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This episode has been edited for clarity and space.
Paul Sloan
Hi. My name is Paul Sloan, and I’m the Associate Professor of Early Christianity at Houston Christian University.
David Capes
Dr. Paul Sloan, Paul, welcome to our podcast. It’s your first appearance on “The Stone Chapel Podcast.”
Paul Sloan
Thanks for having me. I’m glad to be here.
David Capes
I’m excited to have this conversation. I’ve been thinking about you for a while and wanting to have you on the podcast, now that you’ve got this new book out. Because it’s a significant book. It’s not just a good book, I think it’s a significant book. It’s great as a young associate professor at Houston Christian University to have published something this significant. There’s a lot of talk about in the book, and we’re going to come to that in a minute. But first, for those who don’t know Paul Sloan, who is he?
Paul Sloan
Thanks for that. I’ve lived here in Houston for the past nine years with my wife, Megan. We’ve been married now just over 10 years. We’ve got three great kids, a six, a four, and a two-year-old. And my wife’s actually pregnant now. We’re expecting our fourth, a baby girl.
David Capes
Congratulations! You studied overseas.
Paul Sloan
That’s right. I’ve done a masters degree and a PhD. I did one masters here at Houston Christian and then I did a masters in Scripture and theology at St. Andrews. I stayed on to do my PhD there, where I was working with Dr. Grant McCaskill and Dr. David Moffitt. Grant then left for Aberdeen, and I stuck around and I finished up with David Moffitt at St. Andrews.
David Capes
Well, you’ve done excellent work at HCU. You’ve taught a lot of students over the last nine years, I’m sure.
Paul Sloan
That’s right. There’s been a lot of Intro to Bible and a lot of Intro to the Gospels!
David Capes
Today we’re going to be discussing your book, “Jesus and the Law of Moses.” The subtitle is “The Gospels and the Restoration of Israel Within First Century Judaism.” It is published by Baker Academic, which is a great publisher. All right, big idea. What’s the big idea of this book?
Paul Sloan
That’s a good question. There are two big ideas here, and the second is dependent upon the first. The first big idea is that of restoration eschatology. I’ll define that in just a second. But I think restoration eschatology is the framework that governs the unfolding narrative in Matthew, Mark and Luke. And by restoration eschatology, I mean the notion that Israel had received the law, had transgressed, and had then received the promised punitive discipline that was occasioned by their covenant breach. And that that punitive discipline was God’s departure from the sanctuary, captivity to Babylon and whatever foreign enemies, exile from the land and all that type of thing. But that the law itself, God in the law, of course, promised restoration.
When Israel returns to me, GOD says, then I’ll restore you and give you all these blessings back. But one of the major blessings is not just a change of address from Babylon back to Judea or back to the Land of Israel, but the transformation of heart. So that in Deuteronomy 30:6, you get the notion that God will circumcise their heart, so that they will love the LORD their God with their whole heart, et cetera. And that’s basic to some of the prophetic passages as well, that when Israel returns and experiences this restoration, God will also transform their hearts so that they’ll be obedient to this law that they’ve been given. And I’m positioning Jesus at that moment in Israel’s history, both as the herald and executor of this promised restoration, but also within that, the authoritative interpreter of the law, so that the people who are being restored are also those who will know and properly keep Torah as Jesus has taught it.
David Capes
Has taught it and has lived it, has loved it. Tie that into the kingdom of God language, because a lot of people have talked about King and kingdom and things like that. Now you’re using a little different kind of framework, but I think it’s there in the prophets. Over and over again, you’ve got this judgment, or what you called discipline earlier that yields one day a time of restoration of Israel. So how does the kingdom fit into that?
Paul Sloan
It’s a great question, and it’s one that another person has asked me about, because they wondered whether I was overcooking the restoration aspect and not emphasizing the kingdom enough. And there, the idea is that you get in, say, Jeremiah, the notion that you know God is our king over us, but once we were sent into exile, we were captive to either the Babylonians and or the powers that rule in Babylon.
So it’s as if God is no longer our King. And when they say, look, we’ve become like those over whom you’ve never ruled. And that’s that King language. My point would be to not play kingdom and restoration off one another, but to say that, no, they’re integrally related. The discipline is itself losing God’s beneficent rule over you, such that you’re then captive to others who rule over you meanly and badly and punitively. In the restoration precisely what’s being restored is the Lord’s kingship over them.
