Reading Paul with the Reformers

Reconciling Old and New Perspectives

Stephen J. Chester

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781467447881
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Studi biblici

In debates surrounding the New Perspective on Paul, the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformers are often characterized as the apostle's misinterpreters-in-chief. In this book Stephen Chester challenges that conception with a careful and nuanced reading of the Reformers' Pauline exegesis. Examining the overall contours of Reformation exegesis of Paul, Chester contrasts the Reformers with their opponents and explores particular contributions made by such key figures as Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin. He relates their insights to contemporary debates in Pauline theology about justification, union with Christ, and other central themes, arguing that their work remains a significant resource today. Published in the 500th anniversary year of the Protestant Reformation, Chester's Reading Paul with the Reformers reclaims a robust understanding of how the Reformers actually read the apostle Paul.

PART III

INDIVIDUAL PERSPECTIVES

Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin on Righteousness in Christ

5Alien Righteousness in Christ

The Integration of Justification by Faith and Union with Christ in Martin Luther’s Pauline Exegesis

5.1.Luther’s Account of Justification in Its Early Protestant Context

As we have seen, there is a relentless external emphasis in early Protestant accounts of justification. God encounters people in justification only outside of themselves and the righteousness received remains an alien righteousness. The task of identifying such shared features of early Protestant accounts of justification has been undertaken with some thoroughness by Berndt Hamm, who in doing so seeks to answer the question, “what links the Wittenberg Reformation of Luther and Melanchthon, the Reformation of Zwingli in Zurich and Calvin’s Geneva-based Reformation in their opposition to medieval Catholic doctrine and the reforming Catholicism of the sixteenth century?”¹ Hamm provides several answers to this question, but within them the theme of the extrinsic nature of justification and the alien nature of the righteousness granted to the believer through Christ is prominent. Justification is “unconditional” in the sense that acceptance by God is not in any way caused by works performed by the believer either prior to faith or subsequent to faith. The concept of merit is utterly rejected as inappropriate to Pauline exegesis and the righteousness granted to the believer in justification is and remains wholly and entirely that of Christ. The sinner is accepted into holiness, and holiness is the correlate of acceptance, but holiness forms no part of its basis before God. There is a strong sense of the complete and perfect nature of the salvation granted to the believer: “In place of the two-way medieval Catholic path of gradual cooperation between God and humanity that leads to salvation, there entered the new theme that God alone is effective.”²

If this is true, then grace cannot be a quality in the believer. Instead, grace “is nothing but God himself in his mercy, the grace of God, God giving himself in community with the sinner.”³ As such, grace is prior to any and all believing activity on the part of a person and therefore becomes the basis of assurance. The believer stands in the grace of God so that there is an “eschatological final validity of justification. Through the acceptance of the sinner, his entering into the righteousness of Christ, something final has taken place.”⁴ All of this is received by faith alone, and this faith is bound to the biblical word of God. Only in this trustworthy word that is given by God and that takes sinners outside of themselves into total reliance on divine promises can faith have validity. However much it is the case that justification truly speaks to the deepest inner needs of sinners, “people do not find the gracious God when they find themselves and God in their innermost being. Instead, God encounters people outside of themselves as the unconditionally loving one.”⁵ This strong emphasis upon alien righteousness is rooted in the work of Martin Luther. Yet it is important to see that, although a vital part of Luther’s account of justification, Luther’s contribution is not restricted to this extrinsic emphasis or reducible to it. In particular, Luther typically explains alien righteousness in relation to union with Christ and in relation to the apocalyptic themes of his theology. In the integration of these elements and especially in the way Luther expresses the christological nature of alien righteousness there emerges the distinctive nature of his Pauline exegesis. For all that they share a new Pauline exegetical grammar, and for all that each of them emphasizes the alien nature of the righteousness received by believers, Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin each hear Paul differently in this important respect. Melanchthon and Calvin are profoundly influenced by Luther but do not simply reproduce his exegetical conclusions. The exploration of Luther’s exegesis is therefore the first step in understanding the relationship between their interpretations of Paul and the different ways in which they express the christological focus of justification by faith.

5.2.Interpreting Luther Interpreting Paul

Luther is an elusive thinker, whom scholarship finds difficult to pin down. He returns to the same themes and ideas again and again in his vast corpus of work, but rarely for the sake of producing tightly defined doctrines. He produces tracts for the times and expositions of Scripture, but not systematic theology.⁶ As a result, his characteristic ideas and themes appear not for their own sake but in the service of other goals. Luther is more concerned to counter the arguments of his critics, or to communicate clearly the meaning of the biblical authors, than he is with achieving consistency in the use of his intellectual resources. This is not necessarily to allege that Luther contradicts himself, although his ideas certainly develop during the course of a turbulent career spanning several decades. Rather, it is to acknowledge that his thought is as sprawling as it is fertile. Luther’s thought resembles the complexity and variety of a great Gothic cathedral, not the clean lines of a modernist building. There may be genuine coherence and unity, but the structure could scarcely be described as uniform or regular.⁷

It is therefore potentially misleading to discuss Luther’s “view” or “understanding” or “doctrine” of justification by faith or, indeed, union with Christ, as if they constituted single, easily definable entities.⁸ In his exegesis Luther provides different explanations of them as he is prompted by the demands of the text and of debate. His theology of justification can be particularly difficult to pin down. Concern with it permeates his writings, Luther perceiving it as relevant to virtually every other theological issue. Luther is spoken to powerfully about justification not only by texts where Paul directly addresses that theme but also by texts with a different focus. This pervasiveness of the theme of justification in Luther’s Pauline exegesis leads Luther to employ together explanations of justification that were to become distinct from each other in later eras. In turn this makes difficult a systematic analysis of justification in Luther’s Pauline exegesis and therefore, in what follows, the focus is on his dominant or typical patterns of explanation.

