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[Published in the Bible As Christian Scripture: the Work of Brevard S 1 [Published in The Bible as Christian Scripture: The Work of Brevard S. Childs (ed. Kent H. Richards et al.; Atlanta: SBL, 2013), 185-219]. A Tale of Two Testaments: Childs, Old Testament Torah, and Heilsgeschichte “In what sense are the commandments of the Old Testament the expression of the true will of God for Israel and the church? Is there no continuity between the old covenant and the new? The resolution requires careful theological formulation and is far from simplistic in nature. Aspects of the relationship can be formulated both eschatologically in terms of Heilsgeschichte and ontologically in terms of substance. The subject matter of both biblical witnesses is ultimately christological, but the relationship is best formulated dialectically rather than in abstract terms of typology. In the light of God’s action in Jesus Christ, the just demands of the law (Rom 8) have been fulfilled; however, the ‘just demands’ are still God’s will for his creation. Because of Christ’s act in overcoming sin, the law, which is ‘holy, just and good’ (Rom 7:12), is no longer held captive to pervert the Old Testament law by turning it into a false avenue toward rectification (7:13). For this reason the Christian still hears the true voice of God in the Old Testament, but it is a Scripture that has been transformed because of what God in Christ has done.”1 With these words Brevard Childs sought to describe the distinction between Old Testament Torah and the law of Christ within the overarching theological context generated by the dialectical relationship of the two testaments. In his many publications as a Christian OT scholar, Childs maintained a high view of and theological appreciation for OT Torah in both its broad and more restricted senses.2 To cite but one example, in a summary reflection on the theological implications of OT law, Childs writes: “The Law of God was a gift of God which was instituted for the joy and edification of the covenant people. It was not given as a burden, but as a highest treasure and a clear sign of divine favour…The clearest sign of the brokenness of the covenant and of the alienation of Israel from God emerged when his Law became a burden and a means of destroying the nation.”3 Toward the end of his life, this positive appreciation for OT Torah, especially the Mosaic law, also found expression in his last book, published posthumously, titled The Church’s Guide for Reading Paul: The Canonical Shaping of the Pauline Corpus. Characteristic in this respect in the concern Childs registers with J. Louis Martyn’s reading of Paul in Galatians 3: “Although Martyn correctly recognizes the different senses of Paul’s handling of the law, in the end the positive voice of the law continues to be only the pre-Sinai voice, the law’s original voice, the voice of God’s promise to Abraham. The Sinai voice remains from the old aeon, the bearer of the curse, the source of death and tyranny.”4 Over 1 Brevard S. Childs, The Church’s Guide for Reading Paul: The Canonical Shaping of the Pauline Corpus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008) 121-122. 2 I have here in mind ‘Torah’ as a reference to the OT as a whole, as well as ‘Torah’ in the more restricted sense of the Mosaic law delivered to Israel in the context of the Sinai covenant. 3 Brevard S. Childs, Old Testament Theology in a Canonical Context (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985) 57. 4 Childs, The Church’s Guide, 106. See the further exposition of the hermeneutical assumptions and exegetical details accompanying Martyn’s reading on pages 99-103, 119-120. Commenting on the antithesis Paul registers in Galatians 3 between justification through obedience to the Mosaic law and justification by faith, Childs judges that Martyn’s construal of this antithesis “threatens to identify the law with a demonic tyranny” by pressing the theme of discontinuity “to an unwarranted extreme” (104). As a result of this misreading, “Even Paul’s subsequent ‘apology’ for the law to serve as an ‘addition’ because of transgression (3:19) does not fully remove its denigrating function that is further made by mention of the law’s being mediated by angels (3:19) to become a vehicle of God’s curse. 