Being as tomorrow is the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, I thought I would note that Biblical scholar Michael Barber writes:
I co-wrote a book on the apostle with Brant Pitre and John Kincaid, entitled, PAUL, A NEW COVENANT JEW: RETHINKING PAULINE THEOLOGY (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2019). The central argument of the book is that while Paul understand himself to be converted to Christ, he is not a “former Jew” but still views himself as Jewish (he is not a convert away from Jewishness). He believes that the new covenant foretold by Jeremiah has arrived in the work of the Messiah, Jesus.
Here is what the late-great Paul scholar Thomas Stegman (Boston College) said about the book:
“As the scholarly guild continues to churn out monographs on St. Paul and his writings, it is rare to read one that proposes a truly fresh perspective. Brant Pitre, Michael Barber, and John Kincaid, however, have managed to write just such a book. Their proposal that Paul is best described as a new covenant Jew (because he himself does so!) allows them to capture both points of continuity with prior Jewish traditions as well as the novum of Paul’s gospel concerning the crucified-and-risen Jesus. Their Catholic ‘both-and’ approach, done with sound exegetical argumentation and wide consultation with the best of contemporary scholarship, enables them to set forth the coherence of Paul’s theological vision. I highly recommend this volume and will use it in my teaching.”
Exactly so. It is unfortunate that it is called the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul since Paul never conceived of himself as anything but a Jew who had encountered the Messiah he had been awaiting all his life. He interpreted and understood everything he believed about Jesus in light of the Jewish scriptures he had been studying his whole life, just as he interpreted and understood the Jewish scriptures in light of the Messiah he had encountered on the Damascus Road. For him, the idea that he had “converted” or “changed religions” was completely unintelligible. Christ was everything his religious upbringing had prepared him to receive. He cannot speak of or think about Jesus in any terms other than the Pharisaic understanding of the Law and the Prophets his mind is marinated in.
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4 Responses
Very good point. When one understands more deeply the Mass and many other aspects of the Catholic faith, you can see that we are simply the final form of Judaism. As you said, New Covenant Jews.
This is 100% true. However liberal Jews get pretty irritated if you tell them this.
So do conservative Jews.
Is the problem with the word “conversion” that the original word used, metanoia, gets translated as “conversion,” with a different connotation in our time, when the more accurate meaning might be a looking beyond, a further understanding of what you previously knew and/or thought? Similar to the way “fear of the Lord” doesn’t mean literally being afraid of God!