Roger Olson - A New Christian Dogmatics from Eerdmans

A New Christian Dogmatics from Eerdmans
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2017/07/new-christian-dogmatics-eerdmans/

by Roger Olson
July 16, 2017

I recently received from publisher Wm. B. Eerdmans a complimentary copy of Christian Dogmatics: An Introduction by two Dutch theologians Cornelis van der Kooi and Gijsbert van den Brink (2012/2017). It’s a beautifully hard cover volume encompassing 806 pages (including indexes). On the back cover and inside are glowing endorsements by Richard J. Mouw, Michael S. Horton, Charles Van Engen, and John Bolt—all well-known Reformed theologians with evangelical credentials. I have not read the whole volume yet, but have glanced through it and read portions. It is very contemporary, moderate, irenic, broadly Reformed in posture and orientation, and accessible in language. The authors quote a broad range of theologians and philosophers but the influences of certain 20th century Dutch Reformed theologians such as G. C. Berkouwer and Hendrikus Berkhof are notable.

One of the first things I noticed as I scanned the table of contents is that the doctrine of Scripture appears as Chapter 13—on the heels of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Chapter 12). That is not to say, of course, that the Bible is not mentioned or used as an authority for theology before that; it is only to note that a complete account of a doctrine of Scripture follows that of the Holy Spirit—which is ironic (at least to me).

Years ago my good, late friend Stanley J. Grenz published his similar one volume “dogmatics” entitled Theology for the Community of God (also published by Eerdmans) and included the full discussion of a doctrine of Scripture after the doctrine of the Holy Spirit—late in the order of chapters. For that he was pummeled and vilified by certain conservative evangelical theologians. I am waiting to hear from them now about van der Kooi and van den Brink who do the same.

Of course, as an evangelical Arminian, I am especially interested in these Dutch Reformed theologians’ treatment of the doctrines of God’s sovereignty—especially providence and election/predestination. I found them to be very moderate—following closely Berkouwer and Berkhof (Hendrikus, not Louis!). There is no hint here of the aggressive “five point Calvinism” of many American Calvinists.

In sum, if someone asked me to recommend to him or her a moderately evangelical, one volume systematic theology from a broadly Reformed perspective I would recommend this one while cautioning that I have not yet read every page. What I have read pleases me even though, naturally, as an Arminian, I would have trouble using it as my own textbook in a course in systematic theology.

We evangelical Arminians need a good, broadly evangelical (not only Wesleyan), contemporary, one volume systematic theology from an Arminian perspective. I have heard rumors of such—that it is “in the works”—from a British Nazarene theologian, but he has cautioned me not to expect it anytime soon. I hope that it may yet appear in publication during my lifetime. I will not write one; I’m not a systematician but a historical theologian. I will leave it to others to risk systematizing revelation and Christian belief; I’m not at all convinced it can be successfully done. I agree with Alfred Lord Tennyson who famously wrote:

“Our little systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee and Thou, O God, art more than they.”

A Reformed View of the New Perspective (of Paul)

(A) Reformed View of the New Perspective

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/04/18/reformed-view-of-the-new-perspective/

by Scot McKnight

April 18, 2012

Comments

The clash was inevitable, but the clash has too often taken place under terms and categories that unfairly describe the other side. The traditionally Reformed have a stake in framing Paul’s gospel as justification by faith, and behind that they traditionally understand the problem to be humans who strive to establish themselves before God. A good proponent of this view, always framed in pastorally sensitive ways, is Tim Keller. But the New Perspective says "No" to this way of framing Paul’s gospel.

Why do you think the Reformed view of justification clashes so much with the new perspective on Paul, especially its view(s) of justification? What’s the essence of the clash?

First, that view assumes a view of Judaism that has clearly been undermined: Judaism was not full of self-righteous people seeking to establish themselves on the basis of the Law before God. Instead, one good way of describing Judaism is what E.P. Sanders called “covenantal nomism.” Covenant - and that means grace and election - have the first word and the Law (the nomism bit) is not how to become a Jew but how to maintain ones Jewishness, or sustain one’s relationship to the God of Israel. In effect, this knocks the former problem out from under one traditional view and sends people back to the NT and Judaism to see “what the problem was.”

In steps Alan J. Spence, in his book Justification: A Guide for the Perplexed, to say the New Perspective (1) gets it all wrong and (2) is designed to create a gospel shaped apart from what I’m calling Spence’s “justification worldview,” a worldview in which God is judge, humans are sinners, and Christ establishes as relationally right with God.

Spence got off for me on the wrong foot in five ways:

First, he misspelled E.P. Sanders’ name wrong every time, spelling it “Saunders.” He also called him “E.T.” Saunders, and this makes me wonder if he has even read Sanders. One should avoid speculating on such things, so I won’t. (Maybe I already have.)

Second, he kept seeing Sanders in terms of comparative religion and, well, yes, Sanders does talk about comparing the pattern of religion, but to say he’s into comparative religion pulls Sanders from the historian to the modern religions expert. Just not so.

Third, he failed to sketch that the fundamental insight of Sanders and of the whole New Perspective is a fresh re-examination of Judaism and that means, inevitably, what Paul was saying in the context of a sharper profile of Judaism. I see absolutely no interest in Spence in this historical question.

Fourth, Spence shows no awareness of the nuances of variation among New Perspective scholars — from Sanders to Wright to Dunn to Hays and others. For Spence, this is all about Tom Wright’s denial of his justification worldview, and this chp is dramatically different in tone from his chps on Augustine, Aquinas, Luther and Calvin and is more like — but stronger — than the chps on Schleiermacher and Barth. He blames the latter two for deconstructing a justification worldview, and thinks Wright is floating on that deconstruction.

Fifth, he says he will root his sketch of Tom’s view of justification in his What Saint Paul Really Said, in spite of the 2009 book called Justification, which ought to have been the place to base one’s observations, but I’ll forgive him for not living up to what he said: it’s just as much based on the 2009 book as the earlier one, though I don’t think he sees the nuances of the latter vs. the former.

Spence sketches Wright’s narrative, which is the narrative of Israel’s Story coming to fulfillment in Jesus, the true Israelite; he argues Wright’s view of justification is not about salvation but about ecclesiology (this is an overstatement); he doesn’t think there’s enough about forensics, in spite of Tom’s clear statements to the contrary though Wright doesn’t have Spence’s justification worldview; and he thinks Wright doesn’t have enough on faith as instrumental in salvation. Well, here’s a good summary of Spence’s criticisms:

I suggest the controlling motif of Wright’s soteriology is ‘the reinstatement of good governance through the kingship of Jesus’ or, in the evocative jargon of the comparative study of religions, ‘messianic nomism’. [Who uses this expression?] If one removed from his exposition of justification the few passing references to relational concepts such as grace, mercy, pardon and reconciliation [did he read Justification?], the structure would stand intact. None of these concepts serve as load-bearing terms. They are, however, integral features of Paul’s soteriology.

One could at this point stop for a long day discussing how Wright expounds grace and these other terms, and to ask if the proper approach is “The Western Tradition’s” view vs. recent NT scholarship’s view, and how one determines such things — surely by exegesis and history not by appealing to Augustine and Luther and Calvin – but I find this summary critique both hitting on the sensitive areas but grossly misrepresenting Wright’s stuff. But I’m sketching Spence, who says Tom’s use of those terms was only done in deference to others, the way Spence himself crossed himself in a Catholic school as a boy though he was Reformed.

