On Paul and The Law

Was the Apostle Paul Torah-observant — not just before the Damascus road, but throughout his apostleship to the nations? Brad East stakes out a thesis drawn from Messianic Judaism and the Paul Within Judaism school: that Acts 21 should be read straight, that James is telling the truth about Paul, and that Genesis 12 and 17 still bind Jewish believers. Derek Rishmawy and Alastair Roberts push back hard, working through Galatians 2, 1 Corinthians 9, and the question of whether the law's force after Christ is divine command or Hookerian adiaphora — with the future of Jewish identity in the church in view.

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Chapters

• 00:00 - Welcome and the Disclaimer
• 01:00 - The Thesis: Paul Remained Torah-Observant
• 01:34 - Messianic Judaism and Paul Within Judaism
• 04:29 - Acts 21: Is Paul Lying or Walking the Law?
• 08:04 - Alastair's First Move: Affirming, Not Practicing
• 10:33 - A Law You Need Not Obey Is Not a Law
• 12:17 - Law as Covenant vs. Law as Instruction
• 15:34 - Circumcision as the Test Case
• 16:13 - Adiaphora, Hooker, and Binding Authority
• 17:40 - 1 Corinthians 9 Enters the Conversation
• 18:08 - The Halakhic Question: Should Elders Discipline?
• 21:11 - Acts 15 and Internally Differentiated Norms
• 23:13 - Alastair on Existing Authorities and Custom
• 26:36 - The Canonical Vision: Revelation 7
• 29:50 - Adiaphora's Sociological Problem
• 33:22 - Galatians 2: What Was Peter Doing?
• 38:18 - Permission vs. Prohibition
• 41:04 - Why Reduce Genesis 12–17 to Local Custom?
• 44:02 - Baptism, Circumcision, and Covenant Signs
• 47:55 - Does God Want Jews in the World?
• 50:10 - Providence and the Future Conversion
• 56:42 - One Body in Christ and the Complementarian Parallel
• 57:08 - Reinterpreting "Under the Law"
• 1:01:18 - Difference Without Division
• 1:04:13 - The Empirical Problem for Both Views
• 1:07:51 - Reading Our Situation Back into Paul
• 1:10:46 - Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

This episode is brought to you by Lexin Press, who publishes books that love the word, love the faith, and love the church. Lexin Press was recently acquired by Baker Publishing Group, and there will be more news to follow. Our April book of the month is Gospel Education: Jesus as Lord of the Classical Christian School by Nate Walker. You can receive a 30% discount on this title and all previous books of the month by visiting BakerBookhouse.com, backslash pages, backslash Mere Fidelity. You can find that link in our show notes and get 30% off of our book of the month from Lexem Press. Hello and welcome to another episode of Mere Fidelity, a podcast by Mere Orthodoxy, where we think about the Word of God and the world we live in. My name is Derek Kushmaui, and I'll be your host for today, joined by regular cast and crew members Alistair Roberts and Brad East. Good to see you, fellas. We thought we'd talk today a little bit about uh an interesting, a subject of interest to all of us in different ways, but we thought we'd hand it over to Brad to talk about Torah obs the Torah observance of the Apostle Paul. It's kind of adjacent to the conversation we had a little bit earlier with Paul Sloan, although that was about Jesus and the law. Brad has thoughts on Paul and the law, and I'm just gonna reiterate again, we don't know what he's about to say. And so so we're gonna see what he says. Let's see what happens in this conversation. And um, and this is uh this is this is a conversation among friends who argue with each other. So Brad, with that caveat, take us away.

SPEAKER_03 1:31

Yeah, this is one of those disclaimers on under someone's profile, like the my views do not represent the views of mere fidelity.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

Or or or the South Coast Presbyterian. Exactly. That's exactly right. Because you're gonna you're here to tell me I'm wrong. I am always Westminster, all the time. Go for it.

SPEAKER_03 1:46

Okay. Well, so I'm just going to give y'all a a one-sentence proposition, and then I'm gonna back it up for listeners to give uh a little bit of a sense of the scholarly and theological context. The one-sentence thesis is that Paul, not only prior to the appearing of Jesus to him on the road to Damascus, but subsequent to it, that is to say, in his, in the entirety of his apostleship to the nations, Paul remained obser Torah observant. And I'm not using that those latter two words as a circumlocution for optionally observant or intermittently observant, or observant equals fulfillment in the form of not eating kosher. I just mean like plain Torah observant in a way that would be recognized as halakha on a spectrum of observance by Jews at the time. It would be represented as a kind of observance. That's the thesis. Um, let me give some background for listeners. There are uh two threads here, and then uh a scriptural, a scriptural point of departure for this. One is messianic Judaism and Hebrew Catholicism, and the other is a scholarly movement in the last 15 years called Paul within Judaism or PWJ. The first is uh uh predates Paul within Judaism within um the guild, and it's um actual living Jewish people today, genealogical Jews, people whose genealogies stretch back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who have been baptized and put their faith in Jesus, and not only elect to um keep dietary laws, Jewish festivals, and so on, get circumcised their baby boys on the eighth day and so on, but believe that it is in fact obligatory or mandatory on Jews, quad Jews, whether baptized or not. And uh two names I'll give y'all are Mark Kinzer and David Rudolph. David Rudolph wrote an amazing book, I think under Richard Bacham, um, called A Jew to the Jews about 1 Corinthians 9. I recommend it to all listeners. It's fantastic. Um Mark Kinzer is older, and he's been a rabbi at a messianic uh Jewish congregation for a long time. So uh, and I his scholarship has deeply, deeply, deeply impacted me. Um, okay, so that's one group. Another group, uh, which which is a live thing right now and has caused all kinds of uh uh internacing battles among Pauline scholars and New Testament studies, are folks like Matthew Novenson, um, Matthew Tyson, uh maybe our guy, Paul Sloane or Jason Staples, but also Paula Frederickson, uh Mark Nanos, and some others. And these are folks who say it's an it's a mistake, it's an anachronism and an exegetical mistake to interpret Paul as having abandoned something called, some reified object called Judaism for some reified religion called Christianity. And it's an attempt both to situate Paul historically, culturally, religiously, and so on, in his first century, second temple Judaism location, but also, broadly speaking, these folks are different, they they differ from one another, but broadly to say that uh Paul um that Paul kept the Torah. Okay, so that's the background, and I'm gonna give y'all Acts 21, and then we're gonna see what y'all think. Here's the thesis, and many have made this point, I make this point, Matt Tyson makes this point. The claim is if you instead of reading the book of Acts through the lens of a particular interpretation of Galatians, Romans, and maybe Philippians 3, instead, those letters by Paul should and his statements about the law and law observance should be read through the lens of the whole book of Acts, in particular Acts 15 and Acts 21. In Acts 21, Paul makes his great journey to Jerusalem. He goes, he meets with James and the elders, and James says, hey, we've got zealous, law-observant Jews or Judean brothers in Christ here, and they are zealous for the law, and they keep hearing these rumors about you that you're going around to the Gentiles, you're going around to the nations and telling Jews to forsake the law of Moses and to stop practicing the customs. Uh, in order to show the malice of this slander, um, and to show that these are his words, that you live in observance of the law, or follow and safeguard the law, or walk in observance of the law, you keep the law, do the following thing, and then Paul silently obeys it. And the question is, the question is, is Paul, is, is Paul lying? Like if you're a secular scholar, you can just think Luke has Paul wrong because we know what Paul really thought. But the three of us think that this is inspired scripture and it tells us the truth about Paul. Is Paul play acting? Is he pret is this a pretense? Is he feigning that he, like his fellow uh Jewish brothers in Christ, uh walks in observance of the law? Is he feigning that these are malicious and false slanders about him? Or in fact, is James correct? Is the is the Luke and Paul correct? Is Acts as a whole correct? And that tells us about Paul's life, and that tells us how to interpret his statements about Torah in his letters. That's the that's the gambit or the venture, the exegetical hermeneutical venture of this proposal. What do you think?