2 against Martyn, Childs’ own assessment of Paul’s reading of Israel’s salvation history leads him to conclude that the Mosaic law “has also a positive role for Paul.”5 While it would be presumptuous to attempt to do justice in this memorial essay to the scope of the hermeneutical issues probed by Childs in The Church’s Guide, one issue that merits further exploration is Paul’s use of the concept of Heilsgeschichte to interpret Israel’s history, especially in connection with the negative construals of the Law of Moses it has sometimes authorized. Such construals tend to form a natural ally with currents in New Testament scholarship that virtually identify Biblical Theology with NT theology, a tendency noted by Childs himself.6 For his own part, in The Church’s Guide Childs freely recognized that Paul made use of ‘salvation history’ as a lens for reading OT Torah, especially in Romans, but also in Galatians.7 His concern was not to dismiss categorically its validity as a hermeneutical category, but to alert his readers to the potential it has for distorting our understanding of the true nature of the discontinuities between the OT law delivered at Sinai and the Pauline notion of ‘the law of Christ,’ especially when it is either misconstrued vis-à-vis Paul’s ‘apocalyptical theology,’8 or overburdened by enlisting it as a model for uniting the testaments.9 Rather than attempting to address all the arguments typically appealed to in support of negative assessments of the law bestowed upon Israel at Sinai, in keeping with the spirit of Childs’ own assessment of Paul’s reading of OT Torah, my purpose will be twofold. First, to Martyn continues to refer to the Sinai law as given ‘in the absence of God,’ which interpretation presses the theme of discontinuity to an unwarranted extreme (see Acts 7:53).” 5 Childs, The Church’s Guide, 103-107, quote from 107. Over against Martyn’s reading of the Pauline letter collection, Childs argues that the NT process of canonical shaping placed Romans at the head of the Pauline letter collection in order to serve as a hermeneutical guide for reading those letters. The positive view of the law adopted by Paul in Romans 7 is thus not to be interpreted as a later correction of an allegedly negative view reflected in his earlier letter to Galatia (99-103, esp. 102). 6 For Childs, this raises an important hermeneutical issue, namely, “whether an emphasis on Heilsgeschichte tends to imply that theological reflection on the Bible always proceeds in one direction, namely, from the Old to the New. At times one gains the impression that for some biblical scholars Biblical Theology is New Testament theology which retains a certain ‘openness’ to the Old Testament as the origin of certain traditions and the source of New Testament imagery” (Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992] 17). 7 Childs, The Church’s Guide, 211. Childs suggests that Martyn’s reading of Galatians, “much like his mentor Käsemann, has included within the overarching umbrella of apocalyptic, subject matter that is, at best, only indirectly related to apocalyptic, such as the ‘righteousness of God,’ justification by faith, participation in Christ’s crucifixion, and baptism into Christ.” He then goes on to raise a question: “Could not one argue that a phrase such as ‘the fullness of time’ (4:4) derives equally well from the framework of Heilsgeschichte and is akin, say, to Hebrews 1:1?” 8 For example, Childs argues that a canonically misplaced understanding of Paul’s apocalyptical theology in Galatians can skew our understanding of the “full richness” of Paul’s “heilsgeschichtliche approach” to the Mosaic law in Romans (Childs, The Church’s Guide, 111-112). In addition to misunderstanding the hermeneutical role assigned to Romans by the canonical shaping of the NT (122), this also ignores the corrective the letter to the Hebrews offers for our understanding of “a historically oriented Heilsgeschichte within a Pauline apocalyptic vision” (251). 9 See Childs’ criticisms of Oscar Cullmann’s linear concept of Heilsgeschichte, as well as his later remarks on the corrective to this perspective offered by the canonical function of the letter to the Hebrews (The Church’s Guide, 201-202, 239-240). 3 interact with a few of the key NT texts typically appealed to in support of this negative assessment, namely, Paul’s reading of the law in Galatians 3-4 and 2 Cor. 3. In the course of this interaction it will become clear that these appeals cannot be fully appreciated in their true character apart from their relation to particular construals of Israel’s salvation history, the hermeneutical effect of which is either to misconstrue Paul’s reading of the Mosaic law, or to identify the voice of OT Torah with the postfall order of sin and death. By way of a constructive alternative, I will suggest that the OT Torah itself provides models for the Christian character of Paul’s teaching on formation in Gal. 4 and 2 Cor. 3, models that ultimately find their ground in an abiding theological ontology of God’s character and glory from which the OT Torah cannot be separated.
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