The New Perspective on Paul: Evaluation and Critique

1
The New Perspective on Paul Evaluation and
Critique
2

• What is the New Perspective?
• History of the NPP the writers and their
  writings
• Beliefs of the NPP
• What is the Old Perspective?
• Essential beliefs
• Responses of the Old Perspective to the NPP
• What can we learn from this discussion?

3
What is the New Perspective?

• What Paul finds wrong with Judaism
• For Sanders, Judaism was wrong because
  Christianity was right.
• PPJ, 552 This is what Paul finds wrong in
  Judaism it is not Christianity.
• Law, 47 What is wrong with the law, and thus
  with Judaism, is that it does not provide for
  Gods ultimate purpose, that of saving the entire
  world through faith in Christ.

4
What is the New Perspective?

• What Paul finds wrong with Judaism
• For Dunn and Wright, Judaism was wrong because it
  demonstrated nationalistic pride, ethnocentrism,
  and racism in regard to the inclusion of
  Gentiles.

5
What is the New Perspective?

• What Paul finds wrong with Judaism
• Wright, History, 65 If we ask how it is that
  Israel has missed her vocation, Pauls answer is
  that she is guilty not of legalism or
  works-righteousness but of what I call
  national righteousness, the belief that fleshly
  Jewish descent guarantees membership of Gods
  true covenant people.

6
What is the New Perspective?

• What Paul finds wrong with Judaism
• Dunn, Justice, 14 The classic Protestant
  understanding of justification . . . has missed
  or downplayed what was probably the most
  important aspect of the doctrine for Paul himself
  . . ., the fundamental critique of Israels
  tendency to nationalist presumption, not to say
  racial pride.

7
What is the New Perspective?

• Justification
• The maintenance of ones covenantal status before
  God, i.e., staying in right relationship with
  God declaring someone to be a part of the
  covenant people.
• Dunn, New Perspective, 190 Gods
  justification is . . . Gods acknowledgement that
  someone is in the covenant.

8
What is the New Perspective?

• Justification
• Wright, Justification, 96 For Paul,
  justification . . . always had in mind Gods
  declaration of membership, and that this always
  referred specifically to the coming together of
  Jews and Gentiles in faithful membership of the
  Christian family.
• Wright, Justification, 100 Justification
  denotes a status. . . . It means membership in
  Gods true family.

9
What is the New Perspective?

• Justification
• Donaldson, Paul, 171 Righteousness . . . is a
  covenant term to say that one is righteous is
  not, in the first instance, to say that the
  person conforms with some absolute standard of
  moral perfection, but that the person is a member
  in good standing of the covenant community.

10
What is the New Perspective?

• Justification
• Since N. T. Wright has written the most detailed
  description of justification among the NPP
  advocates, we need to delineate the significant
  points of his understanding of justification
• 1. The righteousness of God is Gods
  faithfulness to his covenant it speaks about
  what God does, i.e., an effect of his
  righteousness, rather than who God is, i.e.,
  possessing the attribute of righteousness.

11
What is the New Perspective?

• Justification
• Thus, Wright treats the righteousness of God
  merely in terms of the actions of the Judge
  rather than in terms of his attribute of
  righteousness.
• For a reader of the Septuagint . . . the
  righteousness of God would have one obvious
  meaning Gods own faithfulness to his promises,
  to the covenant. (What Paul Said, 96)

12
What is the New Perspective?

• Justification
• Gods righteousness is his faithfulness to his
  covenant promises to Abraham (Climax of the
  Covenant, 36).
• Gods righteousness connotes the notion of
  Gods covenant faithfulness because of which he
  saves (Justification, 52).

13
What is the New Perspective?

• Justification
• 2. The justification of the sinner is the status
  that someone has when the court has found in
  their favor (Justification, 69). And what is
  that status? This justification is the
  declaration that someone is in the covenant.
  Justification, as seen in 324-26, means that
  those who believe in Jesus Christ are declared to
  be members of the true covenant family (What
  Saint Paul Really Said, 129).

