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New Perspective on Paul
Its origins and beliefs.
You decide if they are found weighed
and wanting
This presentation is a highlight of the
material in Guy Prentiss Waters’ book
“Justification and the New
Perspectives on Paul.” 2004
All expressions of Christianity are ultimately
on the path to either Rome or Geneva.
Present day definition
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A problem clearly defined is a problem half solved. So how does one
define NPP?
NPP is a heretical soteriological doctrine that initial salvation is by
grace, but maintaining salvation is by our works. This being
reminiscent of the papist error that prior sins are erased by baptism,
yet we must atone for all subsequent sins by our own works. J.
Ligon Duncan notes: “The law (nomos) was not a means of getting
saved but of staying saved. Keeping God's law was the appropriate
response to God's covenant mercy.” Some Thoughts on Covenant
Theology and Justification.
Besides rejecting Divine preservation of the saints, the
New Perspective also claims that the First Century A.D.
Jewish pharisaical system was a sola gratia religion ! In other words
the Judaism of Paul’s day was not a religion of self righteousness.
An additional New Perspective teaching: Divine forgiveness is
primarily ethnic or corporate rather than personal.
NPP’s Origins
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Biblical critics of 17th century Germany began to
depart from the formal concern (Scripture
Alone) of the Reformation.
This also led to a departure from the material
concern of the Reformation (Justification by
Faith Alone).
The soteriology that Luther and Calvin rejected
found its way into Lutheran Scholarship.
FC Baur and 19th Century
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1826 FC Baur begins to
teach at Tubingen.
Baur rejects some of
Paul’s epistles that do not
deal with the
Jewish/Christian issues.
European philosophy
embraces doubt.
Exegesis assumes
unprecedented
independence from
systematic theology.
F.C Baur
19th Century Summary
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Scholars by and large agree on the two
main points of Paul’s letters. They are:
1) Justification by Faith Alone
2) Some sort of mystical/ethical line of
thought evidenced by his language of
“the spirit” and “union in Christ”.
Their conclusion was that for Paul the
mystical was more important than
Justification by faith alone.
Rudolph Bultman and W.D. Davies
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Rudolph Bultmann saw faith as the
renunciation of such striving and more as
dependence on God.
William David Davies in his 1948 book “Paul
and Rabbinic Judaism” was the first to
look at Paul and contemporary Judaism
sympathetically.
Bultmann viewed Paul and Judaism
antithetically.
For Davies, Christology was more important
than Justification by faith alone.
J. Ligon Duncan gives a modern example of
this. Duncan notes “Wright's definition of
the Gospel makes the Gospel wholly about
the person of Christ and not about his work
("the Gospel is 'Jesus is Lord and Messiah'
not 'Jesus died for your sins'")… Notice this
definition of the Gospel moves back from
the work of Christ to the person of Christ.
Though Wright doesn't deny the importance
of the work of Christ, he rarely, if ever,
attempts to articulate clearly just what that
work is and how it functions.” Attractions
Rudolph Bultmann
of the New Perspective on Paul.
W.D. Davies
Krister Stendahl
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Served as prof of New Test. at
Harvard Div. from 1954-1984.
He argued Luther and Calvin’s
conversion experiences
affected the West’s reading of
Paul.
Role of Jews and Gentiles in
God’s plan was more important
than Justification by faith
alone. Paul was read by Luther
“in the framework of late
medieval piety.” The Apostle
Stendahl thought the Reformation led
Paul and the Introspective
to those “who find themselves more or less
Conscience of the West.
dogmatically bound by the Confessions.”
P. 86
IBID p. 87
Is Stendahl claiming his interpretation
of the Scriptures on Paul and Justification is correct and the Reformed
Confessions wrong? It sure seems that way. Both cannot be correct.
Galatians 3:24-26 ESV
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So then, the law was our guardian until Christ
came, in order that we might be justified by
faith. But now that faith has come, we are no
longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you
are all sons of God, through faith.
Stendahl says “we/our means ‘me Paul with my
Jewish compatriots and nothing else. It is
totally wrong to apply that ‘our’ to us Gentiles.”
Paul Among Jews and Gentiles p. 23
E.P. Sanders
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Magnum opus was
Paul and
Palestinian
Judaism.
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Second major work
Paul the Law and
the Jewish People.
Third work Judaism:
Practice and Belief.
E.P. Sanders 8 points
1.
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3.
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5.
6.
7.
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God has chosen Israel.
God has given the law.
God’s promise to maintain the election
The requirement to obey.
God rewards obedience and punishes transgression.
