Gaining Perspective On The New Perspective On Paul

By James E. Allman

[James E. Allman is Professor of Bible Exposition, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.]

The New Perspective on Paul encompasses a range of ideas that have permeated Pauline studies and created controversy in both the academic and the ecclesial world. The purpose of this study is to survey the work of the initial leaders of the New Perspective on Paul, E. P. Sanders, N. T. Wright, and James D. G. Dunn.[1] The ideas these writers propose relate to the gospel and the spiritual life. While the average church attender may never hear of the New Perspective (though N. T. Wright figures prominently in popular programs about New Testament themes), yet the discussion within academic circles is ongoing. This means that with the next generation of seminary-trained pastors, the ideas may filter into the church. Stenschke says, “No serious student of Paul can afford to ignore this new perspective and the various discussions it engendered—be it in agreement or disagreement.”[2]

Historical Background

In 1963 Krister Stendahl launched the ideas that culminated in the New Perspective on Paul.[3] He warned against imposing modern Western ideas on the Bible, and especially on the works of Paul.

Stendahl noted that “especially in Protestant Christianity—which, however, at this point has its roots in Augustine and in the piety of the Middle Ages—the Pauline awareness of sin has been interpreted in the light of Luther’s struggle with his conscience.”[4] Stendahl continued, “A fresh look at the Pauline writings themselves shows that Paul was equipped with what in our eyes must be called a rather ‘robust’ conscience.”[5] He cites Philippians 3 and 1 Corinthians 4:4 to support his position. This important article led to the movement that has become known as the New Perspective on Paul.

E. P. Sanders—Covenantal Nomism [6]

Ed Parish Sanders retired in 2005 from Duke University, where he was Arts and Sciences Professor of Religion. His massive Paul and Palestinian Judaism touched off a revolution in Pauline studies. Before Sanders the common view was that Judaism was thoroughly legalistic. But then “E. P. Sanders published in 1977 a bombshell of impeccable scholarship.”[7]

Sanders examined in detail three bodies of first-century Jewish literature: rabbinic, Tannaitic,[8] and the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the first section of his book[9] he set forth six goals, one of which was “to consider methodologically how to compare two (or more) related but different religions.”[10]In pursuit of this goal Sanders established new standards for the use of documentary information in the evaluation of New Testament backgrounds. A common practice, fostered by both Alfred Edersheim and Strack-Billerbeck has been to cite evidence, often from the Talmud, without carefully considering its provenance. Since the two Talmuds, Babylonian and Palestinian, and other early Jewish literature were formed long after the New Testament period, great care is needed in citing them. One must understand, Sanders affirms, that information taken from these sources is often anachronistic. Therefore unless one can clearly establish that the information is relevant to the first-century or earlier, one must avoid imposing the ideas taken from them on biblical texts. Ideas current in ad 400 may have no relevance to the first century.

Sanders had a second purpose: “to destroy the view of Rabbinic Judaism which is still prevalent in much, perhaps most, New Testament scholarship that first-century Judaism was in essence legalistic.”[11] In surveying the three bodies of early Jewish literature named in the previous paragraph, he sought to show that a fundamental unity underlies the varieties of ancient Judaism. He called this “covenantal nomism.”

The “pattern” or “structure” of covenantal nomism is this: (1) God has chosen Israel and (2) given the law. The law implies both (3) God’s promise to maintain the election and (4) the requirement to obey. (5) God rewards obedience and punishes transgression. (6) The law provides for means of atonement, and atonement results in (7) maintenance or re-establishment of the covenantal relationship. (8) All those who are maintained in the covenant by obedience, atonement and God’s mercy belong to the group which will be saved. An important interpretation of the first and last points is that election and ultimately salvation are considered to be by God’s mercy rather than human achievement.[12]

That unity is based in the covenant that stands on grace. It is nomistic in that a person demonstrates that he belongs to the covenant by obeying God’s commandments. One way Sanders and his followers have summarized this view is to say that in Judaism “getting in” (entry into the covenant, or in some general sense “salvation”) is by grace, while “staying in” is by works.

Sanders’s goal was not to deal with the details of how Judaism compared and contrasted with Pauline thought. His goal was to see “the pattern of religion,” which he defined as “the description of how a religion is perceived by its adherents to function. ‘Perceived to function’ has the sense not of what an adherent does on a day-to-day basis, but of how getting in and staying in are understood: the way in which a religion is understood to admit and retain members is considered to be the way it ‘functions.’ ”[13] This approach has the advantage of allowing one to hear the proponents of a religious system speak for themselves instead of “mirror-reading” the religion in the works of its opponents, a dangerous practice.[14] Sanders’s exhaustive research in primary literature has convinced many Pauline scholars that a rereading of Paul is now necessary. They may not follow Sanders in detail,[15] but they find his research convincing.

