Living by Faith - Romans

Paul and the New Testament

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Living by Faith

Lesson: 23-64

Genre: Talk

Track: 023

Dictation Name: RR311M23

Location/Venue:

Year: ?

Let us worship God. Grace be unto you, and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Give unto the Lord the glory do unto His name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God unto whom all glory and honor belong, we come into Thy presence mindful oh Lord how the heath rage against Thee, how they seek to overthrow Thy kingdom, and to establish their rule. We thank Thee our God that Thou art He who is omnipotent, whose word rules all things, and who shall alone prevail. Teach us to so to walk day by day that we be ever mindful that it is not the wrath of man that shall prevail, but Thy kingdom; not the workers of iniquity, but Thy purpose. [garbled] …and despise Thy word. But Thy word and Thy word alone shall prevail. Make us a part oh Lord of Thy work and Thy purpose, that we may be more than conquerors through Jesus Christ our Lord, in His name we pray, amen.

As we continue our studies in Romans, we are going to stop this morning to analyze a particular aspect of the thrust of Paul in Romans by going to another letter, Galatians. Galatians 6:12-13, and our subject is Paul and the New Testament. Later we shall come to Galatians, and then at that time we shall look at all the related passages in which Paul deals with this problem, of to whom was he speaking; who were the Judaizers? Who were the Hellenizers? Who were these people? A good introduction to the subject is this text, Galatians 6:12-13.

“12 As many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ.

13 For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law; but desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh.”

We saw much earlier that there were three possible groups in Rome whose views led to problems and occasioned Paul’s letter to the Romans. First there were those known as the Judaizers. Second, there were those called ‘The Strong’, and the evidence is accumulating from New Testament studies and contemporary materials that these were gnostic-type antinomians. Third, there were the Hellenizers who wanted a Greek framework and a Greek world view, and simply to add Christ to it. These people were very close to the party known as The Strong. But Paul does not single out and separate these three groups, he treats all as a common error. We must say of course they were all false teachings, but historically were they not separate groups? What did they have in common, the Gnostics, the Hellenizers, and the Judaizing Christians?

Now to understand this question is important in order to understand the drift of Romans, and the thrust of all of Paul’s letters. The key question is this: how Hebraic were the Jews of Paul’s day? How faithful were they to the Old Testament? One of the most serious errors in all New Testament studies which has perverted the pulpit, and given the whole of Christian thinking a false direction, is that the Judaizing Christians were champions of the law as against grace; that they were close to the non-Christian views in their emphasis on the law. The assumption is that this aspect of Judaism, a strong emphasis on the law, had crept into the church and was perverting the church. Now, this is the assumption of Evangelical studies, and non-Evangelical studies as well. But if this is true then Jesus and the gospels are totally wrong.

Our Lord came championing the law and the prophets. He did so against a Judaism which had forsaken it. He declared repeatedly as for example in Matthew 15:1-9, that the Judaism of His day had made the law of God of none effect through their traditions. He, according to Matthew 5:17-19, had come to put the law into force. Moreover, He declared that the Old Testament had foretold His sufferings, His death, His resurrection, and His exaltation. He declared it foretold the world mission of His disciples to the gentiles, and also the general resurrection of the dead.

In brief, if you go through the gospels carefully you will find this single emphasis throughout, as our Lord deals with the Judaism of His day; it was simply this: He said that Judaism had abandoned its own faith, its own law, its own wisdom, had turned away for it, for something else.

Now, if we are to say that suddenly within a few years, a very short time after our Lords death and resurrection, Paul is dealing with a problem where not only the Jews but the Judaizing Christians are saying: “We have to go back to the law rather than trust in grace.” We are positing something that is incredible, a violation of all historical reality. Did Judaism suddenly revert to the law after having abandoned it? What were the Judaizers, and what was the problem?

Well, it is obvious that Judaism did not suddenly return to the law after the day of Pentecost. This is what most New Testament scholars in effect maintain, that this does violence to the plain facts of the New Testament. Judea then was a center not of strong religious faith, but of nationalism; its faith and its culture were very strongly Greco Roman. All we have to do is look at Josephus and other accounts, and we see this; that great financial outlays were made by a series of foreign rulers in Jerusalem and all of Judea, and the reason was that Judea was strategically important, it was the highway of the ancient world, linking Asia and Africa, Europe and Asia.