SPEAKER_02 7:13

I think the question, the way you framed it, I have questions about the the gambit of is Luke right? Is James right? That's already that's baking in a reading and saying, well, are they right or wrong? And it's like, well, I gotta actually think about what's being presented to me and James and Luke. So right off the bat, Brad, your question is wrong and malicious. Uh no. Um, but I I I I actually would just question the framing a little bit, and I'd I I'd have to look again and see, okay, do I do I think that that reading of what's happening there is what what you're saying. You know, so yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:50

Let me let me read it. Since I that was all a big paraphrase, let me just read uh Acts 21.

SPEAKER_02 7:54

Um I mean you got you got the sense of it. I mean, I of looking at it.

SPEAKER_03 7:59

So he says, all will know there is nothing in what they have been told about you but that you yourself live or walk in observance or safeguarding of the law.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

I think there are a number of things within the text that suggests that there could be a number of different options in reading this. First of all, the fact that they have to perform this um public completion of the vow, and Paul has to be involved in that, this is an answer to an accusation that has been levelled against Paul. He's actually opposing the law, he's telling people to give up the customs of the law, not to circumcise their children, etc. And Paul's actions could be interpreted as affirming that he is actually positively inclined towards the law, he's not opposed to it, he's someone who observes it in various contexts, and he will honor the customs of the law. It doesn't necessarily, I think, um without further argument, support the case that Paul in every context more generally supports and practices the law, um, that he's observant of the law as it certainly as it is understood by many of his contemporaries in various Gentile contexts, for instance, where he's acting as a missionary. Um but is he going to be uh observing certain customs in those sets settings? I'm not so sure he will. Um there are times when he is concerned to avoid scandal, he circumcises Timothy, for instance, because he is his father his father is a Gentile, and so he's concerned for the sake of permission at the very least that he be circumcised. But beyond that, beyond the concern not to create scandal, I'm wondering whether your statement maybe is too strong. Um I would make the lesser statement that Paul is positively inclined towards the law, he does not oppose people's continued practice of it, and in certain settings, he will practice it himself in order to affirm that he is not he is not hostile towards the law, he's not telling Jews to give up the law. And that maybe is a position between the common positions that you'd find among many and the position that you're laying out of whole within Judaism.

SPEAKER_03 10:34

So let me let me just clarify a couple terms of the debate here. One is a point that David Rudolph, who himself is he's over in Dallas, uh he a New Testament scholar um and a messianic Jew himself. Like he has this wonderful discussion in his book, A Jew to the Jews, where he says like when when we today, many scholars and Gentiles, interpret Paul in this way, we m misconstrue the nature of law. That a law I am not obliged to obey is not a law, it's a suggestion. Uh and so Paul Paul cannot reasonably be said to be uh living or walking in observance of the law if in one context he doesn't keep it, uh because because it's law and in fact it's divine law. Um and so so that's that's one thing, and and we talked about this with Paul. Like Paul Sloan is so good on this in his book uh on Jesus and the law of Moses that Jesus is never saying, Hey guys, I want you all to see how the law I'm going to right now, I will disobey the law, right? That's that's actually not his project. He's uh keeping the law, and when two particular laws of the Torah come into conflict, he may give priority to one. And and so to me, I it's not satisfying either historically or theologically to me to say that Paul uh doesn't i like that that we can say that Paul is affirming that he is walking in observance of the law of Torah, but he can opt, depending on the circumstance, not to obey it.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

I mean, there's law as, right? There's there's law as covenant, law as instruction, law as command, right? And so I think most people would uh observe that kind of distinction where uh for in my tradition we'll talk about the fact that the m the the the old testament law as a covenant is no longer binding. The old testament law as an instruction, and certainly in its moral commands, you know, the Ten Commandments are still binding, and so the law is continuing in one sense. I observe the law, I don't cheat on my wife, I worship one only only one God, and so on and so forth, whatever. But the law as a command, as a covenant by which I attain life, um in obedience to it, is not uh I don't observe it in that way.

SPEAKER_03 13:08

But it was never, but it never applied to you. You're a gentile.

SPEAKER_02 13:10

Okay, hold on. I'm gonna pull this thread. So, Brad, my qu you you you are not asserting that the law as a covenant, um with the deuteronomic curses and blessings and all that sort of stuff, you think that is still binding and applies to Christian Jews in the same sense that it did under the old covenant. You can't think that that's the case.

SPEAKER_03 13:36

The dependent clauses there are tripping me up. Are you are you asking about salvation?

SPEAKER_02 13:42

That's what I was talking about. No, no, no. As a covenant unto life, as a covenant by which one attains life.

SPEAKER_03 13:47

Yeah, yeah. It can't give life. Yeah, yeah, it can't get life.

SPEAKER_02 13:50

But also, but also like I are is are because I mean this gets us into issues of Zionism and the land and so on and so forth. Um if if if the if the law as a covenant is still in app in application in the exact same sense as it was before, like it can't be in exact this in exactly the same.

SPEAKER_03 14:07

Yeah, I'm not saying anything about exact because every every Jewish group then and since, both, both during the Second Temple period and after, recognizes differences of circumstance. Sure. I'm not I'm not suggesting in any way that that there's this this one-to-one correspondence, like it's it's you know, what, 822, 822 BC, and then today like there's just no relevant differences. I'm just saying that the laws of Moses uh that apply to Jews that still that still plausibly can apply after the the destruction of the destruction of the temple and after the and after expulsion, bar Kokba, etc. Just in the same way that just in the same way that rabbinic Judaism has has figured this out in various halocic ways, that uh inasmuch as it is that that one can see how it applies to living Jews today, baptized included, uh it is still the the relevant laws discerned halakhically are obligatory. And so start with circumcision, like circumcision being like the easiest and most straightforward one. Like the and the accusation here is you are telling people not to circumcise their children. And it it is too weak to say, no, no, no. He just meant you don't have to circumcise your children. It's a command. Like it's it's either you do it on the eighth day, and if if you don't have to, then guess what? It's not gonna happen. Like it's going to fade out of existence. And the tr every church that I know, extant on planet Earth in 2026, of course, I mean, except for a few, uh, do make it do make it adiaphora, do make it optional. Like that command does not apply. And I'm saying just start there. It does.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