The key for Sanders is that Paul gave to Jesus the place that the Law had in Judaism. “Just as what is wrong with the law is that it is not Christ, so what is wrong with ‘righteousness based on the law’ (Phil. 3.9) is that it is not the righteousness from God which depends on faith, which is received when one is ‘found in Christ,’ [and] shares his suffering and is placed among those who will share his resurrection.”[16] This may sound trite, but for Sanders it is a crucial issue. The righteousness that the Law offered is not the same righteousness offered in Christ. “The real righteousness is being saved by Christ, and it comes only through faith.”[17]

In light of this central concern Sanders holds that Paul and first-century Judaism agreed in their approach to the Law. He says that because God gave the Law, all who are in relationship with God (in Judaism or in Paul’s thought) are to keep the Law. However, on this Sanders equivocates, saying that Paul did not normally appeal to the commandments of the Law for his ethical teaching.[18] Neither Judaism nor Paul taught that keeping the Law perfectly was necessary.[19] Regarding Galatians 3:10 Sanders urges that one should note the emphasis on “law” and “curse,” but not on the word “all.”[20] He adds, “It is equally un-Jewish to think that the law is too difficult to be fulfilled.”[21] This idea, of course, is contested among students of Paul. To support this view Sanders discusses Philippians 3 and Romans 7.

Regarding Philippians 3:9 Sanders says, “The passage lends support neither to the view that Paul regarded the law as impossible to fulfill, nor to the view that he regarded it as wrong because it leads to self-righteousness.”[22] Then, one wonders, what was Paul saying in Philippians 3:7-8? Sanders explains, “Paul does not say that boasting in status and achievement was wrong because boasting is the wrong attitude, but that he boasted in things that were gain. They became loss because, in his black and white world, there is no second best. His criticism of his own former life is not that he was guilty of the attitudinal sin of self-righteousness, but that he put confidence in something other than faith in Jesus Christ.”[23]

Sanders adds, “The attack on righteousness by the law is against making acceptance of the law a condition of membership in the body of those who will be saved.”[24] Sanders views the righteousness by the Law differently. “In discussing how one can be saved (more precisely, be put in the proper state preparatory to final salvation), Paul always said ‘through Christ’ and ‘not by law.’ The meaning is that neither agreement to observe the law nor actual observance of it can be set as the condition for entering the community of those who have faith in Christ. Faith in Christ itself—sometimes clarified by the phrases ‘dying with Christ’ or ‘sharing his suffering’ — is the only means of entry.”[25]

The closest Paul came, Sanders says, to affirming that it is impossible (or difficult) to keep the Law without Christ is Romans 7:14-24.[26] However, “what Paul says on these topics is not consistent with what he says elsewhere.”[27] The apostle, Sanders says, did not have a fully systematized view of the Law. It was an ad hoc view that he made to fit the situations he addressed.[28] Nor did he have a systematic view of human need. The issue of need arose solely because of his Christology. He had to discover the need when he became aware of Christ. The concept of universal human sinfulness was foreign to Paul.[29] He himself did not have a particular struggle with sin or conscience (recalling the views of Krister Stendahl mentioned in the beginning of this article). In fact Paul’s views on the Law, Sanders asserts, are at times contradictory.[30]

Regarding the “works of the Law” Sanders introduced the concept later developed as “boundary markers.”[31] He identifies as works of the Law three commandments: circumcision, Sabbath, and food laws. These “created a social distinction between Jews and other races in the Greco-Roman world. Further, they were the aspects of Judaism which drew criticism and ridicule from pagan authors.”[32]

Sanders addresses two problems in Romans 2. First, he deals with justification by works in 2:6-11, 12-15, and 26. He affirms, “There is general agreement on the purpose of the section. It is intended to demonstrate (or illustrate) the universal sinfulness of all (3:9, 20), so as to lay the ground for Paul’s solution: righteousness by faith in Christ.”[33] On the other hand on the same page he observes, “There are internal inconsistencies within the section, not all the material actually lends itself to the desired conclusion, and there are substantial ways in which parts of it conflict with positions which Paul adopts elsewhere.”[34] The inconsistency he finds is that “the offer of salvation on the basis of fulfillment of the law is held out repeatedly, and not in terms which make one think that the offer is hypothetical or that the goal is impossible to achieve.”[35]

The second problem Sanders discusses is Jewish sinfulness. In Romans 2:17-24 Paul objected to the claims that Jews made for themselves and he charged them with violating their claims to righteousness. Of that passage Sanders says, “The description of Jewish behavior in 2:17-24 is unparalleled.”[36] He says that “Paul’s case for universal sinfulness, as it is stated in Rom. 1:18-2:29, is not convincing: it is internally inconsistent and it rests on gross exaggeration. . . . Paul knows what conclusion he wants to draw, and it is the conclusion which is important to him, since universal sinfulness is necessary if Christ is to be the universal savior. . . .Paul did not come to his view of sin and salvation by beginning with an analysis of the human plight.”[37] Paul, he says, often made bare assertions, without arguing their validity, and then proceeded with his line of thought as if the assertions were true.[38]

