Well, in my defense, I was trying to take your word for it, specifically, your word about it being a matter of emphasis. But I am afraid I don’t have unlimited time at present to study up further, so I’ll have to remain uninitiated for now.
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Cool, cool, cool. Then my word for it is they are very different intepretations of Paul because of the different emphases, not that they are essentially saying the same thing, just emphasizing different facets. The people from either side say the people from the other side are wrong about some things, so it’s not simply a case of just reiterating the “traditional” doctrine using different words.
Could the difference be a shift from Paul’s focus on the importance of what you believe (on particular things it is important to understand) to a later focus on the importance of the fact that you are a believer (a Christian). IOW Paul was all about this shift of thinking brought by Jesus rather than about some imagined superiority of those who are Christian. This would explain my confusion because the latter was not only never a part of my Christian experience but one which I have always actively opposed.
No, the main difference is a fundamentally Jewish frame of reference versus a non-Jewish frame of reference. NPP woud say, it really wasn’t about understanding things or belief for Paul (at least as far as salvation was concerned), it was about identity and community membership.
But this seems like a very strange view of Paul, since so much of his writings are about how the Jewish cultural framework is not needed (as part of his ministry to the Gentiles). Or… are you including in this “identity and community membership” to a shift from a Jewish one to a new community? Do you mean it is all about changing to a new culture to replace the Jewish one? I am having difficulty making sense of this, since this sound like the opposite of not being Christian.
The NPP people would say that’s a huge misunderstanding.
They say the covenant expanded, as was always the plan since Abraham, and Gentiles were included in the “people of God” and it was the means of covenant community membership that changed, from identity in Torah observance to identity in Christ. It’s all a pretty elegant explanation for a lot of things, but The New Testament and the People of God by NT Wright is 535 pages, and that’s just the first volume in the series. And E. P. Sanders and James Dunn have their take on things too. There was a 300+ page book of scholars just responding to the scholarship from Wheaton’s 2010 Theology Conference.
So honestly, if you want to “make sense of it,” it’s going to take more than me trying to explain the gist in a few sentences. That said, their work has had a huge impact on New Testament studies over the last two decades and has held up and been expanded on really well.
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I think I have been misunderstood and you are nitpicking for no good reason. We know full well that Jews do not consider themselves Christians (nor do arabs) and yet both are Semitics…i should have made it clearer…Christians are not semitics and semitics are not automatically Christians…that is the point.
What?! That isn’t a ‘nitpick’… that’s a correction where you are just flat out wrong. There are Messianic Jews - which is a label applied to many Christian Jews even today. And what was the entire middle part of Acts about then where the huge debate was whether or not non-Jewish converts should be expected to adhere to Jewish law like all the other Jewish Christ followers? Your insistence that Jews can’t be Christians would have been news to them. In fact, their challenge was to overcome nearly the opposite conviction of what you just expressed! Some of them believed the only way to become a disciple of Christ was to become a Jewish-law observer first! Hence Paul’s strong reaction to the Galatians and Peter’s visions.
And Arabs?! So Coptic Christians and Arabic Christians never existed either? Many of them are being murdered in Gaza right now! They are a minority, to be sure, but they’ve existed a lot longer than any of our Protestant denominations have!
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No, Adam you are being really dense. Semitic is an ethnic term, not a religious term. It originally referred to people who spoke any of the Semitic languages (Arabic, Amharic,Tigrinya, Hebrew, Tigre, Aramaic, and Maltese). People of Semitic ethnic heritage can be any religion, including Christian. (Some Arabs are Christians by the way.) It makes absolutely no sense what you are saying. Not all people who practice the Jewish religion have a Semitic (Hebrew-speaking) ethnic heritage. Some Christians do have a Semitic ethnic heritage. “Jewish” is used by some people to describe an ethnic heritage and also describe a religious affiliation that often but not always coincides. Many Jews are both ethnically and religiously Jewish. Some people are ethnically Jewish and religiously Christian. Some people are ethnically not Jewish but are religiously Jewish. Christians can be Semitic people, that is the point.
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OK…. So this topic has piqued my interest… I read EP Sanders some 30 years ago in grad school (and recall that I was thoroughly unimpressed… Again, that same idea where I deeply respected his greater learning, but was appalled at some of his (lack of) basic reasoning and logic.). But really never got into the deeper arguments for the NPP. I vaguely remember, skimming over some of NT Wright’s discussions with an open mind (and my roommate at the time was a serious devotee of the NPP and tried to explain it to me as well)…, , but honestly the arguments in its defense seemed to me at the time as radical eisegesis… like they had this new idea about 1st century/second temple Judaism, and were using those insights as their sole lens to foist a new interpretation onto the actual text and make it mean something radically different than the words themselves obviously meant at face value.