In essence, Spence thinks the best Story of the Old Testament must be only the personal salvation story because the governance Story of Wright, by which he means Jesus as King as the true Israelite through whom God will put the world to rights …. and, well, we’ve got an exaggeration: Tom Wright believes in personal salvation; he thinks the NT teaches that; but personally is caught up in the larger Story. What Spence has is a theory of justification that no one in the Old Testament taught (unless one thinks Gen 15:6 is Abraham’s personal salvation), for which there would have been no back story in the New Testament and which is then assumed to be the true gospel of the apostle Paul.

The New Perspective’s view of justification deserves some good strong pushback; there have been some early overstatements and many take backs, including some by Dunn and Wright. I wonder if Spence might spend some time reading Jimmy Dunn’s big pumpkin book, his book on Paul’s theology, and read the chp on justification, and then ask if he has really sketched the New Perspective’s view of justification. He hasn’t.

This Guide for the Perplexed will make some folks happy; it leaves me perplexed.

Reformational Theology vs. Emergent Theology

"Classic Reformational Theism vs. Emergent Christian Post-Theism"

When comparing Emergent Christianity to classic Reformational Christianity commonly practice within the halls of Evangelicalism one can see the direct influence of the one to the other, and within that correspondence understand the necessity for Emergent Christianity to continue moving away from Evangelical Christianity in a way that is deeply "reformational" as found within the Reformation's originating charters 500 years ago. In the sense that Emergents are revisiting every area of Reformed theology - much like Luther and Calvin had done with the Catholic Church's practices and dogmas - and updating it first in practice (orthopraxy), and secondly, in theological observations (orthodoxy), by de-emphasizing a soteriology of justification by faith and re-emphasizing a Christology of Jesus-first and the Kingdom ethics of benevolence and love.

One of the main disturbances to Evangelicalism is the Emergent doctrine of God's love and grace that somehow became lost in the Evangelic rhetoric of man's sinfulness and certain judgment of death-and-hell. As the latter ideas were lifted up God became more and more distant to the plight of human existence until man was fully regarded as damned and condemned, unworthy of salvation, and dismally lost. And though true, and without dispute, the Emergent Gospel re-emphasizes the first purposes of a God who creates and superintends in love and devotion to mankind; who seeks to impart grace and mercy to mankind's existence; who intends to invade heaven into man's hellish experience of sin and evil. Distancing Himself only from a church not preaching Jesus' Gospel of love and grace.

Moreover, as Emergent Christianity continues to evolve there is a renewed effort to revisit and critique every Reformational doctrine towards a Jesus-of-the-Gospel's rightness and orientation that when followed and practiced can only become deeply disturbing. Upsetting many of the church's current practices and teachings like Jesus did of old when questioning the religious establishment of His day as the Pharisees and Scribes shined-and-polished pet doctrines-and-beliefs. Consequently, Emergents have been questioning not only Luther and Calvin, but the Reformed Father's Grand Progenitor centered in Augustine hoary observation many centuries earlier. Questioning all of Reformed Theology's fundamental doctrines and teachings of Scripture that has created an Evangelic culture of a bible-within-a-bible (e.g., known as Biblicism); a religious subculture within what was intended to be a pervasive, globally-necessitated Apostolic Christian faith; and unnecessary dogmas filled with restrictions, harshness, callousness, set within a minutia of religious Reformed laws.

Partly, this effort is due to postmodernism's critical analysis of secular modernism begun during the World Wars, and again with Vietnam's institutional insurrections. And partly, to Evangelicalism's waywardness from New Testament Kingdom teaching of love-in-action to those in need, impoverished, and unempowered by society. Who are held in the affliction of misery, disease, desperateness, race, gender and lifestyle prejudices. But under a fresh re-reading of the Gospels in light of all these developments, then the Jesus discovered within them (especially as related to His Kingdom teachings) would de-emphasis a Reformed Pauline doctrine that has become too Calvinised by the church. Which then creates the consequential reaction to re-right the Reformed churches' Pauline understanding of the Gospel through the Christ event once again however paradoxical this may seem (for more on this area, please refer to the article Paul, whom I love, and other articles found within this website's sidebar entitled Pauline Theology).

It is submitted then that the only thing holding Evangelicalism together is not Reformational Theology but Emergent Theology's broader scope of God's love expressed through Jesus Christ that builds upon Reformational Theology's first principles of faith (vs. today's emphasis on justice 500 years later). Without Emergent Christianity's important new insights and emphasis for Jesus-first Christological practices, and a radically new re-interpretation of the Bible perceived through the Gospels themselves, Evangelicalism would continue to centralize itself within its own Reformational theologies blinded by their need of a Jesus revolution. Creating then a Calvinism of dogmatizing rhetorics and strict sectarian practices that are excluding the larger part of mankind from any form of acceptance and sympathetic outreach by God's overwhelming love. That would rather wish to see God's justice displayed in judgment-and-wrath upon a wicked world than to stand-in-the-breeches with a lost mankind beseeching Jesus' followers to preach-and-practice a God of loving justice who, when coming, will first sweep out His own house, to their own harm and destruction. Thus, is it more "just" to proclaimed-and-enacted God's love or to preach an unloving rhetoric of God's justice filled with hypocritical legalisms and self-righteous duties? Didn't Jesus say this same thing to the Pharisees of His day? Whose priests and scribes had tipped the theological cart towards an ungracious Judahizing of the Law than to a just-and-loving Gospel of God's benevolence to a lost mankind? Today's Calvinism stands in this same vein unless it re-discovers Jesus' faith declarations to go back to its first tenets and throw out all of its resultant rhetorical baggage built up over the past 500 years in the name of Reformational theology {see NT Wright, Simply Jesus  (October 2011) and How God Became King (March 2012)}.

Consequently, it is important to remember what Reformational theology has brought to modern day Christianity by reciting an older interview of Dr. J.I. Packer to a Baptist journal many years ago.... In an article from the Spring of 1994, Packer speaks to Reformational theology's God-centeredness, particularly as it relates to the themes of God's sovereignty (classic theism); the deep set nature of sin and man's complete inability to save himself, even down to the lowest levels of revelatory illumination (depravity and election); and the radical and transforming power of Jesus Christ to redeem sinners by his saving grace (redemption). To this Emergent Christianity is updating classic theism through it's own inquiries into open theology (also named open theism) and process theology and hopefully towards an admixture of both that this blog here is calling relational theism (see sidebars again).

Packer goes on further to recount his fear of (1) a modern-day humanism filling the evangelical church; (2) of arighting any Christian doctrines oriented towards a me-first, man-centric interpretation of subordination; (3) that God serves man's glory of religious entitlement and indifference to the plight of a lost mankind rather than man serving God's glory through practices of love and justice to the same; (4) of a God who exists for man, and not man for God, despite Reformational rhetoric that would protest otherwise while dunning its ears to the injustices filling the world around itself; and, (5) that God simply exists to serve at man's beck-and-call when in need of help and desperation. In response, Emergent Christianity is rewriting these  same observations from a relational understanding through all its liturgies, practices and doctrines using deconstructive / reconstructive terminologies and postmodernistic framing.

Packer then notes how modern Evangelicalism has splintered into various organizations emphasizing specialized goals beyond that of declaring the gospel of Christ and curiously declares that "the only thing that can unite evangelicalism is a bigger, broader, deeper, wider, and more-generally-agreed-upon theology that he only finds in Reformational Theology." In response, we see today an effort to re-declare these same doctrines through neo-evangelic and neo-reformed movements counter to the broader movement of Emergent Christianity seeking to go beyond the Reformation back to the days of the early Church's proclamations of Jesus teachings and Kingdom ethics. Hence, Calvinists and Emergents are at loggerheads with one another when we should be joined together in purpose and proclamation - one vying for traditional protestant legacies while the other is vying for early 1st Century church practices yet unformed, apostolic, refreshingly new, and built upon Jesus. One which emphasizes the singular doctrines of salvation (justification by faith), law (with an emphasis on rituals and dogmas), and political kingdom (enforced nationalism) while the other seeks an early Christology the affects the whole of soteriology, eschatology, anthropology, and wishing to bind these seamlessly together. Consequently, when these same doctrines are built upon Jesus they have a completely different flavor founded, and seasoned, by God's love in matters of faith, trust, devotion, worship, and affecting popularly preferred religious doctrines by turning them upside-down and inside-out.