It's important to distinguish between various senses of adiaphora, because many evangelicals, I think, have this sense that adiaphora means it's just left up to the individual, it's something that you can decide to do or not to do, it's just like that. Whereas if you're reading someone like Richard Hooker, he's going to treat a category like Adiaphora. Adiaphora means the government can have requirements on this. It's not binding your conscience, but you must recognize what are the laws of the land, go along with those. If the church authorities, for instance, decide you need to use the Book of Common Prayer, you should use the Book of Common Prayer. It's an adiaphora issue. It doesn't mean that everyone can choose what they want to use. It just means that it's not binding your conscience. It's not saying you must, in the same way as the Ten Commandments, let's say, are saying you must. And so the distinction would be that Paul recognizes the continued, the continued authority of the law within the actual existing authorities that apply within the land. And when he's within those contexts, he will observe and submit to those authorities. But he does not see it as coming with the full force of the thus says the Lord that applies to him in each and every circumstance, each and every circumstance, even when those authorities are not the ones that he's under. So I think a key text that needs to be dealt with is um 1 Corinthians 9. To the Jews I became as a Jew in order to win Jews. To those under the law, I became as one under the law, though not being myself under the law, that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law, I became as one outside the law. Not being outside the law of God, but under the law of Christ, that I might win those outside the law. It seems to me that that this is the key area that needs to be discussed.

SPEAKER_02 17:40

I have I have just to sharpen the like just to draw out the sense a little bit more, we're gonna come back to this text because we always have we we obviously have to. Brad, on your I'm just trying to understand your thesis. In a local church that Jews, Christian Messianic Jews are a part of, assuming that they don't have to cloister in their own churches, because that'd be weird because the New Testament seemed to say that Jews and Gentiles should be worshiping together and breaking fellowship together. Should the church elders check up on the Jewish Christians and discipline them for not circumcising their children on the eighth day, and not discipline Gentiles for not that for not circumcising their child on the eighth day, in which case we have members of the church who are disciplinable for one reason, and members of the church, the same church, the same body of Christ, who are now not subject to disciplinary uh uh oversight on that issue because they're Gentiles. It's like we got some Ethiopians here. I don't care what you're doing on the eighth day, you're fine, you're good, just baptize your kid. But our Jewish Christians here, we we got to check before you baptize, before we baptize them, did you did you did you circumcise that kid? Because you're still you're still bound under the law, and the law is binding. We should discipline you over that because you're in sin. Is that what that interpretation requires?

SPEAKER_03 19:01

So I I you and I are working out of there there are such layered questions there. I'm trying, I'm wanting to simplify it.

SPEAKER_02 19:07

Like, I'm I'm I'm trying to get practical because this is the kind of philockic issue that this brings on.

SPEAKER_03 19:13

I'm happy to bite the bullet and just say, in your imagined scenario, my answer is yes.

SPEAKER_02 19:17

Which is the practical one.

SPEAKER_03 19:18

But no, no, but but no, hear me out on this. Really? It absolutely is.

SPEAKER_02 19:22

If it's a law and it's sin to violate the law and elders have to hold you to account, this is this is right there with with being imagined.

SPEAKER_03 19:31

What I'm trying to say, Derek, is like that is presuming a particular ecclesial context. Like it's not the only possible ecclesial context. That's the only point.

SPEAKER_02 19:38

Uh I think the whole world should be the PCA.

SPEAKER_03 19:40

So I know you do, but for real.

SPEAKER_02 19:42

I know Joe, but no, but for but for real, it it's a real issue if you if you're calling something a sin. It's a violation of the case.

SPEAKER_03 19:51

But that but what what I'm part of what I'm I'm wanting to say is two things. So one is this would this this kind of proposal, listening to our uh sisters and brothers in Messianic Judaism, as well as Hebrew Catholics, is a is a is a decades and probably centuries long act of recovery that cannot just be like drop down tomorrow in a gentile church. Like, like this this is something that we have to do a lot of speculative hypotheses about because uh we it it it is not something that that is already happening. So that's the first thing I want to say. The second thing is we already have internally differentiated norms in the form of commands within the church. It's called male and female. Like it is not weird for traditional churches at least to say different rules apply differently, such that different groups might be disciplined for different kinds of behavior. That's actually baked in to mainstream small low Orthodox Christianity. And what I'd want to add to that is this is exactly what we see in Acts chapter 15. We the question is not, well, hey guys, we already, we already made the law optional for us. Well, then that makes a hash of the question. The question is, should they, like us, be circumcised and keep the law? And and Barnabas, Paul, Peter, James say no. Unlike us, y'all don't have to. Uh and and so the premise of the question is we're gonna keep doing it, but there's gonna be a different norm so that we can have table fellowship. And I grant that it is really wacky and weird to ask that question of two billion souls on earth when a tiny fraction of them are Jewish, but to put ourselves uh again, imaginatively in the mindset of the first 50 years of the church when the when when this messianic community, the messianic assemblies dotting the Roman Empire, uh not only are they really are split down the middle, but you can feel the Jewish preeminence. You can feel the authority of the apostles, you can feel the The Jerusalem church, the saints there, the poor saints were giving money to, and that what it would mean for us to step back, not give up, not give up anything that Paul says about Christ did not die in vain. You cannot get eternal life from Torah. Agreed. Agreed. I'm talking about the regulation of behavior by genealogy. Okay. And that that continues in the church. That ought to have. Listen, this is something Protestants should be able to accept because it means that the church got something wrong. And simper refermanda.

SPEAKER_02 22:38

There's so many things I want to pull on, but I I rudely cut off Alistair. I'm going to let Alistair pursue his own.

SPEAKER_03 22:43

You want to come back to 1 Corinthians 9, Alistair? 9.

SPEAKER_02 22:46

I want to go back to Galatians 2 after that. So go for it.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

You've got in 1 Corinthians 9, it seems to me the suggestion of a situation where you have existing authorities that apply in certain contexts, and Paul will, as a matter of course, observe those existing authorities and not act against them. So for instance, when I'm in America, I need to obey American laws. I'm not an American, but I live under those laws. In the same way, if someone were to go over to the UK, they'd have to do the same thing. And so whatever you feel like in terms of what you are bound by, what matters is what authorities you are immediately under. And so when Paul's acting within a Jewish situation, he would happily come under the law. And many churches would be situations where, for instance, you have to either exercise these Jewish customs, or if you're a Gentile, act in a way that does not cause scandal to your Jewish brothers and sisters. And so Paul, in the context of Acts chapter 15 and the Council, it seems to me that what they're tackling is maybe an eschatological vision. Whereas the nations come in, you Judaize all the nations. They are all expected to observe Jewish law and custom. And they're pushing back against that position. Whereas there are these other possibilities that make, for instance, the possibility that there are observant Christian Pharisees who have a strong regard for the law, who expect continued Jewish Christians, Jewish Christians to be continuing to practice the law of their fathers, to observe those customs, and not just to reject them. That's a live option. And it doesn't seem to be one that's straightforwardly rejected within the New Testament. And so when Paul's within that sort of context, he's not going to cause scandal to such people. His point is not that Jews must give up the law, that the law is not something that has force, a force that, let's say, the force of the um, let's say the Book of Common Prayer in an Anglican context, or something like the Westminster Confession within uh a Presbyterian context, it still continues to have that sort of force and regulates practice, regulates the forms of worship. In some situations, they might continue synagogue worship, but in a Christian form, in a Christian manner. And so that's what I envisage happening. That Paul is saying that the greater force that the law once had of the thus set the Lord, that this is the way that things must be done. Um that that now carries the force of the Adiaphora custom that's established by lawful authorities and must be submitted to as such when you are in those contexts. And those who do not belong to those contexts need to show respect, not cause scandal, but they're not bound by it in the same way. And if you're a Jew outside of that context, you can actually um not circumcise your kids if you don't want to. It's not binding upon you in the way that it once was.

