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Source: (consider it) Thread: Purgatory: PSA and Christian Identities
Josephine

Orthodox Belle
# 3899

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quote:
Originally posted by Johnny S:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Not necessarily morally good.

Thanks for arguing my point MT. The 'necessarily' gives it away.
No it doesn't.

It's not just that "as good as" doesn't necessarily mean morally good. In most cases, when you say that one thing is as good as another, you mean that one thing works as well as the other for a given purpose.

So, someone might say that margarine is as good as butter in a cookie recipe. Or an old bike is as good as a new one for getting around town. Or a netbook is as good as a laptop if all you want to do is surf the Net.

There are no moral implications in any of those cases.

When you're talking about a person, though, as I was, when you say that one person is as good as another, you're usually talking about one person having the same level of skill in some area as another person. So a self-taught programmer might be as good as a programmer who has a master's degree. You're not talking about the programmers' moral characteristics, but their abilities to get a computer to do what they want it to do. If the mechanic I go to is as good as the mechanic you go to, we're probably talking about their ability to repair cars, not their humility or generosity.

That's the kind of good I was talking about when I said that Paul was arguing that he was as good a Jew as any other Jew. He wasn't arguing that based on his morals, but on his keeping of the Jewish Law.

Yes, there were moral components of the Law, but that wasn't what I was talking about, and it's not what Paul was talking about. And I'm quite sure you knew that.

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I've written a book! Catherine's Pascha: A celebration of Easter in the Orthodox Church. It's a lovely book for children. Take a look!

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Josephine

Orthodox Belle
# 3899

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quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
To be fair, Josephine, I think the Protestant view isn't simply that God declares us righteous - ie. calls something that isn't so as though it were so - rather, it's that he provides us the means to become what he has declared us to be - ie. given us new birth through his Holy Spirit. Through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit he transforms us from the inside, as it were, from one degree of glory to another.


I don't have any problem with that.

quote:
It's rather a caricature of Protestantism, I feel, to write it all off as some kind of 'legal fiction' - although I think that critique does hold water in some cases.

I certainly don't write all of Protestantism off that way. If it sounds as if I'm doing so, I apologize.

--------------------
I've written a book! Catherine's Pascha: A celebration of Easter in the Orthodox Church. It's a lovely book for children. Take a look!

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mousethief

Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953

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quote:
Originally posted by Johnny S:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Not necessarily morally good.

Thanks for arguing my point MT. The 'necessarily' gives it away.
Can you be less telegraphic here? Gives what away?

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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...

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Johnny S
Shipmate
# 12581

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quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:

That's the kind of good I was talking about when I said that Paul was arguing that he was as good a Jew as any other Jew. He wasn't arguing that based on his morals, but on his keeping of the Jewish Law.

Yes, there were moral components of the Law, but that wasn't what I was talking about, and it's not what Paul was talking about. And I'm quite sure you knew that.

Yes you are right - it was a distraction talking about 'good'. It was merely another example of a word that can be used in two different ways so let's drop it.

However, Paul definitely was talking about the moral components of the Law as well - especially in Philippians 3.

There is no doubt that he was trying to impress his audience with how 'righteous' he was. Now, the horror of his conversion was to discover that doing what he thought was good (persecuting Christians) was actually bad, but his point was that according to Jewish criteria of morality he was outstanding.

To say that he was only talking about keeping the Law in some cultural sense is to make a category error. Paul was certainly not a modern westerner with an innate sense of liberal morality. For a 1st century Jew the two uses of the word 'righteous' coincide (even if they are not co-terminus). You do these things to be righteous and they are your standard of what being morally good looks like.

Again Paul's argument is far more nuanced than you are making out.

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Psyduck

Ship's vacant look
# 2270

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Johnny S.
quote:

However, Paul definitely was talking about the moral components of the Law as well - especially in Philippians 3.

There is no doubt that he was trying to impress his audience with how 'righteous' he was . Now, the horror of his conversion was to discover that doing what he thought was good (persecuting Christians) was actually bad, but his point was that according to Jewish criteria of morality he was outstanding.

To say that he was only talking about keeping the Law in some cultural sense is to make a category error. (emphases mine)

I've been following this part of the debate with interest and a weird dizzy feeling, finding myself apparently at points agreeing with Johnny S. against Josephine, and similtaneously with Josephine against Johnny S.!

I agree with Johnny S. that what God declares righteous is righteous. I've been clear on that since I came across virtually a verbatim statement of that in Bultmann's Theology of the New Testament, years ago.

Bultmann, however, if I remember correctly, is conducting a debate at that point with the Protestant tradition of "imputed righteousness" - and he's doing it from an inner-Protestant but Lutheran perspective.

ISTM that Josephine is talking about a righteous character that belongs to the believing soul because of the work of God within it - a righteousness that is real in that sense.

ISTM that Johnny S. is talking about a righteousness that is real because God says it is - and I don't put it that way in order to diss it; an awful lot of things, to the Protestant theological mind, are real because God says they are. I'm not sure that Johnny S. is really talking about "imputed righteousness" here though, and maybe because he senses the problems with it.

