Paul, the Torah Genius

In my earliest days of being a follower of Christ—I was a college student—I was a devoted reader and learner of the writings of Paul. But I moved from a strong interest in Paul to a fascination with the Jewish scriptures, the Old Testament, aka the Hebrew Bible. And I put in two decades of study, with a strong concentration in the first five books of the Bible, also known as the Torah (or Pentateuch).

I say all that not to boast, but to help you understand the experience from my point of view. I started my faith journey thinking Paul was a genius. Then I mostly set Paul aside for twenty years, studying Torah in academic, rabbinic, and Christian commentary and scholarship. And I came back to Paul.

And what I found can be summed up by simply saying: Paul is a Torah genius.

He saw the Torah as full of promises of life, not just commandments.

He saw that Torah was incumbent on Jews, but not on non-Jews.

He saw that the Torah (and Psalms and Prophets) indicated a future incoming of non-Jews to God.

He saw that those non-Jews who would stream to God's holy mountain remained non-Jews.

He saw that Christ is the telos (goal) of the Torah, the realization of its promises.

He saw that the Gospel revealed to him by Christ directly is perfectly compatible with Torah's promises of life.

And when I came back to really reading Paul—I had deemphasized him in my congregational teaching most of the two decades I worked at it—I read him with new eyes, eyes soaked in the words of Torah. I understood a lot of Paul simply from the agreements I could see in his thinking with the promises of life I already knew about from Torah. Reading Paul after becoming adept in Torah studies is like reading a master. [ Yes, I am quite aware that Jewish readers who do not share my belief in Jesus Christ will think I am crazy, but be aware that Judaism has had 2,000 years to distance itself from the claims of Jesus and also that the church's violent and sinful history has not helped. ]

Paul and Deuteronomy 30

I realized how delightful Paul's use of Deuteronomy 30 is while reading in Beyond Justification (Douglas Campbell and John DePue) about Romans 10. It is a problem passage for Campbell and DePue, a passage used frequently by the theology they are seeking to dismantle: justification theory. Campbell and DePue go on to show that reading Romans 10 in light of Paul's participatory, resurrectional Gospel—and NOT in light of justification theory—makes a lot of sense. According to justification theory the Gospel is conditional and God is a retributive Judge. According to Paul's Gospel God works unconditionally to save us like a benevolent Father (see "Why Reimagining Paul is Necessary" and "8 Truth's From Paul's Actual Gospel").

Romans 10 sounds conditional. It sounds judgy. It sounds like the way the Gospel is proclaimed widely in evangelical Christian churches. But this is because those of us who read Romans have been conditioned to see it that way. Campbell and DePue thoroughly besmirch the justification theory reading of Romans 10.

But that's not the direction this essay is going. Instead, I'm going to focus on Paul's use of Torah in Romans 10:

For Moses writes of the righteousness that is based on the Law,

that the person who performs them will live by them.

But the righteousness based on faith speaks as follows:

"DO NOT SAY IN YOUR HEART, '

'WHO WILL GO UP INTO HEAVEN?'

(that is, to bring Christ down),

or 'Who will descend into the abyss?'

(that is, to bring Christ up from the dead)."

But what does it say?

"THE WORD IS NEAR YOU,

IN YOUR MOUTH AND IN YOUR HEART"

--that is, the word of faith which we are preaching,

that if you confess with your mouth Jesus [as] Lord,

and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead,

you will be saved;

for with the heart [a person] believes,

resulting in righteousness,

and with the mouth he confesses,

resulting in salvation.

—Romans 10:5-10 NASB

What is Paul saying in the way he uses Deuteronomy 30 in Romans 10? How does what he is saying relate to the harmful ideas of his rivals? How does this draw Paul’s thinking to Deuteronomy 30? Why this passage? What connection is Paul making and is it legitimate?

