You said
Your quote left out most of my sentence. It said the 8 Pauline texts I cited suggest that Paul does not understand ‘legal’ justification “as what meets our real need.”
and I’ll concur it did. Thanks for the clarification and I think I know where you are coming from
You said:
My impression is that you, Davo, and DaveB assert what you think Paul means by justification, but don’t engage such relevant texts about what Paul understands to be crucial.
Could be, and thanks for putting me in such grand company but they might not be so thrilled to be lumped with the likes of me.
Some times I view some of these back and forth episodes as splitting hairs, or concentrating on certain individual tree’s and not the forest. But this being a forum, I assume I have that privilege.
Finally you said:
I have no idea what you mean when you appear to just respond that it’s a mistake to take these texts as ‘written to us.’ But in practice, it feels like a way to assert that offering what Paul actually wrote as evidence of his understanding can just be ignored. I take his view on this as relevant to shaping the interpretation of the Christian tradition
Respectfully, it is not *‘just responding’ *that in my view it’s a mistake to take these texts as ‘written to us.’ I am well aware that you take these texts very seriously, and you have some very good and compelling exegesis on these verses. But I would say that it is my opinion that Paul never was talking more than to the people of that time. He was not addressing us some 2000 years later in my opinion.
You yourself Bob have written position papers that address issues that you would consider, I assume, to be relevant to any that would hear them, whether tomorrow or in 100 years. You wrote them in such a way as it would be obvious. I would say that this is not the case with Paul’s letters, or much of the NT in my opinion. And Yes I realize I am going against tradition and orthodoxy. The dynamic of Paul is a Pharisee who was getting after it and had His ‘road to Damascus’ revelation and subsequent conversion were taken to his kinsmen first and then when that didn’t pan out he went to the gentiles, and thus the great book of Romans. I have no argument that we can learn from Paul’s teachings, just that they were not meant for us here in 2018.