Best Defense of Justification by Faith Agains New Perspective

Faith Pulpit
Faith Baptist Theological Seminary
Ankeny, Iowa
May–June 2010

An Overview of the New Perspective on Paul

Douglas Brown, Ph.D.

The New Perspective on Paul is a major departure from New Testament education that is gaining in acceptance amidst writers and teachers, even among some evangelicals. In the July/August and September/October 2008 issues of the Organized religion Pulpit, Dr. Paul Hartog examined this teaching as it relates to the doctrine of justification. In this follow-upwards article, Dr. Douglas Brown, chair of the New Testament Section at Religion Baptist Theological Seminary in Ankeny, Iowa, presents a basic overview of the New Perspective, surveying the historical background, identifying the major figures in the move, and clarifying what is at pale in the contend.

I take had a couple of opportunities to exist on camera in forepart of a "dark-green screen." The camera captures your prototype and ignores the green background. It is a great feel because you tin project yourself on screen into any number of backgrounds. At one moment you lot tin can exist skiing in the Alps; the side by side, y'all can be surfing on the North Shore. You stay the same, only the groundwork changes. This is the same technology that weather condition reporters use in their studios to show the weather map.

In an odd kind of style, the green screen illustrates what the New Perspective on Paul is all almost. The New Perspective on Paul, however, is non really first and foremost about Paul at all. It is about Paul'south groundwork (i.e., Second Temple Judaism). When you change the background on the green screen from mountains to ocean, people interpret the image in a completely unlike mode. In a similar way, New Perspective scholars are reinterpreting Paul in a variety of dissimilar ways considering their perception of his groundwork of first-century Judaism has inverse.

What Is the New Perspective?
In society to grasp the New Perspective on Paul'southward Jewish background, we start need to sympathise a picayune bit virtually the Old Perspective. The Old Perspective was basically the production of Protestant scholarship (especially Lutheran) and was based primarily on afterwards Jewish sources (such as the Talmuds, c. four-5 century Advertising). It essentially portrayed start-century Judaism as a monolithic religion that was legalistic, devoid of grace, and dominated by fear.

The New Perspective methodologically limits the study of first-century Judaism to earlier sources (such as the Sometime Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, Josephus, and the Expressionless Sea Scrolls). Instead of seeing 2nd Temple Judaism every bit a monolithic, legalistic religion, it is at present seen as a grace-based religion with a diverseness of branches. The New Perspective renders null and void any attempt to portray kickoff-century Judaism as a works-based, moralistic organized religion.

At this point the New Perspective may sound only like an esoteric bookish nuance. The conundrum is, still, that the New Perspective dramatically changes Paul's "greenish screen" backdrop. If Paul's Jewish opponents were not legalists, arguing for a works-based righteousness, and then how should we interpret Paul?

What Is the New Perspective on Paul?
New Perspective interpreters of Paul are many and varied. To be certain, in that location is not one New Perspective on Paul, but a plethora of new perspectives. What is common to all of them, though, is that they are using this new understanding of first-century Judaism to refract their interpretations of Paul. We will limit our word to three key figures.

E. P. Sanders In 1977 Due east. P. Sanders published his seminal piece of work, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Fortress). In information technology he dismantled the "sometime" view of Judaism and formulated what would exist later on chosen the New Perspective. He coined the phrase "covenant nomism" to describe the nature of 2d Temple Judaism. Essentially this means that Judaism was a grace-based faith. Jews entered into the covenantal blessings of State of israel past organized religion and God'south grace.

Sanders also argued, even so, that Jews within the covenant had to practice the Law to maintain their status. In other words, covenant nomism means that Jews "got in" past faith and "stayed in" by works. This transfer terminology of "getting in" and "staying in" is foundational to the New Perspective and is Sanders's major contribution to the debate.