I recall at the time, the arguments sounded to me in the same basic category as someone who develops a theory from some other premise, such as “God is love”, and decide to use that as the sole lens by which they read everything else… Such as the way I have seen people decide to use a “hermeneutic of love” …and then claim that Jesus never spoke about judgment, punishment, or hell…. Thus all those places that I think I see him speaking about hell, I’m only seeing that because of my faulty hermeneutic or the evangelical lens I inherited. It is absurd on its face… The NPP came across to me like that… someone coming up with a theory about “what Paul really meant“ that did not come from the text itself (rather, that is it came from a rather dubious theory about first century Jewish Nomism), And then that theory was forced onto the text, and regardless of what the words actually said by any standard of language or grammar, they must really be Paul talking about nomism.
But, practically any knowledge I have of it came from the way my roommate 30 years ago was explaining it to me, so he may not have been the best source, or I might well have misunderstood. But it is interesting and I would not mind studying further as I have time.
I don’t have unlimited time, but any chance you could recommend to me one best book that Best (and succinctly) presents the new perspective theory? And one best book that best (and succinctly) critiques the new perspective?.
Well, that may be, but it really isn’t an argument for or against any position… That sounds very similar to what my roommate was telling me those 30 years ago that I mentioned. And I vaguely recall at the time simply thinking back to him (I think I was circumspect enough at the time to have not said this out loud.)…
"I still don’t think you are acknowledging that your understanding of what these verses mean is a modernistic scholastic understanding, not necessarily what Paul meant.”
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The trouble is that you take each word or statement of jesus on its own, not in relation to the rest of His words. its the same as Scripture itself. You can argue anything with a chosen phrase out of context.
Jesus talks about Heaven, Hell and Jusdgement. OK. But does He also talk about the critera for Juudgement? Does He also not claim to come not to judge? Why take one line of thought and separate it from the whole message.
Hell is for the Devil and His angels. The truly evil of this world. it is not for the rank and file, or the dispationate, or the religiously ignorant, or the non beleiver. Jesus claims the opposite
“Many will claim to call me Lord?” Can’t you see what matters?
We do not buy our way into Heaven so why do you condemn those who are behaving no worse than you but just have no interest in God?
Since when did God demand allegiance, or foce His will onto us? Because that is what you seem to be doing. Belive or else! Or else what? Perhaps you are claiming something for God that He Himself does not claim?
Even worse is to claim that God prejudges, knowing those who will not believe and rejecting them out of hand! What sort of vain God are you worshipping?
Richard
The difference being that getting Paul properly situated in his worldview and mindset is an essential part of the historical-grammatical method – it’s a big part of the essential context, whereas Reformed or any other modern theological framework was not in Paul’s mind at all, any more than was the Council of Trent.
any other modern theological framework … Including that of Sanders, Dunn, and N.T. Wright… I think that was part of my initial major skepticism about this new perspective. They were claiming the reformation erred by reading Paul through their certain lens, not seeming to realize they themselves were reading him through their own lens.
Some of this is coming back to me now after not having given it much thought for 30 years or so.
Speaking as somebody who is also guilty of this (and also not speaking as any kind of expert on NPP - beyond my familiarity with Wright through his online lectures) I’m starting to recognize more and more the emptiness of the objection that any things we don’t like or that rub us the wrong way will inevitably get labeled by us as ‘new’ or ‘radical inventions’ or eisegesis. But just reflect on this - there are not many (any at all?) self-identified Christian traditions that don’t see themselves as rooted in the oldest (back to Christ himself) teachings. I.e. - each one of these thinks that it’s the other traditions that added on or changed something essential to the original gospel in its “purist” form, and they see themselves as returning back to something from before the ‘corrupt’ other view derailed things. So in merely making the claim that ‘this thing I don’t like’ is just some new invention, you aren’t really saying anything that everybody else doesn’t automatically claim as well. To actually distinguish your argument (or make it into any compelling argument at all), you would need to back up your claim with some scholarship. I’m not saying that your view is wrong necessarily - there are some readings that are more faithful to original messaging and intent than other readings, no doubt. But the mere claim that “my view is what Christ himself, or Paul himself actually thought” is a pretty easy and lazy conversation-ender that doesn’t (by itself) really carry any authority. All we’re left with is the presumption that maybe you know what you’re talking about and can back it up … or maybe you can’t.
I’ll bet that N.T. Wright and other scholars like him can (have) brought forward some amount of serious evidence to back up their claims on things like NPP (which is just my presumption, because I know of a lot of respectable pastors from across the political spectrum that have a lot of respect for his scholarship and biblical knowledge - as I do too from having pored over his recent Gifford Lectures.) Not that those were about NPP directly, but I guess they must have been NPP adjacent at the very least even though I don’t recall that label being invoked. I may not agree with him myself on everything, but one thing I can’t do is dismiss him as somebody who doesn’t know what he’s talking about far, far more than I do on theological subjects. And one advantage these present day scholars have over equally (or even more) prestigious scholarship from prior centuries, is that present day scholars already have all their earlier work as part of the available material for consideration. So they can react to people like Augustine or Aquinas and even then Calvin or Wesley and co. as all those prior voices have already built on or critiqued those earlier voices, expanding the available body of material to work with and react to. Early church fathers may have some advantages of being closer in time to the early church (okay - Calvin or Aquinas not so much), but our contemporary experts have the advantage of being able to react to Calvin & Co. and other scholars even more recently than them yet! Each age must wrestle for itself on how to best understand and apply the gospel message of Christ and his early apostles.
