Stoned-Campbell Disciple

In 2 Corinthians 3.1-4.6, Paul is defending his apostolic ministry (from the “super apostles” (11.4-5, 22). This is crystal clear in the text itself in 4.2-3. The topic is not the “old” covenant nor how to distinguish the Testaments (something neither Paul nor the Corinthians ever heard of). We need to read the text in light of what Paul’s intent actually is.

This section is dense with references to the Hebrew Bible and issues of translation as well as Western Christianity’s tendency to impose Plato upon Paul. To begin with Moses is NOT removed anyway one slices this text.  What is removed is the “veil” for reading Moses.  

One more major conceptual point needs to be made as we approach this text. Modern Americans (especially in the Stone-Campbell Movement and Protestantism in general) read Paul with the ASSUMPTION that Paul (and thus Jesus) left one religion (Judaism) and started a completely DIFFERENT religion (Christianity). This is extremely difficult to prove. The apostle Paul never left Judaism. It is one of the starkest facts of the entire NT that Paul never uses the word “Christian” for himself or anyone else (the word “Christianity” itself is not attested to prior to the first third of the SECOND century). Not once. He remained a Pharisee till he died. A Pharisee wrote Galatians and a Pharisee wrote Romans. Embracing Jesus as the Messiah is not to leave the religion of Israel it is to embrace what it is all about. Christ is a Jewish title (it means King). Jesus is the King of ISRAEL. Israel is renewed it is not cast aside. Gentiles are grafted into Israel, they do not replace Israel. To say it simply, Jews on Pentecost embraced the Promised One; Gentiles did converted in that they left false gods for the One True God and his Messiah/King, Jesus of Nazareth. Eighteen hundred years of anti-Semiticism has had horrific results in reading the New Testament.

The Text from the NRSV

“Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Surely, we do not need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you, do we? ² You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by all, ³ and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets that are human hearts.

⁴ Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. ⁵ Not that we are qualified of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our qualification is from God, ⁶ who has made us qualified to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

⁷ Now if the ministry of death, chiseled in letters on stone tablets, came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses’s face because of the glory of his face, a glory now set aside, ⁸ how much more will the ministry of the Spirit come in glory? ⁹ For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory! ¹⁰ Indeed, what once had glory has in this respect lost its glory because of the greater glory, ¹¹ for if what was set aside came through glory, much more has the permanent come in glory!

¹² Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with complete frankness, ¹³ not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside. ¹⁴ But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, the same veil is still there; it is not unveiled since in Christ it is set aside. ¹⁵ Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds, ¹⁶ but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. ¹⁷ Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. ¹⁸ And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.

4 Therefore, since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart. ² We have renounced the shameful, underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God. ³ And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. ⁴ In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing clearly the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. ⁵ For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’s sake. ⁶ For it is the God who said, “Light will shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the gloryof God in the face of Christ.”

CRUX ISSUES IN THE TEXT

Second Peter 3 confesses there are some difficult texts in Paul. This is certainly one of them. This is not irrelevant for this passage because there are numerous things in the “new” covenant that are quite difficult to understand (we will deal with the word “new” further below). Approaching this text with numerous unspoken and unchecked assumptions further (and ironically) “veils” the passage for modern American readers.

But we can get at the gist of the passage if we are willing do some “grunt” work. First question to ask is “what is this passage about?” It is not Paul’s intention to propound a doctrine of “old” and “new” covenant.

Second Corinthians 3.1-4.6 is NOT about the distinction of the so called “old” and so called “new” covenant. It is Paul’s purpose to defend himself as an apostle called by the King of Israel. His ministry will therefore have both similarities and dissimilarities with the ministry of Moses. It is first unclear why Paul brings up Moses but a number of scholars read the text as Paul does so precisely because the critics have made a claim to him.  If this is the case then Paul is responding to arguments put forth by the “super apostles” regarding themselves.

Paul is not anti-Moses. Put a peg down there (and neither is Hebrews nor Jesus himself. Jesus is LIKE Moses even if greater).  I remind people that the New Testament teaches that we will sing the “Song of MOSES and the Lamb” in the New Heavens and New Earth, not the “Song of PAUL and the Lamb.” Scripture holds Moses in far higher regard than most in the Stone-Campbell Movement.

