D. A. Carson.

“Mystery and Fulfillment: Toward a More Comprehensive Paradigm of Paul’s Understanding of the
Old and New.”
Pages 393–436 in The Paradoxes of Paul. Vol. 2 ofJustification and Variegated Nomism. Edited by D. A. Carson, Peter T.
O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 181. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004.

1. The Problem
Paul thinks in polarities (393):

1. old covenant vs. new covenant

2. being a Jew (or even a Pharisee in Paul’s case) vs. being “in Christ”
3. the law-covenant vs. the grace of God in Christ

The new perspective on Paul emerged after perceptions of these poles changed, namely, “Judaism (especially Palestinian Judaism) and
Pauline Christianity” (393). Applying the useful category of “covenantal nomism” (i.e., the covenant based on law [nomos]) to Second
Temple Judaism as a whole is simply reductionistic (393–94). That is why volume 1 of Justification and Variegated Nomism is entitled The
Complexities of Second Temple Judaism (394). Contra E. P. Sanders, covenantal nomism should not “exercise hegemonic control over the
exegesis of the Pauline corpus” (394). To follow this assumption of Sanders, Dunn, Wright, and others is to domesticate Paul “by laying him
on a Procrustean bed of a monolithic background” (395).

Moo’s conclusions are judicious: new perspective exegesis of these passages, even where they expose themes that are genuinely there in
the text, exchange what is at most the background for the foreground, thereby losing sight of what is of most interest to the apostle
himself (395–96).

This essay argues that Paul’s polarities “have been inadequately explored in their relationship to each other. Preliminary reflections on
them may shed a little light on patterns of continuities and discontinuities . . .” (397).

There are two pairs of polarities (397):

1. promise and fulfillment (which presupposes continuity)

2. hiddenness and revelation, i.e., μυστήριον (which presupposes discontinuity)

So the problem is this: How can the very things that are said, on the one hand, to be predicted in the past and now fulfilled [e.g., the OT's
testifying to Jesus' death and resurrection and what flows from that], be said, on the other, to be hidden in the past and only now, in the
fullness of time, revealed? On the surface, at least, the former polarity envisages certain kinds of continuity; the latter presupposes
discontinuity (397–98).

Sections 2 and 3 wrestle with the tension we may feel (but that Paul remarkably did not!) in this continuity and discontinuity, and section 4
clarifies “some of the polarities inherent in debates on the new perspective” (398).

2. Continuity and Fulfillment

This section displays six of “the kinds of ways in which continuity may, in Paul’s thought, be grounded,” and “what is so interesting is that
some form of discontinuity attaches itself to each kind” (398).

2.1. Continuity Located in Common, More-or-Less Unchanged Beliefs

“Inevitably Paul the Pharisee entertained some fundamental beliefs that were maintained even after he became Paul the Christian” (398).
For example, “There is but one God, who is the Creator of all” (398). Such beliefs “came across the divide relatively unscathed, more-or-less
in a straight line” (398).

But for Paul the Christian, some of these beliefs “underwent shifts of one kind or another,” though Paul did not abandon them. For
example, his “monotheism became more complex,” such that he “applies to Christ texts that clearly referred to Yahweh,” and he does this
“with a clear hermeneutical conscience because of his revised estimate of Jesus of Nazareth this side of his Damascus road experience”
(399).

2.2.Continuity Located in the Moral Application of Old Testament Narrative

In 1 Cor 10:1–13 and 2 Cor 11:3, Paul grounds his application in common experience, though there is certainly some discontinuity (399–
400).

2.3. Continuity Located in Common Legal/Ethical Prescriptions

In 1 Corinthians 5–7 and 9:19–23, Paul grounds his application in common legal or ethical exhortations, though there is certainly some
discontinuity (400–403).
D. A. Carson. “Mystery and Fulfillment: Toward a More Comprehensive Paradigm of Paul’s Understanding of the
Old and New.”
2.4. Continuity Located in Verbal Predictions and Event-Fulfillments
In Gal 3:8, Paul connects OT predictions with NT fulfillment, though there is certainly some discontinuity (403–4).

2.5. Continuity Located in Typological Fulfillment

Three clarifications:

1. Typology is distinct from allegory.  Interpreting allegory “depends on an extra-textual grid, some extra-textual key, to warrant the explanation,”
but typology is grounded in both history and corresponding events (404–5). E.g., Gal 4:21–31 is typology (405).
2. Paul understands recurrent typological patterns to point “forward to a culminating repetition of the pattern. This presupposes
that God himself is directing the pattern toward the end; it does not presuppose that early observers in the cycle of patterns
necessarily understood this anticipatory or predictive function” (405).
3. Paul appeals to types “of various kinds, measured by the degree of likeness or unlikeness that subsists between type and
antitype” (407). E.g., cf. Rom 5:14; 1 Cor 5:7–9; 10:4; 15:1–8 (407–10).

2.6. Continuity Located in a Temporal (i.e. Salvation-Historical) Reading of the Old

Testament
[Earlier in this volume, Robert W. Yarbrough defines "salvation history" as "the personal redemptive activity of God within human history
to effect his eternal saving intentions" ("Paul and Salvation History," 297).]