The law provides for means of atonement.
The law helps to maintain or reestablish the covenant.
All those who are maintained in the covenant by
obedience, atonement and God’s mercy belong to the
group that will be saved.
Regarding man’s nature it is interesting to note what Sanders
believes. “It is a matter of observation that all men sin. Men
have, apparently, the inborn drive towards rebellion and disobedience.
But that is not the same as being born in a state of sinfulness from which
liberation is necessary. Sin only comes when man actually disobeys; if he
were to not disobey, he would not be a sinner.” Paul and Palestinian Judaism
p. 114-115
Conclusion on Sanders
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Guy Prentiss Waters summarizes Sanders
analysis of Judaism at the time of Paul. He
notes:
Sanders has not established that Judaism at the
time of Paul was a religion of grace. The Rabbi’s
did not believe that grace had to overcome or
over power the will. Rather, God’s grace helped
to make up the deficiencies of one’s obedience.
Sanders downplays the Rabbi’s who believed
that God chose Israel based on their foreseen
obedience. Sanders views this as peripheral to
the fact that God chose Israel.
Waters rightly concludes, “Any system of theology that
conceives God as electing a person on the grounds of his
or her foreseen choice or actual deeds is not gracious in
the Biblical sense.” P. 56.
Covenantal Nomism
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One enters the covenant by baptism.
Once one enters the covenant the
membership provides salvation.
Obedience to a specific set of
commandments keeps one in the
covenant.
Sanders basically believes that Paul’s discontent with Judaism does not come from the
inability to keep the commandments but from a logical consequence of his two
fundamental convictions which Sanders identifies in Paul the Law and the Jewish
People. Concerning Paul, Sanders notes, “As far as I can determine, inability and self
righteousness do not figure at all in his statements about the law (except for the extreme
statement of inability in Romans 7:14-25). When he criticizes Judaism, he does
so in a sweeping manner and the criticism has two focuses: the lack of faith in Christ and
the lack of equality for the Gentiles.” p. 154-155
Conclusion on Sanders
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Paul never disagreed with Judaism on
soteriological grounds. He never believed
Judaism was faulty in its capacity to provide
salvation.
Waters sums up Sanders by noting, “Christ’s
death was fundamentally not expiatory to Paul,
but entailed the believer’s deliverance from the
power of sin by participation in his death.” p. 89
Paul’s meaning of justification was more
participatory than a forensic, judicial
righteousness.
Post Sanders
Heikki Raisanen
Professor of New
Testament Exegesis at
the University of
Helsinki.
James D.G. Dunn
Lightfoot Professor of Divinity
at Univ. of Durham. Responsible
for the coining the term “New
Perspective” in 1982.
N.T. Wright
Anglican Bishop
of Durham
Raisanen summarized
 Raisanen believes Paul’s writings were filled with “invalid
premises.” Paul and the Law p.11-12. So much for
inerrancy!
 Romans 7:14-25 was “not intended by Paul as a
description of the Christian,” but “man’s existence under
the law.” IBID. p. 13. This is wrong as a cursory
reading of Romans 7 shows that Paul is writing AFTER
his conversion. The grammar is present tense.
 Paul deliberately misrepresents Judaism to teach the law
is a means of righteousness due to his “conflict with the
Judaizers.” IBID. p. 256
 Paul’s “actual attitude towards the Torah… amounts to its
abrogation.” IBID. p. 220
Dunn summarized 1
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Differs from Sanders and Raisanen in that as Paul is more coherent
and consistent. Dunn is more difficult to refute.
Dunn hailed Sanders work as a response to “the typically Lutheran
emphasis on Justification by faith.” New Perspective on Paul, p.
299
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For Dunn the word “nomos” (Greek “law”) in Paul is to be translated
“Torah”. “Works of the law are not good works in general or any
attempt by the individual to amass or merit for himself, but…that
pattern of obedience by which the righteous maintain their
status within the people of the covenant, as evidenced not least by
their dedication on such sensitive test issues as Sabbath and food
laws.” Theology of the Apostle Paul 1:42
Dunn Summarized 2
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Righteousness must be understood as a Hebraic concept and not a
Greek concept.
Greek concept has righteousness meaning “an idea or ideal against
which the individual and individual action can be measured.”