Lastly, Packard rightly notes the need for Christians to better learn of their Christianity. To not only read their Bibles but to study and know its theological truths. Truths that relate to everyday wisdoms, personal behaviors, insights, philosophies; that practically give to us godly direction and thinking. Which is the very reason and purpose for this blog journal. To recite Emergent doctrinal differences from the recent past and declare the Christian faith in fresh, new ways that unwraps past denominational creeds and legacies in postmodern truths of enlightenment and understanding. Striped from religious folklores, dogmas and offences to the more liberating ideas of God's love and grace that were somehow misplaced over the past 500 years of post-Reformational doctrine and enlightenment.

Curiously, Emergent Christians would practice this kind of faith first-and-foremost apart from the dominant Evangelical / Reformed churches more popular dogmas of restrictive grace - which doctrine of faith was ironically the very foundation stone upon which the Reformation began! But to these same Emergent Christians, as to our Reformed brethren all-too-well-steeped in systematic doctrinal distinctions, it is as necessary to discern the faith that we practice as it is to know it. This is all the difference between studying a static biblical theology and discerning it into its various fashions of contemporary biblical theology. Consequently,  Orthopaxy and Orthodoxy must stand together as Siamese twins, and not as opposing opposites. Each one sharpening the other just as the conjoining Christian groups of Emergent Christian can do with our "entwined" Evangelical / Reformational brethren - and similarly, they to us. Not in a spirit of dissolution and synthesis, but in the spirit of true transformational - even radical! - change that could revolutionize our current contemporary theologies in a renewed Reformational movement of grace, truth and justice that may last for another 500 years! Let this be our prayer for unity and discernment.

R.E. Slater

January 9, 2011
Revised: September 24, 2013
 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

http://www.founders.org/journal/fj16/interview.html

AN INTERVIEW WITH

Dr. J. I. Packer

Spring 1994

Question: Dr. Packer, you have done a great deal of writing and speaking on the subject of the need for a new reformation, a new awareness of the sovereignty and grace of God in our day. How do you assess the condition of the state of evangelicalism as it presently exists, and what do you think we can do about that condition?

Augustine (4th-5th Centuries)

Packer: I see evangelical strength needing desperately to be undergirded by Reformation convictions. If you do not see deep into the problem, you do not see deep into the solution. My fear is that a lot of evangelicals today are just not seeing deep enough in both the problem and the need. But Reformation theology takes you down to the very depth of the human problem. And actually, the Reformation itself was a recovery of the tremendous contribution that the great St. Augustine made back at the turn of the fourth and fifth centuries. He was the man who, more than anyone else in Christendom, saw to the heart of the real problem. He saw how much damage sin had done, how completely we were oriented away from God by nature. He is the one who left us that phrase 'original sin' which he got from the text of Psalm 51:5:

'Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.'

He also saw in response to our sinful condition, how great a work of transformation was needed by the grace of God in human lives. The sixteenth-century Reformers stood on Augustine's shoulders at this point. Of course, they clarified the great truth that justification by faith is the way in which the grace of God reaches us. We need, even today, a Christianity that is as deep and strong as that. And this, it seems to me, is where modern evangelicalism is lacking.

Question: Would you say that there is a connection or a similarity between the man-centered theology of evangelicalism and the general humanistic spirit?

John Calvin, 16th Century

Packer: Yes, although I think that it is an indirect connection. Secular humanism, you see, is very man-centered. It encourages every individual to regard his or her own personal happiness as the supreme value. And the kind of evangelical religion which does not challenge this self-centered, self-absorbed standpoint, but, rather, reinforces it by making one's religious experience the most important thing in the world, or God's gift of personal contentment, happiness, joy, good feelings, or that kind of thing, is simply echoing the tenets of this type of modern humanism. A Reformational emphasis, however, challenges this by asserting that God is the centre, not man. We must recognize that he is at the heart of things and that we exist for his glory, that is to say, we exist for him, not he for us. And it is only as we set ourselves to glorify him as the one who supremely matters that we are going to enter into the joy and fulfillment which being a Christian brings. The first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it so well: 'What is the chief end of men?' answer: Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. The enjoyment comes as we set ourselves to glorify God. But if our concern is with the enjoyment, then we won't be glorifying God.

Question: Dr. Packer, you mentioned just a moment ago, in referring to the proliferation and growth of evangelicalism, the lack of any real significant power of the cross and the gospel. Do you believe that modern evangelicals have lost their grip on the biblical gospel?

Packer: Well, in one particular respect we have got it all wrong. We are inclined to believe that God exists for us, God is waiting for us, God is there to make us happy. But in the gospel, God does not play the role of a butler. In the Gospel we are told that God, the Creator who made all things for his own praise and glory, has gone into action as mankind's redeemer. We human individuals are impotent of spiritual response, that is, response to God in any shape or form; but God first of all sends us a Savior to make atonement for our sins, and then he sends the Holy Spirit to change our hearts and make us willing to see and respond to Christ. Now, if we do not appreciate that our salvation is God's work in that absolutely radical sense, that is, God sends the Saviour, God gives us the gift of faith to respond to the Saviour, then we will not even be able to tell people what the gospel means. You see, we ought to be telling people that they are helpless, that they need Christ, and that they must ask God for new hearts and for the ability to trust Christ. In other words, you have got to tell them of their own spiritual inability right from the start. If on the other hand we forget this and go around saying that God is just there to help you, and that you call on him whenever you need to, that he is a sort of cosmic bell-hop, well, then we are misrepresenting the gospel in an absolutely fundamental manner. Until the gospel is understood as a message that obliges us to say that we are hopeless, helpless, lost, and ruined, requiring also that God does the work of salvation from start to finish, then we are not presenting the gospel as it is revealed in the New Testament.

Question: Given the current trends of the evangelical movement, what do you see for the future?

Packer: I think that there is a big risk of fragmentation. Modern evangelicalism is simply too worldly, and the influence of the world is usually always a fragmenting influence. I think perhaps that evangelicalism has not yet learned the way of unity on anything except the outward trappings of united evangelistic efforts. And that in itself is only a shallow uniting factor because the gospel as understood by some doesn't correspond to the gospel as understood by others. And when it comes to all goals and objectives beyond evangelism, then I think that evangelicals are very seriously divided. There are some tightly connected with right wing politics, yet their are others, because of their emphasis on end times speculations, who really do not think that involvement in society is important at all. There are some who are only interested in the supernatural works of the Holy Spirit, such as faith healing or speaking in tongues, while others seem only interested in the implementations of psychology or self-help type programmes. So I see grave risks of fragmentation down the road. The only thing that can unite us is a bigger, broader, deeper, wider and more generally agreed upon theology. And I find that theology only in the Reformation heritage.

Question:If the theology is the only thing that will unite us, do you really think unity is at all achievable? Because from our perspective, the average evangelical, indeed the average Christian, it seems, is intimidated by theology.

