Now when Paul perceived that one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, “Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. It is with respect to the hope and the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial.”
If the essential problem with Pharisaism was a soteriological doctrine of works-righteousness, then Paul here is being a traitor to his call to preach the gospel and is proclaiming another gospel.
Mark,
Isn’t it obvious that Paul was trying to force a divide here between the sadducees and the Pharisees to give an entrance for the gospels?
Nobody in this debate maintains the Pharisees were wrong on the resurrection, on angels, or the canonicity of Isaiah. In this respect Paul is closer to the Pharisees than the Sadducees. What they were wrong on is claiming favor from God based upon birth and works (get in to covenant by birth, stay in by works, if you will –sounds eerily familiar). And, to be wrong on that one point is to be wrong on all.
Now, to him who works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation…
Mark,
Isn’t there a difference between apologetic technique and a doctrine lesson? If he gets a discussion going on the resurrection, then he can begin to unfold the whole gospel beginning with death and resurrection like Peter does at Pentecost.
It would help me if you could point me to what I said about Shepherd.
As far as Shepherd being standard vanilla on law and Gospel, that is a new one by me. I thought Shepherd saw himself as having an innovative take on the whole issue (though it is certainly influenced by Schilder).
Again, I reiterate, what did Paul mean when he said, “Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift but as an obligation.” How can we say that Paul was not taking issue with the false doctrine of justification by works?
That’s my point, Ken. If pharisaism represents that error, then Paul does not have permission to strategize in that way. He would be endorsing the heresy by claiming the name. (Is “strategize” not a word? Why is my Firefox spell checker underlining it in red?)
If Pharisaism involved a doctrine of salvation by meritorious works then Paul cannot claim to be one of them. It would be the endorsement of a false soteriology by Christ’s ambassador. It would be treason.
As far as the “eerily familiar” crack, Ken. It would challenge me more if I hadn’t seen your reasoning in condemning Norman Shepherd in which you accuse him of believing what has been standard vanilla Reformed theology regarding law and gospel. Your beef is with the Westminster Standards not with any real or imagined new movement. (I’m not saying that everything you mentioned about Shepherd was vanilla, but you didn’t seem to discriminate.)
If this was a discussion between myself and some generic Evangelical Bible believer, I would find these asides easier to receive. Coming from a minister I continue to be flummoxed.
I have this in my paper on Shepherd: the one that sticks in my memory was the denial that the conditions of the Mosaic Covenant and the Covenant of Grace are the same. I don’t think Shepherd is (or saw himself as) innovative on Law and Gospel. I was trying to restrict my point to a bite-size chunk, but probably failed to communicate clearly.
Paul does condemn “justification by meritorious works” (I agree with you but don’t want to accidentally condemn James) and I would go to exactly your passage in Romans 4 to show this. What I don’t see in Romans 4 is any attempt to argue or prove the statement that it would be wrong to think one earns favor from God like wages. To my reading this is common ground between Paul and his opponents. Paul is showing that holding the Law as some eternal principle would amount to a pagan (I see Romans 1.18ff as deliberately implicating Israel in the idolatry of the pagan) quid pro quo exchange (c.f Acts 17: the true God is not served [“healed”] by human hands).
I don’t see how Romans 4 can be used to show that the Pharisees thought this was right and true. In Romans 11 and 1 Cor 4, Paul warns Christians against arrogance and boasting by reminding them of election (though in Romans 11 election may also be seen as a temptation for boasting). But in neither case do I think it is necessary to posit a theology of merit salvation on the part of those professing Christians.
For what it is worth.
Mark said:
{quote}
If Pharisaism involved a doctrine of salvation by meritorious works then Paul cannot claim to be one of them. It would be the endorsement of a false soteriology by Christ’s ambassador. It would be treason.
{/quote}
Mark, I think you have mistaken Paul’s meaning and purpose. When he says, “Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. It is with respect to the hope and the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial,” you cannot construe that he is saying, “it is for the matter of works-righteousness that I am here on trial”.
Factually, Paul hangs almost all of the promise of the Gospel on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In 1Cor 15, he says if there is no resurrection — Christ being the first resurrected — then we Christians are to be pitied above all people; we are the worst off. In Romans 1, he hangs the whole of the claims of Christ as son of God on the resurrection as fulfillment of prophecy. The resurrection is the historical foundation of the rest of his theology — not as a future promise (though it is that) but also as a factual event which proves Jesus is Christ and therefore God.
In that, this passage from Acts 23 points to Paul’s view that the Jews ought to believe in the resurrection. His affirmation here says nothing about grace about everything about what the proper beliefs of Jews ought to be.
And let’s admit something here: he’s right. If a Jew was actually of the same faith as Abraham, he ought to be a believer in the same foreign country that Abraham was a traveller to. This world ought not to be worthy of that person. His faith should be the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
To construe what Paul says here as somehow abandoning the Gospel is misreading what he says and to whom he is saying it.
And I am sorry I have not gotten back to you on the matter of NT Wright as I said I would. The season has me at bey.
I noticed this also with the “sect of the Pharisees” in the Jerusalem church of Acts 15. Yes, they’re wrong about projecting the Gospel out to Gentiles. But … they’re heard as Christian believers.
There’s also Pp 3:5, where Paul points out, Pharisaism is a plus, a “confidence in the flesh”. That Paul denies this confidence so he may know Christ Jesus doesn’t deny the fact that Pharisaism is this plus
The plus behind Pharisaic teaching embedded in places like Matthew 5:17-20 also seems significant to me.
This is no attempt on my part to “reconcile” with Pharisaic ideas — I do think there’s a highly problematic soteriological implication in the Pharisaism of Jesus’ day. However, primarily? I don’t think it can be said that Pharisaism is primarily a soteriological problem.
Btw, I first ran into this idea in F.F. Bruce’s “Peter, Stephen, James and John”. A cool little book.