# New Perspective on Paul???



## johnny_redeemed (May 31, 2004)

New Perspective on Paul.

i hear this term being used a lot in theological circles and i am not sure what it means. 

i would like a short and concise definition please. and if you want to leave your opinion on it that would be great.




[Edited on 6-1-2004 by johnny_redeemed]


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## pastorway (May 31, 2004)

Do a search on this forum for NPP or for the &quot;New Perspective&quot;. It is a heretical doctrine that denies the active obedience of Christ and the imputation of that obedience to us as the grounds for our justification.

See also:

http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/topic/bad_theology.html (scroll to the bottom)

http://www.reachingforchrist.org/falsedoctrines/perspec.php (there are many articles and even audio files here that you can listen to from a conference that James White held last year addressing NPP directly.)

Phillip


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## johnny_redeemed (May 31, 2004)

[quote:ec32f49f60][i:ec32f49f60]Originally posted by pastorway[/i:ec32f49f60]
It is a heretical doctrine that denies the active obedience of Christ and the imputation of that obedience to us as the grounds for our justification.

Phillip [/quote:ec32f49f60]

i am not sure what you mean by this. i guess i am not super familiar with the &quot;Old&quot; perspective on Paul to understand this. if you would be so kind could you please elaborate


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## pastorway (Jun 1, 2004)

from the first link I provided:

[quote:02be04785a]The modem New Testament scholar, N. T. Wright, offers yet another variant on the theme of justification by experience. According to Wright, justification means God's declaration that we are members of the covenant community. He accepts that in making this declaration God's only requirement is faith, but rejects old Protestant view that the value of faith lies in the fact that it unites us to Christ and thus makes us partakers of His righteousness. Instead, according to Wright, God takes faith as a sign that the Spirit already at work in us and that we are already members of the covenant people. It demonstrates that we have a new, penitent heart; and God, seeing saving grace already at work, justifies us. 



For all its laboured originality, this theory completely fails to escape the gravitational pull of the religion of self-justification. Wright's basic thrust is that justification is no legal fiction: the believer is righteous. This righteousness may be the result of grace and of the Spirit's work within us, but when all is said and done it is our own personal righteousness. It is inherent, not imputed. We asked to stand on the rock of our own covenant-keeping. Could that have given Martin Luther peace? Could it give any of us peace? On the contrary, our hope would ebb and flow with every rise and fall in the tide of our personal spirituality (A Faith to Live By, Mentor, 2002, pages 166-167).[/quote:02be04785a]

And this from J. Ligon Duncan found here:

[quote:02be04785a]Now for those who are utterly lost in this debate, never having heard of "the New Perspective(s)" or N. T. Wright, let me offer the following. For around twenty years now, a "new" approach to reading Paul's polemics with Judaism has been making waves in the field of New Testament studies, and gradually making inroads into evangelical circles. Actually, there is not just one approach but a group of approaches that are part of this movement. 

The ground-breaking work of E.P. Sanders (formerly Dean Ireland's Professor of Exegesis, Oxford, and now Professor in the Divinity faculty at Duke) in the area of Palestinian Judaism (and its relation to Jesus' and Paul's teachings) prepared the way for this new resuscitation of some familiar approaches to interpreting Paul's thought. British New Testament scholar James D. G. Dunn (of Durham University) coined the term "the new perspective on Paul" (in his famous Manson Memorial lecture) and elaborated some ideas popular among various students of Paul in the post-holocaust era of New Testament studies (among them, Krister Stendahl). 

But it is N.T. Wright (a prolific author and effective communicator, who is now Bishop of Durham [Church of England], and was formerly dean of Litchfield Cathedral, England, as well as former Canon Theologian of Westminster Abbey), who has most prominently contributed to the propagation of this view in the evangelical arena.

At the heart of the new perspectives' critique of both Protestant and Catholic interpretations of Paul is the charge that Reformation-era theologians read Paul via a medieval framework that obscured the categories of first-century Judaism, resulting in a complete misunderstanding of his teaching on justification. Protestant ideas of "the righteousness of God," "imputation," and even the definition of justification itself - all these have been invented or misunderstood by the Lutheran and Catholic traditions of interpretation.

In a nutshell, the new perspective (as set forth by Wright) suggests that: (1) the Judaism of Paul's day was not a religion of self-righteousness that taught salvation by merit; (2) Paul's argument with the Judaizers was not about a "works-righteousness" view of salvation, over against the Christian view of salvation by grace; (3) Instead, Paul's concern was for the status of Gentiles in the church; (4) So justification is more about ecclesiology than soteriology, more about who is part of the covenant community and what are its boundary markers than about how a person stands before God.

Thus the new perspective on Paul purports to help us (1) better understand Paul and the early church in their original context, (2) vindicate Paul and early Christianity from the charge of anti-Semitism; (3) slip the Gordian knot of theological impasse between Catholic and Protestant interpreters of Paul; and (4) articulate an understanding of justification that has inherent social dimensions and thus secure a better theological foundation for social justice and ecumenism among evangelical interpreters of the Scriptures; among other things. [/quote:02be04785a]

See also this critique of NPP at The Alliance of Confessing Evagelicals (click on the names for the link) by Kim Riddlebarger
and by J. Ligon Duncan 


Phillip


[Edited on 6-1-04 by pastorway]


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