Martin Luther, 16th Century

Packer First of all, theology simply means the study of God. This is something that every Christian needs to realize. I think the way that the word has been used in the past has frightened many Christians away from it, even though they never stopped to consider what the word actually meant. People got the idea somewhere that theology is the business of the seminary professors and the clergy, but has very little to do with the day to day living of the Christian life. It's something people seem to think you can get along without, provided that you read your Bible daily and think one or two guiding thoughts from your passage to keep you on the rails. I do not believe it is at all like that. But theology means the study of God, and if we are to love God, as we are commanded, with all our 'minds' them we need to be in the business of theology. So when I speak of theology, I am referring to the truth that God has given us all in Scripture which we all need to learn and digest. It is truth for life! Now, I am a professor of theology, but I must tell you that in all of my teaching and writing, I am trying to show that theology is supremely practical. If this could be seen, then I think people's fear of theology could melt away and they would appreciate, and benefit from, serious theological instruction. Again, if you will allow me to beat the drum once more, this is a Reformational emphasis. If you actually get around to reading the Reformers, such as Luther or Calvin, you will find that they did all their work from a pastoral standpoint, and at every point they are applying truth to the lives of people. What they were trying to do throughout their earthly lives was to build the people up in God's truth so their lives might bring glory to their Creator and Redeemer. It's as practical and down to earth, and as pastoral as that. That's what we need to get back to first, I think.

Which Do You Chose - Justice, Justification or Jesus?

Do We Have the Gospel Wrong?

Scot is on the money here in all three categories. We have (i) the right-wing evangelical conservatives in the Justice camp, (ii) the Reformed traditionalists (or revivalists) in the Justification camp, and (iii) the Love Wins / Emergent groups in the Jesus camp. Each have a condensed version of the Gospel of Jesus - group (i) has a politically charged social gospel with an empire theology at its heart; group (ii) has a soterian gospel that preaches the sinfulness of man and the cross as its penal substitutionary remedy; and, group (iii) has a pure Jesus gospel that sees God at work through Adam, Abraham, Israel and the Church as the completing story and remedy for man's need.

Yes, "Love Wins," but love wins through Jesus' love, and this is what the "Love Wins" group has been saying all along. If you preach Jesus as the gospel you will get both justice and justification (theological camps 1 and 2). But if you preach either the justice gospel, or the justification gospel, you may only get some Jesus, but not all of Jesus, in those gospel versions.

Consequently, preaching the Jesus of Paul's gospel includes both the perspectives of justice and justification. And this third-and-last "J-Gospel" is the theologically correct gospel to place your money on as Scot will go on to explain below.*

R.E. Slater
November 3, 2011

*For additional links on this subject matter please refer to: Do We Have the Gospel Wrong?; The New Perspective of Paul; and generally, to the sidebar "Pauline Theology").

**********

The Three “J’s” in the Gospel Debate

http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/2011/11/02/the-three-js-in-the-gospel-debate/#more-21889

by Scot McKnight

November 2, 2011

Some people are a bit baffled when they hear there is a gospel debate today. Others, and this is no surprise to the readers of this blog, know that many debates actually end up discovering that at the bottom of this debate is the gospel, or how we understand the gospel. Some mainline organizations break into a rash when interviewing a candidate for ministry and discover that he or she has a traditional Reformed understanding of the gospel, while some in that more traditional Reformed movement today do the same when they hear a candidate contend for a more new perspective view of the gospel. And some in the revivalist tradition cannot comprehend how in the world anyone doesn’t think the gospel is anything but that simple four or five point gospel. Yet others, and I’ll avoid giving names here, seem to think the gospel itself can be reduced to three words: God loves you.

The gospel is at the heart today of every major theological debate, and it spills over into one ecclesiastical debate after another.

In all of this lots of folks get thoroughly confused. Take, for instance, the new perspective and the gospel. Some people think this is a fun debate but at stake for many of us is not just a curious piece of history — what was 1st Century Judaism really like? — but instead we see the gospel at stake. To be sure, if you find yourself in the middle of all of this the debate can become bewildering.

So I want to contend this morning that there are three ways of framing the gospel today. What I want to emphasize is that how we frame the gospel determines everything, and I mean everything. I contend there are three J’s that can put the whole debate today on the table in the simplest of framing categories.

First, some people frame the gospel through the category of justice. The point of the gospel is this: Jesus came to establish a kingdom marked by justice, and of course justice is the big term that includes other important ideas like peace and love and salvation. In fact, for many in the justice camp the word “salvation” is robust enough to be called “justice” or “justice” is robust enough to be called “salvation.” For these folks, Luke 4:18-19 is about as gospel as you can get, and Jesus’ death and his resurrection are all connected to this vision of justice. This means gospel work is justice work; it also means any gospel work that doesn’t entail justice is not gospel work.

Some in this camp, of course, are so justice and so “social justice” that it seems like nothing more than political activism or the worst caricature of the social gospel. But a charitable reading of justice gospelers reveals that they do believe Jesus’ death forgives sins (I find few in this camp care much for substitutionary atonement but they are not denying atonement in the death of Jesus; to be sure, some are little more than Abelard or even Girard).

Justice gospelers today tend toward political activism, the summons for more Christians to see compassion for the poor and better laws and peace in the world, and toward a kingdom language. One of the more recent developments for justice gospelers is the category of empire, and they see a conscious and consistent anti-empire agenda at work in Jesus and in the apostles. They like this expression: “Jesus is Lord, Caesar is not.”

I’m not persuaded empire is as important to gospel as many do today, though anyone who claims Jesus is Lord knows that Caesar is not. The issue for me is how conscious is this. (And I’m co-editing a book with IVP, due out next Fall, that will put this anti-empire theory to the test. We’ve got some really, really good essays in this volume.)

Overall I am utterly convinced as I can be that Jesus intended to create a just society, and I’ve written about this in most of my books: but I am just as convinced that the gospel is not justice per se. Justice is the inevitable result and implication of the gospel but not the same as the gospel.

Second, some people frame the gospel through the category of justification. This is the traditional Reformation category, and Luther famously said that the church stands or falls with justification by faith. (Ahem, Jesus spoke to this and he said it stood or fell with the confession of Peter, namely, that Jesus was Messiah/King. [But] I digress.) For justification gospelers, the gospel is soterian and that soteriology, or doctrine of salvation, can all be summed up in and through the term justification. The essence is that we are sinners and guilty before God and God must deal in a legal courtroom kind of way with our status. The good news is that God forgives us through Jesus and we can become justified, or declared in the right, through the death and resurrection of Christ. (Justification gospelers don’t emphasize resurrection enough, sometimes revealing almost no interest. Most emphasize a penal substitution theory of atonement and see divine satisfaction as the primary act of God at work in making justification possible. Many are also double imputation folks. Not all, as others emphasize union with Christ.)

Justification gospelers preach a soterian gospel, and I’ve said enough about this on this blog and in my book (linked below). They tend to be at odds with justice gospelers, just as justice gospelers are at odds with justification gospelers. Tim Keller is on record saying justification leads to justice, but I don’t think the logic is necessary and it is too obvious to me that far too many justification gospelers inherently react to the justice gospelers because they don’t think justification leads inevitably to justice. More of that some other time. [Thus, though they say it they don't believe it. - re slater]

The issue I’m talking about is how to frame the gospel. The justice gospelers frame the gospel through systemic injustice that needs to be undone and justice established; the justification gospelers frame the gospel through the systematic theology of creation, fall, sinfulness, God’s just judgment of humans as sinners, and the remedy of justice in the cross (and resurrection) of Christ where God is both just and justifier.

But I want to contend once again that justification, like justice, is the implication or result of the gospel and not the gospel itself. The proof is in the absence of justification language (especially as the “driver”) in 1 Corinthians 15, the almost total absence of justification in the gospel sermons in Acts, and the same almost total absence of the category/term of justification in the Gospels (which are the gospel). Again, we are talking here about how to frame the gospel.

