One of the biggest mistakes I think that Protestants and Roman Catholics typically make in their biblical interpretation (which Eastern Orthodox interpreters usually don't) is arriving at the theological idea that all humans fall short and cannot meet God's standards. (An obscure discussion here was beginning to touch on this, so I thought it was worth a thread of it's own).
Ancient Jewish writings are choc-full of mentions of the final judgement, and talk of righteousness. In the typical Jewish conception, what is needed to pass the final judgement is a 51% level of goodness rather than evil. They use the binary categories of "righteous" and "wicked" to discuss the two groups of mostly-good and mostly-bad people. (And so the question of "so what if the person has exactly 50% good and evil" comes up in the Testament of Abraham.) It was accepted that a person could repent of their previously wicked ways, and seek to do good, and it was believed that because God was a loving and kind and forgiving father that he would wipe the person's slate clean if they sincerely repeated. The phrase "repentance and forgiveness" attained a proverbial character in ancient Jewish literature, and we see it repeated approvingly in the NT.
It is important to note that there was a universal acceptance among these Jewish writers that humans could be "righteous" by being generally good people and trying to follow God's commandment to the general best of their abilities, and that there were plenty of humans who achieved such a standard to acceptable levels (>50%+) and that therefore God would judge them positively. Two of the best scholarly works on the subject that I'm aware of are: Righteousness in Matthew and his World of Thought by Przybylski and Judgment and Justification in Early Judaism and the Apostle Paul by VanLandingham, and I highly recommend both of these to anyone interested in a serious scholarly study of these topics.
In the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition there tends to be a similar understanding of the theology of salvation to this historical Jewish view. The idea being that through a process of sanctification (aka theosis) the Spirit strengthens people in goodness and righteousness, leading them to be Christ-like people whom God approves of. However in the Western Christian tradition in the period from Augustine through to the Medieval theologians there was the introduction of some very different and very dubious doctrines which completely change the entire salvation process, and which rely on some key (mis)readings of biblical passages. These novel ideas include:
1. That 'righteousness' should be re-defined from 51% good to 100% good. "Righteous" = "perfect". And, as such, no human is ever righteous because nobody is absolutely perfect.
2. Every single individual person falls short of God's required standard. Because God's required standard has been pushed from 'generally good' up to 'perfection' (aka the new definition of "righteous"), and so not a single person meets it.
Obviously these two ideas struggle to find any sort of evidence in the historical Jewish tradition because they are so fundamentally opposed to it. The most that can be said for them is that some Jewish writers did note that "nobody's perfect" and those trite and trivial observations can be taken out of context and creatively redeployed as supposedly supporting evidence for these two new ideas.
When we look at the gospels, Jesus gives his most lengthy portrayal of the last judgement in Matthew 25 where he explains that those who give material assistance to those in need are those that will be judged righteous. That is not an unmeetable standard of righteousness by any stretch of the imagination, and it falls totally within the spectrum of historical Jewish views. Notably Jesus does not say "God will judge everyone unrighteous on their merits at the final judgement because none have met his perfect standard, and only those who have the perfection of Christ imputed to them will be regarded as righteous". The other portrayals of the final judgement in the NT are also consistent with the general historical Jewish theme.
The ideas #1 and #2 rely for their support almost solely on a particular interpretation of a particular part of Romans. This should in itself strongly imply they are wrong, because we would reasonably expect such crucial teachings that so squarely contradicted pervasive Jewish belief (and Jesus' gospel teachings) should be expounded clearly and in detail multiple times, and if we find it only occurring once it suggests that it is probably the interpretation of the passage that is wrong.
IMO, Paul in the first 5 chapters of Romans spends his time emphasizing that those who actually do good are the ones whom God considers righteous, and that one's status as a "Jew" rather than as a "gentile" is irrelevant in God's sight, rather it is only a person's faithfulness to God's commandments that matters. Paul seems to be setting his argument in direct opposition to the minority Jewish view found in the book Wisdom of Solomon that all Jews are amazing people whom God has chosen and given them the law and sanctified with his spirit, whereas the gentiles are all horrible people in the extreme, and thus that God's final judgement will be the "righteous Jews" vs the "wicked gentiles". Paul paraphrases the zealous ravings from Wisdom of Solomon 13-14 in Romans 1:18-32, and then responds himself by vehemently attacking it in Romans 2 where Paul lays out his own view:
Paul is keen to emphasize that it is not Jews only that can do good, but that gentiles likewise can obey the law of their consciences and achieve a positive judgement from God by doing so.
In the second half of Romans 2 and then in Romans 3 Paul moves to address the claim of Wisdom of Solomon 15:2-3 that Jews don't sin and that all Jews are righteous. In the course of Romans 3 Paul quotes historical examples of particular groups of Jews and particular groups of Gentiles sinning, showing that scripture condemns both in the same language when they sin. Paul emphasizes that various people from all nations have sinned at times, and there is not some special nation of sinless people - individuals from all different nations have at times fallen short and the Jewish nation is not supernaturally exempt from this.
In my view the Western Christian tradition has misread Paul's argument here, and misread his statements about races as statements about individuals, and pretended that Paul is saying that every human individual in history has fallen short and wasn't righteous. Obviously such a reading flatly contradicts all sorts of biblical statements that various people were righteous (e.g. "Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God.", "Zechariah and Elizabeth were righteous in God's eyes, careful to obey all of the Lord's commandments and regulations." etc), and this interpretation also contradicts the proof-texts that Paul is quoting from in Romans 3 which in their OT contexts are not making claims of universal human unrighteousness but are labeling a specific group of people at a specific time as unrighteous and usually contrasting those baddies with other specific historical groups of people who are implicitly or explicitly "righteous".
