NOVENSON. The chapter Tom has been waiting for, so let me be precise about what it claims. Paul never speaks of a 'true Israel' or 'spiritual Israel.' Never and nowhere. Origen himself gave the game away: 'The apostle says somewhere, Behold Israel according to the flesh, as if there were an Israel according to the spirit.' As if — Origen's inference from 1 Corinthians 10:18, and a non sequitur: 'Israel according to the flesh' there means just Israel, the people whose temple is in Jerusalem, and κατὰ σάρκα is no slur — the Messiah himself comes from Israel κατὰ σάρκα. No spiritual seed of David, no spiritual messiah, no spiritual Israel anywhere in the corpus. Now the supposed proof-texts, one by one. Romans 2:28–29 — the 'true Jew' — rests on a persistent mistranslation: the adjectives 'true' and 'real' are not in the Greek text, anywhere in the manuscript tradition; they are supplied by modern translators because of their prior assumption. Read the syntax as Arneson proposes, with 'Jew' as subject rather than predicate, and the passage asks not 'Who is a Jew?' but 'Who gets praise from God?' — answer: the Jew in secret, not the Jew on display; and the ostentatious circumcision in view is proselyte circumcision, which by definition is in the flesh and for display. Philippians 3:3, 'we are the circumcision' — the RSV smuggles in 'true,' tellingly — is Paul taking the title back from proselyte-circumcised gentiles and restoring it to eighth-day-circumcised Jewish apostles like himself: the opposite of a transfer. Romans 9:6, 'not all those from Israel are Israel,' does the reverse of what the verus Israel hypothesis needs: it does not expand Israel, it winnows Israel — Paul reasons to fewer, not more, and certainly not other; there is nothing here about outsiders finding a way in. And Romans 11:26: σῴζω means to survive, to be preserved through the day of the lord — 'all Israel will be preserved' is almost identical to the Mishnah's 'All Israel have a share in the age to come,' and 'Jacob' in the attached citation seems to me decisive: Jacob is the father of the twelve tribes. The whole Jewish people, as against the meager part presently on board with Paul's message. Gentiles-in-Christ will survive the judgment too, of course. But they are not Israel. Only a gentile like Justin would ever think they were.
WRIGHT. And once more I am quoted before I can speak — Faithfulness of God, the 'double existence' of Israel in Romans 11. I will defend the substance. Watch what Romans 9 actually does: 'not the children of the flesh but the children of the promise are counted as seed' — once promise rather than descent defines the seed, the term is prised open in principle, and Galatians walks through the opening: 'if you are the Messiah's, then you are Abraham's seed, heirs according to promise.' Matthew says Paul never completes the redefinition. I say the argument performs it, and Justin merely wrote down what the logic had already done.
NOVENSON. Abraham's seed, Tom — not Israel. And the book has a parable for the difference, out of 1 Maccabees: the Spartans, too, were found in writing to be 'from the clan of Abraham' — brothers of the Jews, according to something someone found written somewhere. It does not follow that Spartans are Jews, for Spartans are not descendants of Isaac and Jacob. Just so Paul's gentiles: seed and sons of Abraham, but not of Isaac or of Jacob. This makes all the difference. Abraham is the father of us all; Jacob — which is to say, Israel — is not. Gentiles-in-Christ are annexed to God's people; they do not become God's people Israel. Rejoice, O gentiles, with his people. And your 'double existence' reading, Tom, has one fatal cost, which I will quote myself on: it effectively leaves Paul bereft of any words at all with which he might signify his own co-ethnics, should he ever want to — which he does, very often. In Paul's way of thinking ethnicity, Jews are Jews, and gentiles gentiles. For Paul, carnal Israel was the only Israel there was.
SANDERS. I enter this chapter twice, and fare better than at chapter five. My old reckoning that Galatians 6:16 is the only place Paul uses 'Israel' to mean something other than the Jewish people — Matthew respectfully retires it: read the benediction as two parallel clauses, peace upon those who walk by this rule, and mercy also upon God's people Israel, and the exception dissolves; Eastman's observation that mercy is precisely Paul's word for God's posture toward Israel in Romans 9–11 settles it for me, and I stand corrected with pleasure. My 'third race' proposal fares less well — 'ingenious but not finally convincing' is the book's verdict on better arguments than mine. On the main claim, the discipline is admirable and the lexicon is with him: the extension of 'Israel' to the church is post-Pauline. What the lexicon cannot settle is the pressure Tom feels in the argument. As usual, Paul did not tidy it for us. As usual, I decline to tidy it for him.
PAUL. Hear the subject once more, for this chapter concerns my kinsmen and I will not be brief as if it did not. Matthew: you have kept my words where I put them, and I thank you. I never wrote 'true Israel' — when I said Israel I meant Israel, the people of the adoption and the glory, my brothers according to the flesh, for whose sake I could wish myself accursed. And you heard my 'preserved' rightly: the rabbis said 'All Israel have a share in the age to come,' and I said nearly the same sentence with my own grief in it. Guard that lexicon; churches forgot it and lit fires by the forgetting. But Tom has heard a real pressure, and I will name it, since I felt it in my own hand as I wrote: the promise was always wider than the flesh could hold — in you shall all the nations be blessed; I found the nations inside the promise like a river inside its spring. I made them sons of Abraham. I did not make them Israel — your Spartans, Professor, made me laugh, and the laughter is instruction. If you ask why I stopped at that line — reverence, prudence, or the Spirit's own restraint — I answer as before: what I knew, I wrote; where I stopped, I stopped. The Professor has drawn my boundary where I drew it. Let no one on either side of it boast.