Pondering where the NPP comes from

[Ploutos]

My pastor is currently preaching through Romans, so of late I have been listening to, reading through, and poring over the book on a regular basis to try to get a greater familiarity with it.

I sometimes find that when I study a part of the Bible for long enough, or read it over and over enough times, I begin to understand where some of the heretical interpretations of that book come from. But I also begin to understand more clearly while they're wrong.

In the case of Romans, the emphasis on the contrast between Jews and Gentiles/Greeks is so strong, so prominent, and so frequent - especially after poring over chapter 3, probably reading it and listening to it a couple of dozen times over the last 2 weeks - that I can sort of see how the New Perspective came about. I only have the most superficial familiarity with this doctrine, but as I understand it, one of the basic ideas is that by "works of the law" Paul is referring, not to attempts at works-based salvation, but specifically at the Jewish ceremonial laws. I can see a certain surface plausibility to that - it creates a match between the contrasting pairs - Jew/Gentile, works/faith.

It's just a surface plausibility though. If it doesn't take long to see the appeal of that idea, it also doesn't take long to see some of the implications of fleshing that idea out:
- The Jew/Gentile distinction is literalized, and the typological significance of the Jewish people, both historically in the actual events and exegetically in the way they are used in Scripture, is totally stripped away. Gone are all the metaphors in which the Jews are used as a metaphor for the church in one place or as a metaphor for work-based salvation in other places (as is so often the case in Romans, but not just here).
- Faith has to be redefined. Opponents of the truth can criticize Luther all they want for adding the word "alone" to his translation of Ephesians 2:8; but how many times in Romans does Paul say "without the deeds of the law" or some other correlated saying? "Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law." All Luther did was clarify not only the sense of that text but the sense of every other text in Scripture that speaks to the source of our salvation.
- Romans 2 has to be essentially excised from the book because of how clearly it universalizes the concept of law beyond just the Jewish nation.
- The forensic/declarative nature of justification, as outlined in Romans 3:19-31, has to be qualified in a way that's very much in tension with the text. It's not that correct theology never puts a bit of contextual tension on the interpretive range of some Bible verses; but as with every other heresy, the NPP ends up being just as exegetically and hermeneutically contorted, if not more so, than the proper view of the passage. So much for the "needless complexity" of the Calvinist system and the "Biblical" simplicity of its opponents.

I'm sure there are more and better arguments for the NPP than those I've raised in the comfort of my own mind. But I can take comfort in the fact that God often works through the foolish and simple things of this world, among which I am happy to be counted, and I don't need to know every point of theology to be able to see through the flimsiness and shallowness of this "alternative" line of thinking. This is a point I drove home tonight in our devotions, as I am on a brief excursus for a couple of days talking about evolution and creationism, that we can't all be rocket scientists, and those of us who aren't just need to get familiar enough with God's word to be able to smell a rat even if you can't exactly explain or answer it. With the NPP, any tantalizing simplicity it brings to the table is quickly wiped away by the realization that you've just ignored the interpretive constraints which the rest of the Bible imposes on the book of Romans, and to hold to this view seems to decouple the theology of Romans from the theology of other parts of Scripture. In the end, in the pursuit of a surficially "plain" reading of the text, one ends up having to reinterpret half of the rest of the Bible to accommodate the newfangled innovation.

All that said, I am very willing to read a brief overview or introduction to the NPP so that I can become more familiar with its lines of reasoning, if anybody has a favored recommendation.

 

[Christodulus]

I also can’t see how they could reconcile Romans 3:31, I think it’s a direct refutation. Paul says “Do we then abolish the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law.” However, according to their interpretation, “the law” is Jewish ceremonies, something Paul clearly intends to abolish and not establish.

 

[Ploutos]

If in the pursuit of simplicity, you've had to create more complexity than you had before, something has gone wrong. I feel that way about every erroneous interpretation of Scripture. Somebody tries to absolutize something and ends up tying themselves into a hermeneutical pretzel.

The truth is the most complicated thing there is, except for all the others.

