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The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel's Scripture

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In Conversion, Hayes shares with us some of his early research that led him to his excellent "Echoes of Scripture." His posit that we must read Paul as a preacher of the hope of Israel, while sounding simple, is profoundly important. Pau's claim that his gospel was nothing but the fulfillment and proclamation of that spoken by the prophets has incredible implications for the proper understanding of the N. T., and yet, in the amillennial and postmillennial worlds, this truth is greatly misunderstood, or ignored.

Hays' suggested rewording of Romans 4:1 is particularly provocative, and sets the stage for opening our eyes to a totally different interpretation of that text/context than has been the center of the faith-v-works polemic for so long.

I highly recommend Conversion of the Imagination. If you read this work carefully, it may be that you also, like Paul, have a conversion of the imagination!

In order to understand Paul, one of the things that is of major importance is understanding how he understood the bible of the early Church (the Old Testament). Hays has spent over two decades learning how Paul handled the Old Testament, and this along with his Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul will richly repay study. The last and briefest essay (originally appearing as an article in The Christian Century), "A Hermeneutic of Trust," should be read by everyone who wants to know why some scholars (and others) take such a loose view of the authority of Scripture, and who wants to be reassured that we stand under, not over, Scripture. Recommended.

This book is a compilation of ten essays written by Hays over the years. The essays are brilliant and might take reading over several times to fully digest. Hays considers Paul's hermeneutic of the Old Testament and cites several examples in I Corinthians that show how Paul considered the church to be the eschatological people of God. The arguments he presents are pursuasive and compelling. In another section of the book Hays expounds Paul's train of thought in the last few verses of Romans 3 and Romans 4. The insights he offers into this section of Romans is alone worth the price of the book. He shows how Paul mounts an argument from the law to show that the law always pointed to inclusion of the Gentiles, who were apart from the law, into Abraham's family. Like another reviewer here noted, Hays failure to translate certain German texts is frustrating and would have been helpful. Hays makes a couple of points that I didn't necessarily agree with. For example, he contends that Paul's argument in Galatians hinges on the understanding of the singular seed as an allusion to David's seed in II Sam. 7. I need to re-read this section but I believe that N.T. Wrights idea of the incorporative use of Christos in Galatians 3:16 sounds more reasonable to me, especially in light of Pauls conclusion in 3:29. It seems to me that Paul's quotation of the relevant Genesis texts would be dis-ingenuous knowing that the 'seed' there is a collective singular. Wright's incorporative idea of Christos might also have been helpful regarding Hay's interpretation of Habbakuk 2:4. Overall, this is an excellent book and I highly recommend it.

In this book Hays develops many of his thoughts from Echoes. He addresses criticisms and expands upon previously vague thoughts and points. This book is a collection of some of his more prominent essays.

Hays employs a key concept throughout his work: metalepsis. Metalepsis is when one text alludes to another text and evokes resonances beyond those explicitly cited (2). Hays then gives his criteria for employing and recognizing metalepsis, or "echoes." The text must have availability--it must have been extant to its original hearers and users (this is a fairly obvious point). Volume is the second criterion--how loud is the echo? This will vary from a faint allusion to an overt citation. While this appears subjective, Hays gives several points on how to recognize loud echoes in Scripture. Thirdly, is the echo recurring elsewhere in a writer's corpus?

Hays' first essay deals with eschatology in Corinth. Hays asks whether the Corinthians should be seen as "performing Isaiah's script." Through identification in Christ, the Corinthian Church (and by extension ourselves today) were to see Gentiles brought in (Isa. 49:23; 60:1-16). Hays ties this in with Scripture by noting Scripture is a narrative in which the Corinthians sought identification. They participated in Israel's story (1 Corinthians 10: 1-13) and in doing so fulfilled Israel's proper goal--to bring the Gentiles to the worship of God.

In his next essay, "How did Paul read Isaiah?", Hays advances one of his more controversial claims: Paul's reading of Isaiah is ecclesiocentric and not primarily Christocentric (26). Paul did not primarily appeal to Isaiah to prove the deity of Christ (as many appeals to Isa. 53 assume). Rather, his reading of Isaiah points to a final eschatological people of God in which the Gentiles are included (this is key to Hays' next few arguments in other essays).

