Do We Need A New Perspective?

Do We Need A New Perspective? The preacher said, “There is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9, ESV) All verses Holy Bible English Standard Version unless otherwise noted.. Yet, in 1977 the world of biblical scholarship was faced with a new perspective, actually a new perspective on Paul (Hereafter referred to as NPP). For the ages since the first century it has been taught that Judaism was a legalistic religion; the Jews performed the Law in an effort to earn salvation. This is what has come to be called works salvation. Among the differences in the Old and New Covenants is the approach to justification. Under the Old Covenant salvation was earned; under the New Covenant it was by grace through faith. Beginning in the 60s this view beginning to be looked at in a different light and in the mid to late 1970s scholarship beginning to take another view of the Judaism. The view that Judaism was legalistic began to give way a view that Jews were saved because they were chosen by God; they were essentially saved by grace. Since the time of Stendahl in the 19060s great strides in scholarship have been made. Sanders took Stendahl’s work and pushed forward in Paul and Palestinian Judaism. From Sanders’ work James D.G. Dunn and N. T. Wright have led the way in what has become known as the NPP. The question that rises from the NPP If the Jews are not Legalistic, and have been mischaracterized does it have ramifications on how Christianity is viewed? If the Jews were saved by grace, just as Christians, does justification by faith need to be adjusted? The scope of this writing is not to attack justification but to look at final justification in view of the NPP. Justification and salvation need to be understood as two separate events with the understanding that Paul writes of a final justification. Paul wrote to the church in Rome, “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Romans 3:28). Here what needs to be discussed is what constitutes the ‘works of the law.’ Paul also wrote, “For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God” (Romans 14:10). As well, Paul wrote, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (1 Corinthians 5:10). There will be a final judgement in which every person will stand. This judgement has to also fit with the biblical teaching that salvation is by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9). In light of the NPP it is time that justification, more specifically final justification, needs to be re-examined. This not to give approval to works-salvation, but to understand justification in light of the NPP. Paul held to a final judgment. The NPP sheds light, logically, on that judgement. Let it be understood that salvation is by grace through faith and not by works (Eph. 2:8-9); this paper will argue nothing short of that basic, foundational, belief. Traditional Understanding of Judaism This section will not spend a lot of time in the traditional understanding of Judaism as it is well established. In a brief summary, the traditionally taught doctrine of Old Covenant soteriology is one of works righteousness. There was a balance between good works and law keeping to earn salvation. Even in this day and age there are certain groups that still hold to this ‘works salvation’ theology. This idea that the Jews were a ‘legalistic’ community began to be attacked in the 1960s by an article written by Stendahl. But, the full attack came in 1977 with the book, Paul and Palestinian Judaism E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1977). , by E. P. Sanders. The New Perspective It should be noted that the NPP as a blanket statement is hard to pin down. Just as doctrine of eschatology is splintered into many directions, so too are the differences among NPP proponents. Babb notes that there is an essential unity between the Old and New Testaments; a unity he claims no-one can deny. Otto Baab, “God of Redeeming Grace: Atonement in the Old Testament” Interpretation 10, no. 2 (1956): 131. This unity is what makes the NPP. In its simplest form the NPP asserts that Old Covenant Second Temple Judaism was not legalistic—works-salvation. The Jewish people believed that as God’s chosen people they were saved (this would be grace). They did not ‘do’ the law for entry into the Covenant. They kept the law to remain under the Covenant. It is this point from which this paper will work. While Sanders work in 1977 set off the NPP, it can be argued that the NPP begin in some crude form by the work of Krister Stendahl. Krister Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” Harvard Theological Review 56 (1963): 199-215. Stendahl’s position, as Allman writes, “warned against imposing modern Western ideas on the Bible, and especially on the works of Paul.” James Allman, “Gaining Perspective on the New Perspective,” Bibliotheca Sacra 170 (2013): 51. That Western ideas have been imposed cannot be denied. It is most notable in the concept of separation of church and state. As Moore argues this is a concept that would have been foreign to Jesus and any Jew for that matter. Cf. Mark E. Moore, Kenotic Politics: The Reconfiguration of Power in Jesus’ Political Praxis (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013). Prior to the NPP Western ideas had imposed work-salvation on Old Covenant Judaism. Stendahl asserted that the Pauline awareness of sin has been interpreted in the light of Luther’s struggle with his conscience. Stendahl, 200. The essence then of the NNP is to freshly re-examine the Pauline writings with the worldview of First Century, Second Temple Judaism. It has all times to be remembered that each writer, biblical or otherwise, writes—interprets may even be a better word—writes what is his understanding seen through the lens of his/her own particular world view. The Gospel writers interpret Christ through the world view of their respective communities. Paul interpreted Jesus, the Good News, The Righteousness of God, through the lens of a First Century, Second Temple Jew. For proponents of the NPP t is time for Paul’s work to be reinterpreted not from Luther’s lens, with all of his baggage against the Catholic Church, but