Sanders's interpretation of Paul in light of covenant nomism is certainly novel and a bit disjointed. He argues that just later Paul became a Christian did he work out the "plight" of mankind (opposite of Romans, which is plight to solution). He more or less flattens Judaism and Christianity into equal religions considering both are based on covenantal nomism ("getting in" vs. "staying in"). The dispute in Paul, therefore, is not between law and grace, or even between Judaism and Christianity, since both enter past grace and maintain their status by works. Rather, the dispute is that Gentiles do not accept to exercise the social distinctions of Judaism (circumcision, Sabbath keeping, and food laws). Finally, for Sanders justification in Paul's writings is a reference to inbound the covenant people.

J. D. Thousand. Dunn The second key figure in the development of the New Perspective on Paul is J. D. G. Dunn. In 1982 Dunn coined the term "New Perspective on Paul." He attempts to right Sanders's incoherent view of Paul with a more than consistent framework. For Dunn justification is not simply "getting in" but also "staying in" as well as the time to come judgment. He explains Paul'south negative comments about the constabulary non in soteriological categories but rather in social categories. In other words, Jewish Christians were misusing the police force by forcing Gentile Christians to obey social barriers of Judaism (circumcision, Sabbath keeping, and nutrient laws). Dunn interprets Paul'southward "works of the law" in Galatians and Romans not every bit man attempts at gaining God's favor just equally the "social badges" or "boundary markers" of Judaism. Like to Sanders, the controversy in Paul was that Gentiles did not have to detect the law to "stay in" the covenant. Thus, Paul was not battling legalism, but nationalism.

N. T. Wright The most influential advocate of the New Perspective is no doubt N. T. Wright. Wright, the bishop of Durham, is a prolific author and one of the foremost New Attestation scholars in the world. While his major work on Paul is forthcoming, he simply published a monograph called Justification: God's Plan and Paul'south Vision in 2009 (IVP). This book was in part a response to his critics concerning his New Perspective interpretation of Paul's doctrine of justification. Specifically, it was an answer to John Piper'due south critique in his 2007 book, The Future of Justification: A Response to Due north. T. Wright (Crossway).1 In his book Wright not only refutes traditional critics as "geocentrists" (a reference to people who refused to believe in the Copernican discovery that the Earth is not the center of the solar system) just too systematically and exegetically attempts to present his take on justification.

Wright essentially accepts Sanders's conception of covenant nomism—that beginning-century Judaism was a grace-based organized religion and that Jews believed entrance into the covenantal blessings was by God's grace through faith. To Wright this point has been established and accustomed past mainstream scholarship. Concerning the "works of the police," Wright agrees with Dunn that Paul was referring to Jewish purlieus markers such as circumcision, Sabbath keeping, and nutrient restrictions.

Wright, yet, breaks with Sanders and Dunn in his overall interpretation of Paul and specifically in what Paul meant by justification. Wright sees the gospel as the proclamation of Jesus' lordship, which works the power of God to bring people into the family of Abraham. Thus, the concept of covenant, (i.east., "God'southward single plan, through Abraham and his family unit, to bless the whole world") becomes a ascendant theme in Wright'southward discussion of justification.ii

For Wright, justification is not actually part of the gospel (or at the heart of the gospel), but it is in fact a effect of the gospel. He argues that justification is a declaration of righteousness just not equally understood and articulated by the Reformers (such equally John Calvin, Martin Luther, and Thomas Cranmer). He argues that justification is more like an acquittal for a defendant or a vindication of not beingness guilty. The traditional Protestant view is that God'southward declaration of righteousness (i.eastward., justification) was the result of God imputing Christ's righteousness to the sinner at the moment of salvation. Wright categorically rejects the imputation of God'due south righteousness. He believes it to exist a category mistake:

If we apply the language of the law court, information technology makes no sense whatever to say that the judge imputes, imparts, bequeaths, conveys or otherwise transfers his righteousness to either the plaintiff or the defendant. Righteousness is not an object, a substance or a gas which tin can be passed across the courtroom. . . . To imagine the defendant somehow receiving the judge's righteousness is simply a category error.3
Instead of linking the "righteousness of God" to God's justice or moral uprightness, Wright believes it is a reference to God's covenant faithfulness.

