The allegiance to separation of the culture into which God’s Word became incarnate was ethnic: the separation of the Hebrew children of God from the non-Hebrew children of God. The allegiance to separation of the culture – call it historical Christianity – that eventually established itself after the Ascension was epistemological: the separation of those children of God who have a certain ‘belief’ or ‘set of beliefs’ concerning Jesus, and those who do not.

Characterized in this fashion, Christianity’s difference from Judaism essentially amounted to shifting the boundary line of separation between two populations of the children of God. But St Paul offered his gospel of grace as an alternative to what he called ‘a religion of works,’ not simply as a refinement or readjustment.

The great confusion that lies at the heart of historical Christianity stemmed from a naivete – sometimes willful, mainly not – about the concept of belief. It is the naivete of regarding beliefs – whether invoked in the language of believing someone or something, or believing in someone, or having faith – as naming something, either a course of action or some sort of mental state, that can be chosen.

But of course, if having faith or a belief is something that can be chosen (or rejected), then it is a work as St. Paul understood the term, no different from the work of elaborate hand washing ritual, or the work of circumcision.

Historical Christianity, therefore, far from maturing out of St. Paul’s gospel of grace, instead formed itself into simply another religion of works.