Michael Zank

Is Paul a Jew, or is he a Christian? This is the wrong question. For Paul, a Jew was not the other of a Christian. For him, Gentile was the other of a Jew, and Christian was the way to resolve this difference. Both, Jews and Gentiles, are equally called upon to escape the coming wrath. The fact that Gentiles accepted baptism and received the holy spirit did not erase the difference between Jew and Gentile. Being himself called to proclaim the good news to the Gentiles, Paul never ceased to be a Jew. But he ceased to consider being a Jew as an advantage when it came to the question of righteousness. He or she who is under the law is not considered righteous or blameless before God because of being under the law; and he or she who is not under the law is not considered sinful or condemned, as long as they acquire the “faith of Jesus.”

Why is all this so difficult and complex? Whence the confusion of the Galatians and the need to say it over and over again in sometimes the same, sometimes different words? What made Paul’s message difficult to comprehend? Or was it not difficult to comprehend but difficult to trust?

Here are some further characteristics of his message.

• Paul remained an apocalyptist. From beginning to end, Paul proclaimed a way for the Gentiles to escape the coming wrath. He invited them to the way of Christ, preaching the word of the cross, of the death and resurrection of Christ that made Jesus into a “place of atonement” (hilasterion), inviting both Gentiles and Jews to change their thinking (metanoia), and put their trust in faith, rather than in the works of the law.
• From beginning to end, Paul’s message revolves around Gentiles who are somehow already within the orbit of the Greek body of Jewish texts that he cites as proof of the truth of his message.
• The question of where this leaves the Jews is not clear from the beginning. Paul’s position shifts: from the roundabout condemnation of the Jews as enemies of human kind of 1 Thessalonians, to the radical dismissal of the old covenant in Galatians, to the irenic position of Romans: one God for both Jews and Gentiles; a prerogative of the Jews because of the oracles (i.e., scripture); and a divine mystery playing itself out in their (temporary) rejection of Christ, which is the providential condition for Paul’s mission to the Gentiles. Without the temporary blindness of the Jews (cf. 2 Corinthians: whenever Jews read Moses they do so with a veil before their eyes), the Gentiles could not be grafted as wild shoots onto the noble olive tree.