New Perspective on Paul

Book Review: Allen and Linebaugh, Reformation Readings of Paul

Allen, Michael and Jonathan A. Linebaugh, eds. Reformation Readings of Paul: Explorations in History and Exegesis. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2015. 280 pp. Pb; $28.00.   Link to IVP

The so-called new perspective on Paul often complains that Luther read his own situation into the apostle Paul. It is often stated that Luther misunderstood Paul because he did not understand second temple. Judaism, and he was imposing his own struggle with the Roman Catholic Church on the text of Galatians and Romans. But how Luther or any of the reformers actually read Paul’s writings is never explored. This book attempts to fill this missing link in scholarship. This book is something of a supplement to the growing collection of reformation commentaries also published by IVP academic.

Reformation Readings of PaulIn his introduction, Jonathan A. Linebaugh suggests there is a disconnection between the “Lutheran Paul” and Martin Luther as a reader of Paul. Perhaps Luther’s reading of Paul was not a good one, but the only way to determine this is to actually read Luther’s exegesis of Paul’s writings. The goal of Reformation Readings of Paul is to “catch the reformers in action as exegetes” (15). The book is sort of a “there and back again” tale in which the reader passes through the reformers to the more distant Paul, but always with the goal of returning to the present to understand how these important texts still have meaning today.

In order to achieve this goal the editors have selected five reformation scholars for which the exam in one particular section of the Pauline writings. Each section has a pair of chapters, the first by a historian who describes how the particular reformer read Paul. The second chapter in each section is written by a Pauline scholar and attempts to fit the reformers reading of Paul into a larger Pauline theology. The second essay in each section is not a response but rather an interaction with the data collected by the historian. Perhaps the analogy of a dialogue is best, these chapters attempt to describe a dialogue between Paul and Calvin for example.

The editors selected the following pairings: Galatians and Martin Luther, Romans and Philipp Melanchthon, Ephesians and Martin Bucer, 1 & 2 Corinthians and John Calvin, and finally Thomas Cranmer and the whole Pauline collection. This is not a book focuses solely on Luther, or even Luther and Calvin. The inclusion of sections on Melanchthon and Bucer make this a more diverse collection, and a section on the English reformer Thomas Cranmer is remarkable.

Gerald Bray’s conclusion to the collection reminds us that even though the reformers were “fully engaged in the Renaissance humanism of their time,” the heart of the Reformation was a theological crisis ignited by the Gospel (264). Late medieval theology was preoccupied with paying off the enormous the debt of sin owed to a righteous God. In that world Luther’s interpretation of “the just will live by faith” was both radical and liberating. For Bray, modern critics of the reformers miss the spiritual dimension that makes sense of Luther and Paul (272). Certainly we know more today about Second Temple Judaism that the Reformers, but they connected with Paul in their own time in order to bring the light of the Gospel to a very dark world.

 

NB: Thanks to InterVarsity for kindly providing me with a review copy of this book. This did not influence my thoughts regarding the work.

 

Logos Free Book – Justification Reconsidered: Rethinking a Pauline Theme

WesterholmLogos Bible Software has outdone itself for the “Free Book of the Month” Promotion.  Logos partners with Eerdmans to offer Stephen Westerholm’s Justification Reconsidered: Rethinking a Pauline Theme. This book is a good overview of Paul’s view of justification by faith and the role of the works of the law. He summarizes the “New Perspective on Paul” (Krister Stendahl, E. P. Sanders, Heikki Räisänen, N. T. Wright, James D. G. Dunn, and Douglas A. Campbell). Westerholm recognizes some of the critiques of the traditional view of Paul, but does not find the New Perspective persuasive either. If you are curious about what the “New Perspective on Paul” is, I wrote a series of posts two years ago covering many of the key points.

Campbell DeliveranceAs a bonus, Logos has an “almost free book of the month,” Douglas A. Campbell, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul. This is a great value at only 99 cents (the book is more that 1200 pages!) Campbell’s views on Paul are challenging since he recognizes the New Perspective but pushes beyond it to “a noncontractual, ‘apocalyptic; reading of many of the apostle’s most famous—and most troublesome—texts.” He want to avoid the theological rhetoric which usually pervades discussions on Justification (ie., the John Piper/N. T. Wright exchange a few years ago). In order to do this, he attempts to isolate Paul’s view of justification, works, and law from post-reformation theology. The book was controversial and generated a few articles in direct response, including Douglas J. Moo,  “The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul by Douglas A. Campbell.” JETS 53 (2010): 143-150.

As always, Logos has a “giveaway” related to their free book, this month you can enter to win a set of  the Two Horizons Commentary (10 vols., $174.95 value). I reviewed the Pastoral Epistles commentary by Robert Wall and Richard Steele, and concluded it was a “helpful contribution to the study of the Pastorals which will be profitable for both layman and pastor.”

Both of these books are excellent additions to your Logos library, so make sure to add them to your library before the end of the month.

