Paul and “The Works of the Law”

By Daniel P. Fuller

Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California

From a paper read at the Institute for Biblical Research (Tyndale Fellowship), meeting at Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California, April 6, 1974.

One example of how the methods of biblical theology have helped the Bible to speak more for itself is the now generally accepted conclusion that Paul used the word “law” in two very different senses. C. F. D. Moule has said:

The many shades of meaning attached to nomos have to be deduced from the ways in which the word is used; and it is clear that nomos is used by Paul in (among others) the two quite distinct connections which may be called respectively “revelatory” and “legalistic.” [Then he cites Rom 7:12 as an example of a “revelatory” usage, and Rom 3:28, with its phrase “the works of the law,” as a “legalistic” usage of nomos.]…This contrast between the two contexts in which nomos is used is perfectly familiar to all the students of Paul.[1]

C. E. B. Cranfield makes the same point:

It will be well to bear in mind the fact (which, so far as I know, has not received attention) that the Greek language used by Paul had no word-group to denote “legalism,” “legalist,” and “legalistic….In view of this, we should, I think, be ready to reckon with the possibility that sometimes, when he appears to be disparaging the law, what he really has in mind may not be the law itself, but the misunderstanding and misuse for which we have a convenient term.[2]

If Cranfield and Moule are right and Paul did use nomos (“law”) in these two different senses, then some changes in parts of reformed theology may be required. In the conclusion of his article just cited, Cranfield said:

If the foregoing exposition of Paul’s teaching on the law is substantially correct, it is clear that his authority cannot justly be claimed for…the view that the law was an unsuccessful first attempt on God’s part at dealing with man’s unhappy state, which had to be followed later by a second…attempt…; nor yet for the view (characteristic of Lutheranism) that in the law and gospel two “different modes of God’s action are manifested” [he is quoting from W. Niesel, Reformed Symbolics, 1962, p. 212], the ultimate unity of which, while it may indeed be supposed to exist in God, has not yet been revealed to us men. On the contrary, it is clear that we are true to Paul’s teaching, when we say that God’s word in Scripture is one; that there is but one way of God with men, and that an altogether gracious way…[3]

Indeed, reformed theology has always had difficulty with its antithesis between law and gospel. The problem in the Calvinistic branch of reformed theology began with the distinction Calvin drew between Moses’ “common office” and his “peculiar office.” In his common office, Moses, along with other scriptural spokesmen, set forth “promises of divine mercy, and those gratuitous: and thus it behooved him to be a preacher of the gospel.” But this common office of Moses, Calvin emphasizes, is somewhat obscure. What is much more prominent is Moses’ “peculiar office” “to teach the real righteousness of works,” so that “whenever the word law is thus strictly taken [Calvin calls this law the bare law—nuda lex—in the Institutes, II,7, 2], Moses is by implication opposed to Christ; and then we must consider what the law contains as separate from the gospel.”[4] In this sort of emphasis, which appears in many ways in Calvin’s writings, one finds the basic features of the covenant theology which the later Calvinists developed.

A recent writer, however, complains that reformed theology has a “dualism between law and grace,” a “junction of opposites in which God is seen as operating doubly in his encounters with men, now on the basis of law, now on the basis of grace, a double dealing which if not schizophrenic is at least polar and ever in paradoxical tension.”[5] John Murray, one of the foremost exponents today of the theological tradition noted for its covenant theology, his said in his booklet on the Covenant of Grace (1954) that covenant theology “needs recasting.”[6] He then goes on to affirm that even in the Mosaic covenant and the giving of the law God is dealing no less graciously with men than in the previous Abrahamic covenant or the succeeding new covenant. Likewise in his commentary (NIC series) on Rom 10:5 where Paul quotes Lev 18:5, “Keep my statutes and my ordinances, by doing which a man shall live,” Murray affirms that “in the original setting [Lev 18:5] does not appear to have any reference to legal righteousness as opposed to that of grace.”

