I have been following the wrightsaid list and occasionally commenting. The list is dedicated to a discussion of the work of NT Wright's work; Wright is arguably the foremost New Testament scholar in print today. Here is something that occurred to me in the context of a discussion there:
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Jews of the first century were not thinking about "going to heaven" like we do when we think of things like justification etc. Nor were they worried about "being saved" in the sense we talk about it. In fact the expression "go to heaven" is found only once in all of scripture, in the story of Elijah and the fiery chariot— admittedly not the usual expectation even of pious jews! And "being saved" in today's sense is just not a concern of the old testament: rather, "save me, O God" in the Psalms, for instance, always refers to enemies in this world (usually those of the king)— and it requires a spiritualizing reinterpretation— which is not wrong!— to turn such prayers into prayers for an otherworldly, eternal bliss.
The fact is, the bible is endlessly and everywhere concerned only with the reign of God— what are its conditions, when will it come, what will happen with the people (like the babylonians or the romans or the unjust of israel itself) who oppose his reign; what what the status of israel will be in those days, and so forth. In the eschatological sense, "salvation" refers to the conflagration in which "sinners will be consumed from the earth and the wicked shall be no more" (Psalm 104, end)— and note here that the psalmist immediately adds and concludes, "Bless the Lord, O my soul!" because he knows he is not among those sinners; he is the beneficiary of God's mighty acts on behalf of Israel (Psalm 103). And he is a beneficiary, and even an heir of God, not because of works righteousness, but because he is a member of that "blessed... nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen for his inheritance" (Psalm 33). This is the background of St Paul's thought, and it's context is the Roman occupation of Palestine which very much sharpened Israel's hope in God's reign, but did not change it into a longing for an eternal otherworldly kingdom.
by contrast, we moderns conceptualize the bible, and christianity generally, as all about "going to heaven", and we ask whether we get there by "works righteousness" or by "being saved". And in doing so we faithfully follow the assumptions of renaissance and enlightenment protestantism, which has framed the discourse of theology in northern europe for the past 500 years. Yet the expression "works righteousness", which seems to fit so neatly (or not) into the late mediaeval glove of "salvation", is a phrase that is simply unknown among catholics and orthodox— and that is to say, among any of the early church fathers and even later teachers— with rare exceptions like the treatise of St Mark the Ascetic entitled "No Righteousness by Works" (5th c, i think)— exceptions which may take their start from the same theme, but have a completely different aim and purpose. This difference between earlier christian discourse and that of the reformers and their students already and in itself suggests that some kind of paradigm shift is present, to which we ought to attend. But like all paradigms, it's hard to see, because it entails not so much new words as a new use of old words, so that on one level everything looks the same, but isn't.
In interesting ways, the thought of the fathers develops the ascetical and spiritual aspects of that biblical concern with God's reign, while emphasizing somewhat less its social, political, and social-eschatological (as opposed to personal-eschatological) aspects. I am convinced that, in part, this was because the social meanings were not such a pressing concern in what was, for almost 1200 years, a Christian state which more or less faithfully tried to organize itself around the gospel (whatever ambiguities there may have been). In their teaching on the spiritual life, always practical and always based on experience, the fathers' concern is never about "works righteousness" (either pro or con), for their views of salvation and justification were not the same as those of late western mediaeval catholicism. It was these latter that gave rise to the modern (protestant) discourse in the first place. Luther's anxieties about salvation, resolved by his insight into "justification by faith alone", were possible because the "heavenly kingdom" had already come to mean something completely beyond this world and not part of it. This was not the case in the fathers, who very much had a sense of already being spiritually part of something transforming, however much they also understood their need for purification and enlightenment.
It's good to ask, as scholars at least since Sanders have, how the jews (supposedly) got the protestant sense of "works righteousness" out of their relationship with God. Had God taught it to them, and done so, specifically, in the Old Testament? Why would he do that, if he was only going to reverse it when St paul came along? Or is "works righteousness", the way Luther and those of us who come after him tend to think of it, really a proper way to understand what the OT is all about? Is it even a proper way to understand how the jews themselves understood or understand their own OT? If, even today, fully traditional jews do not think that the OT teaches "pelagianism" and are not really into "works righteousness" or "earning salvation", etc, how can we say that saint paul, writing to jews, was exercised about the concerns we read in his words about works righteousness, salvation, and the kingdom? In fact, it has become fairly clear in the past few decades (some would say, at last!) that the modern concerns with "works righteousness" and "salvation" are related more to certain formations of mediaeval western religion than to either the OT or judaism. But it is very hard for us to understand that "kingdom of heaven" does not mean "going to heaven", and we persistently fall back into thinking salvation and justification as about the latter. Yet that is our problem, not Pauls.
Where does that leave St Paul, then? What is he talking about? Well, it's not exactly surprising, even if it is refreshing, to find that he was talking about the same thing jews always talked about, which was the reign of god in the world, both now and in the end. What are the conditions by which we are citizens of that kingdom? "Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness... shall never be moved" (Psalm 15)— is not about earning salvation, but is a description of what sort of people belong to God. And of course, we want to make this condition of being "God's people" manifest by our actions, for (indeed) by not "walking uprightly and working righteousness", we negate the condition and show that it doesn't describe us. But the condition (covenant) itself is prior to the actions by which we manifest our membership in it; we never "earned" our membership. So: St Paul is asking, how do we jews have part in the kingdom established by God's covenant? This was pressing question because new people were being brought into it. So the question of how we jew have part in it bears directly on that of how others may come to have part in it. What made us God's people was not going through ritual circumcision, which indeed made us a separate, nationalistic in-group— it was never a matter of ritual or even generally moral acts— never that— but as for abraham in the first place— faith or trust in God's ability to do what he promised.
We have the hardest time seeing that Paul is talking about the meaning of the Torah, not about a generalized "moralism" or "nomism", because we are not really interested in becoming Jews— we no longer feel that "salvation is from the Jews" (John 4), but from the Christians. So we generalize his words about "the Law" (the Torah, really), and turn them into a general concern with "earning salvation through our own efforts". This almost works, because from the begining it's been about God establishing his own kingdom, not us establishing ours— though it takes Paul's talk about Law/Torah out of its context and robs it of its salvation-historical meaning. Still it's true that what is necessary is for us to trust and to get with God program, not our own. Only now, Paul is saying, Abraham's original faith in God's program is focused as "the faith of Jesus Christ"—- in other words, in the faith that Jesus the Messiah had, in what God was doing in and through him; and then flowing from this, our own trust in what God was doing, in Jesus his Messiah. And what was God doing? Establishing his reign. "And we are ambassadors for the messiah," Paul writes.
The hard part, i think, is (re)conceptualizing christianity as the "reign of God" rather than "being saved and going to heaven". But once you see that the scriptures don't talk about "getting saved and going to heaven", but repeatedly about when God will actually rule this world of his, and how that will come to be (in terms of the past—- when he will undo the trouble adam caused, and even heal adam of death; in terms of Paul's present— what God has done in Jesus his Messiah; and in terms of the future— when he will establish "jerusalem" as a terebinth of righteousness)—- then the Judaism Paul depicts will no longer seem to mirror the late-mediaeval german catholicism which most of the theology of the past 500 years had been using him to caricature and to argue with, in which we think we "go to heaven" by "works" or by "faith".
