CHAPTER 2 Theosis through Works of the Law: Deification of the Earthly Righteous in Classical Rabbinic Thought

Jonah Chanan Steinberg

1 Introduction

The notion that human beings might attain divine nature or partake in divine identity is a prominent idea in early Christian thought. Although controver- sial, the concept endures in Christian theology to this day, enshrined in the catechism of the Roman Catholic Church and especially important in Eastern Orthodoxy, particularly in its monastic tradition. Some argue that ‘theosis’— becoming divine—is the essence and the highest end of Christianity.1 In this study I show that a concept of theosis, albeit not called by that Greek name, is

1 For guiding my study of the patristic and later Christian teachings on theosis, I acknowl- edge foremost Jules Gross’s pioneering doctoral study, La divinization du Chrétien d’apres les Pères Grecs (Paris: Gabalda, 1938), recently translated by Paul A. Onica as The Divinization of the Christian according to the Greek Fathers (Anaheim: A & C, 2002). Controversial as Gross’s conclusions may be, especially among scholars who are also Christian theologians, his work is a great treasury of traditions of theosis in early Christian thought. So too are Norman Russell’s recent studies, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004) and Fellow Workers with God: Orthodox Thinking on Theosis (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009). I also found great help in Michael J. Christensen and Jeffrey A. Wittung’s volume Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions (Grand Rapids: Rosemont, 2007). Divinization is enjoying a resurgence in Christian scholarship and theology, as attested, for example, by Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen’s monograph One with God: Salvation as Deification and Justification (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2004), which aims to reconcile recent developments in Luther studies with Eastern Orthodox and Catholic concepts of theosis; by the anthology, Theosis: Deification in Christian Theology, ed. Stephen Finlan and Vladimir Kharlamov (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2006); and by Daniel A. Keating’s Deification and Grace (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2007). Each of these has encouraged and enhanced this present project. I am influenced, too, by work that Crispin Fletcher-Louis has shared at SBL meetings, as well as in his doctoral dissertation Luke-Acts: Angels, Christology and Soteriology (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996), and especially in All the Glory of Adam: Liturgical Anthropology in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Leiden: Brill, 2002).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi ��.��63/9789004334496_005 42 Steinberg also a notable and even essential feature of early rabbinic thought and nascent Talmudic tradition, evidenced by rabbinic teachings of the first five centuries of the Common Era. Close similarities in theme, and sometimes even in word- ing, indicate that Jewish and Christian teachings on divinization developed in relation to one another. The differences between early rabbinic and early Christian teachings on divinization frequently suggest a knowing contention between the two emerging religions with regard to the pathway of theosis. In Christian sources, identification of oneself with Jesus as Savior and Logos becomes the key for human involvement in God’s nature. In the rabbinic sources to be examined here, by contrast, righteous action and identification of oneself with Torah constitute the way of attaining divine glory. To put a point on my argument, I give the rabbinic concept of divinization that this study explores a name that would have outraged the pioneers of the corresponding Christian doctrine. I term the Jewish idea theosis through works of the law. ‘Works of the law’ is another term of Christian coinage,2 born to indicate the scriptural commandments, and the corresponding minutiae of earthly life, for devotion to which rabbinic Jews were often derided by the fathers of the Church. Any dichotomy between Christianity and Judaism schematized simplisti- cally in terms of ‘faith vs. works’ runs a high risk of caricature. Early Christian teachers saw urgent need for loving-kindness in practice, and early rabbinic teachers were urgently concerned about particulars of religious belief.3 Still

2 The term ‘works of the law’ has direct precedent within Jewish parlance, not least ‘Maʿaseh Torah’ in the DSS (4QMMT), and certain usages of the terms ḫok (law), mitzvah (command- ment), and even, in a specific sense, Torah itself (e.g., Lev 15:32, Mal 4:4) in Hebrew scripture. However, the Greek ἔργων νόμου (works of the law) develops a very distinct and derogatory Christian meaning, perhaps best translated as ‘those minutiae of praxis with which Jews are so preoccupied.’ This sense is most emphatic in Gal 2:16: “Knowing that a man is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ, and not by works of the law, because by works of the law shall no one be justified.” Rabbinic Judaism develops a categorically opposite view of the relationship between law and salvation, as we shall see. 3 The former claim, regarding early Christianity, is easily demonstrated, e.g., by John 13:33–34; Gal 5:12–25; Rom 12:10–18; 1 Cor 12:25; Eph 4:2, 32; Phil 2:4; 1 Thess 4:9, etc. The claim that early rabbis, post-70 CE, cared urgently about matters of belief is somewhat more contro- versial; their founding convocation at Yavneh is often regarded as (or taken as a narrative emblem for) the birth of a new Jewish ideological pluralism and toleration, by contrast to the sectarianism of Second Temple times. See Shaye J. D. Cohen, “The Significance of Yavneh: Pharisees, Rabbis, and the End of Jewish Sectarianism,” HUCA 55 (1984): 27–53. However, see also Martin Goodman’s response in “The Function of Minim in Early Rabbinic Judaism,” in Geschichte-Tradition-Reflexion: Festschrift für Martin Hengel zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Hubert