As a result, it was important for each ruler to keep the people contented. The Greeks, the Romans and Herod, all poured money into the country. It became a showplace; there were aqueducts, there were theatres, there were gymnasiums, there magnificent public buildings, there were paved streets and roads and colonnades everywhere; Jerusalem was a city of remarkable beauty and character. Judea as a whole was a favored, privileged area. It was nationalism, not faith that marked them; and the common people were also very much given to the same nationalism. We must remember that John tells us, 6:15, that they sought to force Jesus to become king, and use His miracle working powers for nationalistic purposes.

Now this is the fact as ancient history reveals it; this is why the Jewish-Roman war was the bitterest, most savage war in all of history, and why Rome took a revenge that has never been equaled, the most horrible event in all of history, the fall of Jerusalem. It was bitterly angry that so favored a place would revolt.

Well, what are we then to say concerning the Judaizers in the church? The people who were creating problems in Rome, in Galatia, in Corinth, and elsewhere? As we have already seen in Romans, their great emphasis was in circumcision. Again and again in Paul’s letters we find him dealing with the subject.

What was the reason for it? Well, Paul tells us very bluntly and plainly in Galatians, Galatians 6:12-13, in no small bluntness, because Paul in Galatians is very upset, and he comes out very bluntly, without any attempt to conciliate or be diplomatic. He says first, there is a strategic reason for circumcision, its purpose is to avoid persecution. As many as desire to make a fair show in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised, only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ.

So what is Paul saying? He is calling attention to the fact that the Jews had a legal status, a privileged status, in the Roman Empire. Judaism alone of all the religions in the empire did not have the necessity of applying for licensure, and being under regulation, taxation, and control. Now, that can be qualified, because Rome governed the election of the High Priest in order to make sure that they had a compromiser always as High Priest. But apart from those facts, according to law whatever the practical politics behind the scenes may have been, according to law Judaism had a privileged status, it had immunities; and any group that called itself a Jewish sect had the same immunities. Roman officials could not lay their hands on them.

Now, what Paul is here saying is: “All this talk about circumcision in the churches represents a form of subterfuge, of pragmatism, and of cowardice. Only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ, there is nothing else behind it.” He says. They sought to be formally a Jew in order to gain the immunities; they side step persecution thereby, but they also sidestep Christ.

Then second Paul says they only wanted circumcision, not the law; they had no desire to keep the law. “For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law; but desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh.”

These people wanted a foot in both camps. The evidence is clear not only from some epistles like Corinthians, but from other literature as well, that these people who we call Judaizers were also libertines, that their moral standards were very defective; that with them circumcision was a way of evading any clear-cut stand for the faith. Now at the same time the interesting thing is that there were many Gnostics and Hellenizers who were very prone to circumcision because it gained them immunity from persecution, it made a stand unnecessary, and yet at the same time they had no belief in the resurrection. In other words it was a convenient façade. These groups therefore were receptive, the Hellenizers and the Gnostics, to the Judaizing so-called Christians. There was no conflict between them, pragmatism ruled all three groups.

We must remember by the way, that because Judea had become a center of Greco Roman culture, it also had a gnostic segment. Gnosticism was appealing; all the new thought of the Greco Roman world was appealing, and in Judea in varying degrees, popular. This should not surprise us, there has been no golden age in the past; heresies then and now have been common amongst those who call themselves orthodox. I have heard, and encountered some Catholic conservatives, and fundamentalists, who have expressed a belief in such things as Edgar Casey, with all his occultist ideas. I have heard people define themselves as good Jews who believe neither in God nor in God’s law.

Now, we live in better times then the days of Paul. Why assume that there was a pure element in Judea holding on to the law and the prophets faithfully, against the witness of our Lord? Because if we hold as so many scholars do, and as so many preachers do, that the Judaizers were Christians who like most of the people in Judea held strongly to the law, we are discounting the whole of our Lords testimony. We are saying He didn’t know what He was talking about when He said that the whole of the people had abandoned the law and the prophets; when He documented the fact and no man dared answer Him.

Syncretism was common then. Syncretism is taking several contradictory ideas or faith or premises, and putting them together. But Paul insists on the absolute claims of the Triune God. The just, he says, are not only saved by faith, but must live by faith. That is, in terms of Gods law. He says in Romans 3:31 “Do we then make void the law of God through faith? God forbid, yea, we establish the law.” God says moreover, through Paul, that there are only two alternatives, to ways; the way of faithfulness to the every word of God, or the way of sin where man makes his own will his law, his own word his law.

