Interpreting Paul

The Canonical Paul, volume 2

Luke Timothy Johnson

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781467461573
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Études bibliques

"For me, Paul has always been the most difficult and therefore also most delightful advocate and interpreter of the Lord Jesus Christ and of the human experience of God's transforming power through Christ. In Paul's letters above all I have found the quality of mind and the depth of conviction that could arouse in me both excitement and passion. And it is Paul's letters, above all, that show how important and difficult is life together in the church."
— from the preface

With the contextual framework in place from volume one of The Canonical Paul, Luke Timothy Johnson now probes each of the thirteen biblical letters traditionally attributed to the apostle Paul in a way that balances respect for historical integrity with attention to present-day realities. In doing so, Johnson reforges the connection between biblical studies and the life of the church, seeking to establish once again the foundational and generative role that the thirteen letters of Paul have had among Christians for centuries.

Far from being a "definitive theology" of Paul, or an oversimplified synthesis, Interpreting Paul provides glimpses into various moments of Paul's thinking and teaching that we find in Scripture, modeling how one might read his letters closely for fresh, creative interpretations now and into the future. Approached in this way, both in minute detail and as a whole canon, Paul's letters yield rich insights, and his voice becomes accessible to all readers of the Bible.

Chapter 1

Romans 3:21–26 and the Faith of Jesus

The Soteriological Significance of Christ’s Obedience

By his recent article on the pistis Christou formulations in Paul,¹ Arland J. Hultgren has performed the service of reviewing the scholarship devoted to this issue,² and discussing the syntactical points pertinent to the question.³ He has also shown that the resolution of the debate will come about not on the basis of linguistic analysis alone but on the basis of exegesis.⁴ Unfortunately, his own exegetical observations, especially those concerning the critical passage, Rom 3:21–26, lack the necessary sharpness. In this short note, I join the growing number of those who are discontented with the abrupt dismissal of the “faith of Jesus” by Ernst Käsemann and other commentators,⁵ and who find that, simply on exegetical grounds, a subjective reading of pistis Christou is not only sometimes possible but at times (as in Rom 3:21–26) necessary.⁶ The basic pieces of my argument have been shaped before, especially by Markus Barth.⁷ I will here try to refine his position, taking into account the excellent observations of Sam K. Williams on Rom 3:21–26.⁸

The three phrases employing pistis in Rom 3:22, 25, and 26 are awkwardly placed. If Paul was here adding clarification to a traditional formulation, he botched the job rather badly. There are problems with reading the genitives in these phrases subjectively, but they are small compared with those facing the objective rendering found in all the modern translations and purveyed without question by the major commentaries.

First, we must note the literary function of this passage. Paul here restates the thesis of Rom 1:17, after elaborating its antithesis in 1:18–3:20. Two things follow from this simple observation: (1) Paul is here showing how God’s way of making humans righteous is being revealed; the emphasis is on the gift rather than on its reception; (2) there is a formal balance between the thesis and its restatement. Perhaps the simple exegetical technique of reading the passage without the phrases in question will help us see this. If we omit dia pisteōs Iēsou Christou from 3:22, dia [tēs] pisteōs from 3:25, and ek pisteōs Iēsou⁹ from 3:26, we see at once that Paul is stating in straightforward fashion what God has accomplished for humans in the death of Christ. The only place where the reception of that gift is mentioned explicitly is in 3:22, eis pantas tous pisteuantas.

If, with the RSV and most commentators, we read the three phrases as referring to faith in Christ, what happens to the passage? First, in Rom 3:22 we have redundancy. Why should Paul add eis pantas tous pisteuontas if he has just said “through faith in Jesus Christ”? The added note of “all” (pantas) lends some specificity, it is true, but not enough to make this added phrase necessary. On the other hand, a subjective reading makes the two phrases distinct. Now, with the righteousness of God being revealed through the faith of Jesus, the emphasis on God’s gift is maintained. Furthermore (and this is, I think, conclusive), we find a formal parallel to 1:17. As Paul there spoke of God’s righteousness being ek pisteōs eis pistin, so here the eis pantas tous pisteuontas corresponds to the second member of that balanced phrase, and dia pisteōs Christou corresponds to the ek pisteōs of 1:17.

