The Only New Testament Reference to Genesis 3:15

There's a debate going on at the Boar's Head Tavern about who is it who is being referred to in Genesis 3:15:

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

Who will bruise the serpent's head? Jesus or Mary? (You can find posts debating this question here, here, here, etc.)

The funny thing is (along the lines of this post), is that according to the New Testament, it is neither Jesus nor Mary who bruises the serpent's head, but the congregation of the saints (through whom God the Father works). As Paul wrote to the Roman congregation:

For your obedience is come abroad unto all men. I am glad therefore on your behalf: but yet I would have you wise unto that which is good, and simple concerning evil. And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.


Has this passage ever received theologization?

Jesus Before the Crucifixion and the Apostles after Pentecost: How Their Teachings Relate

Since the topic of the Gospels and Epistles came up below, I thought I'd see what the New Testament itself says about the issue. In fact I couldn't find anything using exactly those categories. What I could find a lot of, is commands, and references to the issue of the post-resurrection, post-Pentecost apostolic preaching relates to the pre-crucifixion teaching of the Lord. You could say it's a major theme, but I haven't seen much discussion of it. Since the Epistles are of course post-resurrection apostolic teaching and the Gospels transmit in retrospective form Jesus's pre-crucifixion teaching this is analogous to the distinction of Gospels and Epistles. Yet it's not exactly the same because, of course, the apostles actually wrote the gospels. In other words a skeptic could see it as circular: the apostles taking about in the voice of Jesus the teaching they will give in their own voice later. As every sensitive Bible reader notices, however, the Gospels do have a different voice from that of the Epistles, one in which Acts seems to be intermediate. (Just to take an example from the previous post, "Law and the Prophets" is common in the Gospels, sometimes found in Acts, and rare in the Epistles.)

Here is the teaching I've been able to glean

I. You Can't Hear the Lord without Hearing the Apostles.

The authority of the apostles is as the authority of Christ himself. After sending out the sevety-two, Jesus says (Luke 10):

The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me.

The same idea is expressed by Him at greater length in Matthew 10:

Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. The one who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward, and the one who receives a righteous person because he is a righteous person will receive a righteous person's reward.

II. The Pre-Crucifixion Teaching is Vivid and Intriguing but Cryptic, the Post-Pentecost Teaching Is Plain and Exhaustive:

This theme is emphasized in all three synoptics, whenever Jesus begins speaking in parables. After telling them the parable of the sower, the apostles ask (Mark 4, repeated in Luke 8 and Matthew 13):

And when he was alone, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables. And he said to them, "To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that

"they may indeed see but not perceive,
and may indeed hear but not understand,
lest they should turn and be forgiven."

And he said to them, "Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the word. . . .

He explains the parable of the sower, the lamp under a basket, the growing seed, and the mustard seed, and then concludes again:

With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it. He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything.

From Jesus's advice and warnings to the apostles we read this passage, where Jesus takes what is elsewhere a purely apocalyptic saying and uses it to contrast the pre-crucifixion and the post-resurrection teaching (Matthew 10):

So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

In Luke 12, we see Jesus giving this saying a purely apocalyptic sense: what Jesus and the apostles say in secret will be revealed on the Last Day to justify God's judgments.

That the post-Pentecost teaching will be more thorough and exhaustive than that during Jesus's life emerges in Jesus's upper room discourse recorded in John's gospel (John 16):

"I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you."

What are these things that the Holy Spirit will declare to the apostles? For starters, I would expect it to be the sermons of Acts and the texts of the Epistles and the Apocalypse.

III. The Pre-Crucifixion Teaching Was Discrete on Certain Topics, but the Post-Resurrection Teaching Avoids No Sensitive Topic.

Sometimes the apostles were directly commanded not to speak until after the resurrection. This occurred after Peter's confession (Mark 8; cf. Matthew 16, Luke 9):

And he asked them, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered him, "You are the Christ." And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him.

And after the transfiguration (Mark 9; cf. Matthew 17):

And as they were coming down the mountain, he charged them to tell no one what they had seen, until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

IV. The Full Implications of the Pre-Crucifixion Teachings Were Not Understood by the Apostles Until After the Resurrection.

There are a number of passages in which the apostles are said to have only understood what Jesus said after His resurrection. For example, it is implied that the apostles only understood after the resurrection in the telling of the first miracle of the loaves and the walking on water (Mark 6; cf. the leaven of the Pharisees section in Mark 8 and Matthew 16):

When they saw him walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost, and cried out, for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, "Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid." And he got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.

That they did not understand is repeated right after the Transfiguration (Mark 8; cf. Luke 9)

They went on from there and passed through Galilee. And he did not want anyone to know, for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, "The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise." But they did not understand the saying, and were afraid to ask him.

This is mentioned many times in the gospel of John, as in the cleansing of the temple (John 2):

And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, "Take these things away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade." His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me."