1) Letter and Spirit.  This is an unfortunate traditional translation because of the Platonic baggage westerners bring to the text. Platonic eyes see here a distinction between externalism/ritualism vs internalism/true spirituality or a literal meaning vs some “spiritual” one. These are flat wrong. The word rendered “letter” is the Greek “gramma” (where we get grammar from). The gramma is NOT the Bible/scripture. Paul’s word for scripture, like all the NT and Jews in general, is “graphe” (i.e. ‘the writings). Paul is not contrasting the Scriptures of Israel with the Spirit of the so-called New Covenant.  One being “carnal” and the other “spiritual.”

As NT scholar Richard Hays has noted.  Turning “letter and spirit” into some kind of Platonic dualism (outward v inward; flesh v soul) shatters Paul’s message. It is precisely the flesh and blood embodied Corinthian community that is the Spirit created manifestation of the kainos covenant.  

When Paul brings up the gramma and pneuma it is NOT to contrast scripture from Genesis-Malachi with Matthew-Revelation (most of which did not even exist yet!). Nor is it to contrast the covenant of Moses with the covenant of King Jesus.  It is to contrast the “letter of recommendation” demanded by Pauline opponents with the physical existence of the Corinthian believers who are the result of the work/creation of the pneuma.

So, first point to nail down, “letter v spirit,” bad translation and worse Platonism, has nothing to do with how to evaluate the relationship between the so-called Old Covenant and the so-called New Covenant in the text. “YOU [the flesh and blood Corinthians!] are a letter from the King.”

Paul in fact teaches that not only the covenant, but the LAW is “good” “holy” and “spiritual!” (Romans 7.12, 14). Paul claims, like Psalm 19, he “delights” in God’s law (Romans 7.22). And shockingly to many Restorationist/Evangelicals, Paul claims that he “upholds the law” (Romans 3.31) and that the “law” and the “covenants” (and interestingly enough) “the glory,” along with the Temple worship itself are gifts of God’s grace to Israel (Romans 9.4-5). Paul does not repudiate either circumcision nor being a Jew. “What advantage has the JEW? Or what is the value of CIRCUMCISION? Much, and in EVERY WAY …”(Romans 3.1-2).

2) “New Covenant.” This translation is a traditional English rendering for the word “kainos.” As with the Platonic dualism imposed upon “gramma” and “pneuma” centuries of reading this word as anti-Jewish places a “veil” over our eyes! Kainos does not mean brand new, or new as in different. It means something that has been made new, again. In English we render such an idea as “REnew.” There are numerous places it simply cannot mean something brand new.  Kainos in the Septuagint routinely translates the Hebrew “hadas.” Examples include:

“Tomorrow is the new [hadas/kainos] moon …” (1 Sam 20.5)
“Jonathan said to him, ‘Tomorrow is the new [hadas/kainos] moon, you will be missed” (1 Sam 20.18)
“When the new [hadas/kainos] moon came the king sat the feast to eat” (1 Sam 20.24)
“the day after the new [hadas/kainos] moon” (1 Sam 20.27)

“The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases,
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new/renewed/made new [hadas/kainos] every morning;
great is your faithfulness” (Lam. 3.22-23).

Paul is qualified by God (frankly just as Moses was qualified by God) to be the minister of the covenant made new through the Son of David, King Jesus (Messiah always means “king”). This covenant is not disconnected from Moses.

3) The Scriptures. Paul grounds his discussion (defense of his ministry) in Israel’s scriptures (the graphe) themselves.  When Paul pulls in these scriptures he is using them to both interpret his ministry and to defend the kainos covenant. He appeals to Moses, Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

Paul does not need an “epistle” (“letter” in v.2 is the normal word for an epistle not gramma) of recommendation because, as we have seen, the CORINTHIAN community is itself his “letter” created by the Holy Spirit himself. The critics have a “letter” of some sort but Paul has the Corinthians as believers in the King of Israel.

It is the existence of the CORINTHIANS themselves as believers in the Jewish Messiah written on “our” hearts by the Spirit that bears witness to Paul’s “competence” or “qualifications.”  Paul has already alluded to Jeremiah and Ezekiel. In the midst of the failure of the covenant (thus the destruction of Jerusalem, the temple and the Exile) Yahweh promised he would not abandon Israel but would hadas/kainos a covenant with the same people. Yahweh says, “I will write it on their hearts” (Jeremiah 31.33).