But the root cause behind the distinctions drawn by Calvin and covenant theology are those statements in Paul where he seems to regard the law as opposite to the gospel and faith. One such statement is Gal 3:12 where he says “the law is not of faith,” and then using the wording of Lev 18:5, “He that doeth these things shall live in them,” sets forth what the “law” does say, in distinction to faith and the gospel. If Paul intended “law” in Gal 3:12 to represent the revelatory law, then Calvin was perfectly justified in saying that “Moses is by implication opposed to Christ” and the gospel. But if Paul sometimes used “law” in this and other places to represent the Jewish legalistic misinterpretation of the law, then covenant theology may well need a recasting.

What, then, did Paul mean by “law” in Gal 3:12? Following Moule’s advice that the meaning to be attached to nomos “has to be deduced from the ways in which the word is used,”[7] we begin our consideration of Gal 3:12 by starting back at verse 10. In particular we start by trying to understand what Paul meant by the “works of [the] law” in that verse, which reads, “As many as are of the works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who continues not in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them’ [Deut 27:26].”

I. “Works Of The Law” in Galatians 3:10

There are two propositions in Gal 3:10, the second being the argument, or support, for the first. All exegetes, including Calvin, would agree that “the works of the law,” that crucial term in the first proposition of verse 10, means living legalistically, that is, seeking by means of what one does to earn favor with God. But the crucial question is whether Paul intended this phrase to represent the legalistic living that the Mosaic law itself advocated, or whether he intended it to represent the legalistic misinterpretation of the law advocated by Judaism.

1. The coherency of the argument in Galatians 3:10

We note, first of all, that if “the works of the law” represents the legalism advocated by the Mosaic law itself, then the argument of verse 10 will make sense only if one adds a whole proposition to that verse. Almost all commentators follow Calvin in inserting between the first and the second halves of verse 10 the proposition that “all are held chargeable of this guilt [of coming short of some part of the law].” What Paul is saying, then, is that since Deut 27:26 says that men are cursed if they don’t do what the law commands (v. 10b), and since—the reader must supply this proposition—since all men are guilty of disobeying the law to some extent, therefore all who try to gain God’s favor by doing what the law commands are under a curse (v. 10a).

There would be no need of adding a proposition to verse 10 were Paul to have stated the first clause negatively and said, “All who do not comply with what the law demands are under a curse (10a), for the law itself invokes a curse on those who do not obey it (10b).” But the first half of verse 10 has no adverb of negation. Instead, it speaks positively: All those who are engaged in the works of the law are under a curse. But if these works are what the law itself is commanding, then the citation of Deut 27:26 in the second half of the verse cannot, by itself, be an argument or support for the first half. That the law invokes a curse on all who break its commands cannot be an argument to support the cursedness of all who are obeying the law’s commands. So almost all commentators have felt compelled to add the negative proposition that no one succeeds in keeping the law perfectly.

The Swedish exegete Ragnar Bring,[8] however, argues that “the works of the law” does not represent what the law itself commands, but rather the Jewish misinterpretation of the law. Consequently, he has no necessity for supplying a separate proposition. As he expounds Galatians 3:10 the argument runs, Cursed is everyone who transgresses the law by trying to conform to it by legalistic endeavors, for Deut 27:26 invokes a curse upon those guilty of such monstrous crimes as incest, bestiality, sodomy, bribery, murder for hire, and so on. On this line of interpretation the legalistic frame of mind, which seeks to earn God’s favor, would be in a category with these heinous crimes, since it involves trying to bribe God to impart blessing on the basis of the good works that one does. In this connection it should be pointed out that the law flatly states that the Lord “takes no bribe” (Deut 10:17), and these three words make it impossible to construe the Mosaic law, or any part of it, as setting forth a “covenant of works,” the term agreed upon by the later Calvinists for expressing Calvin’s idea that the bare law, by its conditional blessings, advocates that men try to “merit righteousness by the works of the law” (Institutes, II, 7, 2—”merit” is from demereo, “to earn thoroughly”).

So by regarding “the works of the law” in Gal 3:10 as the sin of bribing God, coherency is attained in the argument of Gal 3:10, without resorting to the highly arbitrary procedure of adding a whole proposition to this verse.