Ancient Jewish writings are choc-full of mentions of the final judgement, and talk of righteousness. In the typical Jewish conception, what is needed to pass the final judgement is a 51% level of goodness rather than evil. They use the binary categories of "righteous" and "wicked" to discuss the two groups of mostly-good and mostly-bad people. (And so the question of "so what if the person has exactly 50% good and evil" comes up in the Testament of Abraham.) It was accepted that a person could repent of their previously wicked ways, and seek to do good, and it was believed that because God was a loving and kind and forgiving father that he would wipe the person's slate clean if they sincerely repeated. The phrase "repentance and forgiveness" attained a proverbial character in ancient Jewish literature, and we see it repeated approvingly in the NT.
It is important to note that there was a universal acceptance among these Jewish writers that humans could be "righteous" by being generally good people and trying to follow God's commandment to the general best of their abilities, and that there were plenty of humans who achieved such a standard to acceptable levels (>50%+) and that therefore God would judge them positively. Two of the best scholarly works on the subject that I'm aware of are: Righteousness in Matthew and his World of Thought by Przybylski and Judgment and Justification in Early Judaism and the Apostle Paul by VanLandingham, and I highly recommend both of these to anyone interested in a serious scholarly study of these topics.
In the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition there tends to be a similar understanding of the theology of salvation to this historical Jewish view. The idea being that through a process of sanctification (aka theosis) the Spirit strengthens people in goodness and righteousness, leading them to be Christ-like people whom God approves of. However in the Western Christian tradition in the period from Augustine through to the Medieval theologians there was the introduction of some very different and very dubious doctrines which completely change the entire salvation process, and which rely on some key (mis)readings of biblical passages. These novel ideas include:
1. That 'righteousness' should be re-defined from 51% good to 100% good. "Righteous" = "perfect". And, as such, no human is ever righteous because nobody is absolutely perfect.
2. Every single individual person falls short of God's required standard. Because God's required standard has been pushed from 'generally good' up to 'perfection' (aka the new definition of "righteous"), and so not a single person meets it.
Obviously these two ideas struggle to find any sort of evidence in the historical Jewish tradition because they are so fundamentally opposed to it. The most that can be said for them is that some Jewish writers did note that "nobody's perfect" and those trite and trivial observations can be taken out of context and creatively redeployed as supposedly supporting evidence for these two new ideas.
When we look at the gospels, Jesus gives his most lengthy portrayal of the last judgement in Matthew 25 where he explains that those who give material assistance to those in need are those that will be judged righteous. That is not an unmeetable standard of righteousness by any stretch of the imagination, and it falls totally within the spectrum of historical Jewish views. Notably Jesus does not say "God will judge everyone unrighteous on their merits at the final judgement because none have met his perfect standard, and only those who have the perfection of Christ imputed to them will be regarded as righteous". The other portrayals of the final judgement in the NT are also consistent with the general historical Jewish theme.
The ideas #1 and #2 rely for their support almost solely on a particular interpretation of a particular part of Romans. This should in itself strongly imply they are wrong, because we would reasonably expect such crucial teachings that so squarely contradicted pervasive Jewish belief (and Jesus' gospel teachings) should be expounded clearly and in detail multiple times, and if we find it only occurring once it suggests that it is probably the interpretation of the passage that is wrong.
IMO, Paul in the first 5 chapters of Romans spends his time emphasizing that those who actually do good are the ones whom God considers righteous, and that one's status as a "Jew" rather than as a "gentile" is irrelevant in God's sight, rather it is only a person's faithfulness to God's commandments that matters. Paul seems to be setting his argument in direct opposition to the minority Jewish view found in the book Wisdom of Solomon that all Jews are amazing people whom God has chosen and given them the law and sanctified with his spirit, whereas the gentiles are all horrible people in the extreme, and thus that God's final judgement will be the "righteous Jews" vs the "wicked gentiles". Paul paraphrases the zealous ravings from Wisdom of Solomon 13-14 in Romans 1:18-32, and then responds himself by vehemently attacking it in Romans 2 where Paul lays out his own view:
Paul is keen to emphasize that it is not Jews only that can do good, but that gentiles likewise can obey the law of their consciences and achieve a positive judgement from God by doing so.
In the second half of Romans 2 and then in Romans 3 Paul moves to address the claim of Wisdom of Solomon 15:2-3 that Jews don't sin and that all Jews are righteous. In the course of Romans 3 Paul quotes historical examples of particular groups of Jews and particular groups of Gentiles sinning, showing that scripture condemns both in the same language when they sin. Paul emphasizes that various people from all nations have sinned at times, and there is not some special nation of sinless people - individuals from all different nations have at times fallen short and the Jewish nation is not supernaturally exempt from this.
In my view the Western Christian tradition has misread Paul's argument here, and misread his statements about races as statements about individuals, and pretended that Paul is saying that every human individual in history has fallen short and wasn't righteous. Obviously such a reading flatly contradicts all sorts of biblical statements that various people were righteous (e.g. "Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God.", "Zechariah and Elizabeth were righteous in God's eyes, careful to obey all of the Lord's commandments and regulations." etc), and this interpretation also contradicts the proof-texts that Paul is quoting from in Romans 3 which in their OT contexts are not making claims of universal human unrighteousness but are labeling a specific group of people at a specific time as unrighteous and usually contrasting those baddies with other specific historical groups of people who are implicitly or explicitly "righteous".
Comment