The New Perspective on Paul - A Summary and Critique

PAULINE PERSPECTIVES: A SUMMARY AND CRITIQUE OF THE NEW PERSPECTIVE ON PAUL1 G. Philip Arnold Introduction The April 2014 edition of Christianity Today features a profile of twenty-first century biblical scholar N. T. Wright. On the issue’s front cover, we are told that Wright “is brilliant, prolific, and controversial—and says we’ve missed the heart of the gospel.” Wright has, indeed, become as close to a household name as a biblical scholar might hope to be. The reason for such sustained attention to Wright’s work can be attributed to his widely recognized advancement of the so-called “New Perspective on Paul,” a movement focused especially on Paul and the role of the law in his writings. As the Christianity Today profile suggests, advocates of the New Perspective like Wright seek to make sweeping changes to the traditional understanding of the center of Paul’s theology. In this paper, I seek first to survey the distinguishing features of the New Perspective on Paul as set forth in the writings of its leading proponents: E. P. Sanders, James D. G. Dunn, and N. T. Wright. Despite the fact that advocates of the New Perspective are not in complete agreement on all points,2 there are several emphases they have in common. Particular attention will be paid to the New Perspective view of Second Temple Judaism as a religion of grace, the interpretation of the phrase “works of the law,”3 and the meaning and 1 This paper was published as a journal article of a the same title in: Wisconsin Lutheran Quarterly, Volume 112, Number 3 (September 2015), p. 184-194. 2 N. T. Wright, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (Downer’s Grove: IVP Academic, 2009), 28: “…there is no such thing as the new perspective…There is only a disparate family of perspectives, some with more, some with less family likeness and with fierce squabbles and sibling rivalries going on inside.”; cf. also D. A. Carson, “Introduction,” in Justification and Variegated Nomism (Grand Rapids/Tübingen: Baker/Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 1:“…it [the New Perspective] is a bundle of interpretive approaches to Paul, some of which are mere differences in emphasis, and others of which compete rather antagonistically.” 3 ἔ γω ου (Romans 3:20,27-28; Galatians 2:16, 3:2,5,10) significance of justification in the theology of Paul. After this survey, I will provide a critique for these three emphases, showing how the New Perspective fails to do justice to the treatments of justification in Paul’s letters and threatens the place of justification as the articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiae.4 Part I: Summary of the Distinguishing Features of the New Perspective Distinguishing Feature #1 – A New Take on Judaism It is important to understand that the New Perspective on Paul actually began with a reexamination of Second Temple Judaism. The reexamination was initiated by Krister Stendahl,5 who argued that the internal struggles of Luther had colored his reading of Paul and turned what was for the apostle only a minor concern (justification by faith) into the center of his theology. Stendahl essentially concludes that Luther read his own personal issues into Paul’s epistles and incorrectly interpreted Paul’s polemic against Judaism in terms of his own battle with medieval Catholicism. In his landmark 1977 work Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion, E. P. Sanders sought to prove Stendahl’s critique of the Reformation’s supposedly deficient view of first century Judaism by conducting a thorough analysis of Second Temple Jewish writings (including Ben Sira, 1 Enoch, Jubilees, Psalms of Solomon, and 4 Ezra) and the teachings of the Tannaitic sages found in the Mishnah. On the basis of his study, Sanders concluded that there was an emphasis on God’s grace and forgiveness in Second Temple Judaism and the characterization of Judaism as a “religion of works” was unfairly harsh. Instead, he argued that Second Temple Judaism could best be described in “The article upon which the church stands or falls.” Krister Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” Harvard Theological Review 56, no. 3 (July 1963): 199-215. 4 5 terms of “covenantal nomism” which he defines as “the view that one’s place in God’s plan is established on the basis of the covenant and that the covenant requires as the proper response of man his obedience to its commandments, while providing means of atonement for transgression.”6 In short, Sanders suggested that Second Temple Judaism taught that a person entered the covenant by God’s gracious election but remained in the covenant through their obedience to the Law. Sanders’ proposal represented a “paradigm shift” regarding Judaism and Paul’s critique of it. James D. G. Dunn was instrumental in applying Sanders’ research to Paul’s epistles. Although Dunn expresses appreciation for the traditional Reformation approach to Paul,7 he wholeheartedly endorses Sander’s thesis. In an essay in which Dunn recounts his own journey to New Perspective conclusions, he writes