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The shape of soteriology and the pistis Christou debate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2008

David L. Stubbs
David L. Stubbs*
Affiliation:
Western Theological Seminary, 101 E 13th St, Holland, MI 49423david.stubbs@westernsem.edu
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Abstract

A historic debate with great implications for theology has resurfaced in New Testament circles; however, it has not received the attention it should by theologians. It concerns how to translate and interpret approximately ten instances of the Greek phrase pistis Christou and its near equivalents in the letters of Paul. This phrase occurs within theologically crucial sections of Romans and Galatians, which have provided the foundation for the Reformation understanding of ‘justification by grace through faith’. The question is whether ‘faith’ in these phrases refers principally to the believer's ‘faith in Christ’, as traditionally understood, or should be translated and understood as ‘the faith of Christ’. In this article, I hope to introduce theologians to this debate and make a contribution to it from a theological angle, by describing the two primary ‘patterns of soteriology’ which are in play, and then examining how easily these different patterns of soteriology can be read onto what Paul writes concerning three crucial issues in his letters: salvation, the Law and the ‘righteousness of God’. I argue that the overall theological vision which includes three facets – a christologically centred understanding of the pistis Christou passages, a broader understanding of pistis, and the centring of soteriology around the concept of ‘participation in Christ’ – provides the most convincing interpretational matrix for reading Paul. I also point out implications this has for contemporary theology.

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Type
Research Article
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Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 61 , Issue 2 , May 2008, pp. 137 - 157
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2008

With the recent publication of Douglas Harink's book, Paul Among the Postliberals, in which the issue of how to translate and interpret approximately ten instances of the Greek phrase pistis Christou and its near equivalents in the letters of Paul,Footnote 1 is placed within the context of postliberal readings, one can expect it to enter into theological discussions with increasing frequency and force.Footnote 2 This phrase occurs within theologically crucial sections of both Romans and Galatians, in passages that have provided the foundation for the Reformation understanding of ‘justification by grace through faith’. The debate raises the question whether the ‘faith’ in these phrases refers to the believer's ‘faith in Christ’, as traditionally understood, or whether the ‘faith’ mentioned should be translated and understood as ‘the faith of Christ’ or perhaps even ‘Christic faith’.Footnote 3 Additionally, the precise understanding of what Paul means by the term pistis or ‘faith’ has become part of the debate. Consequently, how one understands this phrase has wide-ranging ramifications for how one understands these letters, Pauline theology, and the shape of Christian soteriology as a whole, for the theological concepts involved in these passages have been and continue to be important theological touchstones. My hope is that this article will help introduce or deepen the acquaintance of theologians with this debate, and make a contribution to it from a theological angle.

While the hermeneutical spiral involved in this issue is typically and understandably entered by New Testament scholars through a discussion of Greek grammar or a single passage or concept within Pauline theology, this detailed treatment of isolated pieces of the puzzle often makes the larger implications for Pauline theology and Christian theology difficult to discern. Complicating matters, such ‘implications’ also function as theological background assumptions which tip the scales of interpretational judgement with surprising weight. While some New Testament scholars have raised these larger theological issues, there has been too little sustained discussion.Footnote 4 However, the recent publication of Harink's book may well be a harbinger of a renewed interest in this issue by theologians. In the following I will bring those theological background assumptions to the fore by describing the two primary ‘patterns of soteriology’ that are in play in the debate, and then examining how easily these different patterns of soteriology can be read onto what Paul writes concerning three crucial issues in his letters: salvation, the Law and the ‘righteousness of God’. I argue that the overall theological vision which includes three facets – a christologically centred understanding of the pistis Christou passages, a broader understanding of pistis, and the centring of soteriology around the concept of ‘participation in Christ’ – provides the most convincing interpretational matrix for reading Paul. These three facets can be thought of as the legs of a three-legged stool; the stool is quite steady if they all work together. Most theological criticisms of a christologically centred interpretation of pistis Christou fail to consider this larger pattern.

The main concern of this article is to show the persuasiveness of this three-faceted ‘pattern’ as an overarching understanding of Paul's soteriology. However, as a theologian, I am not merely interested in Paul, but in how this pattern of soteriology might affect Christian belief and practice more generally. I think this pattern, which includes a christologically centred understanding of the pistis Christou phrases, can be a force in a larger sea-change in Protestant theology, a change in which salvation, the Law and the righteousness of God take on new meanings, a change in which the church and the sacraments take on increased significance, a change which resonates with ‘postliberal’ theological ethics, a change from most modern ways of understanding divine action in the world, and a change which holds the promise of greater unity with Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. Throughout, I will highlight ways in which this pattern of soteriology moves Protestant theology in these directions.

Divergent patterns of soteriology

Two overall understandings of Pauline soteriology seem to be at play in this debate, and are typically linked with different interpretations of the pistis Christou passages. Richard Hays and Morna Hooker are good representatives of the view highlighted above which is linked to the christologically centred reading of the phrases and evidence a pattern I will call ‘participationist eschatology’. James Dunn and A. J. Hultgren are representative of a second view of Pauline theology that they themselves characterise as drawing from the Lutheran Reformation tradition, which centres around the notion of ‘justification by grace through faith’.

After describing these, I will examine how smoothly these broad patterns of theology may be read into three specific aspects of Paul's letters, his discussions of (1) faith and salvation, (2) the relationship of faith to the Law, and (3) the relationship of faith to the righteousness of God. Examining how well these patterns make sense of these three loci will sufficiently show the implications of the pistis Christou debate for interpreting Paul and will provide an argument for the superiority of a christologically centred interpretation of pistis Christou.

The first of these patterns of soteriology is nicely summarised by E. P. Sanders's phrase, ‘participationist eschatology’. In his ground-breaking study, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, he examines and compares the soteriology of Paul with that of Palestinian Judaism. He argues Paul's vision of soteriology, his ‘pattern of religion’, could be described as ‘participationist eschatology’ which he summarises as follows:

God has sent Christ to be savior of all, both Jew and Gentile . . .; one participates in salvation by becoming one person with Christ, dying with him to sin and sharing the promise of his resurrection; the transformation, however, will not be completed until the Lord returns; meanwhile one who is in Christ has been freed from the power of sin and the uncleanness of transgression, and his behavior should be determined by his new situation; since Christ died to save all, all men must have been under the dominion of sin, ‘in the flesh’ as opposed to being in the Spirit.Footnote 5

In this view, ‘being-in-Christ’ is understood to be at the ‘centre’ of Paul's thought, rather than the notion of ‘justification by grace through faith’. By ‘centre’, he means a feature of someone's thinking which can be used to explain most of the other features. Following the same argument put forward by Albert Schweitzer, he claims ‘righteousness by faith can be derived from and understood on the basis of other aspects of Paul's thought such as possession of the Spirit and living in the Spirit, but not vice versa’.Footnote 6 Justification language in Paul explains only itself and comes into play only when the law is being discussed; on the other hand, Paul's discussions about ethics, life in the Spirit and the Lord's Supper can all be seen to stem from the notion of participation in Christ and not justification by faith.