Paul squeezes Ezekiel into his defense as well. Ezekiel is in Exile – in the grave so to speak – and from there speaks of Yahweh’s promise, “I will give you a new heart [kardian kainen] and a new spirit … and I will give you a fleshy heart [kardian sarkinen]” (Ezekiel 36.26, the whole context is relevant). English translations of 3.3 often leave the English reader “veiled” because they render it as “human hearts” but Paul uses Ezekiel’s words “fleshy.” 

Paul’s appeal to Ezekiel ties directly into the matters of covenant faithfulness. Yahweh himself will renew the covenant through the placement of new hearts of flesh empowered by the Holy Spirit to bring about faithfulness.

“A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I WILL PUT MY SPIRIT WITHIN YOU AND MAKE YOU FOLLOW MY STATUTES and be careful to follow my ordinances” (Ezekiel 36.26-27).

Ezekiel ends chapter 36 with the promise that is directly related to Paul in 2 Corinthians 3 “THEN they shall know that I am Yahweh” (v.38). This is followed by the magnificent “resurrection” – the renewing of Israel – by the Holy Spirit in chapter 37 and the “covenant of shalom” (37.26).

Both of these passages, Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36, speak of Israel’s renewal under a Davidic king (Ezk 37.24ff). And it is appropriate for Paul to apply them to his ministry with the Corinthian community precisely because Paul considers them, including the Gentiles, to be Israelites! That is, they are citizens of Israel under the Jewish King. We see this in 1 Corinthians 10; 1 Corinthians 12.2; Romans 11.11-24; Ephesians 2.11-3.10.  Paul understands his ministry in the context of the renewal of Israel in which Gentiles are welcomed into the “commonwealth of Israel.”

In what way is the covenant a ‘ministry of condemnation?’ Many false claims are made that have no basis in the New Testament nor the Hebrew Bible nor in historical reality of the first century. There is no evidence that Israelites imagined the Torah was some sort of horrific burden (cf. Psalms 1, 19, 119) or that they lived in terror of the judgement of God. Quite the opposite in fact (anyone read the Psalms!?). Paul himself points to the LAW and the PSALMS as proof of salvation by grace and the joy of knowing one is not condemned. The apostolic Pharisee wrote speaking of the egregious sin of David,

“Blessed are those
    whose transgressions are forgiven,
    whose sins are covered.
⁸ Blessed is the one
    whose sin the Lord will never count against them”
(Romans 4.7-8 quoting Psalm 32.1-2)

Paul did NOT believe nor teach that either himself or any Jew was somehow simply condemned. Paul himself he was “blameless” under the law (Phil 3.6; his use of “blameless” (NRSV) comes from texts like Psalm 1 and Psalm 119.1). Salvation by grace/hesed is THE “Old Testament” doctrine.

 So, what does this ministry of “condemnation” actually mean. The problem with the covenant was (and Hebrews tells us God did not find fault with the covenant nor the law but with the “people.”) two-fold.  It could be broken by humans and the Torah did not provide the MEANS for faithful obedience. To pull a little of Romans into 2 Corinthians, Sin (capital S) distorted humanity’s loyalty at a fundamental level. But through the Holy Spirit we do “fulfill the righteous requirement of the law” (Romans 8.4). Which is exactly why Paul pulls in Ezekiel.

So, the ministry of condemnation is not that the covenant caused sin, caused death, or was somehow flawed – all charges Paul explicitly denies in Romans 7 (v.7, “what then should we say? Is the law sin? Absolutely Not!“). But now, once we had broken the covenant it, could only and ever testify that it was in fact broken.  

3) On “Fading/or “transistory” There is nothing in Exodus 34.27-35 or anywhere in the Torah about the glory/shine on Moses’s face “fading.” Not an iota.  And Paul does not say that the glory on Moses face “fades” or was “transitory.” The Greek term here, katagein, (vv.11, 13, 14) simply does not mean that. Scholars across the board agree on this. “Fade” is a “translation fossil” (and words similar to “fade”).  To make a long story short, we should understand the term like “eclipsed.”  (For a thorough discussion of lexical evidence see William Baker’s “Did the Glory of Moses’ Face Face … in 2 Corinthians 3.7-18” in Bulletin for Biblical Research 10 [2000], 1-15).

