In recent years, a rather animated conversation has been taking place about the apostle Paul. This conversation has largely been between those who identify with what is commonly known as “the New Perspective on Paul,” and those who wish to defend a more traditional understanding of the apostle. I can’t say for sure which side is winning the debate, but some of us who were initially inspired by the New Perspective on Paul have decided that it has not gone far enough—and want to push it even further.
The debate about Paul has to do with how one understands his mission and message, particularly what he meant by his famous dictum that one is “justified by faith.” According to the traditional view, which was established by Augustine in the early fifth century and developed more fully by Luther in the sixteenth, “justification by faith” refers to the belief that one cannot be saved by God through one’s deeds or “works.” Instead, one must be saved by “faith,” specifically faith in Jesus.
Religion predicated on salvation by “works” is represented by Judaism. Within this paradigm, Judaism and Christianity are antithetical religions, with Judaism being the bad and most primitive kind and Christianity being the good and most evolved form. Thus, built into the supposedly Pauline idea of “justification by faith” is an implicit anti-Judaism—a big problem for the Protestant theology that is founded on this reading.
The New Perspective emerged largely to address this issue. In contrast to the traditional interpretation, this new reading argues that Paul never meant the phrase “justification by faith” to be taken as a general theological principle about personal salvation. Rather it had to do with the relationship between Jews and Gentiles. Paul’s condemnations of “justification by works” were condemnations of Jewish Jesus-followers who saw the special laws of Torah observance (Sabbath, dietary laws) in elitist and exclusivist terms, and who were trying to impose those laws on Gentile Jesus-followers as a condition for membership in the Christian community. Paul’s argument with them was that Gentiles did not need to turn themselves into Jews in order to enjoy divine favor. The death and resurrection of Jesus had broken down the barriers that Jewish law had created between Jews and Gentiles.
No Beef with Judaism
Both the traditional and New Perspective views still see Paul as having some sort of issue with Judaism—Jews are portrayed as using the observance of Torah to keep people out of their elite club. The new, radical reading, by contrast, takes as its foundation that Paul remained fundamentally Jewish throughout his life (both ethnically and religiously) and had no “beef” with Judaism at all. “Justification by faith” in this scenario does not constitute a critique of Torah observance in general. Rather it is a critique of Gentile observance of Torah in particular. In no way does Paul condemn Judaism, and he certainly does not construct Judaism and Christianity as antithetical religions. His letters were written to a Gentile audience, and if there is any condemnation of religious practice to be found in the apostle’s writings, it is the idolatry of Gentiles, not the observance of Torah by Jews!
Paul makes it absolutely clear that his message was to Gentiles. In Galatians 1:16 Paul explicitly says that God called him in order that he “might proclaim him among the Gentiles… .” Paul’s teaching about “justification by faith” (which in any case does not constitute the core of Paul’s message) meant that Gentiles were not accountable to God for their lack of Torah observance. To Paul the death and resurrection of Jesus signaled the end of the age; as a result, Paul became concerned about the fate of Gentiles. The prophets had predicted that all the nations would come streaming to Jerusalem to worship the one God, and Paul’s mission was to turn all the Gentiles to God before the world ended.
The traditional view of Paul portrays the apostle as converting from Judaism to Christianity and in that process converting from a narrow, spiritually hollow, and xenophobic form of religion to one of grace, faith, and openness. From a Jewish perspective, however, the understanding of Paul’s proclamation of Jesus as the only way to salvation hardly makes Christianity a religion of openness. Thus the debate over how to interpret Paul is more than academic. If the newer reading of Paul gains widespread credibility, it has the potential to transform some key aspects of Christian theology and to rid Christianity of its residual anti-Semitism.
Jesus Saves, But He Only Saves Gentiles
Ironically, the more Jewish Paul is deemed to be, and the more we read him within his own historical context, the less parochial his message becomes. Because Paul preached exclusively to Gentiles, we know his message was intended for specific people, namely, for the Gentiles, not for all human beings. This means Jesus is not the universal means to salvation. Jesus saves, but he only saves Gentiles. Paul wasn’t worried about Jews—they were taken care of because they had an eternal covenant with God in the Torah.
Granted “Gentiles” is a big category, and Paul’s categorization of Jews and Gentiles is a rather simplified way of looking at the world. Nevertheless, Paul’s retention of the categories of “Jews” and “Gentiles” constitutes a vision of redemption in which human difference remains even at the culmination of history. He envisions all the various nations coming together to dwell in the new creation as children of God, but they are included in their variety as different peoples.