Those who argue for a christologically centred ‘faith of Christ’ translation of the pistis Christou phrases link it to something similar to this ‘participationist eschatology’ understanding of Paul, almost without exception. In addition, scholars who hold these views usually understand ‘faith’ as referring to something much broader than intellectual conviction; ‘faith’ points to a fundamental will, orientation or way of being toward God.Footnote 7 These three elements combined form a coherent hermeneutic for reading Paul. In this reading, Christ's life, death and resurrection both manifest ‘the righteousness of God’ and embody a ‘faithful’, trusting and obedient human life. Believers or followers of Christ are ‘baptised into’, ‘believe into’ and participate in Christ communally and individually, and in this way are justified and gradually transformed through the Holy Spirit into the image of Christ. In this way the faithfulness of God is mirrored by the faith of Christ which is in turn mirrored by the faith of the community; thus the phrase ‘faith of Christ’ has its primary reference to the individual faithfulness of Christ, but also characterises the kind of faithfulness believers have as they participate in Christ.

Morna Hooker's work on this question evidences this pattern, which will be seen in full below. But, perhaps most crucially, Hooker sees how Christ's faithfulness becomes the pattern of life which enters into the life of believers. While agreeing in the main with Torrance, Sam Williams and the early study of Adolf Deissmann, she refines their terminology and argues pistis Christou is best understood not in terms of either a subjective or an objective genitive, as if they were opposed, but rather ‘concentrically’:

I suggest that we should think of it [the phrase pistis Christou] not as a polarised expression, which suggests antithesis, but as a concentric expression, which begins, always, from the faith of Christ himself, but which includes, necessarily, the answering faith of believers, who claim that faith as their own.Footnote 8

Hays similarly presses for what he calls a ‘multivalent’ interpretation of this phrase, in which the believer's ‘faith answers and reflects his – indeed, participates in his – because according to Paul it is God's design for us “to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29)’.Footnote 9 In an earlier article, Hays interchanges the term ‘faith’ with ‘our willing and acting’, and writes that ‘our faith will recapitulate the faithfulness of Jesus Christ’.Footnote 10

In contrast, the pattern of soteriology most often associated with the objective genitival ‘faith in Christ’ readings is a ‘classic Lutheran’ understanding of Paul, or some variation on that theme.Footnote 11 In this pattern, it is a human's ‘faith’, rather than their works of the Law, which makes one acceptable to God. Faith is given to the human ‘by grace’ – it is God's work, not a human work – yet ‘faith’ still characterises the boundaries of the people of God and is needed for salvation rather than ‘works of the Law’.Footnote 12 Righteousness, understood here as right standing before God, is ‘imputed’ or ‘reckoned’ to the believer on the basis of their faith. Christ has fulfilled the just requirements of the Law and paid the price for sin on our behalf. We gain the benefits of Christ through our faith, our trust and belief in this work of God accomplished in Christ; it is righteousness won by Christ which is reckoned to us. Faith is thus understood as our belief or trust in God, specifically God's saving work for us in Christ. Freed from guilt and fear, we then live lives of gratitude in response to the grace given to us. This is Paul's gospel. This gospel is exhibited in the objectively understood pistis Christou passages; salvation happens through human ‘faith in Christ’, human faith/belief/trust in Christ's vicarious work on our behalf and God's love for and acceptance of us.

Hultgren writes: ‘That Paul has in mind the faith of the believer, which accepts righteousness from God, is consistent with his terminology elsewhere’.Footnote 13 Likewise, Dunn argues, ‘the most natural reading throughout Galatians is summarized in the classic formulation – justified by grace through faith’, where faith is understood as the human exercise of belief in Christ. Divine acceptance is thus understood as the primary question that Paul's soteriology answers. It is this that explains ‘how Gentile and Jew receive the blessing of divine acceptance’.Footnote 14 The details of this basic pattern will be seen in the way these authors treat the three loci examined below.

Between Hays/Hooker and Hultgren/Dunn there are other options for understanding Paul's soteriology. For example, while almost all who argue for a christologically grounded ‘faith of Christ’ reading seem to share a ‘participationist eschatology’ understanding of Paul, there are some who think Paul centres his thought in ‘being-in-Christ’, but disagree with the ‘faith of Christ’ reading of these phrases. Surprisingly, both E. P. Sanders (in some contrast to Hays/Hooker) and arguably Luther (in some contrast to the ‘classic Lutheran’ position!) seem to hold this position.Footnote 15 While not every scholar falls neatly into the two main ‘patterns’ I am presenting, they do function quite usefully as types and characterise the main choices in recent Protestant theology.

Reading the patterns onto Paul

Using these two basic understandings of Paul's pattern of soteriology, let us turn to some of the loci in Paul's letters that figure prominently in the debate in order to compare the explanatory power these patterns have for illuminating the details of Paul's thought.

Faith and salvation

Much in this debate turns on one's basic understanding of what Paul means by the term, pistis, and what exactly he understands ‘salvation’ to be. There is wide agreement by those on both sides of the debate that the Hebrew word for ‘faith’ often carries the connotation of ‘faithfulness’, that it has this connotation when applied to God, and that it is also used to refer to a corresponding faithfulness in God's people.Footnote 16 The question then becomes whether in Paul pistis also carries this connotation of ‘faithfulness’, or whether Paul explicitly limits its range of meaning. All agree that when Paul applies the term pistis to God it has the connotation of divine faithfulness (as in Rom. 3:3–7, and Dunn thinks Rom. 1:17 as well), but not all agree whether this connotation of faithfulness also applies to Paul's talk about human pistis or whether he ever uses the term pistis to characterise Jesus Christ. This is the key difference here.