The gospel, I contend, is not properly framed as injustice becoming justice (though clearly this happens) or as the unjust becoming just/justified (though clearly this happens too). And the debate between these two folks proves an inability to convince one leads to the other compellingly. There’s a better way. Instead…

Third, some people frame the gospel through the category of Jesus. As I argue in The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited, fundamental category for the gospel in Jesus and the apostles is the Story of Jesus. Just look at 1 Corinthians 15, just look at the gospeling sermons in Acts, and then just take a good look at why the first four books are called THE GOSPEL according to (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John).

What drove them was the Story of Jesus as the completing/fulfilling Story of God’s work in this world, beginning with Adam and then taken up into Abraham.

There are three J’s in the gospel debate. The right J is Jesus.

If you preach Jesus as the gospel you will get both justification and justice.

If you preach justification you may get Jesus (but I see only some of Jesus and not the whole of Jesus) and you may get some justice (I’m skeptical on this one).

 If you preach justice you may get some justification (but I’m skeptical on enough justice gospelers ever getting to justification) and you get Jesus, but again only some of Jesus (often only his teachings, his life, and his life as an example).

If you preach the Jesus of Paul’s gospel (1 Cor 15) or the apostolic sermons in Acts or the gospel of the Gospels, you get all of Jesus and all of Jesus creates both justice and justification.

As for me and my house, we take the third J.

Comments

Comment by Russ — November 3, 2011 @ 6:47 am

Hi Scot. I made a second reading of your article this morning and came to the conclusion that the third-and-last J-Gospel speaks to the “Love Wins / Emergent Church groups” that are unmentioned in your opening paragraph.

Not that other Christian church groups don’t fit into this, but for me (at least my version of the Love Wins/Emergent groups) places this group squarely into the center of the New Perspective of Paul understanding of the Gospel.

And this is the version that I wish to support and to push onto any "Emergent / Love Wins" groups floundering around for direction in their theology. As does the Rob Bell version of the gospel that I am acquainted with. Rob is all about “Jesus” 24 x 7, and goes on to show how Jesus relates to every other thing in societal structures.

I firmly believe the Emergent Church Movement can help revive the Gospel to our pluralistic, postmodern world, and can appeal to all groups, both evangelical and non-evangelical, to denominations and to sub-sectarian groups, to Judaism, Muslimism, Hinduism, and so on. And it can do so in re-righting the understanding of how God loves us through his son Jesus. And as you have said, "Jesus is the center and nothing else," including one of God’s attributes known as divine love. But the “Love Wins” crowd knows and understands this most central of all truths (again, at least in my first-hand experience of this through Rob Bell’s ministry).

And lest I stand wrong in these statements than please correct those gaps and oversights. The Emergent Church movement needs direction (and not backwards) and I believe to the degree it is given that direction, to that degree Christianity can again become relevant to the world rather than hung-up in its factions and “isms.”

Thank you.

God's Covenantal Love in Light of Paul's "New Perspective," Part 2 of 2

continued from -

NT Wright - Introduction to Paul's New Perspective, Part 1 of 2


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God's Covenantal Love in Light of Paul's "New Perspective"

by R.E. Slater, September 28, 2011

When investigating E.P. Sander/ J.D.G. Dunn/ N.T. Wright's New Perspectives on Paul (NPP, 1970's and forward) I was recently reminded of the subtle shift within church doctrine that had occurred between the eras of Augustine (400 AD) and that of the later Reformation (1500's) some 1000 years later. A shift between the ancient understanding of God's love towards man that was replaced with the Reformed understanding of God's judgment upon man. During Augustine's day all theology was centered around God's divine love not His divine judgment. By the time of the Reformation, given the circumstances and events demanding it, God was now seen to lead out towards humanity in judgment upon man's sin.

Surprisngly, I had not expect to discover this understated subjectline, but when coming upon it considered it extremely relevant to the discussions that have been occurring between Rob Bell's Love Wins book, and his accusers, who are primarily motivated in maintaining Reformed dogma and traditions that support Reformed theologies. An ideology which pervasively underlies many of today's Evangelical traditions and worship beliefs having replaced Augustine's idea of God's covenantal grace with Luther and Calvin's Reformational ideas of man's depravity (sin) and election (thus creating a post-Augustinian Reformational theology).

Consequently, Paul's emphasis upon Jesus' covenantal love (as nuanced by Augustine) was displaced over time with a re-interpretive Pauline emphasis upon man's sin and election (sic, Reformational theology). Making it no surprise to find Paul's original emphasis upon God's love "rediscovered" when returning to the mileau of first century Palistinian Judaism and its concordant beliefs (what is now being named "Paul's New Perspective"). Because it was a perspective that was lost amid post-Augustinian, Reformational teachings that had re-interpreted first-century Christian theology with a Reformational-bias towards God's judgment upon man's sin, thus creating the resultant Reformational doctrines of election and justification.

What this means is that in light of God's covenanted love to mankind - that is, His divine charter for man's redemption - God leads out with divine love. That God sees man in terms of love first, and only then in sin, second, is monumental. It is because of His love for us that God seeks our restoration back into fellowship with Himself, no less than a man or a woman would seek one another. Not in terms of deficiency, or by traits of sinfulness, but in terms of wholeness, meaning, and well-being. To know God loves us is to see ourselves as He would see (and accept us) in all of our being. Not in terms of our sin, but in terms of who we are in His image. God's covenantal love juxtapositions itself against our depravity. This was the Apostle Paul's understanding that maintained itself through to Augustine's teachings 400 years later. But by the Reformation, a thousands years after that, time and circumstance had changed our pictures of ourselves to one of a sinful, depraved race of beings living under the judgment of God. A judgment that would require a holy divine election in order to receive God's love. An election locked into the capriciousness of God's holy being that without it condemned man to a hell fire of destruction in both this life and the next.

Once Einstein was asked to define what darkness was and he reportedly stated it was the absence of light (or, I may have confused this, and it may have been "that cold was the absence of heat"). So too we may conjecture that sin is the absence of love, that death is the absence of life, that hell is the absence of heaven. These are simplistic statements but one not fully appreciated in light of the current "controversies" over how God's love "wins," or how God's person, being, presence, power, might, design, rulership "wins." But when seen as the absence of each of these qualities  (or manifestations, or whatever), we then get the opposite (that is, strictly speaking on a dualistic level which our present day Western cultural mindset seems to thrive on). And so, it is time to re-right the covenantal understanding of the church by giving precedence in its beliefs and doctrines towards emphasizing God's covenantal love first, before rephrasing it in terms of man's relationship to God's covenant, as broken and sinful.

And so, read on. And as you do, rethink why you haven't recently heard of Christ's atonement juxtapositioned around the OT Covenantal-paradigm... it used to be, but largely has become forgotten in light of Evangelicalism's persistent and opposing systematic ideas of "justification" as a Roman "penal substitutional" act necessitated by modern day Reformers. Reformers who ironically need their own doctrine reformed, having deformed Paul's seminal message of God's love sent to man through His Son Jesus Christ. Who remain presently uninformed themselves by their Reformational doctrines, rather than informed by the Spirit of God's grace.

And when re-grasping the idea of Christ's atonement as a covenant made between God and man, then re-think how God's love is the foundation and motivation for this covenant, and not how man's sin destroys it. How God's love moved him to make covenant with all of mankind through his son Jesus, so that we may have his love restored and renewed into our sinful lives. It is not a denial of the Lutheran / Reformed teachings on sin and depravity, but it is a re-framing of sin and depravity in light of who God is, what He is doing, and not as defined by ourselves, nor by how we respond.

