Winter 1984 - 1985 - Quarterly Review

NEW TESTAMENT RECONSIDERED
Jesus as the Christ but simply that "all Israel will be saved" (11:26),
and Paul writes this whole section of Romans (10:18-11:36) without
using the name of Jesus Christ. The final doxology in the passage is
the only one in Paul without a christological reference. Says Stendahl:
It is tempting to suggest that in important respects Paul's thought
here approximates an idea well documented in later Jewish thought
from Maimonides to Franz Rosenzweig. Christianity ... is seen as
the conduit of Torah, for the declaration of both monotheism and
the moral order to the Gentiles. The differences are obvious, but the
similarity should not be missed: Paul's reference to God's
mysterious plan is an affirmation of a God-willed coexistence
between Judaism and Christianity in which the missionary urge to
convert Israel is held in check (p. 4).
In working his way toward this conclusion, Stendahl makes several
points. First, following his method of insisting on a simple reading of
Stendahl argues that we must see Paul's experience on the
Damascus Road as a call rather than a conversion.
the text unobscured by what we already think we know, he contends
that we must see Paul's experience on the Damascus Road as a call
rather than a conversion. Conversion usually connotes a change from
one religion to another, in this case from Judaism to Christianity. Paul,
however, was not converted but called to the specific task of
apostleship to the Gentiles. Of his own experience, Paul says: "when
he who had set me apart before I was born, and had called me through
his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might
preach him among the Gentiles . . ." (Gal. 1:15-16). In this comment
are found clear allusions to those calls issued to Isaiah and Jeremiah
that they become prophets to the nations (Isa, 49:1, 6; Jer. 1:5). Rather
than being a conversion, Paul's experience brought him to a new
understanding of the law "which is otherwise an obstacle to the
Gentiles" (p. 9). A careful reading of the three accounts of Paul on the
Damascus Road yields the same result (Acts 9, 22, and 26). Paul did
not change his religion: "It is obvious that Paul remains a Jew as he
fulfills his role as an Apostle to the Gentiles" (p. 11).
Second, Stendahl notes that "justification" and words related to it
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