So the Jews said to him, "What sign do you show us for doing these things?" Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." The Jews then said, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?" But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

For example, the triumphal entry (John 12):

And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written,

"Fear not, daughter of Zion;
behold, your king is coming,
sitting on a donkey's colt!"

His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him.

Even on Easter morning (John 20)

Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to their homes.

Hermeneutically, this is a somewhat tricky category. We read the teachings of Jesus as recorded by men who tell us that at the time they didn't understand them, but now they do. So in their re-telling are they doing it from the first, "didn't understand" perspective, or from the post-resurrection "now I understand!" perspective? Certainly as I said, you can see the substantial difference in tone between the words of Jesus and of the Epistles as evidence that the apostles were quite successful in maintaining the integrity of the pre-crucifixion teachings.

In the following passage from Mark 7, we can see all three levels at work: a parabolic saying not understood by the crowd, a teaching for the apostles which must prudently be left silent for the time being, and a the clear-cut understanding of it which is undoubtedly post-resurrection:

And he called the people to him again and said to them, "Hear me, all of you, and understand: There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him." And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. And he said to them, "Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?" (Thus he declared all foods clean.)

At first we have a parable. Jesus explains it to the apostles. Yet the topic of the parables is the cancellation of the law of Moses, which led to Stephen's martyrdom in Acts. Did the apostles understand even then? The final comment has the air of a commentary, inserted by the post-resurrection evangelist, which is why the translators put it in parentheses.

V. The Post-Pentecost Teaching Explicitly Shows How the Old Testament Is Fulfilled in the New:

Finally, as several of the previous examples showed, a good deal of the the post-resurrection understanding was realizing how the Hebrew scriptures was fulfilled in the life of Jesus and the church. According to Luke, this was the main topic of Jesus's post-Resurrection discourses (Luke 24):

And he said to them, "O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?" And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. . . .

And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, "Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?" . . . .

Then he said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high."

It might seem tantalizing that none of these words were written down. How tragic to have lost these teachings! But were they lost? Leaving them unmentioned, Luke sets up in the reader a desire to understand these words. And what follows? The sermons recorded in Acts which are full of explanations of how the Old Testament is fulfilled in the new. And what is not in those was presumably taught by the apostles, directly or indirectly, in the Epistles. As I remember hearing in a Bible study, one Biblical commentator has said that Paul's Epistle to the Romans can be read as an essay on interpreting the Hebrew Bible as the Old Testament. There is no reason to believe that the much, or indeed anything, of these teachings were lost.

The peculiar thing about all this is that Jesus's teachings are honored as being the best teaching despite being explicitly described as cryptic to the point of misleading, occasionally silent on crucial issues, hard to understand, and lacking Old Testament verification. They weren't intended to remain so; indeed the Gospels once written mix both the pre-crucifixion text and the post-Pentecost understanding. But they still retain something of their cryptic, gnomic, discrete, and self-authenticating character compared to the Epistles. I don't think there is any other conclusion that can be drawn but that these things are to be honored; that cryptic, gnomic, discrete, and self-authenticating teaching that causes the hearers to wonder more than they (at first) understand is the mark of a truly divine teaching. Of course this is what the Gospels themselves say (Mark 1:22; note how John 8:28 unpacks the significance of this):

And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes.

Who Is the "Man of Romans 7"?

(Previous number in this series from here)

Romans 7 has been the key passage for simul justus et peccator (at the same time justified and sinner). The famous description of Paul's in which he describes a struggle with sin:

For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

Is Paul speaking as an apostle here? Or was this before he believed in Christ? Or perhaps under some conviction of sin, but lacking the second blessing that would lead him to sinless perfection and victorious life that all Christians should aspire to?

Here too, Luther was aware of the fifth century debates on this topic. Here the opponent of Augustine, the mature anti-Pelagian preacher, was not Jerome, but the younger, earlier Augustine. In Luther's Lectures on Romans (written in 1515-16), he writes:

That, beginning with this passage until the end of the chapter, the apostle speaks in his own name and as a spiritual person and not at all as a carnal person, Blessed Augustine first asserts extensively and persistently in his book against the Pelagians. Hence he says in the twenty-third chapter of the first book of his Retractations, where he deals again with his exposition of this passage:

When the apostle says: We know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, I did not want to understand this as in any way spoken by the apostle in his own name, because he was already spiritual, but rather with reference to a man who is subject to the law because he is not yet under grace. In this way I earlier understood these words, but later, having read several interpreters of the divine sayings whose authority impressed me greatly, I considered them more carefully and came to see that they can also be understood with reference to the apostle
himself.

And in the second book against [the Pelagian] Julian, he writes:

Behold, it is not, as you think, some Jew who says: I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, etc., but according to Blessed Ambrose, it is the apostle Paul who speaks here in his own name.