through a 1st century lens. N. T. Wright writes, summing up Sanders, “The result, central to Sanders’s case, is that the role of law-keeping in rabbinic and other relevant branches of Judaism was not about ‘getting in’ but about ‘staying in’. One kept the Torah, not to become a member of God’s people but to demonstrate that one already was a member.” N. T. Wright, Paul and Hid Recent Interpreters (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 71-72. While this examination is brief it captures the essence of the NNP. What has been set is the stage of two very different ideas/hypothesis on portions of the Bible. The questions that need to be looked at are many, and yet can be boiled down to a few. If the Jews before were Christ were saved in the same way as Christians how do we interpret Paul and his seeming animosity toward the Jewish law? How does the NPP affect church doctrines especially that of final judgement? Questions such are propelling scholarship. It is questions like these that propels this paper. Is a New Perspective Needed? Understanding that Stendahl’s views that Paul should not be interpreted with a western view, understanding Sanders argument that the Jews were in the covenant by grace, understanding that the works of the Law that have been argued against are boundary markers that set the Jews apart from other nations, and knowing that God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, the Pauline, First Century Second Temple Judaism, worldview has to be equated into the interpretation. The following will be based on taking Sanders’ thesis as truth. Paul has to be interpreted in his context, not Luthers’. One of the problems that often rises is that, it is said, that there is no forgiveness in the Old Testament. Yet, this is a very hard point to make. What were many of the O.T. offerings if not sin offerings? A difference in the covenants is not that one had remission of sins and the other not; the difference in the covenants as far as remission of sins is concerned is that sacrifices of Judaism can be done away with because no there is the perfect sacrifice: Messiah Jesus. The Old Covenant sacrifices then are a type of the perfect sacrifice of Christ, the antitype. The antitype always being superior to the type. While animals were sacrificed for sin under the Old Covenant, they are no longer needed as Messiah has come and has been offered up as the perfect, ultimate sacrifice. It is through the blood of Christ that New Covenant mankind is justified (it should also be remembered that justification and salvation are two different events). Heen asserts, “justification in the NPP is reduced to a term Paul invokes to express his conviction that Gentiles need not conform to Jewish ‘ceremonial’ law in order to become followers of Messiah Jesus and full members of the people of God.” Erik M. Heen, “A Lutheran Response to the New Perspective on Paul” Restoration Quarterly 24 (2010), 263. Dunn adds, “’Justification is a legal metaphor; to be justified is to be acquitted.” James D. G. Dun, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1998), under The New Beginning. For the Old Covenant Jew justification was a legal term. It was something declared by a judge. In Pauline language justification is that state that a person is in. A person is justified by God, through the work of Christ. Bird states, and rightly so, that “righteousness here is not a property to be transferred, but a status to be conferred." Michael Bird, “The Reformed View” in Justification: Five Views, eds. James Beilby and Paul Eddy (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2012), under The Reformed View. That righteousness then is not something that is somehow ‘imputed’ into a person, but rather a state in which a person is declared to be. This would be much like the Jewish position that they were saved not because something was ‘imputed into them, but in that they were chosen by God. Dunn writes, “Paul draws the metaphor of justification from the law court— justification as the judge’s acquittal of the accused— and that the primary reference of the law-court imagery for Paul is the final Judgement.” James D.G. Dunn, “If Paul Could Believe in Both Justification by Faith and Judgment by Works, Why Should that be a Problem for Us?” in Four Views on the Role of Works at the Final Judgment (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013), Chapter 3 under Two Justifications. For the Old Covenant Jew, just as the Christian, they were to live by faith. Habakkuk tells the reader the just shall live by faith; Paul incorporates this statement into his writings. For the O. C. Jew as with the N. T. Christian they are to live by faith. Even with justification Paul informs his readers that there will also be a final judgment based on what they do. Final Judgement One of the major differences between the camps of Calvinism and Arminianism is the final judgement. For the Calvin group that justification that a person comes into Christ with declares him innocent forever. While the camp of the Arminians sees there to be a final judgment whereby people will stand before God and be judged on the merits of their work. Wright comments, “through Paul's writings, but once more especially in Romans, he envisages two moments, the final justification when God puts the whole world right and raises his people from the dead, and the present justification in which that moment is anticipated.” N. T. Wright, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2009), 12. Again, at least in the view of Wright, there is another type-antitype situation. For Paul, this final justification will be based on deeds. And, yet again, it must be stated that salvation is based on grace through faith. But, seems hostile to the law. Yet, works are a part of his gospel. As well, Paul writes in Romans 8:4 that through the Spirit a person can fulfill the righteousness of the Law. How can one be expected to fulfill something that has been taught for the ages to be the antithesis of salvation by Grace? Works of the Law Prior to the NPP works and works of the Law were considered one and the same. Proponents of the NPP, however, have put a different spin on