SPEAKER_02 26:08

Okay. So let me go on this, and then I'm gonna pull on Galatians 2 in a minute.

SPEAKER_03 26:12

Yeah, yeah. So I want to say, I want to lay down a couple meta comments and then try to interpret 1 Corinthians 9 for y'all. One is I want to be clear. I, this, and this is my own doctrine of scripture, uh uh informing it. My priors are informing this. I think the New Testament underdetermines the answer to this question. I think you can read Acts in light of Paul or Paul in light of Acts, and that both interpretations are plausible. So it's not, I want to be clear. I don't think that the interpretation I'm offering is self-evident or jumps off the page, or any rational reader would come to, but I'm saying it makes sense of all the evidence, both historically and exegetically, not to mention theologically. And it is a it is a proposal, a theologumenon, for consideration, precisely because I think that Gentiles have thought it was obvious, the very the interpretation you're offering, Alistair. And I think it is not obvious, uh, nor is it, nor is it clear. That's the first thing. Second thing I want to add is my reading of Paul is canonical, and it's informed by, as you said, Alistair, an eschatological vision. That vision is Revelation 7, where to the right, so to speak, John looks and sees 12,000 from the 12 tribes of Israel, uh, the perfect number, genealogical Israel restored in glory, sealed in the name of Jesus. And then he looks, and from every uh nation, tribe, tongue, and people, uh, a multitude no man can count. Uh, and what we have there are uh two groups, the very two groups that God creates in Genesis 12. The children that, right, the children of Abraham by birth and all the nations blessed in his name or through his people. You have you have uh uh Jews and Gentiles, groups that God created, just like he created male and female, but created in a different way. And he doesn't want, as we see in the New Testament, Gentiles to become Jews in order to be saved or in order to join Abraham's covenant. But neither, and this is my point, neither post-70 or post-100 does he want Jews to become Gentiles. But guess what, guys? If you don't circumcise and you don't keep festivals and you don't keep Torah and you intermarry, within three generations, maybe even just one generation, you are a Gentile. You did you just get intermixed. Okay. And the vision that I hear from Gentile Christianity for 2,000 years is the Jews need to basically get absorbed into the world, pantata ethne, and then all the nations will be there at the end, but no more Jews. But what I see in Romans 9 through 11, but especially Revelation 7, is two distinct groups, uh, both giving glory to uh both confessing, right, Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. And that eschatological horizon for me informs a canonical reading beyond a purely historical exegetical treatment of Paul. I'm happy to pause there or I can jump to 1 Corinthians 9.

SPEAKER_00 29:23

Yeah, I think the big question is very much concerning the status of the law following events like the death of Christ and Pentecost. After those events, the law in its purpose seems to have achieved its primary primary end. That doesn't mean that the Jews should not retain distinction as a people, nor that the law and its boundary markers should not be the means by which they do so. The question is, what status do those things have after the events in which they are fulfilled? And my argument would be that they are adiaphora in the sense that they are treated that category is treated in someone like Hooker, which they continue to have force, they continue to be regulations by which um to which people should submit. If you're in the category those um regulations are over. If you're born in a Jewish context, if you're operating within that general setting, you observe these. In another setting, you're not required to observe those. And also if you are a Jew who goes into the nations and wants to intermarry with the nations, that's okay too. You could you could be part of the wider nations. There's no sense in which there's a sort of ethno-nationalist vision that's being maintained for Israel here. Um but there is at the same time a continued identity for the Jews that is invisit is envisaged and would be maintained by these being the regulations that they continue to observe without the same um force of divine command being um there to back them up. They're there as the various customs and laws that any nation finds itself under and maintains its identity through. And so they do not have the force of divine command that they used to have, but they continue to be enforced as the customs and laws of any nation can be enforced without having the thus says the Lord behind them.

SPEAKER_03 31:31

Yeah. Uh so let me yeah. So I think that's I think that's a problem. I think that doesn't like I think that doesn't work historically, because as a matter of human practice, even in a Hookarian view of Adiaphora, uh, it won't be maintained if it is not divine law. If it's not Eurodivino, it's gonna die out within two to three generations. And again, there just won't be like Jews in the world, much less Jews in the church. And part of like part of like my strong, like my first principle theological conviction here that's part of that's part of what's informing this, is that I mean, this is good, I know this sounds odd taken out of context, but I mean it. God wants Jews in the world, and God wants Jews in the world till the end. He wants Jews at the end, at the Parousia. And how can that happen? I just I literally, quite literally don't think it can happen on the schema that you're representing, which by and large, taken charitably, is the schema of the tradition. When the tradition is not being anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish, it's it's this. And this, what I'm wanting to suggest, is not gonna get the job done. And I think that can point us back back to the New Testament and ask ourselves: does the New Testament require or commit us to this view that you're suggesting, or are there other ways of reading the text? Um, okay, so uh I uh I want Derek, you can jump in. I know we have so there we could do this for three hours.

SPEAKER_02 32:55

Shifting threads here. Um Yeah, I so I'm probably just taking this straight trad uh non-anti-Semitic read on this stuff. Um I still have questions about like the whole non-intermarriage thing because that uh that just seems wild if you want to clarify that later.

SPEAKER_03 33:14

Happy to, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:15

I I do I do wonder about so I'm taking my students through Galatians 2 right now. I I have a lot of the sensitivities that you do um about not yeah, I I I I've read Tyson, I've read Sloane, I I have it's the plausibility of a lot of reason, uh a lot of readings that are not immediately, hey man, just you know, put the put the pork on the barbecue um immediately, so on and so forth. I I I get why that's not like an immediately great reading of the New Testament. Um but but looking at I know there's readings of this, looking at Galatians 2, um what was Cephas doing? What was Peter doing that he stopped doing that Paul got in his face about beyond just not eating with the uh with the Gentiles? Uh this this is not it's not a it's not a a key proof text or whatever it is. I I I know there's answers on this, but but in terms of of of what he's saying, you are a Jew, yet live like a gentile and not like a Jew. I'm going off English there, but it I don't know if the Greek really changes that that radically. Is is it you you you don't Judaize? Is that is that what I I I haven't looked at the Greek lately? Um how is it then that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish? So let's let's look at maybe let's get a more literal translation here up on the board um for for for folks. Let's go. Uh where's the where's the N-A-N-A-S B or something like that? Um uh just for fun. Um if you, being a Jew, live like Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews? Now maybe give me a Greek fix. Is it maybe it's more technical than that? Um, which totally could be the case because I'm not I don't have this thing memorized in the Greek. Uh anybody got something for me? So I'm I'm I'm skimming. I'm looking.

