Edgework

We have made the argument thus far that when Jesus read his Bible he did so through a nonviolent grid. The question that follows directly, then, is whether the Apostle Paul followed Jesus’ way of reading the Old Testament.

In his book, Disarming Scripture, Derek Flood makes a strong case for answering this question in the affirmative. On one level this is evident in the way Paul critiqued the laws of the Old Testament as Jesus had done. As was the case for Jesus: “Paul’s problem was not with the law itself…but with a particular hurtful way of interpreting and applying the law that prioritized rituals and rules over love” (49). This perspective is expressed, for example in Romans 13:10, “Love is the fulfillment of the law,” and in Galatians 5:13, “The entire law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.”

When Paul came face-to-face with Jesus on the road to Damascus a central revelation for him was that his zeal for the law, which had motivated acts of violence in its defense, had ended up making him “the worst of sinners…a violent man” (I Timothy 1:13-15). It seems that Paul’s earlier perspective echoed the genocide commands of I Samuel 15 – anything standing in God’s way must be violently crushed! As Flood says, “That same logic of using divine-sanctioned violence to preserve purity had driven Paul to violently persecute the church” (51). In the light of his encounter with Jesus, then, “Paul needed to completely reassess how to understand the Scripture he had previously read in this toxic and violent way, leading him to a radically different understanding of God’s will, and a radically different way of interpreting those same Scriptures” (52.)

One specific example where Paul follows Jesus’ way of reading the Scriptures is found in Romans 15:7-13. As he does throughout the book of Romans, so here, Paul is arguing that, because of Jesus, Gentiles are now included in the promises of Israel. He could have used any number of Old Testament passages that speak directly about Israel being a “light to the Gentiles.” Instead, three of the four quotations Paul uses here are set in the context of destruction and judgment of Gentiles in the Old Testament text.

For example, take note of the lines Paul did not draw forward from Psalm 18 indicated by the strikethrough feature: He is the God who avenges me, who puts the Gentiles under me… Therefore I will praise you among the Gentiles; I will sing hymns to your name.” Note also the quote from Deuteronomy 32:43: “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants, he will take vengeance on his enemies and make atonement for his land and people.”

In each case, Paul strips these Old Testament passages of violence against Gentiles and uses the remaining text fragments to proclaim God’s mercy in Christ for the Gentiles. We would call this sloppy exegesis, but for Paul it was turning the tables, deliberately reversing the meaning in order to make a case for the inclusion of the Gentiles in the church.

In another passage Paul makes the case that all people, both Jews and Gentiles, are caught in the web of sin (Romans 3: 9-20). To do so he weaves together a series of Old Testament texts, all of which in their original contexts speak of the wickedness of the Gentiles – those who are the enemies of God’s people. For example, the first quotation in verses 2-3 is taken from Psalm 14: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good.” It is clear that the Psalmist is referring to Gentile evil doers, “…those who devour my people as men eat bread and who do not call on the Lord” (v: 4).

The same can be said about all the other textual fragments Paul uses here. His Jewish audience would have been delighted if Paul had used these many descriptions of violence as pertaining to the Gentiles as they did in the original texts. But, “Paul is making a very different point here from the original intent of these psalms. In fact, he is making the ‘opposite’ point: We should not cry out for God’s wrath and judgment because we are all sinners in need of mercy.” So in a similar way to that of Jesus, Paul is seeking to redeem such violent passages, fulfill them, convert them, disarm them and blend them into a vision of redemptive nonviolence.

Another striking example of where Paul redeems a violent Old Testament passage is found in I Corinthians 15:55: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where O death, is your sting?” Paul is using this text to declare our victory over the power of death because of Jesus’ resurrection. However, in the original context in Hosea 13:14, the prophet is calling on death to wreak its havoc in the process of judgment. When Hosea said it, it was bad news; when Paul subverts it and redeems it in light of Jesus it becomes very good news, indeed!

To sum up, Flood says that“…the focus we observe in Jesus and Paul is on interpreting the biblical text in such a way that it leads to love and compassion. Scripture, when read right, must lead to love. That is the common denominator, the shared bottom line for both Jesus and Paul which shaped how they read… Love is the hermeneutical baseline… Paul therefore has no problem… deliberately reversing the meaning of certain passages in order to focus on Christ’s way of grace and enemy love” (69).

All this leaves us with some difficult questions with respect to how we read the Bible we hold in our hands today.