 

[arapahoepark]

I think I have an old paper by T. David Gordon lying around somewhere...
I'm not a scholar of scholars on Paul but, I think Kister Stendahl was one of the more prominent early voices saying that justification was merely a poly for the Gentile mission if I'm not mistaken. Perhaps you are aware of EP Sanders who gave the ammunition (but I believe has been largely refuted by the likes of Barclay recently). He seemed to be more of a reaction to previous scholars like Kasemann and his predecessors on the nature of Judaism at the time.
Also, several, but not all, early church fathers tended to regard works of the law (incorrectly I believe) as boundary markers, similar to the NPP and it's been the standard among Catholics and Orthodox for a long time until challenged by the Reformation since the former don't believe in faith alone.
I tend to think the NPP (and your thoughts) are correct insofar that there was a sociological problem and they may very will be right about the exact nature of the questions being brought up. However, I find it indisputable that the words, syntax and semantics are what the Reformation says they are. I was thinking about this lately: the Reformers may not have fully appreciated the first century milieu largely because they didn't know better but, they read and interpreted the Bible on its own linguistic grounds. Most new perspective adherents tend to reverse this. Believing that they have correctly reconstructed the background they then use that to interpret the meanings and phrases and syntax. As a result it turns into a sort of "whatever Paul means it couldn't be that [Reformed/Lutheran reading]!" Contra the NPP, it seems Paul pulls back the curtain on the Judaizers and asks, "Remember, how were you saved? Oh yeah. Gentiles too."

 

[CasualWestminsterEnjoyer]

"Where the NPP on Paul comes from"

Satan, then N.T. Wright (in that order).

 

[Elias_Amare]

Brief overview or introduction to the NPP

The NPP (not one perspective but perspective(s)) begins at the "major proponents' level" with Krister Stendahl's "The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West", where he "criticises" the Western tradition's way of reading Pauline letters as "documents of human consciousness" and, more broadly, 'makes' an antithesis between Paul and Augustine (and Luther). And then E.P. Sanders poses the research question, "What kind of Judaism did Paul assume?" in his book "Paul and Palestinian Judaism"; he argues for the "covenantal Nomism" of Judaism; he discusses little of Paul himself or his letters; if he did, he would claim, “Paul is a systematically inconsistent thinker” – he doesn’t hold a coherent view of the Torah. Then James D.G. Dunn comes and teaches that Paul was reacting against "National Righteousness" and redefines "works of the Law" as boundary markers and "righteousness of God" as God's faithfulness to his covenant with Israel. Lastly, N.T. Wright claims that Paul is writing against communal problems; therefore, justification is to be understood sociologically. And along with his predecessors, he argues that Judaism is not legalistic and the covenantal framework is the ideal formula.

It seems to me that all of them are running on the presumption that the "old perspective on Paul" is this and that, rather than real engagement with the Western tradition, particularly the Protestant Reformed tradition, and its teaching on justification. Secondly, history develops; thus, theology also develops. This is NPP's core conviction. That's why there is little consensus among themselves, except for the claim of "new" and the rejection of "the old".

 

[jwright82]

https://voice.dts.edu/review/guy-prentiss-waters-justification-and-the-new-perspectives-on-Paul/

Excellent book by Guy Waters. He gives a pretty good story on how it developed from Luther (who's the old perspective) to Wright (new perspective).
Baur, Schweitzer, Bultmann, Davies, and Kasemann are part of that story as well. You see once people started doubting scripture's reliability then the door was opened to any sort of criticism imaginable.
But the NPP is the latest criticism and at least they used ancient documents. Although the book "Justification And Variegated Nomism" volume one on "The Complexities of Second Temple Judaism" is an amazing resource on how semi-Pelagian that period of history was.
So it's no surprise that scholar's of all stripes began to reassess things in the wake of the discovery of the "Dead Sea Scrolls" and Qumran materials.
I went through a NPP study phase a few years back, both pro and con, and I'm more convinced that the old perspective is correct (although I'm aware of some old perspective guys who have tweaked the view to incorporate bits of it but I never looked into it). For what it's worth.
[automerge]1781460774[/automerge]

https://store.ligonier.org/justification-new-perspectives-Paul-paperback

Don't know why that link didn't work so here you go.
[automerge]1781460920[/automerge]
Nevermind this one doesn't work either. The book is called "Justification And The New Perspective On Paul" by Guy Prentiss Waters.

 

[jwright82]

https://www.wls.edu/review-justification-and-the-new-perspectives-on-Paul/

One more shot. This review gets into Waters' historical and exegetical critique. I hope it works.
[automerge]1781462271[/automerge]
Nevermind. I'll quit while I'm behind.

