Undeception

I wanted to share this excellent article that answers, mostly via Scripture, many if not most of the arguments of Calvinism. In an admirable show of the author’s critical thinking, while he certainly rejects the Calvinist doctrine of election and predestination, he still refuses to embrace what he considers to be overwrought and unconvincing alternatives such as a corporate election, pleading ultimate ignorance:

Election is true, but is shrouded in deep mystery. It is one of the secret things that belong to the Lord our God (Deut. 29:29). Calvinists and Arminians both err when they make precise statements about the nature of election. God has not told us whether or not there are conditions attached to it and we should not venture into it with such bold assertions.

Now, while I’m fully in favor of admitting ignorance and not pretending certainty where none exists, I think that some of the mystery surrounding election and predestination is due more to misleading, uninformed readings of the NT than to an innate, intractable ambiguity there. In another display of reasonable thinking, the article’s author remarks, “Perhaps further theological works by thoughtful Christians will reveal a more satisfactory resting place for our convictions.” I happen to think that the understanding of election I’ve come to is fully credible and consistent with a fair treatment of the texts of Scripture, so I’d like to offer the following as a supplement to his otherwise extensive critique of Calvinism.

Recently I noticed a friend on Facebook referencing Exodus 33.18-19:

Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” And the LORD said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.

What probably piqued his curiosity (I conjecture — he made no comment) was the last sentence of this interesting passage, which was quoted by Paul in Romans 9.15 as part of a passage that has been famously championed by Reformed Christians to support the doctrines of predestination to life and reprobation.

While someone might be tempted, by way of synecdoche, to reference the Ex 33.19/Rom 9.15 quotation as a way of affirming God’s choice to save some and damn others, we should note that the negative aspect is wholly absent in the original Exodus passage: we have no clear indication that God’s remark, meant only to highlight His goodness manifesting as mercy, was intended to imply the converse of that mercy. Yet notice Paul’s creative use of this verse in Romans 9 to do something like that, when he sets up a contrast with God’s mercy and His dealing with Pharaoh, synthesizing the two in the statement, “Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden” (v. 18).

At any rate, Exodus 33.18-19 taken on its own terms is a far cry from ‘double predestination’. Here the emphasis is on broadening, not arbitrarily circumscribing, the scope of His merciful dealings with humanity. I believe that this is the key to election as articulated by Paul.

Only those insistent upon ignoring Paul’s overarching argument can find a subdivision of all humanity into two classes, “saved” and “damned” in Romans 9-11. We shouldn’t be fooled into thinking that the “vessels of honor, vessels of wrath” passage ends at Romans 9.22. On the contrary, Romans 9 through 11 is a sustained argument culminating in chapter 11: his point is that the “hardening” of Israel described in chapter 9 was only undertaken as a temporary measure and as a means to extend mercy to more, namely the Gentiles:

Again I ask: Did [the Jews] stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all! Rather, because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. But if their transgression means riches for the world, and their loss means riches for the Gentiles, how much greater riches will their fullness bring! . . . Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. (Romans 11.11-12, 25)

Paul is saying that God only “hardened” the hearts of “natural”, ethnic Israel as a means to extend His grace outside ethnic Israel. Only recognizing this greater argument allows us to understand Paul’s justification of God in 9.18: “Therefore God has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy – including that scoundrel Jacob and those scoundrels the Gentiles, like it or not – and He hardens whom He wants to harden – even His own chosen people, like it or not.”

But it doesn’t end there for those whose hearts He had hardened: “Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you [Gentiles], provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off. And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again” (11.22-23). This again shows continuity with Jeremiah 18, the background passage of the potter and the clay analogy in Romans 9, in which the potter refashions rather than discards the “marred”, uncooperative clay.

To recap, Paul’s argument is that God’s mercy is so great and unrestrainable that, at least in certain times in redemptive history (e.g. Esau vs. Jacob, Pharaoh vs. Israel, natural Israel vs. the believing Gentiles), He will even “harden” the hearts of some of His own people if by doing so it will further His redemptive plan. Yet even those “cut off” will be restored upon their repentance (presumably posthumously).

“Ok, that sounds good for Israel. But what of Esau? Pharaoh?”

