Another one of the subjects to be discussed at my oral defense is the so-called New Perspective on Paul (hereafter NPP). Of course, it is better understood as “perspectives” since there is not one, singular new approach. This is quite a massive topic to have to discuss. I am doing my best to familiarize with many of the various ideas and personalities, but it seems like a never ending task!
About two years ago M.M. Mattison wrote a helpful introductory article on the NPP titled, “A Summary of the New Perspective on Paul” which list four major contributors and their key ideas. There is Krister Stendahl‘s observation that Paul had a “robust conscience” so that unlike Luther he was not a man haunted by moral failings. This idea arose as scholars began to revisit what Second Temple Judaism reveals about itself, especially in works like the Dead Sea Scroll collection. It did not seem that Jews in this period did good deeds to “earn” God’s favor, but as a response to their election as the people of God. In other words, the Jews were already the people of God. One could exit the covenant by doing deeds that disassociated with the people of God thereby enacting one’s departure from the covenant, but one does not earn their way into the covenant. For Stendahl the idea that Paul was a proto-Luther was absurd. He may have forsaken his Jewish identity markers in favor of being identified with Christ, but he did not show himself to be a man buried in doubts and regrets.
E.P. Sanders is the second person mentioned. Of course, he did one of the most thorough studies of Second Temple Judaism and he concluded that the concept of “covenantal nomism” made better since of how the Jews related to the Law. As I explained above it wasn’t “legalism” as much as it was response to election. One could disassociate themselves from Israel by breaking the law, but this wasn’t as much about “morality” as it was “identity”, though the lines are sometimes blurry here.
James D.G. Dunn moved things along by observing (contra Sanders) that Paul had not misunderstood his fellow Jews framing them as legalist, but rather when he accused them of being tied to close to “work of the Law” it had nothing to do with morality. In other words, Paul was not an anti-nomian. It did have to do with those particular demarcators of Jewish identity: circumcision, Sabbath, holy days and festivals, dietary laws, and the like.
N.T. Wright is the final major personality. He challenged the idea that the “righteousness of God” had to do with some moral quality of God that he “imparts” or gives to sinner to make them holy. Rather, he saw the righteousness of God as being something like the vindication of God. He uses the phrase “covenantal faithfulness” quite often. So, for example, in Romans 9-11 the major concerns is how can God be considered just if he is rejecting ethnic Israel to whom he has made so many promises simply because they didn’t recognize Jesus as Messiah. Well, for Paul God is justified or vindicated in his end of the covenant in that he has maintained a remnant saving them as he has always saved the people of God, by faith. I recommend watching the below video to get an idea of what Dunn and Wright argue.
Another debate that matters to those who discuss the NPP is whether or not Paul’s phrase πίστεως Χριστοῦ should be understood as referring to “faith in Christ”, an objective genitive, or “faith(fulness) of Christ”, a subjective genitive. What we have here is a difference in placement: Does salvation come by our faith in Christ or by Christ’s faithfulness? Of course we can argue “both” from other passages of Scripture, but that is the unique contribution of this phrase to the debate.
Another useful article of this topic is Preston Sprinkle’s very recent “What is the New Perspective on Paul?”
Of course, “The Paul Page” from where the first article came has many resources as well.
What do you think are the most important things to know about the NPP? Would you add any other major contributors? Would you add any other important subjects?
If I were to summarize the overall contribution of the NPP(s) it would be that we have been forced to reevaluate how we read Paul in relation to the Judaism of his day. This has impacted how we understand Pauline soteriology which is where most of the battled have arisen (e.g. the impact this has had on the doctrine of justification by faith, especially as it relates to how people like John Piper understand it). What do you think is the most important contribution of the NPP(s)?
It seems to me that for anyone to have a “new” perspective on Paul they would have to meet him up close and personal as a living-breathing-feeling human being, and thus have extended conversations with him about what he (Paul) understood about Jesus and the nature of Reality altogether.
Otherwise such people are just playing mind-games which are an extension of their own unexamined culturally inherited presumptions about “Paul”, “Jesus” and the nature of Reality.
Which raises the question what do any of us really know about anything whatsoever, let alone about long ago “Paul” as “reported” in the Bible.
Initial justification and final justification (or is 2nd justification based on works) I think is significant.
@John: Go read ‘The New Testament and the People of God’ by N. T. Wright, especially his introduction. Then go spend some time in second Temple texts. It’s not that tough. The guys involved with the NPP are trying to say we’ve read Paul through Luther (not even Calvin, unfortunately) and thus are in need of a new lens, a new grid. Historical reconstruction isn’t impossible, just difficult.
@Brian: I think you pretty much hit the big ones, though I’m not sure if ‘pistews Christou’ is that important to the debate. I mean, Wright and Dunn disagree big time on that one and plenty of people who loath the NPP are fine with a subjective genitive. But it does play a role, I suppose.