Those who understand the pistis Christou phrases ‘christologically’ believe Paul intends to draw parallels between the faithfulness of God, the faithfulness of Christ and a faithful human response to God. For example, Richard Hays points out the phrase in Romans 1:5, hupakoen pisteos, faith-obedience, is ‘an epexegetical construction’ in which faith and obedience are ‘closely correlated’. The phrase as used here clearly characterises a particular response to the gospel, and he argues this kind of faithful human response is a major theme throughout Romans. Pistis is used in a similar way in Rom. 1:8, 1:12, 11:20, and 14:1. The opening of the paraenesis section of the letter has a similar theme to it when Paul calls the Romans to present their ‘bodies as a living sacrifice’ (Rom. 12:1).Footnote 17 Hooker, in exegeting Philippians 3, ties the mention of pisteos Christou back to the Christ-hymn of Philippians 2 where Christ is extolled for his obedience to God, showing that the idea of being conformed to Christ accounts for Paul's train of thought. In her treatment of 2 Cor. 1:17–22, Hooker also argues that, even though the word pistis is not mentioned, the passage centres on the issue of Paul's faithfulness or steadfastness. In making his point, Paul appeals to the steadfastness of God, whose promises receive their ‘yes’ in Christ and ‘through him’ an ‘amen’ in believers, whom God has ‘established’ by putting the Spirit in their hearts.Footnote 18 The ‘concentric’ relationship between God's, Christ's and human faithfulness is apparent, even though not explicit. Again Hooker brings out the theme of pistis as faithfulness in her analysis of 2 Cor. 4:13 where, given the context, the phrase ‘having the same spirit of faith’ is most likely referring to the spirit of faith(fulness) which ‘enabled Jesus to be given up in death’.Footnote 19

In contrast, Dunn agrees pistis means God's faithfulness in Rom. 3:3 and Rom. 1:17, but argues that Paul does not speak of an analogical faithfulness either in Christ or in humans. Rather, Dunn thinks Paul draws a sharp distinction between the common Hebrew understanding of faith meaning faithfulness and an understanding of pistis that means belief and trust in God's faithfulness. In Paul's arguments about Abraham in Rom. 4, he argues Paul sets up a contrast between faith, meaning trust in the life-giving power of God, and the works of the Law.Footnote 20 Paul thus argues against the traditional Jewish interpretation of Abraham as the epitome of ‘faithfulness’. In contrast, Paul highlights Abraham as the epitome of trust/faith – this kind of trust/faith is the model for the believer's faith. Using this definition of human faith, Dunn notes that there are no direct or implied attributions of trust/faith to Christ anywhere in Paul, outside the disputed passages. He asks why, if Christ's ‘faith’ is such an important theme, Paul didn't make mention of it in more than two ambiguous phrases in Romans.Footnote 21 In response to Dunn, one could argue that the many thematic parallels Hays and Hooker examine which point to Christ's ‘faithfulness’ (not merely his trust/faith in God) show Christ's pistis is a major theme in Paul. But because of Dunn's position on the meaning of pistis, Dunn responds to Hooker's arguments about Rom. 5 and 2 Cor. 1:17–22 with a continuation of his argument from silence, begging the question about the meaning of pistis.

In sum, if Paul does make an essential distinction between human pistis (belief and trust) and God's pistis (faithfulness), and we assume any possible references to Christ's faith would mean the human kind of faith, then Dunn's arguments are indeed strong. However, if Paul thinks of human pistis as also having connotations of faithfulness, then Christ's pistis and a corresponding human pistis are arguably major themes in Paul, which in turn lends much weight to the ‘faith of Christ’ translation.

Besides influencing the outcome of this debate, the way one interprets the meaning of ‘faith’ has important theological implications for the relationship between faith and salvation. When one takes faith to mean merely belief and trust, faith becomes the key to acceptance by God but does not tell us anything further about the content of salvation. There is a tendency for this understanding of faith to be paired with the understanding of salvation as escaping final negative judgement in the eschatological Day of the Lord. Salvation thus means saved from rejection, punishment or extinction, or positively, acceptance by God and future resurrection. ‘Justification’ and ‘righteousness’ when applied to humans thus imply a positive juridical standing before God. This has often resulted in close links between faith/belief, justification and salvation; sanctification then becomes another discrete occurrence and activity.Footnote 22

On the other hand, in a ‘faith(fulness) of Christ’ reading, Paul's talk about faith and salvation no longer revolves around the typical Lutheran question of ‘how can a sinner find acceptance before a just God?’ but rather the question, ‘how can the purposes of God come to pass in light of the unfaithfulness of Gentiles and also Jews?’ Salvation now is understood as being saved from the power of ‘sin’, from the ways of the world and ‘flesh’ that are contrary to the purposes and patterns God has intended for God's creation – these purposes of God are highlighted. Although salvation still includes within it acceptance before God, and because of human unfaithfulness ‘atonement’ is still needed, acceptance and atonement are not sufficient characterisations of the telos of God's purposes. For Paul, salvation, as in Rom. 3:21–7, in its fullness means ‘being made righteous’ not merely declared so. Martyn writes in his Galatians commentary that this justification is an ‘apocalyptic’ ‘rectification’ of the entire cosmos, which includes, but is not limited to, the individual believer.Footnote 23 God's intentions for human life are that we are to reflect the very character of God in our beliefs, thoughts and actions; this is part of the process of God's defeat of the present evil age. Justification and sanctification are thus descriptions of different aspects of this larger process of salvation. This process is accomplished through the Spirit who works in us to conform us to the faith(fulness) of Christ, who himself is the image of the faithful and true character of God.

Such an understanding of pistis and salvation illuminates the thematic coherence of Paul's thought. It also avoids the unfortunate bifurcation of Paul's ‘gospel’ from his ‘ethics’ which often results from that traditional understanding. And given this christologically orientated reading, his writings other than Romans and Galatians can be seen also to reflect this larger ‘narrative substructure’ of salvation, even though Paul used different terms to speak of it as the context occasioned.Footnote 24 The power this reading has to illuminate Paul's discussion of the law strengthens the case for it even further.

Faith and works of the law

One's understanding of faith and salvation has implications for how one reads what Paul is reacting against in ‘the works of the Law’, a phrase he frequently contrasts to ‘faith’.

In the traditional Lutheran understanding, gospel and the law are strictly opposed. The ‘works of the Law’ becomes a catchphrase to denote any kind of human striving for acceptance before a righteous God. The issue at stake is how a guilty human individual can be accepted by a righteous God. The wrong answer is the attempt to do ‘good works’ to make oneself acceptable to God. The right answer is faith in Christ, meaning trust in the atoning action of God accomplished through Christ, and rejection of any human striving. Israel as a whole and Jewish-Christians must understand that God is acting in a new way in Christ and so they must no longer rely on ‘works of the Law’ to make themselves acceptable before God. Hultgren's exegesis of Rom. 3 reflects this pattern.Footnote 25

Sanders's description of Israelite religion as covenantal nomism, however, has problematised this description of Israelite religion as a striving after ‘works righteousness’. Dunn, working from Sanders's understanding of covenantal nomism, argues rather that Paul's criticism of the ‘works of the Law’ centres on the mistaken Israelite emphasis on the Law's exclusionary character vis-à-vis the Gentiles.Footnote 26 According to Dunn, Rom. 4:4–5, Rom. 10:2–4, and Phil 3:7–9 should not be interpreted as strict indictments of Israelite ‘works righteousness’ religion, but rather as arguments which build upon a common understanding Paul shares with other Jews. This common understanding is that God has accepted Israel on the basis of grace through faith (like Abraham), and that because of this, it makes sense that God will accept Gentiles on the basis of faith as well. Dunn writes, ‘it was the submission [i.e. faith] of the creature for which the Creator looked, not the zeal to defend privileged status’.Footnote 27 Thus, in Dunn's reading of Paul, the Law itself is not the problem, but rather the mistaken emphasis on following the works of the Law, principally circumcision and dietary restrictions, in order to secure the boundaries of their community and so maintain their existence as a special and privileged community before God. Paul stresses that the core of the covenant is faith or trust in God, and not these exclusionary works.