Well, laying aside the not-insignificant fact that such stories are not even likely to have actually occurred historically, perhaps we should turn to Paul’s conclusion to his argument in 11.32:

For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.

So what if He ends up extending mercy to all? Returning to the original intent of Exodus 33.19, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”

For Paul, the mere thought elicited a beautiful spontaneous doxology in the closing verses of that chapter (11.33-36):

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
“Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?”
“Who has ever given to God,
that God should repay him?”
For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.

I have really enjoyed Pete Enns‘s contribution to BioLogos of late. His latest frames the Adam/Eve question in an interesting and honest way. Here’s an excerpt related to my last post:

What if we affirm that Paul’s view of human origins does not settle the matter for us today? Of course, this leaves us with a pressing question: how do we think about Adam today?

This is where the conversation begins for those wishing to maintain a biblical faith in a modern world. And whatever way forward is chosen, we must be clear on one thing: we have all left “Paul’s Adam.” We are all “creating Adam,” as it were, in an effort to reconcile Scripture and the modern understanding of human origins.
….
[O]nce you move to [the above affirmation], you have left Paul’s Adam and are now working with an Adam that is partially and even largely shaped by your own understanding and worldview. You are in an entirely different discussion.

It sounds bleak, but I have hope that efforts like the BioLogos Foundation, if they continue on their current trajectory, will begin to push through.

Richard Fellows, author of the blog Paul and co-workers, just put up a fascinating challengeto the near unanimous understanding of the message of the Galatian “agitators”, also adding a twist on how to understand the dynamic between Paul and the “pillars” at the Jerusalem church.

The typical scholarly understanding of the background of Galatians is that the agitators genuinely represented a Jewish faction that still believed in retaining certain Jewish customs as we see in Acts 15. The message these agitators were spreading among the Galatians is usually conceptualized something like this:

“You should be circumcised because scripture and the Jerusalem church leaders require it. Why should you believe Paul when he tells you that you don’t have to be circumcised?”

In other words, they challenged Paul’s apostolic authority, subjugating it to that of the Jerusalem leadership. Richard Fellows, however, thinks that their message was somewhat different:

“You should be circumcised because scripture requires it. Paul knows this, but he taught you the opposite because he was a loyal envoy of the Jerusalem church leaders (who oppose circumcision).”

Eyebrows will most certainly be raised by this proposition, as this is a very different picture of the scenario than is commonly understood!

The description of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 is often regarded as Luke’s understatement of major differences between Paul and the other “pillars” in the Jerusalem church. There is indeed tension between what the Council decided about Gentiles abstaining from meat offered to idols and Paul’s advice on that same subject in 1 Cor 8, even though Acts presents the decision as so uncontroversial that there was rejoicing in Antioch where the conflict originated (v. 31) despite of it. Still, we needn’t read any further between the lines than we are justified. Acts certainly depicts Peter as independently convinced of the invalidity of at least some of the Jewish customs, including his statement at the Jerusalem Council. This is not to say that the Jerusalem church was painted as wholly gone over to “Christian liberty” from the Jewish customs — clearly they were not — but that it was progressively minimalistic in its fidelity to those customs. Most scholars (except the conservative ones) usually assume that Luke is glossing over conflicts, making things look more harmonious than they actually were; I agree that this is a possibility, but because Luke gives plenty of examples of conflict among Christians in Acts, it doesn’t seem likely that Luke would have thought he could get away with ignoring a conflict of that magnitude, especially given his focus on Paul.

Richard makes some powerful arguments, including the claim that Paul was not defending his authority as equal to the Apostles here as he does in other epistles like 2 Corinthians, but rather he’s making a conscious effort to emphasize his independence from them; Paul wants to emphasize that he is not James’ or Peter’s lackey when he delivers the same message that the Council decided (viz. that Gentiles needn’t be circumcised). This is the motivation for Paul telling the Galatians the story of when he called out Peter for hypocrisy, to the effect that, “I’m even more radical in liberty from Jewish customs than Peter himself!” The implication is that the pillars like Peter were advocates of relative freedom from Jewish custom. Paul makes much more hay by recounting this story in Richard’s version than with the conventional understanding.