And, a little farther on, he quotes Blessed Ambrose from his book On the Sacrament of Regeneration:

We must struggle against the flesh. Paul struggled against it. At last he says: I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind. Are you stronger than Paul? Have no confidence in the sedulous flesh and do not entrust yourself to it, since Paul exclaims: For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, no good dwells: for to will is present with me, but to accomplish that which is good is not.

Likewise, quoting the same author [i.e. "Ambrose"] from the book On Paradise, he says:

Again, at another place of the same work, the same teacher writes: Paul, he says, is assailed and sees the law of his flesh warring against the law of his mind. Paul says: For the good which I will I do not; but the evil which I will not, that I do. And still you think that man is helped by knowledge in so far as it increases his displeasure at his trangression? etc.

And most clearly of all, he [i.e. Augustine] makes the same point in the same work [Against Julian] from the sixth chapter to the end.

Luther then goes on to demonstrate how the delight in the spiritual law and the awareness and hatred of the flesh's sinful urges is a feature not of the carnal (i.e. unregenerate) man, but of the regenerate man.

It is interesting that the Ambrose cited here is believed by modern scholars to be not the "real" Ambrose, but another man who wrote under Ambrose's name (he is called Ambrosiaster). It seems odd that Augustine was unable to tell the difference between the writings of the two, since Ambrose was an older contemporary. In fact, for good or for ill, it seems that this Ambrosiaster was a rather more influential and original theologian than the real Ambrose. If one wishes to find the cuckoo who laid the egg of Evangelicalism that Luther hatched, this Ambrosiaster would seem to be a prime candidate. It is a shame that so little is known about him.

Those who wish to read Augustine's developed anti-Pelagian exegesis of Romans 7 can find a nice assembly of texts in pp. 61-65 of Hurst's translation of Bede's anthology. But it is important to note that there is still a crucial gap between Augustine and Luther. Both believe that the sinner is just yet still subject to sinful desires. Both also believe that the sinner in Christ will prevent these desires from ripening into fruit of mortal sin.

But in this situation of being simultaneously justified and sinner, we can ask, on what basis can it be said there is no condemnation for such a person in Christ? Augustine's answer is that they are not condemned because those in Christ through the Holy Spirit rule over their covetous desires. The work of conquering the flesh cannot be done, but they do do the work of not being conquered by the flesh, and that (it appears) is the basis of their righteousness (although the ability to do so is a gift of God). The mature Luther stresses that while the saint does indeed repress the motions of the flesh, such repression is not the grounds of his acceptance with God. Rather it is faith alone which gives makes the sinner righteous, as it always was.

UPDATE: In a succeeding post, I analyze a homily by John Chrysostom here (HT: Eric Phillips) that gives us the perfectionist "you need to move from the Man of Romans 7 to the Man of Romans 8" reading of Romans 7 as being about man before the grace of the cross. One may presume this was the sort of reading Augustine had imbibed early in his Christian life and which he later repudiated.

More on Luther, Augustine, Jerome, and Paul's Epistles

Sometimes one sets out to write a long series, and then doesn't follow through. Sometimes, however, one falls into a series without really realizing it. That's what's happened in this case, where I have started a series on Luther and Augustine's commentary's on Paul's epistles. In this series the guiding principle is one I enunciated quite a while ago: "I would like to suggest that one's interpretation of a relatively small number of Biblical passages will determine one's theology."

As I've looked through Luther's commentaries on Paul's epistles, I am repeatedly struck by how aware Luther was of the important changes in approach brought in by Augustine, and how important those actual changes were in making Luther's own approach possible. I gave an example below, with circumcision, where Augustine challenged Jerome and Origen's dominant interpretation (you might also want to check out this more recent post where I discuss a passage I should have discussed earlier). I'd like to give a few more examples with the issue of calendrical festivals and the "man of Romans 7."

For calendrical festivals the difficult passage was Galatians 4:10: Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years.

For Augustine and Jerome, the problem here was that the church year seemed to be a similar form of observing days, months, times, and years (this passage is, of course, pay-dirt for Puritan exegetes defending the regulative principle). Augustine seems to have had some sense that since it is OK for us to observe our church year, then it should have been OK for the Jewish Christians to continue to observe their Mosaic church year. Hence he tended to think that can't be what Paul is prohibiting here. In meeting this problem, his early exposition was more ingenious than plausible. In his 1519 lectures on Genesis, Luther noted that:

St. Augustine wavers in his exposition of this passage. Yet he explains it in the light of the religious ceremonies of the Gentiles rather than in the light of those of the Jews. For he says that it is a very common error of the Gentiles that, as they conduct their affairs or look aheard to the outcomes of life and of their business concerns, they observe the days, months, seasons, and years designated by the astrologers and Chaldeans.

But as Luther notes, even Augustine couldn't really believe in this opinion, since it seems so obvious that the "times" in question should be Jewish. By contrast,

St. Jerome understands this passage simply and correctly as referring only to the Jews. "Days," he says, as Sabbaths and new moons; "months," however, as the first and seventh month; "seasons," as those in which they came to Jerusalem three times each year; "years," however, as the seventh, the year of release, and the fiftieth, which they called the year of jubilee.