14
What is the New Perspective?

• Justification
• 2a. The basis of this declaration is the
  persons faith on the basis of faith we . . .
  receive the verdict member of the family
  (Justification, 112).
• 2b. The reason people are declared to be members
  of the covenant family is the faithful death of
  the Messiah. This is why the faith of Jesus
  Christ is understood as a subjective genitive,
  i.e., faithfulness of Jesus Christ, rather than
  as an objective genitive, i.e., faith in Jesus
  Christ.

15
What is the New Perspective?

• Justification
• God always intended that his purposes would be
  accomplished through faithful Israel note
  Wrights understanding of the meaning of
  covenant as Gods single plan through Israel
  for the world. That has now happened . . . in
  the single person of Israels faithful
  representative (Justification, 114).

16
What is the New Perspective?

• Justification
• 3. Because justification is the declaration that
  a Christian is in the covenant family, the
  concept of receiving Christs righteousness as a
  result of that declaration is a category
  mistake. In other words, Wright has no room in
  his explanation of justification for the concept
  of imputed righteousness.

17
What is the New Perspective?

• Justification
• If we use the language of the law-court, it
  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 can be
  passed across the courtroom. For the Judge to be
  righteous

18
What is the New Perspective?

• Justification
• does not mean that the court has found in his
  favour. For the plaintiff or defendant to be
  righteous does not mean that he or she has tried
  the case properly or impartially. To imagine the
  defendant somehow receiving the judges
  righteousness is simply a category mistake. That
  is not how the language works. . . . If and when
  God

19
What is the New Perspective?

• Justification
• does act to vindicate his people, his people will
  then, metaphorically speaking, have the status of
  righteousness. . . . But the righteousness they
  have will not be Gods own righteousness. That
  makes no sense at all (What Saint Paul Really
  Said, 98-99). And in case Wright might have
  wanted to adjust this statement at all, he states
  in his most

20
What is the New Perspective?

• Justification
• recent book (Justification, 133-34), It is quite
  illegitimate to seize on Pauls in Christ
  language and say that therefore Christians
  have something called the righteousness of
  Christ imputed to them.

21
What is the New Perspective?

• Justification
• Wright is much happier to see the benefits of
  Christ coming to believers by virtue of their
  union with Christ. The people over whom that
  verdict (righteous, members of Gods family)
  is issued are those who are in the Messiah
  (Justification, 101).

22
What is the New Perspective?

• Justification
• 4. The law-court scene during which believers
  are declared to be in the covenant is the final
  judgment. And the basis of that final judgment is
  the death of Christ and the life lived by the
  Christian.

23
What is the New Perspective?

• Justification
• Paul has . . . spoken in Romans 2 about the
  final justification of Gods people on the basis
  of their whole life (Fresh Perspective, 121).
• Present justification declares, on the basis of
  faith, what future justification will affirm
  publicly (according to Rom 214-16 and 89-11)
  on the basis of the entire life (What Paul Said,
  129).

24
What is the New Perspective?

• Justification
• This declaration, this vindication, occurs
  twice. It occurs in the future . . . on the basis
  of the entire life a person has led in the power
  of the Spirit that is, it occurs on the basis
  of works in Pauls redefined sense. And near
  the heart of Pauls theology, it occurs in the
  present as an anticipation of that future
  verdict, when someone responding in believing
  obedience to the call of the gospel, believes
  that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from
  the dead (New Perspectives, 260).

25
What is the New Perspective?

• Works of the Law
• Covenant works, i.e., Jewish identity markers
  works done in obedience to the law of the
  covenant, particularly observances of the law
  that were characteristically and distinctively
  Jewish such as circumcision, observance of Jewish
  calendar days and food laws. Works of the law are
  bad, not because they show the desire to gain
  favor with

26
What is the New Perspective?

• Works of the Law
• God by doing good works but because they are
  Jewish and do not include Gentiles.
• Sanders, Law, 20 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 Pauls Gentile
  converts must accept the Jewish law in order to
  enter the people of God or to be counted truly
  members.