This interpretation is not without at least one problem that I’ve identified: if he’s right, Paul missed a wonderful opportunity to prove once and for all that he personally believed that Gentiles shouldn’t be circumcised. If the background for the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 is given even the slightest credence, I have a hard time conceiving that it wouldn’t have occurred to Paul immediately upon hearing the Galatians question his convictions about Gentile circumcision to say, “You think I believe Gentiles should be circumcised? I was the one (well, me and Barnabas) who brought this matter to the attention of the Jerusalem leaders!”

I didn’t mean to go on so long about it, since I’m not necessarily convinced myself.  Still, it’s an interesting idea I thought I’d highlight here. Go read his post!

Under the typical Protestant understanding of “faith” as “not doubting something that one believes without proof”, I as a young Protestant could never fathom why God would be so tickled by us believing in what we had almost no evidence for. This question came home to me most clearly whenever I heard informal apologetics arguing that the reason God doesn’t just show Himself to us is that if He did, no faith would be necessary, and God really wants us to have faith. Obviously this is quite circular, akin to being asked, “Why do we have to have faith?” and answering, “Because faith is necessary.”

So when I found out in third-year Greek (undergrad) about a related discussion that had been going on in scholarly academic circles, I was intrigued. The main question was about the Pauline expression ek/dia pisteos iesou christou (e.g. Philippians 3.9), customarily, but probably inaccurately, translated as “faith in Jesus Christ”, whereas scholars such as Richard Hays have argued for the reading “faith(fulness) of Jesus Christ”; I just posted my exploratory paper on this topic yesterday. As I described in another recent post, the Greek word that we translate as “faith” also carried the meaning faithfulness (notice that English uses the root “faith-” in both “faith” and “faithfulness” as well). In fact, there is no other word in NT Greek that translates as “faithfulness” as directly as pistis. So theoretically, whether Paul had meant to describe a concept more on the “faithfulness” side or on the “belief” side of pistis, or some hybrid of both “belief” and “faithfulness, he would have in all likelihood used the word pistis in any case. “Belief” and “faithfulness” are two very different English words and markedly different conceptually in our modern understanding, but the fact that the NT often uses them in their divergent semantics in places where the meaning is ambiguous suggests that pistis meant not either/or but indicated a concept closely related to both of them. After all, belief is in a sense a commitment to an idea, and I recognize this usage for “faith” and “believing” (Gk pist-euo) in the NT as well.

But rather than mere cognitive assent to an unproved proposition, I think the best way of viewing the semantic center of pistis is in the words commitment, dependence, trust, and devotion. As I said, “belief” plays a part, since we devote ourselves to things we believe in, and believe in things we are devoted to. But because no facts are unfiltered and uninterpreted by our minds, holding fast to beliefs is in essence dependence upon ourselves and our ability to properly parse those facts. What God requires is commitment to and dependence upon Him, amounting to total surrender. At very least, surely it is obvious that the faith that pleases God is not the type that is taken up and held to without a basis; above all, faith is not about being dogmatic about something we have no evidence for, nor likewise something we have mounds of evidence against.

Paul is the one whose teaching is the source of the common focus on belief in certain propositions. But I am coming to think that he instead was more concerned (at least in some of his writing) that we depend on our identification with Christ, whose surpassing faithfulness to God was displayed by his surrender to the point of death. It is for the sake of his faithfulness that we are saved. In turn, we identify with Christ by sacrificing ourselves (Rom 12.1). Paul’s view was shared by the author of Hebrews, who more clearly articulated it in Hebrews 3.1-6:

Therefore, holy brothers and companions in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession; He was faithful to the One who appointed Him, just as Moses was in all God’s household. For Jesus is considered worthy of more glory than Moses, just as the builder has more honor than the house. Now every house is built by someone, but the One who built everything is God. Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s household, as a testimony to what would be said [in the future]. But Christ was faithful as a Son over His household, whose household we are if we hold on to the courage and the confidence of our hope. [HCS]

