The Apostle Paul – A Second Moses

While this suggestion might strike you as quite strange, even irresponsible, it is not an idea that I throw out lightly nor one that has not been suggested before. Indeed, I wrote a five hundred pages Ph.D. on this subject! I begin with 2 Corinthians 3, where Paul compares and contrasts his apostolic ministry with that of Moses. Paul is in fact laying claim to the ministry of the Second Moses, and what Paul says about the ministry of the Second Moses in 2 Corinthians 3–4:16 is crucial.

Because of the presence of the eschatological glory, Paul’s ministry is as a matter of fact, superior to and different than the ministry of Moses. This superiority suggests that Paul is in fact laying claim to the ministry of the Second Moses.

Paul is not thinking at random about any of the Old Covenant ministries of kings, priests, or prophets. Rather, he has in view the specific ministry of Moses, the Old Covenant mediator, whose task it was to receive and establish in written form and practice the Sinaitic Covenant between Yahweh and his people. The argument presupposes a certain continuity of the covenant of Grace under both dispensations, in which both the ministries of Paul and that of Moses share a common glory. This similarity is latent in what Paul says about his foundational role in the reception of the gospel/New Covenant and in the circumstances of his call.

“Our sufficiency is from God who qualified us…” (2 Corinthians 3:4–6). Paul is referring to the experience of commission as an apostle. Essentially the same phrase reoccurs in 1 Thessalonians 2:4: “we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel.”

The comparison with the “coming” of the Old Covenant through Moses appears to imply that Paul as well is speaking of the New Covenant coming through him as an apostle of Christ. In other words, Paul implies that his ministry is to be a mediator of the New Covenant in laying its foundation (1 Cor 3:10) in the way that Moses had laid the foundation of the Old Covenant.

Moses “was made sufficient by the All-Sufficing One (El Shaddai,” interpreted as “God the all-sufficient one.” “For God said to him, ‘Who has made man’s mouth: or who maketh dumb or deaf or seeing or blind?… Who,’” then says the apostle “is sufficient (hikanos) for the second and greater ministry? We are; but our sufficiency also is infused by grace”(Ex 4:11; 2 Cor 3:6). Paul also shows how important this term hikanos is for understanding his call in the first epistle to the Corinthians. Indeed, in the text we have studied at length, (1 Cor 15:8ff), Paul uses the very expression employed by Moses at his call. He says, explicitly referring to his call, in 15:9, “I am not worthy to be called an apostle.” Again, he affirms the grace and enabling of God. “But by the grace of God I am what I am.”

Paul implies that his ministry is to be a mediator of the New Covenant in laying its foundation (1 Cor 3:10) in the way that Moses had laid the foundation of the Old.

The text suggests not only the mediatorial character of their ministries but also the similar circumstances of their call to this ministry. It is significant and perhaps more than coincidental that the account of Moses’ call contains the common term hikanosI. Moses, when faced by the divine majesty and the awesomeness of the task to which God had called him, exclaims: “I am not worthy” (Ex 4:10). Moses “was made sufficient by the All-Sufficing One (El Shaddai, interpreted as Theos ho hikanos). For God said to him, ‘Who has made man’s mouth: or who maketh dumb or deaf or seeing or blind?… Who,’ then says the apostle ‘is sufficient (hikanos) for the second and greater ministry? We are but our sufficiency also is infused by grace.

Moses’ letter of recommendation, one might well say, was the Old Covenant represented by the stone tablets (2 Cor 3:6) which in Exodus 32:16 are described as the “work of God” and the text continues, “and the writing was the writing of God.” Thus, Moses’ authentication before the children of Israel was his mediation and ministration of the God-given Sinaitic Covenant entrusted to him. Now it seems to me, from the movement of Paul’s argument here, that in the same way Paul’s letter or recommendation was the New Covenant, represented by the new people of God, written on his heart, which he was given to minister. Hence in 1 Corinthians 9:2 he describes them as the seal of his apostolate, and in verse 1, perhaps recalling Exodus 32:16, he says to them, “You are my work in the Lord.” The structure is virtually identical. The actual circumstances of the initial giving of the two covenants are implied; there is the Lord who gives the covenants, there is the Spirit who writes them; they both result in something tangible, for the Old Covenant the stone tables; for the New, the eschatological people of God who have the Law within them; and finally both covenants require human mediators, Moses and Paul.^[1] “Of the comparison, as followed up by Paul, is startling in its exceeding boldness. A more impressive disclosure of his exalted sense of office is scarcely conceivable. In order to feel the full force of this we ought to make clear to ourselves that not two single persons, but two pairs of persons are set over against each other. On the one side stand God and Moses, the reflector of his glory, and on the other Christ and Paul. What an overwhelming sense then of the greatness of his own ministry must Paul have possessed, when he dared conceive the thought of being greater than Moses.” Since his vision of God’s glory in the face of Christ, unlike the case of Moses, may be shared with all, so that “we all with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor 3:18). What Moses could not do the apostle glories in being able to do, for his experience of the eschatological glory has not only transformed himself but through his preaching of it all who enter the New Covenant are so transformed.

It appears that another function of the second Moses is that he is the source of true saving knowledge through his inspired exegesis of the Old Covenant Scriptures. Moses was the source of true knowledge of God in the Old Covenant and this knowledge theoretically could give life (Rom 10:5). But, says Paul, a veil lies over Moses and the Scriptures, which can only be removed by turning to the Lord. “Turning to the Lord” means turning to the apostolic gospel which, among other things, while deriving from the Scriptures (Rom 1:1, 16:25f) is an inspired interpretation of those Scriptures.

The apostles are Christ’s instruments and organs for the fulfillment of revelation. As a second Mosaic ministry they share in establishing Christ himself. Together with him they constitute the rock, the foundation, the pillars of the church (Matt 16:18; Eph 2:20; Gal 2:9), of which Paul is the last.

We praise the Lord that founding our ministry on Oneism and Twoism enables us to stand behind Paul, the Second Moses and Last Apostle.