Monday, July 10, 2023

Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., on "The Letter and the Spirit"

  

The Letter and the Spirit

 

Three Pauline passages contrast the letter and the Spirit. In Rom 2:29 Paul compares two types of Jews: the one is a Jew inwardly whose circumcision is that of the heart and the spirit (cf. Moses’ word in Deut 30:6); the other is a Jew outwardly in the letter and the circumcision of the flesh. Notice carefully, however, that in dia grammatos kai peritomēs (Rom 2:27)

 

The δια cannot be translated “in spite of”, . . . it must be given an instrumental significance. It is precisely through what is written and through circumcision that the Jew is a transgressor. He is to see that his true position involves possession of the γραμμα and περιτομη, but with no genuine fulfillment of the law. (Gottlob Schrenk, “γραμμα,” TDNT 1, 765)

 

Consequently, it is in Rom 2:29 that supplies the real solution to this letter/Spirit contrast. Only when the heart is refashioned for obedience can this false use of the law in either Testament can overcome. As in Deut 30:6, what is needed is peritomē kardias en (instrumental) pneumatic. The contrast is total, as shown below.

 

Not this: peritomē en (locative) sarki en (instrumental) grammati, but this: peritomē en (locative) kardia en (instrumental) pneumati.

 

Schrenk declares that this theme of a circumcision of the heart dominates all the letter/Spirit passages in Paul. (Schrenk, TDNT, 1, 765) Thus Paul is not speaking so much of the inadequacy of the law or the mere letter as he is stressing the need for that power which he alone can produce an obedience to this law. The power comes from turning to the Lord with all one’s heart and life. Men actually transgress the law when they outwardly observe all its prescriptions but inwardly remains impervious to it.

 

In a similar manner, Rom 7;16 is not a discharge notice whereby the older dispensation of the law has now been terminated in order to allow room for the new dispensation of the Spirit. It was not that the graphē of the law had ceased, but the gramma. For Paul, this meant an outward, fleshly, uncommitted observance of the letter of Moses and a perfunctory circumcision of the flesh. All to no avail. To do all this was only to sin (Rom 2:27); indeed, it was a “serving in the oldness of the letter (gramma).” Paul could “serve” the law of God with the mind. But “with [his] flesh” he served “the law of sin.” There it is again, Paul’s contrast between the heart, which he here calls his “mind,” and the flesh. In other words, there are two ways of serving the law of God. people recognize the weightier matters of that law and inwardly respond to God first. In Mosaic vocabulary, they “fear God” and “love him with all their hearts,” or “circumcise their hearts.” They too have found, with the prophets and Paul, that what God requires is “obedience” (cf. John 3:36, “believing the son” = “obeying”), justice, mercy, faith and love for God.

 

The same is true in 2 Cor 3:6. If Paul teaches that the Old Covenant or law as written (graphē) was unto death in this verse, then he has flatly contradicted himself in Rom 7:10ff., and contradicted also the OT and Jesus. “The commandment,” he there had said, “was ordained unto life!” But Augustine correctly saw the meaning

 

. . . the letter of the law, which teaches us not to commit sin, kills, if the life-giving Spirit be absent. (De Spiritu et Littera, 5)

 

R. Bultmann also assessed the problem accurately:

 

The reason why men’s situation under the law is so desperate is not that the Law as an inferior revelation mediates a limited or even false knowledge of God. What makes [man’s] situation so desperate is the simple fact that prior to faith there is no fulfillment of the law . . . That is why the “ministration of the Law” is a “ministration of death” or of “condemnation” (II Cor 3:7, 9); that is why “the written code kills” (II Cor 3:6); that is why the Law is “the law of sin and death” (Rom 8:2). The reason why ma under the law does not achieve [justification] and life is that he is a transgressor of the Law, that he is guilty before God. (Theology of the New Testament, 1, 262-63)

 

The problem then is not that the law of God is B.C. in time, but it is B.C. in faith. Man must set his priorities and turn by faith to Christ, or his reading of Moses and his obeying of the law will be veiled. (Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., “The Weightier and Lighter Matters of the Law: Moses, Jesus and Paul,” in Current Issues in Biblical and Patristic Interpretation: Studies in Honor of Merrill C. Tenney Presented By His Former Students, ed. Gerald F. Hawthorne [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1975], 187-88)