E. P. Sanders in his monumental Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977) kicked off a bun fight in the world of Pauline studies: a bun fight that has since been labelled the New Perspective on Paul (NPP). His book was an attempt to discover the so-called ‘pattern of religion’ of Second Temple Judaism, and he concluded broadly that God in his unmerited grace chose to liberate Israel from Egyptian slavery, and brought her to Mount Sinai, where he gave her his Law. Sanders writes: “in all the literature surveyed, obedience maintains one’s position in the covenant, but it does not earn God’s grace as such. It simply keeps an individual in the group which is the recipient of God’s grace.” (PPJ, 420). If we were to put it in a nutshell, “you get into the covenant by grace, but you stay in by obedience.”
The clue that there might be a covenantal misunderstanding here lies in Sanders’ phrase “one’s position in the covenant.” Just the one. But my understanding is that there is not just one covenant, but several quite distinct covenants: the Abrahamic, the Sinai, the Davidic and the New Covenants being the major ones (we’ll ignore the Covenant with Noah here, and we dispute the reformed claim for the existence of a so-called pre-Fall covenant with Adam).
I won’t go over all the fine detail of previous posts on covenant theology, but will give here just my summary understanding of each:
- The Abrahamic Covenant (Gen 12-22) is foundational, and it is of the Royal Grant form. It’s more complicated than simply saying it is a wholly unconditional promise made by God to Abraham (based on Genesis 15, I used to think that). Rather, I see a narrative development in God’s relationship with Abraham whereby Abraham grows in trust and obedience from Gen 12 through to Gen 22, by which time his faith and obedience are truly epic! Thus, on the basis of Abraham’s ‘performing’ as God’s faithful human covenant partner, God swears on oath by himself in Gen 22:16-18 that all the promises to Abraham will most certainly be fulfilled. What this means, crucially, is that regardless of the conditional / unconditional developmental nuances of the Abrahamic covenant during Abraham’s own lifetime, by the time of his death God considers that he has performed, and so, God’s covenantal promises to him will most certainly come true. Therefore, as far as Isaac, Jacob, and his twelve sons are concerned, the Abrahamic Covenant entails an unconditional divine promise of blessing for Abraham’s ‘seed’.
- The Sinai Covenant (Ex 19-24) is very different: it is of Suzerain/Vassal form. Here the emphasis is very much upon conditionality: Israel swears obedience to her Suzerain LORD on pain of death (Exod 24:3,7). And this Covenant has teeth. Lev 26 and Deut 28 are the blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. And Israel is disobedient, and on balance earns the curses, not the blessings. If we had to sum up the Sinai Covenant in a phrase, it would be “Do this and live!” (see Lev 18:5)
- The Davidic Covenant (2 Sam 7:4-17) I regard as a hybrid, with both conditional and unconditional elements applied to different parties. As far as it concerns David, it is of Royal Grant type (like the Royal Grant given to Abraham): God himself will ensure that David’s line will endure forever (see Psalm 89): this is irrevocably a pure gift. And it’s a jolly good job – because only four chapters later, David loses the plot in a very big way, committing adultery with Bathsheba and having her husband Uriah in effect murdered (2 Sam 11-). So as regards David, it’s unconditional. As it concerns any single future Davidic heir, however, it has Suzerain/Vassal features (see 2 Sam 7:14-15). If he disobeys, God will inflict punishment, and may even remove that individual sinful Davidic heir: nevertheless, the Davidic line will endure forever.
- The New Covenant fulfils all of the above, by God’s design. Jesus is the true seed of Abraham (Gal 3:16); the one and only faithful Israelite who earns the blessing but on the cross bears the curse (Gal 3:10-14); and the Davidic heir who will rule forever in righteousness and justice. Of course he is/does: he is God the Son, the second Person of the Trinity!
If the above understanding has validity, we can now perhaps see where the NPP misunderstanding begins. Consider Ex 19:3-6, which reads:
The LORD called to him [Moses] out of the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel: 4 You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. 5 Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; 6 and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.”
