How Aristotle’s 'Politics' May Help Us to Understand Paul and the Law

Introduction

At the academic level, scholars will be aware of numerous books and essays on Paul and the Law.  Many ministers and laity approach the question differently: ‘Is the Law still relevant for Christians?’  Much of this discussion focusses on exegesis of specific texts in Paul.  This brief essay takes a broader view in that it asks how Paul’s discussion of the Law might have fit into the discussion of politics in antiquity.  For this, I propose to use some distinctions from Aristotle’s Politics.  I also intend to keep the analysis brief as considerations easily become entangled in the plethora of literature on the subject and drown understanding in all the details.  The reader may ask whether this is simplistic and distorts the discussion of Paul and the Law.  My view is that this approach helps to provide a way into a complex subject that might be followed up with an engagement of all the discussion of Paul and the Law over the past decades.

Aristotle’s Discussion of Government in Politics

Aristotle follows others (like Plato) in speaking of six types of government that divide into three categories: rule of the one, rule of the few, and rule of the many.  Two possibilities are available in each of these, one good and one bad (Politics 4.1289a).  Thus, respectively, rule of the one may be by a monarch or a tyrant; rule of the few may be by an aristocracy or an oligarchy, and rule of the many may be by constitutional government or democracy.  (His negative view of democracy is that it is the kind of populism that flouts the constitution and laws of the land because the people vote for things that benefit themselves.)

Aristotle does not approach his subject by arguing that there is only one good form of government.  What is needed is virtuous and good leaders.  Nor does he take the view that government is stable as it changes.  As he discusses different types of government in different states, such as Athens and Sparta, he considers their strengths and weaknesses.  Within a state, good government might change for the worse and often does, and the failures of one form of government leads to change to another form of government, such as the excesses of democracy leading to tyranny.  Also helpful is Aristotle’s statement that different forms of government are suited to different sorts of people.  Thus, he sets out four questions for discussion of state constitutions (Politics 4.1288b):

What is the ideal constitution?

What form of constitution is best for a particular people (since the ideal is unattainable)?  How might this constitution be brought into existence and maintained?

What is the form of constitution shared by most states?

Various authors attest to a general view in antiquity that individuals set up a constitution with various laws for particular states, such as Solon’s law for Athenians.  Moreover, these human leaders functioned under the direction of various gods, such as Athena for the Athenians.  Significantly, different laws applied to different forms of constitution and different peoples.  Thus, we have the following sort of progression in the discussion of the politics of a particular people:

Their major god, their leader who established the constitution, the particular people, their constitution, and the laws appropriate for the constitution and the people. 

This view was held not only by the Greeks but also throughout the Ancient Near East.

This context is certainly applicable to a discussion of Judaism.  Of course, the Jews believed that there is only one God, and therefore they were unique among the peoples of the earth in that this God gave them the Law.  Moses was the lawgiver, Israel was God’s covenant people, they lived under a form of monarchy (a theocracy, however) and were given written laws.

Christians had the challenge of considering what to do with the Law of the Jews now that they included both Jews and Gentiles, and this leads us directly to the question of Paul, apostle to the Gentiles, and the Old Testament, Jewish Law.

Paul and the Law

These broad thoughts about government may help us in considering Paul’s view of the Law.  He has in view two different people: Jews and Christians (Jews and Gentiles).  They have the same God, but their constitutions are different.  The one constitution, that of Moses, functioned for a sinful people in covenant relationship with God.  The other constitution, that of Christ, functioned for a righteous people in covenant relationship with God.  They were not righteous through works of the Law but through the work of Jesus Christ.  Jesus was able to bring about the constitutional change because He fulfilled the righteous requirements of the Law, and now those ‘in Him’ were righteous by His righteousness.

The Christian constitution was not of the same sort as the Jewish constitution in regard to laws.  Laws were necessary because people were sinful.  We might say that, if a people obeyed the speed limit, they would not need speed signs.  In fact, we might compare the United Kingdom to the United States of America in this example.  In the UK, drivers are expected to know the speed limit on different sorts of roads.  Thus, they rarely need signs.  In the US, roads have speed signs everywhere.  On this example, the UK is comparable to a Christian constitution with respect to the law, and the USA is comparable to the Jewish constitution.  The example is further helpful in that both countries have speed limits, they just relate differently to them.  Christians do not oppose the laws of the Old Testament—so far as they relate to those who are not Jews.  The difference is that they do not need legal regulations because they are serving God in a different way by keeping in step with the Holy Spirit.

Some Jewish laws no longer apply to Christians, whether Jews or Christians.  The constitution has changed.  Sacrificial laws are no longer needed as Jesus was the sacrifice once for all for sins.  Laws regulating a Jewish state, including punishments for certain acts, are no longer applicable to a people that are not a state—the Church.  Some laws accommodated sin, as Jesus noted, such as permission for divorce.  The new constitution was for righteous people who understood marriage in terms of what God intended in creation.  Yet the question of the Law was not simply a matter of which laws still applied and which did not.  Instead, the constitution was changed by Jesus for a now righteous people serving according to the empowering Holy Spirit.

Conclusion

As stated above, Paul does not quite discuss the Law in the same way that Aristotle discusses government.  The comparisons offered here are for understanding certain categories in a discussion of constitutions and laws that provide a fresh way of trying to get to Paul’s basic argument.  Aristotle’s distinctions may help us understand Paul’s approach to the Law now that Christ Jesus had established a whole new people in Himself who are led by the Spirit.  Contrasting the two ‘constitutions’, Paul says,

For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. ⁶ But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code (Romans 7.5-6, ESV).

Paul could certainly affirm the righteous laws of God under the Jewish constitution, such as when he alluded to Leviticus 20.13 when speaking of homosexuality as a sin (1 Corinthians 6.9; 1 Timothy 1.10).  The moral law of Judaism was God’s law, not just a law for a particular people.  What changed was that Jesus had accomplished a change in the people.  We need to talk about more than just the law when discussing Paul and the Law of the Old Testament.  We need to understand that this matter is part of a larger discussion.  A constitution for a sinful nation struggling with the flesh and their sins was changed into a constitution for a righteous people of Jews and Gentiles in Christ empowered by the Holy Spirit.