The second phrase, dia [tēs] pisteōs, in Rom 3:25 is even worse, if read objectively. The RSV’s “to be received by faith” strikes one as a desperation move. The placement of the phrase between hilastērion and en tō autou haimati is, as Williams has shown, “extremely difficult.”¹⁰ The least likely function of the phrase, however, is to refer to the reception of the gift. Precisely the awkward placement of the phrase demands that we regard it as modifying God’s action of putting forth Jesus Christ as a redemption, in the expiation effected by the shedding of his blood. The most obvious referent would be God himself. It was “through his faithfulness” that he put forward Jesus. This understanding of God’s fidelity is important in Romans.¹¹ But the close conjunction of the phrase “in his blood” and “expiation” leads me to think that the phrase dia [tēs] pisteōs here again (and awkwardly) refers to the disposition of the one who was shedding his blood—namely, Jesus. A decent translation is nearly impossible. I would hazard the following as at least an indication of how I understand the phrase working: “Whom God put forward as an expiation: through faith, in the shedding of his blood.” I am reading the last two phrases almost as a hendiadys. The faith of Jesus and the pouring out of his blood, together, form the act of expiation. Dia and en are both to be taken as instrumental. This is convoluted, but it makes more sense than the objective rendering, and there is another place in the New Testament (1 Pet 1:2) where an equally strange construction demands a similar construal.

The final phrase, ton ek pisteōs Iēsou (Rom 3:26), is rendered by the RSV “him who has faith in Jesus.” This is the least likely of all the objective readings, for it forces the simple meaning of the Greek. One would ordinarily (and free from other considerations) render this “the one who shares the faith of Jesus,” meaning “one who has faith as Jesus had faith.” The faith of the human being Jesus is here clearly intended. In 4:16 the same phrase occurs in reference to Abraham, tō ek pisteōs Abraam. The RSV does not there translate as “those who believe in Abraham” but (quite correctly) as “those who share the faith of Abraham.”¹² So should we understand 3:26. This is supported by observing the way Paul uses Jesus’s personal name. This is the only time that pisteōs Iēsou occurs. Ordinarily, Paul uses the messianic title in such phrases, or in other statements of belief. Indeed, he does not often speak of Jesus simply by name. When he does, his emphasis appears to fall on Jesus’s human identity rather than on his messianic role (see esp. Rom 8:11; 1 Thess 1:10; 2 Cor 4:10–14). Paul’s meaning in 3:26, then, would seem to be that God, by revealing his saving action in the cross of Jesus, has not only shown himself to be righteous but shown himself to be one who makes righteous those who, on the basis of Jesus’s faithful death (I will return to this awkward expression), have faith in God.

By reading Rom 3:21–26 in this fashion, we not only respect its literary function as the restatement of Paul’s thesis in 1:17, but allow it to move naturally into the discussion of Abraham’s faith in 4:1–25, and (of even greater importance) allow it to be understood in the light of 5:12–21, where Paul again describes the gift of God’s grace brought about through Jesus. Indeed, I suggest that the key to understanding Rom 3:21–26 is found in its placement between 1:17 and 5:18–19. But before that can be made clear, a few preliminary points must be made.

It is not always obvious on what grounds resistance to the notion of “the faith of Jesus” is based. There may be fear of a notion of faith as a sort of “work” that might nullify the sovereignty of God’s grace, even if this happened to be a work by one whom we confess as God’s Son. Therefore, no matter what the plain sense of the Greek seems to demand, we conclude that Paul cannot mean that Jesus had faith, or, if he did, that this could not be soteriologically significant. Unfortunately, doctrinal presuppositions (from whatever direction) make for poor exegesis. But perhaps there is a more genuine difficulty upon which the resistance is based—a failure of imagination. In what sense could Jesus be a believer? If Paul spoke of “the faith of Jesus,” what could he mean by it?

It is at this point that the severest criticism has been leveled at those studies that have tried to supply this imaginative picture out of a “biblical theology” perspective. Seeking a “biblical” understanding of pistis, some have tried to read ’emun, “faithfulness,” wherever Paul has used pistis or alētheia.¹³ Certainly, the severe criticism of some of these suggestions by James Barr, for example, is correct.¹⁴ On the other hand, this negative reaction seems to have almost paralyzed the imagination of those who read Paul, so that pistis and its cognates take only an almost univocal sense, and we find it more and more difficult to imagine how Jesus might have had pistis, or how Paul might have spoken of it. For the discussion to proceed, I think it necessary to restate again some fairly simple yet important distinctions. They are: Paul can use pistis and its cognates in more than one sense; and Paul can indicate the same reality by more than one word. To be specific, I recall here the distinction made already by Rudolf Bultmann between pistis as confession and pistis as response to God;¹⁵ and I recall the connection drawn (again by Bultmann, and later by Markus Barth) between faith and obedience in Paul.¹⁶ If the logic of these distinctions and connections is firm, then one can reach a satisfactory understanding of “the faith of Jesus” in Paul and see how Rom 5:18–19 explicates Rom 3:21–26.