A problematic result of both these ‘faith in Christ’ readings is that the content of the Law becomes dissociated from human righteousness. In the first reading, the Law is antithetical to human righteousness; in the second, the precepts of the Law are only indirectly related to righteousness and salvation.

In the ‘faith of Christ’ reading, however, the Torah does reveal the righteous paths that human life should follow, ways that are counter to the ways of the ‘law’ of sin and the ‘law’ of the flesh. Paul, in this reading, does not see an intrinsic opposition between Law and gospel. The problem with the ‘works of the Law’, rather, is twofold. First, like Dunn's reading, there is a problem of Israelite misunderstanding of what one could call the ‘form’ or ‘pattern’ of human action which the Law prescribes; much in Paul's letters combats an exclusionary understanding of the purpose of the Law. However, in addition to this misunderstanding, there is a problem more intrinsic to the law; not with its ‘form’, however, but with its ‘dynamic’ or the means of accomplishing this form. The law itself is not at fault, as Paul says when he defends the law in Rom. 7:7–12 (and Rom. 3:31, Gal. 3:21, etc.) but, because of human sin, the Law itself does not give us the necessary means to life.Footnote 28 The Law gives us a picture of righteousness, but we are unable to live it out. Paul writes in Rom. 8:1–11 that ‘God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do’, by sending Christ ‘to deal with sin’, ‘so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit’. Again in Gal. 3:21, ‘For if a law had been given that could make alive, then righteousness would indeed come through the law’. The Law points us toward human righteousness; ‘in Christ’ we are given power to fulfil the Law (though imperfectly now, until Christ is all in all). As Richard Hays argues in his exegesis of the notoriously difficult passage Rom. 10:1–10, on this reading Christ is not seen as the ‘end’ of the law, in the sense of terminating it, but rather as the telos or ‘goal’ of the Law.Footnote 29 Christ faithfully fulfils the law and those who participate in Christ grow into that faithfulness. The problem with ‘works of the Law’ is not most fundamentally the form of those works, but rather that we are unable to do those works (and both Jew and Gentile have proven to be unfaithful) without participation and growth ‘in Christ’ through the dynamic of the Spirit. Fulfilling the Law is impossible because we are under the dominion of sin. In addition, because of this lack of power to do those works, the attempt itself leads us into pride and hypocrisy rather than leading us toward God. Or, as Hooker puts it, the opposition is no longer between human faith and human works, but between the overall system of the Law, and the system of participation in Christ through which we benefit from his fulfilment of the Law.Footnote 30 Martyn writes that the opposition in Gal. 2:16 is not between ‘two human alternatives’, but between ‘an act of God, Christ's faithful death, and an act of the human being, observance of the Law’.Footnote 31 Dunnill writes, the contrast in Gal. 2:16, 20 is not between the law and human faith, but between the Law and ‘the act of God in Christ, which can be expressed equally in terms of his faithfulness (in fulfillment of Hab 2:4) or of his obedience, or of his sonship’.Footnote 32

The strengths of this reading are numerous. First, it makes better sense of Paul's defence of the Law and ties Paul's treatment of the Law closer to that of the Gospel writers (i.e. Matt. 5:17–20). This creates greater continuity between the old and new covenants, which is of great significance as the relationship between Jews and Christians continues to be negotiated. Instead it opens up new possibilities for Christian ethics to emphasise the public and political aspects of Jesus' ministry and the church's mission, as in the work of Yoder and Hauerwas, and creates the possibility of a non-supercessionist account of the relationship between Israel and the church, as pointed out by Harink.Footnote 33 It also resonates well with the traditional Reformed emphasis on the ‘third use of the Law’.Footnote 34 The church, in so far as it is united with Christ in whom the Law is fulfilled, is the community in which the true intentions of the Law have begun to come to pass, revealing God's light to the nations, to the glory of the Father.

Faith and the righteousness of God

The phrase ‘the righteousness of God’ is itself the subject of another continuing debate about an ambiguous genitival construction. The history of the debate itself is too involved to summarise here, but the different ways of interpreting the phrase have particular implications for how to interpret pistis Christou.

Luther's new understanding of this important phrase – its location in Rom. 1:17 seems to make it the central theme in Romans and central to ‘the gospel’ – was a key aspect of his Reformation breakthrough. He originally understood the phrase to refer to God's character. God's righteousness is God's holy justice because of which he condemns all sin and sinners. Luther saw a new revelation of this as hardly ‘good news’ nor as anything all that different from the Law. His breakthrough was that ‘the righteousness of God’ was now understood as acceptance before God, imputed to those who have faith in Christ; for Luther this truly was good news and became the centre of his understanding of the new covenant.Footnote 35 Hultgren follows this interpretation in his exegesis of the pistis Christou passages in Romans, Galatians and Philippians.Footnote 36 This kind of righteousness is contrasted to a righteousness (right standing before God) based upon the works of the law; thus the antithesis of Law and Gospel. While this reading is certainly possible, for it has been a central Protestant understanding for four hundred years, it does lead to certain problems in interpreting Paul. First, Sanders's work on Palestinian Judaism has shown that, if this is indeed Paul's meaning, in his reaction against Judaism he either misunderstood the religion he was part of or else constructed a Jewish ‘straw man’; neither are attractive ways to understand Paul. Second, this reading makes the structure of Paul's arguments in Romans and Galatians hard to follow. If this understanding of ‘righteousness of God’ is the central theme of Romans, then the logic is unclear that links chapters 1–8 with chapters 9–15, especially chapters 9–11. Additionally, interpreters have had a difficult time explaining the train of Paul's thought in chapters 1–8, and especially how chapters 1–4 fit with 5–8. Third, given this reading, Paul's citations of Old Testament scriptures such as Hab. 2:4 often become quite puzzling, leading to a view of Paul as a ‘proof-texter’ who takes quotations out of context to bolster his argument, rather than as a serious interpreter of scripture. Given a ‘faith of Christ’ reading, all these problems find better answers.Footnote 37

Dunn's understanding of the ‘righteousness of God’ does solve at least the first and second of these problems. Dunn, along with a substantial movement of recent scholarship including many of the ‘faith of Christ’ camp, sees the ‘righteousness of God’ as referring again to the character of God, but not to a general characteristic of distributive justice, but instead to God's ‘covenant faithfulness’. Given this, the implicit question that Paul responds to in Romans is not how a guilty human can find acceptance before a just God, but rather, whether or not God is just, whether God has kept his part of the covenant. This question is raised by the inclusion of the Gentiles into the people of God without having to keep ‘the works of the Law’, especially circumcision and dietary requirements. In this way chapters 9–11 become the climax of the letter (Paul's question in 11:1, ‘I ask then, has God rejected his people?’, becomes a central theme rather than a side issue), and the logic of the transition into the paraenesis section of chapters 12 and following is easily seen. In addition, the characterisation of Israelite religion as ‘works righteousness’ is no longer needed or compelling.