When Paul says “all Israel will be saved,” he doesn’t mean that all Israel will convert to Christianity—Christianity as a religion hadn’t even been invented yet anyway. He means all Jews and Gentiles will be part of the family of God.
They will be related but they will not be the same.
Although it may seem simplistic, I believe Paul’s message is conducive to thinking about religious pluralism, which is certainly one of the most critical issues facing us today. To be sure, Paul did not anticipate the religiously complex world in which we live. His view was too simplistic to be adopted as is; it will require more theological reflection and development. But an understanding of redemption that envisions people coming together while maintaining their differences is certainly inspiring, and that the second most important person in the history of Christianity articulated this vision of redemption offers Christians an authoritative resource for thinking about religious pluralism.
Tags: apostle, bible, christianity, epistles, gentile, jew, judaism, justification by faith, pluralism, saint paul
Paul converted to Christianity. It is Jesus who was not a Christian.
Jim, I think you miss the point of Dr. Eisenbaum's article, Christianity wasn't a coherent category to "convert" to at the time of Paul. So clearly you are incorrect on this.
Not true, the Epistles of Paul were written to early churches of Christ Followers. While I agree it was not a coherent set of Christ followers, it was Paul who brought coherency to that array various religious backgrounds.
Acts chapter 13 says otherwise.
Acts is not historical.
The idea that Paul only preached to Gentiles is inaccurate. Clearly if one has read the epistles of Paul one understands that while Paul spent the vast majority of his ministry outside of Judea, all the Jews were not in Judea. It is dismaying that people who purport to have knowledge about Paul clearly have not read the Bible, or history. The Jews were dispersed though out the known world at the time, so in Greece and Italy Paul was communicating and preaching to both gentiles and Jews.
Because Paul preached exclusively to Gentiles, we know his message was intended for specific people, namely, for the Gentiles, not for all human beings.
How do you square this statement with the book of Acts, which records that whenever Paul arrived in a new city, he almost always began by preaching and teaching exclusively in the synagogue? He would speak first to a Jewish audience, usually until they got so offended by his message that they threw him out or tried to kill him.
It is strange to suggest that Paul's teaching was not meant to be offensive to the Judaism of his day, when the Jews of his day clearly understood it that way.
To be sure, Paul was not an anti-Semite, and he warns us not to be either. In Romans 9-11, he reminds his Gentile audience i) that they ought to show gratitude, not hatred, to the Jews since they owe their salvation (at least partially) to them and ii) that far from being written-off, the Jews are still absolutely children of God's irrevocable gifts and calling, and God has firm plans to gloriously redeem Israel.
But in the same chapters Paul makes clear that the Jews of his day were on the wrong track, as far as God was concerned. He implies in 9:31-32 that Israel had failed to obtain righteousness "because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works". Though he is not writing to the Jews here, he is certainly writing about them, and he clearly believes that obtaining righteousness by faith is not just the way for the Gentiles, but for the Jews as well.
A few verses later (10:3-4), still talking about Israel, he says "Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes." Regardless of how you interpret that last sentence, Paul clearly indicates that Jesus is not just the focus of Gentile righteousness, but of Jewish righteousness as well.
You are correct that i) Paul had no problem with Jews observing the Torah (rather, he had a problem with those who thought that their Torah observance earned them credit with God) and ii) Paul (and early Christians in general) saw diversity of identity and practice as important to worship and integral to the kingdom of God. However, while Paul may support a pluralism of religious expressions, he quite clearly rejects a pluralism of goals, and even of means.
Spot on! It might be argued that Paul was writing a form of Midrash to Jews and Gentiles alike! He certainly was not anti-semitic, and Acts 9:18-19 tells us he was baptized; thus one might say he was a Jewish believer. So "inclusive" was Paul that he took issue with Peter at the Council of Jerusalem over the necessity for Gentile converts to undergo circumcision. He renders Peter's claim to "orthopraxis" secondary to his own claim for orthodoxy. If Paul needed to prove himself a pluralist, that rendering alone would accomplish it. All that being said, Paul was a very Christed Jew: more "both/and" than "either/or" to be sure!
Concur
Some books Paul wrote are addressed to Jews, others to Gentiles. There are plenty of disagreements concerning authorship on several of them, though! I am surprised that wasn't mentioned.