Typical NPP (and Reformed) exegetes proceed something like this: “In v3-4 we see the prevenient grace of God: Israel ‘gets in’ by grace. In v5-6 we see their obedience in grateful response to the prior grace. There you go: they get in to the covenant by grace, and they stay in by obedience. They are not legalists, trying to earn their salvation: they are already ‘saved by grace’!”
This error stems from a rudimentary arithmetic blunder: a failure to count the number of covenants correctly. At this point in the history of salvation, only one (major) covenant is in place: the Abrahamic (we can ignore the covenant with Noah for these purposes). The grace found here in v3-4 is Abrahamic grace, not Sinaitic grace. They don’t ‘get in’ to the Sinai Covenant ‘by grace’: God rescues them – as explicitly stated in Ex 2:24 – because of his covenant promises to Abraham.
What we have in Exodus 19 is not even the point of entry into the Sinai Covenant: that doesn’t happen until Exodus 24. God is here proposing in outline the terms & conditions of a Suzerain/Vassal treaty for Israel’s acceptance. Verses 3 and 4 are so-called ‘historical prologue’ (as found, interestingly, in most Suzerain-Vassal Treaties so far discovered in the Ancient Near East: these were fairly standardised legal contracts). God is saying “On the basis of my gracious deliverance, here’s what I’m proposing.” Note well the conditionality in v5 “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine.”
In most if not all computer programming languages you have if … then clauses, that look something like this:
if <condition> then [execute this code] else [execute this code] endif
God is saying – sorry to labour the point – “if you keep my covenant – the one I am about to propose – then you will be my treasured possession.”
This is absolutely and categorically not the right place to locate God’s grace under the Sinai Covenant! [Aside: the right place, I am persuaded, is at the Tabernacle, a God-ordained, crucial part of the Sinai covenant ‘package’ – where an unblemished substitute bears your covenant curse in its death – all of which of course foreshadows the cross.]
The law given at Sinai says “Do this and live!” It’s a terrifying prospect, as a careful exegesis of Ex 19 makes blindingly obvious for those who still have the strength to remove their ‘one over-arching covenant of grace’ rose-tinted spectacles.
The Abrahamic and the Sinaitic Covenants are very different animals. And to my mind, the rest of the Old Testament is the outworking of the interplay between the two: God’s sworn oath to Abraham tends to lead to Israel’s preservation and blessing (in spite of them), while Sinai tends to lead to her destruction and curse, ending in exile.
And the NPP with its “get in by grace, stay in by obedience” punchline is wrong because it can’t count covenants, plural.
One last thing, which could help to explain, perhaps, Paul’s evidently complex attitude to the Law. Here’s the idea.
Before Jesus died on the cross, to be “in the covenant” was to be a Jew (or convert to Judaism): one who sought to be faithful to the Sinai Law (one who sought to “do this and live!”), but, when one failed, one availed oneself of the God-ordained and effective provision of a sacrificial victim at the Tabernacle, later the Jerusalem Temple. The Law component of the Sinai Covenant ‘package’ condemns, and the Tabernacle component removes the condemnation through the death of a substitute. Such a person is “in the covenant”, and is “righteous” in God’s sight, unlike the “sinners” who are outside the covenant (see Gal 2:15).
After Jesus cried “It is finished!”, and the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, part of the “it” that was “finished” was the ‘cultus’ – the entire God-ordained and effective system of Priests, Sacrifices, and Holy Place. Going forward, this would no longer function to remove sins [In any case, all the sins ever dealt with through the cultus (and they were ‘dealt with’, as for example Lev 4:20 affirms) were dealt with only in a foreshadowing (‘proleptic’) way: they were ‘passed over’. However, when Jesus Christ breathed his last, they were fully and finally dealt with (see Rom 3:25).]
Hence, after the cross, if Jesus is Israel’s true Messiah, the only way for a Jew who rejects Messiah Jesus to be found “righteous” is to perfectly “do this and live!” – i.e. perfectly keep the Law component of the Sinai covenant package, without benefitting from the gracious provision of the cultus component of the covenant package. Good luck with that (see Gal 5:1-4).
So could it be that, when Paul apparently critiques Judaism as legalistic, he is referring only to the now, post-cross, situation? Is Paul thinking salvation-historically, as a good biblical theologian?
"Are we nearly there yet?" 