So far from what I am reading, I think my difficulties simply comes from overstating the NPP position. What I read is pretty much my own understanding which already rejects the kind of exaggeration which had Luther calling James the epistle of straw. I have already said we should not take Paul to mean what you do is not important. And explanations of NPP simply say that Paul’s rejection of justification by the law refers to things like dietary laws which is exactly what I would see as cultural Judaism.
No – the point is that they are trying to see Paul in his sociocultural historical element rather than through any lens built up via human theological tradition, as well as rather than through the modern worldview people bring to the text without recognizing it. For example, seeing Pharisee thinking and reasoning methods in Paul isn’t just another perspective, it’s an element of Paul’s perspective that has been ignored.
Yep – it’s a form of relativism used to justify particularism.
Calvin and Aquinas both suffer from the disadvantage of seeing things through a very Augustinian lens.
Always keeping in mind "ad fontes!.
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Probably, but I would skip both the Reformed and the Catholic views and just look at the “Post-New Perspective” and the “Jewish” views since both work more directly with the reality of Paul’s context.
There was a huge study several decades back that concluded that the majority of church members in the English-speaking world not only don’t understand the main points of Christianity as recounted in the Creed, but don’t have even a passing grasp of what their own churches teach – despite many people confidently asserting that their church is more right than others.
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But unless you have delved into how a certain first-century Jew raised in second-Temple Jewish thinking looked at the world, how do you have the slightest clue what “the plain meaning of the text” is in the first place?
That’s where the whole “new perspective” bit is something of a misnomer: it’s really an attempt to get at the old, or rather the original perspective.
Yeah, they’re getting it from ignorance of the Greek. Really, anyone who has read writers such as Thucydides and Xenophon and the like will recognize that the NWT rendition is a joke.
I would call it ‘manglegesis’ because it mangles the grammar (and ends up mangling Jesus).
Ah – I see the problem. You’re viewing the text as though it is some special isolated collection of literature that is unconnected to a historical context. The first problem there is that in pretty much everything Paul wrote we are reading one side of a conversation, which leaves us making guesses that frankly tend to be based on our personal worldview. The second is that that conversation itself is part of a greater conversation, one that rests in second-Temple Jewish thought, specifically of a branch of Pharisee thought focused around the school of Gamaliel. So it’s not merely like listening to one side of a phone conversation, it’s like listening to one where we don’t really grasp what the topic is in the first place!
Yes, Paul was writing to Gentiles, but at that point he was writing to first-century Gentiles of a more-or-less Hellenistic bent who were also both somewhat familiar with Jewish thought and knew Jews they could ask about things! It was no accident that the “Apostle to the Gentiles” always started at the synagogue; that was where the founding element of the scriptures – the Jews – were found but it was also where Gentiles gathered who had respect for those Jewish scriptures and the ideals found therein: a community ready-made to hear that the promise that all the nations would be blessed through Abraham had finally arrived in fullness, a community built of those to whom that promise had originally been delivered along with a sampling of those it was meant for!
You’ve got the relationship backwards: the text arose from “1st century Jewish covenantal monism”!
Only because he was speaking to people who already thought in that context and felt no need to explain it. A simplistic example would be the phrase “How ;bout them Cubs?”: someone reading it who didn’t know anything about baseball could well think that the “plain meaning of the text” involved a discussion of a certain group of ursine offspring.
There’s no such thing as “the actual words” apart from their context – it’s like holding a fashion show but without any clothes, just the bare models. This is why there’s a “historical-grammatical method” rather than just a “grammatical method”: the latter isn’t actually possible because a reader will always bring a worldview to the text, so the only correct way to read is to delve into the original worldview of the writer and initial audience.
(Which is why the early Fathers are a better resource than anything from the Reformation: they at least had nearly the same worldview as Paul!)
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, I sincerely appreciate your thorough response… I feel very hesitant engaging too deeply in this conversation, as admittedly, ignorant as I am in terms of the depth of the topic, but I will try over the next few days to touch on some of your very thorough thoughts – many of which I thoroughly agree with.
But as I have said elsewhere, I am a stickler for the basic logic, and can occasionally see logical problems even in topics where I’m not an expert… I do recall when I read Sanders some 30 years ago, I was amazed at both His level of knowledge, and his atrocious leaps of logic and non-sequiturs.
And with sincerest and deepest respect, your statement above is one such example. The very question, the crux of the debate, the very point under dispute – is as to whether or not Paul was or was not writing from the perspective of covenantal nomism.
one simply cannot assume, or assert, the truth of the very subject that is being disputed.
