Yesterday we celebrated the great feast of St. Peter and St. Paul. Whereas yesterday’s lections focused on St. Peter, today our attention is directed to St. Paul, as well as commemorating the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost. In today’s epistle, St. Paul reminds the Galatians how he came to faith. The gospel he received did not come from men, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. He had been exceedingly zealous for the tradition of his fathers and had consequently persecuted the church of God. But by revelation Christ had made himself known to him and he had been commissioned to preach the gospel to the Gentiles. He did not in the first instance go to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before him, but went into Arabia and then returned to Damascus. After three years he went to Jerusalem to see St. Peter and stayed with him for fifteen days, but saw none of the other apostles, except St. James, the brother of the Lord. He emphasises that this is a truthful account of what happened and how he came to faith in Christ.
Over the centuries there have been many attempts to explain the sudden transformation of St. Paul from one who was a hostile persecutor to the great apostle and missionary he later become. A popular and influential view holds that St. Paul had striven to lead as scrupulous and observant a life as he could, striving to be righteous by his own efforts. But for all his striving he had been plagued by a guilty conscience that he had never been quite good enough. When he saw the light on the Damascus road the scales finally fell from his eyes. He realised that he could never be righteous by his own works, but that the grace of God in the redeeming work of Christ had done for him what he could not do for himself. He came to recognise that all had sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and salvation could not come through his own efforts, but only by divine grace. Recognising the bankruptcy of his former way of life, St. Paul abandoned Judaism for the new faith of Christianity.
While this view explains some of the evidence there are other factors that should give us pause before accepting it. It is certainly true that St. Paul repeatedly emphasises that salvation can only come by divine grace rather than by human effort. But it has often been pointed out in recent times that this view owes more to the “introspective conscience of the West” than exegesis of St. Paul’s epistles themselves. It tends to read St. Paul too much through the lens of the psychology of St. Augustine or of Martin Luther, people who had striven to be righteous but found it impossible save by divine grace. But St. Paul himself never speaks of labouring under a guilty conscience before his conversion. Indeed, he writes in one passage to the Philippians that he had been “blameless” according to the Law (Philippians 3). He shows no sense of abandoning Judaism for a new faith. For him the true God remained the God of Israel, the maker of all things and judge of all men, and it was as the fulfilment of the hope of Israel that he proclaimed the gospel. In his great epistle to the Romans he speaks of how in the end, when the fullness of the Gentiles have come in, all Israel, at present estranged from the gospel, will be saved (Romans 11).
It is therefore not surprising that a new school of thought has emerged which emphasises St. Paul’s continued indebtedness to his Jewish faith. It is pointed out that he never in principle argues that Jews should cease to observe the Law, but that his polemic in epistles like Galatians is against those who try to impose the requirements of the Law on Gentiles. According to this view there are in fact two covenants, the first with the Jews who lived under the Law of Moses, and the second with the Gentiles, through faith in Jesus Christ. Judaism remained valid for Jews, but faith in Christ was the way of salvation for Gentiles.
It is certainly true that the main thrust of St. Paul’s polemic is not against Judaism as such, but rather the attempt to impose it on Gentiles. But this view also fails to provide a satisfactory exegesis of all the texts. It cannot explain why when St. Paul writes to the Corinthians he says that when Moses is preached in the synagogues a veil is placed over the hearer, but when a man comes to faith in Christ that veil is removed (2 Corinthians 3). This is not the language of two covenants, one with Jews and another with Gentiles, but rather a blunt recognition that since salvation is only by faith in Christ, the following of any other path is wrong, or at the very least inadequate.
It would therefore seem that neither of the contrasting views we have discussed provides an adequate explanation of all the evidence. The first view fails to explain St. Paul’s continuing indebtedness to Judaism, while the second view fails to do justice to his strong critique of any other way of salvation than faith in Christ, including non-Christian Judaism.
How might we find a more satisfactory way of interpreting St. Paul? It is probably best to begin where he began before his conversion, his Jewish faith. He believed that the only God, the creator and redeemer of the world, had chosen Israel to be a light to the nations to witness to this faith. But Israel had not been faithful to her vocation and there was consequently a seemingly insoluble tension between what is and what ought to be. The hope of Israel was for a time when God’s purposes would finally be realised and his Kingdom would come on earth as it is in heaven. The nations would abandon idolatry and come to Jerusalem to worship the God of Israel, the Holy Spirit would be poured out on all flesh, a new covenant would be written on the hearts of men and the dead would be raised into a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. Given this hope it was not surprising that St. Paul was initially scandalised by the Christian claim. How could Jesus be the promised Messiah of Israel when the prophecies were still unfulfilled? Nature was still red in tooth and claw and Jesus had not only failed to deliver Israel from Roman rule, but had actually been crucified by the occupying forces. This was surely a sign not that the Kingdom of God had come, but rather that it had not. The new faith was clearly a dangerous heresy that needed to be rooted out and destroyed.
But when he saw the light on the Damascus road, St. Paul came to understand everything in a new way. Though the old order of sin and death was indeed still continuing, a new creation had been inaugurated in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. St. Paul had expected the prophecies to all be fulfilled at the end of the age when the dead would be raised. Instead they had begun to be fulfilled in the resurrection of one man in the middle of the present age. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Corinthians 15). There was now no condemnation for those who were in Christ Jesus, for the law of the spirit of life had set men free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8). The dark forces that seem to rule this present age had been in principle defeated on the cross (Colossians 2) and since the hope of Israel and the nations had now been fulfilled it was time for the Gentiles to come in and share the faith of Israel. St. Paul had previously envisaged the nations coming to Jerusalem to renounce their idols at the end of the age. Now he believed that he had been commissioned himself to go out among the nations to preach the gospel to them, summoning them to renounce idolatry and turn to the one God who had now finally revealed himself in Jesus Christ. He was not ashamed of the gospel, which was the power of God of salvation for all who believed, whether they were Jews or Gentiles, the righteousness that comes only by faith in Jesus Christ (Romans 1).
He was not abandoning his previous Jewish faith but neither did he believe that his previous faith was fully adequate (as the two covenant theory would have us believe). Rather he believed that the new creation had come to birth in the midst of the old in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit had been poured out on all flesh, a new covenant written on the hearts of men. The nations were now summoned to repent and be baptised and to live according to the Spirit, above all that most excellent gift of charity which suffereth long and is kind, which vaunteth not itself, rejoicest not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth.
The faith which St. Paul proclaimed to the nations is the same faith that we must continue to proclaim today, as we continue to live in the time between the dawning of tbe new creation in the first coming of the Saviour in time and history and his final coming, when God will be all in all, in that new heaven and that new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.