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The New Perspective from Paul1 Mark A The New Perspective from Paul1 Mark A. Seifrid 1. The New PersPecTive oN Paul community, and the need for Christian ethical t is a real question as to whether it is proper engagement in a way that we must take seriously. I to speak of a “new perspective on Paul.” For at Although it had significant precedents, the least thirty years New Testament scholarship— “new perspective on Paul” can be said to have had especially in the English-speaking world—has its birth in E. P. Sanders’s study Paul and Palestin- been occupied with it in one way or another.2 The ian Judaism.3 This comparison of Paul with early literature on the topic shows no Jewish understandings of salvation gave Sanders’s Mark A. Seifrid is Ernest and Mildred Hogan Professor of New sign of abating. Whether one likes work a measure of influence that none of his pre- Testament at The Southern Baptist it or not, engagement is necessary. decessors enjoyed and called for a fundamental Theological Seminary. The implications of “the new per- revision of most contemporary Protestant inter- spective” for the reading of Paul pretations of Paul. In some measure, therefore, it He has served as Visiting Lecturer at Wheaton College and at Trinity (and, in fact, of the entire New Tes- also challenged the reformational reading of Paul Evangelical Divinity School. Along tament) are so fundamental that which informed them.4 We should by all means with many articles, Dr. Seifrid is unless a new paradigm emerges it welcome this impetus to reexamine the apostle’s the author of Justification by Faith: is likely to remain controversial for relationship to the Judaism of his day and to “the The Origin and Development of a Central Pauline Theme (Brill, 1992) a long time to come. Its continu- traditions of his fathers” (cf. Gal 1:14). The Prot- and Christ Our Righteousness: ing attractions lie not merely in the estant portraits of Paul against which Sanders Paul’s Theology of Justification questions it raises concerning the reacted (and which often still predominate among (InterVaristy, 2001). In addition, he has co-edited (with D. A. way in which Christians have read Christian laity) were in need of revision. Even if Carson and Peter T. O’Brien) the Paul, but also in the way in which it one remains skeptical of the tendency of propo- two-volume work Justification And speaks to contemporary concerns nents of the “new perspective” to single out Luther Variegated Nomism (Baker, 2001, about Christian life in the post- as a myopic introvert, a reexamination of the refor- 2004). modern world. The proponents of mational reading of Paul can be a healthy exercise. the “new perspective on Paul” point to the inclu- What made this “new perspective on Paul” so sivity of the gospel, the centrality of Christian revolutionary? In the first place, Sanders offered 20 SBJT 14.3 (2010): 20-35 a new paradigm for understanding early Jewish objections to the usual way of interpreting Paul’s soteriology, which he described as “covenantal understanding of justification as the freedom of nomism.” According to Sanders, with only minor forgiveness for a guilt-ridden conscience.6 The exceptions, the early Jewish sources suppose that true purpose of Paul’s teaching on justification all those who belong to the covenant God estab- was the acceptance of Gentiles into the people of lished with Abraham are destined for salvation. God as equals alongside their Jewish brothers and Only those who rebel openly and without repen- sisters. The doctrine had to do with mission not tance are excluded from this covenant. The obedi- salvation.7 This conversion of Paul’s understanding ence that the law required, especially when it is of justification into a theology of mission has been seen within the context of repentance and sacrifi- taken up by virtually all the proponents of the cial offerings, was only a matter of “staying in” the “new perspective on Paul,” even if they sometimes salvation already given to Israel, not a matter of affirm that for Paul justificationalso has to do with “getting in” to the realm of that salvation. the salvation of fallen human beings.8 In varying As a result, Sanders called into question those ways, interpreters subsume Paul’s understanding portraits of Paul which imagined that his conver- of “justification” within God’s election of Israel, sion had to do with relief from the demands of the an election in which Gentiles now may share. law or anxiety over the securing of his eternal state According to this reading, Paul rejects the valid- through his good works. This was by no means the ity of “works