Joseph Prince: Paul's Theology versus the New Testament

Every now and then, somebody says something that begs the obvious question, "Why didn't Jesus preach what Paul preached?" or alternatively, "Why don't we have a more direct link between Jesus' recorded words and the theological statements in Paul's letters?" (That last question is certainly more of a mouthful.)  This entry's inspiration is drawn from one of the less vitriolic criticisms of Joseph Prince.

Prince seems to quote the Gospels only occasionally, which gives me the impression he probably believes much of the teaching is not relevant to the church age because the Gospels were written before the Resurrection. This enables Prince (and typical hyperdispensationalists) to avoid dealing with the command for believers to take up their cross (Mark 8:34-36) and other such passages that demand high commitment.

I believe any teacher who is called to preach like Paul the apostle must preach the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27), which means they need to include equally the Gospels and the epistles of John, Jude, Peter and James as well as the book of Hebrews and the Old Testament.

Joseph Mattera concedes that Prince has "enough good stuff" that warrants recommending his book for "certain Christians suffering from a performance trap in which they try to earn God’s favor and love by the things they do instead of through the merit of Christ’s finished work."  But to restate the quandary yet again, are we using the non-Pauline writings of the New Testament to understand Paul's revelation, or to undo it.  If the texts are contradicting Joseph Prince's theology are they prima facie contradicting Paul's theology--that is, without interpretation being forced to protect the axiom that the writings never contradict each other because they are all divinely inspired.  We should be wary of a forced syncretism of the NT writings that refuses to acknowledge what Paul was saying.


The words of Jesus are more problematic than Paul's, because Jesus admits that most of his ministry is under the Old Covenant (preaching a gospel that is only for the lost sheep of Israel), because Jesus notes that the meaning of most of his message is hidden under a veil of parables, and because the context of his sayings are reconstructed years after the fact by men who were notorious for misunderstanding him.  The first three gospel accounts (chronologically and otherwise) do not even involve key revelations (that appear later in the fourth gospel) about who he was and his ultimate mission for the whole world.  Aside from the later "Johannine writings," it is the Pauline writings (and the Hebrews epistle which is often thought to be very influenced by Paul if not written by him) that start to indicate more explicit divinity to Jesus than being the son of Deity.

What Mattera is getting at is that there is a core revelation of morality that the law was meant to convey aside from what Paul's describes as the revelation of human inability to live up to God's morality.  The controversial statement by Paul, which is often played down to accommodate the other writings in the New Testament, is that actual requirements/ ordinances/ mitzvot were nailed to the cross, mystically speaking.  Mattera argues that the passage in Colossians is only talking about the ceremonial laws in the Torah.  What do these teachers make of  Jesus' saying in Matthew's gospel that we must teach the most insignificant commandments of the Torah?  Jesus tells us what the greatest commandments of the Torah are, but he did not excuse his listeners from any part of the Torah, and even told them that their most insignificant acts could violate the Torah.  What do we make of the saying that not one jot or tittle would pass away?

Now Paul agreed with the idea that the Tanakh, the Torah in particular, was "profitable" for moral revelation.  But he also said that to be "alive unto God" one had to be "dead to the law."  Taking into account the "whole counsel of God," as Mattera puts it, we find that the Tanakh can only be profitable in this way through revelation of the anointing within.  Without the Holy Spirit revealing all truth to us, the Tanakh is only the "ministration of death" revealing how our human righteousness cannot help but come short--a revelation which the Sermon on the Mount can only bring into sharper relief, not explaining how the lost sheep of Israel can be like their Father in heaven or how their righteousness can exceed that of the ultra-strict sect of the Pharisees.  It is the "law of Christ" written within and illuminated with the Holy Spirit that can enable us operate in the long-suffering love that Jesus claimed epitomized the Father's character -- which the Tanakh can only shed positive light (that avoiding the "performance trap in which [believers] try to earn God’s favor") through the intervention of the Spirit.

I believe that Paul would agree with Prince that grace is the key to living in the "law of Christ." As Prince says, holiness that is by human willpower and not by the Spirit of Grace is merely "pseudo-holiness."  And I believe that most of today's church, including almost all the critics of "hyper-grace," would never be accused, as Paul was, of giving people a license to sin.  They would not be accused of this for the simple reason that they do not preach the same radical message, for fear that people with misuse the revelation and for fear that there is "another side to the story."  "Yes, it is all grace but ..."  "Yes, we are dead to the law, but ..."  "Yes, it is Christ that lives in me, but ..."  "Yes, it is all by the Spirit, but ..." Every bit of Christ-exalting, Spirit-empowering radicalism is undercut, with the explanations generally contradicting statements by Paul.

The epistle of James is sometimes quoted as an antidote to Paul's radical message of being justified by faith.  James refers to Abraham as though in reply to the teaching that Abraham was justified by faith, and it thus our example, and he asserts that Abraham was justified by his works.  Yet, unlike Paul, this assertion is not based on a particular phrase in the Tanakh.  James doesn't quote.  So we are in the difficult position of having to assign some other meaning of "justified" in James's writing in order to not give up the authenticity of James' understanding.  James' letter seems to be written from the perspective of someone who had only been privy to the Sermon on the Mount and not to many of the discourses recorded in the fourth gospel.  It is not clear that James is one of the Twelve (is Jesus' brother the son of Alphaeus?), and it seems clear that Jesus' brothers did not follow him throughout his three years of ministry.  Paul's testimony is that James did not confront him face-to-face over any doctrinal differences, so James no doubt understood that Paul did continue value the Tanakh as a testimony of moral conscience.  Paul also makes clear that James' disciples influenced Peter with un-Christ-like expectations.

Paul told the Colossians to not let anyone judge them according to the laws of Moses, because the requirements of the infractions were nailed to the cross --otherwise how could we be dead to the law by dying with Jesus the Anointed?

The Ten Commandments were not just individual commands for piety and holiness but were primarily given as a corporate structure to disciple the burgeoning nation of Israel (Ex. 20:1-2).

You mean, as in the Paul's letter to the Galatians where he says that the law was given as a paidogogos to lead to Christ, but is not needed as a paidogogos once one has Christ?

Mattera discriminates between the Ten Commandments and the ceremonial law, but the Sabbath, concerning which the Colossians were to let no person judge them, is one of the Ten Commandments.  Is it not enough for the Holy Spirit to disciple us?  Paul's revelation is that the power of the law to disciple operates on the power of human ability, which makes it ultimately powerless to truly make us better people.  We can't die to our own human ability, our own human self-righteousness, without dying to the law, and counting all acts of righteousness that we hope would "make our calling and election sure" to be "dung" that we may stand in Someone Else's righteousness.  If the power of the law to disciple (or to do anything) is the power of the flesh, then asking with Paul, "Having begun in the Spirit, are you now made perfect by the flesh?"