Given that this understanding of ‘the righteousness of God’ is shared by both Dunn and the ‘faith of Christ’ camp, the issue that divides them is whether God's covenant faithfulness is revealed through ‘faith in Christ’, à la Dunn, or through the ‘faithfulness of Christ’. Dunn understands Paul to be arguing that God is faithful to his covenant with Israel by drawing a distinction between the common Israelite understanding that the covenant hinges on human ‘faithfulness’ to the laws of the covenant, especially certain particular works, and Paul's interpretation that the covenant has always been based on human ‘trust’ or ‘faith’ in the life-giving power of God. Paul thus argues that God is faithful to his covenant because the covenant always has been based on this kind of faith. As mentioned above, Dunn argues Paul makes this new understanding of pistis explicit in the discussion of Abraham in Rom. 4.Footnote 38

One problem with this overall construal of Paul is that his citations of key scriptural passages, such as Hab. 2:4 and Gen. 15:6 seem unconvincing, as does his view of the covenant based upon them. Paul seems to bend these passages to fit into his soteriology which centres on the imputation of righteousness due to a person's trust in God, a theme which does not appear to arise easily out of the hopes and fears of Israel, nor out of ‘the gospel’ portrayed in the Gospels. Indeed, according to Dunn, the whole idea of ‘justification by faith or trust’ stems from Paul's attempt to explain how and why Gentiles are now accepted by God.Footnote 39 Thus, a picture of Paul's interpretation of scripture emerges in which he is grasping at this verse and that, interpreting those verses in rather unexpected ways, in order to buttress his understanding of the old covenant and the new, an understanding he develops as he tries to explain God's unexpected acceptance of the Gentiles.

But does the ‘faith of Christ’ interpretation pattern fare better in illuminating the logic of Romans? Is it also able to explain how the ‘righteousness of God’, God's faithfulness to his covenant, is manifested in the gospel while also making Paul's interpretations of the covenant and scripture seem more traditionally Jewish? As mentioned above, God's decision to allow the Gentiles full membership in the people of God, without requiring full adherence to the law's precepts such as circumcision and dietary restrictions, raises questions about God's ‘righteousness’, and it does so in three ways. First, there is the question of whether God is ‘just’ or ‘fair’ in letting the Gentiles off easily; the Jews have to be circumcised, the Gentiles do not. Paul turns the tables on those who would argue God is ‘unfair’ by showing that, since both Jews and Gentiles have failed to be faithful to their particular revelations (chapters 1 and 2), we might expect that God's ‘fairness’ would be shown by his equal punishment of both, but instead salvation is equally available to both as a gift on the basis of Christ's atonement for our unfaithfulness and through participation in Christ (chapter 3). Dunn would argue similarly; the key here is showing equality of access to God's salvation for Jews and Gentiles.

A second issue is whether God, in setting up this seemingly new path for human righteousness and salvation, is being faithful to his covenant even if God is being ‘fair’ to both Jew and Gentile. Paul here, on a ‘faith of Christ’ reading, responds by showing that the covenant with Israel, understood properly, points beyond itself. Paul interprets the Law not merely as a set of moral and legal principles and precepts, but as pointing toward and partially manifesting a goal. This goal is a new humanity, a new kind of relationship between God and humans, among humans and even a new harmony with the rest of creation. The precepts of the law are themselves an approximation of the form of this new humanity, but because humanity through its own fault is under the dominion of the power of sin, the law in itself is powerless to bring us to that goal; instead, it reveals our sinfulness. God, in putting forth the Messiah Jesus, is fully manifesting his faithfulness to the covenant by bringing about, and also finally fully revealing, the goals and intentions of his covenant with Israel. Thus Paul, on the one hand, can write that the righteousness of God is revealed ‘apart from the law’, meaning God's purposes for humanity are being revealed apart from the current system of religion of the Law. Yet, on the other hand, this new humanity revealed in the ‘faithfulness’ of Christ ‘is attested by the law and the prophets’, meaning that the law and the prophets point to this goal through both the pattern of righteous human life they portray and the messianic expectations contained in them (Rom. 3:21). Abraham (Rom. 4) also points toward this kind of relationship with God, one not realised in merely fulfilling laws, but in faith, trust and peace with God. Abraham is analogous to, but not a full embodiment of, this ‘grace in which we stand’ (Rom. 5:2), contrary to the ‘faith in Christ’ reading.Footnote 40 Paul then more fully explicates what this new humanity is that Christ has manifested and that we might share ‘in Christ’, contrasting the kind of human life lived while one knows the law but is under the dominion of sin with the kind of human life lived as one is shaped and empowered by the Spirit as one participates in Christ (Rom. 5–8). Thus the law is ‘holy’ in that it does point us to the proper patterns of human life, but the purposes of God cannot be fulfilled by it alone because it does not have power to free us from the dominion of sin.

‘Faith in Christ’ readings have a more difficult time explaining how God is still faithful to the covenant with Israel. On these readings, either God gave the law in order to prove to people how unfaithful and needy they are (Paul according to Luther and, by association, Hultgren), or else the heart of the law is seen to be its sacrificial system which is a temporary means to atonement until Christ comes, Israel grossly misunderstanding its function by taking pride in their status because of it (Paul according to Dunn).Footnote 41 On these readings, Paul's understanding of the heart of the law is quite different from that of Jesus' summary of the law in the Gospels.Footnote 42

Finally, the question arises whether ‘the gospel’ about Christ means that God has rejected his people Israel because the majority of Israel rejected Christ. Paul treats this question in Rom. 9–11. Paul's arguments here can be understood quite similarly independent of whether one reads ‘faith in Christ’ or ‘faith of Christ’. Paul interprets ‘salvation history’ in a way which shows God is ultimately faithful to his covenant people, Israel, while working in a way which will bring salvation to the Gentiles as well.

In sum, in ‘faith in Christ’ or anthropologically centred readings, Paul explains how the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel by either making the gospel oppose the covenant (Luther, Hultgren), or by dissociating the heart of the covenant from the law (Dunn's view, in which Paul seems to oppose the Abrahamic to the Mosaic covenant). In contrast, in the ‘faith of Christ’ reading, Paul is arguing in Romans that ‘in Christ’ the covenant and Law are fulfilled in a way that has more in common with traditional Jewish understandings of the Law.

