Thank you very much for this thorough essay. It was very helpful and I recommend it to anyone as a clear, brief introduction to the NPP. However, there is one thing in particular that I got snagged on towards the end. I obviously know very little about the NPP so I was hoping you could clarify this idea of a “socially responsible doctrine of justification”.

I was right there with you every step of the way – at least I think I was – until near the end when you quoted Wright saying, “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.”

I understand you were simply summing up how Wright took his insight further into the possible dangers that such misguided theology risks; however, I fail to make the connection. Obviously, I need to read his book – and I intend to. But I was wondering if I missed something you clearly pointed out that would explain this somewhat ‘leap’ from the NPP’s corrections on Paul to the resulting new (more accurate) message of the Scripture being about ‘creating community’ and ’social justification’.

Now, I understand that the NPP’s message is, as you wrote, that “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’”. So Paul’s focus was about how the Jews can understand why the Gentiles will be INCLUDED; that is, how their much hoped for and sacred COMMUNITY of the KINGDOM is getting larger, but not with more Jews but with those who don’t fit that ethnic, religious, or social description at all. Instead, there is a more common ground element that is the most important aspect about a citizen of the Kingdom. But I am still confused as to why all of this is considered a ’social justification’. And why is this social justification a less self-righteous or individualistic justification than the traditional view?

I guess my reaction really comes down to a belief that I don’t see how any of what Paul or Jesus is saying is anything but confronting the individual and a message of hope for the individual and his personal salvation.

“It is NOT those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who OBEY the law who will be declared righteous.” Rom. 2:13

God’s Blessings

Michael

To begin with, it should be easy enough to judge how accurately I’ve summarized Dunn’s Manson Memorial Lecture since, fortunately, it’s now available in its entirety online — thanks to the permission of SPCK. It should also be added that Dunn has continued to elaborate and nuance his thesis over the last thirty years, and that during that time he has clarified on several occasions his position that whereas the works of the law “particularly at issue” in Galatians 2 “were those of circumcision and food laws,” nevertheless the term in principle was broad enough to include all requirements of the law (cf., e.g., his Black’s New Testament Commentary The Epistle to the Galatians, Hendrickson Publishers, 1993, pp. 135-137).

Your comments above address Dunn’s approach to Galatians 2 on the basis of Galatians 3. Consequently, I highly recommend a review of his follow-up paper “Works of the Law and the Curse of the Law (Gal. 3.10-14),” first published in New Testament Studies in 1985. In that essay he wrote: “In ‘The New Perspective on Paul’ I was conscious that my argument amounted to little more than an exegesis of Galatians 2.16. Several respondents observed that if my exegesis were to gain in credibility it would have to make sense of Galatians 3.10-14. Galatians 3.10-14 does indeed provide a substantial test case, and to it we now turn” (cf. Jesus, Paul, and the Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians, SPCK, 1990, p. 225). This essay is also available in Dunn’s newest anthology The New Perspective on Paul: Revised Edition published by Eerdmans in 2008, but the earlier SPCK collection of essays includes an additional note not available in the most recent collection.

I essentially reiterated Dunn’s approach to Galatians 3 in my article “Confronting Legalism or Exclusivism? Reconsidering Key Pauline Passages,” which (along with my “Summary” article above) was originally written more than twelve years ago but revised as recently as 2004. Although I still very much stand by my conviction, expressed in that article, that it is anachronistic to read Galatians and Romans as if divine sovereignty and human inability were Paul’s key concerns, nevertheless since that time I have become sensitive to the criticism that the recontextualization of Paul’s debate as an intra-church controversy can be construed as simply substituting one negative stereotype of Judaism (legalism) for another (exclusivism) to the degree that what Paul criticized is considered to be essentially Jewish. Hence my willingness to consider other approaches, as reflected in my more recent book reviews and my interest in the Leuven project.

Suffice to say, I very much believe that the advent of the new perspective on Paul within Protestant circles was crucial to paving the way for more creative work in interpreting Paul’s letters in less anachronistic terms, and that this work is far from complete. It’s my continuing hope that The Paul Page can play a constructive role in moving that dialogue forward.

Which brings me to my final comment. Although The Paul Page began as a personal web page about ten years ago, even from the start I always tried to make it as cosmopolitan as possible, often trying to include as many voices in the dialogue as I could. Today, although the web site has admittedly taken the form of a glorified weblog, it is no longer “my” site (or blog) but rather belongs to Logos. Not only am I no longer the “owner” of the site, I’m no longer the only editor either, as The Paul Page is developing an editorial staff. It’s my sincere hope that these key changes will help The Paul Page to expand and continue to develop into far more than one person’s personal web venture and become an even more effective tool in facilitating Pauline studies.

This “observation” is the swallowing of a camel! The “all” of Galatians 3:10 means all, not merely those who did not get circumcized or follow the food laws.

Whether people care for introspective theologies and Western stricken consciences should not make us skewer the text out of antogonism to them, any more than it shoud make us bend it to serve them. The fact is that Galatians 3 expresses the covenant with Abraham as based on a promise, and the scope of the curse is completely explicit: all who are “of” the works of the Law. This is ontology language, not behavior language: a fact obscured by the English translations that use active verbs for the group Paul describes on the one hand (“of the works of the Law”) and the other (“of faith”). Not only that! It is the Law itself, not any one or two portions of it, that Paul says is not of faith! 3:12.

It’s interesting that Wright’s use of Galatians 3 does not expound Paul’s description of Gen 15:6 as promise to Abraham, although he makes much of its application to the Gentiles, which is very nice. Galatians 3, however, makes huge emphasis of the promise nature of what God said to Abraham.

It was for the sake of all concerned, both Jew and Gentile, that the law be shown as to not nullify the promise! If the Law nullified the promise for the Jew, the unity of the body in Christ would be just as impossible as if the world would need to come under the Law.

In our zeal to not be smugglers of the strange gods of introspection, Pelagianism, semi-Pelagianism, traditional Protestantism into Galatia, we may commit the common fallacy that some idea “must be” wrong, because it’s like that other idea over there. Let the chips fall. Paul was advocating a promise-based inheritance.

Mark, try and stick to what people say, not what you perhaps infer or assume they (I!) say, or even what people have said in the past. People may come to your blog with the desire to be corrected, too, you know!

It also (arguably) presupposes a classical Protestant paradigm which privileges marketplace metaphors, a paradigm to which I’m not particularly drawn. Since I don’t share your views of divine sovereignty and human (in)ability, I find your question difficult to relate to.

You haven’t avoided works of the Law by just asserting them to be only circumcision and food laws. Certainly the Pharisees advocated more than those in the Gospels! The works of the Law include loving the Lord with all our hearts, souls, etc. The works of the Law are all the works demanded of the Law, not just the identity marker rules!

That’s why Paul’s comment in Galatians 3 is so telling, quoting the Law: cursed is everyone who does not abide by ALL the things written in the book of the Law to perform them.

So neither is the criticism of Paul sufficiently exhausted upon those who advocate a keeping of law to get in, because the Law has much to say about what must be kept within the demands of the covenant; the criticism of Paul extends to those who rely on the works of the law at any point, even to stay in. That is Paul’s point about “if sons, then heirs.” Notice how the heirs are designated, not by law-keeping to stay in — but according to promise alone! Heirs, according to promise. If it gets a religion off the hook to merely allow a free entrance, and make the requirement to stay in be the keeping of law, then, Galatians 3:18 would be false.