Paul, the Law, and the Covenant

Trinity Journal, Fall 2004 by Hafemann, Scott

A. Andrew Das. Paul, the Law, and the Covenant. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2001. 342 pp. $24.95.

Das's Union Seminary (Virginia) dissertation recognizes that "the ultimate (and unanswered) problem for a reading of Paul that still sees the doing of the law's requirements as a problem or 'plight' ... is that it was not a plight for the Jew or for Paul (Phil 3:2-9)" (p. 11).

Though always diverse, Judaism as a whole had earlier held to covenantal nomism (e.g., Jubilees, Qumran, Philo, and some Tannaitic texts) (pp. 24, 28-29, 31, 38, 45). In time, however, the disappointments of Israel's continued life under foreign domination, seen as God's wrath, led post-70 apocalyptic Judaism (e.g., 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, 3 Baruch, 2 Enoch, T. Abraham) to abandon the "gracious framework" of covenantal nomism by denying the saving efficacy of Israel's election in favor of a judgment by works (pp. 8,10, 47, 50, 52-53, 55-56, 60, 62, 67-69, 186 n. 52). As a result of the "collapse" of this "gracious framework," the commands of the Law "come to the fore" as demands that must be kept perfectly (or nearly so) to be saved. Unable to be kept, they "emerge as problematic" in their call for obedience and corresponding threat of God's curse for failing to do so (p. 7).

What texts like 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch concluded about Israel and the covenant based on the events of A.D. 70, Paul stated on the basis of her rejection of Jesus. Without its covenant context, all that remains for Paul is the Law's rigorous and difficult demand for perfect obedience (as Sanders himself put it, a "legalistic perfectionism," p. 53 n. 38) and the glaring reality of Israel's (and humanity's) utter failure to meet it (Gal 3:10; Rom 1:18-2:29; pp. 8, 9, 53 and 53 n. 38, 140, 162, 164, 168-71, 181-82, 187-90, 228). Indeed, when the framework of the covenant is denied, the Law's demand for "works" is for Paul an "enslaving obligation" that cannot be kept due to the power of sin and the flesh (Romans 7; p. 10). Thus, like apocalyptic Judaism, "Paul disrupts the irreconcilable tension between the two poles of Jewish thought by weighing judgment over mercy" (p. 187). And because Jews too will be judged by their works, just like Gentiles, "Paul therefore compromises the gracious framework of covenantal nomism in favor of a universal judgment according to one's deeds" (p. 191).

Judaism's response was either pessimism or a call for a revival of keeping the Law in order to reestablish their covenant relationship with God. In stark contrast, Paul's response was to redefine the covenant in terms of Christ. "Paul's denial of the efficacy of sacrifice, election, and covenant leads him into the sort of dilemma that other Jewish groups felt who no longer had available to them the temple (post-70 CE. Judaism) or an efficacious covenant with ethnic Israel (Qumran). . . . Paul is saying that the Jew who disobeys the law has no effective path to resolve the situation caused by sin, since its resolution can be found only in Christ. The Mosaic law has been severed from its context and forced to function as an empty series of demands requiring obedience with no solution for failure-hence, Paul's negative view of the law" (p. 144). As a result, "the law's observance becomes a merely human endeavor offering a worthless righteousness. The framework of Judaism has been supplanted by a new framework: God's action in Christ. Severed from the gracious framework of God's electing and saving activity, the law can offer only an empty promise, 'rubbish'" (commenting on Phil 3:9; pp. 221-22)..

Das asserts, "Only faith in Christ could create such a shift in Paul's thinking to see these things as worthless. As a Jew he would have seen them as ordained and sanctioned by God. ... It is not just Jewish cultural identity but also the observance of the law itself that have been downgraded to merely human accomplishment of no value in God's scheme of things. This is a radical position" (p. 222 n. 27). According to Rom 9:32, Israel therefore missed the true goal of the Law in Christ because she was concerned with its requirements, which is a "false path." . . . "The human pursuit of the law is in principle opposed to God's action on the basis of election" (pp. 246 n. 44, 247, emphasis mine). "It is because they were involved in the doing of the law that they failed to believe" (p. 247). Israel missed the "inner meaning" of the law "because of their rush to pursue the law's demands" (p. 247; cf. p. 257 n. 95).

Nevertheless, the Law in Paul's thought also performs a positive function in its witness to the need for faith, thereby pointing to Christ (see Rom 3:21-22, 27, 31). The law consequently has two meanings: its demand for works and its simultaneous witness to a righteousness apart from works based on faith in Christ (pp. 245, 250, 263). Romans 10:4 is consequently a "double entendre" (p. 265) that is "deliberately ambiguous" (p. 252) in referring to Christ as both the goal of the witness of the Law and the abolishment of the Law in terms of its demand for works (p. 251). The "Law of faith" is thus its function of witnessing to and calling for faith, as seen in the Abraham narratives in Romans 4 (p. 200). There is therefore a "tension internal to the law" itself between its demands for works and its witness to faith, since the Mosaic law is fundamentally "a merely human endeavor" (pp. 201,11, cf. 201, 202-3 n. 45, 211-12, 237-39, 244, 268).