Can someone please explain this finer point of theology to me?

[Jereth]

Hi everyone,

I'm seeking enlightenment on something that has nagged at me and eluded me for some time.

For the last few years, as far back as my campus ministry days in 1998-2001, I've been hearing various people talk about certain "evangelicals" who are trying to rewrite the Bible's teaching about salvation and justification. Often, the speakers/writers/bloggers I have heard have not gone into much detail and have only alluded to the debate that is supposedly going on somewhere out there in the impenetrable world of high brow academia. I've tried to look into this on and off, as time has permitted, and have managed to figure out a few things, but on the whole I'm still in the dark.

What I have gathered is that a bunch of so-called "evangelicals", apparently led by bishop NT Wright of the UK, are teaching along the lines of:
- the protestant church has understood Romans & Galatians wrongly for the last 500 yeras
- righteousness / justification is not granted to us by grace through faith in Christ alone, but by good works as well
- Paul's teaching about justification in places like Romans 3-4 has nothing to do with individual/personal salvation; therefore individuals like you and me cannot have assurance of salvation on the grounds of what Christ has done for me personally; all we can rely upon is what Christ has done for all God's people in some vaguer way
- Christ/God does not freely give us, or "impute", his righteousness to us, there is no such thing as an objective transfer of sin/righteousness between Christ and me; so the idea that God will look at me on judgment day and see the perfect righteousness of his beloved Son is wrong (again, removing my assurance of salvation)
- I've also worked out that most sound guys such as John Piper and Don Carson think that these beliefs are wrong.

As I said, the whole thing is rather muddy to me still, and much of what I've read has confused me as much as it has helped me, so some of this might not be quite accurate. But I think I do finally have the basic gist of it -- which is that (according to NT Wright and those in cahoots with him) we're not saved by grace simply through what Christ has done for us and freely gives us, but we must contribute something as well as in Roman Catholic teaching.

I'm sure there's someone who reads masg who could kindly explain it to me better.

Thanks,
Jereth

[Stephen Brown]

Jereth, My understanding of the 'New Persepective' is also muddy.  I thought about it a bit in college but haven't much since leaving.
I think you're on the right track, though I'd have to check your assumptions again.  I do recall however, that the 'NP' leading lights would say that a Christian is justified by Jesus Christ alone and that's how one enters the New Covenant.  BUT...a person must then do good works to remain within the covenant blessings of Christ.  

    "Final Judgment According to Works... was quite clear for Paul (as indeed for Jesus). Paul, in company with mainstream second-Temple Judaism, affirms that God’s final judgment will be in accordance with the entirety of a life led – in accordance, in other words, with works." (New Perspectives on Paul, 10th Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference: 25–28, August 2003, by NT Wright)

And this observation from Wikipedia, "New perspective scholars tend to place a higher value on the importance of good works than the old perspective does, taking the view that they causally contribute to the salvation of the individual."

If I read this right, then this is just a throw back to

I'll do some reading to catch up and sharpen my understanding again.

Good to be back on MASG.

[Stephen Brown]

Here's a bit from a John Piper paper that helps to understand the NP position.  I didn't copy the rest , because I don't want to critique the NP yet...just hear what they're proposing.


E. P. Sanders is the main spokesman for the way Pharisaism is reinterpreted by the New Perspective. Here is the way N. T. Wright summarizes it:

    [Sanders'] major point, to which all else is subservient, can be quite simply stated. Judaism in Paul’s day was not, as has regularly been supposed, a religion of legalistic works-righteousness. If we imagine that it was, and that Paul was attacking it as if it was, we will do great violence to it and to him. . . . The Jew keeps the law out of gratitude, as the proper response to grace—not, in other words, in order to get into the covenant people, but to stay in. Being “in” in the first place was God’s gift. This scheme Sanders famously labeled as “covenantal nomism” (from the Greek nomos, law). (What Saint Paul Really Said, pp. 18-19)

Wright agrees with this main thesis of the New Perspective: “Sanders . . . dominates the landscape, and, until a major refutation of his central thesis is produced, honesty compels one to do business with him. I do not myself believe such a refutation can or will be offered; serious modifications are required, but I regard his basic point as established” (Ibid, p. 20).

For example, Wright says that the boasting which Paul aims to exclude by the doctrine of justification by faith (e.g., in Romans 3:27) is not what we usually think it is.

    This ‘boasting’ which is excluded is not the boasting of the successful moralist; it is the racial boast of the Jew, as in [Romans] 2:17-24. If this is not so, [Romans] 3:29 (‘Or is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not of Gentiles also?’) is a non sequitur. Paul has no thought in this passage of warding off a proto-Pelagianism, of which in any case his contemporaries were not guilty. He is here, as in Galatians and Philippians, declaring that there is no road into covenant membership on the grounds of Jewish racial privilege. (Ibid, p. 129)

[Nat Whilk]

Lionel Windsor has a neat sort of summary here.
He says,
"What is this ‘New Perspective’ all about? Unfortunately, this is a very difficult question, because the New Perspective is such a diverse movement. It is a ‘perspective’, not a creed or a religion. Different New Perspective scholars (e.g. E. P. Sanders, James D. G. Dunn, N. T. Wright) emphasise different things, and in different ways. Furthermore, The New Perspective just won’t sit still. Many of its proponents have modified their earlier views. It develops, changes and grows with every new article and book published."