2. Paul’s life-situation in writing Galatians 3:10

More evidence for construing “the works of the law” as the sin of legalism comes from the teaching of the Judaizers, whose recent arrival among the churches of Galatia had prompted Paul to write this epistle. The probability is that Paul was fully acquainted with this teaching and that his argument in Galatians could be effective only to the extent that it started from a basis that both he and the Judaizers regarded as true.

The contours of the Judaizers’ teaching can be traced out from some of the Old Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, the early Rabbinic writings, and from allusions to it found throughout the New Testament. From these sources it can be shown that a Judaizer would have agreed with Paul that all men have sinned. For example, in the Midrash on Ps 143:2 (“Enter not into judgment with thy servant; for no man living is righteous before thee”), the following statements appear:

Who can say, I have purified my heart, Prov 20:9? No man, by himself, can regard himself as righteous at the day of judgment. Why?…There is no man who has not sinned, 1 Kings 8:46….Therefore Psalm 143:2 says that before God there is no person living who is righteous. Does “no person living” imply that the dead, then, are righteous? To the contrary, even the saintly beings of the heavenly world cannot justify themselves before God in the day of judgment.[9]

But alongside this emphasis on universal sinfulness, Judaism affirmed that God would forgive the sins of people who fulfilled certain conditions. Rabbi Eleazar (c. 150 A.D.), citing Exodus 34:7 that God forgives “iniquity and transgression and sin,” affirmed that “God forgives the repentant.”[10] A great authority on Judaism, George Foote Moore, lamented the proneness of Protestants to forget that forgiveness, on the basis of repentance, is very central to Jewish thinking.[11]

How then did Judaism understand Deut 27:26 (“Cursed be he who does not confirm the words of this law to do them”), which forms the premise for Paul’s conclusion in Gal 3:10 that “as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse”? Naturally, a teaching which stressed the universality of human sinfulness and the possibility of divine forgiveness would not construe Deut 27:26 to mean, in accordance with the usual Protestant interpretation, that failure for one moment to keep but one of the law’s slightest commands consigned a man irrevocably to God’s curse. In the Jewish understanding of Deut 27:26, emphasis is laid upon the causative form of the verb “to stand” (yaqim), which the RSV translates as “confirm.” So to avoid the curse threatened in this verse a man must engage in some concrete way of supporting the law, or “causing it to stand.” So, for example, Rabbi Huna (c. 350 A.D.) said:

When one stumbles into sin and thus becomes worthy of death from God’s hand, what should he do in order to live? If he had been accustomed to read one page in the scriptures, now he should read two…But if he had not been accustomed to read the scriptures…what should he then do, in order to remain alive? He should go and become a leader in the synagogue, or become a collector of alms…For if [Deut 27:26] said, “Cursed be he who does not learn,” then there would be no hope for him. But this passage says, “Cursed be he who does not uphold (yaqim)…[12]

So it is extremely difficult to suppose that the Paul who was so familiar with the teachings of the Judaizers could have intended by his quotation of Deut 27:26 in Gal 3:10 a meaning that they could counter so easily simply by quoting Ex 34:7. But if in quoting Deut 27:26 in Gal 3:10 Paul’s meaning was that those submitting to the Jews’ legalistic way of understanding the law are cursed because bribery, to say nothing of bribing God, is so contrary to the law itself (see Deut 27:25; cf. 10:17), then the Old Testament itself, on which the Judaizers supposedly based their arguments, would deny their teachings.

But the objection should be considered that in the Jewish parlance of that day, “the works of the law” meant doing what the law commands, and to a Jew carried no implication at all of committing some heinous sin. The commentators Strack-Billerbeck affirm that

…were an individual, according to his duty, to have been led by the Torah, so would his deeds be regarded as opera praeceptorum, that is, works to which the Torah had given direction, and which arise from obedience to the Torah. The apostle [Paul] has attached the same meaning with his words erga nomou [“works of the law”]: they are works which are the result of the observance or performance of the law.[13]

A passage supporting this conclusion comes from the Apocalypse of Baruch, 57:2: “At that time the unwritten law was named amongst [the Patriarchs], and the works of the commandments [italics added] were then fulfilled…” So it might be argued that Paul surely could not have used “works of the law” as meaning rebellion against God when this term in Jewish parlance had the opposite meaning of doing precisely what God’s law enjoins.