of the law” for salvation, not because only picture of Judaism which Christian biblical they are inadequate to fulfill the law, but because scholarship had produced, but it was one of the they are “boundary markers” which separate Jews most prominent by the end of the nineteenth cen- from Gentiles, and thus contradict the universality tury and served for many as the unexamined basis of the gospel.9 Not the salvation of the individual, for the interpretation of Paul.5 Sanders pointed but the community of those being saved stands to many places in early Jewish writings in which alone at the center of interest. In its ethnic concern God’s election of Israel was regarded as the sole the “new perspective” interprets Paul’s gospel in and secure basis of salvation. In his reading of the ethical terms. Most proponents of the “new per- materials, the concept of grace in early Judaism spective” regard the reformational understanding seemed to look much the same as that which many of the gospel as lacking ethical relevance, which Christians attribute to Paul. Paul’s break with his they then seek to correct in a fresh reading of Paul. past appeared inexplicable on the basis of the older It is a question, however, whether this reading way of interpreting him. The problem lay in the of Paul brings us anything fresh. Who wouldn’t misconception of “grace.” choose inclusion and acceptance over rejection Initially at least, Sanders presented the gap and prejudice? Was an encounter with the risen between Paul’s past and present as a sort of “leap Christ necessary for this change of mind? Is the of faith.” Before his encounter with Christ, the image of early Judaism as exclusionary and nation- Lord’s election of Israel provided the promise of alistic any more accurate or sympathetic than older salvation. Afterwards, he knew Christ only as the views? In the end, the “new perspective” seems to Savior of the world. Some new explanation had to offer nothing more than an old, insipid moralism. be found for the change of direction in Paul’s life, As we shall remind ourselves in a moment, Paul’s and for the dispute he carries out in his letters with letters provide a quite different picture—one in other Jewish Christians concerning the law, righ- which a real freshness and newness is present here teousness, faith, and the salvation of Gentiles. That and now within the fallen world. That is certainly new explanation had already been provided. Even the case with Paul’s conversion, as he describes before Sanders’s study, Krister Stendahl had raised it in his letters. His absolute break with his past 21 is paradoxically joined to his continuity with it. of Israel precedes his giving the law which was to Otherwise he could not speak of Jesus as Israel’s guide Israel’s life, and which it was obligated to Messiah or identify himself with his Jewish broth- obey. Keeping the law is not a “getting in” to salva- ers and sisters “according to the flesh.” Nor is it tion, but a “staying in” a salvation already given. explicable in merely moral terms. Paul describes it Although this interpretation of the Jewish sources as an act of the Creator who caused light to shine has received decisive challenges in the last decade, out of darkness, and who so spoke and acted to many scholars have continued merrily to read create in his heart the light of “the knowledge of Paul out of the paradigm that Sanders offered.12 the glory of God in the person of Jesus Christ” (2 In so doing, they must overlook the apostle’s own Cor 4:6). Paul’s faith was a gift given to him by new perspective on the world. It is to this new per- God in Christ, in which he was granted “a new spective from Paul that we now turn. perspective” on the whole of life and the world, including his Jewish identity and “the works of the 2.1. Paul’s New Perspective on Grace law” in which that identity was expressed. It is this It is not at all clear that the way in which propo- “new perspective” from Paul which will guide our nents of the new perspective use the term “grace” following reflections. corresponds to Paul’s new perspective on “grace.” Before we turn to Paul, we must note another For the apostle, “grace” is not dependent merely dimension of the current debate. Some repre- on the temporal priority of God’s choice of Israel. sentatives of “the new perspective” (along with Grace is the justification of the ungodly (Rom 4:4- others) find the basis of Paul’s theology in a “salva- 8). The objects of grace are “all” who have sinned, tion-historical scheme.” Stendahl himself appeals those who in radical rebellion and disobedience to this category.
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