Now this teaching of Paul is very clearly visible in the early church. When we go to such things as Didache and Barnabas, two writings of the post apostolic age, which are really on a low level, they are written without any great awareness and knowledge of the fundamental issues of the faith, and yet, one thing that stands out clearly is the Pauline emphasis on two ways; that there are only two alternatives. For example Barnabas says: “Loose every bond of injustice, untie the knots of forcibly extracted agreements, free the downtrodden, tear up every unjust contract, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the homeless, treat the lowly with respect,” and so on and on. We are also told by Barnabas that Christ’s work was not to create a new covenant, but a new people.

Moreover, there is an essential agreement also between Paul and James, both stress the Old Testament. James 2:10 says: “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.” Now this is a Christian statement of a precept common in Israel, and derived from Old Testament premises. For both James and Paul, faith and works cannot be separated, they are a unity; and the just are to live by faith, and they are to further righteousness, justice under God, for men.

Romans is not an abstract theological premise, it is a very practical letter. The just must live by faith, and manifest the justice of God in every area of life and thought. Paul does not break with the gospels, nor with James, nor with the Old Testament; it is a perversion of scripture to pit one part of it against the other, it is a seamless garment.

Gnosticism was adaptable, it wanted no conflict. It was ready to compromise with any and every doctrine. The Gnostics adopted circumcision and reinterpreted it to their own ends, and gave it their own meaning. The Gnostics were averse to making a stand for anything under the sun, hence they were for circumcision in order to avoid persecution. So here, the Hellenizers, the Gnostics, and the Judaizing Christians were agreed. Circumcision became a great issue, because by means of circumcision they could avoid, until after the fall of Jerusalem when the immunities ended, persecution for their faith. Paul tells us so plainly.

Paul on the other hand instead of this compromise, is insistent on forcing the antithesis; there are two ways, two alternatives, and men cannot bring them together. We cannot live at peace with sin. There is a clear distinction between the two faiths or the two ways. The just shall live by faith, not by compromise. We cannot serve sin or our own autonomous will. We can only serve God and His justice.

We are the just, the people of justice, because we have been justified by the atonement of Jesus Christ, and we have been commissioned to live by Gods every word.

We began by reading Galatians 6:12-13. It is interesting to look at the sentence that precedes it. Paul normally dictated his letters, then he would add a final personal note. But at this point when he made this statement about the hypocrisy of these people who claim to be for the law, when it only means to them circumcision, ‘For they do not keep the law’ he said. He precedes it with this, the 11th verse: “Ye see how large a letter I have written unto you with mine own hand.”

At this point, he took the pen from the hand of the person to whom he was dictating, and he wrote perhaps some say because his sight was failing, with a large hand; but perhaps also to make emphatic that which was to follow, when he separates from Christ, from the law and the prophets, all these champions of circumcision, declares them to be hypocrites, and sets them down as lost men.

Now, no one can approach Paul with antinomian premises, and read him honestly. In all his letters, Paul is at one with Christ, and with the law and the prophets. Scripture cannot be broken. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God whose word is truth, and who didst raise up Paul even as Thou didst raise up Moses and the prophets; give us grace to hear them all, and to hear them as a seamless garment, as one word from the throne of all creation. We give thanks unto Thee oh Lord that Thou hast called us to be Thy people; give us a spirit of faith and of faithfulness, of obedience and of joy, of thanksgiving for the plain way Thou hast set before us, in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

Yes?

[Otto Scott] I have a comment, it seems that if at that time the people of Israel lost faith in Judaism, became nationalistic, then their concept of the chosen people became separated from following the law, and became identified with being Jewish; and that this is what gives rise to so much confusion.

[Rushdoony] Yes, yes, the faith was turned into something that was nationalistic, rather than something with a world mission. We must remember that at the very dedication of the temple, Solomon prayed that God be especially mindful of every gentile who came there to worship, and to give preferential treatment and answers to their prayers, in order to hasten the incoming of all peoples into Gods kingdom. But what happened in the 400 years from the close of the Old Testament canon to the time of our Lord was precisely this kind of development, the rise of nationalism to replace the religious faith; and it is at this point that the church has often gone astray in its interpretation of what the religion in Judea was at the time of our Lord, it was pure formalism, it was very empty, and Josephus gives us a great deal here.

Now Josephus is variously regarded, some regard him as very authentic and trustworthy, and others are bitterly hostile to him. But while we can say that Josephus is not totally accurate, he is substantially correct, and he felt very definitely that their nationalism was leading them into a suicidal policy, it was blinding them to the realities of their day. It is what a contemporary general in Israel has called in his book by that name: The Bar Kokhba Syndrome, a suicidal refusal to face reality, and hence inviting defeat.