the WOL. Farnell points out that “The Reformation approach had two key elements: first, the justification of the individual as the center of Paul's theology, and second, the identification of Paul's opponents as legalistic Jews (Judaizers) whom Luther and Calvin viewed as agreeing with the Roman Catholicism of their day.” F. David Farnell, “The New Perspective on Paul: Its Basic Tenets, History, and Presuppositions” The Master’s Seminary Journal (September, 2005): 192. But, as has been brought out by the NPP Paul is not arguing about the entire Law. It is the ‘boundary markers’ that Paul argues against. As Dunn puts it these are visible markers or rituals that set the Jews apart from other nations. These ‘woks of the law’ would have consisted of three markers: circumcision, dietary laws, and Sabbath keeping. Dunn sums it up this way, “Boundary markers (i.e., observing that part of the law that particularly set Israel apart from the other nations: e.g., Sabbath, circumcision, purity regulations) are the impetus for Paul’s declaration since Peter was in effect compelling Gentiles to abide by the food laws in order to belong to the people of God (Galatians 2: 11– 14).” Thomas Schreiner, “Justification Apart from and By Works” in Four Views on the Role of Works at the Final Judgment (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013), Chapter 4 under Justification Apart from Works. The Final judgment then “and the phrase, if it can be used to describe Paul's soteriology, has an equivalent emphasis-both grace through faith, and the obedience of faith.” James D. G. Dunn, “The New Perspective Response” in Justification: Five Views (Downers Grove: Intervarsity, 2011), under New Perspective Response. Paul’s hostility was never about the ‘righteousness of the law;’ his hostility was aimed at the boundary markers—the markers that set Jews apart from other nations and people groups. Paul never gives up his ‘Jewishness.’ In fact late in Acts we see Paul trying to get back to Jerusalem to observe one of the Jewish Feast. Paul’s hostility to the Law was hostility to the boundary laws that would make on a Jew to be a Christian. Wright again confirms the final judgment based on deeds, “Paul, in company with mainstream second-Temple Judaism, affirms that God’s final judgment will be in accordance with the entirety of a life led – in accordance, in other words, with works.” N. T. Wright, Pauline Perspectives: Essays on Paul, 1978-2013 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013), 281. While there are theologians that would argue against this, John Piper John Piper, The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright (Wheaton: Crossway, 2007). being one, it seems that somehow works have to be figured into the final Judgment. And it has to be remembered that James says faith without works is dead. And the pericope that everyone likes to hang on to, Ephesians 2:8-9, is followed in Ephesians 2:10 by a verse saying there are works prepared for the saved. Wright adds, “The ‘works’ in accordance with which the Christian will be vindicated on the last day are not the unaided works of the self-help moralist. Nor are they the performance of the ethnically distinctive Jewish boundary-markers (sabbath [sic], food-laws and circumcision).” Wright, 282. Wright clarifies even farther, “They are the things which show, rather, that one is in Christ; the things which are produced in one’s life as a result of the Spirit’s indwelling and operation. In this way, Romans 8.1– 17 provides the real answer to Romans 2.1– 16.” Wright, 282. While Wright believes that the final judgement will be based on works, as Allman reports Wright clarified the statement by suggesting that whatever one needed to perform those works that would render a verdict of innocent at that final judgment would be given by God to the person. Thus, the final judgment would have the same verdict as the first justification. But, here is where Wright seems to try and cling to tight to the Reformation views. It seems much more plausible that yes, one is given what it takes to do those works that would render one innocent at the final judgment—this would be the indwelling Holy Spirit—but the person has to act on/in/with that Spirit and not ‘quench’ it. While initial justification does look forward to the final judgment, it does not have to anticipate the final verdict. If the Jews were saved by grace as God’s chosen people yet kept the law not to enter the covenant but to remain in it, it seems that under the New Covenant man can be saved by grace and then fulfill the ‘righteousness’ of the law to remain ‘in the covenant.” This in no way nullifies salvation by grace and faith alone. God has given grace to allow man in the covenant; man’s obligation then is to fulfill the righteousness of the law to remain in the covenant. Wright, while claiming to look at scripture anew seems to be still focusing a bit through the Reformation lens and no doing 100% what he claims should be done. He has a doctrine derived from the Reformation that while admits is in need, and indeed scholarship has shown, not the least his own scholarship, of a face lift, yet he still holds too close to the Reformation. He still slightly forces a scripture to fit a doctrine instead of allowing the scripture to shape the doctrine. This is a charge that could be leveled at most all NPP scholars. Conclusion While the New Perspective on Paul has cause controversy among scholars and theologians, it does not have to. The New Perspective is not new, it is simply looking at the scriptures with the, as best it can be determined, worldview held by 1st Century Second Temple Judaism. It is time that Luther’s view of reading the scripture through a lens of hostility towards the Catholic Church needs to change. Yet, it seems Luther, and as well Calvin, have become so entrenched in scholarship that many scholars are not ready/willing to put on a new set of lenses and interpret the scriptures from a fresh perspective. The doctrine of Grace is worth preserving. And, a final judgment based on the entirety of one’s life does not have to take away from that doctrine. 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