In an eclipse, be it a lunar or solar, there is no fading.  When the Moon passes in front of the Sun, it can turn it dark but the Sun does not fade. When the roles are reversed and the Moon passes through the Earth’s shadow it does not fade but it is eclipsed. The ministry of the kainos covenant eclipses the ministry of the former for one reason only, the glory Moses was privileged to receive is now available for all. This “eclipse” is not a narrative detail of the Torah but Paul’s interpretive deduction after the fact that now all the Corinthians have access to God through the Holy Spirit.  

In Exodus we can argue that the veiling of Moses was actually to protect (grace) to the Israelites. They had just shattered the covenant by committing ‘adultery’ during the honeymoon. Be that as it may Paul does not say it was slowly fading and had to be recharged when Moses reentered the Presence of the Lord.

In the Jewish interpretive tradition, the question has been “why does Scripture tell us that Moses’ face glowed at this point?” Moses had been “exposed” to the glory of God numerous times from the Burning Bush to spending forty days on the Mountain but no record in Exodus of the “glow.”  What happens in Exodus 34 however is the revelation of Yahweh’s HESED (34.6-7). And it is only after Exodus 34.6 that the narrator tells us Moses was physically changed by the glory of God’s Hesed.  We too are supposed to be “altered” by the Hesed of God. 

4) What is removed? The Veil is removed. One of the most straightforward statements in our text but ironically is often “veiled” is verses 15 and 16.  Paul has no polemic in reality against either Moses the person nor Scripture. Here in v.15 the word “Moses” does double duty by referring to both the man and Torah.  “to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds, but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.” Neither Moses nor the Torah is removed. What is removed is the veil. Now through the Spirit and King Jesus we can actually be renewed in order to be “holy as I [Yahweh] am holy.”

Of course, it is not Moses/Torah that is removed for it is precisely Moses’ covenant that is hadas/kainos … made new through the King of Israel, the Son of David. 

Concluding Thoughts

To bring this to a close it is also important to recognize what Paul does not claim. Paul does not claim that the “new/renewed/kainos” covenant has arrived in its fullness. In fact, in 4.3 he admits that a veiling of some sort remains. “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.”

In Romans Paul qualifies this further. The “hardening” as he calls it is actually the act of God himself (more mystery!). But it was done so that God’s own mercy is even more magnified. The Gentiles, as the Psalms and Prophets make clear, will come and embrace the King of Israel and worship the One True God. And then God will remove the hardening/veil and “all Israel shall be saved.” (Romans 11.25-36, v.26).

This veiling is of the GOSPEL, Paul says. We currently have the first fruits as Paul will say in other places, we still know “in part.” We still sin. We still do not know as we are known. None of us to this day have access to God as Moses did.

But we have the Spirit given to all and the Spirit creates now a beach head of the new/renewed creation.  That is the goal and that is Paul’s task as an apostle of the kainos covenant. The KING has come. The Spirit has been given. The Dead have been raised. 

RELATED ARTICLES
The New/Renewed Covenant, the Already/Not Yet

God Enters Covenants, Not Contracts: Deconstructing Bad Bible Reading

Moses’ Gloriously Shining Face (Exodus 34): The Full Impact of HESED

Untamed God and Dangerous Grace

Take Not Your Holy Spirit From Me: Israelites, the Spirit, and Personal Relationship with God

Scholarly Resources on 2 Corinthians 3

William R. Baker, “Did the Glory of Moses’ Face Fade? A Reconsideration of καταργέω in 2 Corinthians 3:7-18,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 10 (2000), 1-15.
Scott Hafemann, “The Glory and Veil of Moses in 2 Cor 3:7-17: An Example of Paul’s Contextual Exegesis of the OT – A Proposal,” Horizons in Biblical Theology 14 (1992), 31-49.
Richard Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, chapter 4 (pp. 122-153).
Jason A. Staples, Paul and the Resurrection of Israel: Jews, Former Jews, Israelites, ch.2 (pp. 68-106).

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