Volume 70:l January 20%
Table of Contents
The Faith of Chist: A Lutheran Appropriation of Richard Hays's
R o e
Arthur A. Just Jr. ....................................................................... 3
Listening to Intertextual Relationships in Paul's Epistles with
Richard Hays
................................................................... Charles A. Gieschen 17
Looking at the Moral Vision of the New Testament with Richard
Hays
Dean 0. Wenthe .......................................................................... 33
Wa3k This Way: A Theme from Proverbs Reflected and Extended
in Paul's Letters
Andrew E. Steinmann and Michael Eschelbach .................... 43
With a View to the End: Christ in the Ancient Church's
Understanding of Scripture
......................................................................... Joel C- Elow sky. 6 3
A Curriculum from and for the Church
John T. Pless ................................................................................ 85
We apologize for publication delays in recent years. We assure you Mat all
overdue issues are in process and will be mailed as each is printed. We plan to be
back on our normal quarterly publication schedule by January 2008. Thank you for
your patience! The Editors
Listening to Intertextual Relationships
in Paul's Epistles with Richard Hays'
Charles A. Gieschen
There is a piece of wisdom that New Testament interpreters often
preach, but rarely practice: Your most important tools in exegesis are
concordances for the Greek Hew Testament and the Septuagint ILXX).
Despite our lip service to the hermeneutical principle "Saipture interprets
Scripture," too many of us engage in the hermeneutical practice
"Commentaries interpret Scripture." Many of us fail to check the original
context of explicit quotations of t6e Old Testament by New Testament
authors; much less do we trek through a concordance to the Septuagint-
even though electronic technology accomplishes searches in seconds-in
order to track down implicit intertextual relationships between biblical
texts, such as allusions or ech0es.z We certainly reject Marcion's practice of
excising the Old Testament from the New Testament, but our practice of
vktuallv ignoring the Old Testament narratives and texts underlying New
~estamint writings runs the danger of yielding a similar result.
Above all else that one can laud in Richard Havs's Echoes ofscripfure in
the Letters of Paul, one must praise his carefully deliberate practice of
dlow4ng Paul's use of the Old Testament to inform and enrich the
interpretation of Paul's Epistles.; Hays recognizes that these Old
As apparent from the title, this article examines the work of Richard B. Hays, Echm
of Sm'pfrtre in tllp k t t e ~ of Paul (New Haven and London: Yale L'niversity Press, 1989).
This volume was reviewed by several New Testament scholars in craig-A. Evans and
James A. Sanders, eds., Paul and tlw 5~Tiptures o f Israel, JSLTSup 83 (Sffield: JSOT
Press, 1993). For a more recent book that collects together some of Hays's other writing
on Paul, both before and after Echoes af Scripture, see 7Tlp Coni~ersim of the Impnation:
Paul as m Interpreter of Israel's 5~npture (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, UK: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2W5). This volume reprints an essay in which Ha>5 responds
to critiques of Eclwes o f Suipture; see The Concrrswn ofthe Imgination, 163-189.
2 Hays recognizes the difficulty of establishing rigid categories with these terms; see
Echoes of Scripture, 29. He uses the term allusion for "obvious intertextual references"
and the term echo for "subtler ones." See ,further John HoUander, 7he Figure of Echo: A
Mode gf Allusion in Mifton and A-fler (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).
3 This study will use the term Old Testumrt rather than Snfpfrtre (as in Hays). Even
though Paul did not use the term Old Testament-which could be considered
Charles A. Giesdten is Professor of Exegefical Theology and Chairman of the
Deparment 4 Exegetical Theology at Concordia Theolopcal Seminary, Fort
18 Concordia Theological Quarterly 70 (2006)
Testament allusions and echoes are often the unchoreographed result of
Paul's immersion in Old Testament language and theology. The Old
Testament narrative is not nearly as familiar to the modem reader, as Hays
observes by using this vivid simde: "We, belated rootless readers, can
learn only through marginalia and concordances-like novice guitarists
learning blues riffs from sheet music-what Paul knew by heart-"a In this
volume, Havs provides us with a model for reading Paul with greater
sensitivity to the fact that the Old Testament, which is the core of Paul's
world~lew, was the quarry for his theology, even for a signhcant amount
of the language he used. In short, Hays has used his concordance to the
Septuagint-probably in the Hatch and Redpath hardcopy form back in
the 1980s-like few of us ever do.' Furthermore, Hays does not only listen
carefully to trace echoes, he also does the even more difficult task of
reflecting upon what this means for understanding Paul's hermeneutical
approach to the Old Testament as well as how this, in turn, should inform
our own interpretative approach.
