Canter Bridge

At the core of the apostle Paul’s self-understanding stands his calling to enlighten the nations regarding YHWH’s intention to bless them. Indeed Paul seems to evoke the language of the book of Isaiah’s enigmatic ‘servant of the Lord’ when he speaks of how he invests his own life in this almost startlingly non-Jewish mission.

Paul believes himself to be the custodian of a mystery hidden in the secret counsels of God until Paul’s own historical moment. At that time, his argument runs, what was hidden was made clear. Paul’s job is to illuminate the nations regarding the good news that YHWH’s redeeming obsession tracks itself out in their direction, intends to gather them into its embrace, and even sets its sight on renewing the whole creation until it cannot keep itself from bursting into praise.

Reading through the so-called ‘oracles against the nations’ in the book of Isaiah, it is easy for this writer to understand how Paul can consider the wideness of YHWH’s intentions to be something that was, back then, hidden. One does not pick up such prophetic denunciation a self-evident determination to bring the pagan peoples into loving reconcilation with Israel:

In former generations this mystery was not made known to humankind, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: that is, the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

Yet it would be equally unfair entirely to deny such a purpose to the prophets, particularly if the promise to Abraham in Genesis 12—with its wide-armed promise of blessing (in Abraham) to all nations—is allowed to serve as a lens through which that biblical literature that alludes to such a promise can be read. Paul is not inventing a new topic that he then imposes back upon the purposes of God with the caveat that YHWH was keeping a pretty big secret for all those years. Rather, the apostle is thrusting roots into a particularly deep watercourse and drawing from that reservoir more liquid nourishment than the Judaisms of his day (or the Christianities hence!) have found it convenient to imbibe.

YHWH is good, the apostle might recite with his kith and kin, then move on to paraphrase the confession’s concluding clause: his mercy is even more forever than we knew.

The most audacious promises of gentile ‘ingathering’, even in their audacious openness to the peoples who do not know YHWH or his Law, might not have captured quite this extremity of grace: that the gentiles should become one with Israel under the Lord’s supervision.

It was a hidden mystery, a secret, Paul explains. ‘Twas a hidden counsel now brought to life and entrusted to a man like me. If this be so and the nations be dark, how can I possible stay here, where light and life are fairly a birthright?