While reading his collected essays on Jesus, Paul, and the Law, Heikki Räisänen wrote the following which shows the problematic nature of the “all works associated with salvation [even those empowered by God’s grace] are anathema per Gal 1:6-9” approach many (not all) Evangelicals have:
It is true that
circumcision and observance can be regarded as ‘an essential element of soteriology’
(S. Kim, The Origin of Paul’s Gospel, p. 351). This does not mean,
however, that Judaism was a religion of ‘justification by works’ in the sense
of human-centred legalism. A Jewish boy was circumcised at the age of eight
days: that could not be regarded as a work of his own. He grew up in a milieu
where observance was normal and, therefore, did not demand an enormous effort
from him (although things were harder in the Diaspora than in Palestine). The
will to stay within Judaism and the covenant was the important thing. Thus, a
human decision and effort was expected of him in the framework of a larger
scheme, in which God’s salvific activity was basic. The Christians scheme was
not dissimilar: one had to be baptized and to live in accordance with one’s
call. Actually, in Paul’s day it was ‘Christianity’ (to use an anachronistic
term) which demanded a Jew to do something novel as one had to ‘seek’ (a
new kind of) righteousness (Gal. 2;17!) and accept baptism. One had to convert
and that required a conscious human decision. (Heikki Räisänen, “Paul’s
Call Experience and His Later View of the Law,” in Räisänen, Jesus, Paul and
Torah: Collected Essays [Journal for the Study of the New Testament
Supplement Series 43; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992], 34, emphasis in bold added)
Refuting Douglas Wilson on Water Baptism and Salvation
