Paul and Judaism: 5 Puzzles

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In recent years, five questions have dominated scholarly discussions regarding Paul’s attitudes toward Judaism and its Law.

Was Paul a convert? Or did he remain Jewish?

The answer to whether Paul converted depends to a large extent on what is meant by conversion and from whose viewpoint the question is posed. If conversion means changing religions, moving from one religion to another, then Paul was not a convert. This is because Judaism and Christianity were not yet viewed as separate religions. In the fifties of the first century, when Paul wrote his letters, people still looked on Christians as a particular kind of Jew.

This was the perspective not only of outside observers, but also of inside participants like Paul. Paul regarded his Christianity as the fullness of his Judaism, as the kind of Judaism that God had finally revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, not as an alternate religion.

If Paul thought that he remained within Judaism, then of what did his “conversion” consist? Paul’s conversion was really a move from Pharisaic Judaism to Christian Judaism, from one type of Judaism to another.

Paul himself claims to have been a Pharisee (Philippians 3:5), and Luke also reports this (Acts 23:6, 26:5),¹ There is no good reason to reject this claim.² But after and because of his experience of Christ, Paul regarded his life as a Pharisee to have been a “loss.” “Whatever gain I had [as a Pharisee] I counted as loss for the sake of Christ” 020(Philippians 3:7). He had found a better way—“conformation” (being formed) with Christ. Everything else had to fit within that overpowering experience:

“Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith; that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:8–11).

In Paul’s own mind, however, he remained within Judaism. From his viewpoint, he was promoting a new, fuller kind of Judaism. But to some other Jews and even to some other Jewish Christians, Paul was going beyond the bounds of Judaism. To them, Paul looked like an apostate from Judaism. That is why it is so important to ask from whose viewpoint are we considering whether Paul converted. The answer may well turn on the perspective of the observer. Alan Segal describes what happened to Paul as a true conversion and specifies it as a transformation from Pharisaism to Christianity.³

Paul’s insistence on “conformation” with Christ eventually led Jews to perceive Pauline Christianity to be a new religion. His liberal attitude toward gentile converts to Pauline Christianity and his own willingness to share their lives (perhaps even to the point of not observing the Law, see 1 Corinthians 9:21) led Jewish Christians to suspect that Paul had gone over the edge, both of Judaism generally and of Jewish Christianity.

While remaining within Judaism in his own view, Paul did engage at several points in what can be called a “redefinition” of Judaism that equated Jewish Christians and gentile Christians with the remnant of Israel mentioned in the Jewish Scriptures (Isaiah 10:22–23, cited in Romans 9:27). In Philippians 3:3, for example, he redefines circumcision: Those “who worship in the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh” are the “true circumcision.”

In Romans 2:13–16, Paul redefines what it means to be an observer of the Law. He there claims that gentiles who “do instinctively what the Law requires” are a law to themselves and thus qualify as doers of the Law. Speaking with reference to gentiles, Paul says that “what the Law requires is written on their hearts.”

In Romans 9:6, he even redefines Israel to exclude some Jews: “For not all Israelites truly belong to Israel.” And the basic issue that occupied Paul in his letters to the Galatians and Romans was how non-Jews could be part of the people of God, whose historic root was in Israel (see Romans 11:17–24).

But Paul never disavowed his Judaism. He never said: “I am no longer a Jew.” In fact, at several points, he lists his credentials as a Jew (Philippians 3:5–6; 2 Corinthians 11:22; Romans 11:1).

To say that Paul remained intensely proud of his Jewish credentials, however, overlooks the contexts in which these lists appear. What Paul the Christian was most proud of was his participation in the death and resurrection of Christ. In light of that experience, his Jewish credentials were at best indifferent and at worst “loss” (Philippians 3:7–8).

Was Paul a convert? He probably viewed himself as moving from Pharisaic Judaism to Christian Judaism—from one kind of Judaism to another. Other Jews (and even Jewish Christians) viewed his move as more radical. His “easy” admission of gentiles to the communities he founded—gentiles did not have to be circumcised, or observe the dietary laws or otherwise heed the Law—and his liberal redefinitions of circumcision, Law-observance and Israel seemed to other Jews as too drastic. They probably did regard Paul as moving from one religion to another, or at least as moving beyond Judaism. Later gentile Christians came to share the opinion that Christianity and Judaism were indeed separate religions.

Who was Paul addressing in his letters? And why does it matter?

