St. Paul and Salvation: With or Without Works

   For many years, I could not figure out the meaning of St. Paul's understanding of salvation coming through faith, not the works of the law. I knew that there was a still a relation between the two, but not how it made sense. Discussion of this in more advanced classes had been either obscurely presented or hazily recieved due to my lack of sleep. Then, last Sunday, I had a breakthrough. I realized I had been looking at St. Paul's assertion as somehow opposing Faith and works, much as either Protestant doctrine or Catholic apologetics tended to. As I scanned the readings prior to the Extraordinary Form Mass I was about to attend (13th Sunday after Pentecost) I noticed that St. Paul did not oppose Faith and the Law, but rather described a relationship. I needed to look at both together. The reading is as follows:

St. Paul  -Marco Zoppo

Brethren: To Abraham were the promises made and to his seed. He says not: And to his seeds as of many. But as of one: And to your seed, which is Christ. Now this I say: that the testament which was confirmed by God, the law which was made after four hundred and thirty years does not disannul, to make the promise of no effect. For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise. But God gave it to Abraham by promise. Why then was the law? It was set because of transgressions, until the seed should come to whom he made the promise, being ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator.  Now a mediator is not of one: but God is one. Was the law then against the promises of God: God forbid! For if there had been a law given which could give life, verily justice should have been by the law. But the scripture has concluded all under sin, that the promise, by the faith of Jesus Christ, might be given to them that believe. But before the faith came, we were kept under the law shut up, unto that faith which was to be revealed. Wherefore the law was our pedagogue in Christ: that we might be justified by faith. But after the faith has come, we are no longer under a pedagogue.

St. Paul means that the Old Testament or Covenant had two parts; one part was the “promise,” one the “pedagogue” leading the Jews toward the promise. St. Paul says that the “promise” was the same as the the “faith of Jesus Christ,” the New Covenant. I then saw that there were two ways to see the relationship of the Law and Faith. If Faith is the life according to the fullness of God’s promise, then perhaps, inasmuch as we failed to grasp or live this faith, we still remained subject to parts of the law, such as the Ten Commandments. The other way to see this, which is in some ways more interesting, is like an onion that gets bigger on the inside. As C.S. Lewis has Eustace, Jill, Tirian, and their friends discover at the end of The Last Battle, the further in you go, the bigger it gets. (“Further up and further in!”) Perhaps, then, the promise, the New Covenant was contained in the Old Covenant, but hidden, like a blossom hidden as a bud. Thus, parts of the law, of the “pedagogue,” are built into the New Covenant, the “faith of Jesus Christ.” It could be that there is a central essence to the Old Covenant that unfolds as the New, at the time designated by God, and the old shell of the law is gone, but not every aspect. Thus, St. Paul could say that we are justified by faith, since that is the whole of the New Covenant, involving certain works or vestiges (or the essence) of the law. Clearly, the law cannot bring us to the promise, but the promise still has a law.

   Although this may not interest everyone, I was excited to find this. Of course, had I paid attention in class, I may not have had to suffer in ignorance for so long.

-Quaestor