27
What is the New Perspective?

• Works of the Law
• Wright, What Paul Said, 130 Israel was
  determined to have her covenant membership
  demarcated by works of Torah, that is, by the
  things that kept that membership confined to Jews
  and Jews only.
• Dunn, Works of the Law, 109 Works of the
  law do not denote any attempt to earn favour
  with God. . . . What we do see, and see in
  plenty, is a Jewish assumption of favoured
  nation status, and the corollary

28
What is the New Perspective?

• Works of the Law
• assumption that even when Jews sin it is not so
  serious as Gentile sin. It is this attitude and
  misapprehension which Paul sums up in the
  confidence of justification by works of the law.
  The clear implication being that it is his works
  of the law (since they maintain his covenant
  status and document his distinctiveness from
  Gentile sinners)

29
What is the New Perspective?

• Works of the Law
• which give the Jew his false confidence and
  which cloak the seriousness of his sin.
• Dunn, Theology, 363-64 Works of the law are
  what distinguish Jew from Gentile. To affirm
  justification by works of the law is to affirm
  that justification is for Jews only, is to
  require that Gentile believers take on the
  persona and practices of the Jewish people.

30
What is the New Perspective?

• What is the Gospel?
• NPP advocates tend to emphasize a big Gospel in
  one sense while at the same time minimizing the
  essence of what the Gospel message should be.
• N. T. Wright offers the following cryptic
  statements about the definition of the Gospel
• The announcement of the gospel results in people
  being saved. . . . But the Gospel

31
What is the New Perspective?

• What is the Gospel?
• itself, strictly speaking, is the narrative
  proclamation of King Jesus (Wright, What Paul
  Said, 45).
• The crucified Jesus of Nazareth has been
  raised from the dead that he was thereby proved
  to be Israels Messiah that he was thereby
  installed as Lord of the world (Wright, What
  Paul Said, 46).

32
What is the New Perspective?

• What is the Gospel?
• The Gospel is a message primarily about Jesus,
  and about what the one true God has done and is
  doing through him (Wright, Justification, 156).
• Wright notes four aspects about the Gospel as he
  articulates it (Wright What Paul Said, 60)
• 1. In Jesus . . . the decisive victory has been
  won over all the powers of evil.

33
What is the New Perspective?

• What is the Gospel?
• 2. In Jesus resurrection the New Age has
  dawned.
• 3. The crucified and risen Jesus was, all along,
  Israels Messiah, her representative king.
• 4. Jesus was therefore also the Lord, the true
  king of the world, the one at whose name every
  knee would bow.

34
What is the New Perspective?

• What is the Gospel?
• The Gospel is not just for the individual, in
  fact for the NPP it is much more corporate and
  wide-sweeping
• The gospel is not . . . a set of techniques for
  making people Christians. Nor is it a set of
  systematic theological reflections, however
  important. The gospel is the announcement that
  Jesus is Lord Lord of the world, Lord of the
  cosmos, Lord of the earth, of the ozone layer, of
  whales and waterfalls, or trees and tortoises
  (Wright, What Paul Said, 153-54).

35
What is the New Perspective?

• What is the Gospel?
• The doctrine of justification by faith is not
  what Paul means by the gospel (Wright, What
  Paul Said, 132).
• The gospel is not an account of how people get
  saved (Wright, What Paul Said, 133).
• Pauls gospel to the pagans was not a philosophy
  of life. Nor was it, even, a doctrine about how
  to get saved (Wright, What Paul Said, 90).

36
What is the New Perspective?

• What is the Gospel?
• The gospel is not . . . a set of techniques for
  making people Christians (Wright, What Paul
  Said, 60).