At several points in his letters, Paul emphasizes that God called him to preach the gospel to the gentiles (Romans 1:5, 11:13, 15:16, 18, 16:26; Galatians 1:16, 2:2, 8–9). In Galatians 2:1–10 Paul describes the outcome of a meeting in Jerusalem with other leaders of the Jesus movement. There they agreed that Peter would preach the gospel to “the circumcised” and Paul “should go to the gentiles.” This effected a division of labor according to which Paul and Barnabas would minister to non-Jews and the other apostles would work with Jews. Since Paul never separated his gospel from its Jewish roots, in effect 021Paul was extending a form of Judaism to gentiles and thus opening up to all the privileges granted to Israel.

To emphasize that Paul himself did not feel he had converted from Judaism but was simply opening up the blessings of Judaism to gentiles by enabling them too to become among the people of God, some scholars prefer to speak of the “call” of Paul rather than his conversion.⁴ Their point is that, rather than changing religions, Paul felt himself to have been called by God to a special mission: to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to non-Jews and thus to integrate them into the people of God.

At the same time, Paul insisted that these gentiles did not have to undergo circumcision or take upon themselves all the other obligations of the Law (the Torah). Paul regarded Jewish Christians who sought to impose these obligations on non-Jews as compromising the gospel. Though he may have looked upon circumcision and the “works of the Law” as matters of indifference, he was not indifferent on the question of whether gentiles needed to observe, or even share, these practices. Paul understood his mission to the gentiles as not requiring (or involving) circumcision or other aspects of Torah observance.

What I have said about Paul as the apostle to the gentiles is hardly new or controversial. It is important, however, because it provides the context for what Paul says in his letters, especially regarding Jews and Judaism. Paul almost always directly addresses gentile Christians, a fact that must be kept in mind. Paul tries to help gentile Christians to locate themselves in God’s people with reference to Jewish Christians and other Jews. The problems that he encounters are, for the most part, gentile-Christian problems.

Equally important, we must bear in mind that we are not sure how Paul spoke to Jewish Christians (see 1 Corinthians 9:20: “To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win the Jews”). In his ideal future, Jewish Christians and gentile Christians would be united with the temporarily “harden[ed] … part of Israel” (Romans 11:25–26) in one people of God, with all enjoying the benefits of salvation. In his letters, Paul was addressing a gentile-Christian audience. That Paul preached primarily to non-Jews and was speaking to them in his letters is an important emphasis in modern Pauline scholarship.

From this same starting point, however, different scholars have arrived at different positions. We will look at the work of two scholars who, though agreeing on the importance of understanding Paul’s position in light of the fact that he is addressing non-Jews, nevertheless arrive at very different pictures of Paul as the apostle to the gentiles. They reach their differing conclusions in significant part because one believes that the gentile-Christian community had already separated from the synagogue, while the second believes this had not yet occurred and that Paul was essentially concerned with defining how gentiles can become a part of Israel, the 022people of God.

The first view is that of Francis Watson of King’s College, London.⁵ According to Watson, when Paul wrote his letters, gentile Christians had already separated from the synagogue. Paul had already conducted an unsuccessful mission among Jews. That mission had been so unsuccessful that Watson concluded that non-Christian Jews were subject to a divine “hardening” (Romans 11:25). Therefore, Paul was called to preach the gospel to gentiles instead. For Watson, the gentile-Christian churches founded by Paul constituted a sect outside the Jewish community, not a reform movement within it.⁶

Based on this presupposition, Paul’s attitudes toward Judaism, the Law and gentiles, in Watson’s view, must be understood as Paul’s attempt to legitimate theologically gentile-Christian communities even though they did not observe the Law.

Since Christian hope was, even at that early stage, independent of the Law and of Judaism, Pauline Christianity, in Watson’s perspective, is gentile Christianity, and he expected other Jewish Christians to follow.

Lloyd Gaston of the Vancouver School of Theology takes a very different position.⁷ He contends that, although Paul was certainly concerned with gentile-Christian problems, foremost among these problems was “the right of gentiles qua gentiles, without adopting the Torah of Israel, to full citizenship in the people of God.”⁸

According to Gaston, Paul’s experience of Christ on the road to Damascus had a specific content—through Christ, God had provided a meaningful answer to the quandary concerning gentiles and the Law. How were the gentiles to be saved? That salvation was to take place “in Christ,” for Christ was the fulfillment of God’s promises concerning the gentiles. Therefore, Jews do not need to become gentiles, nor do gentiles need to become Jews. Both are full and equal members of God’s people.

Since Paul was not addressing Jews or Jewish Christians, he had no intention of persuading them to abandon observance of the Torah, says Gaston. The implication is that Jews and Jewish Christians were to continue keeping the Torah. The result of this approach would seem to be two kinds of Christianity—one Jewish and one gentile. Paul’s quarrel with his fellow Jewish Christians—Peter and company—was not their observance of the Law but rather their failure to grasp what God was doing among the gentiles through Christ.

