Excursus: Paul, The Law, and The Temple

 Third Saturday after Pentecost

BVM--Color: White

Lectionary texts:

Saturday:

2 Corinthians 5:16-21

Mark 4:26-29

Sunday: 

OT: 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13

Psalter: Psalm 72 (UMH 795)

Epistle: 2 Corinthians 5:6-17

Gospel:Mark 4:16-34

First, let me inform you of a new abbreviation, though many of you may know it already. BVM stands for Blessed Virgin Mary. It's an abbreviation every Catholic knows. Apparently a lot of Episcopalians know it as well. My Episcopal Calendar has every Saturday this month color:white in honor of the BVM. If your doing something with liturgical colors in your home, I'm definitely okay if you want to have green on these Saturdays. I love Mary (that's what I call her, just her name, not the titles), but I think every Saturday is honorific overkill. I think we Protestants have far diminished her importance, but I also think Catholics and Orthodox make too much of her. Episcopalians make too much of her in their calendar. We'll talk about her next week.

Now to Paul. An Excursus in a Biblical commentary is when the writer needs to stop verse by verse commentary for a page or two and talk about a larger matter, or smaller matter, related to the verses at hand. It's like a large parentheses. So before we go any further with Paul and the Temple incident, here are a few words about Paul's view on the Law and the Temple.

Paul writes extensively about the Law (Torah) in Romans and Galatians. He has little to say about it elsewhere. There are literally hundreds of books on Paul and the Law, with various disagreements among them. I've read about a dozen. What follows is what on the basis my reading and my own thinking I currently regard Paul's view on the subject to have been.

Unlike me, Paul doesn't change his thinking much. He is consistent on this. The Law does not apply to gentiles. They can eat all the bacon they want. They are, however, to be respectful of Jews and Jewish Christians who follow the Law. He does not believe that any gentile who comes to faith in Christ should follow the Law or be asked to follow the law. The only reason not to eat bacon, shrimp, crab, etc,, is if you don't like the taste of it, not any religious reason.

With Jewish Christians it's much more complicated. There is the Law and then there is standard rabbinic interpretation of the law. Paul understands himself as following the Law (because he is a Jewish Christian/Christian Jew). He does not follow some of the standard interpretations of the Law. For example, he will eat with gentiles and associate with them fully. He also expects other Jewish Christians to eat with gentiles. When they don't, he is very upset with them (cf. Galatians 2). Paul is not completely clear on whether Jewish Christians can or should abandon the Law, but he seems to imply that they can. 

In Romans 10:4 Paul writes, "Christ is the end of the Law." The word end (Gk. telos) here I think means "ultimate goal." What the Law sought to achieve, it could not fully do. Christ did. What the Law sought to achieve was freedom from sin. It could not. Christ could and did. A Jewish Christian can follow the Law to please God, but that will not free him or her from sin. Only Christ can do that. 

That's the short of it, but it all gets more complicated than that. Paul himself follows the Law, because he is a Jew-a Jewish Christian/Christian Jew. He reveres the Temple. He makes the sacrifices. But his stand on gentiles and the Law will get him in trouble in our verses for our next Acts Bible study.

God of Jew and gentiles,

We are thankful that since World War II most of our disagreements have been ameliorated. We, Jews and Christians, can live together in peace and support one another. May that peace extend to Muslims as well, especially in you Holy Land. In the name of the Prince of Peace. Amen.

Faithfully,

Christian