However, ISTM that Bultmann might actually be very helpful here - and in a way that helps me reiterate that, opponent of PSA that I am, I in no way want to ditch the undoubted forensic themes that there are in Paul; it's just that I still believe that you can't do them justice through PSA because PSA turns the whole of Scripture and the whole Christian tradition into a court report on The Trial Of Humankind.

That said, Paul's legal use of concepts deriving from δικαιοσυνη demands that we entertain the perspective of the courtroom while we consider them. I think Bultmann helps because he clarifies Paul's concepts in a particular way.

What men (sic!) seek, the Jews seek, what the Pharisees - of which Paul was a very good one - is righteousness, δικαιοσυνη, before God.

Righteousness is the approving verdict handed down on us and our existence. It;s a forensic term, so it puts us within the ambit of the law. Puts us in court, you might say.

However, what the Law inevitably offers is something else which we would desperately like - in fact it's what the Pharisaic mentality, understood not as the mindset of a first-century Jewish party, still less as the whole of Judaism, but as what H H Williams memorably deracializes as "the Pharisee within all of us" - is a ground of righteousness over against God - a righteousness which is proper to us, which belongs to us, so that the justifying verdict of the court over us and our lives is properly ours.

You can look at that as our own achievement, or you can look at it as our reassuring guarantee that we are living/will have lived in a way that pleases God, so that we earn/deserve our justification.

You might say that, so far from being smug superiority, what Paul is desperately worried about is the mentality that filled him - and that fills the whole of Psalm 119! (Yes, bits of it look smug and judgmental - read it side by side with Jesus' encounters with Pharisaism in the Gospels, and you get a weird dizzy feeling, especially if you believe that the whole Bible is saying the same thing from the same perspective!)

But Paul explores at length especially in Romans, but also in Philippians, the terrible internal contradictions that go along with trying to achieve righteousness - both in failure ("I do what I do not want to do") and in success ("I was a superb Pharisee - the best! For what it was worth...")

And Paul scouts an impasse. Even to seek a righteousness-over-against-God is to emphasize the gulf between ourselves and God - even if it could be done...

And this was Martin Luther's in cloaca discovery; "The Righteousness of God" doesn't mean "The Righteousness God Demands Of Us" but "The Righteousness That Originates With God."

And that righteousness is appropriated by faith - trust in the promise.

So to believe what God has promised - and the fulfilment of the promise in Christ - is to receive the righteousness of God, which of course is real, absolutely real.

But that verdict of "Righteous!" (δικαιοσ)is just exactly that; it's what Bultmann refers to as "the eschatological verdict" which transforms the basis of our living so that, with "nothing between us and God" - no issues, no impediments - we embark on a transformed existence, in which the reality of what we are (sinners) coexists with the reality of what God says we are on the basis of the real righteousness which is his.

We are, as Luther says "simul justi et peccatores".

Now, all of that sounds like PSA. But it's not. It's both very much less than PSA, becuae you can articulate it without reference to any of Paul's sacrificial themes. In fact, you can't fit Paul's sacrificial themes into it, because it's set in a courtroom, not at the Altar, or the Passover meal.

I wonder, though, if that helps with the state the discussion has reached.

ISTM that both Johnny S. and Jospehine were circling around the moral components of both Christian existence / God's work in us and God's demand.

I don't think you can make sense of "righteousness" unless you treat it - as Bultmann does - as a purely forensic term, in which case the decisive thing is the verdict that's handed down that either confirms or breaks a relationship. So I would agree with Johnny S. that what God declares righteous is righteous.

However I think Johnny S. may be in danger of intruding a moral dimension into this that just isn't there. And that, I suspect, may be coming from the old Calvinist distinction between moral and ceremonial law. I think that's an invalid distinction, tailored in the chaos of the 16th century to assert that God's demands are still in force and still to hand as a basis for human living, even though we can now eat black pudding and get away without circumcision. I don't think there is a Biblical ground for distinguishing between moral and cerermonial. dura lex, sed lex.

And I think that Paul's solution to the "hardness of the Law" takes us in a very different direction.

I wonder if, rather than disagreeing over "righteousness" here, maybe we need to see Johnny S. and Josephine actually agreeing over something much more constructive, the necessity of what the Orthodox, I think, would call theiosis, and the Calvinists, I know, would call "sanctification"?

Righteousness - the "righteousness of God" - is what God does to transform the situation, break the deadlock, restore our relationship with him, and create a space in which transformation has already begun.

And I think you can have all of this, including the forensic conceptuality of δικαιοσυνη and its kin, without PSA. In fact, I don't see how you can have it all with PSA. (You knew I was going to say that, right?) [Biased]

[ 31. August 2010, 08:17: Message edited by: Psyduck ]

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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)

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Gamaliel
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# 812

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I've found this latest post helpful, Psyduck, as it helps resolve the apparent impasse between Johnny and Josephine yet still within a Protestant paradigm - but, to echo MT, I would say that ... [Big Grin]

I do find the Orthodox position attractive but do wonder whether it does full justice to the forensic aspects that I still (through much conditioning no doubt) find in the apostle Paul.