According to Gaston, throughout Paul’s ministry, two kinds of Christianity co-existed—one Law-observing (Jewish) and the other not Law-observing (gentile).

I regard both Watson’s view and Gaston’s view as somewhat extreme and based on presuppositions that cannot be proved, although both present a surprisingly fresh and provocative picture of Paul. I believe, however, that historical truth probably lies somewhere between the two views. Paul wrote in the midst of the struggle over whether there really were two kinds of Christianity; the logic of Paul’s position was that there was only one (whether or not his contemporaries or even Paul himself recognized this). The relation between church and synagogue in Paul’s time was more fluid than Watson allows and less neat than Gaston proposes. Their startlingly different pictures of Paul begin from the fact that Paul spoke primarily to gentile Christians. They diverge in part because there is much we do not know about the development of earliest Christianity and because we all tend to form our view of Paul in light of our own historical and theological presuppositions.

What was Paul’s attitude toward the Law?

Writing to gentile Christians, Paul made clear that willingness to observe the Mosaic Law was not a requirement for them.^a For several reasons, gentiles considering conversion might well wonder whether they would be required to observe the Law. Christianity of course had its roots in Judaism. Its Messiah lived and died on this earth as an observant Jew. Moreover, gentiles were familiar with Judaism and Jewish ways as associate members of synagogues—“God-fearers” according to Acts (10:2, 22, 35, 13:16, 26). This may well have led to the expectation in some quarters that gentile converts to Christianity would be required to observe the Jewish Law. Paul, however, insisted vigorously that gentiles did not need to observe the Law (Galatians 4:8–20, 5:13–14).

Why was Paul so insistent on this point? The precise occasion for Paul’s insistence escapes us now. But Paul’s theological reason is clear enough: Paul did not regard Christ and the Law as being on the same level. Only Christ could bring about right relationship with God (justification). Paul feared 023that some people might think the Law could bring about right relationship with God. Perhaps he himself once thought that way (see Romans 7). Therefore, Paul emphasized that the Law could not do what Christ did.

In Paul’s view, the Law must not be understood as a rival to Christ. In its positive aspect, the Law bears witness to Christ (Romans 3:21); It prepares the way for Christ (Galatians 3:24–25). In its negative aspect, the Law serves as an ally of sin and death by bringing knowledge of sin and thus enticing people to sin (Romans 7:7–25). The Law is secondary to Christ, for both gentile Christians and Jewish Christians. Whether Jewish Christians (like Paul) observed the Law is a matter of secondary importance to which Paul was indifferent. But Paul was not at all indifferent to those who would force gentile Christians to observe the Law.

Did Jews of Paul’s time really believe that Torah observance could bring about right relationship with God (justification)? Was Paul arguing against a situation in which Jews generally were seeking a 024right relation with God through Torah observance? There is not much evidence for “legalism” within first-century Judaism. Most Jewish writings from the period place Torah observance in the theological context of God’s election of Israel, the gift of the Law and the ongoing relationship of covenant. Torah observance was typically the proper response to God’s initiatives, not the means of securing and meriting God’s favor.

If some Jews thought they could bring about a right relation with God through Torah observance, it was quite rare. E. P. Sanders made an explicit effort to find the legalism that Paul battled, but failed to find it anywhere in the writings of Second Temple Judaism. Jewish legalism, Sanders suggested, was more the product of Paul’s theological reasoning than a living Jewish theological option in Paul’s own day; what Paul says about Judaism and the Law derives from the logic of his theology, not necessarily from his experience of other Jews. Paul’s experience of Christ was so dramatic and powerful, so liberating and life-giving, that Paul would put nothing else on the same level. His experience in Christ solved his personal and theological problems.⁹

In his theology, Paul reasoned from the solution (what happened to him through and in Christ) to the plight (what Christ freed him from). As Sanders cogently suggests, Paul was reasoning backward from what wonderful things he regarded as now taking place for him (justification, access to God, forgiveness of sins and so forth) to what terrible things he had been rescued from (the dominion of sin and death, the Law as their ally, etc.).¹⁰ To emphasize the greatness of what Christ had done, Paul also emphasized the terrible plight in which humankind had found itself before the coming of Christ (see Romans 5:12–21 for a powerful meditation on this theme).