Again, sincerely appreciate the thoughtful engagement.
FIRSTLY - I don’t know how fruitfully to debate this, I think we view this radically differently… but my answer would be, “consult a Greek Lexicon and Grammar.”
The words he chose meant something. I absolutely do not deny in the least the depth of the importance of understanding of the culture, background, intent, purpose, audience, mindset, cultural assumptions, and all of that to fully understand the full intent of what an author is saying, to help us choose between different, legitimate interpretations. Regardless, the words themselves still have a meaning.
And a person can understand what the words literally conveyed even if they didn’t know the full background. part of my heartache about this entire approach, is that it means that practically everyone, from the early church fathers, through the earlier medieval theologians such as Aquinas and Anselm, through the reformers, and all evangelical and conservative and progressive and liberal theologians through roughly in the 1950s, completely, totally, radically, and entirely misunderstood what Paul was saying, as they were only able to read his words, and did not have this magic knowledge that gave the “real” meaning of his words. Especially when that “meaning” conveys something significantly different than what the literal words conveyed."
It sounds downright gnostic to me.
Moreover, I completely grant the idea that historical context, world view of the author, etc. can help us choose between different possible legitimate interpretations of a text… but again, if literally no one from roughly 200AD - 1950AD had ever even conceived of the notion that Paul was “really” talking about the exile, or covenantal nomism… not even as a small minority opinion… then one wonders how legitimate an interpretation of the text it really is, or if these ideas really can be found in the text itself. it goes back to requiring Paul to be one of the history’s worst communicators… he was really trying to convey covenantal nomism, but no one ever got this from his words for some 1800 years until Dr. Sanders finally gleaned it. Paul would be shocked, shocked! to discover that readers had taken his words as referring to an individual being justified of their sins before God…
SECONDLY, though, I suppose I could reframe your own question and ask back…
“Unless you have delved into Pauline thought from his own writings and fully grasped the arguments he himself was making, how do you have the slightest clue if Paul was looking at the world the exact same way as his contemporary first-century Jews raised in second-Temple Jewish thinking?”
Personally, I find the idea preposterous that Paul - after his radical conversion and time spent (3 years if i recall correctly?) engaging with the other apostles who had been taught by Jesus himself, and absorbing this radically transformative Christian thought - would have maintained a worldview that was essentially identical to that of first century second temple Judaism.
Or that he would have imported wholesale second temple Jewish notions into his new Christian theology, or that he would have without question maintained the full and complete legitimacy of contemporary Jewish thought, or their practical outworking of that thought, and would never have pushed back, differed, or perceived any “legalism” in first century Judaism… especially given how much of such legalism is documented throughout Jesus’s ministry in the gospels.
Historical context - particularly the writer’s background and culture, are indeed as you observed of enormous importance for understanding historical texts… and i don’t disagree in the least…but i perceive it as a two way street… the historical context brings light to the texts, but the texts themselves must be allowed to give insight as to how a particular individual from a particular culture may have interacted with, broken from, challenged, modified, critiqued, or pushed back against his culture.
I submit that one cannot take “typical” First century Jewish thought, and then use that as the final authority on which to understand Paul’s words, and then force his words, whatever they actually said grammatically, to conform to typical first century Jewish thought. If anything, Paul wasn’t a typical first century Jew, no?
But as always, I would value your thoughts or anything you think I am missing.
Well, yes, I agree. Just for fun I looked it uo on the JW website, they give this explanation of John 1 (“the word became a god”…
In the original-language text, the two occurrences of “God” (Greek, the·osʹ ) at John 1:1 are grammatically different. In the first occurrence, the word “God” is preceded by the Greek definite article, while the article does not appear before the second occurrence
According to that logic, Matthew 1 should be translated…
An Abram begat the Isaac,
An Isaac begat the Jacob,
A Jacob begat the Judah…
Here again, if you are accurately representing the basic “new perspective on Paul”, I find the reasoning rather dubitable.
Paul was explicitly and specifically writing to people who were not raised or enculturated in the culture of first century, second temple thought, no? You mentioned it yourself but seemed to suggest that the impact was minimal…yes, He was the apostle to the Gentiles, he was writing to predominately Gentile audiences, who lived in providences of the Roman empire quite far from Jerusalem…Rome and Galatia weren’t exactly cities that neighbored Jerusalem, and i think it safe to say that the vast majority of his intended audience in those cities had not been steeped from birth in understanding second temple covenantal nomism… many would have been direct gentile converts who had not even previously been metuentes.
