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A Summary of the New Perspective on Paul |
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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. |
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