 

[jwright82]

Just to add, it was bad historiography for the NPP people (they are a diverse crowd with diverse views) to say that "Luther and Calvin were reading their debate with Rome back into Paul but now with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (a little Gnostic secret knowledge I guess) we can finally understand the debate Paul was engaged with, and it's not Pelagian at all like Rome was".
Well first off Rome was never fully Pelagian but semi-Pelagian and that was the problem that the Reformers had. So also, Pelagian was a very small portion of Second Temple Judaism but semi-Pelagian was very integral to the varieties of the the Judaism of the time.
See Cara's book "Cracking The Foundations" for a very intensive look at the Scrolls of Qumran and the Pelagian question.
So the whole Lutheran/Reformed criticism of Pelagian views is a straw man argument and misleading to what actually happened. It's always been Paul/ Reformers vs semi-Pelagianism and Pelagianism..
Grace plus works for our salvation is wrong and a false gospel that cannot save (I won't get into the question of how much one must be able to articulate to be saved question).

 

[Ploutos]

Just to add, it was bad historiography for the NPP people (they are a diverse crowd with diverse views) to say that "Luther and Calvin were reading their debate with Rome back into Paul but now with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (a little Gnostic secret knowledge I guess) we can finally understand the debate Paul was engaged with, and it's not Pelagian at all like Rome was".
Well first off Rome was never fully Pelagian but semi-Pelagian and that was the problem that the Reformers had. So also, Pelagian was a very small portion of Second Temple Judaism but semi-Pelagian was very integral to the varieties of the the Judaism of the time.
See Cara's book "Cracking The Foundations" for a very intensive look at the Scrolls of Qumran and the Pelagian question.
So the whole Lutheran/Reformed criticism of Pelagian views is a straw man argument and misleading to what actually happened. It's always been Paul/ Reformers vs semi-Pelagianism and Pelagianism..
Grace plus works for our salvation is wrong and a false gospel that cannot save (I won't get into the question of how much one must be able to articulate to be saved question).

This is helpful. Thank you.

 

[RamistThomist]

NT Wright didn't wake up one day and say, "Im gonna hate me some God. Here's the New Perspective." The early versions of the New Perspectives were reactions to and buildings upon the history of Pauline studies over the last few centuries. You kind of have to start there. In fact, most non-Evangelical Pauline scholars today likely haven't heard of the NPP or probably don't care.

First there was Krister Stendahl, then EP Sanders, then James Dunn who criticized Sanders, then Wright who criticized both Sanders and Dunn. It's like pinning jello to a wall.

If you want a good critique of the NPP, go with Carson and Horton. Ignore at all costs anything remotely resembling apologetics ministries on this topic, even worse if they are on twitter.

 

[arapahoepark]

Horton on Justification is great. I like Barclay too. His work went off like a bomb lobbed against the NPP and I believe it truthfully vindicates the Reformation view even if his redefinition of certain words tends toward the sociological.
Now the problem from what I can see in Pauline studies is something called Post-Supersessionism (super reactionary to anti-Semitism) and bizarre apocalyptic readings (like Douglas Campbell who thinks Romans 1-4 is a view that Paul is quoting to refute for the remainder of the letter last I checked). Thankfully, we don't have to choose but if the choice was the NPP vs those, I'd gladly choose the former all the way. My enemy's enemy I suppose.

 

[MW]

I would say first comes the Tubingen School with Baur appropriating Hegel. This imposed a Jew-Gentile conflict as the structural key to Paul. The apostle became the champion of Gentile freedom over against Jewish legalism. "Law" is already being read as a boundary marker and theology is subordinated to historical development. Then comes the history of religions school. They abandoned the dialectic but kept the evolutionary model. Paul is interpreted through comparative religion and is read sociologically and anthropologically. Judaism was reconstructed as a "religion of grace." NPP keeps the rehabilitation of Judaism in Sanders' "covenantal nomism" along with the focus on social identity and boundaries, but without the anti-Judaic polemic. Its real innovation is to argue that Paul's problem with the law was never legalism, but ethnocentrism.

 

[Elias_Amare]

Rev. Winzer has already made an important observation regarding the sociological and anthropological lenses through which Paul has increasingly been read. To build on that point, it is worth noting that the intellectual roots of the New Perspective may extend beyond New Testament scholarship itself. Before publishing his influential article, “Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West” in 1963, Krister Stendahl first presented
to the American Psychological Association in 1961. This was a period when religious phenomena were frequently interpreted through psychological and anthropological categories, often under the influence of thinkers such as Freud and Feuerbach, who sought to explain religion in largely human and social terms. Moreover, much of the academic climate was shaped by the assumptions of logical positivism, which tended to privilege empirical and sociological explanations over metaphysical or theological ones.