Paul seems to have argued that God grants us grace by associating us with Christ’s work. God graciously identifies us as faithful to Himself through our identification with Jesus in a relationship of joint commitment, not from our accomplishment of the works of the Law, which was regarded as within the bounds of human ability alone. Our faithfulness is not the prerequisite to this grace, but its goal. In fact, one reason why many Protestant biblical scholars are not at all happy with Hays’ reading of pistis christou is the extremely close association in Philippians 3.4-14 between our being identified with Christ’s faithfulness and our participation in His faithfulness:

…and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through (the) faith(fulness) [of] Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith(fulness). I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this… [Philippians 3.9-12a NRSV]

Notice how Paul explicitly states that his participation is not complete and that, inasmuch as it is not, he entertains the possibility of his own failure to attain to the resurrection from the dead! Notice also that this possibility acknowledged by Paul does not disappear no matter how you interpret pistis christou. The author Ephesians 2.8-10 put it this way:

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

If we take the view of I outlined above seriously, we notice that these verses essentially equate pistis with good works. A paraphrase of the verse reveals this: “By God’s grace you are saved through faithfulness, and this faithfulness is God’s gift as well, and not something the Law could have brought about. For it is God who has crafted us into instruments of doing good works [faithfulness] that He desires.” The key distinction is between “works” and “good works”. Paul never devalues “good works”; his criticism is of works of the Law (this post discusses what he probably meant by that), which is what Paul means by “works” when it is not qualified (unlike James). In fact, we are told that performing “good works” is what we are supposed to be about doing (2 Cor 9.8). This understanding of what “faith” is becomes clearest when we look outside of the epistles recognized by scholars today as authentic Pauline epistles: see Col 1.10, 2 Tim 2.21, 2 Tim 3.17; cf. also Hebrews (discussed above) and James (discussed below). Ephesians 2.8-10 isn’t saying that good works are not necessary — indeed, the opposite — but that no one is able to hold up his/her end of the bargain by doing good works apart from God’s grace, simply by following the Law. Reading “faith” and “works” in this light actually reconciles an apparent conflict between the theology of Paul and James, who wrote, “Faith without works is dead”. James seems to be arguing against precisely the sort of misinterpretation of Paul that Luther championed; this is why Luther famously rejected the book of James and called it an “epistle of straw”. It is important to realize that unlike Paul, James does not use “works” to refer specifically to any ritual “works of the Law”. He clearly articulates the kind of works he expects that are part and parcel of “faith(fulness)”:

If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. [James 2.15-17]

He seems to be referring to the “good works” of Ep 2.10, doesn’t he? And as if this weren’t obvious enough, James next appeals to the example of two individuals who lived outside the Law, Abraham and Rahab (vv. 21-26). I find myself under the impression that whether we are to try to please God by works of devotion or not wasn’t even an issue for Paul; this was taken for granted. Rather, he sought to emphasize that inasmuch as we accomplish good works, God is fulfilling His purposes through us:

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. [Phil 2.12]

Paul certainly contends that we don’t depend on our good works to please God; rather, we depend upon (=”have faith in”) God, submitting and surrendering to (=”having faith in”) Him to follow Him in faithfulness. It seems that, although energized by God’s grace, Paul expected believers to take the maintenance of faith in its true sense as a responsibility.

I’ve known many Christians so afraid of trampling on the work of Christ by depending on good works for salvation that they, in effect, looked down their nose at good works, chastising congregations that spend “too much” time and effort with ministries and programs and not enough with “worship”, by which they meant praising God and basking in His love (especially with music). I understand that many of them spend so much of their lives trying to earn favor with God by proving their own merit that once they encounter the grace that is Christ’s meritorious faithfulness they become intoxicated by it, with the result that they neglect their own “reasonable service” in response. Others find the notion of mental assent to true propositions to be the core framework for faith based on their misapprehension of what faith meant to the biblical authors, and understandably spend the bulk of their time in developing the perfect set of beliefs and disparaging those who don’t do likewise. I think these are all distractions at best, and outright perversions of biblical faith at worst. We are to show true worship to God not only by thanking Him, but by committing our best effort to modeling the faithfulness set before us by Jesus.

No soteriological answers here. But it’s fertile ground for discussion, isn’t it?

