Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Heikki Räisänen on Paul and Early Christians Teaching One had to "Do" Somethings To Be Saved vs. Common Eisegetical Abuses of Galatians 1:6-9

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)

 

 On baptism and its salvific efficacy, see, for e.g.:


Refuting Douglas Wilson on Water Baptism and Salvation