|
|
|
A Summary of the New Perspective on Paul |
|
|
|
Unless otherwise
noted, all Scripture references are from the New Revised Standard Version. Depending upon one's
point of view, the current state of Pauline studies is either exciting or
alarming. Traditional interpretations of Paul's letters are being examined
afresh with increasing frequency as scholars diligently work to reconstruct
Paul's historical context. The fact that these studies may not corroborate
traditional Reformed interpretations can be used to discount the growing
consensus or to reconsider contemporary approaches to soteriology. Of what might such a reconsideration consist? One of the primary features of
the traditional Protestant doctrine of justification is an emphasis on the
plight of the individual before God, an individual quest for piety apart from
concrete social structures. As John Howard Yoder put it in his classic, The
Politics of Jesus: In
line with the personal appeal which has been so central in Protestant faith
since Luther, even more since Pietism, and especially since the merging of
Protestant existentialism with modern secular personalism
-- and even more especially since Freud and Jung imposed upon everyone in our
culture the vision of man as a self-centered reacting organism -- it has
seemed quite evident that the primary message of Jesus was a call most
properly perceived by an individual, asking the hearer for something that can
be done most genuinely by an individual standing alone. Whether this
something that he can do standing alone be a rare
heroic ethical performance like loving one's enemies, or a response more
accessible to the common man, like sorrow for his sins, it is a response each
individual can make only for himself. It has nothing to do with the
structures of society.1 Consequently,
a historical reappraisal of Paul's doctrine of justification could help not
only to provide a more solid basis for bringing faith to bear on social
issues, but also to strengthen the continued development of ecumenical
dialogue. The key questions involve
Paul's view(s) of the law and the meaning of the controversy in which Paul
was engaged. Paul strongly argued that we are "justified by faith in
Christ (or "the faith of Christ") and not by doing the works of the
law" (Gal. 2:16b). Since the time of Martin Luther, this has been
understood as an indictment of legalistic efforts to merit favor before God.
In fact Judaism in general has come to be construed as the very antithesis of
Christianity. Judaism is earthly, carnal, proud;
Christianity is heavenly, spiritual, humble. It is a tragic irony that all of
Judaism has come to be viewed in terms of the worst vices of the
sixteenth-century institutionalized church. When Judaism is thus cast
in the role of the medieval church, Paul's protests become very Lutheran and traditional Protestant theology is reinforced
in all its particulars, along with its limitations. In hermeneutical terms,
then, the historical context of Paul's debate lies at the very heart of the
doctrine of justification in the church. Obviously an in-depth
analysis of the Pauline corpus and its place in the context of first-century
Judaism would take us far beyond the scope of this brief article. We can,
however, quickly survey the topography of Paul's thought in context,
particularly as it has emerged through the efforts of recent scholarship, and
note some salient points which may be used as the basis of a refurbished soteriology. Judaism
as Legalistic: The Making and Breaking of a Paradigm Traditional Protestant soteriology, focused as it is on the plight of the conscience-smitten
individual before a holy God, must be carved out of the rock of human
pretentiousness in order to be cogent. Thus it is no accident that the
Reformers interpreted the burning issues of Paul's day in light of their
struggle against legalism. "The Reformers' interpretation of Paul,"
writes Krister Stendahl,
"rests on an analogism when Pauline statements
about Faith and Works, Law and Gospel, Jews and Gentiles are read in the
framework of late medieval piety. The Law, the Torah, with its specific
requirements of circumcision and food restrictions becomes a general
principle of 'legalism' in religious matters."2 This caricature of
Judaism was buttressed by such scholars as Ferdinand Weber, who arranged a
systematic presentation of rabbinic literature.3 Weber's book
provided a wealth of Jewish source material neatly arranged to show Judaism
as a religion of legalism. Emil Schürer, Wilhelm Bousset, and others were deeply influenced by Weber's
work.4 These scholars in turn have been immensely influential.
Rudolf Bultmann, for instance, relied on Schürer and Bousset for his
understanding of first-century Judaism.5 Weber's interpretation of
Judaism did not go unchallenged, however. The Jewish theologian Claude G.
Montefiore6 pointed out that Weber had not approached rabbinic
literature with sufficient sensitivity to its nature and diversity. Weber had
imposed a systematic grid on the rabbinic literature and wrested passages out
of context. The law in Judaism was not a burden which produced self-righteousness.