If he wanted the Romans or Galatians to understand all this covenantal nomism stuff, I cant hlp but think he would have explained it explicitly. Again, unless he’s the worst communicator in history, he would not have assumed that the Gentiles in Rome and Galatia would have “caught” his (supposed) subtle references or allusions, since he was explicitly not “speaking to people who already thought in that context.” If he was a decent communicator at all, he would have known that he would indeed have had the need to explain it.
So again, I am left with the idea that Paul would have been shocked, shocked! to discover that some Gentile direct-convert Christians in Rome would have taken from his letter to them the idea that justification referred to their individual salvation and new status before God.
well, I’m skeptical of any claim that, “well, these scholars are completely free from bias or agenda”, as if Sanders wasn’t viewing Paul through any theological lens of his own. His theological lens and agenda were all too obvious to me when I read him.
And seeing Paul as a former Pharisee, and seeing elements of that perspective, is common in the theological circles I’m familiar with… for that matter I recall discussions about how Jesus himself more aligned with the Pharisees in his thought than with other sects within 1st century Judaism. But we don’t allow Pharisism to dictate to us either what Jesus or Paul “really” believed.
So I’m not sure how much we can say this perspective has been ignored, unless by “ignored” you simply mean “they don’t agree with N.T. Wright’s perspective”?
Interesting. My first reaction was to think about quoting Matthew 19 again, since there is nothing collective about Jesus’ response. But then that is about answering the question “what must I do to have eternal life?” Justification is not mentioned there and “justification” is not an idea I connect with so easily. So shifting it to this popular new collective paradigm might be helpful (not sure).
Amen to that! I share your skepticism about the pretense to “objectivity” in this. It seems to me entirely too easy to project whatever you want on the so called way of thinking of people who are not present to voice their objections. Seems like it would have the same order of accuracy as when we have people here summarizing the views of others here on this forum only too prone to strawman arguments.
sure, though when i think about Jesus in this connection, one of the few times he used the word “justified” was in his parable about the individual tax collector who was justified through his repentance, rather than the Pharisee (who was trusting in his covenantal nomism???)
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Actually … Yes! I think you might have just checked a box in the other column than the one you meant to check. After all, Jesus probably wouldn’t have given an example about a nonexistent thing? It was probably even prevalent… Hence his concern to showcase it in a parable.
Yeah, he certainly wasn’t affirming it, which is what you’re no doubt trying to draw on. But it is evidence about how Hebrews of the time thought about things.
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Mervin, I know of no modern scholar, evangelicals included, that dispute that covenantal nomism was a thing. Sanders work was pretty quite thorough on that part (although the major critique of Sanders on that point is that other scholarship observed that Hebrew thought was far more diverse than Sanders’s rather monolithic portrait). Either way, I dont dispute it either, quite the reverse. I could give you paragraphs on that aspect
but that isnt remotely the dispute…
the dispute is that he (Sanders, and those who followed him) were essentially claiming that Paul was affirming it, or adhering to it, endorsing it, or the like… and that when he was talking about people being justified by faith alone, he was really pushing covenantal nomism. that is my dispute, not whether covenantal nomism was a thing back in the 1st century.
My own (perhaps irrelevant, I guess) point was just that, endorsed or not, that was the cultural air breathed by Hebrews back then, and perhaps knowing that might seem relevant to some. But thanks for the clarification! Which I’m happy to leave, then, to any who have an interest in defending it. I confess that my interest in all of it as a whole under that label (or NPP or whatever) does not match yours.
Mervin, that is truly an important point and quite relevant. This indeed was Sanders’s very valuable (and relatively uncontroversial) observation and contribution.
In fact, if I might be so bold, his basic observation fits perfectly within the larger reformed understanding of Soteriology…
Namely, that us reformed types do not believe that the Old Testament was a legalistic, or works -righteousness system. Modern dispensationaliats tend to believe some variation of that, That the mosaic law was one of salvation by works in some form or fashion. Us reformed types insist that Moses was saved by grace, the same way that we are. Hence the sacrifices to atone for us when we sin, (I.e., when we violate the law), etc.
Point being, if the OT was the Bible that the Jews were using in the first century, it is completely unsurprising that they would Have some sense of being saved by grace. (Whether or not they really lived it I think is the real question… one that the Gospels really seem to speak to…)
And in that same vein, we perceive Paul as confirming that same grace that is found throughout the Old Testament. Righteousness from God apart from law is something that was testified by “the law and the prophets” (Rom 3)… “was not our ancestor Abraham justified by faith”… (Rom 4), etc.