A central point for Sanders is that Paul did not struggle with a sense of sin, nor was he dissatisfied with the Law or his achievements under it. Paul confronted Christ, and this led him to struggle to harmonize his earlier ideas with the work of Jesus.[39] As a Pharisee Paul was committed to keep the Law. “The all-pervasive view is this: all Israelites have a share in the world to come unless they renounce it by renouncing God and his covenant. All sins, no matter of what gravity, which are committed within the covenant, may be forgiven as long as a man indicates his basic intention to keep the covenant by atoning, especially by repenting of transgression.”[40] When Paul confronted Christ, he had to reason back from Christ to whatever would account for His work: to his sinfulness, his failure to live by the commandments of God. “Paul in fact explicitly denies that the Jewish covenant can be effective for salvation, thus consciously denying the basis of Judaism. Circumcision without complete obedience is worthless or worse (Rom. 2:25-3.2; Gal. 3:10).”[41] The result, for Sanders, is that

Paul agreed on the goal, righteousness, but saw that it should be received by grace through faith, not achieved by works. But this formulation, though it is Paul’s own, actually misstates the fundamental point of disagreement. Just as what is wrong with the law is that it is not Christ, so what is wrong with “righteousness based on the law” (Phil. 3.9) is that it is not the righteousness from God which depends on faith, which is received when one is “found in Christ,” shares his sufferings and is placed among those who will share his resurrection. That is, “righteousness” itself is a different righteousness. . . . Means  and end correspond. The real righteousness is being saved by Christ, and it comes only through faith. This implies, again, that it is not the activity of doing the law which is wrong as an activity. Rather, such a means leads to the wrong end (righteousness based on the Law); and the end itself is wrong, since it is not salvation in Christ.[42]

N. T. Wright —Removal Of Covenant Curse

The influence of E. P. Sanders is pervasive. Hardly a study of Romans has appeared since 1977 that fails to interact with his ideas. This is due in no small part to the work of N. T. Wright.43 In many ways, however, Wright is closer to evangelical thought than either Sanders or Dunn (though Dunn’s views are welcomed by many evangelicals).

Wright encourages the church to bring its traditions under the judgment of Scripture. His chief objection is that the “old perspective,” represented primarily in the current debate by John Piper,44 is too dependent on tradition.[45] Wright’s second chapter, “Rules of Engagement,”[46] makes a sustained and commendable plea to submit all of tradition to the Scriptures for verification and, if necessary, emendation. Exegetical and synthetic work must take priority over church or denominational tradition.[47]

Key to Wright’s new perspective ideas is his view of the grand metanarrative he sees in the Bible.

Highlighting Paul’s reading of “the story of Israel” isn’t a matter simply of “narrative theology” in the reductive sense. . . . It is an attempt to understand how Paul’s references to Adam and Abraham, to Moses and the prophets, to Deuteronomy and Isaiah and even the Psalms, mean what they mean because he has in his head and heart, as a great many second-temple Jews did, a grand story of creation and covenant, of God and his world and his people, which had been moving forward in a single narrative and which was continuing to do so.[48]

This metanarrative is the story of how both Adam and Israel failed to achieve God’s purposes in bringing blessing to all the nations. God rectified this failure through the work of Israel’s representative Messiah, Jesus, dying on the cross, but rising, and thereby ending Israel’s plight under God’s curse. More importantly, Jesus’ work makes possible the worldwide spread of the blessing that Israel attempted to keep for itself.

This metanarrative focuses on Israel’s relationship to the Mosaic covenant. The “Torah given to the freed slaves in the first Exodus has now become, paradoxically, part of the enslavement from which the second Exodus [accomplished in the cross of Christ] frees the people of God.”[49] Jesus’ work on the cross is what Paul referred to when he used the phrase πίστις Χριστοῦ, the “faithfulness of the Messiah.”[50] Thus until the coming of Jesus, Israel remained under the curse of exile that began in the sixth century bc. Wright makes four points on this issue: “(a) Torah shows up sin within ethnic Israel; (b) sin invokes wrath. Therefore (c) if the inheritance were confined to ethnic Israel (d) nobody at all would inherit [the promise to Abraham]. Those outside would be kept there; those inside would be subject to God’s wrath.”[51] Galatians 3:14 presents Jesus as bearing the curse so that those under the Law (which could justify no one) and even the Gentiles can enter the blessing promised to Abraham.

A key issue in Wright’s thinking is the term “justification.” He states that the term has been used to refer to “the entire picture of God’s reconciling action toward the human race.”[52] Wright then defines righteousness as “the status that someone has when the court has found in their favor.” As a result, justification is “ ‘acquittal,’ the granting of the status of ‘righteous’ to those who had been on trial—and which will then also mean, since they were in fact guilty, ‘forgiveness.’ ”[53]