SPEAKER_03 35:17

I have a strong take on uh under law, hyponomon, and on died to the law, so first Corinthians nine as well as uh Galatians two through four.

SPEAKER_02 35:27

Um yeah, I'm not talking about law yet.

SPEAKER_03 35:29

I'm looking at the strong take on this. I agree that the bit I mean, I just think these passages are so freaking thorny. It is a dense thicket of Greek. I think and I think that what's clear is that he removes himself from a common table. What that tells us about kosher or not is not obvious to me.

SPEAKER_02 35:55

I I don't know. I just yeah, I I guess looking at that, it seems like he was doing something that was pretty Gentilish. And then he stopped doing it when the circumcircumcision party showed up, and and then Paul makes this this point about us always knowing that we've never been justified by by Judaizing um or by by the law, by keeping by keeping it by works of the law. Uh and so we don't need to Judaize them. So, like obviously, we're all we're all clear that Judaizing means hey, we we don't need to bring the Gentiles under um you know circumcision, Torah, etc. etc. Nobody's justified by their works of the law. Um, but there's this line here about living uh as a gentile that he was doing uh for a while. This is why it would have been fun to have Paul Sloane on this. I'm sure he has an answer. I'm looking at trying to find the Greek here. Yeah, it could, it could just be Judaizing. Um uh but even there, what is it uh what does it mean? What does it mean to live like a gentile there for Peter the Jew? Um when he's among the Jew the Gentile Christians, there's something that he's doing that is Gentile Christianish, um, that he stops doing that would be put him back under the kind of behavior that the circumcision party would have found relevant and more consistent with the keeping the traditions of the elders um and so on and so forth that that would keep the keep the lines clear. And it seems like more than just not eating with the Gentiles. Because if that's the distinction, then that I I don't know, that that that didn't seem like enough. Um, but maybe it is. So that that's a problem text that I just was working through with one of my with my students, and I don't see how your reading like it seems like a problem text for you for for your reading.

SPEAKER_03 37:51

Yeah, I mean I want to be clear. This is why this is why one of my meta-hermeneutical points is I think everybody has uh a couple problem texts. I I really think that acts 21, yeah, I gotta go, I gotta do a little reading on that one too.

SPEAKER_00 38:03

Like I just think it like and I'm I'm not sure how I should think that Acts 21 is a problem text.

SPEAKER_02 38:09

Yeah, I I it I I want to I want to have a little bit more under, but I I I find Alistair's read plausible. I I don't think there's anything duplicitous in what Paul is doing if he's he's like, yeah, just you know, circumcision, uncircumcision, that's fine. Yeah, you want to circumcise your kid, that's fine. Uh if you're a Jew, totally keep doing it.

SPEAKER_03 38:26

But we just that Alistair, you said earlier that that uh a Jew that a baptized Jewish family in a given context would not need, would not be under divine uh under divine uh uh divine command, would would not be obligated to circumcise their baby boy. That is the accusation that he is authorizing the non-observance of circumcision among Jews.

SPEAKER_02 38:51

But that but he's not he's not saying, hey, don't circumcise your kids, Jews. Stop that.

SPEAKER_03 38:55

He's only saying you're allowed to not do it.

SPEAKER_02 38:57

Yeah, I think there's a difference between saying you're allowed. He's not saying it's a plausible reading.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

I don't think it's incoherent. I mean, the the accusation that's made is that he's speaking against the law of Moses and telling people not to circumcise their to they're instructing the Jews among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or walk according to our customs. Um that's not what Paul is doing.

SPEAKER_02 39:29

Stop stop it. We're done. It's like, no.

SPEAKER_00 39:32

But permission is that in a situation where certainly in the context of Jerusalem, where it's a Jewish setting, he would be advocating for observance of the customs that everyone is under. In a more gentile diaspora context, you can imagine him taking both approaches. If he's within a Jewish community within that setting, he would say, go along with the customs that you are under, continue to observe this. But if there's a breakaway from the synagogue, for instance, and there's a new situation that arises that is overwhelmingly Gentile, and your son, for instance, wants to marry a Gentile Christian, and then they have children, and do you have to circumcise those children? Maybe not. Maybe it's at that point is up to you in the same way as it would be up for you, up to you in a different setting if you had a particular nationality and set of customs. There are certain circumstances where you're between two options and you do have that option. Also, let me try to claim that you must take one or the other.

SPEAKER_03 40:39

Let me try to say two things. One is that the the the the the Jewish brothers in Jerusalem, zealous for the law, they're not that is part of what they are worried about. They're not satisfied by the answer. I authorize some Jewish groups, depending on context, to consider God's command in Genesis 12 and 17 to be optional. Like they they they would say that's that's part of the problem that we've been hearing because it's a behavior. So this is my second thing. When in your framework, uh Genesis 12 and 17 are reduced to local cultural customs. And this is my question to both of y'all. What what about the New Testament? What about uh Jesus' ministry or death and resurrection or the apostolic uh ministry uh among the nations uh would lead us to think that Genesis 12 through 17 is abrogated as divine command and reduced to local cultural custom. I'm not talking about because it's not mosaic. It's not, it's not at Sinai. Like what what what I'm I'm actually failing to grasp why that would be reduced to the equivalent of like a local, a local tribe in their their customs.

SPEAKER_00 41:57

I mean, you could you could think about this in terms of things like in the Mosaic context, the celebration of Passover. What significance does the celebration of Passover have after the institution of the Eucharist? Um, you could think about it from the perspective of um participation in the temple where God dwells. Um what is the people within whom God in whose midst God dwells? And how does it count to become part of God's people? Because that's formally what circumcision used to mark. It was also set up very much as a separation between Jew and Gentile, such that, for instance, if you wanted to marry a a Jew, you needed to get circumcised, become part of the Jewish people in order to intermarry. Um what I'm saying here is I can be jet I can be zealous for the customs of my people. I can want those customs to be preserved. And within a context that is English, for instance, I can be quite strongly argue that they should be maintained and they should be um placed upon people who are within that context. But when I'm overseas, there are different ways that I might relate to my customs. I don't recognize them as having the same force upon me as they would when I'm in England. I recognize how, however, that I want those customs to be preserved. There will be various ways in which I continue to observe and recognize my customs in the way I write, in the way that I the things that I read, the um songs that I whatever it is.

SPEAKER_03 43:35

But English customs and law were never divinely given.

SPEAKER_00 43:38

Whereas like Israel's were.