And finally, re-think how Calvinism's ideas of election and foreordination have robbed our understanding of God's pervasive covenant of love made with all of mankind. Only-and-when the latter truth is understood can the terms of "election" and "foreordination" be then discussed. For the one precedes from the other and not the other way around! To be elected into God's love, and foreordained before the foundation of the world into the fellowship of His Trinity and with His being... these are significant, mind-blowing concepts. That God's covenant with man is undergirded by his election of man into restored relationship with Him; that He foreordained these events to become a reality made through His Son Jesus as Israel's Messiah and as the Gentiles Savior should move us to praise and worship for God's greatness and love. These are not first and foremost soteriological terms, these are covenantal terms made as a charter with all of creation, with all of mankind, throughout time without end, eternally! Praise God!

Consequently, we must place God's Word first, our doctrines second. God's revelation first, our words second. We must understand Scriptures biblically first, and less so systematically and/or dogmatically. The entirety of this blogsite has shown the importance of this again, and again, and again. Remember what you are reading. Put it together in your hearts and souls. Don't let these ideas be so soon displaced by another teacher, prophet and soothsayer, no matter their popularity and the reception of their sheep-like followers. Remember God's words. Remember the Spirit's teachings. Be a shepherd and not a sheep. Learn to lead and no longer follow. Learn to discern God's word, to carry it in your hearts and being, and to desire strong meat and no longer milk. Stand up, and in love, declare God's love in every way possible, in every way imaginable, to the glory of the Almighty.

RE Slater

September 28, 2011

 

 

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Further Necessary Observations and Conclusions

RE Slater, September 28, 2011

In light of NPP I have overlooked a couple of important developments, but these will become evident when reading through this document. Those several issues are as follows:

One, a re-appreciation of late Judaism and how God worked within the Old Covenant using Israel's ideologies of culture and customs pertaining to worship and faith practice to percolate their faith and faithful observance. And as a subsequent idea, how the Americanized gospel of today's evangelical modernism must relax and allow for cultural accommodations of the gospel within global heritages and customs (rather than the older missiological idea of Westernizing the gospel through Inquisitions, crusades, martyrdom's, banishings, and pulpiteering).

Two, a further point of NPP is that of its emphasis on faith-works as a natural response and outflow of God's renewing love restored into an individual's life or a tribal customs. It yet maintains the Protestant standard of faith-alone without works, but also restores the practice of having gracious works in one's Christian life. Thus the emergent Christian Church's emphasis on "cup of cold water" ministries both individually and corporately alongside the older denominational dogmas of holiness and righteous living. Of orthopraxy over orthodoxy.

God's Covenant to all the Nations

Three, one might even take the added step of visualising NPP as it moves towards Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy beliefs and practices to make allowance for the variety of human apprehensions of the gospel of Christ which view faith through the actual performance of worship and good works. You see this in the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox faith, but yet, Reformational Protestantism's declaration by-faith-alone, though true, may not fit all men and women's expressions using this dogmatically declared abstraction. As example, the early church's practice of baptism was once synonymous with a declaration of faith but in modern times we have separated the faith act from the baptismal ceremony. So too have evangelicals separated the decision of faith from the actions of faith. Whereas in biblical times it was more common to see faith expressed alongside of, and in conjunction with, acts of faith. How much more likely then is it that an individual's believing faith-act be similarly declared as a sinner's faith decision once-and-for-all-time?

The Abrahamic Covenant
enacted by faith

Our Western understanding would divorce this behavioral practice for many so that abstract concepts like "faith alone" remain bare of meaning for many poeple unless translated first into "faith-acts" which at that self-same moment gives birth to one's decision of "faith." As example, Abraham declared his faith, but he also acted on his faith by hearing God's calling to leave Ur of the Chaladees and proceed into the wildness laced with Mesopotamian caravan routes. Without his faith he may not have left Ur; but without leaving Ur his faith was yet an "un-faith." He had to act. Which is what both the Old and New Covenants of God require of us to do. To submit to them and to act upon them through observation of their Convenantal requirements. The old covenant seemed full of requirements, and yet, as Jesus remarked, there was but two... "Love God and love one another." Supremely summed up in the New Covenant made in his blood. So then, we see that faith is barren without action, and action is meaningless without faith. So then, lets give our non-Reformational brethren some credit and behave our over-eager doctrines a little more contritely before those that differ from our own.

Four, moreover, this latter understanding, is actually the real understanding of those "faith-alone" Christians who, when practising their faith, who actually renew their faith, making it real for both themselves and those around them whom it affects. It is not a foreign concept at all. Just not one understood in this manner. And thus, the matter of linearity is eclipsed (the idea of which comes first, faith or act) within the greater substance of the very faith-act itself. For how would one know if he or she is of faith unless it is revealed and practiced (per James, Paul, etc)? If there is no change in our demeanors then the reality of our faith is on paper without subscription, without conviction, without transformation.True reformation is transformation in action.

Fifth and lastly, to Scot McKnight's concluding remarks at the end of this document, I wish to add the above observations and summarizations as further commentary to Sanders, Dunn, Wright's initiating works. Further, Tim Gombis has just released a book on this very subject of NPP, and so I would recommend it as a further iteration to today's modernistic, evangelistic mis-apprehension of God's covenant in his son Jesus in the links just below. However, as Andrew Perriman observes, Gombis did not go far enough in his evaluations and differentiations with modern day evangelicalism, being found in the heart of evangelicalism himself.

May God's grace and peace be yours,

RE Slater
September 28, 2011


Tim Gombis - The Paul We Think We Know

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/07/tim-gombis-paul-we-think-we-know.html

Why Tim Gombis Doesn't Go Far Enough

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/07/why-tim-gombis-doesnt-go-far-enough.html

 

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Understanding the New Perspective on Paul

http://www.vanguardchurch.com/mcknight_npp.pdf

by Scot McKnight

www.jesuscreed.org

August 6, 2007

This document is found at www.vanguardchurch.com/mcknight_npp.pdf

This series was originally published at www.jesuscreed.org

Beginnings: E.P. Sanders

In Christianity Today (CT), Simon Gathercole of Cambridge University has a lengthy and fine study of the good and bad of the New Perspective on Paul (NPP) (see “What Did Paul Really Mean?”, Christianity Today, August 2007). What is the New Perspective on Paul? The most significant development, outside of historical Jesus studies, in biblical studies in the last 50 years. Today I want to begin at the beginning and see if I can explain it. I will continue this throughout the week as we take a readable look at the New Perspective and hope to stand next to Simon’s piece in CT.

The opposition to certain elements of the NPP has become so fierce for some that denominations have gathered to see if pastors who represent that denomination adhere to the NPP or not — if they do, they’re out.

The NPP begins, oddly enough, with a public lecture on 4 November of 1982 by my then-mentor in PhD studies, Jimmy Dunn. I didn’t hear it; but I heard plenty about it. It was published the next year and it changed NT studies by giving a handle to what was going on. But it took awhile for what was going on to take on the name “The New Perspective.”

What was it that Jimmy said? In 1977, five years earlier, E.P. Sanders published Paul and Palestinian Judaism and Jimmy basically captured the shift in perspective that Sanders unleashed in his expression “new perspective on Paul.” At the time, nearly everyone was captivated by Sanders but there were voices like this: “Let’s not get too excited” or “He’s basically right but that’s not the whole story” or “This is so innovative we have to think about this some more” or “There are some problems here but I’ll have to do some careful work in Judaism to show it.” Some said, with Dunn, “The tide has changed. We have entered a new world.”