How does one account for the differences between how Paul the Pharisee and Paul the Christian read the OT? More is necessary than
merely distinguishing “between appropriation techniques and hermeneutical assumptions” (410). Paul argues that what he “finds in the
Scriptures is actually there” and that unconverted Jews do not see it because the Spirit has not illumined their understanding (411).

But how does Paul “seek to warrant his Christian reading in the Scriptures themselves, and thereby convince his readers?” (411). How does
Paul warrant, for example, his view of law?

Paul relativizes it by paying strict attention to the actual story-line in the Books of Moses. At the risk of deploying anachronistic categories,
instead of allowing the law-covenant to gain controlling force in a massive systematic theology, he reads the texts in a biblical-theological
fashion, in a salvation-historical sequence. Suddenly, the law-covenant is no longer the high point, the culmination and control of all that is
meant by true religion. Instead, it has almost become a parenthesis (Gal 3:15–4:7). . . . It appears that the argument of Galatians 3 turns on
temporal distinctions, on salvation-historical distinctions (411–12).

Two important observations follow from this (412):

1. “These temporally-based distinctions are grounded in a surface reading of the Old Testament text, of the story-line itself (i.e. they
are not fabricated by the apostle out of whole cloth, or generated by an extra-textual grid).”
2. “Paul’s salvation-historical argument in Galatians 3 responds not primarily to appeals to the law’s boundary markers, but to a
wrong estimate of its place and function in God’s sweeping salvific purposes  (which of course includes assessment of the boundary
markers).

3. Discontinuity and Mystery

Section 2 presupposes continuity and notes accompanying discontinuity. This section likewise presupposes discontinuity and notes “some
remarkable elements of continuity” (413).

3.1. Μυστήριον
Whether for Second Temple Judaism or for Christianity, whenever one speaks ofnew revelation — i.e. revelation whose material has been
hidden in the past but only now revealed — one must ponder its relation to antecedent revelation. Implicitly, there is at least some kind or
measure of discontinuity, or it would not in any sense be “new.” The nature of that discontinuity is precisely what must be probed,
especially if (as is the case for both Second Temple Judaism and for Christianity) it is simultaneously claimed that this recent disclosure is
somehow in line with the long-held revelation (415).

Μυστήριον occurs in Paul’s writings in Rom 11:25; 16:25 (textually debated), 1 Cor 2:1 (textually debated); 2:7; 4:1; 13:2; 14:2; 15:51; Eph
1:9; 3:3, 4, 9; 5:32; 6:19; Col 1:26, 27; 2:2; 4:3; 2 Thess 2:7; and 1 Tim 3:9, 16 (424n88). This section probes four of those passages (1 Cor
2; Rom 11:25–27; 1 Cor 15:50-55; and Rom 16:25–27) by making five inquiries:

1. “the content of the mystery (i.e. that to which the μυστήριον refers)”
D. A. Carson. “Mystery and Fulfillment: Toward a More Comprehensive Paradigm of Paul’s Understanding of the
Old and New.”
2. “who receives it”
3. “the nature and degree to which this mystery has been hidden in the past”
4. “the nature of the revelatory act that now discloses it (e.g. is that act public? private and personal?)”
5. “its relation, if any, to antecedent Scripture” (415)

3.2. Mystery Without Μυστήριον

Some passages do not use the word μυστήριον but nevertheless express the concept, e.g., John 2:19–22; Gal 1:11–17 (424–25).

4. Synthetic Reflections and Their Bearing on the New Perspective

These six reflections are based on sections 2 and 3. (I’ve added the headings in place of DAC’s numbered list.)

4.1. Paul simultaneously recognizes both continuity and discontinuity.

It appears Paul thinks of the gospel he preaches as simultaneously [1] something that has been predicted in times past, with those
predictions now fulfilled, and [2] something that has been hidden in times past, and now revealed (425).

Scholars commonly “stress one stance at the expense of the other” (425). Dunn, for example, overemphasizes continuity by insisting that
“Paul did not abandon his ancestral religion” and convert “to a new religion” (426).

4.2. Paul feels no tension between this continuity and discontinuity because they
genuinely lock together.
First, there is no evidence that Paul himself was aware of any tension between these two stances; and second, within the patterns of
promise and fulfillment, regularly connected with continuity, various kinds of discontinuity emerged, while within the patterns of mystery
and fulfillment, regularly connected with discontinuity, various kinds of continuity emerged in that the revelation of the mystery was on
occasion tied to (revelatory) exegesis of Scripture. These two matters dovetail. The reason Paul does not sense any tension between the
two stances is because they genuinely lock together (426).

Paul certainly does not insist that when the stipulations regarding the Passover lamb were first written down, both writer and readers
understood that they were pointing to the ultimate “lamb,” the Messiah himself. So it would be fair to say that such notions were still
hidden — hidden in plain view, so to speak, because genuinely there in the text (once one perceives the trajectory of the typology), but not
yet revealed. And that, perhaps, is why a “mystery” must be revealed, but also why it may be revealed through the prophetic writings. In
other words, Paul feels no tension between these two stances because, as he understands them, there isn’t any. And this is why the gospel
itself, not to say some of its chief elements, can be simultaneously seen as something that has been (typologically) predicted and now
fulfilled, and as something that has been hidden and has now been revealed. What starts off as almost intolerable paradox emerges as a
coherent and interlocking web (427).

