An interesting excerpt I thought I’d share from the final chapter of Brian Rosner’s recent Paul and the Law: Keeping the Commandments of God (InterVarsity Press, 2013), p. 208:
[T]he biggest task for students of Paul is to clarify the sense in which, and the extent to which, the apostle repudiates, replaces and reappropriates the Law of Moses.
With respect to the law, Paul is like the restaurant proprietor who fires a waitress, replaces her, and then hires her as the maitre d’ and as the sommelier. Her function of serving tables would end and someone else would perform that role. But she would then carry out two different functions in the restaurant, as hostess and as manager of the wine service. To get the full picture of the status of this particular woman one needs to take all three moves into account, namely her termination, substitution and rehiring.
The solution to the puzzle of Paul and the law is hermeneutical. Rather than asking which bits of the law Paul retains and which he rejects, a hermeneutical approach starts by acknowledging the unity of the law and asks instead, when Paul speaks positively or negatively about the law, in which capacity the law is functioning… Christ has abolished the law as law-covenant (Eph. 2:15), but faith in Christ upholds rather than abolishes the law as prophecy (Rom. 3:31); and Paul does not appeal to the commandment to obey’s one’s parents as law (Eph. 6:1-2), but as advice concerning how to walk in wisdom (cf. Eph. 5:15).
A very interesting analogy. Reactions?
Dunelm Road 