Since Echoes of Scripture in tlw k t fers of Paul has probably not received
the kind of reading that it deserves over the past fifteen years among
Lutheran pastors, the first portions of this study will summarize some
representative content of this book in order to offer a clear sense of its
contribution. This summary is not given as a substitute for reading the
book, but only to whet one's appetite to engage Paul and the Old
Testament through the Hays's exegesis. Both commendation and critique
will follow. The studv of intertextuality in biblical studies, especially
about how New ~estament writers are drawing on Old Testament texts,
has grown in recent decades; Richard Havs has been at the center of this
discussion. This study will affirm the importance and value of much of
Hays's basic exegetical approach for the interpreter who is willing to listen
carefully with lum to the echoes of the Old Testament that reverberate in
Paul's letters.
I. The Why and How of Echoes
There have been several studies of Paul's use of the Old Testament in the
twentieth century, and certainly most commentaries on the different
anachronistic -to signify the object of his exegesis, it will be used in this study in order
to avoid codusion among readers who also regard the New Testament as Scripture.
Hays, Ehoes o f Scripture, 43.
Hatch and Redpath is the conunon designation for Edwin Hatch and Henry A.
Radpath, A Concordance to the Septuagint and the oflwr Greek Versions of the Old Testament,
Induding the Apocryphal B o d s (Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck- u. \'erlagsanstalt,
1975 reprint 11897 original]).
Gieschen: Listening to Intertextual Relationships 19
Pauline Epistles address this question in a limited form."\'hat, therefore,
is distinctive about Havs's approach? Hays neither myopically focuses on
the explicit of the Old Testament nor on the identification of
exegetical methodology in Paul's handhg of Old Testament texts. His
scope is much broader and more substantive because he understands
Paul's reappropriation of the Old Testament to be both broad and
substantive, far beyond a few messianic prophecies, proof texts, or
methods:
In Paul we encounter a firstcentup- Jewish thinker w-ho, while
undergoing a profound disjuncture with his owm religious tradition,
grappled his way through a vigorous and theologically generative
reappropriation of Israel's scriptures. However great the tensions
between his heritage and his new7 Christian convictions, he insistently
sought to show that his proclamation of the gospel %-as grounded in the
w-itness of Israel's sacred texts.;
In an effort to understand Paul's broader reappropriation of the Old
Testament, Hays listens carefully for intertextual relationships, be they the
more obvious Old Testament allusions or the more subtle echoes. He
posits and explains the following seven tests for hearing echoes:
1 AraiIability: Was the proposed source of the echo available to the
author and/ or original hearers?
2. Volume: What is the degree of explicit repetition of words or
s)-ntac tical patterns?
3. Recurrence: How often does Paul elsewhere cite or allude to the same
scriptural passage?
4. Ihemntic CoImence: How well does the alleged echo fit into the line
of argument that Paul is developing?
5. Historical Plau_sitility: Could Paul have intended the alleged meaning
effect?
6. History uf I?~t~rp~etntiun: Have other readers, both critical and pre-
critical, heard the same echoes?
7. Sati_sfnction: Does the proposed reading make sense? 5
"ys discusses this research in Echous of Scripture, 5-14. For more recent work on
this subject, see J . Ross \\-agner, Heralds qf Gnorf ?jm.i: Paul anif Isaiah "irt Cnncert".
NovTSU~ 101 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), ancl Francis Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics I$ Faith
(London: T & T Clark, 2W).
Hays, E c h m LlfSrripture, 2.
8 Hays, Echoes qf Scripture, 29-32.
20 Concordia Theological Quarterly 70 (2006)
As one reads this volume, you sense that Paul's hameneutical approach
to the Old Testament was controlled by neither extant Jewish exegesis,
especkily partidar rules, nor conventional Greco-Roman rhetorical
practices, even though infIuence of Jewish and Greco-Roman methodology
certainly is visible in Paul's letters and noted by Hays. Given the kind of
herrneneutical freedom that Hays attributes to Paul's interpretation of the
Old Testament, one might well ask: What were Paul's h m e u t i c a l
constraints? At the end of his book Hays sets forth three criteria that
implicitly norm Paul's exegesis of the Old Testament; all three are
substantive rather than methodological criteria. Here Hays expresses the
heart of Paul's hermeneutical approach to the Old Testament as he
understands it. The first constraint is God's faithfulness to his promises.