Originally inspired by this recent post by Doug Chaplin, I exhumed a paper I wrote in third year Greek while an undergrad (I estimate this to be c. 2000-2001). As a segue between my last post and my next, I thought I’d present it here with minimal edits. Please realize that the scholarship within this is a good decade behind, but given the modesty of the claims in this overview, I sincerely doubt that much of what is argued below has been soundly defeated.

The interpretation of Iesou Christou as an objective genitive (faith in Jesus Christ) in Galatians 2.16 and 3.22 (cf. Php 3.9) is the overwhelmingly pervasive reading of that construction. Fairly recently, however, scholarship has had to come to terms with the work of many scholars such as Richard B. Hays, who argues most strenuously that our modern fixation on the freedom of the individual conscience distorts Paul’s concerns. In his article, “Jesus’ Faith and Ours” (Theological Students Fellowship Bulletin, 7 No. 1 [S-O 1983], 2-6), Hays argued that nowhere in Galatians 3 does Paul place any emphasis on the salvific efficacy of “believing,” and nor does he speak of Jesus Christ as the object of human faith. Paul insists that we are redeemed/justified by Jesus Christ’s faithfulness (pistis Iesou Christou) on our behalf, not by our believing.

What must be demonstrated to make this minority view plausible?

The case for the subjective genitive interpretation (faith/faithfulness of Christ Jesus) is grammatically the most obvious. BAGD notes that translating the genitive as “in” is possible with reference to pistis, but acknowledges that pistis is usually found without an object. Moreover, translating the genitive as “of” is most commonly preferable with most other words. Noteworthy among the arguments for the subjective genitive view is that when pistis takes a personal genitive it is almost never an objective genitive (cf. Matt 9:2, 22, 29; Mark 2:5; 5:34; 10:52; Luke 5:20; 7:50; 8:25, 48; 17:19; 18:42; 22:32; Rom 1:8; 12; 3:3; 4:5, 12, 16; 1 Cor 2:5; 15:14, 17; 2 Cor 10:15; Phil 2:17; Col 1:4; 2:5; 1 Thess 1:8; 3:2, 5, 10; 2 Thess 1:3; Titus 1:1; Phlm 6; 1 Pet 1:9, 21; 2 Pet 1:5). Douglas Campbell, an advocate of the subjective usage, has been accused of being too dogmatic or dramatic by Brian Dodd, who has sympathies with the subjective camp, because Campbell makes the statement that how we take Paul’s usage of pistis Christou Iesou might “open up the possibility of a major reevaluation of Paul’s . . . theology as a whole.” However, Hays in both the article mentioned above and his dissertation, The Faith of Jesus Christ, highlights the significance of this alternative translation when he makes the statement that in Galatians, Paul insists we are justified by Christ’s faith/faithfulness, not our believing.

Much research and study has gone into this debate, with conservative scholars even delving into the ranks of those who see Christ’s faith/faithfulness as Paul’s intended meaning in such phrases as dia pisteos and ek pisteos, even in passages where the specifier Christou Iesou is not present. The likeliest loci for this scenario are Romans 1:17 and 3:25-26.

Romans 1:17 is Paul’s quotation of Habakkuk 2:4, “The righteous one shall live by faith/faithfulness.” Campbell took this statement as Messianic, so better to be translated, “The Righteous One shall live by His faithfulness.” One could still argue for the faithfulness of Christ being the basis for life (rather than believing faith on the part of the believer) if one takes the “righteous one” to be any number of people who now have the opportunity to live rather than a reference to Christ, and therefore, “The righteous one shall live by His faith/faithfulness.”

Paul in Romans 3:25-26 states, as the New English Translation translates it, “God publicly displayed him as a satisfaction for sin by his blood through faith. This was to demonstrate his righteousness, because God in his forbearance had passed over the sins previously committed. This was also to demonstrate his righteousness in the present time, so that he would be just and the justifier of the one who lives because of Jesus’ faithfulness,” or ek pisteos Iesou. This passage shows the value of such an interpretation: Jesus was put on display as a satisfaction for sin by his blood through faith (dia pisteos); in other words, Jesus was capable of demonstrating God’s righteousness in being publicly displayed because Jesus had faith or was faithful, not because of our faith in Him.

