Law and Gospel

According to Paula Fredriksen’s wonderful analysis in Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism , Augustine dramatically, even revolutionarily, shifted the traditional Christian understanding of law and gospel: “The old antagonistic contrast between Law and gospel . . . was undermined. Law and gospel are neither opposites nor alternatives. Whether publicly or privately, globally or individually, Law and gospel stand together as two historically specific modes of a single divine initiative of redemption . . . . Through his incarnation and crucifixion and bodily resurrection, Christ had revealed that the Law, which had foretold all these events, referred to himself. In this way, the law was the gospel.” She quotes from Contra Faustum : “The same Law that was given to Moses became grace and truth in Jesus Christ.”

How did he do it? By combining a thoroughgoing typological reading of the Old Testament (everything is about Christ) with an insistence on the validity of the literal understanding of the Old Testament. Not only was the Law good, but (in contrast to many earlier Christian writers) Augustine said that Jewish performance of the Law was good. No tricks, no traps: When God told Israel to offer sacrifice, avoid unclean meats, keep Sabbath, purify themselves in various ways, He meant it. And it was in the actual bodily performance of the law that Israel became a living prophecy of the things that were coming in Christ: “No less than did Jewish scripture . . . Jewish rites and Jewish behavior – God’s word interpreted proprie – also served as signa translata , signifying divine truths.”

As Augustine himself put it, “Through these men whose hearts were enlightened by the wisdom of God, we may seek out the prophecy of the coming of Christ and his church not only in what they said but also in what they did; and the same is true of the body of the whole people. All this accords with what the Apostle said, ‘these things were done as examples ( figurae ) for us.’”