If you have not been following the Reimagining Paul blog, you will wonder who I mean when I mention "rivals." Near the end of Paul's missionary career, some other teachers began traveling to the communities Paul had founded and they said Paul had it all wrong. Non-Jews definitely needed to follow Jewish commandments—circumcision for the men, dietary laws, purity laws, Sabbaths and festivals, etc. It is possible they saw Jesus as our example in perfect Jewish law-keeping and not as our Savior. That is to say, they may have believed that Jesus achieved resurrection by perfection in keeping the law and showed us that God will resurrect us too if we follow his example.

These rivals definitely demanded that non-Jews live like Jews—the opposite of Paul's policy. And Paul saw clearly in the Torah and prophets that non-Jews would remain non-Jews in the promised renewal of the world. The rivals had plagued him in Galatia, Corinth, and Philippi, and he was concerned that they would come to Rome and make trouble there as well. So in the letter to the Romans, we have Paul in a Socratic dialogue with the rival teacher, especially in Romans 1-4.

How is Paul using Deuteronomy 30, then, and how does this relate to the teaching of Paul's rivals?

The first thing to see is that both Paul and the rival teachers are concerned with “life,” meaning for them eternal life. There are a number of passages from the Torah and prophets connecting the special relationship Israel has to God through the teaching of the Torah as a promise of life. Paul’s key text from the Prophets in explaining Jesus just such a verse:

But the righteous

Will live

By faith.

—Habakkuk 2:4 my translation

Paul sees a double meaning in here. For Habakkuk, the declaration was about how a Jewish person could continue in faith in God after seeing Jerusalem and the temple destroyed (in 586 BCE). God is saying through the prophet, “Keep believing; I have not abandoned you.”

But Paul sees another meaning here: the Righteous One (the messiah) will live (be resurrected) by faithfulness.

Resurrection and eternal life hang on that word in the Torah and prophets: “live.” Now, Romans 10:5-10 evokes Habakkuk 2:4, but that is not the only place Paul finds the Torah speaking of life coming from Israel’s Torah relationship with God:

See, I have placed before you today

life and happiness,

and death and adversity,

...I call heaven and earth to witness against you today,

that I have placed before you life and death,

the blessing and the curse.

So choose life in order that you may live,

you and your descendants.

—Deuteronomy 30:15, 19 NASB

Now we see that Paul did not choose Deuteronomy 30 randomly or simply for some cheap re-application of a metaphor. He chose it because in this very chapter Moses addresses the issue of "life". And this ultimately means eternal life. So, when Paul cites Moses—“Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will go up to heaven?’”—he has chosen his example from the very same scripture that talks about life, eternal life.

Paul saw eternal life promised in the scriptures of Israel and Paul saw Jesus as giving the "life" that Torah promised.

The Double Meaning in Deuteronomy 30

Now finding double meanings in ancient Hebrew oracles is a common rabbinic pastime. And there is an art to it. It is relatively easy to stretch a metaphor from an ancient prophet so that it has reference to later events in Israel's experience. But to be a particularly skillful second reading there needs to be more. There needs to be some additional reason why the chosen words are appropriate in the new context to which they are being applied.

And Paul has that with Deuteronomy 30. Moses is giving a speech about life and death, and how the Israelites must choose life by following God's words carefully. God has placed life and happiness, death and adversity, before the people of Israel.

With this context in mind, Paul is ready to take a potent image from Moses' speech and re-apply it to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. After all, Moses was talking about eternal life.

What did Moses mean about the word being near? What did he mean when he said no one would have to ascend to heaven to bring the word of life down to earth? What did he mean when he said no one would have to dive to the bottom of the sea to find life?

In the Ancient Near East (Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia)—and the same fears applied to Mediterranean religions that were connected to ancient Mesopotamia—people feared the gods would punish them for violating unknown protocols or preferences. There were, for example, many prayers repenting of unknown sins. Capricious gods and goddesses might kill your baby or your crops over some rule you didn't know was a rule.

This relates to our life experience. Bad things happen to good people. And if you believe that the universe operates according to justice or fairness, then it bothers you when a good person undergoes a painful trial. One way to explain it is to say, "They must have angered the gods."