37
What is the New Perspective?

• What is the Bibles Big Idea/Storyline in
  relation to Soteriology?
• The key question facing Judaism as a whole was
  not about individual salvation, but about Gods
  purposes for Israel and the world (Wright,
  Justification, 56-57).

38
What is the New Perspective?

• What is the Bibles Big Idea/Storyline in
  relation to Soteriology?
• There was indeed one divine purpose, from
  creation through Abraham and Moses to the
  monarchy and the prophets, and on into the long
  exile from which Gods people had now emerged
  (Wright, Justification, 58).

39
What is the New Perspective?

• What is the Bibles Big Idea/Storyline in
  relation to Soteriology?
• Pauls view of Gods purpose is that God, the
  creator, called Abraham so that through his
  family he, God, could rescue the world from its
  plight (Wright, Justification, 73).

40
What is the New Perspective?

• What is the Bibles Big Idea/Storyline in
  relation to Soteriology?
• This single purpose, this plan-through-Israel-for
  -the-world, this reason-God-called-Abraham (you
  can see why I prefer the shorthand covenant . .
  .) finally came to fruition with Jesus Christ
  (Wright, Justification, 74).

41
What is the New Perspective?

• What is the Bibles Big Idea/Storyline in
  relation to Soteriology?
• The covenant . . . is not something other than
  Gods determination to deal with evil once and
  for all and so put the whole creation (and
  humankind with it) right at last (Wright,
  Justification, 74).

42
What is the New Perspective?

• What is the Bibles Big Idea/Storyline in
  relation to Soteriology?
• For Wright (Justification, 74-75) the covenant
  (which is Gods purpose for the world) can be
  described in four steps
• 1. The Israelites of the OT and the 2nd temple
  period saw themselves as the people of the
  creator God whose purposes stretched beyond them
  and out into the wider world.

43
What is the New Perspective?

• What is the Bibles Big Idea/Storyline in
  relation to Soteriology?
• 2. The particular focus of this purpose is
  centered on the story of Abraham with whom God
  established a covenant (Gen 15 and 17) this
  covenants promises and warnings are delineated
  in Deuteronomy 27-30.

44
What is the New Perspective?

• What is the Bibles Big Idea/Storyline in
  relation to Soteriology?
• 3. There was a sense in 2nd temple Judaism that
  this single story of God with his people Israel
  was continuing to move forwards towards whatever
  fulfillment God might eventually have in mind.

45
What is the New Perspective?

• What is the Bibles Big Idea/Storyline in
  relation to Soteriology?
• 4. Paul holds onto this story and rethinks it in
  the light of Jesus through whom at last the one
  God would fulfill the one plan to accomplish the
  one purpose, to rid the world of sin and
  establish his new creation and in the light of
  the holy spirit, the operating power of the
  covenant.

46
What is the New Perspective?

• What is the Bibles Big Idea/Storyline in
  relation to Soteriology?
• One particularly unique element emphasized by
  Wright in this storyline is the idea of the
  covenantal curse of the ongoing exile that Israel
  was experiencing as she awaited Gods release
  from exile Many first-century Jews thought of
  the period they were living in

47
What is the New Perspective?

• What is the Bibles Big Idea/Storyline in
  relation to Soteriology?
• as the continuation of a great scriptural
  narrative, and of the moment they themselves were
  in as late on within the continuing exile of
  Daniel 9 (Wright, Justification, 42).
• Jesus is the one who will help to bring this
  exile to an end.

48
What is the New Perspective?

• What is the Bibles Big Idea/Storyline in
  relation to Soteriology?
• To summarize this storyline God had a single
  plan all along through which he intended to
  rescue the world and the human race, and that
  this single plan was centered upon the call of
  Israel, a call which Paul saw coming to fruition
  in Israels representative, the Messiah (Wright,
  Justification, 18-19).

49
What is the New Perspective?

• What is the Bibles Big Idea/Storyline in
  relation to Soteriology?
• In order to be included in this storyline, people
  need to receive justification, the status of
  being in the covenant family.