Israel's Law and the Church's Faith: Paul and His Recent Interpreters [Paperback]

Stephen Westerholm (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1998

A scholarly treatment of the debate over the law in Pauline thought. After describing how Luther viewed Paul's statements on the law, Westerholm provides an extended survey of major twentieth-century works that bring the “Lutheran” construction of Paul into question. He then develops his own view of the matter, referring constantly to the concerns and solutions posited by the scholars whose work he has examined.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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About the Author

Associate professor of biblical studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. His other books include Preface to the Study of Paul and Israel’s Law and the Church’s Faith: Paul and His Recent Interpreters. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 238 pages
• Publisher: Wipf & Stock Publishers (July 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1579102336
• ISBN-13: 978-1579102333
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,699,379 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Neo-Lutheran Reading of Paul as an Alternative to the New Perspective on Paul, February 23, 2011

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This review is from: Israel's Law and the Church's Faith: Paul and His Recent Interpreters (Paperback)

I have read all of the Paulinists (in English) and Westerholm is the most entertaining. N. T. Wright is more crisp but Westerholm is more fun. The entertainment arises from Westerholm's veiled and implied irony in tandem with his side-swipes of full-on sarcasm. In some ways reading Westerholm reminds me of reading Kierkegaard (both employ sarcasm and both are attempting a return to [Neo] Lutheran insights). I always bust out laughing while reading Westerholm--and at one point of the text, was even reduced to side-splits and streaming tears.

But, as noted below, there are other good reasons for reading Westerholm:

Structure/Approach
Overall, the structure and argument of Westerholm's book is as follows: In the Introduction (Chapter 1) Westerholm sets matters up with the rubrics of "The Problem" and "Luther's Answer."

In Part 1 (Chapters 2 - 6), Westerholm provides a quasi topical/chronological survey of the major development within Pauline Studies which have led up to the current situation--a situation which is problematic for Westerholm in that, in many key respects, it departs from the Lutheran (and largely Reformational) reading of Paul. This perceived departure is, of course, the New Perspective on Paul (NPP).

In Part 2 (Chapters 7 - 11), Westerholm sets out his own position with respect to the salient issues bound up with Paul's nomology. In the first Chapter (7), Westerholm calibrates definitions for terms central for Pauline nomology. It is in this Chapter that Westerholm responds most directly to some of the Paulinsts featured in the survey of Part 1. But the remainder of Part 2 is essentially Westerholm's articulation of his own reading of Pauline nomology. Indeed, throughout Part 2, Westerholm never fully enters into direct counter-diction of the Paulinists surveyed in Part 1. Thus, one will want to look elsewhere if one seeks a thrust and counter-thrust engagement with the proponents of the NPP. In the end, Westerholm's overall approach may be characterized as providing an alternative (yet essentially traditional-Reformational) reading of Paul that squares more readily with the exegetically driven definitions of the pertinent terms of Paul's nomology as calibrated by Westerholm in Chapter 7. Westerholm sensitizes the reader to this approach from the outset--at the end of the third paragraph of his Preface.

Key Problematics Engaged by Westerholm
Despite appearances, Westerholm is actually engaging two problematics in his book.

The first is more traditio-theological and involves the perceived caricature of Luther's theology as represented by the positions of certain NPP proponents who relativize (in various ways) the strong contrast contained in the Lutheran thesis: "justification by faith, not by human works" (p. 141). How Westerholm responds to this problematic was noted above (i.e., by presenting his own position).

The second is more biblical-theological and can be succinctly respresented as follows:
Paul holds fast to two propositions: 1) The valid divine law was given, by God, for life--it promises life to those who keep its commands. Thus, with the giving of the law, God intended life; but 2) a. The law fails to convey the life it promises (due to human transgressions) and b. since God knew, all along, that the law would not convey life (because God knew beforehand that this life would come by Christ), God had always intended the law to lead to sin (and death).

So which is it? Was the divine law intended for righteousness/life or for sin/death? Do these conclusion not exhibit non-coherence in Paul--if not contradiction?

Both Sanders and Hubner are struggling with this same problematic and each "resolves" it differently--more accurately, each provides "non-resolutions" in their own way: the former simply admits that Paul is incoherent (with respect to the coherence between his nomological conclusions--but Paul is consistent in that his conclusions follow from his working premises) while the latter introduces the thesis of the angelic genesis/intent of the law (= purposed for sin/death).