But before being persuaded by this line of argument, we should consider another phrase of Paul’s which finds a parallel in a Jewish language convention of those days. In Phil 3:9 and Rom 10:3 Paul speaks of himself at a previous time, and the Jews at the present time, as trying to establish their “own righteousness.” “[One’s] own works” was a similar way in Jewish parlance for representing disobedience to the law. According to the Apocalypse of Baruch, 48:38, “It shall come to pass at the self-same time, that a change of times shall manifestly appear to every man, because in all those times they polluted themselves and they practiced oppression, and walked every man in his own works [italics added], and remembered not the law of the Mighty One.”[14] Although Paul uses the term “own righteousness” rather than “own works” in Rom 10:3 and Phil 3:9, yet it is clear enough from these passages that he intends this similar expression also to represent rebellion against God.

But in Phil 3:9 Paul used the word “law” as a synonym for the rebellion of trying to establish one’s “own righteousness.” He said, “That I may be found in Christ, not having my own righteousness, which is of the law.” Here Paul uses a language convention which is similar to the Jewish way of expressing rebellion against the law, but says that this rebellion is “of the law”! How shocking to Jewish ears to hear the law spoken of as synonymous with sin! But we argue that Paul deliberately used such language for shock effect, as a way of getting the Jew to see that his sin against God consisted chiefly in his legalistic attitude of trying to bribe God and in his misinterpreting the law so that it would support that attitude.

So if Paul, in Phil 3:9, departed so radically from the Jewish way of speaking of the law by making the word “law” a synonym for the Jewish way of expressing rebellion against God, then we have an analogy for supposing that he also used the term “the works of the law” with a meaning that was shocking to Jewish ears. Instead of signifying adherence to the law, Paul used this term to represent the ultimate transgression of the law, the legalism which presumes that the Lord, who is not “served by human hands, as though he needed anything” (Acts 17:25), can nevertheless be bribed and obligated to bestow blessing by the way men distinguish themselves. Strack Billerbeck are right in understanding what “the works of the law” meant in ordinary Jewish language. But they were wrong in assuming that Paul assigned the same meaning to this term. Georg Bertram, who wrote the article on ergon (“work”) in Kittel, says: “The erga nomou which are at issue for Paul have become a means of self-righteousness for the Jews. Hence they are no longer [for Paul] an expression of the absolute requirement of God,…but they spring from man’s arrogant striving after self-righteousness.”[15]

3. The “works of the law” in Galatians 2:15-16

Naturally, the way this term was used earlier, and especially in its first appearance, in Gal 2:16 (where it appears three times), must be considered in determining the meaning of Gal 3:10ff. Beginning with Gal 2:15 the text reads:

We ourselves, who are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet who know that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, in order that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight.

We observe that (1) this statement comes right after the paragraph recounting Paul’s clash with Peter at Antioch on the matter of Jewish dietary regulations (2:11–14), and that (2) the three-fold reference to the “works of the law” in verse 16 helps to complete the sentence beginning at verse 15 with a reference to how Jews, adhering to such distinctives as their dietary regulations, regarded themselves as superior to Gentile “sinners.” Modern expositors agree that Paul was not using “sinner” in verse 15 in the usual sense of one who had, in fact, disobeyed God’s will, but rather in that Jewish sense in which this word was a virtual synonym for “Gentile.”[16] As Jews proudly reflected upon their great zeal in keeping the law, and particularly its more “ceremonial” aspects, such as dietary regulations and circumcision, it was easy for them to regard Gentiles as “sinners” just because they were indifferent to these “ceremonial” or cultural stipulations.