Paul’s Experience on the Damascus Road

Like most who write on the conversion of Paul, Polhill asks if Paul was “predisposed” to conversion.  To what extent did was Paul “prepared” for his encounter on the road to Damascus?  Certainly Paul thought that God had prepared him to preach the grace of God (Gal 1:15), but this question usually is more interested in Paul’s psychological state of mind when he met Jesus.

Road to DamascusLike the discussion of Paul’s conversion, the New Perspective on Paul has had quite a bit to say here.  Typically Paul has been viewed as struggling to keep the Law, perhaps in despair over his inability to do “the whole of the Law.”  Usually Romans 7 is cited here; Paul is the “wretched man” who must be delivered from his body of death (Rom 7:25).  He has been “kicking against the goads” for some time, according to Acts 26:14.

But this reconstruction has been questioned by the New Perspective, especially by E. P. Sanders, following Krister Stendahl.  Sanders challenged what he saw as the Lutheran domination of Pauline studies on justification.  In the twentieth century (primarily Lutheran) scholars have made justification by faith the “center” Pauline theology. This leads to the unfortunate result of anti-Judaism – Jews become proto-Pelagians, Paul is Luther bashing the RCC’s.  Judaism is thought to be the antithesis of Paul’s Christianity and Paul’s theology develops out of a struggle against Judaism.  Sanders changed the debate by arguing that the questions posed by the protestant / RCC debate have nothing at all to do with Judaism of the Second Temple period.   For Sanders, this totally obscures what was actually happening in the first century and how Christianity developed out of Judaism.  In addition, Sanders points out that the protestant Paul was never recognized by Jewish scholars (Sandmel, for example), he was incoherent or inconsistent.

According to Sanders, Paul was not a guilt-ridden sinner trying to justify himself through the good works of the Law.  In fact, that was Luther. He was the guilt-ridden sinner trying to justify himself, and he read all that angst back into Paul.  Paul was therefore not converted on the road to Damascus.  Obviously this has huge implications, since the theological edifice of the reformation is built on Luther’s understanding of Paul, and there have been some fairly strenuous arguments against Sanders and the other more recent New Perspective writers.

In the end, Polhill is correct when he states that Paul’ encounter on the road to Damascus was a radical event for which he was totally unprepared (p. 55).  By appearing to Paul in his resurrection glory, Jesus radically changed Paul’s thinking in a way which cannot really be described as “conversion” in the contemporary sense.  It was a prophetic call like Isaiah or Ezekiel which resulted in a transformation of Paul’s thinking about who Jesus is and what he claimed to be.

If the New Perspective is correct about Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus, how would this change our understanding of Paul? What are the ramifications of Paul as called” to a prophetic mission rather than converted to a new religion?

The New Perspective on Paul: Dispensationalism and the NPP

There are a number of other topics which could be included in a discussion of the New Perspective. The “faithfulness of Christ” or “Christ’s faithfulness” debate is very important although the details are a bit arcane. Wright’s view of the Exile is important, but not something that is at the heart of the New Perspective on Paul. Let me close off this series with a few observations why I think that dispensationalism and the New Perspective can be closely allied.

dispensationaismBy dispensationalism, I do not mean the quirky stuff (people predicting the end of the world, etc.) The dispensationalism I have in mind here is represented by writers like Darrell Bock, Craig Blaising, Robert Saucy or Dale DeWitt. There are quite a few ideas in the New Perspective which resonate with dispensationalism. I do not mean to say that the NPP is dispensational, only that the two are often “on the same page.” A few examples will suffice.

First, dispensationalism has always had a strong view of progressive revelation which lends itself to a narrative of salvation history. Scripture is the unfolding story of redemption. God is working through a series of “steps” or stages to redeem creation from the effects of sin. Wright has particularly emphasized “story” as a way of understanding Jesus and Paul, often using the analogy of a five act play. His oft-cited world view questions are important, Paul is answering the question “what time is it?” Dispensationalism highlights the fact that Paul is describing the current age as distinct from the last.

Second, dispensationalism has never been particularly anti-Semitic and has always done a good job emphasizing the Jewishness of the writers of the New Testament. This is may be a result of Dispensationalism’s late development as a system of thought, but it is also true many of the earliest “dispensational” thinkers were interested in Jewish evangelism. That the New Perspective says Jesus, Paul, Peter and James reflect Second Temple Period Judaism is nothing which should shock a dispensationalist! I think that there is a great deal more to be learned by studying Paul and Jesus in the light of our growing understanding of the Second Temple Period.

Third, dispensationalism has always emphasized Paul as the central figure for the present age. He is the “founder of the church” and his letters are usually emphasized over other writers in the New Testament. Paul claims his revelation is unique, and dispensationalists frequently develop this claim to mean that Paul is the only one to whom God revealed his plan for the current age (Eph 3:1-6, for example). The New Perspective also emphasizes the radicalness of Paul’s message in the context of Second Temple Period Judaism. For all of his connections to Judaism, Paul says things that would be considered radical within any form of “biblical” Judaism of the first century.