Hays hits gold in his next few essays dealing with "the righteousness of God." He builds upon Ernst Kasemann's thesis that dikaiosune theou means "salvation-creating power," though he rejects Kasemann's apocalyptic overtones. The heaviest use of the phrase dikaiosune theou occurs primarily in Romans 3. Hays notes that Romans 3 is an extended discussion on Psalm 143. God must be seen as faithful to the covenant despite human unfaithfulness. When read in its entirety Psalm 143 is a psalm that anticipates a salvation effected by God's own righteousness (e.g., his saving power). In conclusion, Hays blunts any talk of construing "righteousness" as imputation, but sees it as salvation-creating power.

Hays then has an extended essay on Abraham and justification. He says any discussion of Romans 4 must take the previous paragraphs into accounot (3:27-4:1). Paul's problem is not "how to find acceptance before a wrathful God," but to work out the relation of Jew and Gentile in Christ (69). This means God justifies the Gentiles in the same way as Jews.

WHAT IS THE ROLE OF THE LAW, THEN?

Reformed theologians are partly correct in that the Law condemns, but that's not the Law's primary focus, nor does it condemn in the way they think it does. Hays points out the Law serves to identify the people of God. Hays follows Dunn's reading of ergon tou theou as marking the identity of the people of God. If this reading is correct, Paul's argument in Romans 3 comes into focus. While it is true that Paul would forbid boasting in our meritorious works, why then does he make the point, if the Reformed gloss is correct, using such out of the way arguments against circumcision and other identity markers (e.g., "receiving the oracles", etc)?

True, the Law does pronounce condemnation, but here Paul "spins" the way we normally see it. Paul's quotes several Psalms in Romans 3 to that point, but where the Psalms speak of condemning Israel's enemies--Paul uses them to condemn Israel! On the other hand, Paul is not offering a systematic doctrine of the Law. Rather, he is destabilizing an entrenched Jewish mindset.

Hays' final point on the law warrants reflection. Hays ties his discussion of the Law in with his earlier point about dikaiosune theou to make his conclusion: if the Law speaks of dikaiosune theou, as all say it does, and if dikaiosune theou means "salvation-creating power," as Hays has capably argued, then Torah announces that God's saving power is for all the nations (95ff)! Paul's reading of the law has undergone a fundamental hermeneutical shift: 1) Torah is now seen as a narrative of promise; and 2) The promise expressed in Torah is primarily for the Church now.

Hays final essays show Christ as the paradigmatic figure in the Old Testament. Hays examines how Christ prays the Psalms and how believers can find their identification in him. Of some interest is Hays' essay on Habbakuk 2:4 and ho dikaios, the Righteous One. Hays surveys Old Testament texts speaking of ho dikaios and possible NT parallels in the non-Pauline corpus.

Hays then notes Paul's use of the phrase. Paul used Hab. 2:4 in Romans 1. Given its context, we see a revelation of God's faithfulness before the nations and a coming eschatological judgment. This language echoes most of Isaiah where it is promised that when God acts to intervene on behalf of "Israel," he will bring salvation to all the nations (137). Obviously, this reading is superior and clearer than the usual post-Reformation gloss on Romans 1. Paul is not saying that an inward human disposition (e.g., faith) is the new way in which God's faithfulness is revealed (which would have been odd, since the Jews had "faith" in God). Rather, it is a response to theodicy: in both cases how can God be faithful to the covenant in the face of human wickedness?

CONCLUSION

Hays successfully stays with his thesis throughout the book, though not all chapters are equally strong. I think his last chapter on Paul's use of Scripture is weak. He started out by saying that Paul did not view Scripture as a "didactic database from which to draw prooftexts." There is a truth to this point, and Hays starts out well, but it seems halfway through his essay he realized that Paul did indeed appeal to the Old Testament didactically (cf. 1 Cor. 9).

Elsewhere, I wished Hays would have expanded some of his thoughts on the Law. I agree with his and Dunn's reading of "works of the law" as ethnic identity markers, but it would have strengthened his case considerably had he spent a few extra paragraphs arguing and developing that point, rather than consigning it to a footnote.