This concept is similar to that in Galatians 3:13-14, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us (because it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’) in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles, so that we could receive the promise of the Spirit by faith.” Longenecker’s commentary on Galatians discusses Paul’s paradigm of Abraham’s faith and our justification by looking at the perception of Jewish writers concerning Abraham’s faith/faithfulness. Jewish scholars tended to view Abraham’s extreme faith and faithfulness as being their very salvation, much as the Church of Rome would much later come to proclaim with the idea of “works of supererogation.” In other words, Abraham’s merit was so exceedingly worthy of God’s favor that those who are Abraham’s seed are worthy of God’s favor by virtue of Abraham’s merit. Another common picture was that of Abraham’s ten trials through which he remained faithful. If one sees Paul’s use of the term pistis in this passage as referring to Christ’s faith being that wih which we must be identified for justification, a faithfulness that was consistent enough even to submit to being cursed by hanging on a tree, then we see that it is Christ’s work of supererogation that justified Abraham and therefore us as well. Galatians 2:16 contrasts those who seek to be justified by works of the Law and those who seek to be justified dia pisteos Iesou Christou. Instead of the common translation of being “justified through faith in Jesus Christ,” read “justified through Jesus Christ’s merit,” or “Jesus Christ’s work of supererogation” (which means, after all, “a work above or beyond”). This merit can be seen by his death, being publicly placarded as Paul reminds the Galatians in 3:1. Jesus’ obedience unto death providing for redemption is also strongly demonstrated in Romans 5:19: “For just as through the disobedience of the one man many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of one man many will be made righteous.”

The case is, then, rather strong for the belief that the faith that we stand upon is not our own, but that of Jesus, upon whose merit alone we may hope to be justified.

_________________________

I just came across this bibliography devoted to this topic. I used a few of those sources for my paper, although inexplicably the copy of the paper that I have doesn’t show them.

I think Paul gives us a somewhat unexpected answer in 2 Corinthians.

I’ll return to the subject of this post after a (possibly irrelevant) discursus here. This morning in Sunday School we went over a passage in the last chapter of 2 Corinthians. Throughout the epistle, Paul makes repeated references to the fact that some of the Corinthians are challenging his authority as apostle. Although some of his critics apparently been questioning his courage and boldness to resolve problems (10.1), here near the end of the letter he warns that when he comes, they’ll see that he can be severe in person.

Something struck me as I looked at chapter 13 verses 2 through 5, displayed in PowerPoint on the screen this morning. It occurred to me that there was a slightly disjointed thought between verses 2 and 3. Read those verses as I saw them this morning (in the NIV):

² I already gave you a warning when I was with you the second time. I now repeat it while absent: On my return I will not spare those who sinned earlier or any of the others,
³ since you are demanding proof that Christ is speaking through me. He is not weak in dealing with you, but is powerful among you.
⁴ For to be sure, he was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by God’s power. Likewise, we are weak in him, yet by God’s power we will live with him to serve you.
⁵ Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?

Now let’s center on what I found a little disjointed, or rather, awkwardly joined, between verses 2 and 3: “On my return I will not spare those who sinned earlier or any of the others, since you are demanding proof that Christ is speaking through me.” To me, this did not follow very naturally. Proof that Christ is speaking through Paul would be seen by his acting harshly? This attitude did not really seem altogether congruent with his defense of his apostleship, which he made at least partially on the basis of his humble and suffering service to Christ (11.22-30). In fact, the next few verses seemed to undermine his own argument, for if Paul was required to show up in order to harshly reprimand them, why would he then go on to claim that Christ was already dealing with them powerfully?

Bearing in mind that Greek has no punctuation, I looked at other modern translations as well as my copy of NA26 and found that, with the exception of Darby, they all followed basically the same path: v. 3a is Paul’s rationale for why he anticipates having to be harsh when he returns. “I will not spare those who sinned because you are demanding proof that Christ is speaking through me.” Most of them (Darby and NKJV being exceptions) also turn the participial phrase in v. 3b, lit. “who is not weak toward you but powerful among you,” into an independent sentence, “He is not weak…” In other words, 3b is dependent grammatically upon 3a in Greek but usually not translated as such (this is not itself an unfaithful rendering).

