Dimensions of Baptism Biblical and Theological Studies

114 Dimensions of Baptism

logical implication is that Israel's election is forfeit, yet Rom. 11

leaves the reader in no doubt that Paul will not do away with the

election of Israel.

There is an issue of apparently unresolved faith-works tension at the

heart of Paul's theology. Perhaps, from his Christian vantage point, he

simply does not know what to do with the Jewish law. He responds to

Christ's claim as exclusive—but what does this imply about God's faith-

fulness to his chosen people?

There is also an unevenness in his treatment of the faith-works theme in

discrete letters. Not every letter makes explicit, polemical and vehement

reference to the question. For example, 1 Thessalonians, out of all those

generally accepted as Pauline, has no explicit reference to faith-works.

Perhaps this simply had not yet developed as a theme at an early stage in

Paul's ministry, but there are aspects of the transfer theme in this letter

that we find reflected throughout Paul's entire correspondence. The sequence

in 1 Thess. 1.9 provides an outline of transformation and the transfer of

loyalty and worship moving to stress the eschatological aspect of freedom

and deliverance.

This may suggest that the heart of Paul's theology was not so much a

doctrine of justification by faith, as his experience of life-changing grace

in the moment of confrontation or judgment, which then impels his

preaching of Christ crucified and risen (cf. Gal. 2.19-21). His varying

expression is not a problem, because his real concerns lay elsewhere, with

that 'transformed standpoint' which is at the heart of his theological aware-

ness. According to Sanders, this 'participation in Christ as the only way of

salvation' is the coherent centre at the heart of Paul's outlook, although he

does not work out its implications in the way of a systematic theologian.

Although Sanders corrects an uncritical and naive judgment on the Tan-

naitic literature, he cannot provide evidence for popular and 'unclerical'

Judaism, and does not answer how far the literate rabbis were representa-

tive of the mass of the population or to what extent their literary deposit

represents what most people whom Paul dealt with actually thought. There

are shades of exception to his rule in 4 Ezra, which, although not going so

far as representing the keeping of the law per se as a means to salvation,

does, by Sanders's own admission, portray a more pessimistic outlook of

the necessity of perfect obedience.

Sanders has presented a corrective and major challenge within Pauline

scholarship, but this does not mean all questions are answered. James

Dunn in particular has sought to push Sanders to explain more fully the