Conclusions

The ‘faith of Christ’ reading, coupled with both a broader understanding of pistis as faithfulness and a soteriology centred on ‘participation in Christ’ forms a pattern of soteriology that, as we have seen above, forms a powerful hermeneutic for reading Paul, bringing new light and coherence to the full range of his writings. It is able to make sense of and shed light on the central topics in Paul's letters and theology such as faith and salvation, the works of the Law and the righteousness of God. The ‘faith of Christ’ reading makes Paul's ‘participatory’ language cohere quite well with his ‘righteousness’ language; we are ‘made righteous’ through our participation in Christ and his ‘faithfulness’ to God and God's purposes. Because of this, Paul's theology of justification can be seen to lead naturally into and be one piece with his ethics.

This pattern of soteriology not only serves well in understanding Paul, but it creates new harmonies out of the old antitheses or disjunctions between old covenant and new and between Paul and the Gospels.Footnote 43 This coherence with the larger canonical context adds considerably to the power of this pattern of soteriology.

But even given its persuasiveness within the context of Pauline and New Testament theology and the lack of persuasiveness of the key arguments against it,Footnote 44 the ‘faith of Christ’ reading and the larger pattern of soteriology typically associated with it has seemed implausible in the past. There have been theological concerns about it and its implicit christology. For example, some have wondered whether there might be a lurking Pelagianism in this understanding, given its emphasis that believers are to embody the ways of Christ; however, when the ‘faithfulness of Christ’ is linked to a soteriology of participation in Christ, we see that any ‘imitation’ of Christ is the result of grace. Footnote 45 Others have worried ‘the faith of Christ’ implies a poor understanding of the humanity of Christ.Footnote 46 However, when ‘faith’ is understood more broadly as ‘faithfulness’, we find such worries unfounded and discover Christ's faithful obedience is a key theme throughout Paul's writings. Others might balk at an implicit soteriology that they think is not at its core Anselmian. But, the theme of the ‘merits’ of Christ being applied to us takes on deeper meaning within this alternative soteriology, for Christ's ‘faithfulness’ is what occasions his ‘merit’. Finally, I think one of the greatest resistances to this larger understanding of Paul is that the idea of ‘participation’ seems so foreign to modern ways of understanding the world.Footnote 47 While answering this concern is beyond the scope of this article, I think that discussions in philosophy of science and trinitarian theology have begun to provide new ways of thinking about God's action in the world that are fertile ground for the concept of participation. There no longer appear to be convincing reasons not to accept the larger pattern of soteriology often linked to ‘the faith of Christ’ reading, and many good reasons to accept it.

If indeed this way of understanding Pauline theology comes to dominate and influence especially Protestant understandings of Christian soteriology, the shape of some of the traditionally central theological notions in much of Protestant thought, at least those that stem from the mainline tradition of Protestant Augustinianism, will need to be rethought. As Douglas Harink has argued, given a reading of Paul in which ‘the faithfulness of Christ’ is linked with an apocalyptic invasion of Jesus Christ into the world in which we participate,Footnote 48 traditional Protestant notions of justification, apocalypse, election, politics, ethics and the church's relationship to culture must be renegotiated. But this may mean deepening our understanding of our traditions, rather than abandoning them. As pointed out above, certain Lutherans are finding ‘participationist’ themes to be central to Luther. For Reformed Christians, the fact that this ‘participationist’ soteriology coheres quite well with Calvin, Edwards and Barth will become more deeply appreciated. Harink shows this understanding of Paul resonates well with the broad postliberal strand of Protestant theology. I would suggest that this pattern of soteriology discerned in Paul also resonates well with certain sacramental strands of Christian theology, where ‘sacramental’ is understood as a participation in the activity-patterns of Christ/God. Such ‘eucharistic’ theology is evidenced in writers from Lutheran, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions such as Reinhard Hütter, Henri de Lubac and Alexander Schmemann.Footnote 49 My hope is that such an understanding of Paul can provide common ground not only among Protestant theologians, but also across the ecumenical spectrum, helping to bring unity to the scandalously fragmented church.

Footnotes

Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.

References

1 The passages are Rom. 3:22, 26; Gal. 2:16 (twice), 20; 3:22, 26 (a textual variant); Phil. 3:9; Eph. 3:12 and 4:13. The debate resurfaced in the 1980s and continues to this day. See Paul, Pollard, ‘The “Faith of Christ” in Current Discussion’, Concordia Journal 23 (July 1997), pp. 213–28Google Scholar, for an excellent historical summary of the debate, 1795–1997, and a nearly exhaustive bibliography since the 1980s. For another extensive bibliographical list, see Richard, Hays, ‘πIσTIσ and Pauline Christology’, Pauline Theology, vol. 4 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1997), pp. 35–6Google Scholar. More recent articles and books include: Wallis, I. G., The Faith of Jesus Christ in Early Christian Traditions (Cambridge: CUP, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dodd, Brian J., ‘Romans 1:17: A Crux Interpretum for the Pistis Christou Debate’, Journal of Biblical Literature 114 (Fall 1995), pp. 470–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Janzen, Gerald J., ‘Coleridge and Pistis Christou’, Expository Times 107 (June 1996), pp. 265–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Martyn, J. Louis, Galatians, The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1997)Google Scholar; John, Dunnill, ‘Saved by Whose Faith? The Function of pistis Christou in Pauline Theology’, Colloquium 30 (May 1998), pp. 3–25Google Scholar; Cranfield, C. E. B., ‘On the πιστισ Xριστoψ Question’, On Romans and Other New Testament Essays (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), pp. 81–97Google Scholar; Lindsay, Dennis R., ‘Works of the Law, Hearing of Faith and πιστιζ, Xσιστoε in Galatians 2:16–3:5’, Stone-Campbell Journal 3/1 (Spring 2000), pp. 79–88Google Scholar; Barry, Matlock, ‘Detheologizing the pistis Christou Debate’, Novum Testamentum 42/1 (2000), pp. 1–23Google Scholar; ‘“Even the Demons Believe”: Paul and pistis Christou’, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 64/2 (April 2002), pp. 300–18; Paul Foster, ‘The First Contribution to the pistis Christou Debate: A Study of Ephesians 3:12’, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 85 (March 2002), pp. 75–96.

2 Douglas, Harink, Paul Among the Postliberals: Pauline Theology Beyond Christendom and Modernity (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

3 The most common way to characterise the numerous positions is to indicate whether one understands pistis Christou to be an objective or a subjective genitive phrase. If one interprets Christou as an objective genitive, then Christ is seen to be the object of faith, so one translates the phrase as ‘faith in Christ’; if Christou is understood as a subjective genitive, then Christ is the subject of faith, and so one translates the phrase as ‘faith of Christ’. The attributive genitive is a third option; here Christou tells us of the quality of the faith, hence ‘Christic’ faith. However, I believe the most helpful way to frame the debate is whether the faith referred to in each phrase is fundamentally ‘christological’ or ‘anthropological’, i.e. whether the reality that Paul is pointing to with these phrases is at its root something to do with Christ or else the human response to Christ. Cf. Hays, ‘ΠIΣTIΣ’, pp. 39–40 and Harink, Paul, pp. 27–8.