Many find difficulties with Wright’s view of justification in Romans. Commenting on Romans 2:13, he affirms that Paul “states openly and cheerfully that it is ‘the doers of the law’ who will be justified.”[54] Wright draws the implication that the final justification of God’s people will be entirely by works. He adds other references from Paul—Romans 14:10-12; 1 Corinthians 3:12-15; 4:5; 2 Corinthians 5:10; 6:8-9; Galatians 5:19-23—in which, he says, Paul anticipated a judgment according to works. This has led some to think—and earlier statements by Wright seemed to suggest such a view—that this eschatological justification might not reaffirm the preliminary, prospective justification that Paul wrote about in Romans 3:24. Yet in November, 2010, when Wright spoke at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, he clearly affirmed that God’s Spirit would so work in the lives of His people that they would provide precisely the works that will allow God to declare His people righteous. Wright seems to be confusing reward with legal verdict, a distinction he rejects.[55] Yet he seems close to evangelicals in many of his views. No summary of his work, especially in the short space allotted here, can do justice to this gifted thinker.[56]

James D. G. Dunn—Ethnocentrism

In 1983 James D. G. Dunn initiated the use of the phrase “new perspective” on Paul[57] “and subsequently proved most energetic in its promotion.”[58] Dunn’s works on Romans and Galatians (with Philippians) deserve careful attention. His major commentary on Romans is a masterful treatment. Dunn’s thinking is difficult to summarize, since it has gone through significant developments over nearly thirty years.

The emphasis Sanders initiated on grace in Judaism characterizes Dunn’s work too. He speaks even more boldly than Sanders did about grace in first-century Jewish thought. “The Judaism,” he says, “of what Sanders christened as ‘covenantal nomism’ can now be seen to preach good Protestant doctrine: that grace is always prior; that human effort is ever the response to divine initiative; that good works are the fruit and not the root of salvation.”[59]

Dunn’s primary contribution to the New Perspective on Paul is his discussion of Paul’s opposition to Jewish ethnocentrism. Legalism played no role in Paul’s thought. The problem that Paul addressed was Israel’s attitude that only by the Mosaic law could Gentiles enter into a relationship with God.

Dunn understands that that attitude thwarted God’s purposes for the nations, including blessing for the Gentiles. Thus the Law must be set aside. But it is not the Law in its entirety, for the Law is the expression of the holiness of God. For Dunn the elements of the Law that Paul wanted to set aside were the “boundary markers”: circumcision, Sabbath, and the food laws. In this he follows Sanders. But he does not see the boundary markers as elements that elicit Gentile ridicule. He sees them as the issues that in first-century Judaism marked one out as “in the covenant.” These are the “works of the Law” that Paul rejected, not obedience to the commandments of God.[60]

“The law thus became a basic expression of Israel’s distinctiveness as the people specially chosen by (the one) God to be his people. In sociological terms the law functioned as an ‘identity marker’ and ‘boundary,’ reinforcing Israel’s sense of distinctiveness and distinguishing Israel from the surrounding nations.”[61] In his commentary on Galatians he adds, “ ‘Works of the law’ would mean in principle all that the faithful Israelite had to do as a member of the chosen people, that is, as distinct from ‘Gentile sinners.’ But in practice there were a number of test cases, several specific laws which in the history of earliest Judaism had brought the issue of covenant loyalty to clear decision, boundary issues where the distinctiveness of Jew from Gentile was most at stake.”[62]

Paul understood, Dunn holds, that his divine commission to carry the gospel to the Gentiles was threatened not by the Law in general, but by the boundary markers. These practices by design marked off Israel from the nations. The church Paul was involved in building is a church that must be multi-ethnic, reaching across cultural and racial limits. It must be a community where there is no Jew or Greek (Gal. 3:28). Only a justification that is by faith alone can allow such a fellowship to develop.

But the Law, he says, retains a central role in the life of God’s people. “The issue expressed in ‘works of the law,’ in other words, was not whether membership of the people of God entailed various obligations (Paul had no doubt that it did), but whether it entailed an in-effect sectarian interpretation of these obligations.”[63] Thus when Paul wrote about the Law in Romans 6-8, he thought specifically about the role the Mosaic law would play in the Christian life. Dunn’s view is most obvious in his discussion of the opening verses of Romans 8. There he says, “The inadequacy of the law lies not in itself but in the conditions in which it has to operate.” It is “not the law as such which liberates, but the law in its given purpose for life (7:10), which can only be achieved when it functions truly as an instrument of divine power (rather than of sin), understood and responded to at the level of the πνεῦμα (rather than the σάρξ).”[64] The Law “may regulate the life of righteousness ([Gal.] iii.12), but it is not the basis or source of righteousness.” Righteousness is “more fundamental than the law, the starting-point rather than the objective of the law’s function.”[65]

In this context Dunn explains his doctrine of justification. His comments on Romans 5:1 are like those of the Reformers. But he goes further. “Since the covenant with Abraham is still so much in the background, the Roman congregations would be unlikely to make the mistake of reading the aorist tense (‘having been justified’) as though it excluded other tenses. That is to say, they would be unlikely to regard their justification . . . simply as an act finished and past.”[66] For Dunn, as for Sanders, justification is also a future act of God that is “in accord with” works.[67] In discussing a group of references in Romans Dunn says, “To be sure, the present tenses could be taken as ‘timeless’ presents, but most of the future tenses are best taken as referring to future (= final) justification on the day of judgement (Rom. 2.1; 3.20; Gal. 2.16; 5.4).”[68] He continues, “And in the Jewish-Christian adaptation of that, covenant status and final vindication depended on justification by faith completed by ‘works of the law’ (the clear implication of Gal. 3.2-5; cf. Jas. 2.22-4). Paul’s point is to insist precisely that the ongoing process of salvation is wholly of a piece with its beginning; that as their initial acceptance by God was through faith, so is their continuation (Gal. 3.2-5) and their final acceptance (Gal. 5.5).”[69] Paul’s opponents, Jewish Christian teachers (not non-Christian Jews), had misplaced the proper emphasis on the Law. Instead of seeing its fundamental role as defining sin (since it could never give life, a role possible only through the Spirit), they thought of it as defining one’s relationship with God, believing that their status gave them exemption from God’s judgment.[70]