4.3. By reading the OT's storyline salvation-historically, Paul concludes that the OT reveals
and is fulfilled in Christ.
Earlier we saw that methodologically Paul differs in his reading of the law-covenant from the reading of first-century Judaism by appealing
to the Old Testament’s story-line. . . . [O]nce the importance of the story-line is grasped, then determining what is of most controlling
importance cannot be discovered by measuring what themes take up the most space. In other words, Paul assesses the significance of
Israel and the Sinai covenant within the larger biblical narrative. It is this essentially salvation-historical reading of Genesis that enables him
to come within a whisker of treating the Sinai covenant as a parenthesis: the law’s most important function is to bring Israel, across time, to
Christ — and to bring others, too, insofar as the “law” is found among those “without the law.”

Here, then, too, we obtain a glimpse of how something could be simultaneously long hidden / eventually revealed and long prophesied /
eventually fulfilled. It was right there in the text (provided one reads the Scriptures with careful respect for the significance of the historical
sequence), even though, transparently, this was not how it was read by Paul the Pharisee. Doubtless it took the Damascus road
Christophany to make Saul of Tarsus recognize that his estimate of Jesus was wrong: Jesus could not be written off as a (literally) God-
damned malefactor if in fact his glorious resurrection proved he was vindicated, and so the controlling paradigm of his reading of the Old
Testament had to change. But when it changed, Paul wanted his hearers and readings to understand that the Old Testament, rightly read in
its salvation-historical structure, led to Christ. In other words, as far as Paul was concerned the gospel he preached was announced in
advance in the Scriptures, and was fulfilled in the events surrounding the coming, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus —
even if this gospel had long been hidden, and was now revealed in those events and thus in the gospel Paul preached — the gospel
revealed, indeed, through the prophetic writings (427–28).

4.4. Paul's understanding of the law recognizes both continuity and discontinuity.
D. A. Carson. “Mystery and Fulfillment: Toward a More Comprehensive Paradigm of Paul’s Understanding of the
Old and New.”
DAC draws on and tweaks Stephen Westerholm’s mature analysis (428–30). Christians are not under the law, yet Christian righteousness
fulfills the law. Further, the righteousness of God revealed in Jesus operates apart from law, yet the law witnesses to the righteousness that
Christ brings us. “The law is upheld [Rom 3:31] precisely in that to which it points. The law’s continuing validity lies in that which it
anticipates and which fulfills it” (430).

4.5. N. T. Wright emphasizes continuity at the expense of discontinuity.

We have already noted that some scholars maximize the continuity and minimize the discontinuity. The position of N. T. Wright in this
regard is simultaneously curiously penetrating and slightly misdirected (430).

First, it is difficult to see how Wright has taken on board what Paul says about “mystery” . . . . To lay great emphasis on the coherence of
Paul’s reading of the Old Testament without simultaneously taking into account Paul’s insistence on hiddenness — that strange hiddenness
that corresponds both to human morally culpable blindness and to God’s infinitely wise ordering of things so as to bring about the cross —
not only ignores Paul’s specific utterances regarding the μυστήριον, but misconstrues the biting edge of his understanding of typology. This
result is that God himself, in his word, becomes domesticated. . . . This “typology with teeth,” this re-reading of Scripture by focusing on
the story-line, this unveiling of material that is actually there in the text (even if it was long hidden), is precisely what makes coherent the
shattering event of the cross. Unless one simultaneously preserves mystery and fulfillment, then both the sheer Godhood of God and the
despoiling of human pretensions are inexcusably diluted (432–33).

Second, Wright’s actual reading of the typologies, though it is frequently fecund, is, I think, too narrowly tied to Israel’s history, and
therefore fails to position Paul’s understanding of the law-covenant within redemptive history (433).

4.6. James Dunn emphasizes continuity at the expense of discontinuity.

“Dunn has subsumed the mystery schema under the salvation-historical schema” (434).

Paul’s analysis of the purpose of the law was more penetrating, more radical, not least because of his profound and complex typological
interpretations, but also because, owing to his salvation-historical reading of the Old Testament, he understood the nature and role of the
law within the larger narrative framework of creation/fall/promise-to-Abraham/Israel-and-Sinai/Christ (435).

We are left with the paradoxes of Paul — a man who esteems the law-covenant highly, yet no longer sees himself under it (if it is conceived
primarily as lex); a man who teaches that the gospel has been announced throughout the Scriptures, yet who insists that only fresh
revelation, both in the person of Christ and in the illuminating work of the Spirit, unpacks what is there in the text and brings it to
fulfillment; a man whose being can on occasion breathe gratitude for his Jewish heritage, yet who reads the Bible in the still larger
salvation-historical frame of reference shaped by creation, Adam, the fall, the promise to Abraham, and the broken and enslaved universe
crying out for the promised liberation from its bondage to decay (435–36).