that “I took Sanders to have made his case, and was more than ordinarily grateful for the correction he had provided to the traditionally more negative view of Judaism.”8 Elsewhere he asserts that “…only with the publication of E. P. Sanders’s Paul and Palestinian Judaism has the message got through at last to English-speaking New Testament scholarship: that Judaism is first and foremost a religion of grace, with human obedience always understood as response to that grace.”9 It is noteworthy that in his recent monograph on justification, N. T. Wright seems to try to distance himself from Sanders. He writes, “…my gratitude for the stimulus of his work has been cheerfully matched by my major disagreements with him on point after point not only of detail but of method, structure, and meaning.”10 However, Sanders’ assertions about 6 E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 75. James D. G. Dunn, “The Justice of God: A Renewed Perspective on Justification by Faith” in The New Perspective on Paul: Revised Edition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 194. 8 Dunn, “The New Perspective: whence, what, and wither?” in The New Perspective on Paul, 6-7. 9 Dunn, “Justice of God,” 199. 10 Wright, Justification, 29. Cf. also: “…critics of the new perspective who began by being afraid of Sanders should not assume that Dunn and I are flying under the same flag,” 29. 7 Judaism undergird many of Wright’s arguments. In a 1978 Tyndale New Testament Lecture, Wright cites Sanders’ work as giving credence to his conviction that “the tradition of Pauline interpretation has manufactured a false Paul by manufacturing a false Judaism for him to oppose.”11 In that same lecture he asserts that “Judaism…far from being a religion of works, is based on a clear understanding of grace” and that “Good works are simply gratitude, and demonstrate that one is faithful to the covenant.”12 Whatever disagreements may exist between Wright and Sanders, they share a fundamental agreement that the traditional Reformation approach to Paul is inaccurate. Distinguishing Feature #2 – The “Works of the Law” One of the most hotly debated features found in most New Perspective interpretations of Paul revolves around understanding the phrase “works of the law.” Based on his paradigm of “covenantal nomism,” E. P. Sanders argues that Paul – whether in Romans or Galatians – was never concerned with responding to Jewish attempts to earn God’s favor by meritorious obedience to the law, but with defending the inclusion of Gentiles in the community of the saved without requiring them to observe the distinctive practices of ethnic Judaism. He writes, “The question is not about how many good deeds an individual must present before God to be declared righteous at the judgment, but, to repeat, whether or not Paul’s Gentile converts must accept the Jewish law in order to enter the people of God or to be counted truly members.”13 This feature of the New Perspective, however, is most commonly associated with the work of James Dunn. Dunn suggests that in the Maccabean era Jews fought against the N. T. Wright, “The Paul of History and the Apostle of Faith,” Tyndale Bulletin 29, no. 1 (1978), 78. Ibid, 80. 13 E. P. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1983), 20. 11 12 encroachment of Hellenistic culture by emphasizing those practices which most clearly set them apart from Gentiles—especially circumcision, the dietary restrictions of the Mosaic Law, and the observance of the Sabbath Day. He contends that these ethnic distinctions came to serve as “badges” which indicated membership into the community of the saved.14 This conviction of the Jewish emphasis on ethnic distinctions largely shows itself most clearly when Dunn treats passages which include the phrase “works of the law.” In his now famous 1982 lecture entitled “The New Perspective on Paul,” Dunn says that the “works of the law” are not good works in general or works done to earn God’s favor. Instead, they are “identity markers…. They functioned as badges of covenant membership.”15 He insists that first century Jews did not view the “works of the law” as means of meriting God’s favor,16 but were viewed as crucial for maintaining Jewish “separateness” from the Gentile culture around them. For Dunn, then, Paul’s polemic against the “works of the law” in Galatians 2 and Romans 3 is not a criticism of works-righteousness, but of ethnic exclusivism. He contends that Paul was objecting to the idea that in order for Gentiles to enter the covenant community, they must “wear the badges” of Jewish identity. Although there are some differences in the details of their interpretation, this same emphasis—that “works of the law” refers to specific ethnic distinctiveness—is found in N. T. Wright’s work as well. In his discussion of Romans 9:30-33, Wright says: …the Torah really is the ο α ο η , the boundary marker of covenant membership; but it is so in a paradoxical fashion, since it can only be fulfilled by Cf. James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1-8 (Dallas: Word, 1988), lxix: “In sociological terms the law functioned as an ‘identity marker’ and ‘boundary,’ reinforcing Israel’s sense of distinctiveness and distinguishing Israel from the surrounding nations.” 