Tuesday, 29 December 2015

Paul and the Torah,
Lloyd Gaston, Wipf & Stock, 2006, page 147-148

Gaston's second answer to the question "Why will all Israel be saved?" goes like this:

The second answer is that "there will come from Zion the Redeemer". I believe this to be only a variant of the first answer, but it deserves special treatment because most interpreters have seen here a reference to the parousia of Christ. It could be asked whether Paul could ever think of God apart from Christ, but this question can be answered if at all only in connection with an exegesis of 1 Corinthians 15:28. It may be that Christ was in Paul's mind, but even so it would be completely wrong to speak of an end-time conversion. If Christ is meant, then it is Christ in a different role, Christ as the agent of the "Sonderweg" of Israel's salvation. Some Jews have thought that eschatalogically Gentiles would be absorbed into Israel, and most Christians have thought that eschatalogically Jews would be absorbed into the church, but Paul's conviction is God's righteousness for salvation for both, without changing one into the other.