The New Perspective on Paul: Evaluation and Critique

1. The New Perspective on Paul: Evaluation and Critique

2. INTRODUCTION • In his book entitled, Counted Righteous in Christ (Crossway, 2002), 42, John Piper suggested that there are four significant issues related to the concept of justification in theology today:

3. INTRODUCTION 1) The New Perspective 2) Evangelicals and Catholics’ ecumenical dialogues 3) The conflation of faith and works of faith in the instrumentality of justification 4) The imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us

4. INTRODUCTION • What is the New Perspective? • History of the NPP: the writers and their writings • Beliefs of the NPP • What is the Old Perspective? • Essential beliefs • Responses of the Old Perspective to the NPP • What can we learn from this discussion?

5. What is the New Perspective? • History of the NPP • E. P. Sanders

6. Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977) • Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (1983) • Paul (1991) • Judaism: Practice and Belief 66 B.C.E.-66 C.E. (1992)

7. PPJ was the groundbreaking work that was actually built on the findings of several earlier writers including George Foot Moore (1921), Krister Stendahl (1963), George Howard (1970), and Joseph Tyson (1973).

8. In PPJ Sanders studied a number of Jewish writings from the intertestamental (2nd temple) period and he concluded that the Jews of Jesus’ day believed in grace and that their works did not save them.

9. He suggested that these second temple Jews were not legalists who believed in works righteousness; rather they were covenantal nomists who believed in grace – they were not concerned with getting in; they were concerned with staying in.

10. In the end Sanders’ goal was to study patterns of religion (rather than to make a theological statement), and his agenda was to demonstrate that Christianity and Judaism were not as antithetical as commonly supposed.

11. What is the New Perspective? • History of the NPP • James D. G. Dunn

12. “The New Perspective on Paul” (1983) • Romans, 2 vols. WBC (1988) • Jesus, Paul and The Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians (1990)

13. Galatians, BNTC (1993) • The Theology of Paul the Apostle (1998) • The New Perspective on Paul , rev. ed. (2008)

14. Dunn is credited for introducing us to the phrase “New Perspective.” • His 1983 article was based on the findings of Sanders (e.g. that Judaism was not legalistic), but he expanded on this view of Judaism by arguing two specific points:

15. Justification is covenant language. • When Paul uses the phrase “works of the Law,” he is talking about Jewish works seen as boundary markers separating Jews from Gentiles. • Thus, Paul’s problem with Judaism is not just a shift from Judaism to Christ (Sanders’ view).

16. Rather, Paul is attacking actual disobedience on the part of the Jews who have an attitude of presumption in regard to the Gentiles.

17. What is the New Perspective? • History of the NPP • N. T. Wright

18. “The Paul of History and the Apostle of Faith” (1978) • The Climax of the Covenant (1991) • What Saint Paul Really Said (1997) • “Romans” in New Interpreter’s Bible (2002)

19. Paul in Fresh Perspective (2005) • “New Perspectives on Paul” (2006) • “4QMMT and Paul” (2006) • Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (2009)

20. Wright is by far the most prolific writer supporting the NPP. • His 1978 article, though published after Sanders’ book, gives evidence of Wright’s exegetical and theological foundation which colors all of his writing on the NPP.

21. For example, “Judaism, so far from being a religion of works, is based on a clear understanding of grace, the grace that chose Israel in the first place to be a special people. Good works are simply gratitude” (“The Paul of History,” 80).

22. Further, the works-righteousness that has been attributed to Judaism by the retrojection of the Protestant-Catholic debates of the Reformation is not true. In fact Paul finds Israel “guilty not of ‘legalism’ or ‘works-righteousness’ but of what I call ‘national righteousness,’

23. the belief that fleshly Jewish descent guarantees membership of God’s true covenant people” (“The Paul of History,” 65). • Wright has written most specifically on the doctrine of justification.

24. Wright differs from Dunn in at least two ways: 1) He views justification as both covenantal and judicial. 2) He believes that his overall covenantal approach (viewing all of Paul through the lens of “God’s-single

25. Saving-plan-through-Israel-for-the-world”) is more precise than Dunn’s less covenantal understanding of the metanarrative of God’s saving plan.

26. What is the New Perspective? • History of the NPP • Other NPP writers of note: • Richard Hays • Don Garlington • Terry Donaldson • Bruce Longenecker • Douglas Campbell • Walter Hansen

27. What is the New Perspective? • Essential beliefs of the New Perspective: • Judaism: Jews of the 2nd temple period believed in covenantal nomism, i.e. obedience to the law was necessary to maintain one’s position in God’s covenant. These Jews were not concerned with “getting in” to God’s covenant family rather they were concerned with “staying in.”

28. What is the New Perspective? • Judaism: Obedience to the law was not thought to result in one’s salvation. Thus, Judaism was a religion of grace, not works. • Sanders (PPJ, 297): “Salvation . . . Is always by the grace of God, embodied in the covenant.” • Wright, Founder, 32: “We have misjudged early Judaism , especially Pharisaism, if we have thought of it as an early version of Pelagianism.”

29. What is the New Perspective? • Dunn, Theology, 345: “Second, and fundamental to Jewish self-understanding and covenant theology, was the recognition and affirmation that Israel’s standing before God was due entirely to the initiative of divine grace.” • Sanders, PPJ, 422: “Election and ultimately salvation are considered to be by God’s mercy rather than human achievement.”