Here’s what Sanders in essence said:

1. Judaism was not a religion of works where if you built up enough credits you’d find final approval with God. Paul can’t be understood saying that about Judaism.

2. Turning Judaism into a “works” religion flies in the face of all of Jewish scholarship, emerges from Luther’s problem with the Catholic Church and gets imported onto Paul, and is out of touch with the vast bulk of ancient Jewish sources. (Sanders allowed some, but not much, works-type religion in Judaism.)

3. Judaism’s understanding of salvation (which is a Christian way of capturing the reality) is rooted in two themes: God’s election and the covenant. God chose Israel and this gave Israel salvation; Jews were not worried about final redemption and were not striving to gain eternal life by accumulating merit. The Covenant is the foundation of all of Jewish religion. To suggest that Jews were accumulating merit because this is human nature is not true according to Sanders.

 

Israel's reaffirmation of God's Covenant

4. The Law, or [the] observing and obeying [of] the Law, is how Jews “maintained” their relationship to the covenant and God and not the way of entering into that covenant. To say Jews followed the Law to get salvation misses why Jews loved the Torah.

5. Righteousness describes behavior that conforms to that Torah.

Thus, Sanders put all this together in what he called “covenantal nomism” — a covenant that creates a community called to obey the Law (nomos); any offense of the Torah requires appropriate sacrifice and atonement. Those who live this way — within the bounds of the Torah — are righteous.

This basic set of factors is at the heart of the New Perspective on Paul. Sanders himself proposed that Paul believed the Church had entered into the eschatological day — he called Paul’s theology participationist eschatology. But Sanders’ proposal on Paul wasn’t his major contribution.

It was Jimmy Dunn who took Sanders’ view of Judaism and gave us a new Paul and a new understanding of Paul’s relationship to Judaism and therefore a new perspective on Paul.

[Note to CT: I see resemblance in the caricatures of Beza, Luther, Calvin, Wright and Sanders, but that picture of Jimmy Dunn looks more like Bruce Chilton than Jimmy. Anyone else observe this?]

Second Phase: James D.G. Dunn

Today we will look at the second phase of the New Perspective on Paul. The first phase is the work of E.P. Sanders in 1977. The second phase was the work of Jimmy Dunn, and that began in 1982 and came to full fruition with his pumpkin book, The Theology of the Apostle Paul, in 2000.

Dunn basically agrees with Sanders on Judaism: election-based, covenant-shaped relationship for Israel with God to whom God gives the Torah to know how to live as God’s people.

Where Dunn shifted things was with Paul, and he argued at first that Paul’s problem with his Judaizing opponents (not the same as “Judaism” as a whole) was that they were constructing a nation-based righteousness, a nationalistic righteousness, that kept Gentiles out because it was simply a nation’s faith.

Over time Jimmy shifted his language to the “sociological markers” of a community so that “works of the Torah” were not “merit-seeking works” but “boundary-marking works.” That is, the Judaizers were trying to make the Gentile Christians become Jews [Judaizing, Proselytising]. The “works of the Law,” then, were not merit-shaped works but specific things like sabbath, food laws and circumcision. (Think concretely, Jimmy was asking us to do, when we get to this expression “works of the Law.” Avoid thinking of the expression the way Augustine and Luther and Calvin do.)

For Paul, one was a member of the Church, the people of God, by faith and not by works (by adhering to such things as circumcision, sabbath, and food laws — the works that separated Jews from Gentiles). So, Paul’s idea of faith was the way all people — [both] Jews and Gentiles — could gain access to and enjoy the saving work of God in Christ.
 

Teaching God's Covenant to
future generations

Fundamentally, Paul’s mission was to form a new people of God, the Church, on the basis of faith and because it was by faith and not works (boundary markers) it was a people of God that could include Jews and Gentiles. Justification was God’s work of declaring and making righteous those who had faith in Jesus Christ.

Much more could be said, but our focus this week is on the core issues that are causing a stir for so many.



Third Phase: N.T. Wright

The first phase of the New Perspective on Paul was E.P. Sanders; the second was the work of James Dunn; the third phase is the work of N.T. Wright, whose earliest book was a study of Paul and who then began to unleash his massive set of volumes on Christian Origins and the Question of God.

[Note added: As Tim Gombis reminds us in a comment, it is not like 1-2-3 in the relationship of Sanders-Dunn-Wright; it is not that Sanders said it, Dunn then added, and then along came Tom Wright to add some more. The relationship of these three scholars can be said to be post Dead Sea Scrolls and part of the awakening to Jewish sources of the 70s. The three are actually dialectically related to one another and they sharpened one another’s ideas in mutual interaction and debate. When it comes to formative writings, writings that shaped us, the relationship can be reasonably said to be Sanders-Dunn-Wright.]

Wright’s books begin with is Climax of the Covenant, move to What Saint Paul Really Said, and now in Paul: In Fresh Perspective. It’s a bit hard to sum up Wright in a paragraph or two but I’ll give it a whirl and let the experts on Paul chime in for corrections and modifications.

Wright’s early work was a macroscopic understanding of Paul in light of how he understood Jewish history unfolding. His big insight, which he applied with potency and probably too often, was the theme of exile. Israel was “in exile” still at the time of Jesus and Paul — even though Israel was back in the Land, the promises of Isaiah and others hadn’t been completely fulfilled. Paul’s theology was shaped by this conviction and by covenant and by new creation.

But Wright agreed basically — as did Dunn — with Sanders’ perspective on Judaism: election-based, covenant-shaped work of God, to form God’s people to whom God gave the Torah, to show to them how to live before God in righteousness.

In other words, Judaism was a religion of covenantal nomism. It’s pretty hard to read the OT and not see the potency of Sanders’ perception of the pattern of religion for Israel.

Where Wright differed from Sanders (participationist eschatology) and Dunn (sociological markers of the Torah and community of Israel) was on how Paul reworked that covenantal nomism (Wright’s view of Paul is hard for me to bring to a single expression)... [It went something like this... At the] "end of exile," Jesus is recapitulating [(recapturing? resummarizing?)] (i) Israel’s covenantal history and their need to be “in Christ,” (ii) their yearning for new creation, and, (iii) - in his most recent augmentation - their anti-empire ideology.

The Church in Covenant Community
with the God of Israel

Justification, of course, gets revisioned in the New Perspective. Sanders isn’t known for this so much and Dunn’s view has shifted a little over time, but Wright came out swinging on this one and has recently done a little shifting as well. But, Tom said that justification described not how to get into the people of God but identified who was in the people of God. It was not a “salvation” term but a “covenant” or “ecclesial” term. It said something about who was already in and not something about how to get into the people of God.

Tom has suffered from serious misrepresentations; he has made some adjustments; and his view of justification has some breadth and depth and some width. What perhaps annoys most is that he’s intent on out sola-scripturing the Reformed camp; what annoys someone like me is that I hear too much on the part of the Reformed camp that Wright’s views are not consistent with the Reformation. How ironical is that? Isn’t the question: What does the Bible say? [and not, what does Reformed Theology say!?]

No one has captured the young scholar more than Tom Wright. One reason is because there is no one out there who writes as well; combine that with a fertile, creative, courageous mind and a life dedicated to the church and you come up with Tom Wright. Do I agree with him all the time? Nope. But, like Jimmy Dunn and Ed Sanders, I read their every word.



Correcting Some Misperceptions about New Perspective

With these three summaries now on the table, and with some fine clarifications by others, I wish now to state what we have to do when we start talking about the “New Perspective” because I’m hearing lots of things that I think are gross distortions. Simon Gathercole’s piece in CT is a nice summary; I have only little quibbles with it but I have more than quibbles with what I sometimes hear.

