Why Should a “Law-Free” Mission Mean a “Law-Free” Apostle?

Abstract

Law-free is a phrase habitually used to describe both Pauline mission itself, and Paul's own personal repudiation of traditional practices. The present essay argues that phrase misleads on both counts. Paul demanded of his gentiles a much greater degree of Judaizing than either synagogue or Jerusalem temple ever required or presupposed of theirs; and gentile involvements in community institutions, whether ekklesiai, synagogues, or temple, in principle can tell us nothing about levels of Torah observance within these same institutions. The essay concludes that much of Pauline mission was Jewishly observant and traditional, and that Paul's Judaizing demands of his gentiles are to be understood as an aspect of his absolute conviction that he lived and worked in history's final hour.(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Law-free is a phrase habitually used to describe Pauline mission, even by scholars (like me) who think it is wrong.1 The phrase seems historically useful because it serves to signal, economically, what long scholarly tradition has considered to be identifying characteristics of Paul's gentile mission: no to circumcision, no to the works of (Sabbath, food ways, circumcision), no to Torah, no to Jewish ethnic pride. For Paul and for his communities, as of our colleagues has phrased it, criterion of revelation and thus of salvation was grace, not race.2 And not only did Paul promote this message (so goes this interpretation), he himself embodied it. After revelation of risen Christ, Paul himself was law-free, dead to law (see Gal 2:19).This view of Paul's personal rejection of ancestral custom has proved remarkably enduring, stretching from earliest patristic theologies to current modern and postmodern ones, uniting those scholars of New Perspective with those of Two-Covenant perspective. No matter how various their interpretive frameworks, all of these scholars hold that Paul himself, in pursuit of his gentile mission, had ceased to observe traditions of fathers.3Finally, this idea of serves as a cover theory to explain history of earliest postresurrection movement. Why split between Hellenists and Hebrews? Hellenists were supposedly looser on issue of Torah observance.4 Why did Paul persecute ... in Damascus (Gal 1:13)? Because its members mingled too closely with uncircumcised Gentiles, an index of their own lax attitude toward law. And why eventually did Paul get as well as give synagogue punishment-five times forty lashes less one (2 Cor 11:24)? Because his own law-freeness offended or enraged synagogue communities in diaspora, just as, before his conversion, such laxness had offended and enraged him. To quote Alan Segal, Paul apostle was Paul apostate.5This reconstruction, in my view, is utterly wrong. I argue here that earliest movement's energetic extension to pagans, while socially unprecedented, was in fact Jewishly traditional. I also argue that main criterion for a pagan's joining movement was his or her commitment to a radical form of Judaizing. Additionally, I argue that scholarship's traditional emphasis on so focuses attention on synagogue resistance to Paul that it obscures involvement of many other ancient actors who likewise resisted Paul's mission: irate pagans, Roman magistrates, and most especially lower cosmic gods (2 Cor 4:4, 11:25- 26). Finally, I argue that levels of Torah observance in principle can tell us nothing about levels of Torah observance, whether within Christ movement or outside of it. To make my case, I will ask you to bear two contexts in mind: that of Greco-Roman city, and that of restoration theology.We are so used to knowing that gentiles, in order to join this new messianic movement, had to foreswear worship of pagan gods, that we easily fail to see what an odd idea this was, both in wider context of ancient city and in narrower context of resident diaspora community. …