Westerholm, though, brings a kind of closure to a discussion of Dunn’s thought.

Dunn’s affiliation with the new perspective is generally marked (at least in part) by his insistence that the conviction was equally axiomatic in first-century Judaism [stressing faith and grace]. Yet he is willing to grant that, to Paul’s mind, those who added works of the law to the requirement of faith thereby compromised the essence of the latter. . . . Indeed, to believe that their “status was to be documented and maintained over against Gentile sinners by works of the law” was to show an attitude that “is not so very far from the attitude of the merit-earner.”[71]

Evaluation Of The New Perspective On Paul

Positively, significant benefits flow from the work of the New Perspective’s adherents. First and most significantly is Wright’s call to subject one’s traditions to the Scriptures. Theological traditions too easily replace Scripture as the basis for theological thinking. Second, Sanders warns about the proper use of ancient information about Judaism. New Testament scholarship has too readily leveled Jewish material, making it all equally relevant for Paul’s theology. As a result scholars have used information from the Mishna (ca. AD 200) and even worse the Talmud (ca. AD 400) to help explain the issues addressed in, for example, Galatians and Romans. Sanders rightly requires contemporary sources for such comparative study.

In this respect there is a third benefit, namely, that the New Perspective scholars have warned that Paul is more often in conversation, not with Jewish thought specifically, but with Jewish Christians who may not represent Jewish views. Fourth, it is clear from their works, as from the Scriptures themselves, that one must contend with an important segment of first-century Judaism that genuinely did embrace the grace of God. Evidence for this comes from the New Testament itself, people who when confronted by the apostles’ teaching embraced the message of good news in Christ. One should expect to find evidence outside the Bible for this as well (as for example the Hodayot in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which witness to a strong sense of God’s grace in the lives of the righteous).

Yet much in the New Perspective may be questioned. Many scholars fault Sanders’s selection of data, restricting his sources to Palestinian writers, but omitting Josephus. It is problematic that he distinguishes Palestinian from Hellenistic writers. This is a problem partially solved in Justification and Variegated Nomism, a major critique of Sanders’s thesis.[72] A first-century writer who calls into question Sanders’s concept of covenantal nomism is Philo.[73] Omitting Philo made Sanders’s thesis seem more reasonable.

Another aspect of Sanders’s method that seems open to question is how one would demonstrate the “pattern of religion” without dealing with details. Such an approach does not seem realistic. In pursuit of this, Sanders and those who follow him state that no first-century authority affirmed the necessity of perfect obedience to the Law. If that is true, and perhaps it is, such a claim is irrelevant if Paul was urging that perfect obedience is in fact required, as his argument in Galatians 3 seems to do.[74]

Sanders and his followers want to affirm that Paul’s contemporaries in Israel would never have thought that they were saved by keeping the Law. However, according to Sanders in some sense keeping the Law is essential to “salvation” (or entering the kingdom), since he clearly makes a relationship to the Law a central issue in Israel’s final participation in the culmination of God’s work.

Turning to Wright, an area of his thought that is difficult, though largely influenced by his rather militant amillennialism,[75] is his intention to unite judgment for eternal destiny with judgment for reward. He equates the Great White Throne judgment of Revelation 20 with the judgment seat of Christ. This has left Wright open to the charge leveled against Dunn that salvation is not established until the final judgment (though, as noted above, Wright has clarified his view). In Revelation 20, however, judgment begins by searching the book of life and then proceeds to the other books so that individuals are judged first by their relationship with Jesus, and then their punishment is determined by reference to the things written in the other books. At the judgment seat of Christ the relationship to Christ is already assumed and He assesses reward to believers for service.

The matter of justification and works requires further comment. A major passage used in the discussion is Romans 2:6-10, a passage that has been widely discussed with varied interpretations offered. The proponents of the New Perspective consistently relate it to one of two things: either to the possibility or likelihood that one may indeed be justified by works, or to the view that the passage is addressing final justification at the last judgment, a justification on the basis of (or consistent with) good works. Without resolving all the problems, here is one proposal. It is part of the longer discussion in Romans that begins with 1:18 (the wrath of God against all human sin) and 3:19-20. In the latter passage Paul affirmed that his argument demonstrates that no flesh will be justified before God by works. Whatever else Romans 2:6-10 teaches, it must lead from the present wrath of God (1:18) to the conclusion that no flesh shall be justified (οὐ δικαιωθήσεται) by works of the Law. Any interpretation of 2:6-10 that does not fit in this trajectory is unsound. So neither in the present nor in the final day can anyone be justified by works of the Law.

