There are a number of serious
problems with this type of reading. First, one of its consequences is a
tendency to separate the Old and the New Testaments means of salvation. This
reading assumes that salvation in the Old Testament was based on works (Lev.
18;5), while in the New Testament it is based on faith. It seems difficult to
accept in the Old Testament God would use a means of salvation that in New
Testament times is considered erroneous, or even heretical; the presumed
Judaizing (and Catholic!) the error of works righteous. Second, the assumption that
St. Paul had an “introspective conscience” cannot withstand careful scrutiny of
his letters. Throughout these letters we meet a confident St. Paul—confident not
only after but seen before his Damascus Road experience (cf. Phil. 3:6). This
is not to say that Paul thought that he had been sinless or perfect in obeying
the Law. But he took comfort from the fact that under the Law, Israelites could
atone for their sins by means of repentance, sacrifice, and restitution, not
all sins resulted in punishment. Finally, and perhaps most seriously, the
traditional Protestant reading belittles hospitality because it works with a
strict economy of exchange. The covenantal relationship between God and human
beings takes on strongly contractual connotations. The stranger has secured a
place in the home not by an unconditional gift but by means of a contractual
agreement (with the elect being allotted to Christ on the basis of his
agreement to suffer in their stead). Nouwen’s notion that the father “cannot
force, constrain, push or pull” the prodigal appears to be lost (Henry J. Noumen,
The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming [New York:
Image-Doubleday], 95).
It seems to me that we need to opt
for a national-historical reading of this passage, one that does not ignore its
juridical and covenantal overtones—it plainly contains penal language—but that
makes the judicial elements subservient to the hospitality that God extends in
Jesus Christ. St. Paul’s quotation of Deuteronomy 27:26 is highly significant,
because this text is part of a larger covenant document (Deuteronomy 27-30) and
needs to be read in that context. N. T. Wright explains the context as follows:
It describes, and indeed appears
to enact, the making of the covenant in Moab, the covenant which holds that our
blessing and curse. The blessing and curse are not merely “take-it-or-leave-it”
options: Deuteronomy declares that Israel will in fact eventually make the
wrong choice, and, as a result, suffer the curse of all curses, that is, exile
(Deuteronomy 28:15-29:29). But that will not be the end of the story, or of the
covenant. Deuteronomy 30 then holds out hope the other side of covenant
failure, a hope of covenant renewal, of the re-gathering of the people after
exile, of the circumcision of the heart, of the word being “near you, on your
lips and in your heart” (30:1-14). In other words, Deuteronomy 27-30 is all
about exile and restoration, understood as covenant judgment and
covenant renewal. (N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the
Law in Pauline Theology [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992], 140)
The Mosaic covenant was an
arrangement that God made not with one individual but with an entire nation.
This also means that the covenant curse of exile would fall on the entire nation.
The Deuteronomic Law insists that Israel as a whole—despite the
uprightness of individual believers—would consistently reject the very aim of
repentance and sacrifice, namely, restoration of and growth in the relationship
with Yahweh. The book of Deuteronomy leads up to the divine prediction of the
rebellion of Israel, of its rejection of the monotheist confession of the Shema
as the heart of the Law (Deut. 6:4-6). The book thus leads to the culmination
of exile as the curse of the Law (Deut. 28:32, 36-37, 49-52, 63-68; 29:28;
31:16-22, 29. The Song of Moses that the Israelites are to sing [Deuteronomy
32] is to function as a judicial self-indictment]). The Deuteronomic history
books (Joshua-2 Kings) trace the apostasy of God’s people, which finally
results in the exilic curse.
Significantly, exile is God’s last
option. He resorts to this climactic punishment when it becomes clear that
Israel as a whole consistently refused to repent and so to obtain forgiveness
and a restoration of the relationship with Yahweh (Again, this is not to say
that individual Israelites would not have had their relationship with God restored
by the Old Testament means of reconciliation. Scripture [in particular the
Psalms] calls many people “righteous.” The point is that Israel as a whole did
not abide by Torah and its means of reconciliation). God does not delight in
punishment but keeps the violence of penal force at bay as much as possible.
What is more, the punishment of exile as the curse of the Law serves to salvage
the realization of monotheistic worship as the very heart of the Law. The punishment
serves the purpose of pure, eschatological hospitality: the Father’s eternal
embrace of the prodigal son. “Punishment may be necessary . . . but it is not
the pain of punishment itself that achieves justice, as though justice resides
in creating equity of suffering, the pain of offenders’ punishments
compensating for the pain inflicted on victims. True justice in the restoring
of relationships and the recreation of shalom (Romans 5) “ (Marshall, Beyond
Retribution, 69).
When St. Paul quotes the
Deuteronomic invocation of the curse, he is assuming that Israel has, in fact,
suffered the curse of the Law in the historical punishment of exile. In other
words, the “curse of the Law” is not some eternal principle that results from
any and every transgression of the commandment, but it refers to the historical
judgment of exile against Israel because of its consistent rejection of divine hospitality.
Despite the partial return of the Jews in the sixth century B.C., St. Paul saw
the Jewish nation of his day still oppressed by foreigners and therefore still
in exile. According to a national-historical interpretation of Galatians 3,
therefore, St. Paul maintains that in his death Christ has suffered Israel’s
exile: “Christ, as the representative Messiah, has achieved a specific task,
that of taking on himself the curse which hung over Israel and which on the one
hand prevented her from enjoying full membership in Abraham’s family and
thereby on the other hand prevented the blessing of Abraham from flowing out to
the Gentiles. The Messiah has come here Israel is, under the Torah’s curse . .
. , in order to be not only Israel’s representative but Israel’s redeeming representative”
(Wright, Climax, 151). Christ not only suffered Israel’s exile, however,
but in the eschatological reality of his resurrection (“a new creation”—2 Cor.
5:17), he has also returned from exile and thereby restored Israel (Ezekiel
37:1-14 depicts the return from exile as a resurrection from the dead). The
resurrection of Jesus Christ is the inbreaking of the age to come and as such
is the realization of God’s pure, unconditional hospitality—which is not infinitely
delayed, forever “to come” (à venir). Thus, we can observe the objective
pole of the atonement when we interpret the cross in the light of the open
grave. Redemption is not simply the result of punishment, but is the result of
a punishment that leads to the restoration and new life of the eschaton.
St. Paul’s difficulty with the
Galatians is that they refuse to live in anticipation of this eschatological hospitality
that has, at least in principle, already brought them the blessing of covenant
renewal and so of God’s unconditional hospitality, the blessing of Abraham has
now come to the Gentiles (Gal 3:14). The Judaizers’ wish to abide by the ethnic
boundary markers of the Law means that they posit themselves under the old
covenant and so put themselves back into a historical period that has proven to
be a dead-end road. Life under the Law led to exile. By attempting to do “works
of the Law,” therefore, the people of Galatia would place themselves in the sphere
of the curse. “This curse-threat looms overhead like the sword of Damocles,
ever ready to fall and realize its full maledictory potential upon those who
stand beneath it. The state of its existence results from being ‘under the law’
for it is the torah which pronounces the threat of curse” (Joseph P. Braswell,
“’The Blessing of Abraham’ verses ‘the Curse of the Law’: Another Look at Gal
3:10-13,” Westminster Theological Journal 53 [1991]: 76-77). (Hans
Boersma, Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross: Reappropriating the Atonement
Tradition [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2004], 174-77)