15 James D. G. Dunn, “The New Perspective on Paul,” in The New Perspective on Paul, 109. 16 Cf. James D. G. Dunn, “Yet Once More – ‘The Works of the Law’: A Response” in The New Perspective on Paul, 221: “When it is read against the background of Jewish polemic against Gentile religiosity and ‘Gentile’ as ‘sinner,’ as I believe it must, it should become clear that ‘works of the law’ do not denote any attempt to earn favour with God.” 14 faith, not by the “works of the law,” the badges of Jewish membership (Sabbath, dietary laws, circumcision) which kept Jews separate from Gentiles.17 Similarly, in his recent treatment of justification, Wright contends, “What, then, are the ‘works of the law,’ by which one cannot be ‘justified’…They are not, in other words, the moral ‘good works’ which the Reformation tradition loves to hate. They are the things that divide Jew from Gentile.”18 With statements that echo Dunn’s work, Wright does not see the phrase “works of the law” as describing the moral requirements God’s law places on an individual, but as “boundary markers” which protected the Jewish people from being absorbed by Gentile culture. Distinguishing Feature #3 – The Meaning and Significance of Justification in Paul The final—and arguably most important—distinguishing feature of the New Perspective is the way its proponents have sought to redefine our understanding of justification by faith. The New Perspective suggests that the traditional Reformation practice of inappropriately reading its own battles with medieval Catholicism into Paul’s polemic against Judaism has led to a misunderstanding of the apostle’s doctrine of justification. Justification, they insist, is not about how the sinner finds a gracious God. Instead, it is about how to tell who is in the community of the saved and who isn’t. While the vast majority of Sanders’ Paul and Palestinian Judaism was dedicated to exploring texts from Second Temple Judaism, he does dedicate a short portion of the volume to applying his theory to Paul’s letters. For Sanders, “justification” language cannot be limited to describing any one doctrine. Rather, it is Pauline “shorthand” for any number of theological concepts including possessing the Spirit, having life, and being cleansed from sin. 17 N. T. Wright, Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 244. 18 Wright, Justification, 116-117. Sanders agrees with the earlier thesis of Albert Schweitzer that union with Christ (i.e. being “in Christ”) is the center of Paul’s theology rather than justification.19 Sanders suggests that the Reformation has turned what is only a minor concern in Paul’s epistles into the center of his theology and Paul is better understood in terms of participatory categories.20 James Dunn argues that Luther’s conversion experience has given a theological impetus to Reformation theology that “has involved a significant misunderstanding of Paul, not least in relation to ‘justification by faith’ itself.”21 In particular, he chooses to understand justification and righteousness terminology not as a Greek, but a Hebraic concept. While the emphasis of the Greek term was “an idea or ideal against which the individual and individual action can be measured,” the Hebraic concept is “a more relational concept…the meeting of obligations laid upon the individual by the relationship of which he or she is a part.”22 So, for Dunn, being “justified” does not describe “a distinctively initiatory act of God” but is rather “God’s acknowledgement that someone is in the covenant—whether this is an initial acknowledgement, or a repeated action of God.”23 In other words, justification is not a onetime action, but a series of actions for the believer which declare them to be within the community of the saved. The redefinition of justification among New Perspective apologists is most clearly seen in the works of N. T. Wright. In words reminiscent of Dunn, Wright states: “Justification” in the first century was not about how someone might establish a relationship with God. It was about God’s eschatological definition, both future and 19 Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 440. Ibid, 503-505. The New Perspective’s emphasis on “participatory” categories can be traced to Albert Schweitzer’s assertion that the main emphasis of Paul’s theology is “being in Christ.” “Participatory” categories prioritize a mystical union with Christ rather than the traditional legal/forensic language of righteousness. 21 Dunn, “Justice of God,” 194. 22 James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of the Apostle Paul (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 341. 23 James D. G. Dunn, Jesus, Paul, and the Law (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990), 190, emphasis original. 