A foundational issue raised in the New Perspective is Paul’s “robust conscience.” Frequently Paulinists argue that Romans 7 cannot be a reference to any struggle that Paul had with his conscience, calling that passage an example of prosopopoeia, “speech in character,” in which Paul spoke as Israel, or as humanity, or some persona. Yet in examining examples of prosopopoeia, it is not clear that Romans 7 fulfills such a function.[76] However, the examples that the rhetorician Kennedy proposes, as in the speeches of Luke 1, do not look at all like Romans 7. The “I” remains the same from Romans 7:1 through 8:39 with no indication of change. The great problem with taking Paul as the subject of all of Romans 7 is Philippians 3, unless Paul is dealing with different aspects of the issue in the two passages. In Romans he addressed the effects of the Law in judging sin by turning sinners over to the present wrath of God (cf. Rom. 1:18-32). In Philippians he addressed the satisfaction he felt in keeping the interpretation of the Law given him in his Pharisaic training.

The two most important critiques of the New Perspective on Paul are Justification and Variegated Nomism, edited by Carson, Seifrid, and O’Brien, and Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics, by Westerholm. Also works by Bird, Das, Kim, and Waters,[77] provide good coverage of the issues both positive and negative.

Conclusion

Because of the widespread influence of Sanders, Wright, and Dunn and those who agree with them, it is important for pastors and teachers to be informed about the issues. The conclusions these advocates of the New Perspective on Paul have drawn are not always biblically sound. If ministers make use of the work of these authors, they must critically interact with their conclusions. One hopes that this study will aid reflection on this influential movement.