On the contrary, the law was itself a gift from a merciful and forgiving God. A second challenge came
from a non-Jewish scholar, George Foot Moore.7
Moore's treatment of Weber was even more devastating than Montefiore's.
This point was not
sufficiently driven home, however, until the publication in 1977 of E. P.
Sanders' book Paul and Palestinian Judaism. A New Testament scholar with
a good grasp of rabbinic literature, Sanders drove the final and most
powerful nail into the coffin of the traditional Christian caricature of
Judaism. Sanders' extensive treatment of the Tannaitic
literature, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha
was designed, like the efforts of Montefiore and
Moore, to describe and define Palestinian Judaism on its own terms, not as
the mirror reflection of Christianity. Unlike Montefiore
and Moore, Sanders has been immensely successful in convincing New Testament
scholars. Sanders has coined a now well-known phrase
to describe the character of first-century Palestinian Judaism:
"covenantal nomism." The meaning of
"covenantal nomism" is that human
obedience is not construed as the means of entering into God's covenant. That
cannot be earned; inclusion within the covenant body is by the grace of God.
Rather, obedience is the means of maintaining one's status within the
covenant. And with its emphasis on divine grace and forgiveness, Judaism was
never a religion of legalism. Krister Stendahl:
Paul's "Robust Conscience" The more we consider
Paul's writing in this context the less we see the acute psychological
dilemma characteristic of the Augustinian-Lutheran interpretation as a whole.
Krister Stendahl
masterfully explores this in his ground-breaking essay "The Apostle Paul
and the Introspective Conscience of the West." Paul was certainly aware
of his own shortcomings, but, Stendahl asks,
"does he ever intimate that he is aware of any sins of his own which
would trouble his conscience? It is actually easier to find statements to the
contrary. The tone in Acts 23:1, 'Brethren, I have lived before God in all
good conscience up to this day' (cf. 24:16), prevails also throughout his
letters."8 Far from being "simultaneously a sinner and a
saint" (simul iustus
et peccator), Paul testifies of his clear
conscience: "Indeed, this is our boast, the testimony of our conscience:
we have behaved in the world with frankness and godly sincerity" (2 Cor. 1:12a). He was aware that he had not yet
"arrived" (Phil. It may be countered that
Paul considered himself the least of the apostles (1 Cor.
15:9a; cp. Eph. 3:8) and in fact chief of sinners (cp. 1 Tim. All of this would seem to
be at loggerheads with Romans 7, where Paul writes that "I do not do the
good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do" (v. 19). Is this
not the despairing cry (whether pre-conversion or post-conversion) of a
person smitten by a remoresful conscience? Stendahl reminds us that this passage is part of a larger
argument about the law. In defending the holiness of the law Paul assigns
guilt to Sin and the Flesh. But Paul does not simply identify the egō with Sin and Flesh. Verse 19 does
not lead directly into verse 24 as a cry of despair, but into verse 20 which
on the contrary exonerates the egō and
blames the principle of Sin. Paul's simple observation that a person often does
what he or she knows is wrong serves to preserve the holiness and goodness of
the Law. Stendahl writes: Paul
happened to express this supporting argument so well that what to him and his
contemporaries was a common sense observation appeared to later interpreters
to be a most penetrating insight into the nature of sin. This could happen
easily once the problem about the nature and intention of God's Law was not
any more as relevant a problem in the sense in which Paul grappled with it.
The question about the Law became the incidental framework around the golden
truth of Pauline anthropology. This is what happens when one approaches Paul
with the Western question of an introspective conscience. This Western
interpretation reaches its climax when it appears that even, or especially,
the will of man is the center of depravation. And yet, in Rom. 7 Paul had
said about that will: "The will (to do the good) is there..." (v.
18).10 The growing consensus
about the nature of first-century Palestinian Judaism and the agreement that
Judaism was never a religion of "legalism" has generally been
followed by the observation that whatever else Paul was protesting, he was
not protesting self-righteous11 efforts to merit favor before God.
Nor was Paul grappling with the Western question of the introspective
conscience. The tide of opinion has
clearly turned against the Lutheran-Weberian
interpretation of the role and function of the law within Judaism.