SPEAKER_03 43:41

Diaspora Jews, diaspora Jews wherever they lived and still live today. I don't know if either of y'all have lived in a community with Orthodox Jews or a synagogue around, like they're still keeping them, man. Like they don't think that these like random ancestral customs are like are like nice when you live in the land. They're God's word. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:02

I'll bite a bullet here, Brad. I'm an infant baptism. I'm an infant baptist partially because I identify circumcision, the function of circumcision with the function uh of a of the covenant sign of baptism. They mean functionally the same thing uh in a million different ways, and we apply that sign to believers and to their children in the new covenant, just the same way we did to believers and their children, mostly in the old covenant. That's just how I think about it. Um and so uh and w in the New Testament we had a transitional period. You know, we had those, we we had this time of overlap.

SPEAKER_03 44:39

This is Augustine's view, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:41

Yeah, dude, he was solid. Um uh like I I'll just say that. Like, I I uh whatever. I I I actually just think that there's an identify identification with it. They're doing the same thing. They're saying, you'll be my people, I'll be your God. It's a cutting way of the flesh, it's a it's a it's a it's a circumcision of the heart. Baptism is a renewal of the heart, it's a cleansing way of the of the fleshly old. They're they are symbolically they're doing the same work, right? And so then I mean, I redundancies are fine, but what I'm saying that symbolically, they're functionally doing the same thing for me in the New Testament. So it if you want to keep doing, if you want to have like a redundant sign talking about prior faithfulness and and it helps maintain Jewish identity and all that, I I have no problem with that at all. And in fact, in the US, I mean, uh a whole bunch of whole bunch of folks who are baptized are also circumcised for non-religious reasons. So it's not like it's like a it's not like there's something uh immoral about it. But but I'm just saying that's not historically been a theological problem. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03 45:40

But you can't think they're entirely redundant because they're doing different things. They they there's overlap, but they're doing different things too. Like circumcision doesn't cleanse you of sin.

SPEAKER_02 45:48

Like, well, I mean, I don't I don't believe in baptismal regeneration either. So so, you know, um not not not in a strict way.

SPEAKER_03 46:00

Not in a strict way.

SPEAKER_02 46:02

Yeah, dude. Uh tell me tell me who tell me what tell me what the thief on the cross got got baptized with.

SPEAKER_03 46:07

There are exceptions to every rule, man. Exceptions to every rule to God. God, you believe in God's sovereignty, right?

SPEAKER_00 46:12

I do, I do. At least what people can get the spirit that people can get into marriage without actually having a ceremony, without having to marry. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 46:22

Well said, Alistair. Well said. I have no problem with the spirit working with the sign, and I have no problem with the spirit working apart from the sign. But my point is, my point is that even if you go back to the old covenant, not every kid who got circumcised in Israel had the spirit of God spiritually circumcising their hearts, but some of them did. God actually circumcised the hearts of some people to some degree, in insofar as we don't think that Old Testament believers weren't regenerate, or were totally unregenerate until the coming of Christ. I don't think that's true. In which case, do you do you think that all the Old Testament believers were unregenerate?

SPEAKER_03 46:55

Well, that's that I don't like using that one. I think that's fixing up the question.

SPEAKER_02 46:58

Yeah, yeah, that that's that's yeah, that's question begging. The argument is working for me, so I want to keep quiet. Um, I know. But but the slippages are there. I'm not saying it's it's it's it's exactly exactly what I think.

SPEAKER_03 47:12

Yeah, no, I'm agreeing that there's analogy. I'm just saying there's disconfidence.

SPEAKER_02 47:15

But it it's it's it's it's like uh it's a narrative identity in the sense that it is it is it came later. It is a different sign, but it is the con it is the continuing version of that sign. And now for a quick word from one of our sponsors. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelical seminary on the campus of Sanford University in Birmingham, Alabama. I've been there. It is actually a lovely campus led by world-renowned faculty. Beeson forms students in person in a kind of a community-oriented model of theological education, and they have top-ranked scholars who engage their students at kind of very small class sizes, to warm environment. And now, thanks to a generous gift, Beeson is actually offering uh new full tuition scholarships for the 2025-2026 incoming class for their flagship degree, the Master of Divinity. So this kind of makes the whole thing more affordable than it's ever been. Now, these scholarships cover the cost of tuition and fees for three years, which is the average time it takes to finish the MDiv. And I'll be honest and say I wish I had known about this or had an opportunity to look at this one when I was heading to seminary. So if you're interested, you can apply and learn more information at easyndivinity.com.

SPEAKER_01 48:32

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SPEAKER_03 49:35

Right. I'm actually we do that. But I want to ask y'all a question because this will help whether we have common ground or not common ground here. Like either God's will in the first in the first generation of the church, or God's will, present tense, or God's will in the future tense. Y'all can pick. Does God want a community of distinct groups, i.e., Gentiles and Jews? Yes. Because, okay, so if there's a yes, my question is, how can that let me let me read something to y'all? This is I'm not opposed.

SPEAKER_02 50:09

Yeah, yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_03 50:10

This is a 1989 letter that the Orthodox Jewish theologian Michael Visegrad wrote to Jean-Marie Lustiger, who's a cardinal of the Catholic Church, but who was a Halakhic Jew, that is, he was born to a Jewish mother and uh self-identified as a Jew as a as a converted Catholic. And in the letter, this is what Visegrad writes to him. He says, if all Jews in past ages had followed the advice of the church to become Christians, there would be no more Jews in the world today. The question we must ask is, does the church really want a world without Jews? Does the church believe that such a world is in accordance with the will of God? Or does the church believe that it is God's will, even after the coming of Jesus, that there be a Jewish people in the world? And I fail to see on the standard, I ex- Listen, I'm the tradition guy. I'm the quasi-protestant in this con this conversation. I acknowledge that this is a minority report and a dubium presented to the mainstream tradition. But the reason, the force of the question, and it's moral and biblical and theological is uh the mainstream position of the church erases Jewishness. It is a, it, the condition of entry is self-erasure within with uh at the at the at the day of baptism or within a generation or two. And I fail to see how the mainstream answer responds to that without, well, but you don't have to, even though we know inevitably you will be absorbed into, you will gentilize like the ten tribes, you will just be absorbed into the world and no longer distinctly Jewish. And I don't know how the standard view or y'all's inflections of that view is accountable to that concern. I I I genuinely don't know.

SPEAKER_00 51:51

Well, my my position would be that it is not something that is desirable. I think we need to recognize, first of all, what are the ways that scripture provides us to maintain um Jewish identity just the natural human resources that are given. Does it need to come with a divine commandment because the natural human resources are not sufficient? Um or can we also trust to divine providence in these sorts of situations? It seems to me that it is good for Jews to want to continue a distinct identity, and that will require a number of things as a group that will not necessarily apply for each and every individual. And we have that the same thing for any group of people that wants to retain its identity, it becomes a lot stronger, a much much more pronounced problem for a diaspora people within a context where for Christian converts there is a diaspora setting where they'll be detached from their main community and as a result end up intermarrying with people and losing their identity. If there's a widespread conversion of the Jews, which I think many Christians have been praying for, there's a sense that that is part of the future hope, that would not be the case. That would be a distinct group of people that retains its distinctive identity, intermarries primarily within itself, in the same way as there can be intermarriage between lots of different groups, while those groups retain their identity because of, first of all, having particular territories or location localities where their rules and laws and lives apply. For instance, the English and Scottish people can constantly intermarry and yet still retain identities that are distinct from each other. I would see Jews very much fitting into the same sort of category, but with the more pronounced problem of, first of all, being, in many cases, a diaspora people, and in many cases those who convert to Christianity are converting in a context where they will be isolated from their communities of origin and will be more likely to assimilate into communities that are overwhelmingly gentile. That is the problem. That is not a problem in an absolute sense. It's a more contingent problem. You can imagine easily situations where that would not be the case. And certainly if there's a large-scale conversion of Jews, that would not have to be the case.