Notes

1. N. T. Wright objects that these three are not the “chief culprits.” He adds Richard Hays, Douglas Campbell, Terry Donaldson, and Bruce Longenecker (Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision [Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009], 28).
2. Christoph Stenschke, “Review of The New Perspective on Paul: Collected Essays, by James D. G. Dunn; and The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel’s Scripture, by Richard B. Hays,” Religion and Theology 15 (2008): 157.
3. Krister Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West,” Harvard Theological Review 56 (1963): 199-215.
4. Ibid., 200.
5. Ibid.
6. E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977); idem, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1983); and idem, Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
7. Robert Egolf, “Review of John Gager, Reinventing Paul,” http://www.thepaul-page.com/reinventing-paul (accessed January 25, 2011).
8. “The Talmudic Rabbis whose views are recorded in the Talmudic literature are called Tannaim and Amoraim. Both these terms are also found in the Talmud in connection with learning activity. In this context, a Tanna (‘rehearser’ or ‘teacher’) was a functionary who rehearsed opinions and statements of the teachers of the first two centuries CE; an Amora (‘expounder’) was a different functionary, whose job it was to explain to the assembly the words of a contemporary sage, the latter making only a series of brief rulings which the Amora would then explain in detail,” http://www.myjewishlearning.com/texts/Rabbinics/Tal-mud/Talmud/Studying_Tal-mud/Tannaim_and_Amoraim.shtml (accessed March 21, 2012).
9. Others have done more work in the primary literature (e.g., James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1-8, Word Biblical Commentary [Dallas: Word, 1988], lxv–lxvi).
10. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, xii.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., 422.
13. Ibid., 17.
14. An important source on the subject of mirror-reading is Gordon D. Fee, Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 7, n 24. He discusses the problem and gives seven criteria by which to protect against over-reading the evidence.
15. For example Simon J. Gathercole severely critiques Sanders’s conclusions while acknowledging the significance of his contribution (Where Is Boasting? Jewish Soteriology and Paul’s Response in Romans 1-5 [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002]).
16. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 551.
17. Ibid.
18. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 86.
19. “No rabbi took the position that obedience must be perfect. . . . Even in Qumran, where perfection of way was stressed, allowance was made for transgression and atonement. The requirement of virtually perfect obedience in 4 Ezra makes the work stand out as unique in Jewish literature of the period — and that requirement is entirely unattested before 70 c.e.” (Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 28). Dunn agrees with this view. In a symposium held between the faculties of Durham and Tübingen universities, Dunn noted that “no one seemed to want to maintain that Second Temple Judaism taught the need for ‘perfection’ in law-keeping” (James D. G. Dunn, “In Search of Common Ground,” in The New Perspective on Paul, ed. James D. G. Dunn, rev. ed. [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005], 288). In a footnote on that page he adds, “This misunderstanding, however, continues to bedevil the discussion elsewhere, as we see in T. R. Schreiner, The Law and Its Fulfillment . . . e.g., 71, 181” (ibid., 288, n 5).
20. “Thus I propose that the thrust of Gal. 3:10 is borne by the words nomos and ‘cursed,’ not by the word ‘all,’ which happens to appear” (Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 28).
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., 44. Here he is in conversation especially with Rudolf Bultmann. Stephen Westerholm has a good summary of Bultmann’s view of the Law, to which Sanders objects: “But in the very fact that the law promises ‘life’ for those who submit to God and obey his commands lies the possibility of misunderstanding. Man, knowing that to transgress God’s law is sin and that life is promised to those who obey it, may conclude that he can secure his own life and establish his own righteousness by doing what the law requires. But such apparent conformity with the law is really its perversion” (Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004], 151). Bultmann’s view, summarized by Westerholm, appears in Bultmann’s essay “Christ the End of the Law,” in Essays, Philosophical and Theological, trans. R. Gregor Smith (New York: Macmillan, 1955), 36-66.
23. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 44.
24. Ibid., 48.
25. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 143.
26. Ibid., 77.
27. Ibid. This is also the way Dunn characterizes Sanders’s view (Romans 1-8, lxv).
28. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 86.
29. Thus Sanders says, “The subordination of [Gal. 3:]10-13 to v. 8 — seem[s] to me to be decisive against the view that the thrust and point of the argument are directed toward the conclusion that the law should not be accepted because no one can fulfill all of it. The argument seems to be clearly wrong that Paul, in Galatians 3, holds the view that since the law cannot be entirely fulfilled, therefore righteousness is by faith” (ibid., 22). Later he writes, “Rom. 1:18-2:29 and chapter 5 do not lead to the conclusion that the basis of Paul’s view was human inability to fulfill the law” (ibid., 36). And still again, “Paul did not come to his view of sin and salvation by beginning with an analysis of the human plight” (ibid., 125).
30. Ibid., 77. This recalls the more extreme position of Heikki Räisäinen, Paul and the Law, 2nd ed. (Tübingen: Mohr, 1987).
31. Sanders uses this phrase, apparently only once, in Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 207.
32. Ibid., 102.
33. Ibid., 123.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid., 128-29. Cf. Romans 2:7, 13, 14-15, 20, and 25-28. Regarding verse 15 Sanders says, “Gentiles who do what the law requires will be held innocent.” Earlier he said, “That passage [Rom. 1.18-3.20] contains the charge that everyone commits heinous sins, while holding open the possibility that some, both Jew and Gentile, could be righteous by the law” (ibid., 23).
36. Ibid., 124. But see C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: Clark, 1975), 1:168.
37. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 125.
38. “When Paul turns to the plight, however, his statements would make a systematist shudder” (ibid., 68). Also he wrote (favorably citing J. A. T. Robinson), “Rom. 3:20 is ‘dogmatic (almost axiomatic).’ ‘It is the first of a series of unargued statements on the subject of the law which he does not take up and justify till chapter 7” (ibid., 71).
39. “I should have said that his [Paul’s] doctrine of salvation led to the necessary conclusion that all men required salvation, with the result that his description of the human plight varies, remaining constant only in the assertion of its universality” (Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 474). This encapsulates his idea that Paul’s thought ran “from solution to plight” (ibid., 475-76).
40. Ibid., 147.
41. Ibid., 551. One wonders if Sanders is himself completely consistent in this statement.
42. Ibid.
43. Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul, 179.
44. John Piper, The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2007).
45. Wright, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision, 22.
46. Ibid., 39-53.
47. “If we are to give primary attention to Scripture itself, it is vital to pay attention to the actual flow of the letters, to their context (to the extent that we can discern it) and to the specific arguments that are being mounted at any one time” (ibid., 41).