Lloyd Gaston makes a different and quite provocative suggestion about Paul’s struggle against legalism.¹¹ Since Paul was writing to gentile Christians, then legalism was most likely a gentile problem, not a Jewish problem. Whereas Jewish Christians could continue to live their lives in the traditional context of the Law, gentile Christians, who were not “under the covenant,” were at a loss as how to proceed. Some determined to do “the works of the Law,” but were confused about what these were or should be in their case. Among such gentile Christians, according to Gaston, the problem of legalism arose as they sought to build up their own kind of justification before God. Thus, legalism was not a Jewish aberration or a Pauline theological construct but rather, a gentile-Christian invention that Paul sought to combat with his criticisms of those who undertake “works of the Law.” Gaston’s suggestion is attractive, although difficult to prove.

Was Paul consistent in his views about the law?

Since Paul was working backwards from the Christ-event to the Torah, the Law remained a theological problem for him, and his theological attitude toward the Law vacillated. As the Finnish scholar, Heikki Räisänen has observed, Paul’s most radical conclusions about the Law are “strangely ambiguous.”¹² We should not be surprised if Paul was occasionally inconsistent; he was primarily concerned with the Christ-event and only secondarily about the Law.

According to Räisänen, contradictions and tensions are constant features of Paul’s theology of the Law. His use of the term nomos/Torah oscillates wildly. At some points, it seems that non-Jews are subject to it and fulfill it (Romans 2:14–15). At other points, Paul appears to reduce the Law to love as the basic principle of the moral law (Romans 13:8–10).

Is the Law still valid? On the one hand, Galatians 3:23–26 indicates that the Law has been abolished: “But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian” (3:25). Romans 7:1–6 likewise suggests that Christians are no longer under the Law: “Now we are discharged from the Law, dead to that which held us captive” (Romans 7:6). On the other hand, in answer to the charge that Christians overthrow the Law, Paul answers the question, “Do we then overthrow the Law by this faith?” as follows: “By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the Law” (Romans 3:11).

These different attitudes toward the validity of the Law meet in Paul’s claim that Christ is the telos (“end” or “goal”) of the Law: “Christ is the end of the Law, that everyone who has faith may be justified” (Romans 10:4). This of course has its own ambiguity: Is Christ the goal to which the Law pointed? Or is Christ the termination of the Law in the sense of its abolition? Or is He both? Paul and his readers generally share the assumption that God gave the Law to Moses on Sinai (2 Corinthians 3:7–18). However, for Paul, the Law is an ally of sin and death. By fostering knowledge of sin (Romans 3:20), the Law gave life and power to sin: “Apart from the Law, sin lies dead” (Romans 7:8). The result of the alliance between sin and the Law is death: “For sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me” (Romans 7:11). Yet, Paul boldly states in the very next verse: “So the Law is holy, and the 025commandment is holy and just and good” (Romans 7:12).

So what is the status of the Law? As Räisänen says: “Paul implies that the Law is a rival principle of salvation, occupying in the Jewish system a place analogous to that of Christ in the new order of things.” In his apocalyptic picture of reality, Paul placed the Law and its works along with sin, death and flesh. These powers stand in opposition to Christ, the Spirit, grace, the promise and faith. The great status, on the one hand, and the negative role, on the other, that Paul attributed to the Law are unique among Jewish and even early Christian writers not directly influenced by Paul.

Why Paul ignored the theological framework in which Jews customarily placed the Law (as the proper response to God’s election of Israel, not the means of securing God’s favor) and why Paul so elevated the status of the Law (as a rival to Christ, although in a negative way) remain puzzling. And it is hard to know what to call these features of Pauline thought. Tensions? Confusions? Contradictions? It is clear, however, that on the matter of Law, Paul’s letters contain statements that appear inconsistent.

The classical apologetic approach to interpreting Scriptures, the first approach we will consider, is to deny the presence of inconsistencies—in Paul’s case, to harmonize what appear to be Paul’s inconsistencies. But it takes a lot of ingenuity and special pleading to turn all the Pauline statements about the Law into a perfectly coherent position.

Another classical mode of explanation, the second approach, is to appeal to the development of Paul’s thought.¹³ This approach has some merit, but it soon runs aground mainly because even within a single letter (Romans), we find so many tensions and inconsistencies regarding the Law.

A third, more recent approach is to understand Paul’s views in the context of the situation in which he wrote. Paul wrote as a pastoral theologian trying to cast light on specific situations. In his directives, Paul necessarily used the language and slogans of his opponents, or at least of the people whom he addressed. Paul was not a systematic theologian; he was a practical pastor. We should therefore not demand consistency in his view on the Law. His letters are pragmatic responses to local pastoral questions; they address his audiences’ understanding of the problem.