The biggest thing it has changed in my thinking is the covenantal framework of soteriology. Paul, like Jews of his time, were concerned about who was properly in the covenant because those marked off as covenant members were the only ones who received eschatological vindication. Thus, the whole issue of ‘I can’t do anything good, Jesus did everything for me, so if I believe that I’m good to go’ (which just stands so contrary to the Gospels) falls by the wayside and it becomes more an issue of Christ’s powerful triumph on the cross and his inauguration of the new covenant which brings the Spirit of God upon a people of faith who now embody the fullness of the Law through their faith, hope, and love. In so far as I am a faithful member of the new covenant, I will receive a favorable judgment on the last day. The significance of this may depend upon your church tradition and context, but for me in my circles, this was huge.
I wonder how long, if ever, any of this will work its way into the minds of chuchgoers.
I’m tempted to agree with John, and for sure we’ll never really know what Paul was thinking, but it seems important to correct widely held beliefs about his teaching that are almost certainly wrong. Those wrong ideas have shaped christianity for centuries. But telling people that large swathes of what they have been taught from an early age is wrong is a very difficult proposition.
I don’t know if this relates to the NP, but I think the best way to summarize Paul is Ehrman’s idea that he is thinking backwards. Jesus is the Messiah, so why was he crucified? What does that mean for the covenant? How then are we justified? And so on. The writings are ways to wrestle with the questions raised by the starting point of his belief system.
John
While we are not able to recover the mind of a dead person I do think your skepticism goes a bit too far. If we can’t gain an understanding of the basic intent of someone’s writing corpus then we may as well stop doing history. This doesn’t mean we can recover their thoughts fully, but I don’t think the options are merely we completely understand them or we do not.
Dn
Indeed, that has been one of the more contested topics, especially as surrounds the Piper-Wright debates. Good observation!
Jonathan
The NPP has done a much better job of making sense of Paul in light of Jesus in the Gospels. Beforehand there seemed like such a disconnect. Why would Jesus be so comfortable in Judaism while Paul hated it? That never made much sense.
Bond
It will take time. Sometimes it takes a very long time for things discussed in the classroom to trickle down through the pulpit into the pews. Hopefully as people have access to education on places like iTunes U and so forth it will hurry the process a bit.
I agree that Paul is thinking backwards, which contra Ehrman is one reason why I believe in the resurrection! He had to reinterpret everything after he met the risen Christ.
Also just a random bit of me and my run-ins with the NPP. I was fired from a church for my stance in affirming the basic ideas of it. I was working on staff at a Neo-Reformed elder led (think 9marks, gospel coalition). I was called a heretic, and my faith was questioned.
I still wont forget reading Krister Stendahls essay, The New Testament and the People of God, What Saint Paul Really Said, and Dunns New Perspective on Paul. Easily some of the most formative books for my theological framework.
Piper’s response book to Wright is like a 2nd grader trying to respond to a high school math teacher and tell him he is wrong.
(sorry for the rambling)
Dn
Wow, that is quite unfortunate! Obviously the NPP does threaten their worldview, though at times I think they grossly overreact. Someone like K. Vanhoozer is a good example of a Reformed theologian who took what he could from the NPP. Sadly, others like your former church’s elder are unable to do that.
These works have been formative here as well and I agree, Piper is in the minor leagues when compared to Wright. It was wise of him to go on “sabbatical” rather than face him at ETS a couple years ago.
@Brian I think if you are talking about the objective and subjective genitive discussion then you have to include Richard Hays. Also what about the big work that went into refuting Sanders, Justification and Variegated Nomism? That might be a significant dialogue partner.
@Bond This acadmeic stuff does work its way to the church if the pastor or the teacher is willing to take the time to study the Bible at a high level. It takes a lot of effort and time but I believe if we are going to be serious about the Bible then we need to be serious about its study.
I was the Teaching Pastor at my church for 2 1/2 years. For the first year we did a Life of Jesus study that was heavily influnced by the Third Historical Quest. The people in the class where amazed at how flat they were reading the Gospels. I had very positive reviews from many a particpant.
After that they wanted to move on to Paul so we went through the book of Galatians together. I have also been very influenced by the NPP and I really enjoyed reading Richard Hay’s dissertation on objective and subjective genitive in relation to Galatians. In the end how you translate this phrase does determine what is going on in the text and in Paul’s argument. So they also enjoyed that and had very positive reviews. At the time I bouncing off Fee, Witherington, Hays, and Logenecker, among the numerous academic articles you can find via ATLA.
Bobby
Agreed, Hays is another important figure. I have read V. 2 of ‘Justification and Variegated Nomism’ on Paul, at least many of the essays. It was a good dialogue partner, though it has been a couple years now.
What about Jacob Jervell. http://www.messianicjudaism.me/agenda/2012/03/12/new-perspectives-on-paul-7-jacob-jervell-i/ BTW, Stuart Dauermann has a whole series going on right now about NPP.