Protestants can no longer assume that Paul was up against a legalistic Judaism
which taught that salvation was to be "merited" or
"earned" by self-reliance. Nor were Paul's opponents against faith,
grace, and forgiveness. The sticking-point of the Judaizing
controversy must be located elsewhere. If Paul was not
protesting against legalism in Galatians and Romans, what is it he was up
against? If Jews and Judaizing Christians also
believed in faith and grace, to what did Paul object? These questions have
proven more difficult for scholars. Montefiore
suggested that Paul was contending not with the Palestinian Judaism which
would evolve into rabbinic Judaism but with a colder, more pessimistic
Hellenized Judaism of the diaspora in which God was
more remote and less forgiving.12 However, subsequent scholarship
has not vindicated this thesis. Most scholars today agree that though there
were differences between Hellenistic Judaism and Palestinian Judaism, the
differences were not as great as Montefiore's
suggestion would demand. E.P. Sanders:
"Transfer Terminology" Other solutions are even
less convincing. For some, like Heikki Räisänen,13 Paul's criticisms of the law are not only
inaccurate but contradictory as well. They are to be understood not as
representing a carefully formulated doctrine but as expedient arguments
derived from his conviction that Christ is Savior of the world. Similarly, E.
P. Sanders concluded that Paul worked backward from solution to plight rather
than from plight to solution. If salvation comes to all, both Jews and
Gentiles, through Christ, then it cannot come through the law. This approach certainly
places more emphasis on the nature of the Judaizing
conflict as a Jew/Gentile issue rather than a philosophical debate about
human nature and divine sovereignty. Sanders writes, for instance: The
dispute in Galatians is not about "doing" as such. Neither of the
opposing factions saw the requirement of "doing" to be a denial of
faith. When Paul makes requirements of his converts, he does not think that
he has denied faith, and there is no reason to think that Jewish Christians
who specified different requirements denied faith. The supposed conflict
between "doing" as such and "faith" as such is simply not
present in Galatians. What was at stake was not a way of life summarized by
the word "trust" versus a mode of life summarized by
"requirements," but whether or not the requirement for membership
in the Israel of God would result in there being "neither Jew nor
Greek." ...There was no dispute over the necessity to trust God and have
faith in Christ. The dispute was about whether or not one had to be Jewish.14 For Sanders the language
of justification is "transfer terminology." To be justified is to
enter into the covenant people. The distinction between "getting
in" and "staying in" is important in this regard. The debate
between "faith" and "law," he writes, is a debate about
entry requirements, not about life subsequent to conversion. The law is
excluded as an entry requirement into the body of those who will be saved;
entrance must be by faith apart from the law. Once Gentiles are
"in," however, they must behave appropriately and fulfill the law
in order to retain their status. Elements of the law which create social
distinctions between Jews and Gentiles -- circumcision, Sabbath-keeping, food
laws -- also have to be discarded, even though Paul never sought a rational
explanation for such a selective use of the law. Thus in Sanders' view
Paul's letters do not provide a consistent view of the law. Paul's central
conviction -- the universal aspects of christology
and soteriology, and Christian behavior -- led Paul
to give different answers about the law, depending on the question.
"When the topic changes, what he says about the law also changes."15
When the topic is entrance requirements, the law is excluded. When the topic
is behavior, the law is to be fulfilled. The arguments to which Paul is
driven to defend these answers are construed as less consistent yet. James D.G. Dunn:
"The Works of the Law" At this point the
corrective work of James D. G. Dunn becomes critical to fully appreciating
Sanders' reconstruction of Palestinian Judaism and making good sense of Paul
at the same time.16 It was in fact Dunn who coined the term
"the new perspective on Paul" in his landmark 1982 Manson Memorial
Lecture.17 Dunn demonstrates that
the language of justification is not just "transfer terminology."
There are ongoing and future elements of justification as well as the initial
act of acceptance. "'To be justified' in Paul cannot, therefore, be
treated simply as an entry or initiation formula; nor is it possible to draw
a clear line of distinction between Paul's usage and the typically Jewish
covenant usage. Already, as we may observe, Paul appears a good deal less
idiosyncratic and arbitrary than Sanders alleges."18 Also unlike Sanders, Dunn
provides a coherent framework for both Paul's positive statements about the
law and his negative statements. It was not the law itself which Paul
criticized, but rather its misuse as a social barrier. This misuse of the law
is what Paul means by the term "the works of the law": ‘Works
of law', 'works of the law' are nowhere understood here, either by his Jewish
interlocutors or by Paul himself, as works which earn God's favor, as
merit-amassing observances. They are rather seen as badges: they are
simply what membership of the covenant people involves, what mark out the
Jews as God's people;...in other words, Paul has in
view precisely what Sanders calls 'covenantal nomism.'