4 Exceptions to this include the exchange between Torrance and Moule: Torrance, Thomas F., ‘One Aspect of the Biblical Conception of Faith’, Expository Times 48 (Jan 1957), pp. 111–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Torrance, Thomas F., ‘The Biblical Conception of “Faith”’, Expository Times 48 (1957), pp. 221–2Google Scholar; Moule, C. F. D., ‘The Biblical Conception of “Faith”’, Expository Times 48 (1957), pp. 157, 222Google Scholar. New Testament scholars who have raised important theological implications about the translation are Richard Hays, ‘πIσTIσ’, pp. 55–7, Morna Hooker, ‘πIσTIσ 㩷PIσTΟY’, NTS 35 (1989), pp. 341–2, and Dunnill, ‘Saved by Whose Faith?’; Martyn, Galatians; Pierre Vallotton, Le Christ et la Foi: Étude de théologie biblique (Genève: Labor et Fides, 1960). Ian Wallis's historical study, Faith of Jesus Christ and Harink, Paul, begin to treat the theological issues with greater depth.

5 Sanders, , Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), p. 549Google Scholar.

6 Ibid., p. 441. Other arguments Sanders makes are that (1) participation language about Christ's death is much more typical than sacrificed ‘for us’ language, (2) the human problem is characterised not so much as ‘guilt’ before God, but that we are ‘under sin’, (3) Paul understands that the main problem with transgression is that it establishes unions not compatible with union with Christ, 1 Cor. 6 and 10 being good examples. Ibid., pp. 502–8.

7 A possible exception may be Dunnill. He argues for a christologically centred understanding of the passages, and has a more expansive view of Christ's ‘faith’, but he does not also stress the believer's participation in Christ. Instead, he makes a distinction between Christ's faith and the faith of those who follow Christ.

8 Hooker, ‘πIσTIσ 㩷PIσTΟY’, p. 341.

9 Hays, ‘πIσTIσ’, pp. 59–60.

10 Hays, Theological Students Fellowship Bulletin 7/1 (September/October 1983), pp. 4–6. Yet another author who illustrates this pattern is Coleridge. In Janzen's examination of how S. T. Coleridge interpreted the pistis Christou passages and Pauline theology in general, we see the christologically centred interpretation once again linked to both a broader understanding of ‘faith’ – which for Coleridge refers most fundamentally to an ‘energy’, ‘disposition’, ‘will’ or ‘principle’ within a person – and a soteriology centred on participation in Christ's ‘faith’, ‘disposition’, ‘mind’ or ‘will’. Janzen, ‘Coleridge’.

11 At least among Protestant interpreters of Paul. Aquinas, in his Galatians commentary, sometimes interprets these phrases as references to the believer's faith or trust in Christ, but most often ‘the faith of Christ’ is taken to refer to the Christian religion or ‘manner of life’ or ‘living according to the precepts of the faith’, which is opposed to the Jewish religion or works of the Law. St Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Saint Paul's Epistle to the Galatians (Albany, NY: Magi Books, 1966), pp. 52–4. Thus Aquinas seems to take the ‘attributive’ genitive position.

12 Referring to E. P. Sanders's work again, one can understand this pattern to be similar to what he describes as ‘covenantal nomism’, his description of the Jewish pattern of religion, but now ‘faith’ rather than the ‘works of the Law’ describes the boundaries of the community. Cf. Paul, p. 422.

13 Arland, Hultgren, ‘The Pistis Christou Formulations in Paul’, Novum Testamentum 22 (1980), p. 259Google Scholar.

14 James, Dunn, ‘Once More, πIσTIσ ≥PIσTΟY’, in Johnson, E. and David, Hay (eds), Pauline Theology, vol. 4 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1997), p. 74Google Scholar.

15 A ‘participationist’ interpretation of Luther is argued quite persuasively by Tuomo Mannermaa and the Finnish school of Luther scholars that surround him. See Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith: Luther's View of Justification (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), and Braaten, Carl E. and Jenson, Robert W. (eds), Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998)Google Scholar. Sanders thinks ‘faith in Christ’ refers to the believer's faith, but this introduces tensions in Paul in at least two areas. First, Sanders argues the ‘juridical language’ or ‘righteousness’ language of Paul is best understood as controlled by Paul's ‘participationist’ language. Paul ‘presses into service’ the inherited language of righteousness into his theology, with the result that his righteousness language is not equivalent to typical Jewish usage, nor is it systematically worked out in and of itself: ‘It is precisely because he pressed the term [righteousness] into meanings which it does not easily bear that the exegesis of what he wrote has always been so difficult and confusing’ (Paul, p. 508). In response to Sanders, while the ‘faith of Christ’ interpretation does not make Paul easy reading, it does smooth out and make more coherent many traditionally difficult ‘righteousness’ passages, as will be pointed out below. Second, Sanders argues a common problem with Pauline interpretation is that interpreters assume the opening arguments of Romans and Galatians are good clues to the centre of Paul's theology. Sanders believes this ‘is ultimately misleading’, presumably because these arguments are about ‘juridical’ concerns, while the centre of Paul is ‘participationist’ (p. 441). However, given a ‘faith of Christ’ reading, these opening arguments are good indications of the centre of Paul's theology, which is reasonable to expect. In these passages, the ‘juridical’ and ‘participationist’ languages are merged, and in a way in which the juridical language is more coherent with itself and with the participationist language than in a ‘faith in Christ’ reading. In sum, I agree with Sanders that ‘participationist’ language is at the heart of Paul's theology, but think that a reading of Paul which includes a christological ‘faith of Christ’ understanding will smooth out the tensions Sanders highlights in the ‘righteousness’ language of Paul's letters.

16 Vallotton, Le Christ et La Foi, pp. 13–19; A. G. Herbert, Theology, 58/424 (Oct. 1955); T. F. Torrance, ‘One Aspect’, pp. 111–14; Dunn, ‘Once More’, p. 75, citing his own Romans 1–8 (Dallas, TX.: Word Books, 1988), pp. 200–1. Wallis, Faith of Jesus Christ, pp. 9–23. Dunnill, ‘Saved by Whose Faith?’, pp. 4–5.

17 Hays, ‘πIσTIσ’, pp. 40–1.

18 Hooker, ‘πIσTIσ 㩷PIσTΟY’, pp. 334–5.

19 Ibid., p. 335.

20 Dunn, ‘Once More’, pp. 75, 80. Romans 4 will be treated in greater depth below. Dunnill, while arguing for a christological reading of the pistis Christou phrases (p. 10), does share Dunn's distinction between divine and human pistis, although for Dunnill Christ is included in the divine side. He argues this on the basis of Rom 4 and the reduced semantic range of the verbal, as opposed to nominal, forms of the pistis word-group (pp. 11, 15–16). When Paul uses pistis in reference to God and Christ, it is in the nominal form, which Dunnill interprets often as ‘faithfulness’, while the verbal form always refers to human forms of believing, their responsive faith or trust (p. 12).

