I have been reading Jame’s Dunn’s monumental (800 pages!) THE THEOLOGY OF PAUL THE APOSTLE as part of my readings for this The Year of St. Paul. (Just holding the book to read is simultaneously spiritual and physical exercise!). I have been trying to gain insight into St. Paul’s understanding of the Torah and the relationship of the Law to our salvation as well as to our moral behavior. We are saved by grace not by works, but how then are we to live – does the Torah or the Ten Commandments have any importance in our daily lives?
Dunn endeavors to get beyond the grace versus works arguments of the Reformation-Counter Reformation debates and to understand Paul within the context of his relationship to Judaism rather than to Protestantism or Catholicism. It seems to me he does pretty well in getting beyond this Western Christian debate and getting into St. Paul’s text, though he casts the discussion often in terms of the ongoing interpretive debates of the 20th Century among his scriptural scholar colleagues. He uses these more recent discussions to build his arguments for his interpretation of St. Paul.
One insight I’ve had while reading the book concerns the nature of the Torah/Law. In Deuteronomy 6 the great creedal Shema of Israel is offered:
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”
What seems to me to be the main thrust of Deuteronomy 6 is that keeping Torah – God’s commandments, ordinances, teachings , law – is to help the person remember (not forget, 6:12-14) the saving deeds of God in order to remain faithful to God. The purpose of doing all of the commandments is to remember what God has done so that we will always be faithful to God no matter what else might currently be happening. This is the purpose of reciting/repeating the commandments and it is how God will remain close to and in our hearts.
What Dunn sees as the misunderstanding of Israel is that keeping Torah ultimately changed the focus of the Israelites and instead of remembering what God had done to save them, they came to focus on their own deeds and how to keep the Law. This is what St. Paul means when he contrasts faith to works of the Law. The Law was given to help the Israelites remember what God had done, instead they focused on what they were doing – how well they were keeping the Law, and thus pursued a righteousness based on their own works of the Law rather than on remembering what God had done – keeping faith in God’s works. In this sense the Law became a trap for the Israelites instead of their salvation. They misunderstood the Law and forgot its purpose – to focus their attention and faith on God and God’s deeds and God’s will. Instead they got caught up in meticulously (rigidly, legalistically, Pharisaically) keeping the details of the Law while forgetting the very thing the Law was to remind them of – what God had done for their salvation. The Torah was supposed to help maintain the faith of Israel in God, but the Israelites turned it into their way to maintain God’s blessing on them and to keep them separated from the rest of humankind. Thus the Law became nothing more than a way of the flesh rather than a way of the spirit because it focused on human effort instead of reminding the people of what God had done for them. Keeping Torah was not supposed to be about following rules but about remembering what God had done in order to keep faith with God.
The implications for modern Orthodox should be pretty obvious as well. Fasting, rubrics, canons and typicons help us to remember what God has done for us in order to nurture our faith in God. If we however turn them into our own pursuit of holiness, into that which defines and separates us from the rest of humankind (whom God loves and for whom Christ died), we are turning our faith into the same traditionalist mistake which the Israelites made – and they were not commended or justified by God for it. We are not saved by keeping Torah or Tradition but by keeping faith in the Holy Trinity who has saved us. It is Jesus Christ who saves us, and our goal is to maintain faith in Him and thus be united to Him. All Tradition is important to the extent that is helps us remember God’s saving acts in Jesus Christ and helps maintain our faith in God and trust in His merciful deeds of salvation. It is not the rigorous keeping of rules and regulations which is important, but maintaining faith in God through Jesus Christ our Lord. keeping Tradition is important when it is identical with keeping Faith in the Holy Trinity. Tradition helps us remember what God has done for us; that is why we keep it, not to replace trust in God with trusting in our own rigorist righteousness.
help – coming from the depths of his soul. And I realize for generations humans have been suffering, hoping and crying to God. Even though each person’s afflictions are their own, yet countless people before have suffered similarly and found help and strength in God. And we Christians always have hope – both because of the promises of God and because our God has suffered all the pains, sorrows, afflictions and mental anguish of humanity. Psalm 103 speaks so well to this: ‘He knows our frame, he remembers we are dust…’ God does not forget the creatures He has made; He remembers the fragility of our nature. We are dust, tiny particles that easily be blown away. We are dust, and unto dust we will return, and yet He remembers what we are …. His Majestic Might is so gentle, so nimble, so humble that He can touch a human – who is but dust – and heal him. The infinite power of God can in love touch dust and give it life. … The incarnation is even a greater mystery – Mary is not only touched by the Divine Power, but she contains in her womb this Power. In Christ, Divinity not only touches dust, but humbles itself and allows itself to be contained by the dust!”
In this season of the Nativity Fast, I have been offering up theological reflections on 
scholar Ray Brown, 
Fraternized 