De operibus

Ok, so now that I've posted my thoughts on faith, works are the logical next step. Before I start, though, I should place some parameters on what I am going to say; I don't have this all worked out, and I don't know how to fit the pieces together, but I think that there is enough to look into this. Everything that follows must also be viewed in connection with the working of God in the believer's life, and the necessity of Christ's work. I do not intend to say that "works" would function in the same way without any of this, or without faith as mentioned in the last post.

Too often, I see a dichotomy of works vs. grace, or works vs. faith, or our works vs. God's works. This is one of the biggest things which is pushing me out of conservative Protestant thought in one direction or another: too much of an uncritical reliance on using the categories developed around the time of the Reformation. So, I propose the following research program instead: we should view the role of our own effort in line with the Old Testament, with added stuff about the atonement, the Holy Spirit, and so on. This is to say, that the fundamental opposition is between ritualistic works (and those done merely as rituals, not the fact that they are rituals) and mercy, love, justice, etc.

I think that there is a lot going for this. Jesus did not tell people to stop obeying the law, even in its finer points. In fact, when talking to the Pharisees, he told them that when they tithe their spices and what not, that they should have paid attention to justice and mercy without forgoing the minor details. I do not mean to say that we should follow the OT law, but rather that we should look at what Jesus was changing the focus to.

Paul speaks of the conflict between the flesh and the (S|s)pirit. I would suggest that, instead of reading this as any human effort vs. divine effort, that we look at it as works done for ritualistic purposes (sacrifices, prayers, and so on) instead of works done according to the life Jesus has revealed (which is not to deny divine aid while so doing), which is again in line with the OT. Similarly, other contrasts in Paul can be seen as law vs. love, and our own rituals vs. the gracious way of life which God has provided, and graciously has willed to help us lead. I cannot make God do what I want through set actions; however, I can give up making God do what I want and instead live as God wants me to live. This way of life even has been provided by God, so how can I boast about it? I didn't discover it, and it challenges my prior way of like completely.

I don't know how to tie this into other threads running through the NT, but I do find this a more satisfying reading than the typical Reformed version. I no longer have to fudge my way through passages such as "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling;" I can acknowledge the full force of Jesus' teaching and the exhortations in 1 John without laying over it a reading which is not given in the text. In addition, I think that this reading makes sense of most typically Reformed passages at least as well as the Reformers have done, and it is inspired by OT themes rather than 16th century European philosophy (though, of course it is also filtered through 21st century American thought as well; I just hope that that isn't the major part). It continues the line given by the New Perspective on Paul, but goes beyond some of the criticisms which I have seen (namely, that the New Perspective narrows the law to merely a badge of national identity, while the church is meant to be for all peoples).

Edit: I think I've found a way of expressing what I mean more precisely. I am arguing for one of two things: either a synergistic view, which holds together the works of God and man and repudiates both the Pelagian monergism as well as a purely divine monergism (of course, synergism covers a pretty broad range, but I don't intend to narrow that too much at the present moment); or a phenomenalistic view, which scraps the metaphysics for the moment and discusses things from the experience of the believer (whether determined or not, that act sure feels like it's taking effort). I think that both have some validity; a proper synergism (which includes God and man working together at one and the same time, rather than part and part) would make sense of Scripture, but I also hold that Scripture doesn't talk about metaphysics most of the time.