Some other wrinkle in Wright's view is that justification is not completed at the moment of salvation, but rather information technology is God'south on-going declaration of i's condition in the covenant customs. He argues that justification is more a matter of ecclesiology than soteriology. Therefore, justification is initially when a Christian receives forgiveness, but it is so maintained through works and finally completed when the believer is vindicated at the final judgment. Thus, Wright argues for an eschatological dimension to Paul's doctrine of justification.

What Is at Stake?
The New Perspective on Paul represents a genuine paradigm shift in the field of Biblical studies. It does zilch less than overturn the Reformation. The Reformers' cry of "justification past faith lonely" no longer stands unchallenged in Protestant circles. Specifically, New Perspective scholars refuse the doctrine of imputation. Many who hold to the traditional view have recognized that this ultimately minimizes the death of Jesus on the cross.

Closely related to this idea is the very nature of salvation. M. P. Waters correctly contends that New Perspective scholars essentially reduce first-century Judaism and Christianity into semi-Pelagian religions.iv The result is that works become part of the salvation procedure. Sanders's charge that first-century Judaism is non legalistic becomes nothing but muddled once nosotros come across what the alternative solution is from the New Perspective. Undoubtedly New Perspective proponents confuse grace, merit, and works.

Information technology is interesting to notation also that Wright believes this new consensus on justification could well bring a renewed ecumenism to Christianity. The barrier of justification by faith alone no longer stands between the Roman Catholic and Protestant wings of Christendom. He writes, "justification by organized religion tells me that if my Roman neighbour believes that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead then he or she is a brother or sister, however much I believe them muddled, even dangerously so, on other matters."v

Finally, the authority of Scripture is at stake. Proponents of the New Perspective are heavily dependent upon their "green screen" background of Paul. In the opinion of some they have elevated this background to the bespeak that it speaks louder than the Scriptures themselves. The Reformers' weep of sola scriptura is being undermined.

Determination
Only time will tell how far reaching the New Perspective affect volition be on the church. The battle is nevertheless primarily an academic effort at this point. Just just as Martin Luther's 90-V Theses eventually transformed the church, so the New Perspective will trickle down into the pews. Today's professors are training tomorrow'southward pastors.

We already encounter the New Perspective impacting commentaries and background books. Dunn's and Wright'south commentaries are readily bachelor and could be used naively. In Scot McKnight's commentary on Galatians in the NIV Application Commentary series his introduction and exposition reflects the New Perspective, only he does not actually reveal how divergent his conclusions are from traditional views.

Pastors or lay people who are unaware of this doctrinal deviation could easily apply New Perspective writings without even understanding what is at stake. At the very to the lowest degree, pastors and church leaders demand to be aware of the ongoing debate and how theology is changing. Many scholars with a traditional view have mounted defenses against the New Perspective, but much more needs to be done.6

End Notes

one John Piper, The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright (Wheaton: Good News/Crossway, 2007). Interestingly both N. T. Wright and John Piper were scheduled to be chief authors at plenary sessions of the Evangelical Theological Society's annual briefing in Atlanta in Nov 2010. Unfortunately Piper is now on sabbatical and will be replaced by Tom Schreiner, some other well-known critic of the New Perspective.

2 N. T. Wright, Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision (Downers Grove: IVP, 2009), 67.

3 N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 98.

4 Guy Prentiss Waters, Justification and the New Perspective on Paul: A Review and Response (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2004), 57, 58, 185-87.

v See North. T. Wright, "New Perspectives on Paul," Lecture at the Rutherford House Conference at http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_New_Perspectives.pdf (accessed May 31, 2010), 15.

half dozen Most notable is the 2 volume set, Justification and Variegated Nomism(Grand Rapids: Bakery, 2001, 2004) edited by D. A. Carson, Peter O'Brien, and Mark Seifrid.

To learn more nigh the New Perspective on Paul, visit "The Paul Folio" at thepaulpage.com. This website contains hundreds of manufactures, reviews, and books dedicated to the subject.

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Source: https://faith.edu/faith-news/an-overview-of-the-new-perspective-on-paul/

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