So one significant fact for determining what Paul meant by the “works of the law” in verse 16 is that his attention has been focused in the immediately preceding context, not on the whole Mosaic law, but rather on its ceremonial aspects, whose zealous observance provided the Jews with fuel for the pride by which they regarded themselves as superior to the rest of men. On the basis of this line of thought the “works of the law” would then refer to the ways in which a Jew felt he distinguished himself from other men and thereby gained acceptance with God. This meaning of the “works of the law” would honor the emphatic antithesis in 2:16 between this term and faith in Christ, for the pride in what one himself does to distinguish himself from others would be totally incompatible with deriving one’s confidence only from what Another has done.

But Calvin argued that the meaning of this term in Gal 2:16 must not be derived from the stress in the immediately preceding context on the ceremonial aspects of the Mosaic law. This was how the Romanists interpreted this verse in Calvin’s day. According to them, Christ’s coming had made these Jewish ceremonies outdated, and so Paul’s statement in Gal 2:16 means that men are saved, not by persisting in these ceremonies, but by following Christ. But since this loyalty to Christ excluded further loyalty only to the ceremonial law, it therefore did not exclude the need to be obedient to the moral aspects of the Mosaic law. Since faith in Christ did not exclude obedience to the moral precepts, it was easy for the Romanists to regard faith as necessarily including obedience to these precepts as a meritorious work which earned salvation.

Thus Calvin argued that, although Paul had been thinking only about the ceremonial law up to verse 16, nevertheless beginning with that verse “the moral law is also comprehended in [the ‘works of the law’], for almost everything Paul adds [from verse 16 on] relates to the moral rather than the ceremonial law” (comm. on Gal 2:15). As Calvin saw it, only if one understood the “works of the law” as referring to all that the Mosaic law really commanded could one honor the antithesis Paul draws between them and faith in Christ. Not Paul’s line of thought up to Gal 2:16 but the way he used nomos afterwards—that, according to Calvin, is decisive for construing the “works of the law” in that verse.

The next use of the word nomos occurs in 2:19, and indeed there is general agreement that at least one of its two occurrences there refers to the whole revelatory law of Moses. But a rather decisive objection against Calvin’s argument comes from observing that Paul’s attention is still focused upon the ceremonial aspects of the law up into verse 18, where he says, “If I build up again the things which I tore down….” Peter’s action at Antioch provides the best clue for understanding what Paul is referring to in this metaphorical language of “building up” and “tearing down.” Like Peter, Paul had also torn down any further dependence on the Jewish distinctives for giving him acceptance with God, and became assured of that only on the basis of what Christ had accomplished. But now Peter, by breaking off table fellowship with the Gentile believers when emissaries from the mother church at Jerusalem had come to Antioch, had built up these distinctives again. Such an action encouraged the Gentile believers to establish a frame of mind in which their observance of the Jewish distinctives would now be vital to any “faith” in Christ. Paul, however, would have nothing to do with rebuilding such a frame of mind, especially when he remembered how in his erstwhile zealous adherence to the Jewish distinctives he had succeeded only in becoming the chief of sinners.

But if Paul, as late as verse 18, is still thinking about the law in these ceremonial aspects just as he was in verses 11–15, then it is well nigh impossible to regard verse 16 as a parenthesis where he thinks about the law as a whole. So his three-fold use of the “works of the law” in verse 16 should be construed from the vantage point of his concern with the ceremonial aspect of the law and not from the law as a whole, especially “the moral law,” as Calvin argued. So in repudiating “the works of the law” in Gal 2:15–16, Paul is not repudiating Moses, but that legalistic frame of mind in which the Jews, for example, regarded their adherence to certain distinctives as making them superior to others and thereby earning God’s favor. Therefore it is natural to assume that Paul meant the same thing by the “works of the law” when he used this term again in Gal 3:10.