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Okay. But 30 years went by, hundreds of dissertations have now been written and reviewed, it’s been the topic of a host of theological academic conferences, and it sure seems to me that at least some version of NPP or at least some of the claims are now considered mainstream consensus in biblical scholarship. So reminisce all you want about your unimpressed college days, but are we supposed to give your outdated second-hand decades-old opinions weight? You have just told us you don’t actually know anything about the current state of the debates.
I don’t know, it really isn’t my area and this conversation topic is like 15 years old, so I haven’t paid much attention to it lately. I’m just generally aware as someone who works in Bible translation and pays attention to Bible scholarship and reads recently published exegetical resources.
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I have never read this Counterpoint book or known anyone who took the class, but based on who is involved, I bet it would be “balanced.”
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Yes. There is also one thing that we sometimes forget: few people are actually pure representatives of an ‘-ism’. We may agree with some basic teachings of some branch of Christianity but not necessarily with everything. Sticking labels on persons may be misleading - we assume that the person believes something he does not necessarily believe.
Especially in larger churches, members do not even know all official doctrines or have misunderstood them. In the large churches, there are several schools or revival movements that may stress different viewpoints, up to the point where their teachings are in conflict with each other. I have been challenged when I told something that is the official teaching of the Lutheran church of Finland - several persons did not believe that the church teaches so although they had background in the church.
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Marvin, as in general, I’m very sympathetic to your thoughts, and I’d be happy to discuss more at length. And I am sympathetic to the concern that “I am right, everyone else does eisegesis.“
But I generally break this down into essentially two categories: you have new interpretations that are still quite consistent with the plain meaning of the text, and those which essentially require me to ignore the plain or direct meaning of the text to large extent.
I would even put the typical Jehovah’s Witness Interpretation of John 1 in the former category. While I disagree with their claim interpretation of course, I can actually look at the Greek in John 1 and see where they are getting it. Regardless of their larger world view that they may be imposing on the text in order to reach that interpretation, that kind of “new interpretation“ Doesn’t raise the same kind of alarms for me. It is right there in the text, and I can see how someone could get that, even if they are mistaken, from that text. Their interpretation may be wrong, but I personally would not call it radical eisegesis.
The specific kind of eisegesis I was talking about, though, is the kind that requires me to believe that the original author was essentially one of the worst communicators in the history of antiquity. Again, similar to the ones I have heard where someone uses the “exegesis of love“, and tries to claim that Jesus never intended for his words to ever suggest that God would ever punish anyone. And that Jesus would be shocked, shocked! To find out that anyone had ever interpreted his words in such a manner. That just seems utterly absurd on its face to me. That kind of interpretation would require Jesus to be one of his histories’s worst communicators, not realizing that the words he used were going to evoke in people‘s minds, the idea of God punishing people.
Now again, I’m just offering tentative reactions based on my vague recollections of 30 years ago, (and I am interested in studying this further… But I recall feeling the similar reaction when I heard about the NPP perspective on “what Paul really meant“…. Paul was really trying to communicate that justification was about being confident of your covenant status, or something to do with realizing you’re still in exile, or whatever… But then the words he used are eerily identical to the exact words that Luther and Calvin would use to describe their position.… Rather than actually using any words about covenant or a church membership or exile or the like when he discusses justification, that would make Paul Remotely sound to any casual observer, as though he were describing a position that was similar to that of Sanders or Wright.
I may be completely mistaken, not remembering their arguments in proper detail, and yes, I suppose it is possible that I am reading all of this through such distorted lenses that I just can’t see it, but at core, I remember that was essentially my objection. That this really was a kind of new interpretation that came almost exclusively from an outside perspective (1st century Jewish covenant al monism or other such external ideas, not derived at all from the text directly) and then was foisted onto the text wholesale in a way that radically changed the meaning of the words right in front of us – the kind of interpretation, again, that would require Paul to be one of his history’s worst communicators, if that is what he was really trying to say all along.
No, of course not. I’m not even offering these as present opinions, I thought I acknowledged that I don’t know enough to even have an opinion at present.
But admittedly it would be interesting to me if anyone here knew enough about the subject to clarify whether my objections from 30 years ago have been addressed without my needing to wade through all those dissertations. That’s why I tend to post thoughts here instead of wading through all that scholarship. I just don’t have that kind of time.
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Or put another way, when talking about historical insights that add to the text… I have no issue whatsoever, and actually deeply appreciate, those insights from history or other historical context that add meaning, depth, or layers to our understanding of a text.
But I begin to get skeptical when scholarship discovers some historical insight that so radically changes the meaning of a text into something that – without that “special knowledge“ – no one in a million years would have gleaned that meaning from the actual words the ancient author used.
(It actually starts to sound almost gnostic to me)
But as I said, although this topic has piqued my interest, I am only operating with vague 30-year-old recollections. I really need to study this in far more depth before I could seriously discuss the specifics.