And what he denies is that God's justification depends on 'covenantal nomism,' that God's grace extends only to those who wear
the badge of the covenant.19 The "badges" or
"works" particularly at issue were those of circumcision and food
laws, not simply human efforts to do good. The
ramifications of this observation for traditional Protestantism are
far-reaching: More
important for Reformation exegesis is the corollary that 'works of the law'
do not mean 'good works' in general, 'good works' in the sense
disparaged by the heirs of Luther, works in the sense of achievement....In
short, once again Paul seems much less a man of sixteenth-century Europe and
much more firmly in touch with the reality of first-century Judaism than many
have thought.20 Dunn also emphasizes the
ramifications for the traditional dichotomy between faith and works: We
should not let our grasp of Paul's reasoning slip back into the old
distinction between faith and works in general, between faith and 'good
works'. Paul is not arguing here for a concept of faith which is totally
passive because it fears to become a 'work'. It is the demand for a particular
work as the necessary expression of faith which he denies.21 N.T. Wright: "The
Righteousness of God" More recently, N.T.
Wright has made a significant contribution in his little book, What [T]he
doctrine of justification by faith is not what Paul means by 'the gospel'. It
is implied by the gospel; when the gospel is proclaimed, people come
to faith and so are regarded by God as members of his people. But 'the
gospel' is not an account of how people get saved. It is, as we saw in an
earlier chapter, the proclamation of the lordship of Jesus Christ....Let us
be quite clear. 'The gospel' is the announcement of Jesus' lordship, which
works with power to bring people into the family of Abraham, now redefined
around Jesus Christ and characterized solely by faith in him. 'Justification'
is the doctrine which insists that all those who have this faith belong as
full members of this family, on this basis and no other.25 Wright brings us to this
point by showing what "justification" would have meant in Paul's
Jewish context, bound up as it was in law-court terminology, eschatology, and
God's faithfulness to God's covenant. Specifically, Wright
explodes the myth that the pre-Christian Saul was a pious, proto-Pelagian moralist seeking to earn his individual passage
into heaven. Wright capitalizes on Paul's autobiographical confessions to
paint rather a picture of a zealous Jewish nationalist whose driving concern
was to cleanse Israel of Gentiles as well as Jews who had lax attitudes
toward the Torah. Running the risk of anachronism, Wright points to a
contemporary version of the pre-Christian Saul: Yigal
Amir, the zealous Torah-loyal Jew who assassinated
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin for exchanging Jews
like Saul of Tarsus were not interested in an abstract, ahistorical
system of salvation. They were not even primarily interested in, as we say,
'going to heaven when they died'. (They believed in the resurrection, in
which God would raise them all to share in the life of the promised renewed When Saul became a
Christian, Wright contends, he maintained the Jewish shape of his doctrine,
but filled it with new content. The zeal of Saul the Pharisee was now the
zeal of Paul the Apostle; God's covenant faithfulness (righteousness) with
regard to the covenant people was indeed fulfilled, in the death and
resurrection of Jesus the Messiah. Wright maintains that as
a Christian, Paul continued to challenge paganism by taking the moral high
ground of the creational monotheist. The doctrine of justification was not
what Paul preached to the Gentiles as the main thrust of his gospel message;
it was rather "the thing his converts most needed to know in order to be
assured that they really were part of God's people"27 after
they had responded to the gospel message. Even while taking the
gospel to the Gentiles, however, Paul continued to criticize Judaism
"from within" even as he had as a zealous Pharisee. But whereas his
mission before was to root out those with lax attitudes toward the Torah, now
his mission was to demonstrate that God's covenant faithfulness
(righteousness) has already been revealed in Jesus Christ. At this point Wright
carefully documents Paul's use of the controversial phrase "God's
righteousness" and draws out the implications of his meaning against the
background of a Jewish concept of justification. The righteousness of God and
the righteousness of the party who is "justified" cannot be
confused because the term bears different connotations for the judge than for
the plaintiff or defendant. The judge is "righteous" if his or her
judgment is fair and impartial; the plaintiff or defendant is
"righteous" if the judge rules in his or her favor. Hence: If
we use the language of the law court, it makes no sense whatsoever 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 does not mean that the court has found in his
favor. 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 judge's righteousness is simply a category mistake.