Where Sanders got controversial, as I recall reading him and if interesting to you, is when he decided that since Paul grew up in that culture, he must have bought into it and embraced it, hook, line, and sinker, and therefore anything he says about justification, he must ”really” have meant covenantal nomism, even if the words he’s using don’t sound like that.
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How many of them were first-century Jews?
No, it just means he was a normal human operating within his own culture.
“Radical conversion” is an assumption that was imposed on the text later. All that we can gather from the text is that this highly-educated Jew got the point that Jesus was the (very Jewish) messiah. The “radical conversion” idea assumes that there was a sharp and radical break with Judaism rather than Paul recognizing that here was what Judaism had been pointing towards.
What other notions would he even have? Do you think God downloaded wholesale some new cultural background?
The only evidence of Paul dealing with legalism is when he emphasizes that Gentiles don’t have to become Jews to enter the Kingdom, a point on which he stood firmly with the prophets. Nothing of the sort of legalism in the Gospels appears on Paul’s work, which makes perfect sense since he was writing to Gentiles (who didn’t have the problem of trying to build a hedge around Torah).
Paul continues to call himself a Pharisee, particularly in statements in Acts but not limited to those. Nowhere does he say he gave up that or any other part of his identity.
And this points to the problem: the church has held to these traditions about scripture that aren’t actually in scripture, so when such things have to do with Paul and someone corrects them it appears to be something new.
In a seminary reading list about Paul back in the early 1980s there wasn’t a word about any of this – which is what “ignored” means. The only thing I can recall any professor in grad school even mentioning it was to say of course Paul was a Jew but don’t worry about it, just read the text.
Hardly, given what he prayed. Covenantal exceptionalism, sure.
A major element is missing here: that the Reformation mostly failed to recognize that when πίστις is followed by a genitive it should be rendered as “(the) faithfulness of” rather than “faith in”. When that is recognized, covenantal nomism beings to be a clear – if not obvious – fit.
This should have been especially plain given how often Paul does use a preposition that can be rendered as “in” in connection with πίστις (well, at least if one assumes that all the letters labeled as Paul’s really are).
If Sanders uses the term “affirming”, I would say he went too far. IIRC the Gamaliel school of thought fell into covenantal nomism, so Paul would have been in that tradition, but that doesn’t establish that he was teaching it, only that he was operating within that framework.
Of course it’s relevant, it’s part of the “historical” in “historical-grammatical”.
BTW, it just struck me that while I’ve been reading and typing “nomism” my brain has been treating it as “monism”!
I would say it was Paul’s operating model; if he had been writing to Jews to explain why he preached to Gentiles that might have been clear. Really I think the biggest indication in Paul is his little phrase “in Christ”, which to go back to straight Judaism comes out as “in Messiah”, and to be in Messiah was to be in the covenant. But Paul’s focus on Abraham – something in common with second-Temple Judaism (as evidenced in the Gospels) – sets aside any need to actually speak of covenant; as the Jews were “in Abraham”, so Paul’s point is that by following the faithfulness of Abraham believers are also in Abraham, but more pointedly are in Christ. Since Paul’s focus was on Christ crucified, he’s already talking covenant without saying it; the Cross in a real sense is the covenant – as Christ put it, “…in My Blood”. So Paul is taking the covenant concept and putting it in terms more suitable to a less Torah-familiar audience.
As for justification, a big problem is that there really is no term in Hebrew that matches the Greek δικαιόω, and the LXX use hardly frames Paul’s, serving more as a starting point than anything really helpful. Even other NT use doesn’t clarify things much! But again, while Paul was probably thinking in covenantal terms there was no need to spell that out since Christ is essentially Himself the covenant, and that is where justification sits.
So to an extent Sanders could be right, but there would be no reason to expect Paul to be explicit about the covenantal aspect as that rested in Christ, on Whom Pauls’ focus was set.
Well, I think we can get slightly more from the text than just that. The text does describe someone who was a Hebrew of Hebrews, etc., who moved to consider all that rubbish, and rather could perceive himself as the chief of sinners.
But in there we agree indeed. As did Peter, James, and John… All of them I would agree would have recognized that Jesus was the fulfillment of everything they had been believing.
More I’d like to say about that, but don’t have time at present.
Well, maybe my seminary experience was better 
But seriously, I recall us going into great depth even into Jesus’s own teaching and its similarity to various schools of thought in Judaism by diving into the Mishnah…
I genuinely appreciate the discussion, I think we’ve actually made some progress clarifying where we agree and disagree. The section I highlighted above is one place where I’d yet disagree, again, as I don’t follow the logic…
Even if I grant (which I don’t particularly dispute) that Paul was indeed working within a covenantal nomism framework when he was dyed-in-the-wool/anti-Christian Jew… it is simply non sequitur to assert that he was continuing to operate within that framework.