Fourth, with respect to the Justification debate, dispensationalists are a bit confused. Dispensationalism developed out of the reformed tradition, continuing the reformation in terms of ecclesiology and eschatology. Dispensationalism is in fact a development of covenant theology whether either side wants to admit it or not. As such there is a interest in the soteriology of the Reformers, but the anti-denominationalism of dispensationalists prevents them from fully embracing confessions and the like. As a result, there are dispensationalists who represent all the various “flavors” of the reformation, Calvinist or Arminian. Soteriology is not the primary motivation for most dispensationalists, so this debate might very well pass them by.

I do think that the New Perspective is correct in their description of justification as one of the many metaphors of salvation and that the reformation stream theologies have elevated it to such an extent that the word “justification” now means “total salvation.” For me, the fact that Paul uses “in Christ” to describe our salvation far more often makes it a more viable overarching metaphor for salvation. It also seems to me that the division between justification and sanctification in Systematic theology misses the point that Paul uses the same language for both the beginning of our salvation and our on-going experience of salvation.

Obviously someone like N. T. Wright is not a dispensationalist in any sense of the word, but it is remarkable how many of his basic ideas resonate with dispensationalist foundations. I think this is why Wright goes out of his way to separate himself from dispensationalism, although he has in mind the goofy popular forms. The New Perspective certainly does not go so far as to separate the church from Israel in the way that dispensationalists do, nor is there any sort similarity in eschatology. There is much to be learned from reading the New Perspective on Paul.

The New Perspective on Paul: Scholarly Response to the NPP

The literature on the New Perspective on Paul is vast, to say the least. There are volumes supporting and extending Sanders’ work, there are others critiquing his work. Some are aimed at N. T. Wright as a particularly popular proponent of the New Perspective, others championing the classic Reformation view with zeal worthy of Elijah. Since Wright has sold quite a few books and has attracted a strong following, it is somewhat fashionable to reject him ought of hand with a sneer usually reserved for Rick Warren. This does not seem fair to me since Wright is a brilliant scholar, careful researcher and entertaining writer.

Keep calm and BurnAmong the most valuable responses is the collected essays in Carson, O’Brien, and Seifrid, Justification and Variegated Nomism: Volume 1 – The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2001); Volume 2: The Paradoxes of Paul (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck; Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker, 2004). This material covers the same material as Sanders (and even more). Each chapter takes a section of the literature and evaluates Sanders’ “covenantal nomism” in the light of that literature. In most cases, there is something which can be used as support for Sanders’ view of Second Temple period Judaism, but the evidence is far from uniform. Some Jewish writers may have thought of election and boundary markers as Sanders described, but others did not. The situation is far more varied than Sanders allowed for in his Paul and Palestinian Judaism.

Mark Seifrid has been a strong voice in favor of a more or less traditional view of Paul. His Christ, Our Righteousness: Paul’s Theology of Justification (Downers Grove: Intervarsity, 2000) is a brief treatment of the topic but among the very best and most accessible for the layman. Seyoon Kim engages James Dunn in his Paul and the New Perspective: Second Thoughts on the Origin of Paul’s Gospel (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002). Stephen Westerholm’s Perspectives New and Old on Paul (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2004) surveys Augustine, Luther, Calvin and Wesley as well as the “Lutheran” interpreters of Paul in the twentieth century before turning to Paul’s view of the Law and Justification in the final third of the book. This historical approach seems backwards to me, but it really does “work” in practice. Francis Watson recently revised his Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2007), attempting to break through the false dichotomy between either the Traditional “Lutheran” view nor the New Perspective. In many ways, Watson’s work draws the best from both views of Paul and attempts to build a biblical theology of Paul. I would also add Douglas Campbell’s The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2009), although it has been severely critiqued. Matlock, for example, called the book an “impossibly forced argument” (R. Barry Matlock, “Zeal for Paul but not according to Knowledge: Douglas Campbell’s War on ‘Justification Theory,’” JSNT 34 (2011): 115-149.  See also Joshua Jipp, “Douglas Campbell’s Apocalyptic, Rhetorical Paul: Review Article,” Horizons in Biblical Theology 32(2010): 183-197; Douglas J. Moo, “The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading Of Justification In Paul By Douglas A. Campbell, Review Article,” JETS 53 (2010): 143-50.)

While studies challenging Sanders’ position are not unique, they are almost always from the Calvinist side of the Reformation and are intent on defending the reformation view of justification by faith in Paul. Chris Vanlandingham has charted a new course in that he approaches Sanders from a decidedly Arminian view of salvation and the last judgment. For Vanlandingham, Sanders is guilty of the very sins of which he accused scholarship in his Paul and Palestinian Judaism – he reads the Reformation view of grace and works back into the literature of the Second Temple period and finds a robust view of election. Vanlandingham contends that Jewish literature of this period uniformly describes the final judgment as a judgment by works, including the Apostle Paul. (See Chris Vanlandingham, Judgment and Justification in Early Judaism and the Apostle Paul. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2006.)

Another dozen titles could be added to this list if I included responses from systematic theology, but these are among the best which I have read on the New Perspective and are all worth reading to balance the more polemical books out there. This is far from a complete list of responses to the New Perspective; please feel free to suggest others in the comments.

Anrgy Calvinists