I don't understand what the "misread" is referring to, either. Many conservative Christians have been making the same Jew/Gentile distinction to explain the works/faith contradiction (and other little ones) in Paul's writings and James for a long time. It's not that new.
And what does the title have to do with the article? Paul isn't a Christian and the article is about Christian and Jewish theological disagreements? What does that have to do with Paul's religion?
The belief system of Christians is so embedded into people's minds that this kind of thing won't change anything. If science doesn't change minds, do you really think that this is up to the challenge? Nope. Paul will forever be a saint and looked upon as the "Father" of the church. End of story. With all due respect, this article is actually a tad lame.
You can't say much in such a short article but at least it encourages those of us who are beginning to outgrow some of the received doctrines that there are other ways of seeing even so great a figure as Paul.
At any rate it has pointed me to other ways of thinking.
With the exception of a couple of comments here I am surprised at how negative and dismissive the responders have been on what I thought was a good post by Dr. Eisenbaum. Perhaps readers missed the most important few sentences of the article:
"...to be sure, Paul did not anticipate the religiously complex world in which we live. His view was too simplistic to be adopted as is; it will require more theological reflection and development. But an understanding of redemption that envisions people coming together while maintaining their differences is certainly inspiring, and that the second most important person in the history of Christianity articulated this vision of redemption offers Christians an authoritative resource for thinking about religious pluralism."
Isn't the point here to actually attempt to think about Paul in terms of his value to our present day concerns and challenges? It seems the way forward with Pauline scholarship is to see if Paul can provide wisdom for our times and I think Dr. Eisenbaum provides us with some necessary reflection to judge whether the good apostle is useful to us or not. Wouldn't it be great if Paul's legacy in the 21st century was to be a force for mitigating religious hostility in the world? That would truly be redemptive!
Good article! Poor responses (largely)!
Mitigating religous hostility doesn't always address the problem. Consider two generations ago in the 60's when Martin Luther King was fighting racism in this country. He wrote his letter from the Birmingham jail complaining to his fellow preachers that they weren't engaged in addressing the problem. They knew there was racism and people were being harmed, but they were probably working at mitigate hostility instead of risking their lives and bodies to make the point that something was wrong and had to be changed.
Today we in America are under a religious curse because of the large number of people who believe the world must be destroyed (hopefully in our lifetime) and non-believers need to suffer. That is wrong and needs to change. Mitigating religious hostility won't help, and might actually hurt if it ends in some of the insanity becoming even more mainstream as we migitate things.
I agree that Paul should be prayerfully read and re-read to fully understand the messages to the first Christians and to us today. But it also important to join that study with a broad understanding of History. Such statements as "Because Paul preached exclusively to Gentiles," are just inaccurate by any standard. Because God called Paul to preach to the Gentiles, which is accurate, it was not an exclusive calling. There were Jews in every church that Paul visited and and wrote to.
It is good to re-look at things but not with "facts" that aren't indeed facts.
Disclosure: I am a part-time student at Iliff and the lectures by Dr. Eisenbaum are a legendary part of the degree program.
I was hoping to find someone who could make me like Paul. I have found several: Dr. Eisenbaum, Marcus Borg, and John Dominic Crossan.
Within the church, "Paul" has been used to keep women in their place. I know of few women not so treated by those who read the Epistles literally without questioning the circumstances. "Paul" is a divisive figure. In another of Dr. Eisenbaum's writings, she points to a simple potential question of translation which could dramatically change the perception of Christians worldwide: is the proper translation faith IN Christ Jesus or faith OF Christ Jesus?
Small word, huge implications.
With regard to the Acts passages, there were God worshippers in the synagogues who were not circumsized and therefore Gentile and not Jew: it is to those whom Paul spoke.
For me, the doctrine of justification by faith never quite did it for me. Personal ethics could be forgotten and all manner of cruelty accommodated by a literal reading of this doctrine.
On this matter of justification by faith, Borg and Crossan posit that the definition of "justification" may in fact mean "to be made just" by faith. This fits within the newer perception referenced above.
I recommend their book "The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary behind the Church's Conservative Icon" (Harper Collins, 2009) for a whole new "Christian" viewpoint that rests neither on condemnation of those with whom one disagrees or who are "justified" by doctrine to act according to their own prejudices.
As a Wesleyan tradition United Methodist, the doctrine of Justification by Faith is a beginning, not an end. Sanctification is the end.
