanks to the New Perspective on Paul. This viewpoint contends that first-century
Judaism should be used to interpret Paul's teachings. According to New
Perspective scholars, Paul's criticism of the law was more about its function in
establishing and upholding Jewish identity than it was about legalism (the notion
that one might obtain salvation via good works) or even about the law in itself.
For Paul, the Law was not the problem but the mindset of a Jewish exclusivist
status in the covenant made with Abraham. This perspective questions the
conventional wisdom of the classical perspective, undergoing since Augustine in
the 4th century that Paul disregarded the law completely in his soteriological
scheme. Paul's encounter with Christ on the Road to Damascus resulted in a
175
profound change in his worldview but not a conventionally thought “conversion.”
He eventually realized that the Ritual aspects of the Law were unreliable, and
that Judaism no longer needed the borders it had once employed to set itself
apart from the Gentiles and the Hellenistic way of life. Paul understood that
righteousness or acceptance by God comes through "faithfulness of Christ," i.e.,
“pistis Christou,” rather than seeking to get it by observing the Law via self-effort.
The Law is not the reason for the Covenant, but there is no Covenant without a
law. Paul's teachings and their ramifications for Jewish and Christian traditions
can now be seen from a fresh viewpoint. In the meantime, it has provoked
continuing discussions and disputes among academics, highlighting the depth
and complexity of Pauline's studies.
In the Sola Scriptura realm, scholars have engaged in the debate of the
abolishment of the Law under the scope of the covenant. Despite all opinions, all
agree that scriptures do not authorize any changing of the Moral law of the second
temple religion, and it is unclear which law Christians should abide by if not the
Old Testament moral law from the classical perspective, especially after the
reform movement. The logical inconsistency of the abolishment theory holds up
a theological problem for protestant Christians that sustain the Sola Scriptura
belief but at the same time revere the Catholic teachings and fill its agenda. The
abolishment of the law implies that the Old Testament regulations were done
away with after Christ. This idea becomes a challenge since the New Testament
is ambiguous about which rules still apply and which do not. Moral laws, a
component of the Old Testament rules, would be included if all laws were
eliminated. However, this goes against what Jesus taught, who claimed in
Matthew 5:17 that he did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. On the other
hand, it is unclear from the New Testament alone which rules, if any, are still in
rule. This is where the Tradition of the Catholic Church comes in. The Roman
Catholic Church holds that as itself is a God-initiated organization, it holds the
power and authority to appoint and change laws. The Sola Scriptura concept,
which asserts that Scripture alone is adequate for comprehending true religion,
is in conflict with the dependence on Catholic Tradition. For individuals who
respect both Sola Scriptura and Catholic beliefs, this poses a dilemma.
176
The New Perspective puts in place the law as it has never left in the life of the
early community. It shows that Paul saw the controversy around the Law not from
a theological perspective but from a sociological, inclusivist perspective. Despite
all the unsystematic thought of Paul in matters of law, he considers the law to be
valid, not in a written form only, but in a living manner, Jesus himself. “To be
saved” in Paul’s context regained the concept of “to be able to enter the Covenant
with God,” which directly implies that a gentile should keep the law, be it the moral
law or the Torah itself, as a result of being accepted in the covenant with God
through the sacrifice of Jesus. As stated by Paul (Galatians 3:24), the goal of the
Law was to "tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith." He
further clarified that following the letter of the law does not make one virtuous in
God's eyes. This implies that although the law plays a part in regulating moral
conduct and accusing us of sin, it is not how we get into the covenant.
Followed by the third perspective which synthesizes the Old and New, around the
subject of Law and temple. By this perspective we see that Paul addresses
religious sociology considerably more than theology itself. He is attempting to
illustrate the new path that a non-Jew can take in order to become an Abrahamic
descendent and therefore be eligible for everlasting life. Christianity could be
seen therefore as a covenant-stretch to gentiles rather than a new religion, based
not in the rejection of law but in the adherence of the law by non-Jews. In the
Macro view of this word, Classical Perspective creates a Thesis, New Perspective
a Antithesis and the Third perspective creates a Synthesis.
Therefore, one should keep the law as a response to be accepted in the covenant.
This is the natural outcome and expectancy of receiving a gift from the patron
God. No one can be saved or accepted into the covenant by keeping the law,
because the law is not a invitation ticket to be part of the covenant. Only through
the election or free invitation, “grace.” Those who are in should live as the people
inside the covenant, which implies that those who believe in Christ should keep
the commandments to stay in the covenant, as E. P. Sanders says to be the
natural background to the second temple religion.480 Remaining the covenant
480 Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 420, 543.
177
means to keep the commandments of the Torah. Keeping the Torah in the context
of Pauline's interpretation was “following the example of Jesus.” The actual law
for him was not a compelled collection of traditional rules of the Torah but the
application of the Spirit of Torah, what he called the law of the heart, or the law
of Christ. However, this law does not exclude the need to practice the old and
well-known moral law given in the form of commandments as found in Exodus
20, as they are the only set of clear rules given in the second temple tradition
related to morality. Early Christian Jews and Gentiles were, in this perspective,
bound by the laws of the Old Testament regarding the moral aspects of the law,
especially the Ten Commandments, considered the moral law, especially for the
community had felt the necessity of circumcision to certain individuals who
wanted to sacrifice in the temple, meaning that even the newly converts to the
Jesus faith were abiding by the Old Testament law. Therefore, the law in the New
Testament gains a deeper meaning regarding the prophecies and statutes of the
Old Testament, which is highlighted in Paul’s writings as what to do/how to
act/right motivation, rather than having a “what not to do list.”
In contrast, therefore, do not dismiss the Torah laws. The obvious “confirmation
of the law” concept comes with making it stronger rather than useless or
canceled. The New Perspective dismantles the false dilemma previously
undertaken by the classical perspective of Law vs. Grace and makes it Grace +
Law. The Third perspective, in addition, shows that Paul was not in any form
against the law but saw the moral aspects as fundamental to the life of the
Christian, not being bound by the ethnically given customs of the law seen
primarily in the ritualistic aspect of the Torah.
178
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