And you get wonderfully, in a text like Isaiah 52:7, all in one verse where he says, beautiful are the feet who pronounce the good news. And the content of the good news is the Lord reigns. And that all this will happen when the Lord restores Zion. And it’s precisely the word for restoration elsewhere in all these other passages. So that the restoration is the restoration of God’s kingly rule over them, among other things.
David Capes
Restoration is the restoration of God’s kingly rule. I like the way you say that.
Paul Sloan
When Jesus is saying the time is up, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe this good news. I think he’s basically quoting, alluding to these prophetic notions that the time of our punitive discipline is up. Now God is coming back to reign over us, so return just like the prophets told us to repent and trust this good news. It’s really here and it’s really happening. So, get on board.
David Capes
Yes, Let’s shift a little bit, because I want to talk about Matthew, chapter five. Because in the second part, you said that Jesus in his life and his teaching becomes the definitive teacher. He becomes what the law was supposed to be from the very beginning. Here we are in the Sermon on the Mount, or what I’ve just simply come to call “The Sermon”, because it’s the thing. In the sermon one of the things Jesus says is, Do not think that I’ve come to abolish the law. Why does he say that?
Paul Sloan
I have a whole chapter devoted just to Matthew 5. My chapter title is actually The Law on the Mount, precisely because people hear sermon and they think what someone does on Sunday morning for 20 minutes or so. I’m trying to talk about the fact that, no, here’s Jesus’s exposition of the law when he says, do not consider that I’ve come to abolish the law or the prophets, etc.
There are a few ways that people have interpreted that. In the commentaries, you’ll see that some people must have thought that Matthew’s community and Jesus were sitting a bit loosely to the law. Here they’re presenting Jesus to correct that assumption, to show that Jesus is actually doing it and expositing it within the context of the Gospels themselves, outside of some concern for what the community might have been doing.
I think it is Jesus trying to say, the time of fulfillment is here. Yes, the time of restoration is here. But do
not think that that means that Torah is going by the wayside. Rather, I am both doing, embodying, but also teaching what it means to actually fulfill the will of God, according to the Torah and the Prophet. So that the expedition that you get in 5:21 and following what’s often called the antitheses. The “You have heard it said, But I say to you.”
David Capes
Which I don’t like, by the way! I don’t like the idea that Jesus is doing the antithesis to the law. It’s not really that at all.
Paul Sloan
Yes, I agree. In the 5:17- 20 passage, he’s saying, don’t misunderstand me, my teaching is the exposition of the will of God as revealed in the Torah and the prophets. To answer the question, how did we get to this notion of calling these antitheses, first I think it’s wrong. I think people have gotten there because of the formula of the sayings. You have heard it said XYZ, but I say ABC. And because the formula of that saying makes it sound a bit contrastive, they’ve wanted to give a title that reflects that supposed contrast. I don’t think is that. I don’t think it’s as strong as people have made it out to be.
I don’t think he’s contrasting what Torah says with what he, on the other hand, says. Rather, I think the thing that I’ve tried to point out, and others have as well, is the notion that everything he says in the “but I say to you” aspect is actually itself, expressed in the language of Torah, in the language of the commandments. So that when you see that, it helps show that he is quoting law and then giving some exposition of it in his words, but that his words are expressed with the vocabulary of the commandments themselves. He’s not contrasting law with his non-law teaching. He’s saying, the law says this, And I’m telling you that here’s this other bit of the law that helps you understand how to keep the first quoted portion.
The best example for this is the one on coveting. You’ve heard it said, do not commit adultery, but I say, do not even…and it’s often translated, lust. But I say, do not even lust after a woman. Except what he says there, it’s just the word covet. It’s just the same Greek term that is used in in the Decalogue and the 10 Commandments, for covet. Once you see that know he’s quoting the seventh of the 10 Commandments. The law says don’t commit adultery, but the law also says don’t covet. So I’m saying don’t covet, and that once you’ve coveted, you’ve already committed adultery in your heart.
He’s not saying the law says don’t commit adultery. But I’m ramping it up to something much more important about the interior disposition. I agree with the notion that Jesus wants to stop the heart of a person from having the wrong interior disposition. My point is simply to say that’s precisely what the law is saying when it says, do not covet. Coveting is an interior disposition that the law itself is prohibiting.