Jerome also asks whether we, too, are in the clutches of the same fault, because we observe the fourth day of the week (Wednesday), the day of preparation (Friday), the Lord's Day, the forty-day fast season (Lent), Easter and Pentecost, and various seasons appointed in honor of the martyrs and differing from land to land. In answer he says, in the first place, that we do not observe the days of the Jews but observe other days.

Or, as the Didache (8:1) inimitably says:

Let not your fasts be with the hypocrites, for they fast on Mondays and Thursdays, but do you fast on Wednesdays and Fridays.

("Well that explains it; fasting on Thursday is different -- totally -- from fasting on Friday.")

Here we see the idea that after the Resurrection, Jewish ceremonies are in some inherent sense fatal for the Christian.

But as Luther adds, Jerome has other explanations too:

Secondly that the days have been appointed, not to give greater distinction to the day on which we assemble but in order that faith in Christ may not be diminished by a disorderly assembly of the people.

Thirdly, Jerome says that actually now every day is a Lord's Day, a resurrection Sunday, a day of celebration, and the real change has been that by concession certain days have been disallowed, "for the sake of those who have more time for the world than for God." In other words, every day should be a monk's day, but as a concession to human weakness, laymen are allowed to spend non-feast days in worldly occupations.

Luther adds that in his time, there are far too many feast days. Not until the end of his commentary on this passage, though, does he hit the crucial issue of justification:

Circumcision as well as feast days contributed nothing at all to righteousness. Nor did the other things which [Paul] recounts in greater detail in Col. 2:16. Accordingly, they were not to be observed as necessary, certainly no more than our feast days confer righteousness on us when we observe them or other burdensome traditions. But our righteousness comes from faith in Christ, which is not produced by ceremonies but freely makes use of ceremonies out of love for God and one's neighbor . . .

In his 1535 Lectures, however, he puts this point right up front. After discussing the controversy of what days exactly were the Galatians observing, he writes:

But Paul is instructing the conscience. Therefore he is speaking, not about the Gentile practice of observing days, etc. [as Augustine might think], something that pertains only to the body, but about the Law of God and the observance of days, months, etc., according to the Law of Moses. In other words, he is speaking [as Jerome realized] about religious days, months, and seasons, which the Galatians were observing, on the basis of instruction by the false apostles, as a means of obtaining justification.

He then answers the question which Jerome had asked:

Here someone may say: "If the Galatians sinned in observing days and seasons, why is it not sinful for you to do the same?" I reply: We observe the Lord's Day, Christmas, Easter, and similar holidays in a way that is completely free. We do not burden consciences with these observances; nor do we teach, as did the false apostles, and as do the papists, that they are necessary for justification or that we can make satisfaction for our sins through them.

He then refers to a famous incident in church history, when the second-century bishop of Rome, Victor, excommunicated the Anatolian Christians for observing Easter on a different day. This debate and St. Irenaeus's remonstance against Pope Victor's actions, were important for the Augsburg Confession's discussion of church traditions in Article 26 (scroll down to lines 44-45). Luther comments:

It was the utmost madness to hand the churches of the East over to the devil on account of such a trifle [i.e. the date of Easter]. Therefore this knowledge about the observance of days and seasons was rare, even among great men. Jerome did not have it, and Augustine would not have understood it if he had not been troubled and provoked by the Pelagians.

I wonder what particular passages from Augustine Luther is referring to here. Perhaps he means the texts from Augustine's letters and On Christian Doctrine, which he and the Augsburg Confession liked to cite. In the Confession (again in article 26, lines 16-17), Melanchthon writes:

Thirdly, traditions brought great danger to consciences; for it was impossible to keep all traditions, and yet men judged these observances to be necessary acts of worship. . . . [But] Augustine also forbids that men's consciences should be burdened with such observances, and prudently advises [in his letter to] Januarius that he must know that they are to be observed as things indifferent; for such are his words.

Luther liked to cite Augustine's On Christian Doctrine III.9. In a discussion of signs and what they signified, Augustine wrote:

In these times, since there has been revealed to us a clear sign of our liberty in the Resurrection of the Lord, we are not heavily burdened with the use of certain signs whose meaning we understand; rather we have a few in place of many, which the teaching of the Lord and the Apostles has transmitted to us, and these are very easy to perform, very sublime in implication, and most upright in observance. Such are the sacrament of Baptism and the celebration of the Body and Blood of the Lord.

But even in the late Enchiridion (chapter 81), Augustine still referred to his old astrological interpretation of Galatians 4:10:

Certain things we may suppose to be trifling if the view of Scripture did not show them to be more serious. Who would think that the observation of days and months and years and seasons may be a grave sin -- as those people observe them, who are willing or unwilling to begin anything on certain days or months or years because according to worthless human teachings they reckon such times lucky or unlucky -- unless we weighed the seriousness of this evil from the anxiety of the Apostle, who tells such people, I am anxious about you, that my work for you may have been wasted (Gal. 4:11) .