Faith as the Confession of Christ

Pistis as confessional is so important for Paul, and its use so pervasive, that it colors the whole discussion of pistis Christou. For purposes of clarity, I here leave aside for the moment the disputed cases. Apart from these, we see in the plainest fashion that Paul makes Christ the object of faith. The clearest examples are when he uses the verb pisteuō, as in Gal 2:16, kai hēmeis eis Christon Iēsoun episteusamen, and in Phil 1:29, to eis auton pisteuein.¹⁷ The noun form is used so unequivocally only in Col 2:5: stereōma tēs eis Christon pisteōs hymōn. The fact that Paul speaks so clearly of Christ being the object of belief cautions us against precipitous conclusions regarding the disputed genitive constructions. But in what sense does Paul speak of Christ being the object of faith?

Christ is the object of the Christian’s faith in the sense of specifying confession.¹⁸ We do not find in these passages that “faith” describes a relationship of trust, fidelity, or obedience to the particular figure designated as Messiah, but rather to God’s offer of righteousness (salvation, redemption) through the death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. Paradoxically, the fundamental confession is not (for Paul) “Jesus is Christ” but “Jesus is Lord,” and this is attached explicitly to “confession” language in Phil 2:11, kai pasa glōssa exomologēsētai hoti kyrios Iēsous Christos eis doxan theou patros, and in Rom 10:9, ean homologēsēs en tō stomati sou kyrion Iēsoun.¹⁹ The confessional aspect of pistis specifies the shape of the Christian response to God. Thus, not only “Christ” but also the gospel can be spoken of as the object of such faith.²⁰ Likewise, Christians can be referred to by Paul simply as the “believers” (hoi pisteuontes),²¹ and those outside the community as apistoi.²² Such “faith in Christ” sets Christians apart not only from pagans, “who do not know God” (1 Thess 4:5), but also from Jews, who have faith in the one God (Rom 2:17; 10:2) but who do not confess Jesus as Christ and Lord; that is, they do not acknowledge God’s way of revealing his justice in the present time.²³

In those places, then, where Paul is concerned to stress the particular shape of the Christian response to God (especially in contrast to non-Christian Jews), there are good reasons beforehand to suspect that a pistis Christou formulation would be an objective genitive. Such appears to be the case in Gal 2:16a, combined as it is with the already cited verbal form, “and we have believed in Christ Jesus.”²⁴ Yet, even here, where Paul’s contrast between faith and the works of the law is clear, a certain ambiguity is created by the presence of ek pisteōs Christou in the same verse, and by the phrase, four verses later, en pistei zō tē tou huiou tou theou (Gal 2:20). With ek pisteōs Christou, one wonders whether the RSV has adequately captured the sense with “by faith in Christ,” for that leaves us with the same sense of redundancy as we had in Rom 3:21.²⁵ In the case of Gal 2:20, one would like to follow the RSV in reading, “I live by faith in the Son of God,” were it not that, again, the sense is that one lives because of the gift and not because of the mode of its reception. It is not “faith in Christ” that gives Paul life. It is “Christ living in me” (Gal 2:20a). The “faith” here, one begins to think, may belong to “the one who loved me and gave himself up for me” (Gal 2:20b).²⁶ Even where “faith” appears to refer to specifying confession, therefore, we are faced with the possibility that it may be less part of the gift’s acceptance than of the gift itself, so that we need to read, “I live now, not I, but...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Romans 3:21–26 and the Faith of Jesus
• 2. The Social Dimensions of Sōtēria in Luke-Acts and Paul
• 3. Transformation of the Mind and Moral Discernment in Romans
• 4. Life-Giving Spirit
• 5. The Body in Question
• 6. Glossolalia and the Embarrassments of Experience
• 7. God Was in Christ
• 8. Truth and Reconciliation in 2 Corinthians
• 9. Ritual Imprinting and the Politics of Perfection
• 10. The Truth of Christian Experience
• 11. The Expression of Christian Experience
• 12. Paul’s Vision of the Church
• 13. The Rise of Church Order
• 14. Fellowship of Suffering
• 15. Mystery and Metaphor in Colossians
• 16. Doing the Truth in Love
• 17. Sacrament of the World
• 18. Discernment, Edification, and Holiness
• 19. The Apostle as Crisis Manager
• 20. Oikonomia Theou
• 21. The Shape of the Struggle
• 22. Second Timothy and the Polemic against False Teachers
• 23. The Pedagogy of Grace
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography