Annalisa Phillips Wilson. Paul and the Jewish Law: A Stoic Ethical Perspective on His Inconsistency

Any attempt to make sense of Paul either in his first-century context or for theological and ethical ends in the contemporary world is bound to struggle with explaining Paul’s many seemingly contradictory statements. Nowhere is this challenge greater than in Paul’s view of the law. It’s not unusual, for example, to find scholars who make lists of Paul’s statements about Torah observance with the headings “good statements about the Law” and “negative statements about the Law.” How is it that Paul can speak of Torah observance so positively at times and negatively at others?Wilson’s revised dissertation, completed at Durham University, argues that Paul is not, in fact, inconsistent or incoherent but, rather, draws upon another pattern of reasoning. This pattern of reasoning is best exemplified in the Stoic teaching on intermediates. More specifically, both Paul and Stoics model two patterns of reasoning. The first pattern of reasoning devalues and neutralizes a second-order good when it is seen as conflicting with, or being exalted in importance over, the first-order good. The second pattern of reasoning is displayed when a second-order (neutral) good is seen to conflict with another second-order good. Here it is possible to argue and defend one second-order good above the other, presuming that it does not conflict with the first-order good. Stated more simply, Wilson will show how these patterns of discourse illuminate how Paul can uphold the value of Torah observance even while, at times, seeming to critique certain Jewish practices if they threaten a believer’s orientation to Christ.Chapter 2, “The Intermediates in Stoic Ethical Reasoning,” establishes the context for these two types of discourse through an extended examination of Stoic philosophy. Foundational for Stoicism is the belief that humanity’s supreme good, the final goal or telos of human life, was to be found in virtue and virtue alone. Virtue was incommensurable with any other conventional good, for only virtue can benefit humanity and make humanity happy. So-called intermediates or indifferents are such precisely because they are not unconditionally good or bad in the same way that virtue or vice are. A common pattern of Stoic discourse, then, frequently spoke of these intermediates—for example, marriage, wealth, political office—as “nothing” or “indifferent” since they did not contribute in any way to human well-being. Nevertheless, the Stoic would use wisdom in order to know what indifferents should be preferred or selected in a given case. The virtuous Stoic would never attribute ultimate goodness to an indifferent, but he would know the right way to use, select, and act with respect to appropriate intermediates.In chapter 3, “Interlude: Mapping Paul’s Structure Alongside a Stoic Framework,” Wilson makes some methodological claims regarding her comparison of Paul and Stoicism. She does not argue specifically that “Stoic ethics provided an amenable structure and reasoning pattern for Paul as he addressed what he perceived to be confused category errors within his communities” (p. 71). Paul adopts this similar pattern of reasoning in order to set forth orientation to Christ as the supreme good for his communities and to devalue the conventional good (or intermediate) of Torah observance should it come into conflict with one’s orientation to Christ.Chapter 4, “Paul’s First Pattern of Discourse: Establishing the First-Order Value of the Christ-Orientation,” examines two Pauline texts, Phil 3 and Gal 2, and establishes that orientation to Christ, for Paul, is humanity’s supreme good. This is why we see Paul deriding things that he would otherwise consider to be limited or intermediate goods on other occasions. Insofar as Torah observance, ethnicity, and education are to be compared with the supreme good of orientation to Christ, they are devalued as “waste” or “refuse” (Phil 3:2–6). In Wilson’s words: “Paul establishes the first-order value of ‘knowing Christ’ and the error of relying upon anything else for salvation with a metaphorical motif of value, sharp rhetoric laced with epistemological details, and presupposed criteria for distinct categories” (p. 97). Paul does not reject Torah observance, his education, or his ethnicity, but he does not allow them to have the value they once did in light of his new orientation to Christ and its supreme value. Similarly in Galatians, for the community to treat Torah observance and circumcision on par with their orientation to Christ is to make a disastrous category error, one that will turn them away from finding resurrection life with Christ.In chapter 5, “Paul’s Second Pattern of Discourse: Assessing and Selecting Intermediates in 1 Corinthians 8.1—11.1,” Wilson shows how Paul argues for some practices as having a conditional, second-order value that must be wisely discerned through one’s orientation to Christ. It’s likely, in fact, that the Corinthian slogan “all things are permissible for me” (6:12 and 10:23) derives from Paul’s teaching that orientation to Christ is the supreme good that overrides the importance of all other practices. That said, Paul then goes to shows how the Corinthians should select certain Jewish practices with respect to sacrificial food and idolatry given their potential to come into conflict with their orientation to Christ.Wilson’s work makes a significant contribution to both Paul’s apparent inconsistency regarding his communities’ observance of the Torah and shows how Stoic philosophy provides an important analogue for understanding Pauline argumentation. Particularly illuminating is her argument that Paul adopts the similar philosophical orientation of establishing humanity’s telos or supreme good as a mode of theologizing or making ethical claims. Numerous exegetical insights abound here. While I do not think Wilson’s argument completely solves the problem of “Paul and the Law” (and she doesn’t claim this for her work either) or will satisfy all of the question that are raised by the “Paul within Judaism” approach, her argument successfully establishes one of the primary ways Paul reasons with respect to Jewish practices.