So how did Luther read Galatians 4:10? He had to accept Jerome's insight that it is exactly Jewish dates which are in question, thus rejecting Augustine's astrology fixation. But he then had to find a proper explanation (in place of Jerome's patently inadequate ones) for why observing Jewish dates were bad without invalidating the Christian observance of the church year. Here Augustine's writings on circumcision, that focused on the intent of the observance, were crucial. But on the dating issue, Luther had to travel most of the distance himself.

Next up: "The Man of Romans 7"

Jerome and Augustine Again

If there is one thing I try to emphasize with my students, it is that information in literary sources needs to be read and understood in context. If some Chinese historian writes about the Huns (Xiongnu), for example, you need to understand that in the light of his whole historical argument. And that will usually involve reading the whole book, not just strip-mining it for useful quotations. And sometimes as you read the whole book, you come across interesting passages that you otherwise would have missed.

I came across an example of this recently as well. While finally getting around to actually reading Bede's florilegium of Augustine passages commenting on the epistles of Paul (I'd bogged down in Romans for a while), I came across this passage from one of his letters to Jerome that is the best expression of some of the points I've been trying to make in my on-going posts on Biblical interpretation.

It occurs on pp. 222-23 of Excerpts from the Works of St. Augustine on the Letters of the Blessed Apostle Paul, and is on Gal. 5:18:

But if you are led by the Spirit, you are no longer under the law.
What is being under the law in the way the Apostle finds faulty may be seems to me an important question. I do not believe [here he contrasts his view with that of Jerome, to whom he was writing] that he said this on account of circumcision, or the sacrifices once made by our ancestors, but not now made by Christians, or other things of this kind, but on account of this saying of the law, 'You shall not covet.' This I grant Christians definitely must observe, and must preach with all the light the gospel sheds on it.

In other words, the law that Paul is saying doesn't justify is precisely the law that Christians must observe, not some other, obsolete, law.

The words of the law, 'You shall not covet,' bind a guilty person under it, and, if human weakness is not aided by God's grace, rather condemn a transgressor than set a sinner free. How much less, then, could those things commanded because of what they pointed to -- circumcision and the rest, which had to be abolished while the revelation of grace was becoming more widely known -- justify anyone?

Once law is redefined in this way, then circumcision is seen as not something bad in itself. It's not a question of good laws versus bad ones, but of the general problem with law as a category. Even so, Augustine does not envision a church with permanent religious-cultural* diversity:

And yet they [i.e. Mosaic rituals] were not for this reason to be shunned, as if they were the diabolical sacrileges of the nations, even while the grace that such signs foreshadowed was beginning to be revealed. They were to be allowed for a while, especially to those who had come from that nation [of the Jews]. Later on, however, they were to be honorably buried, so to speak, by all Christians, and given up without blame.

So eventually, mature Christianity will lead to ritual conformity and the "honorable burial" of all religious culture that diverges from the mainstream. As I have said before, this is part of the way, but still considerably short of where Luther and the Evangelical Reformation put the question of liturgical/ritual diversity.

*On this term, which I prefer to the nihilistic-sounding adiaphora, see here.

Is Circumcision Sinful in Itself for a Christian?

I have been focusing on the issue of Luther's interpretation of Paul in a number of recent posts. One reason is that I don't think philosophy, world views, or deep structures of thought have much to do with the history of Christian doctrine. Instead, as I said here, "I would like to suggest that one's interpretation of a relatively small number of [Biblical] passages will determine one's theology." For example, is Romans 7 about Paul before he believed in Christ, or after? That, not nominalism, or any other philosophical idea, is going to shape your view of sanctification of the believer.

Another question no one has asked is: how come the Catholic monk William of Rubruck had such a different view of fermented mare's milk from the Eastern Orthodox? To put it differently, what was Latin theology doing right in its understanding of culture, that Greek theology was doing wrong? (Background for this question here).

The answer lies in Augustine and Jerome's debate over circumcision and the interpretation of the passages on circumcision in Galatians. Paul says in Galatians 2:3, that he did not have Titus circumcised, but in Acts 16:3 he did have Timothy circumcised. Jerome and Augustine had a great debate over this question. Jerome contended that just as Paul's conflict with Peter in Galatians 2:11 must have been a kind of play-acting, because for Jerome (and following him Erasmus) Peter as an apostle could not sin and was beyond attack, just so, Paul's circumcision in Acts 16:3 must have been a pretence, and "deceitfully" should have been added into the text there. That is, Paul fooled the Jews into thinking he had circumcised Timothy, because once Christ had come circumcision was fatal. (Luther sums up Jerome and Origen's view point with the adage, "But after Christ the ceremonial laws were fatal"; see Luther's Works, vol. 26, Lectures on Galatians, p. 123.)