20 present, of who was, in fact, a member of his people…In standard Christian theological language, it wasn’t so much about soteriology as about ecclesiology; not so much about salvation as about the church.24 In Wright’s recent monograph on justification, his views remain substantially unchanged. In his discussion of Galatians 2:1-15, Wright concludes that “…for Paul, ‘justification,’ whatever else it included, always had in mind God’s declaration of membership, and that this always referred specifically to the coming together of Jews and Gentiles in faithful membership of the Christian family.”25 In his discussion of Romans 8, he against suggests that “‘Justification by faith’ is about the present, about how you can already tell who the people are who will be vindicated on the last day.” In summary, for Wright, justification is not about how the sinner “gets right” with God, but is an outward declaration of who is and is not in the covenant community. Part II: Critique of the Distinguishing Features of the New Perspective Having summarized the important distinguishing features of the New Perspective, I now turn to giving a critique of the arguments presented for each feature. While I do believe the New Perspective has benefited confessional evangelicalism by correcting an inaccurate caricature of Second Temple Judaism and driving interpreters to reexamine their theological commitments in light of the biblical text, I will show that each of the three features discussed above contain significant problems. Distinguishing Feature #1 – The Nature of Second Temple Judaism Standing behind New Perspective approaches to Paul is an acceptance of E. P. Sanders’ conclusion that Second Temple Judaism was a religion of grace, not merit. Thus, the traditional approach that sees Paul responding to a spirit of works-righteousness in the 24 25 N. T. Wright, What St. Paul Really Said (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 120. Wright, Justification, 116. Judaism of his day must be incorrect. This argument, however, is reductionistic. Simply because grace plays some part in a religion’s approach to God does not mean that the religion is free from legalism. While it may be true that Second Temple Jewish literature provides many examples emphasizing God’s electing grace, it also provides examples which elevate the individual’s obedience as necessary for salvation. As D. A. Carson has pithily noted, “…it is not that Sanders is wrong everywhere, but he is wrong when he tries to establish that his category is right everywhere.”26 The danger of a reliance on a conclusion drawn from extra-biblical literature – and an inaccurate conclusion at that! – is that the message of the biblical text quickly becomes muted. An interpreter who approaches Paul’s epistles already having decided, on the basis of extra-biblical literature, what Paul can’t be asserting treads on dangerous ground. Much of the New Perspective’s efforts to “reinterpret” Paul seem to be trying to find a way to understand Paul, not on his own terms, but in terms that are sympathetic to the scholarly consensus regarding Second Temple Judaism. It should be noted that this conviction concerning Second Temple Judaism undergirds much of the New Perspective’s criticism of Luther and the Reformation approach to Paul. New Perspectivists contend that Luther was incorrect to find a parallel between Paul’s polemic against Judaism and his own battle against medieval Catholicism. However, it should be noted that it is precisely because of the parallels between Second Temple Judaism and medieval Catholicism that the Reformation found such rich support in Paul’s letters for its struggles against Rome. Guy Prentiss Waters uses the term “semi-Pelagian” anachronistically—but accurately—when he writes, “For all their differences, late medieval 26 D. A. Carson, “Summaries and Conclusions” in Justification and Variegated Nomism, 543. Catholicism and Judaism are both semi-Pelagian in character, and therefore worthy of such comparison.”27 Distinguishing Feature #2 – The Meaning of “Works of the Law” The New Perspective, convinced that Paul was not critiquing Judaism for its attempts to earn God’s favor through law-keeping, has argued for a much more specific definition for the phrase “works of the law.” They argue that the term does not refer to the obligations God’s commands place on the individual, but to the “boundary makers” or “badges” which separated Jews from Gentiles. It should be noted that there is truth in what the New Perspective is advocating. Without a doubt, certain observances of the Mosaic Law did serve as a “dividing wall of hostility”28 between Jews and Gentiles. However, the New Perspective goes too far when it insists that the phrase must always and only refer to such “dividing” practices. In Galatians 3:10,29 Paul emphasizes that law requires perfect obedience in all parts and in Galatians 5:330 he reminds his readers that acceptance of one aspect of the law requires obedience to its entirety. The argument that the phrase “works of the law” refers only to those features of the law that served to separate Jews from Gentiles is unconvincing. Similarly, in Romans 3:20,31 Paul concludes his sustained proof that all have sinned and fallen under the righteous condemnation of God. Thomas Schreiner illustrates how the New Perspective’s interpretation makes nonsense out of this phrase when he writes, “It is hardly credible to claim that the Jews were condemned for their 27 Guy Prentiss Waters, Justification and the New Perspectives on Paul: A Review and Response (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2004), 186. 