Hebraic denotes a “more relational concept, the meeting of
obligations laid upon the individual by the relationship of which he
or she is apart.” No forensic or transformative use of the term is
allowed. Theology of the Apostle Paul p. 52
The righteousness of God for Dunn is “God’s fulfillment of the
obligations He took upon Himself in creating humankind and
particularly in the calling of Abraham and the choosing of Israel to
be His people.” In other words it is “God’s faithfulness to His
people.” IBID. p. 342
The goal of Romans is to “explain and vindicate the faithfulness of
God.” IBID. p. 344
Wright Summarized
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Reading Romans regarding imputation and the
righteousness of God Wright has a different
understanding than the historic creeds and confessions.
For example, Wright notes, “If we use the language of
the law court, it makes no sense whatever to say that
the judge imputes, imparts, or bequeaths, conveys or
otherwise transfers his righteousness to either the
plaintiff or the defendant. Righteousness is not an
object, a substance or gas which can be passed across
the courtroom…..To imagine the defendant somehow
receiving the judge’s righteousness is simply a category
mistake. That is not how the language works.” What
Saint Paul Really Said, p. 98.
Criticism
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Even though there is a divergence of opinion, there is
enough similarity to label NPP a “school of thought”. It
is found weighed and wanting for three main reasons.
1 NPP fails hermeneutically as its basic principles for
interpreting Scripture are flawed.
2 First century Judaism does have some concept of the
grace of God and it was not solely based on works.
Granted one could argue it was semi-Pelagian.
3 The exegesis of the Reformers and their heirs is
faithful to Paul in contrast to the revisionist eisegesis of
Dunn, Wright and Sanders. Paul always interpreted “the
history of salvation through the lens of Christ, not the
reverse.”
Justification/Imputation
You decide who’s right.
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'Justification is an act of God's free grace in
which he pardons all our sins and accepts us as
righteous in his sight for the sake of the
righteousness of Christ alone, which is credited
to us and received by faith alone' (Shorter
Catechism, 33).
Philippians 3:8-9 NASB “More than that, I count
all things to be loss in view of the surpassing
value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for
whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and
count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ,
9 and may be found in Him, not having a
righteousness of my own derived from the
Law, but that which is through faith in Christ,
the righteousness which comes from God on the
basis of faith,”
Challenge: find a lexicon which defines the
Greek word dikaiosune ("righteousness") as
"membership within a group" or dikaioo
("justify") as "to make or declare the member of
a group." [It's not even down under definition
number 14d!] Charles E. Hill
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Stendahl asks, "does [Paul] ever intimate that he is aware
of any sins of his own which would trouble his conscience?
Far from being "simultaneously a sinner and a saint" (simul
iustus et peccator), Paul testifies of his clear conscience:
"Indeed, this is our boast, the testimony of our conscience:
we have behaved in the world with frankness and godly
sincerity" (2 Cor. 1:12a). He was aware that he had not yet
"arrived" …He looked forward to a day when "all of us
must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each
may receive recompense for what has been done in the
body, whether good or evil" (2 Cor. 5:10), and he
anticipated a favorable verdict (v. 11). He acknowledged
that his clear conscience did not necessarily ensure this
verdict (1 Cor. 4:4), but he was confident nevertheless.
These are hardly the convictions of a man who intends to
rest entirely on the merits of an alien righteousness imputed
to his account.“Mark M. Mattison Auburn Univ
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N.T. Wright’s translation of Philippians 3:8: "Paul is
saying, in effect, 'I, though possessing covenant
membership according to the flesh, did not regard that
covenant membership as something to exploit. I emptied
myself, sharing the death of the Messiah, wherefore God
has given me the membership that really counts in which I
too will share the glory of Christ.'" What Saint Paul
Really Said, p. 124.
That is a very significant shift. "Righteousness" is translated as "covenant membership." That's what righteousness is,
being declared by God to be a member of the righteous covenant community, it is not receiving or being credited with
the righteousness of Christ. No, Wright would say Christ's righteousness is non-transferable.
Are you part of the problem or
solution?
X
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In our day and age the doctrine of
justification by free grace is all but
forgotten. The majority of large
denominations, although they may
have it set forth in their official
creeds, as a matter of fact no
longer believe it or preach it in
any pointed or consistent way. In
many cases the Protestant church
which claim to hold it yet show
but little zeal or enthusiasm for
preaching it. It is not an
exaggeration to say that the
average Protestant church
member knows little or nothing of
it. The Westminster Larger
Catechism: A Commentary by
Johannes G. Vos, edited by
G.I. Williamson.
Reformed
Theology
X
marks the overlap
The big picture is supposed
to be truth and evangelizing,
the misled, underfed and lost.
Evangelical
Christians
X here refers to the point of
overlap where Reformed
Evangelical
Theology is the minor point
Christians
in today’s church world.
X
Reformed
Theology