By contrast in the Galatians 2:11 passage, Augustine wrote, "It is intolerable to suppose that there was pretense in Paul, for he confirms with an oath that he is speaking the truth" (cited in Lectures on Galatians, pp. 107-08, from Augustine, Expositio epistolae ad Galatas, 15). Similarly he argued that circumcision was "not to be withdrawn from Jewish practice as if abominable and reprehensible" (Bede the Venerable: Excerpts from the Works of Saint Augustine on the Letters of the Blessed Apostle Paul, p. 219). As the place of my citation shows, the series of letters between Jerome and Augustine debating this this issue was well known in the Middle Ages, and was referred to by Luther as early as his Lecture on Romans.

Here is Augustine arguing against Jerome:

It is I, Paul, telling you that if you have yourselves circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you. (Gal. 5:2)
Di he deceive Timothy, then, and make Christ of no benefit to him [Acts 16:3]? Or, if it was done deceitfully, was it then no hindrance? But [Paul] did not specify, and say either if you have yourselves circumcised truly, or deceitfully, but without limiting it he said, if you have yourselves circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you.

As you want to make room for your interpretation, so that want us to supply the words 'deceitfully' [to Acts 16:3], so I am not demanding unreasonably that you also allow me to intepret the words if you have yourselves circumcised as being addressed to people who wanted to have themselves circumcised because they supposed that they could not be saved by Christ otherwise. [Or as Luther would say, they made it part of justification.] To those circumcised in this state of mind, with this desire and intention, Christ was of no benefit, as [Paul] clearly states elsewhere: 'If righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.' He also makes this declaration which you yourself have quoted: 'You who are seeking to be justified by the law have been cut off from Christ; you have falled from grace.' Surely he was rebuking those who were trusting in themselves, not those who were legitimately observing the [commandments] out of respect for the One who commanded them, not those who understood both why they were commanded -- to foreshadow the truth -- and how long they should endure [i.e. only until the Christ came].

. . .

I say, then, that circumcision of the foresking, and other things of this kind, were divinely given to the earlier people through the covenant that we call 'old', to represent the future things that were to be fulfilled through Christ. When [the future things] had come, these were left for Christians to read solely for the purpose of understanding the prophecies that had gone before. They did not necessarily have to be carried out so that the revelation of faith, which was represented here as to come in the future, may come, as if it was still being awaited.

But although these things were not to be imposed on the Gentiles, they were not to be withdrawn from Jewish practice as if abominable and reprehensible. Slowly and gradually, then, all this observance of prefigurations was to be ended by the passionate preaching of the grace of Christ, the only means believers have of knowing that they are justified and saved -- not by those prefigurations of things once future, but then already coming and present, as at the calling of those Jews whom the Lord's physical presence and the period of the apostles found in this state [i.e. circumcised]. This was enough to suggest that [this observance] was not to be avoided as abominable and similar to idolatry, but that it had no further use, lest it be supposed necessary -- as though salvation came from it and could not exist without it -- as heretics supposed. [The heretics, Judaizers in this case], while wishing to be both Jews and Christians, could be neither Jews nor Christians (Hurst, trans., pp. 218-19).

And here is Luther writing about their debate:

But even Titus, who was with me, was not compelled to be circumcised, though he was a Greek (Gal. 2:3)
. . .
Thus Paul did not reject circumcision as something damnable; nor did he by any word or deed compel the Jews to give it up For in 1 Cor 7:18 he says: Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. But he did rejected circumcision in the sense of something necessary for righteousness . . . Nevertheless when Jews who were believers but were still weak and zealous for the Law heard the statement that circumcision was not necessary for righteousness, they could not take it to mean anything else than that for this reason circumcision was altogether useless and damnable. . . In the same way we today do not reject fasting and other pious practices as something damnable, but we do teach that by these practices we do not obtain the forgiveness of sins. When the common people hear this, they immediately conclude that we are condeming good works. And the papists abet this impression of the people through their sermons and books . . .

. . .

Jerome and Augustine engage in a bitter controversy over this passage. The term "was not compelled" supports Augustine's case. But Jerome did not understand the issue. The issue here is not, as Jerome supposes, what Peter or Paul did about circumcising or not circumcising. Therefore Jerome is amazed that Paul had the authority to denounce in Peter what he had himself done [i.e. observe on occasion the Jewish law]; for, he says, Paul circumcised Timothy and lived as a Gentile among Gentiles but as a Jew among Jews. Jerome imagines that what is at issue here is not very important; therefore he concludes that neither Peter nor Paul had sinned, but he imagines that both had covered things up with a "white lie." As a matter of fact, however, this entire controversy of theirs was, and is, serious business; it deals with the gravest of issues. Therefore it was not a matter of covering things up.