SPEAKER_02 54:34

I am fully able to say I've got to give this some more thought in terms of like what that continuing providence looks like. And I think Alistair has pointed to some important points. And I won't say it it's not it's not actually foreign to the Reformed tradition to have a future conversion of the Jews uh as part of the schema. It's not a pure dispensationalism. I mean, thing her Herman Wit Herman Whittius has that that possibility going on in his economy of the covenants. And so that that you can actually you can go you it's not foreign to the broader tradition to actually think, yeah, we're gonna have Jews who convert and there's gonna be very clear contingent, and then we're gonna have people who were who, in a sense, are downstream, have married in, so on and so forth, and they're also part of the contingent. And we haven't even mapped out how the whole Staples thesis uh maybe works into this as as well.

SPEAKER_03 55:23

Yeah, we have to set that to decide, actually.

SPEAKER_02 55:31

The Jews who've been Gentiles and and the and the and the and the Gentiles who've been you know Israelitized, uh that's also actually a thesis I think that should be on the table to some degree. Part of my concern is other ones, um, to be frank, that what what what those what the what that reiteration of things does towards those texts around Pauline unity, and I I struggle to see that maintaining some of those higher boundaries um as mandated as law within a church community, there's some functional problems that I I I struggle to see, and I I'm I'm I guess I'm probably till still too stuck in the old paragraph paradigm looking at. I actually think the reading of 1 Corinthians 9 that Alistair read it gave is plausible, and I think Acts 21 is plausible, and I don't I I don't know how your reading makes sense out of Galatians 2 and what the problem is there and and and some of those things. And so um Yeah, the one new body and and all that kind of thing. So I I uh my concerns I have other concerns. I have concerns around honestly some of the uh well I I'd I'd be curious what you think about the the the the the commands around intermarriage, um those those within the church and all that Jews and Gentiles were we're cool with that. That's not a that's not that's not a deal breaker on on your paradigm. That's not is that okay? Is what okay? Sorry. Jews and Gentiles intermarrying as it were.

SPEAKER_03 57:00

No, no, I it's yeah, so I this is where like uh the um I like we I'm not gonna I'm not gonna go command by command. Like for me, the point is that like uh Yeah, but if we're not gonna go command by command, that's isn't that the point?

SPEAKER_02 57:13

No, no, no.

SPEAKER_03 57:14

No, we should do that. I'm saying I can't, I am not in a position. My competence is too low. Uh I think Alistair's language of assimilation is is preferable here. Uh for me it's not uh I'm not I'm not I'm not I it's not I'm not I don't have standing to issue these decrees. What I'm saying is the frame what the framework matters. So let uh let me uh let let me say uh there are contingencies that worry me. Yeah, for exactly.

SPEAKER_02 57:40

For ethical practical reasons in the other way as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do it. On top of just justification stuff and whatever, and we'll we'll stipulate everybody thinks we're gonna get justified by faith, et cetera, et cetera, on both paradigms.

SPEAKER_03 57:52

So I mean I said it earlier, I want to reiterate, um, but but I want to hit unity in 1 Corinthians 9. But yeah, we're agreed. Like it's not that quote unquote something is wrong with the law. The law is spiritual, the law is holy, just, and good, uh, but it can't give what Jesus alone can give. That is a premise of all of this. So I just want to be clear, it's not a sonderveg, it's not a two-way, it's not some people get saved this way, some people get saved that way. I'm not saying that. Um, but to your point about Galatians 3 and Ephesians 4 and other similar passages about unity, what I what I want to insist for Derek, the complementarian Derek, is that if we if we don't think sexual difference is abolished in Christ, then we already have a framework for what it means to remain different and blessed in our difference, but also united in Christ. Like we have that paradigm already. So I'm I do not think that as we've identified problem texts and problem questions. To me, that is not one. Let me say my brief take on 1 Corinthians 9, which is which which is Romans, Romans and Galatians as well, right? It's hyponomo, not under the law. I agree that Paul says this, but I just want to just suggest an alternative take. Because the night the thing that not y'all, y'all are good, y'all are good Bible readers, but what where people often stop is when he says, uh, though not being myself under the law. And then when he says, uh I became as one outside the law, not being without law towards God, but under the law of Christ. I want to suggest, I want to suggest that one I I agree that one plausible interpretation is what you've offered, and I want to give two alternatives. One that I don't share but has been proposed by scholars, and one that is my view. The one that I that I don't share, but I think is plausible is I think Mal Herbie makes this claim, Tyson cites it in his book, uh, that this is about rhetorical strategies. This is not about I I just drop Torah and I and I do whatever I'm not allowed to do uh when I'm with Gentiles. Uh and then I change and then I change that based on my the domain or the authorities. Rather, it's about it's about r it's about his rhetoric, it's about the content and style of his proclamation. Plausible, not totally persuasive to me. My take. I think, I mean, all three of us are agreed that Paul line and New Testament teaching about Torah in relation to Christ, uh you know, law and grace, Torah and Christ, etc., is coherent, right? There are other people who just don't think it's coherent. The three of us think it holds together. Yeah. And that means that we think it's both good, the law is good, but can't get the job done for what Jesus does for us, right? And so what I want to suggest is under law does not mean for Paul obliged to obey the commands of God. As he says uh elsewhere in 1 Corinthians, like what matters is not circumcision or foreskin, but keeping the commands of God. I think he thinks that those just apply to Jews and Gentiles differently. There's overlap and there's distinction. And what under law means is under the death dealing power of law, under the curse that comes from uh the that that that that law inevitably indicts you with because you, like all human beings, are under sin. Uh it's it I actually think it's a it's a um a parallelism with under sin, because if you are under law, then you are under the dispensation, not in that word, not in that sense of the word, but you are under well comes back to Darby.

unknown 1:01:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:33

You you are under the regime of being accused without recourse as a sinner. Um, and then when you are no longer condemned because you are under graced, because you are in Christ, you are still subject to God's commands. But you are not under law in that death-dealing sense. The the the curse that the law inflicts you with justly because you are a transgressor. That's the way uh to describe that's the way to that I think that passage uh can be plausibly interpreted and uh his other uses of that Greek phrase.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:14

To kind of parallel the Romans 7 a little bit, what you're getting.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:18

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:18

Yeah, I I don't buy it, I get it. Um I think I think some of the other I think there's other senses of under law.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:27

