Category: E.P. Sanders
Reviewing the new perspective(s) on the Apostle Paul.
A statue of the Apostle Paul at the Vatican.
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)?
Sunday Quote: Fisher on Holiness in Paul
Holiness cannot be created or achieved by not doing something. For Paul holiness cannot be defined by what a person does not do. For Paul the believer’s holiness can be endangered and diminished by committing various transgressions and offense, but it cannot be increased or established by not committing those transgressions and offenses. For Paul, the believer’s relationship with Christ is active not passive. It is what a person does, not what they do not do that establishes them in a state of righteousness before God.1
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1. Roy A. Fisher, “Paul and the Faith of Jesus: Justification by Faith in Eschatological Participatory Soteriology” (paper for requirements in the PhD in Near Eastern Religions, University of California Berkeley, in an email to author, April 24, 2008), 12. Here, Fisher apparently is following Sanders’s view of participatory soteriology in Paul.[Back]
Did the Apostle Paul Misrepresent Second Temple Judaism?
Both E.P. Sanders and H. Raisaner criticized the Apostle Paul saying that he misrepresented Second Temple (esp. Palestinian)Judaism (STJ) when he depicted it as a merit-based, legalistic religion. It is argued that STJ was a religion of “covenantal nomism”. This is to say that the Jews did not see works as means of earning God’s favor since God had already elected Israel. Rather, it was by works that one showed that one was in the covenant or one maintained right-standing in the covenant. The Jews obeyed the law because of election.
J.D.G. Dunn, N.T. Wright, M. Hooker and others have previously argued that Sanders did not give Paul a fair hearing. These scholars have suggested that the traditional Reformed (esp. Lutheran) reading of Paul was incorrect and that we must reinterpret terminology such as “the works of the law”, “the righteousness of God”, “faith in/faithfulness of Jesus Christ” and so forth. This is to say that Sanders is correct in his assessment of STJ, but not Paul.
Douglas Moo offers yet another possibility. He argues along with M. Seifrid, T. Schreiner, P. O’Brien, S. Gathercole, and others that STJ is much more diverse that Sanders allowed. Therefore, it is possible that Paul was in fact challenging some sort of “legalistic” or “merit-based” Judaism. Paul was not challenging STJ as a whole (because it was not uniform) but rather a particular element of STJ that was represented by his opponents. Even if we cannot find STJ literature that sounds exactly like the opponents of Paul it is suggested by Moo that,
Even if the position of Paul’s opponents could not be traced to any Jewish view discernible in the literature, it would still be preferable to admit our ignorance of much of first century theology and let them remain unidentified than accuse Paul of misrepresentations or force the texts to say something that they do not appear to be saying (Moo, Douglas. “Paul and the Law in the Last Ten Years.” Scot. Journ. of Theol. 40: 287-307.).
Of course, there are some scholars who believe that there is as much in STJ literature to suggest merit-based religion as there is “covenantal nomism”. But even if there wasn’t one should assume that Paul knew what he was talking about and that he knew what he was criticizing. Especially since for all the STJ literature we have we do not have enough to know all the aspects involved.
James D.G. Dunn Critiquing the ‘Lutheran’ Paul and the E.P. Sanders’ Paul
In an article titled ‘The New Perspective on Paul’ (1983) [1] James D.G. Dunn addressed E.P. Sanders’ ground breaking work Paul and Palestinian Judaism. After complementing Sander’s work for giving “us an unrivalled opportunity to look at Paul afresh, to shift our perspective back from the 16th century to the first century, to do what all true exegetes want to do–that is, to see Paul properly within his own context, to hear Paul in terms of his own time, to let Paul be himself”, Dunn states, “The most surprising feature of Sanders’ writing, however, is that he himself has failed to take the opportunity his own mouldbreaking work offered.” (100)
Dunn was not satisfied with Sanders’ assumption that Paul must have characterized Second Temple Judaism (hereafter STJ) as legalistic when in fact STJ was not a legalistic religion. In fact, according to Sanders STJ was a election and grace based religion. Paul’s defaced STJ because it was not Christianity; Paul was against STJ because it did not acknowledge Jesus as Messiah.
Dunn sees this as wrongheaded. Although Dunn was not willing to go back toward Luther he was not willing to allow Paul to appear to be either ignorant of the Judaism of his own day or deceptive of it in his criticism. Dunn writes this,
The Lutheran Paul has been replaced by an idiosyncratic Paul who in arbitrary and irrational manner turns his face against the glory and greatness of Judaism’s covenant theology and abandons Judaism simply because it is not Christianity.
Hence, we see the starting point of Dunn’s own perspective within the New Perspective(s) on Paul. Dunn, unlike some, bought into Sanders’ Judaism but not Sanders Paul. Those like Heikki Raisanen bought into Sanders’ Judaism and therefore rejected Pauline thought.
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[1] Dunn, James D. G. “The New Perspective on Paul.” BJRUL (Manchester, 1983). Pp. 95-122.