Hays states that for Paul "no reading of Scripture can be legitimate if it
denies the faithfulness of Israel's God to his covenant promises."g The
second constraint is that the Old Testament must be interpreted in a
manner that testifies to the gospel of Jesus Christ: "No reading of
Scripture can be legitimate if it fails to acknowledge the death and
resurrection of Jesus as the climatic manifestation of God's
righteousness."lO These two convictions function in tension to demarcate
the boundaries Paul observes as he interprets the Old Testament in and for
the church. Hays also emphasizes a third hermeneutical constraint in Paul,
that proper interpretation of the Old Testament forms and shapes the
church like unto Christ:
Comrnuni$ in the likeness of Christ is cruciform; therefore right
interpretation must be cruciform. "For while we live we are always
being given up to death for Jesus' sake so that the life of Jesus may be
manifested in our mortal flesh" (2 COT. 431). Any reading of Scripture
that requires of us something other or less than this is a false reading.ll
Although the term crucifimr may be unfamiliar to some, the basic
understanding here is not foreign to Lutheran interpreters. The
interpretathe process is to shape the church like unto Christ crucified. We
often speak of this as exegesis that expresses "the theology of the cross" for
the life of the church.
9 Hays, Echoes of Scripture, 191. One would Like to see, however, more integration
between Israel's God and the Son as the Lord of Israel's history; see my critique below
(IV. Commendation and Critique, 28-32).
1 C Hays, Edzoes of Scripture, 191.
" Hays, Edms of Scriphcre, 191. One needs to interpret such an assertion with the
proper understanding of sanctification; see the discussion of J. C. Beker's label of
&ctification as a "&thodistic Hermeneutic" and Hays's response in The Conversion of
tlw Imagination, 189.
Gieschen: Listening to Intertextual Relationships n
II. Intertextuality in Romans
In order to provide a representative glimpse at what Richard Havs does,
this examination will draw heavily on Chapter 2 of Eclzoes of Scripture,
where he offers a reading of Romans that listens for echoes of the Old
Testament in this carefully constructed Pauline epistle. Hays begins bp
acknowledging the importance of the many explicit quotations of the Old
Testament in Romans and how these push our understanding of the theme
of this letter beyond focusing exclusively on justification:
If, however, we attend carefully to Paul's use of the quotations, we wiU
discover them spiraling in around a common focus: the problem of
God's saving righteousness in relation to Israel. The insistent echoing
voice of Scripture in and behind Paul's letter presses home a singIe
theme relentlessly: the gospel is the fulfillment, not the negation, of
God's word to Israel.''
Although many Lutherans are properly concerned with the so-called
New Perspective on Paul, which attempts to margmalize the centrality of
justification in Romans, Hays's emphasis on the theme of God's
faithfulness to Israel is, nevertheless, a helpful corrective for those who
m y marginalize or ignore Romans 9-11 in discussions of this epistle.l3 I
xvould, however, stop short of Hays's emphasis that theodicy and not
soteriologv is the question addressed in this epistle.14
The explicit Old Testament quotations are only a starting point for Hays
in understanding the presence and impact of the Old Testament on this
epistle. He emphasizes that the Old Testament has a much more pervasive
presence:
This text is most fruitfun! understood when it is read as an intertextual
conversation between Paul and the voice of [Old Testament] Scripture,
that powerful ancestral presence with which Paul grapples. Scripture
broods over this letter, calls Paul to account, speaks through him; Paul,
groping to give voice to h s gospel, finds in Scripture the language to say
what must be said, and labors to win the blessing of Moses and the
prophets. 1'
'1 Ha!-s, Echoes o f Scrip lure, 34.
13 Charles .A. Gieschen, "Paul and the Law: Was Luther Right?," The Larr in Holy
Scripture, ed. Charles A. Giexhen (SL Louis: Concordia Publishing House, ZDM), 113-
1-17, See also Stephen \\-esterholm, Perspectires Old and .Yea? on Paul: T/ze "LlctFzeran" Paul
and Hi5 Critic5 (Grand Rapids: William 8. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2004).
:* For criticism of ttus position, see A. Andrew Das, Paul and the ] e r r (Peabod?-, X I A .
Henctrickson, 2003).
" Hays, Ehnes nfScriphrre. 35.
22 Concordia Theological Quarterly 70 (2006)
Romans 1:16-17
Hays begins his examination of this "intertextual conversation" between
Paul and the Old Testament with the echoes he hears in the key thematic
verses of Roaans:
I am not ashamed [ i i r u ~ o ~ i v o p x ~ ] of the gospeI, for it is the power of God
for salvation [~ i ; awqpiav] to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and
also to the Greek. For through the gospel the Righteousness of God
[ ~ L K ~ L O O ~ ~ L ~ &06] is being revealed [aatmai6~:c:a~], by faith for faith, just
as it is written: "The one who is righteous by faith shall live." (Rom 1:16-
17)
Usually most attention is given to the quotation of Habakkuk 2:4 and how
Paul may be using this verse in a way distinct from its origirral context.'"
While in no way detracting from the sigruhcance of this quotation, Ha~rs
enriches our understanding of how Paul is drawing on the language and
theology of additional LXX texts to communicate his message by
examining three primary Old Testament echoes in these verses.