The basic issue was this: Is the Law necessary for justification, or is it not? Paul and Peter are in controversy here over this particular hteme, on which the whole of Christian doctrine depends. Paul was too responsible a person to launch such a public attack on Peter in the presence of the entire church of Antioch on account of some trivial issue. He is attacking him on account of the basic doctrine of Christianity. For when there were no Jews present, Peter ate with Gentiles; but when the Jews arrived, he withdrew. Paul rebukes him because by his pretense he was compelling the Gentiles to do as the Jews did. The whole emphasis lies on the phrase "you are compelling." But Jerome did not see this.

Therefore Paul did not require that anyone who wanted to be circumcised should remain uncircumcised, but he did want to know that circumcision was not necessary for salvation. Paul wanted to remvoe this compulsion. Therefore he allowed the Jews to observe the Law as an obligation; but he always taught both Jews and Gentiles that in their conscience they should be free from the Law and circumcision, just as the patriarchs and all the Old Testament saints were free in their conscience and were justified by faith, not by circumcision or the Law

In fact, Paul might have permitted Titus to be circumcised; but when he saw that they wanted to compel him, Paul refused . . . (Lectures on Galatians, p. 84-85)

As one can thus see, Augustine had already gotten the debate on circumcision to a point pretty close to where Luther took it. One may presume, therefore, that readers in the medieval church had the chance to assimilate the Augustianian view of circumcision and hence religious culture (as I've termed adiaphora here). In this view, the issue is not such rituals in themselves, but whether they are done for salvation or not. This laid part (not all, but part) of the groundwork for Luther's reading of Jerome, and moreover, accustomed Luther to thinking that great figures in the church like Jerome could go badly wrong.

1 Corinthians 7 on marriage (I)

As Luther noted in his 1523 pamphlet on this chapter, 1 Corinthians 7 is the charter text for monasticism. As Christopher Parks claimed on a previous thread that any fundamental criticism of the Catholic and Orthodox tradition of monasticism (as opposed to isolated abuses) is in effect a criticism of Paul, so I have set forth my understanding of what the text actually says. In preparing this, I used Luther’s essay on 1 Corinthian 7, Tertullian’s works against remarriage (the first extended argument on the issue of celibacy/chastity in church history), and Dale Martin’s study The Corinthian Body (a secular study). I have checked modern Catholic and Protestant translations; when I talk about modern consensus, I mean that shared by both Protestant and Catholic Bible translators. Here are my seven basic conclusions about what Paul is teaching in this chapter.

1) Desire for sex is, like worldly joys or sorrows generally, a distraction from prayer and spiritual life. Hence a normal Christian married life contains periods of abstention from sex, just as it normally contains fasting. Such periods of abstention when over-prolonged, let alone through celibacy, generally create both distracting lusts ("burning with passion") and the temptation to immoral activity. For these the normal remedy (i.e. the way to get your mind off sex) is sex relations within marriage (vv. 2-5, esp. 5, 9, 29-31).

2) The decision to marry is in no sense a sin, nor can the decision of one who has dedicated himself to virginity (within or without marriage) to renounce that be a sin (vv. 8, 36-38). Nor is the desire to have sexual relations, even for those engaged in periods of sexual continence, in itself a temptation of Satan (since in v. 5 the performance of marital duty by those conducting a period of continence is seen as a remedy against temptations of Satan).

3) In what Chris Parks believes to be the heart of the passage, Paul writes "Indeed, I wish everyone to be as I am, but each has a particular gift from God, one of one kind and one of another." Thus Paul identifies himself as the possessor of a gift. This gift cannot be seen as "the gift to remain celibate, fighting off sexual temptation through sheer force of will" but rather "the gift of being relatively untouched by sexual urges and temptations even when celibate." (I will call this gift sexlessness). As a gift, sexlessness follows Paul’s general theology of gifts. Gifts are indeed ranked and one should eagerly desire the greater gifts (1 Cor. 12:31, 14:1, cf. 14:39). But what makes one gift great and another less is solely utility to the church (see esp. 14:5), since their purpose is to build up the church (1 Cor. 12 passim; Romans 12:6-8). Gifts like sexlessness are separate from what Paul case the "way"of love in 1 Cor. 12:31-14:1 (cf. the "fruits of the spirit" in Gal. 5:22-23, etc.) in that the "way" has eternal significance, while gifts do not (13:8). The gifts in themselves are worthless, apart from building up the church. Exactly how Paul’s gift helps the church will be detailed below. To put it in modern theological language, gifts, including Paul’s gift of sexlessness, are not only no part of justification, but also no part of sanctification. Their significance is solely ecclesiastical/pastoral.