The identification of what constitutes such typical or dominant patterns is a matter of controversy. Contrary to the images of Luther often prevalent within contemporary New Testament scholarship, his contribution is not reducible to a rather “thin” forensic account of justification or to his radical rejection of all works righteousness. In fact, since the end of the Second World War, trends and new developments in the interpretation of Luther have been broadly analogous to trends and new developments in the interpretation of Paul. Developments in each field have both reflected contemporary intellectual currents and generated vigorous debate. In the interpretation of Paul, previously dominant existential accounts have been succeeded by ones focusing on apocalyptic categories and/or on union with Christ. Meanwhile, Luther has successively been interpreted primarily within existential categories (the dominant longstanding tradition within German Luther scholarship),⁹ or as an apocalyptic thinker (so the late Heiko Oberman and many of his students),¹⁰ or most recently as one centrally concerned with participation in Christ (Finnish Luther scholarship).¹¹ Finally, again as in the interpretation of Paul, some have sought to incorporate the insights of the other major approaches within their own paradigm. From within the German tradition Oswald Bayer portrays Luther primarily as a theologian of God’s performative word that accomplishes what it declares. Bayer begins with a discussion of Luther’s apocalyptic mode of thinking and he also pays considerable attention to union with Christ.¹²

The strong resemblance between these patterns of development in the interpretation of Paul and of Luther should lead New Testament scholars to pause for reflection. Without downplaying the significance of the NPP, and especially its revised account of Second Temple Judaism, wariness is necessary as regards contrasts with Luther that are too simple or sweeping. Particularly in relation to the theme of justification, something more complex may be happening than the replacement of an inadequate interpretation of Paul’s texts based upon traditions derived from Luther with superior ones freed from that inheritance. The apocalyptic Luther or the Luther focused on union with Christ may have more to offer contemporary Pauline scholars as a dialog partner than is usually supposed. As will be explored (see 8 and 9) in more detail in later chapters, contemporary interpretations of Paul may be exegetically indebted to Luther and to other Reformers in ways currently unacknowledged. In particular the relationship within Luther’s exegesis between justification by faith and his participatory and apocalyptic motifs holds promise in terms of relevance to contemporary discussions of Paul.

5.3.The Human Plight: Luther’s Apocalyptic Anthropology

In relation to soteriology, appreciation of the apocalyptic nature of Luther’s appropriation of Paul is foundational to an accurate understanding of what he teaches about justification by faith and the manner in which justifying faith establishes union with Christ. For justification and union with Christ function within an apocalyptic dualism that configures the gulf between those who are being saved and those who are perishing in absolute terms.¹³ There is no way to understand their positive value for Luther if we do not first understand the human plight in contrast to which they stand. Description of this plight is therefore the indispensable backdrop to discussion of these themes in Luther’s Pauline exegesis. We have already seen many features of this plight when discussing the Reformers’ shared convictions concerning sin, shared convictions of which Luther was the single most significant originator (3.1). Most significantly, there is the severe and total impact of sin upon human nature encapsulated in Luther’s description of sin as “the person turned in upon the self” (homo incurvatus in se).¹⁴ The fallen human being has no resources to apply to salvation but is in bondage to the self, in love with sin, and incapable of loving God.

Having reached this view, it is scarcely surprising that Luther rejected the nominalist soteriology (see 2.3.2) in which he had been schooled as a young theologian.¹⁵ In this soteriology initial acts of repentance are within the power of fallen human beings and fulfill their part of a divine covenant (pactum) with humanity. If individuals do quod in se est (“what lies within them”), God will justify despite the feeble nature of such repentance. Luther’s difficulty is that, given his view of sin, he simply does not believe that even the limited required level of repentance is possible for anyone. Repentance is not a human possibility that provides a gateway to justification and to union with Christ. Rather, it is a divine gift that truly exists only within these realities. For Luther, if the nominalist position were accurately to describe how God justifies, it would be nothing other than an announcement of universal damnation.¹⁶ However, Luther’s rejections go further. His views also contradict other perspectives within medieval Pauline interpretation, such as that of Thomas Aquinas (see 2.3.1), or that of some theologians within the Augustinian order (see 2.3.3), who did not share the nominalist optimism about the capacity of fallen human beings to repent. On these views, initial repentance is a gift from God, and human beings then cooperate with divine grace in a process of renewal. Christ in his righteousness enters into individuals and, with their cooperation, produces a righteousness that is inherent to them such that they can eventually stand before God on the basis of their own merits.¹⁷ Such merits can only ever be...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Prologue
• I. Hermeneutics: The SixteenthCentury and the Twenty-First Century
• II. Shared Convictions: The Reformers’ New Pauline Exegetical Grammar
• III. Individual Perspectives: Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin on Righteousness in Christ
• IV. Contemporary Implications: The Reformers and the New Perspective on Paul
• Medieval and Reformation Figures
• Bibliography
• Index of Authors
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Texts
• Index of Medieval and Reformation Texts