21 Dunn, ‘Once More’, pp. 77, 77, n. 69. In Dunn's conclusion on p. 79, this point, along with the grammatical arguments and the general argument that Paul's letters read more smoothly when reading ‘faith in Christ’, are his three summary arguments which convince him of the ‘objective’ or ‘anthropological’ reading.

22 While Sanders understands salvation differently, he understands justification and righteousness similarly in that he sees them as ‘transfer terms’ that have the primary connotation of being forgiven for past sins. Sanders, Paul, pp. 470–2.

23 E.g. Galatians, pp. 97–105, 246–60.

24 Harink, Paul, p. 45. Cf. Beker, J. Christian, Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980), pp. 11–36Google Scholar. ‘Narrative substructure’ is a term Hays uses in The Faith of Jesus Christ: An Investigation of the Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1–4:11 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983).

25 Hultgren, ‘Pistis Christou Formulations’, pp. 259–60.

26 James, Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), esp. pp. 354–71Google Scholar.

27 Ibid., p. 369.

28 While Paul's argument about the Law in Gal. 3 is different from his treatment in Romans, this understanding of what the problem with the Law is makes sense of Paul's argument there as well, as Hooker's exegesis shows. Hooker, ‘πIσTIσ 㩷PIσTΟY,’ pp. 326–31.

29 Richard, Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), pp. 73–83Google Scholar.

30 Hooker writes that there is an ‘antithesis’ between ‘the works of the Law and the saving work of Christ’, but I would clarify that this antithesis is in reference to the means and not the ends. Hooker, ‘πIσTIσ 㩷PIσTΟY,’ p. 341.

31 Martyn, Galatians, p. 271.

32 Dunnill, ‘Saved by Whose Faith?’, p. 17.

33 Harink, Paul, pp. 105–207.

34 Calvin, Institutes, II.VII.12.

35 But see n. 15 above; a new school of Finnish interpreters of Luther argues for the importance of ‘in Christ’ language in Luther's understanding of the new covenant. They argue that the emphasis on ‘imputation’ without ‘participation’ is found in the Formula of Concord and Melancthon but not Luther.

36 Hultgren, ‘Pistis Christou Formulations’, pp. 258–62.

37 Studies in Rabbinic interpretation have helped to explain some of the ways that Paul interprets scripture, yet problems still remain given the ‘faith in Christ’ paradigm. Richard Hays's work on Paul's use of the Old Testament has done much to open up a renewed interest in Paul as an interesting and skilful interpreter of scripture. Hays, Echoes of Scripture.

38 Dunn, ‘Once More’, p. 75.

39 Dunn, Theology, p. 354.

40 See Hays, ‘πIσTIσ’, pp. 52–3. Here Abraham is analogous to both Christ's faith and ours. Paul on this reading appears to be searching the scriptures for general patterns of the relationship between God and humanity (thus Abraham's faith is on a trajectory that reaches its fulfilment in Christ and in our participation in Christ), rather than looking to the word ‘reckon’ as a technical term upon which he bases his whole soteriology, as Paul appears to do in Dunn's exegesis of Rom. 4. Dunn, ‘Once More’, pp. 75–76.

41 See Dunn, Theology, p. 139.

42 One can also see why Calvin's third use of the law seems so mistaken to many Lutherans.

43 Pierre Vallotton provocatively writes in his introduction that ‘redemption through the mystical theology of life in Christ contains all of soteriology, not only of the apostle, but of the New Testament’ (p. 9).

44 Looking once again to James Dunn as a representative of these opposing arguments, in the conclusions of his ‘Once More’ article, he argues the ‘faith in Christ’ reading is superior for three primary reasons (pp. 79–80). First, he believes the grammatical considerations weigh in its favour. However, authors such as Sam Williams have forcefully made the case that the grammatical scales tip slightly in favour of the christological ‘faith of Christ’ reading (Sam Williams, ‘The ‘Righteousness of God’ in Romans’, JBL 99 (1980), pp. 241–90; ‘Again Pistis Christou’, CBQ 49 (1987), pp. 431–47; ‘Justification and the Spirit in Galatians’, JSNT 29 (1987), pp. 91–100). Dunnill argues the grammatical questions have ‘largely been resolved’ with the burden of proof resting on the traditional reading (pp. 5–6). Second, Dunn questions whether the theme of ‘the faith of Christ’ can be seriously considered as the key to Pauline soteriology given it is only mentioned in the disputed phrases. But, as shown above, if the ‘faith of Christ’ is taken to mean Christ's obedient faithfulness to God, even to the point of death on a cross, then many substantial passages in Romans, Galatians, Philippians, and 1 and 2 Corinthians specifically refer to it and Paul's ‘theology of the cross’ is linked to it. Third, Dunn argues that the flow of Paul's arguments is more coherent given the ‘faith in Christ’ reading while the ‘faith of Christ’ throws them into confusion. Again, while Dunn's particular ‘faith in Christ’ reading improves upon some problem points in the typical Lutheran reading, the ‘faith(fullness) of Christ’ reading makes better sense of certain specific passages, the overall flow of Paul's argument in at least Romans and brings coherence to certain problems within Pauline theology as a whole, not least of which is the arguably problematic way Paul is seen to interpret scripture and his overall construal of the covenant in the ‘faith in Christ’ readings.

45 E.g. in Paul Achtemeier's response to Hays's and Dunn's papers in the Pauline theology group, he apparently does not consider linking participation in Christ with the ‘faith of Christ’ and consequently questions whether the ‘faith of Christ’ reading might lead again to a kind of ‘work’ on the part of the believer and in the end make Christ dispensable once this ‘faithfulness’ is achieved. Achtemeier, ‘Apropos the Faith of/in Christ’, Pauline Theology, vol. 4 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1997), pp. 90–1.

46 E.g. Aquinas writes, ‘I answer that . . . the object of faith is a Divine thing not seen . . . . Now from the first moment of His conception Christ saw God's Essence fully, as will be made clear (Q34 A1). Hence there could be no faith in Him.’ Summa Theologica III.7.3.

47 Cf. Sanders, Paul, pp. 523, 552.

48 Participation is a consistent theme characterising the church's relationship to Christ in Harink's book, e.g. ‘The Church participates in the new creation; it does not bring it about by its own actions . . . it is a participation in “the cross” . . . a participation in the resurrection’ (pp. 102–3).

49 Reinhard, Hütter, Suffering Divine Things: Theology as Church Practice (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000)Google Scholar; Henri, de Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural (New York: Herder & Herder, 1967)Google Scholar; Alexander, Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's, 2000)Google Scholar.