Uh yeah, well, Paul on the law part of what it means to be under the law is to be under the curse of the law for those who do not observe it. That you essentially face um excommunication in a radical sense, cursed is everyone before God who does not observe all of these things. Yeah. And that's the question whether someone, a Jew who was a faithful Christian, who maybe wanted to marry a Gentile and be um join a Gentile church, not out of rejection of their past, but because maybe they loved someone who was uh a Gentile and were living within a diaspora context, would they be um under God's judgment of excommunication? That's what it would mean, in my understanding, to be under law. Um the curse of the law is very much that judgment upon those who have failed to observe or failed to observe or rejected it. The sort of thing that's listed in um Deuteronomy chapter 29, the curses that are declared. And then I think beyond that, there's just the deeper question. You give the example of male and female, there is clearly a continuing difference within the life of the church between male and female, even though we are all one in Christ. And that's also it seems to me the case for Jew and Gentile. I don't think that the New Testament envisages just a breaking down of a of a div of a difference between Jew and Gentile. I think that persists, and it persists primarily in God's providence, but also pres persists through the various means by which societies and peoples maintain their distinct identities. Um but beyond that, the Old Testament law was not just creating a difference between Jew and Gentile, it was creating a division between Jew and Gentile. And after the advent of Christ Grace and the unity of the church in Christ, all being one in Christ is is not so much saying everyone's interchangeable, everyone's essentially um all the differences don't matter. The differences still matter in various ways. But all those differences are traversed, and the differences are not divisions. And there I think is where I would feel some of the force of Paul's teaching against your position as I understand it. Because I think what Paul is saying pushes against the way that something like circumcision, something like the celebration of the Passover, something like the whole system of worship that you have within the Old Testament, which were exclusive, they were things that created divisions, and they were set up precisely in order to divide Jews from Gentiles for the purpose of redemptive history. But I think that period almost of quarantine through law has been fulfilled, and what you have is a persistent difference that is no longer a division, and that persisting difference is more maintained through adiaphora, through continued customs, national distinct identities, but it's no longer the division, and it's the division that is really sustained with the force of the curse of the law that excommunicates those who reject it. And so my that's my concern with your position, as I understand.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:55

Let me say two things about that. One is I you know, this is sort of an offline thing, because we're not going to talk about it. Forever, but I I actually think, and this could be methodological difference between the two of y'all and me, but I actually think your claim is coherent but undermined by an empirical reality. And to me, the empirical reality calls into question the viability of the theory or the reading, because empirically, the one place you're bound to lose your Jewishness is the church. Whereas the way you can preserve it is by not getting baptized and not entering the church. You are going to preserve it either purely through family customs that are half connected, quarter connected to the synagogue, or especially through actual halakhic observance. And I agree with you that Providence is at work here, but I don't see you, you're not suggesting this. But let's let's make it two-handed, right? Let's make Providence on the one hand and the church participating and enabling and helping and being a conduit of divine providence on the other. And in as much as the church, again, we're bracketing the horrible, terrible, violent history of the church towards Jews. We're just even setting them aside. Like even just the neutrality uh just swallows up all of it. And and you you will, you can, you can bet your bottom dollar if you are Jewish and you book and you join a Gentile Christian church, your grandchildren will not even, or your great grandchildren will not even know they're Jewish. And there will be no distinctiveness. So that's on the one hand. On the other hand, I I want to place a question mark. I grant again the plausibility of the reading. Can I just pause it? No, no, no. Let me finish this. It's very quick. On I don't I don't share your view that the distinction created by election is ao-ipso, is ipso facto division. I think that division is occasioned by sin. Uh and it does not have to, and you can see the sanctification of Israel as analogous to the sanctification, the consecration of the Levitical and Nearonic priests. And it does not have to be hostility, though of course it leads to hostility. Now, I grant that it can be read either way, but that's not the way that I would read it.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:08

I think I think in both cases, what's what's interesting is that the history plays a role in how these things have have cashed themselves out because in history we've had alongside just covenantal concerns, et cetera, et cetera, just the history of anti-Semitism, the continuing polemics between Jews and Gentiles in the first few centuries, which put placed a certain kind of pressure on what continuing Jewish Christian existence could have looked like, right? Um but it it also would have placed uh you know can you know uh pressure on on uh kind of what your pattern would have looked like. There's a sense in which we're at a new stage where a different potentially potentially like a more non-antisemitic, continuing Jewish identity friendly, traditional position that hasn't been tried might be on the table in the same way that your uh version essentially hasn't been tried and might be on the table. We haven't seen what it looks like in a non-sinful, non-divisive, whatever it is way. And so your your sociological concerns, your your observational pattern is also just as conditioned by, you know, the the lived history of sinners trying to work this out as well. And so our pa our paradigm, in a sense, you might say, like, well, we haven't We haven't tried either. We haven't thought to try it either, right? Uh and i in in the same way. And it could be the case that that is that these kinds of conversations forward that and help that. Um I I uh I still have my exegetical and theological concerns for I think it's helpful for that.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:57

As Jason Staples and others have reminded us, that when we're looking at the New Testament, we're looking at a situation that was overwhelmingly, certainly at the beginning section of Acts, overwhelmingly Jewish. And Christians were overwhelmingly Jews. And so the sorts of questions that we have now in an I mean in a church where only the smallest fraction of Christians are Jews are very different from those that are being addressed within the New Testament. And so there's always going to be a degree to which we're reading our situation back into the text in ways that will place unhelpful um questions before Paul and the Book of Acts that are underdetermined by their comments and their statements into their specific circumstances, which are very different from our own. And so tackling the sorts of questions that we face seems to me is not going to be something that's going to there's not going to be any particular text in scripture that will give us extremely clear guidelines of what we are to do to address our questions. There will have to be something of prudence, something of creativity, something of uh a sense of development practice at least. Um there's certainly a a a way in which our doctrine needs to be filled out. That doesn't necessarily mean that we're coming up with something whole cloth that is not without press that is without precedent in the New Testament. Rather, there is a prudential response in the same way as the early church in Acts 15 had to respond to new circumstances with the conversion of the Gentiles. So we have to respond to the circumstances that have been the case for many hundreds of over a thousand years, where the church is overwhelmingly Gentile and there's a danger of Jewish Christians being um erased. And the distinctive it would seem to me, at the very least, the distinctive charism of Jewish Christians within the church more generally, being lost through assimilation rather than a healthy digestion of their gift without an assimilation of them.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:27

So I there is a there are a million threads that I want to pull on, and I'm selfish and I just want to do it because I'm technically the host. But I will restrain myself and I will restrain you too, because we actually have to, we have to we have to curb it on this episode. Well, we can return to this in the future. Brad, thanks for um Hey, this was nice. This was an episode that wasn't just Derek Argues with his friends, this was a Brad Argues with his friends version of Mere Fidelity. And that felt, I'm just gonna say personally, that felt nice for a change. Um so so that was good. If you've if you've struggled with this so far and you've come to no conclusion, welcome. This is what we do. Uh it it it's it's good to have you guys on the show. Thanks for listening to Mere Fidelity. I hope what this has done is at least provoked a more um aggressive encounter with the word. Uh and just wrestling with the text actually says we we always want to be fully submitted to it. So uh, but for now, uh feel free to rate and review us on iTunes, share the episode, share with your friends. But for now, this has been Mere Fidelity.