That is not how the language works.28 However, Wright makes the
important observation that even with the forensic metaphor, Paul's theology is
not so much about the courtroom as it is about God's love.29 Wright then goes on to
flesh out the doctrine of justification in Galatians, Philippians, and
Romans. The "works of the law" are not proto-Pelagian
efforts to earn salvation, but rather "sabbath
[keeping], food-laws, circumcision."30 Considering the
controversy in Despite
a long tradition to the contrary, the problem Paul addresses in Galatians is
not the question of how precisely someone becomes a Christian, or attains to
a relationship with God....The problem he addresses is: should his ex-pagan
converts be circumcised or not? Now this question is by no means obviously to
do with the questions faced by Augustine and Pelagius, or by Luther and
Erasmus. On anyone's reading, but especially within its first-century
context, it has to do quite obviously with the question of how you define
the people of God: are they to be defined by the badges of Jewish race,
or in some other way? Circumcision is not a 'moral' issue; it does not have
to do with moral effort, or earning salvation by good deeds. Nor can we
simply treat it as a religious ritual, then designate all religious ritual as
crypto-Pelagian good works, and so smuggle Pelagius
into [T]he
polemic against the Torah in Galatians simply will not work if we 'translate'
it into polemic either against straightforward self-help moralism
or against the more subtle snare of 'legalism', as some have suggested. The
passages about the law only work -- and by 'work' I mean they will only make
full sense in their contexts, which is what counts in the last analysis --
when we take them as references to the Jewish law, the Torah, seen as the
national charter of the Jewish race.31 The debate about
justification, then, "wasn't so much about soteriology
as about ecclesiology; not so much about salvation as about the church."32 Translating the doctrine
of justification into contemporary terms, Wright notes with irony that this
doctrine, which was principally concerned with unity and acceptance in the
body of Christ regardless of social barriers, has been one of the most
divisive doctrines in the history of Christianity, particularly between
Catholics and Protestants who have traditionally interpreted it as a question
of precisely how salvation is to be attained.33 He also draws out the
social implications of a gospel in which Jesus is proclaimed as Lord over all
things (including "politics"34) and which will not allow
for a rugged individualism. "The gospel creates, not a bunch of
individual Christians, but a community. If you take the old route of putting
justification, in its traditional meaning, at the centre of your theology,
you will always be in danger of sustaining some sort of individualism."35
Hence Wright dismantles the artificial distinctions between spiritual piety
and social concern. Conclusion Given the increasingly
fragmenting state of biblical studies today it should come as no surprise
that some Pauline scholars are not interested in synthesizing their findings
with contemporary theology. Stowers writes, for instance: "If I challenge the historical
accuracy of some standard interpretations of the letter [Romans], it does not
mean that I intend to denigrate the contributions of its great commentators.
But my purposes as a historian of early Christian literature differ from the
purposes of the theologians and churchmen."36 But those of us
who want our theology to be at the same time cogent and biblical
cannot settle for this approach. Instead we must ask how Paul's original
meaning, in its historical context, can be appropriated by contemporary
theology. In so doing we affirm that New Testament theology is very much
alive and a tenable undertaking in the twenty-first century; that the canon
of Scripture has continuing relevance as an authoritative guide in matters of
Christian faith. The Judaizing
conflict and Paul's doctrine of justification which grew out of it continues
to be relevant to our day. But we must recognize the relevance in analogy.
Applying Paul's polemic against Judaizing to any
and all "good works" is not a correct appropriation of Paul's
teaching. True as it is that no one can "earn" salvation before
God, that was not Paul's point, and applying his language that way often
involves unintended consequences.37 It is a hermeneutical
truism that a New Testament text must be understood and appreciated in its
context before it can be applied to that of the interpreter. Romans has been preserved for the benefit of the church,
but it was written to first-century Christians living in Having said that, it is
important to emphasize what such a contemporary doctrine should not entail.