Given that major New Perspective figures such as E. P. Sanders and James D. G. Dunn repeatedly acknowledge Stendahl's importance in reframing Paul's doctrine of justification away from the traditional concern with guilt and forensic righteousness toward questions of community identity and inclusion, one might argue that the New Perspective is not merely a proposal in biblical exegesis. It also reflects broader twentieth-century intellectual currents that encouraged the interpretation of religious claims through sociological and psychological frameworks.

 

[No Other Name]

I also can’t see how they could reconcile Romans 3:31, I think it’s a direct refutation. Paul says “Do we then abolish the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law.” However, according to their interpretation, “the law” is Jewish ceremonies, something Paul clearly intends to abolish and not establish.

Incidentally, I used this verse in dialoguing with NCT believers. My counter-exegesis of Matthew 5 vs. Zaspel left them unmoved but I think a couple never considered Rom. 3:31 reading their face. I wonder what overlap there is with VCT and NPP? huh

 

[RamistThomist]

As someone who used to be pretty hard core NPP (I was reading Sanders, Dunn, etc), here are some tips for discussing it.
* Don't immediately begin with Gal. 1:9. While I hold to faith alone, that's the position under debate. He can just as easily say the same as you.
* Not all advocates of NPP believe we need to do good works to gain heaven. Of course, I think their view of the law as boundary marker makes that claim difficult, but you will find some like that.
* Just point to the "do this and live" passages, noting that works of the law in Galatians, when read in its Deuteronomic curses/blessings background, assumes both ceremonial and moral aspects.

 

[clawrence9008]

* Just point to the "do this and live" passages, noting that works of the law in Galatians, when read in its Deuteronomic curses/blessings background, assumes both ceremonial and moral aspects.

How would you respond to Wright's whole thing about using Paul's quotation of Deut. 27:26 in Gal. 3:10 to deny the traditional penal substitutionary understanding of Christ becoming a curse (3:13) and instead saying that Christ as the representative Israelite was fulfilling the curse of exile as the true Israelite? (I might not be precise in how I'm describing this so forgive me if I'm not being clear.)

We have a ministry on campus at Rice whose college pastor who is huge into Wright, Comer, and others. He espouses this kind of view and denies PSA, the active punitive wrath of God, the judicial/forensic nature of justification, etc...

 

[RamistThomist]

How would you respond to Wright's whole thing about using Paul's quotation of Deut. 27:26 in Gal. 3:10 to deny the traditional penal substitutionary understanding of Christ becoming a curse (3:13) and instead saying that Christ as the representative Israelite was fulfilling the curse of exile as the true Israelite? (I might not be precise in how I'm describing this so forgive me if I'm not being clear.)

That seems to be a newer development in Wright's thought. Of if not, it wasn't really on the forefront a few decades ago in his debates with Gaffin et al.

I would start out saying this, and that's all I can say at the moment. Wright's view doesn't refute PSA. Where PSA teaches A, Wright offered B. A refutation would demonstrate ~A.

 

[Elias_Amare]

How would you respond to Wright's whole thing about using Paul's quotation of Deut. 27:26 in Gal. 3:10 to deny the traditional penal substitutionary understanding of Christ becoming a curse (3:13) and instead saying that Christ as the representative Israelite was fulfilling the curse of exile as the true Israelite?

Wright often pits "narrative" readings of Scripture against "logic" and "propositions", which is an unhelpful dichotomy, since all interpretation requires logic and ordered propositions to be understood. In the context of Galatians 3:10-14, Wright identifies the "curse of the law" specifically as the national curse described in Deuteronomy 27 and 28. He argues that this curse fell upon Israel for her "national" disobedience and explicitly defines it as exile. In verse 13, Wright says the cross in this passage is Christ bearing the national curse of exile to bring it to an end. By doing so, Christ (who redefines Israel around himself) opens the door for the promised blessings of Abraham to finally reach the Gentile nations. In verse 14, he excludes imputed righteousness and argues that this is not a category Paul uses.

A couple of thoughts: (1) if the curse in verses 10-13 is purely corporate, national, and temporal (the physical state of exile); it is "abrupt" and inconsistent for the blessing in verse 14 to suddenly be interpreted in an entirely different frame of reference as an individual or salvific blessing. (2) Wright has some kind of penal substitution which focuses on Christ bearing a corporate, national, and temporal curse; however, there is also an interpretation that shifts the focus away from the traditional view of penal substitution, where Christ pays the penalty for the individual sins of his people.