Moses in the Deuteronomy 30 story is speaking to the Israelites camped on the edge of the Promised Land, about to go in. Moses will not go with them because God has decreed Moses' death outside of the Promised Land. So this last speech is a pep speech, a you-will-make-it-without-me speech. He wants them to have confidence in the promises. (It doesn't matter that the speech is fictional—written by a much later figure than Moses addressing a much later generation than early Israel).

So Moses makes a simple point: unlike other nations, you have a clear set of teachings from God given to you in words that you can memorize, recite with your lips, and teach to your children. The Torah (aka Law of Moses) is quite a gift. God's way is not a secret only to be discovered if you can ascend past the celestial dome to unknowable heights and retrieve it.

But Paul is going to make an analogy between Moses' teaching and the Gospel. Because, like the Torah, the Gospel is delivered in . . . words.

Words of Life

For Moses and the Israelites in Deuteronomy 30, the words of Torah are a desirable gift. They are the recipients of divine Grace. God could have given Torah to any other nation. The choosing of Israel is Israel's blessing.

For Paul and the early Christian communities, the words comprising the Gospel are a Grace-gift beyond anyone's greatest expectation. There is no one way to say the Gospel. It is not a message with a fixed script of words. Many different things can be said that are part of the Gospel: Christ died and rose so that we would die and rise with him and be included in God's New Reality by means of our participation with Christ.

These are words that Paul says comprise "the righteousness based on faith." Now, in this phrase the "faith" is that of Jesus. Jesus had faith in God to go all the way to the cross and not to resist the evil people who put him there. Jesus had faithfulness to stay there all the way until death overtook him. And the faith of Jesus saves us (see "The Faith of Jesus" for more). We are delivered from Sin and Death, regarded as righteous, because of Jesus' faith.

But having said that, we also have faith. We come to believe at a definite point in our experience. So Paul says:

… if you confess with your mouth Jesus [as] Lord,

and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead,

you will be saved.

—Romans 10:9 NASB

Just as the Israelites could say the words of Torah, memorize them, learn them, pass them on to children, so Jesus-followers can say the words of the Gospel and teach them to others. And just as the words of Torah promised life for Israel, so the words of the Gospel promise life for Jesus-followers.

Now, the statement above need not be read conditionally. It can be read as a declarative statement. In other words, Paul is not necessarily saying, "As long as you confess and believe, God will save you." He could be saying, "If you have confessed the Gospel in words and if you believe in your inner person, then you can be assured you are on track to be saved." This is not the essay where I am going to go over the arguments about conditionality and unconditionality however.

No, this is the essay where I am celebrating the genius of Paul as a rabbi, a Torah-teacher, and a master of the Gospel.

When you have rivals using Jewish theology to create fear of missing out (missing out on afterlife), what better way to combat their meshugas (crazy beliefs) than to cite the Torah itself!

Paul's rivals are saying the path to life is difficult, almost unattainable. They put burdens on the good people of the Greco-Roman world: you must be perfect like Jesus to have eternal life.

Paul stands with Moses, who told the Israelites on the edge of the Promised Land: "It is not difficult; God has made it easy." The word is near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart. This is true of the word of Torah (love the Lord your God with all your heart) and the word of the Gospel (Christ died and was buried, but on the third day he rose).

No one has to ascend to heaven. Christ brought the word down from heaven. No one needs to descend into the sea or the abyss (Paul not so subtly changes "sea" to "abyss," but there is justification for that if you understand Torah symbolism regarding bodies of water as representing chaos and death). Christ went down into death and came back up already.

So all we need to do is know the words and believe them. And God grants us the belief, so even that does not depend on us. It is all a gift from the benevolent Father who sent the redeeming Son and spoke to our hearts directly by the immanent Spirit. There should be no fear of missing out. God loves Israel with an everlasting love and he brings the promise near. Likewise, God loves those who are in Christ with an everlasting love and puts the promise on our lips.