Here’s my oversimplification of Paul. Paul, just like all the apostles and most all of the early Believers, was Jewish. Within the matrix of Judaism, saw and believed Jesus as the prophesied Messiah. The Jewish Messiah.
What Paul did that was so controversial and got him into so much trouble was his message to the Gentile Believers that they did not have to legally convert to Judaism (aka circumcision). Paul was vindicated at the Jerusalem council, and the ruling was made there that Gentiles did not have to convert to Judaism in order to be “saved.” But they gave the Gentiles Believers 4 prohibitions that would help them get started down the right path as new Believers. They did not have to give up their identity as Gentiles and they could fellowship with the Jewish Believers.
Paul didn’t stop being Jewish; he didn’t stop observing Torah. He didn’t teach others to do so. He was accused of it, though. That’s why in Acts 21, James tells him help pay for the 4 young men to complete their Nazarite vows.
Jon
I agree, Paul remained in his Jewish context, even as a follower of the risen Messiah. Acts 21 is quite interesting. I’ve heard people frame this as a mistake, as if Paul weakened his stance, but I don’t know that the author intended to say any such thing.
I haven’t heard of Jervell, so thank you for the link!
I reject much of NPP as academic nievity. This whole debate stems from, and circles about, other issues that remain largely ignored; so (I contend) all of such discussions are merely ‘the blind leading the blind’.
Well, if an anonymous guy on the internet rejects NPP, I guess there is no point discussing it any further. Especially since all of its proponents go by the name Nieve, apparently.
Bond
Apparently world class scholars like Stendahl, Sanders, Dunn, Wright, Hays, et al., are “the blind leading the blind”, so I guess that makes me blind too?
@Brian, you just appealed to authority; which is a fallacy.
Aristotle, Thales, Leucippus, Democritus, and Xenophanes all believed in a flat earth. All were world class scholars in their day and considered experts in geography. Although Homer and Hesiod we’re poets, their opinions seemed to count for something. They also believed in a flat earth. Their contemporary Anaximander, also an expert, didn’t believe in a flat earth though. His earth was a cylinder. Pliny the Elder believed in a spherical earth, but he was not a geographer; he was an historian, a writer and a philosopher. One of the few ‘geographers’ who’s held a true belief about the shape of the earth was Ptolemy, but how long did it take for his view to become accepted (perhaps half a millennium, and I’m being generous)
Flat earth aside, not even the world class theologians of Jesus day were safe-guarded from error by the fact they were ‘world class scholars’ either. They had spent their entire lives studying the same scripture Jesus quoted, and which itself testified to Christ. The point is that both you and bond have employed a fallacy in your reasoning, which means the argument carries no weight! Neither one’s reputation, nor one’s credentials have any bearing on correctness, or truth. So called ‘experts’ can be, and are often, wrong, even in their field of study. The amount of time someone spends studying some particular subject, in no way influences the truth of a matter. At most it may influence whether or not they hold the voguish theories of their day. Only belief in a true thing, influences true belief. Stendhal, Sanders, Wright, Hays, et al., are all world class experts, but if they all share the same defective presupposition from which they reason, they are all blind what ever their credentials. I contend this is the case.
More alarmingly though, I hope you response does not suggest a tendency to simply follow the crowd because of the popular acceptance of someone’s credentials. Likewise, occasional reliance on fallacy to assert some position is worrisome too. I would think that an intrepid ability to think for one’s self, even if it sets one at odds with ‘world class scholars’, would be a more fitting approach for someone whose career goals seem to be the pursuit of truth.
@Bondboy: Given my argument above about the fallacious mis-use of someone’s credentials to gauge the veracity of an assertion, anonymity is an asset here.
It means you can neither use my lack of education, nor my reputation as a world class scholar, against me, but must instead focus your attention on my premises, the soundness of my logic, and the conclusions which follow.
So mocking anonymity only reveals you fail to recognize the advantage it provides.
Andrew
Wow, really? You’re going to move from calling scholars “blind leading the blind” as mere heated rhetoric that dismisses a wide array of scholars with unique contributions to reading Paul in light of literature from STJ only to go philosophical when this is pointed out by waxing eloquent about an “appeal to authority”? Also, I didn’t appeal to authority. I didn’t say, “Andrew, you should accept the views of the NPP because scholars X, Y, Z affirm it.” Instead, I found your cocky statement, well, cocky.
@Brian, I’d admit that my comments may seem ‘cocky’, but only if I am wrong, or if you suppose me so.
In no way was I suggesting we should not show ‘experts’ respect, or fail to consider their opinions. I was suggesting we should never correct their position as true simply because of their reputation, or credentials.
Indeed, if I could expose a common defective presupposions with their position, and advance knowledge, my comments would hardly be seen as ‘cocky’.
OK.