Untitled Sermon

Perfecting the Cross: An Attempt to Explain Paul’s Argument in Thesis: The concept of perfection is a helpful heuristic tool to analyze how Pauline scholarship has perfected the idea of crucifixion in Paul’s thought in Galatians. John Barclay in his 2015 monograph Paul and the Gift, employed a term from the 20th century literary critic Kenneth Burke, called a perfection, to account for the various implications of the terms χαρις, δωρον, ελεος, and (blank) in select authors of early Judaism. Barclay’s thesis, “That grace is everywhere in Second Temple Judaism, but not everywhere the same”1 responds directly to E.P. Sanders landmark verdict in Sanders’ 1977 work Paul and Palestinian Judaism.2 Sander’s helped to bring to the forefront in contemporary Pauline scholarship that Judaism, as it existed in the texts Sanders investigated from the Mishnah, Talmud, and Pseudepigraphal literature, was not a religion of works-based righteousness but a religion of grace. Sanders exchanges the overarching paradigm of works-based salvation in Judaism for a different paradigm of Judaism, which presents a pattern of religion of grace. The point of this talk is not to assess Barclay’s utilization of the idea of perfection, but to test-drive it in a new but perhaps complementary direction. Returning to the idea of perfection, any time an author uses a word he or she implicitly or explicitly defines a word to the nth degree, bringing to the forefront one of the logical implications of the word itself. This brief thought experiment seeks to analyze how the cross has been perfected in the thought of three interpreters of Paul, Martin Luther, James Dunn, and John Barclay. To account for time only their interpretations of , διʼ οὗ ἐμοὶ κόσμος ἐσταύρωται κἀγὼ κόσμῳ. This choice is also calculated in that scholarship recognizes the summarizing nature of for Paul’s argument,3 of which 6:14b figures prominently. Additionally, the passage is helpful to ascertain the perfections of the cross operative in each author because all three understand the cross in Paul’s theology to be a reversal of all human values.

1Quotation from P&G.

2E.P. Sanders citation

3Jeffrey A. D Weima, Neglected Endings: The Significance of the Pauline Letter Closings, Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 101 (Sheffield, England: JSOT Press, 1994); Jeff Hubing, Crucifixion and New Creation: The Strategic Purpose of , Library of New Testament Studies 508 (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015).