As I understand it, there is not just one new perspective, but rather a range of views. From where I stand it's probably worthwhile looking at individual author's views rather than calling it all New Perspective

[Tim Patrick]

A good book to read for an overview of the discussion is 'Getting the Gospel Right' by Venema (Banner of Truth Trust, 2006). As I remember it, it was produced as a short teaser version of a larger upcoming work.

For what it's worth, my conclusion with regards to the NP is that it isn't always challenging our understanding of the content of the gospel (justification-by-faith), but it does question our understanding of the issues that Paul applied the gospel to.

So - Wright, following Sanders, disagrees that 1st Century Jews believed in justification-by-works. He would say that was an error Luther saw being promoted by the Roman Catholic Church of his day and that he (Luther) mistakenly projected that error back to New Testament times. But what Wright et al. claim was that the Jews' real error was that they believed in justification-by-race. ie. they thought 'because we're Jews, we are the inheritors of the Covenant (including its Laws) and therefore of the gift of salvation'. This line of thinking would seem to gel pretty well with lots of what we read in Romans, etc.

But - and here's the point for me - in either case, whether you think the problem was trusting in justification-by-faith or justification-by-race, the gospel says 'No'. Justification is by grace and is received through faith. Therefore there is no longer Jew or Gentile in God's economy, just as there's no longer anyone who can claim salvation by works. I think the reality is that we have evidence of people trying to claim justification by both non-Christ means (works and race) in the New Testament and so Sanders' New Perspective is actually quite helpful in filling out the breadth of false gospels that exist.

Now, as for the 'faith-to-get-in-but-works-to-stay-in' question, I have less to say about this that's specifically tied to the New Perspective debate. Someone else's turn... ?

Tim

[jereth]

Thanks all u guys for offering your help and insight. I'll try to take some time out later on this year to try and get my head around it a bit more.

Something that's frustrated me about this issue is that virtually everything I come across from New Perspective proponents is written in highly academic, impossible-for-the-layman-to-understand language and concepts. For instance, I found this website devoted to new perspective
http://www.thepaulpage.com/
but all the articles there are long and hard to read and comprehend. It really does my head in.

I've read somewhere that NT Wright has been the one to bring the scholarly discussion to ordinary people -- yet what I've read of him online is extremely esoteric as well! (Obviously I'm not an "ordinary person")

I found theopedia (a theological Wikipedia equivalent) somewhat helpful:
http://www.theopedia.com/New_Perspective_on_Paul

And the most frustrating thing at the end of it all is: I can't really figure out what the bottom line of New Perspective is. You get the vague sense it has something about adding works to faith, but it's hard to really find any clarity. How am I supposed to change my Christian beliefs in light of it? How am I meant to live / speak/ pray / behave / relate to God differently? That's what really matters, no?

Jereth

[Stephen Brown]

jereth wrote:

And the most frustrating thing at the end of it all is: I can't really figure out what the bottom line of New Perspective is. You get the vague sense it has something about adding works to faith, but it's hard to really find any clarity. How am I supposed to change my Christian beliefs in light of it? How am I meant to live / speak/ pray / behave / relate to God differently? That's what really matters, no?

Your not supposed to change your Christian beliefs in light of it YET...though if you do, then you are indeed enlightened and truly intelligent.  The beginning of most 'good' heresy is couched in high academic speak that befuddles the brain and creates enough doubt so that you simply loose confidence in the 'OLD' perspective.  "Ah...that Luther just had a Catholic bee in his bonnet because N.T. told me so."

This sort of thing is the first tactic of Liberalism in just about every debate going.  It's an old tactic, first employed in the garden (no I'm not confusing our threads) when the evil one questioned, "Did God say...?  No you shall surely not...!"  Create doubt, then go in for the contradiction when they've little confidence of their original convictions.

Then again, I could just be a pessimist.  Keep investigating it though, with caution as you are.
 

[Matt Williams]

Hey Jereth,

You need to be careful of cariacatures on all sides of this debate, and it's such a precise debate I can't do it justice without refreshing my reading. I remember a couple of years ago becoming a fan of Stephen Westerholm on the subject: check out his "Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The "Lutheran" Paul and his Critics". As far as I am qualified to judge, he seems fair to everyone while describing their views and charts a good way forward that is basically Lutheran 'old perspective' while finding things that must be learned from the new.

Unbelievably for such a penetrating and insightful academic, he writes with sparkling good humour. It's occasionally a laugh-out-loud theology book!

Cheers
Matt

[Jereth]

Matt: thanks for the suggested reading.

Nat: I started reading the Lionel Windsor page (who is he btw?) Finally, something in plain English!

Jereth

[Luke Isham]

I've had trouble understanding what NT Wright actually means by the 'New Perspective on Paul' (NPOP) and I think his latest book Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision is his attempt to clearly articulate his position with particular regard to the NPOP.  From reading the preface in the Ridley bookshop I discovered it's written in response to John Piper's The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright, a book that I've found very helpful in reinforcing the importance of justification.  I'm planning on reading Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision alongside Douglous Wilson's responses.