Because some one says that Paul said something does not mean that he did. The problem here is not with Paul but the interpretation of Paul. I have read Paul's letters extensively with out the benefit of a Fundamentalist Preacher telling me what Paul said and I find an entirely different view of Paul.
To read the Epistles of Paul you have to put them in the context they were written. Paul was not writing Theological Texts, he was addressing real life problems on the ground. The Christian Communities were in disarray and confusion.
The disarray was to be expected. Segments of one organized religion, Judaism, was being merged a number of lesser structured belief systems that ranged from pantheistic to sex oriented religions. Each person brought their old ways with them when they decided to follow Jesus.
Paul was trying to explain to the new faith what was and was not part of Jesus' teaching. It is that context that he discusses a lot of the most abused of his writings.
It is disturbing that Professor would teach such unsupportable notions like that Paul preached to Gentiles only and was in anyway anti-Semitic.
He explains in Romans 15, about the unity of Jew and Gentile.
This is a noble undertaking to make a prominent Christian figure not anti-Jewish, but Paul wrote some very anti-Jewish things.
Just read Romans. I'll give you an example:
in Romans 11, Paul uses a metaphor of an olive tree. The Jews were the original tree, but God cut them off and has grafted Christian Gentiles to the tree. Check out Romans 9-10 also for more anti-Jewish assertions. These are only two examples.
I say "anti-Jewish" because Paul was against Judaism, not the Jews as a race (anti-Semitic). For more about this read Misunderstood Jew by Amy-Jill Levine.
These statements by Paul are based in Jewish Prophesy. It was part of the Jewish Prophesy. 1Kings 19:18 says "Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal and every mouth which has not kissed him."
Paul is but saying what had been prophesied that God would cut away from the tree the dead limbs and graft new limbs upon the tree. It is not anti-Semitic at all. If you know anything about horticulture, you know you graft a new branch in to an already live and thriving tree, that which was cut off was not the Jewish people but the people of the Jewish Faith that had abandon God to other Gods. The Gentiles would, Paul said be grafted onto the living Jewish Faith in one faith unified in God.
1. Didn't Paul say that Gentiles had become "co-heirs" with the Jews? That implies that Jews are still heirs of the great promises of God.
2. Whether Paul was a Christian surely depends on the definition of "Christian," and to say that he wasn't a Christian because Christianity was not a religion or a category during Paul's lifetime seems facile. Paul refers to "Christ Jesus" and "Jesus Christ," so he was clearly a "Christian" in the sense of one who believes that Jesus of Nazareth was the anointed one of God, the Jewish Messiah. Maybe to be a Christian one must go beyond that and believe in the divinity of Jesus, but I don't think that is what the fight (sorry, discussion) over whether Paul was a Christian is about.
3. It hardly seems possible that Paul limited his criticism of Torah observance to imposing it on Gentiles as a condition of joining the community of salvation. Is there evidence of Paul's attitude toward the necessity of Torah observance by Jews in the churches? If he believed it unnecessary, then how can he not be called "anti-Jewish," in the sense of disagreeing with an important part of Judaism?
4. Wouldn't Christian anti-Judaisim and anti-Semitism be extinguished if every Christian believed not only that Jesus was a Jew, but that Jesus IS a Jew? In other words, that Jesus lived a Jew, died a Jew, rose a Jew, ascended a Jew, poured out the Spirit as a Jew, and sits at the right hand of the Father as a Jew? How can this conclusion be repudiated if Jesus neither "converted" to Christianity nor repudiated Judaism during his lifetime on earth? This wanders a little from the topic of discussion, but if the reason for trying to "get" Paul correctly is the hope of extirpating Christian anti-Juadaism, why not go to the source?
With all due respect to Dr. Eisenbaum, I am, frankly, appalled by this rather pathetic attempt to drape the New Testament (and the Pauline Epistles in particular) in 21st-century "Political Correctness." Paul was an outspoken, opinionated, firebrand who had no qualms about speaking his mind and he minced no words to avoid offending the people he disagreed with. As another respondent has noted, he gave Peter quite a dressing down at the Jerusalem Conference (and bragged about it later in an epistle). He was quite unabashed about being abrasive in his remarks about the Jews of his day. He wrote: "We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles (1 Cor. 1:23). Elsewhere, he spoke of the "offense of the cross" (Gal. 5:11), and in that same verse implies that the Jews were "persecuting" him because he preached against circumcision (this persecution was alluded to obliquely by another respondent). Earlier in that chapter in Galatians, he raves against circumcision and then goes on to say: "Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law" (v. 3). Note that he is addressing himself to "every man"—not just to the Gentiles, as Dr. Eisenbaum claims. In fact, his comments on circumcision in Galatians 5 are addressed particularly to the Jews, for he says, "do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery" (v. 1). The slavery that he is referring to here is slavery to "the Law" (which Dr. Eisenbaum delicately refers to as "Torah" in truly politically correct fashion).