I suggest that it reads more naturally to take v. 2 as ending a sentence and understand v. 3 as a clause dependent upon the imperative in v. 5, completed in v. 6. I break it down as follows: “Since you are demanding” requires a little explication (v. 3b), which in turn continues into another clarification (v. 4) before continuing the main idea in v. 5. In prose, “Since you are demanding proof that Christ is speaking through me (3a) … (3b-4), examine yourselves to see if you are in the faith, and if it turns out that you are (v. 5), I’m pretty sure you’ll see that my ministry is valid (v. 6).” Extended, grammatically awkward rocks in the stream like vv. 3b-4 are quite typical of Paul (and indeed, of handwritten discourse in general, I’d imagine, especially before the advent of the eraser).

A couple other points of grammar help reinforce this reading. Although the ἐπεὶ clause ‘since…, because…’ is often used as resultative of the preceding main clause in the sense of ‘and that’s why X‘ as v. 3 is indeed translated in the majority of translations, it does however occasionally introduce a rationale for the topic of its main clause as I am proposing here, most notably in the case of the only other NT instance of an imperative in the main clause, 1 Cor 14.12. In addition, the original of v. 5 puts “yourselves” in emphatic first position in the first two clauses: “Yourselves test, yourselves examine. Or do you not recognize for yourselves that you are in Christ?” This makes his logic clear enough: if you are not sure about the legitimacy of my ministry, try examining your own selves, and if you find yourselves to be in the faith, you’ll probably recognize that my ministry is of God.” After all, if the ministry that converted them from paganism is illegitimate, what would that say for the legitimacy of their faith?

Here is the entirety of my somewhat dynamic equivalent translation of vv. 3-6:

I have warned and am warning, as I did when I was there the second time so also now while I’m absent, those who sinned earlier and all the rest, that if I come again I will not hold back.

Since you are seeking proof that what I am saying is of Christ, who, by the way, doesn’t act weakly toward you either, but rather is powerful among you — for in weakness he was crucified but lives by the power of God and we likewise are weak in him but will be alive with him by the power of God, all for your sake — try testing yourselves to see whether you are in the faith! Examine yourselves! Do you not know for yourselves that (unless you do not prove genuine) Jesus Christ is in you? But I trust you will discover that we are genuine.

Now, back to the regularly scheduled post topic…

The thing I found interesting about this passage (and it’s not really dependent on my reinterpretation) is the answer to the question I ask in the title of the post: How do you know you’re in the faith? It seems to me that Paul’s answer to that question wasn’t quite what many evangelical Christians might think it should be. One of the primary tests they’d present would be to ask, “Do you believe in XYZ?” with an affirmative answer resulting in a pronouncement, “Then of course you’re saved.” But this would have been entirely inadequate in the Corinthians’ case, since determining which XYZ beliefs were correct was what they were having trouble doing, given the dispute between Paul and his opponents in Corinth.

In contrast, it occurs to me that Paul’s actual answer here is quite subjective — intolerably so for those who insist that our sole source of what-to-believe, the Bible, must be somehow flawless or else we might as well not believe at all. Here Paul turns that on its head: you’ll know what is genuine based upon whether it makes a genuine difference within you. “How do you know whether what I say (and you believed) is true? Why, perform a self-test, of course! Examine yourselves. Look inside yourselves and see if Christ is there. If he’s not, you’ll know it because you won’t find anything.” Even Paul the doctrine hound, who emphatically insisted that false beliefs be torn down and replaced with his own teaching, seems to acknowledge here that what God does in a person was not so much dependent on what they believe as vice versa.

No, we can’t prove faith like this to anyone. But wasn’t that the thing about Abraham’s faith that made it so astounding? When did God ever provide Abraham a real smoking gun to present to his pagan neighbors in order to convince them to believe? God “tested” Abraham by requiring of him something he couldn’t understand at all, yet, if I may echo Kierkegaard a little here, he was asked to take that wild leap of faith in God based upon what he subjectively knew of God. Could it be that faith that pleases God is not “believing the right stuff” but mere “trust and faithfulness in a relationship with Him”?