First, the language "I am not ashamed" in 156 appears to be an echo of
the shame language that appears in the prophecies and psalms from which
Paul draws his understanding of the Righteousness of God. Hays notes
especially Isaiah M:7-8: "I know that I will not be ashamed [oi, pfi
a io~uv&j] , because the one who justifies me [o 6 ~ ~ u ~ i ) o u ; is near." The
language of both shame and righteousness here make it a probable source
of Paul's language. Furthermore, Hays observes that Paul transforms the
tense of the verb from future to present in order to emphasize that the
gospel offers "God's already efficacious act of eschatological deliverance in
Christ."l; The one who justifies is not only near, but has been revealed at
the cross and is presently being revealed in the gospel.
Second, Hays proposes that several LXX passages are informing the
language Paul uses about salvation (Rom 1:16b) and the Righteousness of
God being revealed (Rom 1:17a). Especially important is Psalm 97 (98
M-0:
The LORD has made know his salvation [:b oo+lilp~ov]; in the presence of
the nations/Gentiles [sGv &OvGv], he has revealed [UTIEKU~U+CV] his
righteousness [ ~ v d ~ ~ a ~ o a i q v akoC]. He has remembered his mercy to
Jacob, and his truthfulness to the house of Israel. All the ends of the
earth have seen the salvation [rb ownip~ov] of our God. (Ps 97:2-3 LXX)
16 C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on tlw Epistle to the Romans
(Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1975) 1.100-102.
1; Hays, Edwes qf Scripture. 39.
Hays notes that both the language of verse 2 and the content of verse 3
appears to be informing Paul's language in Romans 1:16b-17a. "The hope
of the psalmist is that God's eschatological vindication of Israel will serve
as a demonstration to the whole world of the power and fairness of
Israel's God, a demonstration that will bring even Gentiles to acknowledge
him. Paul shares the psalmist's eschatological vision . . . ."I8 Paul's
language of salvation and righteousness also appears to echo the same
language used in the latter chapters of Isaiah. Although other interpreters
have indicated that these chapters are the quarry from which Paul shaped
his teaching of justification, Hays goes further to suggest that Paul echoes
some of the language and argument of Isaiah. Hays highlights Isaiah 51:4-
5 and 5210 as texts that reverberate in Romans 1:16-17:
[YHU'H says] For the Law wilI go forth from me, And my judgment will
go forth as a light to the nations/Gentiles [ i M v ] . My ri&teousness [fi
6 r ~ a l m l j l q IOU] draws near quickly, And my salvation [:b aw+jpr6v pou]
will go forth as a light, And in my arm will nations/Gentiles F€hq] hope.
(Isa 51:ab-S)19
And the Lord hill reveal [a~acai.it$cr] his holy arm before all the
nations/Gentiles [rGv i8vGv], and all the comers of the earth w-ill see the
salvation [+v ao.rrlphv] that is with God. (Isa 5210)
Hays goes on to explain the relationship he discems between these texts:
Instead, W s vocabulary echoes sublimin&~- in Paul's diction; the
effect of the echo is to suggest-for hearers who share Paul's sensitivity
to the cadences of the LXX-that the gospel must be understood as the
fulfillment of the ancient promise that God's righteousness would be
revealed in an act of deliverance for the Jews first and also for the
Gentiles. Ths sort of figuration HoUander characterizes as metalepsis:
the reader, signaled bv the echoes, is required to grasp together the old
text and new-w
JXrd, Havs goes on to argue that Paul's quotation of Habakkuk 2 4
intends to &und forth not only these few explicit words from the prophet,
but also echo the wider context of this quotation which addresses the
:' Hays, ELAL?PS qf Smphrc, 37.
li Although not mentioned by Ha!%, Isa *12-13 is another text that may be part of
the echo here since it has content parallel to Isa 51:ti , The centralitv of Isa 5210 in ttus
echo is reinforced b>- the tact that Paul quotes Isa 5.25 (W) in om-224 and lsa 527 in
Rom 10:15.
" Hays, Echoes of Scripture, 37-38.
24 Concordia Theological Quarterly 70 (2005)
problem of theodiq as reflected in the questions posed in the opening
lines of Habakkuk:2'
How long, 0 Lord, shall I cry out, and you will not hear? Or m. to you
when I am wronged, and you will not save? You whose eye is too pure
to see evil, and who cannot look upon afflictions, Why do you look upon
despisers? Will you stand silent while the wicked man swallou~s up the
righteous one? (Hab 1:2-3)
Here is a place where I do not hear the Old Testament echo that H a ~ s
hears. Although very intriguing, I also doubt his christological reading of
this quotation.= The christological focus of this verse is found in
~ L K ~ L O ~ ~ V &oG. Even more doubtful for me is Hays's understanding that
Paul is echoing the personal pronoun of the LXX translation of Habakkuk
2:4 without explicitly including the pronoun in his quotation: o & 6 i ~ a ~ o c