In general terms, the NPP (and positions tributary to it) resolves this problematic by throwing the Pauline theological baby out with the (Dunnian) Jewish-National bathwater--Paul's nomology gets reduced to rearguard (Watsonian) Socio-Missiological machinations and, in the end (and more generally), Paul the theologian gets eclipsed by Paul the PC missionary outfitted with all of the sensitivities currently in vogue throughout Western academia--those pertaining to Nationalism, Racism, Ethno-centricism, etc. Not unlike the Jesus of Liberal Protestantism, with the Paulinism of the NPP, we get to see Paul at the bottom of the well of history--and lo and behold if it is not the face of a contemporary Western academic multi-cultural (and, no doubt, "revolutionary") Paul staring right back at us!

Thankfully Westerholm is not a proponent of the NPP; however, in my opinion he ever really resolves this problematic satisfactorily. What he does do is situate Paul in his "religious heritage," Judaism, and point out that the theological tradition to which Paul is tributary itself exhibits this incoherence. Thus, the problem cannot be made coterminous with Paul's theology but must be predicated of the extra-Pauline theological dimensions of (certain strains of) 1st Century Judaism. This is not so much a resolution of the problem as it is a devaluing of the value of the charge of Pauline incoherence through a kind of inflation--a multiplying of such incoherence and a propagating of it far and wide. I myself think there is a more accurate and substantial way to resolve this apparent Pauline problematic of incoherence.

In passing it should be noted that C. Beker grapples with the same nomological problem and, via the deployment of his (now famous) contingency vs. coherence model of the Pauline hermeneutic, comes away with a much more favorable picture of Paul's coherence (i.e., it is the contingent situation to which Paul is writing which results in apparent inconsistency--but this inconsistency is not as fundamental or systemic as Sanders [nor Raisanen] would like to believe).

Other Contributions & An Engagement with NPP
In addition to the succinct and accurate (and therefore quite helpful) survey of the salient Paulinists up to the date at which the book was published (Part 1), Westerholm's most important contribution, in my opinion, is his treatment of central Pauline terminology; he quite vividly demonstrates the clear (and traditional) readings of such terms which arise from their biblical context and this constitutes a kind of foil against which the exegetical gymnastics of various NPP proponents--gymnastics required to sustain the NPP reading--are thrown into sharp relief.

But Westerholm is not, of course, wholly opposed to all of the insights of those who are considered to be proponents of the NPP. As one example, he endorses Sander's (actually it goes back to Wrede, if not earlier) thesis that Paul's initial reason for holding that the law cannot convey life is his Christological insight: since salvation comes through Christ, it cannot come by the law (= from solution to plight). However, Westerholm insists that this insight be immediately transposed into a "from plight to solution" schema the moment we begin to discuss how Paul thought out this initial Christological insight. Here he criticizes Sanders for his facile characterization of Pauline nomology which arises, per Westerholm, as a result of the Sander's understanding of Paul's "from plight to solution" presentations (e.g., Rom 1-3) as being mere secondary arguments which are superficially posited to reach conclusions which Paul had already arrived at upon other real Christological grounds.

In my opinion, Westerholm's critique of Sanders on this point is sound but his own solution seems almost equally misguided, i.e., do next to nothing with the Christological insight (of solution to plight) but quickly transpose it back into the traditional Procrustean bed ("from plight to solution"). There is a via tertium.

Anthropology as the Ground of Paul's "No" to the Law
For me, the fatal flaw with Westerholm's position is the fact that a pessimistic anthropology (=universal human failure to obey the divine law qua law) is made the ground of the Pauline conclusions concerning the law's inability to provide for righteousness/life. This is, of course, a key Lutheran thesis which Westerholm tenaciously holds to. I am not suggesting that Paul did not hold a universal pessimistic anthropology (he quite clearly does). What I do contest is that Paul, in his varied arguments--most notably Gal 3.10--makes this anthropological thesis the ground of his nomological conclusions. In Galatians (and Romans too), he simply does not do so (and all his statements concerning his own "righteousness of the law" are cashed out in terms of smashing success). This reading of Galatians 3.10 is the present darling of Evangelicals--but not this Evangelical.

But despite my own problems with Westerholm's position, I still highly recommend this book--especially to the one who is seeking to get quickly abreast of the NPP and how it differs from traditional Protestant Reformational Pauline Theology--and get there with a wry smile if not a laugh.

P.S. I trust that it is understood that Westerholm is not Neo-Lutheran in the Butlmannian sense (for Westerholm, the pursuit of the works of the law is not always already sinful in the Bultmannian [=quasi Heideggerian] sense); rather, works of the law are simply "the deeds demanded of the Sinaitic law code . . . . " (p. 121).