Winter 1984 - 1985 - Quarterly Review

NEW TESTAMENT RECONSIDERED
Gentiles, etc., came to be regarded as a discussion of legalism and grace.
"Where Paul was concerned about the possibility for Gentiles to be
included in the messianic community, his statements are now read as
answers to the quest for assurance about man's salvation out of a
common human predicament" (p. 86). This Lutheran interpretation has
a considerable impact on the reading of specific texts. Reinterpretation
of a classic text is by no means illegitimate; indeed it is necessary if a text
is to remain a classic. Also, reinterpretation may make possible
significant theological insight, as in Luther's case it certainly did. To fail
to note that one is reinterpreting, however, can result, in this instance, in
attributing to Paul a view of Judaism that he did not hold and in missing
his salvation-historical way of saying that through the no of Jews to
Jesus, the Way was opened for the gospel to move to the Gentiles.
In his "Paul and the Torah," Lloyd Gaston argues that Paul was an
apostle to the Gentiles, that he was commissioned by the Jerusalem
Council (Acts 15; Gal. 2:1-10) to preach among the Gentiles, that he was
not commissioned to preach among Jews and that he apparently never
did. All his letters were sent to congregations overwhelmingly made up
of Gentiles. Foremost among the problems faced by those Gentile
followers of Jesus was the right of Gentiles qua Gentiles to full
citizenship in the people of God without adopting the Torah of Israel.
Gaston's thesis is that legalism—"the doing of certain works in order to
win God's favor and be counted righteous—arose as a gentile and not a
Jewish problem at all" (p. 58). It was the God-fearers not under the
covenant who "had to establish their righteousness by the performance
of certain works, compounded by uncertainty as to what these works
should be" (p. 58). The term "works of the law," not found in any
Jewish texts, refers to the Gentile habit of adopting certain Jewish
practices as a means of self-justification. How else can Paul address the
Galatians with the question: "Tell me, you who desire to be under law,
do you not hear the law?" (4:21). In this passage, remarks Gaston, one
hears Paul the Pharisee who really knows the Torah replying to
amateurs who are only "playing with the idea" (p. 64). "When Paul is
most negative about the law, he opposes it to—the law, i.e., the Torah!
Opposed to 'the other law, the law of sin' is 'the Torah of God' (Rom.
7:22f)" (p. 65).
Paul spoke as he did to Gentiles because with them a new
vocabulary was necessary. He never spoke to them of repentance, a
central Jewish idea, because "that meant turning back to the God of
the covenant, and Paul was interested in gentiles turning to him for
the first time" (p. 65). Gaston's article is useful to ministers in helping
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