In her overzealous efforts to kowtow to political correctness, Dr. Eisenbaum confuses anti-Semitism with anti-Judaism (as another responded has pointed out). Anti-Semitism may be politically incorrect, but anti-Judaism is another matter entirely. Paul himself was a Semite and could hardly be accused of being anti-Semitic, but he certainly renounced Judaism (as it was practised in his day) and denounced it vehemently as being a "yoke of slavery" (as quoted earlier). As an aside, it was in fact the Jews of Paul's day who were the real racists, for they considered the Gentiles to be inferior to them (and even had a separate Court of the Gentiles in the Temple in Jerusalem reminiscent of segregation in the United States and apartheid in South Africa). Paul sought to cut them down to size on this score, writing specifically that "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28; see also Col. 3:11, where he mentions circumcision, which was a matter of great pride for the Jews). Paul could not have been clearer: race was immaterial in the kingdom of God: the Jews had no special passport to salvation by virtue of being Jews, whether racially or religiously.
As for Paul being a pluralist, I cannot imagine from what Biblical texts Dr. Eisenbaum conjured up such a notion. Anyone who could write the following passage could hardly be called a religious pluralist: "Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father"(Phil. 2:9-11). By "every tongue" Paul clearly meant that even Jewish tongues were required to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. This is not the stance of a religious pluralist by any stretch of the imagination. One can only wonder at the ignorance of a so-called "New Testament scholar" who can so brazenly claim that Paul's message was that "Jesus Saves, But He Only Saves Gentiles." Peter, who was himself rebuked by Paul for being soft on Jews who had been baptized into the faith, said early on: "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).
[continued …]
As for the claim that Paul was not a Christian—it is patently absurd and Dr. Eisenbaum's efforts to support it are quite laughable. She writes: "Christianity as a religion hadn’t even been invented yet anyway." There can be no doubt that Christianity existed as an entity in its own right in Paul's day, though it was admittedly not the Christianity that we know today. Even someone as high-powered as Herod Agrippa recognized Christianity as a separate and distinct "religion" when he said to Paul, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian" (Acts 26:28, KJV). And in 1 Peter 4:16, we read: "Yet if [any man suffer] as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf." If these references are not a clear enough indication that Christianity did indeed exist as a religion in Paul's day, then perhaps it might be pointed out that the Book of Acts is at pains to make it clear that it was in Antioch, where Paul spent a whole year, that the disciples of Christ were first called Christians (Acts 11:26). Quite apart from all these textual references, the followers of Christ in the time of Paul did all the things that are characteristic of a religion. They had regular meetings for religious purposes, they performed rituals (baptism and the "Lord's Supper"), they had councils (two, in fact, in Jerusalem), they had an organizational structure to which were appointed elders, presbyters, and deacons, and they argued about doctrine. If these activities don't constitute a religion, then I don't know what does. At any rate, it is plainly absurd to claim that Christianity was not a religion in Paul's day.
There is much more that is simply wrong about this article, and other respondents have pointed out some of these errors. Space does not permit a full accounting of the errors, and in the end, they don't really matter. The real issue is the appalling attempt to turn Paul into some sort of politically correct 21st-century pop-spirituality New-Age all-embracing anything-goes guru. I am appalled by the shoddy scholarship, the sweeping generalizations, the tendentious "revisionism," but above all, by the cavalier manner in which Dr. Eisenbaum does insidious violence to the text of the Pauline Epistles (and the rest of the New Testament), by invoking—without actually mentioning it—the political correctness doctrine.
Thank you for your two part post. You took the time to do the work of documentation that I did not have time to do. I am in agreement with your summation.
Paul was certainly not, by any stretch of the imagination, a pluralist. He strongly believed in the equality of access to God, but it was clear from all of Paul's writings that he believed that there was but one path to Salvation, Jesus Christ.
I am a Christian Pluralist, but Paul was not. Paul was holding together a new Church and you do not accomplish that by equivocating. Today when we have a highly (maybe over) Structured Church we can question things at the edge of our Faith.
Thank you for you words and the work behind them.
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