28 ὸ ο χο οῦ φ αγ οῦ, Ephesians 2:14. 29 Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them (ESV). 30 I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law (ESV). 31 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin (ESV). bad attitude of excluding Gentiles. They were liable to judgment because they had not kept the entirety of God’s law.”32 It is also illuminating to see that Paul’s use of the phrase “works of the law” is invariably contrasted with faith. In those instances where Paul insists on the negative statement that justification does not comes by means of “works of the law,” he also states the corresponding positive statement that justification does come through faith.33 For Paul, then, “works of the law” and “faith” are opposites. It is difficult to see how limiting “works of the law” to those practices which separated Jews from Gentiles could be the opposite of faith. The contrast makes perfect sense, however, in the traditional Reformation view that the phrase “works of the law” refers to all the works required by the Mosaic Law. In his monograph Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics, Stephen Westerholm assesses the inadequacy of the New Perspective’s view of the phrase. He argues that, while the questions which immediately provoked the controversy in Galatia may have arisen in response to those uniquely “Jewish” practices, Paul says very little about those practices in and of themselves. Instead, Westerholm argues, Paul sees these battles over Jewish practices as revealing a much more fundamental problem: Everything in his [Paul’s] response indicates that, to his mind, the issue could only be addressed by assessing the adequacy of the Sinaitic covenant to provide a framework within which its adherents could enjoy God’s blessing, inherit God’s promises, and be found righteous before God…the alternatives were to be weighed not simply as potential paths to a proper religious life but as potential solutions to the human dilemma—the dilemma posed by human sins and their pending judgment, by human participation in an evil age and its pending dissolution, by human alignment with supernatural powers whose day had passed and whose doom was imminent.34 32 Thomas Schreiner, Galatians (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 161. Cf. the contrast between ἐ ἔ γω ου and ἐ / ὰ πί ω Χ οῦ (Galatians 2:16 and Romans 3:20). 34 Stephen Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 368-369. 33 It is simply insufficient to argue, as the New Perspective does, that Paul’s polemic against “works of the law” was only a critique of those who would enforce specific ethnic markers on Gentile believers. The interpretation of the phrase that does the most justice to the textual evidence is that, by “works of the law,” Paul has in mind any and every obligation placed on an individual by God’s commandments. Distinguishing Feature #3 – The Soteriological Emphasis of Justification It is my contention that the most dangerous aspect of the New Perspective is its attempt to redefine the doctrine of justification. E. P. Sanders argues that justification is a process of transformation that flows from one’s participation in Christ. James Dunn believes that justification is a series of declarations which take place throughout the believer’s life. N. T. Wright contends that justification is simply a matter of demonstrating who is and who is not a member of the community of the saved. For the New Perspective, then, justification answers the question “How do we identify the believing community?” All three approaches have one thing in common: they define justification in terms of ecclesiology. But, in an ironic twist befitting an O. Henry short story, the movement which claims that the traditional view has made an insignificant aside in Pauline theology into the center has itself turned the center into an insignificant aside. Since the Reformation, justification has been defined in terms of soteriology. The primary question answered by justification is “How do we sinners find a gracious God?” In the Smalcald Articles, Luther says of justification that “we must be quite certain and have no doubt about it. Otherwise everything is lost, and the power and the devil and whatever opposes us will gain victory and be proved right.”35 35 Smalcald Articles, Part II, article I, paragraph 2 in Robert Kolb and Timothy Wengert, eds., The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 301. Establishing justification as a primarily soteriological category goes beyond the examination of a set of “proof-texts.” It means recognizing that Paul’s discussion of justification in Romans is “set against the backdrop of a world under judgment, and the awful reality of God’s wrath against human sin