And going to the text while wearing the glasses/lenses that chooses to read everything as though he was indeed operating within that framework, and discovering that he was indeed still operating within that framework, is circular reasoning or begging the question.
It is at this point I think that our approaches are diverging… I will insist that the text itself must be able to speak to the very question as to whether or not Paul was or was not operating within a covenantal nomism framework… it cannot be assumed that he was, and then the text read through that interpretive framework.
But there are good reasons historically, theologically, and textually to believe that he may well have - at minimum - modified, changed, pushed back, expanded, shifted, reinterpreted that framework significantly. When he can literally say that “all these things that were identity markers for my (supposed) ‘covenantal nomism’ I now treat as rubbish…” then I don’t think we’re at a place where we can simply assume that he continued to think and operate in the exact framework he had before his conversion…
Let me expand a bit my thoughts but I’ll use a separate post.
The problem at core I think is theological (and of a kind that, respectfully, Sander’s liberal theological commitments would have preclude him from seeing)… If you’d be so kind as to continue to engage with me here, let me lay out my logic before I move on… Please let me know which of these points you agree with or would challenge:
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On the one hand, you have “Judaism” as defined by the Old Testament - a religion of covenant, but simultaneously of individual salvation (individuals had to offer sacrifices for their sins; they could be cut off from the covenant by their actions, etc.) Paul obviously affirmed the entire, complete, and full truth and validity of Old Testament religion.
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Even in the Old Testament, however, the Old Testament itself challenged and warned those who simply were “trusting” in their “covenantal nomism”, rather than their having a real, personal, regenerate heart. “Circumcise your hearts.” “The time is coming when I will punish those who are only circumcised in the flesh.” “Do not say, ‘the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord’”… and perhaps most explicitly:
These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.
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So there is such a thing, especially testified and highlighted by the OT prophets, of outward conformity to the OT laws, but which was not saving for them, as it was not based on a “circumcised heart”. So sure, the OT prophets concurred with covenantal nomism, but warned against those who looked at their “works” as what they were trusting in to save them, if their hearts internally and individually were not alive to the Lord. And so these prophets warned that Jewish worship, although giving appearance of conformity to OT covenantal regulations, is actually based on man-made rules?
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For lack of a better word, might we call this “legalism” or “works-righteousness”, a trust in the external works of the law that was not reflective of the true state of the person’s heart?
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Given our record of Jesus’s interaction with the religious leaders of the day, it does not seem a stretch to say that a similar kind of pernicious external conformity / legalism / works-righteousness was indeed quite common… that Jesus was interacting with a community that largely viewed the law as the lens by which they believed themselves to be righteous, even though “their hearts were far” from the Lord.
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So it sounds like, even though the first century Jews were indeed affirming, nominally, of covenantal nomism, it sounds, from Jesus’s perspective, like they were largely in the same category of the countless Jews through the ages - those ones called out by the prophets - that were indeed (falsely) trusting in their covenant status, which they (falsely) confirmed and found confidence in due to their outward conformity to the “works of the law”, even though their hearts were far from Him.
Before I move on, any chance we have basic agreement on those 6 observations above?
There were jokes that if something wasn’t written before 1850 it wasn’t allowed on the reading lists . . . .
Its common sense to assume he still did unless there is something to indicate a sharp break – people don’t get a sudden change in worldview overnight, and there’s nothing to indicate Paul got one.
It’s not possible to read the text with no interpretive framework. It’s thus critical to try to read it from the framework of the writer. Since second-Temple Jewish thought shows up in other NT writers, who weren’t educated under a prominent (Hellenistic) rabbi, it only makes sense to take that as Paul’s framework.
The “text itself” can’t speak on its own.
Calling it a “conversion” is itself imposing a framework, usually a Reformation one. Given that the only change was that Paul recognized that something he’d regarded as belonging to the future was actually happening right then, I don’t see “conversion” as a helpful word but rather a misleading one.
The burden of proof must be on those who claim that something more happened than Paul’s Jewish faith gaining a new perspective, namely that the second half of the promise to Abraham was happening and he was supposed to play a role.
I think those are fairly solid. I’d just point out that the Old Testament as we read it was not the framework for thought, but rather an understanding of it that we call second-Temple Jewish thought (specifically late-second-Temple thought, i.e. the Hellenistic variety).