First, such a doctrine should not be construed as one of legalism, burdening
Christians with lists of arbitrary requirements and detailed standards of
conduct and enforcing compliance with the threat of hell. It is in this way
that the message of the Reformation may be fully appreciated in the church
today. For all of his exegetical oversights and doctrinal overreaction,
Martin Luther's protests against penance, indulgences, and other abuses were
entirely justified. Good Christians with troubled consciences may seek
reassurance in Luther's message of the acceptance of individuals before God
apart from the extra-biblical demands of ecclesiastical hierarchies.38
In short, a socially responsible doctrine of
justification must not be characterized by the concept of "earning"
God's favor. Just because Paul was not up against that idea does not mean
that it is acceptable.39 Second, we cannot
reconsider the Christian doctrine of justification without grappling with the
meaning of "righteousness." We have already argued that
righteousness is not simply the imputed merit of another. But our criticism
of traditional approaches must go beyond that. Dunn argues against the Greek
view that righteousness is an impersonal, abstract standard, a
measuring-stick or a balancing scale. Righteousness in Scriptural terms, he
argues, grows out of covenant relationship.40 We forgive because
we have been forgiven (Matt. That is the meaning of a
socially responsible and ecumenical doctrine of justification by faith. Endnotes 1 John Howard Yoder, The Politics
of Jesus ( 2 "The Apostle Paul and the
Introspective Conscience of the West," in The Writings of 3 Cf. Frank Thielman,
Paul & The Law ( 4 Thielman, Paul, p. 26; Sanders, Judaism,
p. 33. 5 Thielman, Paul, p. 26; Sanders, Judaism,
pp. 39,42-47. 6 Thielman, Paul, p. 27. 7 Thielman, Paul, p. 28; Sanders, Judaism,
pp. 33,34. 8 Stendahl, "Paul," p. 429. 9 Cf. Stanley Stowers,
A Rereading of Romans (New Haven & London: Yale University Press),
1994, p. 6: "The more one learns and understands about the world
of the Roman empire and the Jews in the Greek East, the more difficult it
becomes to imagine the Paul known from modern scholarship in that world. The
Paul of traditional theological scholarship seems to have dropped directly
out of heaven." 10 Stendahl, "Paul," p. 432. I
would hasten to add that rather than start with the highly figurative Romans
7 I would prefer to take the clearer and less enigmatic Philippians 3 as my
control text for interpreting Paul's experience with the law and work into
Romans 7 and other passages from there. When we take Philippians 3 as our
starting point, a much different picture emerges. 11 The phrases "a righteousness
of my own" (Phil. 3:9) and "their own righteousness" (Rom. 10:3)
refer not to self-righteousness but the particular righteousness of 12 Thielman, Paul, pp. 31-33. 13 Thielman, Paul, pp. 37-39. 14 Paul, the Law, and the Jewish
People ( 15 Sanders, Paul, p. 143. 16 Cf. Jesus, Paul, and the Law:
Studies in Mark and Galatians ( 17 Reprinted as chapter 7 of Jesus,
Paul, and the Law. 18 Jesus, p. 190. 19 Ibid., p. 194. 20 Ibid., pp. 194, 195. 21 Ibid., p. 198. Not surprisingly, Dunn
has been criticized on this point, most notably by Stephen Westerholm ( 22 ( 23 Ibid., pp. 45,88,113,114,151. 24 Ibid., pp. 52-54,126. 25 Ibid., pp. 132,133. 26 Ibid., pp. 32,33. 27 Ibid., p. 94. 28 Ibid., p. 98. 29 Ibid., p. 110. 30 Ibid., p. 132. 31 Ibid., pp. 120-122. 32 Ibid., p. 119. 33 Ibid., pp. 158,159. 34 Ibid., pp. 153-157,164. 35 Ibid., pp. 157,158. 36 Romans, p. 4. 37 Cf. Wright's statement that the
"popular view of 'justification by faith', though not entirely
misleading, does not do justice to the richness and precision of Paul's
doctrine, and indeed distorts it at various points....Briefly and baldly put,
if you start with the popular view of justification, you may actually lose
sight of the heart of the Pauline gospel [i.e., Jesus' death and
resurrection]; whereas if you start with the Pauline gospel itself you will
get justification in all its glory thrown in as well" (Paul, p.
113). 38 Cf. Dunn and Suggate,
Justice, p. 8. 39 Cf. Wright, Paul, p. 116. 40 Cf. Dunn, Galatians, pp. 134-135; Dunn and Suggate, Justice, pp. 32ff. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