I do recognise that both MT and Josephine aren't dissing the Protestant tradition wholesale, whilst accepting that there are differences at issue from each perspective.

I don't pretend to understand the Orthodox position on 'theosis', for instance, but it strikes me as different to Protestant models of 'sanctification.'

As far as I can tell, 'sanctification' approximates to the Orthodox position on 'theosis' but isn't a direct translation, if I can put it in those terms.

I don't think it's an accident that many Orthodoxen feel closer to the Wesleyan strands in Protestant theology and pneumatology than they do to the often cold, clinical, juridical Calvinist/Augustinian models.

I've heard it said by several Orthodoxen that they often find ecumenical dialogue more conducive with Protestants influenced by the Wesleyan tradition than they do with high and dry Calvinists. Although, tell it not in Gath, some will concede that the Reformed positions hold an inner logic that they can understand, even though they don't share it themselves.

--------------------
Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.

http://philthebard.blogspot.com

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Johnny S
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# 12581

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Psyduck - [Overused]

Maybe it's because we are both Protestants, but I'd agree with almost all of your analysis (even if not your conclusions!)

quote:
Originally posted by Psyduck:

However I think Johnny S. may be in danger of intruding a moral dimension into this that just isn't there. And that, I suspect, may be coming from the old Calvinist distinction between moral and ceremonial law. I think that's an invalid distinction, tailored in the chaos of the 16th century to assert that God's demands are still in force and still to hand as a basis for human living, even though we can now eat black pudding and get away without circumcision. I don't think there is a Biblical ground for distinguishing between moral and cerermonial. dura lex, sed lex.

Except for this bit. I thought I had emphatically said the opposite to what you suggest here. My point was the same as yours - you cannot distinguish the moral from ceremonial (e.g. the Sabbath in the 10C anyone?) I think this is one area where the classic reformed position is wrong.

But if we are agreed on this matter then your conclusion doesn't seem to follow - if you cannot distinguish between the two then how can I possibly be intruding a moral dimension that isn't there - you've just agreed that it has to be there because it cannot be distinguished from ceremonial obedience.

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Psyduck

Ship's vacant look
# 2270

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Johnny S.
quote:
Except for this bit. I thought I had emphatically said the opposite to what you suggest here. My point was the same as yours - you cannot distinguish the moral from ceremonial (e.g. the Sabbath in the 10C anyone?) I think this is one area where the classic reformed position is wrong.

But if we are agreed on this matter then your conclusion doesn't seem to follow - if you cannot distinguish between the two then how can I possibly be intruding a moral dimension that isn't there - you've just agreed that it has to be there because it cannot be distinguished from ceremonial obedience.

Well if we can't, you're not! And I accept what you say, but actually I must still be reading what you said inside out, because bits of it still look that way to me. Sorry if I got you wrong.

But I'd also like to repeat the extent of my agreement with Josephine, and maybe to add a wee footnote to this sudden explosion of agreement; I do really wonder - and I want to say again that I am absolutely not dissing anyone by suggesting this - whether what a lot of people are calling PSA is really just doing justice to the Pauline forensic themes. Thanks to Bultmann, I have always felt able to do that without recourse to PSA, and since I was brought up in a liberal tradition which didn't really entertain it (but did, I would say, adequately explore this aspect of Paul and Christian thought) I never felt any sort of imperative to go forward and embrace PSA. It always seemed to me to be (as I've said before, and I know people disagree with me!) a "complete package" which however much it does give space to the other Biblical themes organizes them around the central "courtroom" themes, which really arise out of Paul's discussion of the Law in relation to Jewish faith and hope, and are only then generalized into a connection with the human striving for autonomy over against God AKA "rebellion".

And again, I'm wondering if that is part of what underlies the odd disagreement between you and Josephine here, and the weird feeling I have that I am agreeing and disagreeing with both of you simultaneously!

--------------------
The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)

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Josephine

Orthodox Belle
# 3899

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I'll have to confess that I've never read Bultmann, or probably any of the theologians I'd need to have read to participate in a discussion of PSA properly. (I think I acknowledged as much early on this thread.) I also have no Hebrew or Greek.

Is Paul's word that gets translated as "righteous" roughly the equivalent of "not guilty" rather than the equivalent of "virtuous"?

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I've written a book! Catherine's Pascha: A celebration of Easter in the Orthodox Church. It's a lovely book for children. Take a look!

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Jamat
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# 11621

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quote:
Psyduck: Now, all of that sounds like PSA. But it's not. It's both very much less than PSA, becuae you can articulate it without reference to any of Paul's sacrificial themes. In fact, you can't fit Paul's sacrificial themes into it, because it's set in a courtroom, not at the Altar, or the Passover meal.
You can, if you want to suggest that that very righteousness you so ably articulated, is somehow impossible apart from God's justice component which required that Christ die AS a sacrifice (1Pet 2:24 and 2:18)

By the way did you check out that book I referred to above?

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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)

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