4) Marriage is a situation, like being circumcised or not circumcised, slave or free, that is irrelevant to sanctification. Sanctification is concerned solely with obeying the commands of God (v. 19; cf. Romans 2:27, 13:8-14, etc.) and Paul’s counsels to consider non-marriage he explicitly says are not such commands. While not explicitly stated, v. 17 links this principle, enunciated with regard to circumcision and slavery in v. 19, to the discussion of marriage in vv. 12-16. This principle of situations like marriage, sex, circumcision, etc. being irrelevant not just to justification, but to sanctification is mandatory for all churches (v. 17; Gal. 6:15-16, 5:6, etc.).

5) But marriage can limit one’s utility to the church (vv. 32-35). This explains why Paul’s gift of sexlessness would be one that he might desire everyone to have, although in his sober mind, he knows God did not will it so.

6) There is a further consideration that the tribulation at the end of the world is very near, which will make marriage and childrearing very painful (vv. 26, 28-29, 40; cf. Lk 21:23). For this reason that Paul discusses marriage and never once (except peripherally) in the whole passage even mentions children, let alone speak of procreation as the purpose of marriage.

7) Paul believed his gift of sexlessness to be very rare. Much as he might wish it otherwise, he expects pretty much every man and woman in the Corinthian church to marry (v. 2). He does not list sexlessness (or celibacy) as a gift in the list of essential gifts that every church is expected to have in 1 Cor. 12:7-11, 28, and Romans 12:4-8; evidently he believes those churches can (and most likely will) get along without it. If Christ tarried for any stretch of time, it was pretty much impossible to expect it of young women (1 Tim. 5:11-15). Even among the apostles only he and Barnabas appear to have it (1 Cor. 9:5-6), nor was it normal among bishops of the church (1 Tim. 3:2); evidently it was not expected of leadership in the church, except as an occasional gift of God.

Originally posted at Here We Stand

1 Corinthians 7 on Marriage (II)

Below are some ways in which modern scholarship (again I count only those cases where Catholic and Protestant translations are the same) has emended the Patristic reading of 1 Corinthians 7. (The numbers are keyed to the points above) These new understandings render make the case for Paul as ascetic very problematic, although he is also not the advocate of "healthy married living" that some Protestant exegetes make him to be either.

1a) . Patristic authors starting with Tertullian misunderstood "it is better to marry than to burn" (i.e. with passion) as "those who are unmarried might engage in fornication and so burn in hell." The implication is that those who through dint of sheer will can fight sexual thoughts and remain be celibate without engaging in fornication can still rightly claim to have a superior status to the married, because they have been celibate and yet not actually committed fornication/masturbation. Jerome for example fought, by his own account, weeks of fierce attacks from lust with extreme fasting and frantic tears of guilt. When however, Paul is correctly interpreted as saying "It is better to marry than to burn with passion/be on fire" the implication is quite opposite. If you are "on fire" (i.e. afflicted by sexual thoughts), then Paul states clearly it would be better to marry. Thus the wrestlings of monks like Jerome fighting powerful sexual temptations have no spiritual value at all and are the result of attempting to force a gift which so many never had in the first place. Col. 2:20-23 and 1 Tim. 5:11-15 make this point.

2a) The phrase "It is a good thing for a man not to touch a woman" was understood from Tertullian’s time on to be Paul’s phrase, but is now acknowledged to be Paul’s quotation from a letter written by his opponents in Corinth. Hence far from establishing that Paul thought sexual relations as fundamentally undesirable, it is closer to arguing the opposite, since Paul responds by saying everyone should be married and have regular sexual relations.

2a) I also follow the modern consensus that vv. 36-38 are referring to men who are engaged in spiritual (i.e. unconsummated) marriage with a woman and who now wonder whether or not to consummate it. Patristic authors and classic Protestant exegetes both preferred this to be talking about a father deciding to marry off or not his unmarried daughter: Protestant exegetes because the whole idea of spiritual marriage seemed outlandish, and Patristic authors because the idea that one having once decided on celibacy could leave that state without sin seemed far too lax. 1 Tim. 5: 11-15 speaks of widows receiving judgement from breaking their pledge of non-remarriage, but presumably widows in return for support from the church had to pledge chastity and this was seen as dishonest (like a widow today still collecting Social Security payments after remarrying).

6a) Of the church fathers, only Tertullian had the same apocalyptic consciousness as Paul, saying that the time is short and the command to "be fruitful and multiply" died with the old law. He claimed that the pagans are right that no one in his right mind would want to have children, although they are wrong in how they go about preventing it, by abortion, rather than by virginity. Later Patristic sources downplayed or eliminated the apocalyptic element of Paul’s preaching, although Jerome also thought of "be fruitful and multiply" as abrogated. Indeed Paul himself in 1 Timothy 5 downplayed both the apocalyptic element and his previous skepticism about contracting marriage in the last days. Now, what we are to make of this apocalyptic expectation is a whole separate issue, but note that exalting celibacy, making marriage solely for procreation, and avoiding talk of the last days (as Augustine famously did all three) is a constellation of positions that is bears little resemblance to the mood and counsel of 1 Cor. 7.

Originally posted at Here We Stand