Picking up from the previous post:

(4) Finally, Sim fails to appreciate the implications of what Paul actually does with the Law: he follows Jesus’ Matthew in throwing fidelity to Jesus as Lord and the love command front and center, the latter appearing not only in Matthew 22 but in a different form in the Sermon itself. Sim’s account requires that Matthew does not accept or appreciate such passages as Romans 6:17-23, 8:2-4, 13:8-10; and Galatians 5:13-15, 6:2-5; 6:7-9, to cite the two most “licentious” letters, wherein Paul informs his readers that true law and the goal of the “Spirit” and “freedom” consists in obeying the same love commandment Jesus put front and center in Matthew 22.

Matthew, like James, could well be writing against distortions of the Pauline gospel. But he cannot be said to be writing against Paul himself (or even Acts’ Paul, which has Paul insisting on “fruit in keeping with repentance” just like Matthew’s John the Baptist and Jesus in the paragraph before the one on which Sim is focused), and thus the caricature “anti-Pauline” is misleading and unhelpful in describing Matthew’s thrust here and elsewhere. He combats licentiousness, yes, but not the circumcision-diet-and-calendar free Christianity on offer in Paul.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 31st, 2007 at 10:28 pm by jbhood and is filed under gospel of matthew. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.