Sunday, November 28, 2004
(7:31 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Epistle to the Americans, pt. 2
Picking up in the middle of Romans 3, where pt. 1 left off.Now we know that whatever the Bible says, it says to those who claim the Bible, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world be held accountable to God. For not everyone needs to join institutional Christianity to practice justice. For "all humanity will not become just in God's sight" by the deeds of the law, for through the law comes only the full knowledge of sin. But now, apart from law, scripture, and institution, the justice of God is available -- the same justice of God attested by the scripture and the church -- the justice of God through the faithfulness of Jesus the Messiah for all who are faithful to his message. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of God's just demand; they are now made just by his grace as a gift, through the hope for redemption attested by Jesus, whom God presented to the world in order to reconcile us through Jesus's faithfulness. He did this to show his justice, because in his patience and mercy he had passed over the flagrant corruption of humanity, so that now he could prove his justice in making just those who adhere faithfully to Jesus.
Evangelical Christian: Then what becomes of our pride in being Christians?
Me: It is excluded.
EC: How is that? Are you founding a new religion in which pride is forbidden?
Me: No -- I am forming a "religion" of faithfulness. For we hold that person is made just through his faithfulness, apart from any religion whasoever. Or is God the God of the Christians only? Is he not the God of the whole world?
EC: Of the whold world, of course, or else he wouldn't be the One God.
Me: And he will justify the religious on the basis of their faithfulness and the irreligious through that same faithfulness.
EC: So are you trying to abolish Christianity and religion altogether?
Me: By no means! On the contrary, we deeply value religion.
EC: Then what are we going to say about Paul, the founder of our Christian religion? Surely if he was so religious as to found a religion, he had something to be proud of.
Me: But not before God! For what does Paul say in his letter to the Romans? "I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faithfulness." Now if Paul thought that someone could be saved simply through finding the right rules to follow, he would be following the model of institutional affiliation. But to one who without keeping a checklist of pious deeds trusts in God who justifies even the irreligious, faithfulness is the cause of justice.
Is the justice of which Paul speaks pronounced only upon the Christians, or also on the non-Christians? Paul says that his justice stemmed from faithfulness. Was this as a result of becoming a Christian, or before he had identified as a Christian? It was not after, but before, since Paul would never have called himself anything but a faithful Jew -- indeed, the word "Christian" does not appear in any of his writings. His writings only later became "Christian," as part of God's providential plan to make them available to all, even those outside the church. The purpose of his message was to make him the forerunner of all who are faithful to Jesus without joining the Christian chuch and who thus are made just, and likewise the forerunner of those religious Christians who are not merely religious but who also follow the example of faithfulness that Paul had before Christianity came into existence. For the gospel that would transform the world did not come to Paul or to anyone after Paul through belief in the innerant New Testament, but through the justice of God displayed in the faithfulness of Jesus.
If it is the Christians who are to be the only heirs, then faithfulness is null and the promise is void. For religion brings wrath, but where there is no religious law, there is no violation either. For this reason it depends on faithfulness, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all those who follow Paul's footsteps, not only to those who faithfully carry on the pious observances of the Christian church but all those who share the militancy of Paul -- who is the father of all the faithful, as he writes, "I am a debtor to the Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish" and "the gospel is the power of God for salvation... to the Jew first and also to the Greek." Hoping against hope, he believed that "All Israel will be saved," after "the full number of the Gentiles has come in." He did not weaken in faithfulness when he considered his own human frailty and failings, or when he considered the resistence of his own coreligionists. Not distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faithfulness as he sought to carry his mission to the ends of the earth, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. It was through this faithfulness -- not through his inclusion in the Christian canon of scripture or in his being declared a saint by the Christian church -- that he was made to be an exemplar of justice. That justice was not for his own benefit or reward, but for us, too, for whom the very same justice is available to those who trust in the one who vindicated Jesus, the Messiah who was handed over to death by our corrupt human institutions and who was raised from the dead so that we might trust in God's promise to make us just.
This concludes the second installment of the Epistle to the Americans. Another installment is sure to follow in this, the perhaps hastily declared St. Paul Week here at The Weblog.
