By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
What is the significance of Paul's speaking, as he does, of "the law of Christ" (Gal 6:2) or "the law of the Spirit" (Rom 8:2)?
Bultmann is surely right that Paul's speaking in this way is "paradoxical," given his usual use of the terms in question. He says thereby that standing in freedom under grace is standing under law, even as freedom from the law and sin is slavery to righteousness and to God (Rom 6:18 f., 22). But "the law of Christ" doesn't have the character of law, and slavery to God is not really slavery but precisely freedom (GV 4:50).
And yet there seems to me to be more to Paul's meaning than this -- and, in other contexts, Bultmann himself says or clearly implies as much. Thus, for one thing, there are Paul's concepts of "the obedience of faith" (Rom 1:5) and of "the law of faith" (Rom 3:27), which are rather less obviously "paradoxical," in that faith can be understood only as obedience to God's demand even as it must be understood as acceptance of God's gift. And, beyond any question, Bultmann so understands it.
Moreover, there is his clear statement that, although faith itself and as such is not simply the acceptance of a world view, its content can be explicated only as a world view. Implied by this, surely, is that the faith that implies a world view also implies a law, in that its content can be explicated only as such.
19 May 2003
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