Räisänen represents still another approach. Paul, according to Räisänen, was simply confused and ambiguous about the Law. This confusion and ambiguity apparently had deep personal and historical roots. Therefore, it is a fruitless task (1) to systematize what Paul said about the Law, (2) to plot the development of his thought on the Law, or (3) even to reconstruct the pastoral situations that Paul addresses.

There is probably some truth in all four approaches. Yet, even after we squeeze understanding from the first three approaches, some of Paul’s statements about the Law resist attempts at defending their consistency and coherence. Sanders’ insight that Paul was clearer about the solution (Christ) than about the precise nature of the plight is helpful in understanding Paul’s statements about the Law.

What is Israel’s future, according to Paul?

One thing is clear: In Paul’s view, the Law cannot do what Christ does in bringing about right relationship with God. Therefore, those who follow the Law rather than Christ are on the wrong path and exist in some kind of theological limbo. In Romans 11:17–24, those who follow the Law are the branches of the olive tree that have been broken off so that the gentiles might be “grafted in their place to share the richness of the olive tree.”

Although Paul describes non-Christian Jews in negative terms, he nevertheless holds out a future role for such Jews in the unfolding of God’s mystery: “If they do not persist in their unbelief, [they] will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again” (Romans 11:23). For the moment, however, “a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of gentiles has come in” (Romans 11:25). After that, “all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:26).

Who is included in “all Israel”? Apparently the collective of Christian Jews and other Jews, along with the gentiles who have been “grafted in.” While it need not include each and every Israelite, there are surely enough to merit the title “Israel.”

More important, when will the salvation of “all Israel” take place? It seems to be an eschatological event that will accompany the resurrection of the dead, the last judgment, and the full manifestation of God’s kingdom at the end of time. This eschatological event, of course, does not preclude Jews from becoming Christians before that. But Paul probably envisioned not so much a long-term mission to the Jews as a sudden mass conversion on the part of “hardened” Israel as one aspect of the scenario of end-time events. Paul expected this to happen fairly soon: “Salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed; the night is far gone, the day is at hand” (Romans 13:11–12).

Precisely how “all Israel” will be saved at the 052end-time is not clear. At least two interpretations have been suggested. One line of interpretation, the Christological, regards Israel’s eschatological salvation as necessarily connected with Christ. Another mode of interpretation, the theological, believes that God has a separate way of salvation for “all Israel” apart from Christ.

The theological interpretation in various modes is defended by scholars like John Gager, Lloyd Gaston, Franz Mussner, Krister Stendahl and Paul van Buren.¹⁴ They argue that Israel’s way of salvation is fidelity to the Torah. For this approach, it is critical that in Romans 11 (and the end of Romans 10, from verse 18) Paul does not mention “Christ” or “Jesus,” despite the fact that the subject is the salvation of Israel. According to the theological interpretation, therefore, God will judge Israel on its fidelity to the Torah and the Law, not on the criterion of “faith” by which gentile Christians (and presumably, Jewish Christians also) will be judged. This theological approach has great ecumenical potential because it allows Jews and Christians to view one another as partners along two different but equally effective ways to God—the way of Torah and the way of Christ. In this perspective, there need be no special Christian mission to the Jews, and Jews can rest secure that they and their children will not be the object of conversion campaigns.

While the theological approach has some distinguished proponents and great ecumenical potential, it probably does not mirror what Paul thought. Romans 9–11 is, after all, an integral part of the letter as a whole, including Paul’s statements about Israel’s need for the revelation of God’s righteousness in Christ (Romans 2:1–3:20) and his statements about what Christ has done for all human beings (He freed them from the dominion of sin, death and the Law). In this context, it is very difficult to hold anything but the Christological interpretation of Romans 11:25–26. The eschatological salvation of all Israel must have some explicit connection with the saving work of Christ. That, at least, is the logic of Romans.

Paul defies easy categorization as supersessionist or anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish, however. He regarded himself as a Jew bringing to non-Jews what God had accomplished through Jesus the Jew. He looked forward to Jews and gentiles worshiping the God of Israel together (Romans 15:7–13). He understood the gentile churches in relation to Israel and held out a glorious future for “all Israel” (Romans 11:17–26). Yet his powerful experience of the risen Jesus (Philippians 3:8–11) led him to believe that the salvation of all Israel involved the person of Christ. And in light of Christ, Paul felt the need to redefine and reevaluate some important elements of Judaism: circumcision, the food laws, the Torah and even the identity of God’s people.

(This article was adapted from pages 69–83 of the author’s Paul on the Mystery of Israel [Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992].)

In recent years, five questions have dominated scholarly discussions regarding Paul’s attitudes toward Judaism and its Law.