and rebellion.”36 It means understanding that for all the conflict surrounding the misunderstanding of the law in Galatia, the deeper problem was an attempt to accomplish with the law what can only be done by the gospel. It means appreciating that justification by faith is more than the solution to ethnic hostility in JewGentile relationships; it is the solution to the much deeper problem of human rebellion against God. In the first chapter of Justification and the Gospel, R. Michael Allen identifies the proper place of justification in the expression of Christian theology. Unlike advocates of the New Perspective who claim that justification is just another doctrine in the Christian corpus and should not be privileged above any other, he contends that “justification is the central doctrine and theological rule with respect to certain questions” and that “the character of God’s love, the nature of human-divine fellowship, the stance of the creature before God, and many more—are answered most fully in God’s justifying word.”37 This statement beautifully captures why the church has confessed that justification is the articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiae. Conclusion Advocates of the New Perspective on Paul such as E. P. Sanders, James D. G. Dunn, and N. T. Wright stand as monumental figures in Pauline studies. Their detailed scholarship Peter T. O’Brien, “Was Paul a Covenantal Nomist?” in Justification and Variegated Nomism: The Paradoxes of Paul (Grand Rapids/Tübingen: Baker/Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 289. 37 R. Michael Allen, Justification and the Gospel: Understanding the Contexts and Controversies (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2013), 13. 36 and prolific writing has made a significant contribution to the exegesis of Paul’s epistles and the construction of his theology. Nevertheless, their proposals contain weaknesses which make uncritical adoption of their views dangerous. In particular, the view that Judaism was a religion of grace fails to account for the strong emphasis in Second Temple Judaism on the necessity of obedience to God’s law and mutes the testimony of Paul himself. Likewise, their insistence that the phrase “works of the law” refers only to a few specific “boundary marking” practices of Judaism undercuts Paul’s assessment of the absolute necessity of the gospel as the only means of salvation. Finally, their removal of the doctrine of justification from its soteriological moorings threatens to undermine the chief doctrine of the Christian faith. May God grant that his church may continually return to his Word so as to be blessed to think his thoughts after him. BIBLIOGRAPHY Allen, R. Michael. Justification and the Gospel: Understanding the Contexts and Controversies. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013. Carson, D. A. “Introduction.” In Justification and Variegated Nomism: The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001. ———. “Summaries and Conclusions.” In Justification and Variegated Nomism: The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001. Dunn, James D. G. Jesus, Paul, and the Law. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Publishing, 1990. ———. “The Justice of God: A Renewed Perspective on Justification by Faith.” In The New Perspective on Paul: Revised Edition. Grand Rapids, 2008. ———. “The New Perspective: whence, what, and whither?” In The New Perspective on Paul: Revised Edition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008. ———. “The New Perspective on Paul.” In The New Perspective on Paul: Revised Edition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008. ———. Romans 1-8. Word Biblical Commentary. Dallas: Word Books, 1988. ———. The Theology of the Apostle Paul. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006. ———. “Yet Once More – ‘The Works of the Law’: A Response.” In The New Perspective on Paul: Revised Edition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008. O’Brien, Peter T. “Was Paul a Covenantal Nomist?” In Justification and Variegated Nomism: The Paradoxes of Paul. Grand Rapids/Tübingen: Baker/Mohr Siebeck, 2004. Sanders, E. P. Paul and Palestinian Judaism. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977. ———. Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1983. Schreiner, Thomas. Galatians. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010. Stendahl, Krister. “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West.” Harvard Theological Review 56, no. 3 (July 1963): 199-215. Waters, Guy Prentiss. Justification and the New Perspectives on Paul: A Review and Response. Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2004. Westerholm, Stephen. Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004. Wright, N. T. Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993. ———. Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision. Downer’s Grove, Ill: IVP Academic, 2009. ———. “The Paul of History and the Apostle of Faith.” Tyndale Bulletin 56, no. 1 (1978): 60-88. ———. What St. Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997.