New Perspective on Paul Totally Explained

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The new perspective on Paul is a significant shift in how some New Testament scholars interpret the writings of the Apostle Paul, particularly in regard to Judaism and the common Protestant understanding of Justification by Faith and Imputed Righteousness.

Development

The "new perspective on Paul" is a term coined by James D.G. Dunn in his 1982 Manson Memorial Lecture. It refers to a paradigm shift within New Testament scholarship since E. P. Sanders’ 1977 book Paul and Palestinian Judaism.
Sanders argued that Rabbinic religion has been unfairly caricatured by Christian theology as a religion of legalistic works-righteousness, and in particular the "existence of a treasury of merits established by works of supererogation" constituted a "retrojection of the Protestant-Catholic debate into ancient history, with Judaism taking the role of Catholicism and Christianity the role of Lutheranism."
By contrast, Sanders described Palestinian Judaism’s attitude toward the law with the term "covenantal nomism," which he described as follows:

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

James D.G. Dunn has developed the new perspective, building on Sanders’ reappraisal of Second-Temple Judaism. He notes that the new perspective, as he worked it out in fuller detail, observes that the law maintains both separation to God and separation from other nations. The new perspective notes that "Paul's own teaching on justification focuses largely if not principally on the need to overcome the barrier which the law was seen to interpose between Jew and Gentile," and that "'works of law' became a key slogan in Paul's exposition of his justification gospel because so many of Paul's fellow Jewish believers were insisting on certain works as indispensable to their own (and others?) standing within the covenant, and therefore as indispensable to salvation." Finally, Dunn argues that the new perspective "protests that failure to recognise this major dimension of Paul's doctrine of justification by faith may have ignored or excluded a vital factor in combating the nationalism and racialism which has so distorted and diminished Christianity past and present."
Though often expressing some reservations about the term "new perspective on Paul," N.T. Wright, Bishop of Durham, is one of the most well-known New Testament scholars among evangelicals who builds on "the Sanders revolution," most popularly in his 1997 book What Saint Paul Really Said.

Criticism

The new perspective has been heavily criticized by conservative scholars in the Reformed tradition, arguing that it doesn't faithfully reflect the teachings of their founding theologian, John Calvin (as N.T. Wright had asserted). It has been the subject of fierce debate between evangelicals in recent years, mainly due to N.T. Wright's increasing popularity in evangelical circles. Critics include John Piper, Sinclair Ferguson, C. W. Powell, Mark Seifrid, Don Carson and Ligon Duncan.
The diversity within the new perspective between Sanders and Wright isn't always appreciated by its critics. In 2003, N.T. Wright, distancing himself from both Sanders and Dunn, comments that "there are probably almost as many ‘new perspective’ positions as there are writers espousing it – and I disagree with most of them."

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