And that was the disaster, of course, of the Jewish Roman war. The very interesting thing is that it was sometime after that war before any really religious emphasis returned to Judaism, a very much altered one from the Old Testament faith, but the intense nationalism was the governing motive, and led to a whole series of revolts. Yes?

[Audience Member] I’m just curious about the Apocrypha books written, I suppose between the inter testament books, the 400 years between, is that correct?

[Rushdoony] Mhmm.

[Audience Member] Was part of the reason that they weren’t accepted as Canon because the writings stressed this nationalism?

[Rushdoony] Well, there is so much in the Apocrypha that represents varying strands; some of it was simply moral teaching that did not pretend to be a part of the Old Testament Canon, for example the Wisdom of Ben Sirach. Good reading on the whole, and at points an excellent summary of Old Testament teaching. On the other hand you have some things that are purely nationalistic, but even there, there will be a difference, we have the two books of Maccabees, 1st Maccabees is a good historical account of the Maccabean war. In 2nd Maccabees nationalistic and non-historical thinking takes over, and it becomes a very different kind of document. So the Apocrypha is not a unity, it is simply a collection of materials that is of varying characteristics. Yes?

[Otto Scott] I understand that in the 1st century there was a considerable number of gospels circulating, do you see any parallel between that and these expanding variety of Bibles that we are getting now?

[Rushdoony] Yes, there were a great man Apocryphal works that circulated in the 1st and second century, towards the end of the 1st century they began to appear, but they are primarily second century, and by the way there is a book of these Apocryphal writings about Christ in particular, mostly discovered, I believe, in Egypt; now being promoted by the History Book Club. The reviewer, a university professor, wrote as though these represented unacknowledged and authentic traditions concerning Christ. Well, what they do represent as a matter of fact is Gnostic reinterpretations of the life of Christ, so that you cannot read the gospels and these Apocryphal writings and see any resemblance, they have totally different purpose. They turn Jesus into a mystical teacher who utters all kinds of strange nonsense which supposedly has important hidden meanings, so that it comes closer to being what you occasionally find when some Theosophists talk about the hidden teaching of the Tibetan masters.

So the Apocryphal material came precisely from these Gnostics, and the church had a real problem with them, although as persecution began to mount the Gnostics tended to separate themselves, they were not interested in making a stand for their faith. Yes?

[Audience Member] I have a question on the Bible itself, has God preserved for us today His true unaltered word through a written work?

[Rushdoony] Yes, of course you have those who hold to the Westcott and Hort tradition of an uncertain text that only scholars can remake; all your modern translations are based on that premise. The King James version is not without faults, but it went back to the received text which the Eastern Orthodox church had very carefully preserved over the centuries. So today there are some people who still hold in this country, a growing number, to the belief in the Received Text, that not only did God give an authoritative and infallible word, but that He also preserved it.

[Audience Member] …the King James?

[Rushdoony] The King James is based on that received text. Yes?

[Audience Member] Did the idea that the Judaizers were faithful upholders of the Abrahamic covenant originate with the Dispensationalist theologians?

[Rushdoony] No, it did not, but it was greatly used and promoted by them. it originated with the Gnostics really, they could not as I have called attention to in some of the recent position papers, believe that God could in His law actually deal with such mundane matters as diet, marriage and divorce, theft, kidnapping, and so on. So they had different solutions for that problem; first they would spiritualize everything and say that it actually meant something else, not what it said literally. Second, they said that this was a different dispensation totally, so that that was for the primitive Hebrews of ancient times and did not apply to us, so that these ideas which are prevalent in Dispensational and non-Dispensational circles, do go back to these heresies in the early church, made up of groups that had first invaded Jerusalem because they wanted the protection that its status gave them, and second invaded Christianity for the same reason. We should not be surprised at this, because consider for example the fact that we have had groups call themselves churches that had no purpose except tax evasion, they sought the immunity of the 1st amendment.

Now, we had one group with a large following, in fact someone in San Diego who knew something about it told me that he personally knew of a few thousand people who had constituted themselves as churches in that area for tax reasons.

Well, this is minor compared to what happened in the Roman Empire because of the immunity that Judaism had.

Well, our time is up, let us bow our heads now in prayer. Oh Lord our God we Thank Thee that Thy word is truth, and Thy word shall prevail, and that every false doctrine, every false person will in Thy time be dealt with and cast aside. Give us grace to wait on Thee, knowing that it is not the false and the evil who shall prevail, but Thy truth and Thy people. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, amen.