First, there is no official “New Perspective Institution” or “NP Denomination” that filters everything through a grid to make sure it is sound. What Jimmy Dunn called “the new perspective” was a trend emerging out of the rediscovery of Jewish sources and how Paul fit into how people were re-construing Judaism. But, there is a wild diversity out there of people who have plowed their own furrow. Please avoid saying the “New Perspective” says “X.” Try to connect with a name as much as possible.

Second, the only “new perspective” I know that can be said to be represented across the board is a new perspective on “Judaism.” There is a common thread: Israel was elected by God, brought into the covenant and given the law to regulate how covenant people live. Thus, Sanders’ covenantal nomism is a common thread — even if Dunn and Wright have modifications and differences with Sanders. Dunn’s and Wright’s modifications are really more than that: they have both investigated the Jewish sources themselves. And on top of them are all kinds of offshoots and variations, but there seems to me to be a general consensus that Judaism — and this is not the same as the “Judaizers” Paul went toe-to-toe with — was not a works-based religion but a covenant-based religion in which works played a prominent, sometimes more than other times, role.

Third, when it comes to Paul, there is wide variation in Sanders, Dunn and Wright. It is unfair to say these three are the same when it comes to what they think about Paul. I’m not sure there is such a thing as “The” New Perspective on Paul. Those who say this aren’t reading the books of these authors. Sometimes they are drawing unities that don’t exist. To speak of a unified theory of Paul in a New Perspective is inaccurate. What I’m hearing today is mostly criticism of NT Wright; what is being said about Wright would not always be applicable to Dunn and Sanders. Which means, perhaps most importantly for theological debates, that…

Fourth, there is no real “systematic theology” at work in this New Perspective on Paul. Much of the criticism I’m hearing attributes what “New Perspective” folks believe at the level of systematic theology. Sanders doesn’t care about this; Jimmy Dunn is not a systematician; and Wright isn’t really one either — they are biblical theologians and historians. NT Wright, of course, is the Bishop of Durham and that means he’s Anglican — and if anyone knows what systematic theology that is you’ll have to tell us, but the 39 Articles really isn’t a “systematic theology.” Let’s not forget this. To suggest there is a systematic theology at work here, and to suggest there is one systematic theology at work, is poppycock. Most of what I hear at this level is an invention by those who infer what the systematic theology would look like if Sanders and Dunn and Wright composed one. It is never wise to make up a theology and then criticize it.

Fifth, the NPP does give rise to [an] exegesis of Paul that, however, can lead to some major shifting in theology and, in particular, how to understand salvation. Next I will give a final consideration and I hope it will give us something to understand.



Augustinian Anthropology and Criticism of New Perspective

The crux of the fierce criticism of the New Perspective on Paul is what I will call an Augustinian anthropology. Hear me out because I think this is behind nearly every criticism I’m hearing of the NPP, and many times I’m not hearing that it is this that is actually prompting the criticism.

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Behind the Reformation is Augustine; behind much of modern evangelicalism, especially in the Reformed circles today, is the Reformation. Therefore, at the bottom of the evangelical movement in the Reformed circles is Augustine and his anthropology. The New Perspective, by and large, probably does not adopt a fully Augustinian anthropology but it is rare that such an issue arises in the discussion. At times I hear the NPP doesn’t have an adequate theory of sin — well, I think NPP would say “Neither does the Reformation. So there!” So, let’s dig into this just a bit today and see if we can shed some light on the NPP and help us all.

What is Augustine’s anthropology? (I’m no specialist on this, but this is how I understand it. Experts chime in.)

1. Humans are born in original sin.

2. Humans are bound to their sinful natures.

3. Humans have an incurable itch to justify themselves and seek merit [e.g. we are legalists at heart].

4. But humans cannot please God because they are bound to those sinful natures that cannot please God.

5. Humans are therefore “naturally” condemned before God.

6. They are in need of God’s awakening grace and new life — through the Holy Spirit.

7. The only way out of this condition of self-justification and merit-seeking is to surrender that selfish, proud self-image and cast oneself on God in the mercy of Christ through the regenerating power of the Spirit.

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[A friend and colleague, an Augustinian scholar, reworks my points into this:

I think Augustine would agree to some form of each of the statements you have listed. However, I don’t think it quite gets at the core of Augustine’s thoughts or concerns. Or to put it differently, it identifies Augustine’s positions as they emerged in his debate with Pelagians and not so much with the rest of his thought.

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I think he always remained a rhetorician rather than a systematic thinker, so the images he employs are often more fundamental than an abstract statement of his doctrine. In his Confessions, the guiding image is that of the prodigal son (kind of overlaid on some semi-Plotinian metaphysics). I don’t think Augustine’s first word in his anthropology is “sin”. I think it is “love.” Sin is just love gone bad — as evil is good gone bad.

So maybe to rephrase it, using the vocabulary of the earlier Augustine:

1. Humans, like God, are lovers.

2 and 3. Humans though are bad lovers, redirecting their love from God to the good things God made. This creates in them disordered desires.

4. Humans have become incapable of loving God for himself (instead of themselves) and loving other things in” God.

5. Humans are incapable of being happy, like the prodigal son who exchanged his father’s table for eating husks with the pigs. etc.]

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[Per the aforementioned encapsulation of Augustine by Reformational theology re "sin" and "depravity"... ] each of these elements shapes the Reformers’ perception of the gospel, [that of] salvation, and how to understand Paul. But there is more…

Standing next to Augustine’s anthropology is the way to attack the human (is this too strong?) in preaching the gospel: show [how] humans are selfish, merit-seeking people who are in need of seeing their sinfulness and need of grace. Show them they need to trust and give up on their own works. The starting point for Reformed gospel preaching is an anthropology; that anthropology for many is Augustinian [(or is it, the Reform's view of Augustine?) - skinhead... ]; [and] that anthropology is pure selfishness.

The Law factors into this as far as I can tell in this way: the Law is how corrupted humans seek to earn favor with God; they climb the Law to find their way to God. But, Paul is interpreted to say that’s not the way; that way is legalism and death. The gospel, which this view tends to pit over against the Law in the severest of ways, is the way to redemption — through grace, by faith, and faith alone.

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If the New Perspective teaches — rightly or not — that neither the opponents of Paul nor Jews in general were merit-seeking humans, then the central foil of the gospel — how to understand the human condition and how to attack human nature — is undercut and the entire framework of the gospel is changed. Thus, the critics of the New Perspective are aiming at the soteriological framework of the NPP that they (the critics) have assumed to be right, that they have inherited from Calvin-Luther-Augustine, and which they believe was at the heart of Paul’s theology. I am not saying that all of the Reformed contention here is what I sometime ago called “grace grinding” (talking about grace but doing so only to grind a human into selfish dust), but what I am saying [is] that the Reformed tradition operates with a self-conscious anthropology that derives from Augustine (who provided an interpretive grid for the NT texts).

Stendahl and Sanders laid blame on Luther for seeing in the Judaizers the Roman Catholic Church. That may or may not be the case. What to me is the case is that the real opponent of Paul for the old perspective is not the Catholic Church but Pelagius. NPP folks need to harp less on Luther and his Catholic polemic and start focusing on Augustine and Pelagius. Did Augustine get it right? Did Augustine get it right when he saw in Pelagius the human condition writ large?

The question is this: Was this the anthropology of Paul? Of Judaism? of the Old Testament? Was Paul’s gospel shaped by this anthropology?

There are, of course, other elements, and one of them is central and I’d beg you to listen to this one: if one finds an element or two in the NPP inaccurate that does not mean that the whole thing has to be tossed overboard. I’m seeing far too many “all or nothing” approaches to this issue — from both sides.

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