48. Ibid., 34.
49. N. T. Wright, “New Exodus, New Inheritance: The Narrative Substructure of Romans 3-8,” in Romans and the People of God: Essays in Honor of Gordon D. Fee on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, ed. Sven K. Soderlund and N. T. Wright (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 29.
50. Ibid., 32.
51. N. T. Wright, “The Letter to the Romans: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible (Nashville: Abingdon, 2002), 10:496.
52. Wright, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision, 86.
53. Ibid., 90.
54. Ibid., 182.
55. Ibid., 186.
56. Wright prefers the idea of incorporation in Christ to imputation. He says believers have righteousness because God has “incorporated” them in Christ, not because Jesus has earned righteousness which is then imputed to them. His exposition of 2 Corinthians 5:21 is fascinating.
57. Dunn used this phrase in his article, “The New Perspective on Paul,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 65 (1983): 95-122, republished in his book Jesus, Paul, and the Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1990).
58. Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul, 183.
59. James D. G. Dunn, “The Justice of God: A Renewed Perspective on Justification by Faith,” Journal of Theological Studies 43 (1992): 7-8.
60. James D. G. Dunn, The New Perspective on Paul: Collected Essays, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 23-28. “In short, then, I do not want to narrow ‘the works of the law’ to boundary issues” (ibid., 28). He now affirms that “works” means “what the law requires, the ‘deeds’ which the law makes obligatory. To be noted at once is the fact that we are not talking about just any law here. . . . But Paul is talking about the Torah, the Jewish law. To be more precise, therefore, we should define ‘works of the law’ as what the law required of Israel as God’s people. Works of the law, in other words, were what Israel’s righteousness consisted of, Israel’s part of the covenant which Yahweh had made with Israel in first choosing Israel as his special people. ‘Works of the law’ were Israel’s response to that grace” (James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of the Apostle [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998], 355). See also idem, Beginning from Jerusalem, vol. 2 of Christianity in the Making (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 475-77, 484-88.
61. Dunn, Romans 1-8, lxix.
62. James D. G. Dunn, The Epistle to the Galatians (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993), 136.
63. Ibid., 137.
64. Dunn, Romans 1-8, 519.
65. Dunn, The Epistle to the Galatians, 193.
66. Dunn, Romans 1-8, 262.
67. Sanders says, “As did his contemporaries in Judaism, Paul thought that salvation basically depends on membership in the in-group, but that within that context deeds still count. Transgressions must be repented of or they will deserve God’s punishment. Punishment itself, however, provides atonement. Both punishment and reward take place within the in-group, whether here or hereafter. Loss and commendation (1 Cor. 3:15; 4:5) are both earned in the sense of ‘deserved,’ but salvation itself is not earned by enumerating deeds or balancing them against one another. While there is a firm belief in rewards and punishments which are appropriate to deeds, there is understandable reluctance to say precisely what the reward or punishment will be, especially when recompense is reserved for the final judgment” (Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, 111). Dunn’s view is more hopeful than Sanders’s, who holds that “remaining in the in-group is conditional on behavior” (ibid.). Even though Dunn affirms that punishment, even at the judgment, is atoning (Jesus does not do all the atoning in Sanders’s thought), “there are some passages in which Paul threatens that Christians can lose their status” (ibid., 109; specifically Gal. 5:19-21; 1 Cor. 6:9-10; and the vice lists of the New Testament). Dunn states his position in this way: “Evidently, then, Paul’s differentiated view of the law could hold together both the affirmation that final justification will not be ‘from works of the law’ and the thought that final judgment will be according to ‘works (of the law).’ In other words, Paul’s concept of works as necessarily to be performed by believers and as forming the basis for final judgment was little different from that commonly held by the Judaism of his day” (James D. G. Dunn, “The Role and Function of the Law in the Theology of Paul,” in The New Perspective on Paul, 466).
68. James D. G. Dunn, Jesus, Paul, and the Law (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1990), 207.
69. Ibid., 208. See also Dunn, Beginning from Jerusalem, 586-87.
70. James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 115.
71. Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New, 191.
72. D. A. Carson, Mark Seifrid, and Peter T. O’Brien, eds., Justification and Variegated Nomism: The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum neuen Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001).
73. See especially Legum Allegoriae 3.77, where Philo explains that Noah found grace because “as it ought to be, he was praiseworthy in constitution and family” (ἀποκρινούμεθα δεόντως ὅτι ἑπαινετῆς ἑλέγχεται συστάσεως καὶ γενέσεως). For similar notions see also de Opificio Mundi 23, 168; Legum Allegoriae 3.14, 164; de Cherubim 84; de Sacrificiis Abelis et Caini 54, 57; de Posteritate Caini 42; de Gigantibus 64; Quid Deus ImmutabilisSit 104, 106, 110; Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres 39; de Fuga et Inventione 29; de Mutatione Nominum 40, 52, 58; de Somniis 2.177; deAbrahamo 39, 118; de Iosepho 249; de Specialibus Legibus 1.43, 284; 2.219; de Virtutibus 79; and de Praemiis et Poenis 101. Peder Borgen writes about Philo’s relevance this way: “Philo . . . clearly belonged to the main body of Judaism, which recognized the religious jurisdiction of the Jerusalem Temple. Moreover, the Jewish nation was the life-setting even for his philosophical and mystical ideas” (“Philo of Alexandria: A Critical and Synthetical Survey of Research since World War II,” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, ed. Wolfgang Haase [Berlin: De Gruyter, 1984], II:21.1:115).
74. See Thomas R. Schreiner, “Paul and Perfect Obedience to the Law: An Evaluation of the View of E. P. Sanders,” Westminster Theological Journal 47 (1985): 245-78.
75. N. T. Wright, The Millennium Myth: Hope for a Postmodern World (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1999).
76. For a discussion of this rhetorical device see Progymnasmata: Greek Textbooks of Prose Composition and Rhetoric, trans. George A. Kennedy, vol. 10 of Writings from the Greco-Roman World, ed. John T. Fitzgerald (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), 47-52; and more briefly, Ben Witherington III, New Testament Rhetoric: An Introductory Guide to the Art of Persuasion in and of the New Testament (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2009), 132-34.
77. Michael Bird, The Saving Righteousness of God: Studies on Paul, Justification, and the New Perspective, Paternoster Biblical Monographs (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2007). Bird is a mediating voice, for he adopts some aspects of the New Perspective thought but finds others less than acceptable. See also A. Andrew Das, Paul, the Law, and the Covenant (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2001); Seyoon Kim, Paul and the New Perspective: Second Thoughts on the Origin of Paul's Gospel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002); and Guy Prentiss Waters, Justification and the New Perspectives on Paul: A Review and Response (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2004).