II. The Train of Thought in Galatians 3:11-12

Gal 3:11 reads, “Now it is evident that no man is justified before God by the law, for ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live’.” We observe that the statement, “No man is justified before God by the law” in verse 11 is simply a negative way of saying in verse 10 that men who are of the works of the law are under a curse. So if the “works of the law” are responsible for the curse of verse 10, then the “law” which is also responsible for the curse of not being justified in verse 11 must be the same as the “works of the law.” In other words, Paul’s “law” in Gal 3:11, which is so obviously one and the same with the “works of the law” in verse 10, is an example, like Phil 3:9, of the use of the word “law” to represent legalism, rather than the revelatory law itself.

Further evidence of this comes from the parallel passage in Rom 3:28: “We hold that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.” Here faith is contrasted with the works of the law, whereas in Gal 3:11 it is contrasted simply with “law.” It was fitting for Paul to use his full-blown term for legalism in Rom 3:28, for an examination of the context there shows how that verse is a conclusion for an argument that began back at Rom 3:21, and in a conclusion abbreviated language like “law” gives way to more precise, albeit cumbersome, language, like “works of the law.” By the same token it was fitting for Paul simply to use the word “law” when saying the same thing as Rom 3:28 in Gal 3:11, for he had just used his full-blown term for legalism in the preceding verse and there was no need to keep repeating that mouthful.

What then is the meaning of “law” in Gal 3:12: “And the law is not of faith, but he that does these things shall live in them”? There is no reason to suppose that Paul now shifts the meaning of “law” from the legalistic misunderstanding of the law to the revelatory law. We note that in verse 12 Paul is continuing the contrast begun in verse 11 between faith and its opposite. Since verse 11 contrasts faith, the proper attitude toward God, with its opposite, the improper attitude of legalism, it would be hard not to understand verse 12 as continuing this contrast of attitudes. So verse 12’s statement that “the law is not of faith” means that “legalism is an attitude of heart which cannot coexist with the attitude of faith.”

But it may be objected that “law” in 3:12 must mean the objective law itself, since Paul cites words from Lev 18:5 which are in that objective law. But the legalism which gloried so in its supposed loyalty to Moses was constantly quoting the wording of Lev 18:5 in support for its life style. The Psalms of Solomon are generally regarded as an expression of the Pharisaic point of view, and they use the wording of Lev 18:5, “Faithful is the Lord…to them that walk…in the law which He commanded that we might live” (Ps of Sol., 14:1f). It would be perfectly natural for Paul, therefore, in summing up the legalistic affirmation in a single motto, likewise to use the wording of Lev 18:5. But Paul does not cite Moses as an authority for Lev 18:5 here, as he does in Rom 10:5, because the meaning which he intends these words to convey in Gal 3:12 is not the meaning that Moses himself intended.

As a further argument for interpreting Gal 3:12 in this way, we should take note of two passages in Paul which make it impossible to suppose that he regarded the Mosaic law itself to be contrary to faith. In Rom 9:31–32a, Paul asserted that though Israel sought the law of righteousness, she did not attain that law because she sought it not from faith, but as by works. This “as” signifies the subjectivity of Israel’s life style. The grammarian Winer says: “The expression ek pisteos [by faith] denotes the objective standard; [and] [“as by works”] the purely imaginary standard.”[17] According to what Paul says in this verse, then, the objective law teaches faith, not works. But the Jews lived according to works because that was their subjective and fanciful way of interpreting the law.

The second passage is Rom 3:31, where Paul, in answer to the question, “Do we then overthrow the law by this faith?” replies, “By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.” In speaking of upholding the law, Paul seems to be drawing upon the Jewish way of understanding Deut 27:26, which stresses that those are under a curse who do not uphold the law.[18] Paul viewed himself as upholding the law by teaching the faith that the law itself enjoins, and so it would be difficult to understand him to be saying in Gal 3:12 that the Mosaic law itself proposes a way of life that is the opposite of faith. All falls into place, however, when Gal 3:12 is understood to mean that the legalistic attitude is the opposite of faith.

One central aspect of reformation theology, however, has been that Moses, at least in his “particular office” (Calvin), taught what was the opposite of faith. But if Paul was not using nomos in the revelatory sense in Gal 3:12, then some substantial changes would have to be made in the theology which stresses sola scriptura along with sola fide.

Notes

1. C. F. D. Moule, “Obligation in the Ethic of Paul,” Christian History and Interpretation: Studies Presented to John Knox. W. R. Farmer, et al. (eds.) (Cambridge: at the University Press, 1967), pp. 392f.
2. C. E. B. Cranfield, “St. Paul and the Law,” Scottish Journal of Theology 17, 1 (March, 1964), p. 55. Part of the thesis to be developed in this paper, however, is that while Paul found no single Greek word adequate for denoting the idea of legalism, yet he sometimes used the Greek of a Rabbinical phrase for “the works of the law” to designate legalism. But this phrase was rather cumbersome, and so Paul also simply used the word “law” to represent not the revelation given to Moses, but the legalistic misunderstanding of the law which the majority of the Jews espoused from the time of Moses onward.
3. Ibid., p. 68.
4. The quotations for these distinctions in Calvin’s view of Moses come from his commentary on Romans 10:5.
5. Holmes Ralston, III, John Calvin versus the Westminster Confession (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1972), p. 37.
6. John Murray, The Covenant of Grace (London: The Tyndale Press, 1954), p. 5.
7. Supra, note 1. In earlier decades a number of expositors (e.g., J. B. Lightfoot, G. Volkmar, A. H. Gifford, and E. W. Burton) argued that nomos without the article carried a stress not on the objective Mosaic law, but on law as having the qualities of law, such as legalism. But one problem (among others) which this theory cannot adequately explain is the interchange between Jo nomos and nomos in Rom 7:7–12. Since both of these forms are used in parallel with entole (“commandment”), which must refer to a concrete, historical utterance by Moses, it is impossible to think of the anarthrous nomos in this passage as not also referring to the objective Mosaic law, rather than some qualitative concept. So Werner G. Kuemmel, Roemer 7 und die Bekehrung des Paulus. Untersuchungen zum N.T., Hrsg. von Hans Windisch, Heft 17 (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrich’sche Buchhandlung, 1929), p. 55, concludes that “the constantly interchanging use of nomos and Jo nomos in the closely knit line of thought in Rom 7:7–12 provides a coherent meaning only when these two forms signify the same sense, namely the Mosaic law.” So Kuemmel, like Moule, goes on to recommend letting the immediate context, rather than the use of the article, control the particular meaning of nomos in any particular Pauline passage.
8. Ragnar Bring, Commentary on Galatians. E. Wahlstrom (tr.) (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1961), pp. 120ff; also “Das Gesetz und die Gerechtigkeit Gottes,” Theologica Studia, 20(1966), pp. 21ff. Martin Noth also argues that “the works of the law” in Galatians 3:10 designate the legalistic misinterpretation of the law rather than what the law itself taught in “‘Die mit des Gesetzes Werken umgehen, die sind unter dem Fluch’.” Gesammelte Studien zum Alten Testament, Theologische Buecherei, 6 (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1957), pp. 155-171, esp. p. 171.
9. Strack-Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament (Munich: C. H. Bech, 19613) III, 157, on Rom 3:9.
10. Strack-Billerbeck, I, 637, on Matt 12:32.
11. G. F. Moore, Judaism. 3 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1927), I, pp. 507, 521.
12. Strack-Billerbeck, III, p. 541, on Gal 3:10.
13. Strack-Billerbeck, III, pp. 160ff, on Rom 3:20.
14. These quotations are taken from R. H. Charles (ed.), The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, 2 vols. (Oxford: at the Clarendon Press, 1913). The exact title that Charles gives to what we have called “The Apocalypse of Baruch” is “2 Baruch, or The Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch.”
15. Kittel, TDNT, II, p. 651.
16. E.g., 1 Macc 1:34; Tobit 13:6; also the word “Gentile” in Matt 5:47, whose parallel in Luke 6:32f has the word “sinner” instead.
17. Georg B. Winer, Grammar of the Idiom of the New Testament. 7th ed.; H. Thayer (tr.) (Andover: Warren F. Draper, 1897), p. 619.
18. Cf. Supra, note 12.