The traditional interpretation of Gal 3:10-14 is that Paul is making a universal claim that applies to "as many" (hosoi) as are of the works of the law. This encompasses all human beings because, while the law demands perfect obedience, no one can perfectly keep it. Consequently, everyone who relies on the law is held accountable and falls under its curse. The "lifting off" of this curse occurs because Christ redeemed us by becoming a curse "for us". where Christ intervened to take upon himself the specific penalty that was due to individual sinners. Therefore, because Christ bore the curse, the blessings of the covenant of grace now flow to the people of God. The "blessing of Abraham" comprehensively includes justification (imputed righteousness) and the gift of the Holy Spirit, which is explicitly mentioned in verse 14.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

I agree that Horton’s book on justification, along with the Carson-edited volumes on Justification and Variegated Nomism, are probably among the most comprehensive refutations of the New Perspective on Paul. I also think The Torah Story is helpful in pushing back against the claim that, once we have supposedly recovered “what Second Temple Judaism really believed,” the traditional Protestant reading of Paul simply collapses.

One of the key issues is that Scripture provides its own exegetical and prophetic fulfillment of earlier Old Testament passages, even within the Old Testament itself. Once that is understood, we should be cautious about treating later Jewish interpretive schools as though they provide the controlling framework for understanding what the Scriptures actually taught. They may provide historical context, but they do not norm the interpretation of inspired revelation.

That is one of the strengths of Carson’s work. It demonstrates that there was no single, uniform “Second Temple Judaism” on these questions. There were multiple strands of thought. And, significantly, much of what predominated in the period was precisely the sort of error that Christ and Paul had to confront.

I also find it strange when the NPP presents itself as a kind of recovery of historical accuracy, as though the Reformers crudely imagined that Jews believed men were saved by works entirely apart from grace. That was not the Reformation objection. The concern was not merely with a religion that used the word “works” instead of the word “grace.” The concern was with any system that turns grace into a kind of enabling principle by which man’s own covenant faithfulness, penitence, obedience, or cooperation becomes the decisive ground of acceptance with God.

In other words, the issue is not solved by finding “grace” in Rabbinic or Second Temple sources. Semi-Pelagian systems have always spoken of grace. The question is what grace does, and whether the sinner is justified by grace alone through faith alone on the basis of Christ alone, or whether grace merely establishes the arena in which man’s Spirit-assisted covenant faithfulness becomes the decisive factor.

So it is not surprising that some NPP scholars can find “grace” in that period and yet miss the problem. That is often exactly the kind of thinking Jesus and the Apostles were opposing: God is gracious to provide a way of salvation, but the penitent sinner’s cooperation with that gracious offer becomes, in the end, what saves him.

That is why the older Protestant critique still stands. Paul is not merely opposing ethnic boundary markers or a narrow Jewish nationalism. He is opposing every form of boasting before God, including religious systems that speak much of grace while still locating the decisive difference in man.

 

[jwright82]

I agree that Horton’s book on justification, along with the Carson-edited volumes on Justification and Variegated Nomism, are probably among the most comprehensive refutations of the New Perspective on Paul. I also think The Torah Story is helpful in pushing back against the claim that, once we have supposedly recovered “what Second Temple Judaism really believed,” the traditional Protestant reading of Paul simply collapses.

One of the key issues is that Scripture provides its own exegetical and prophetic fulfillment of earlier Old Testament passages, even within the Old Testament itself. Once that is understood, we should be cautious about treating later Jewish interpretive schools as though they provide the controlling framework for understanding what the Scriptures actually taught. They may provide historical context, but they do not norm the interpretation of inspired revelation.

That is one of the strengths of Carson’s work. It demonstrates that there was no single, uniform “Second Temple Judaism” on these questions. There were multiple strands of thought. And, significantly, much of what predominated in the period was precisely the sort of error that Christ and Paul had to confront.

I also find it strange when the NPP presents itself as a kind of recovery of historical accuracy, as though the Reformers crudely imagined that Jews believed men were saved by works entirely apart from grace. That was not the Reformation objection. The concern was not merely with a religion that used the word “works” instead of the word “grace.” The concern was with any system that turns grace into a kind of enabling principle by which man’s own covenant faithfulness, penitence, obedience, or cooperation becomes the decisive ground of acceptance with God.

In other words, the issue is not solved by finding “grace” in Rabbinic or Second Temple sources. Semi-Pelagian systems have always spoken of grace. The question is what grace does, and whether the sinner is justified by grace alone through faith alone on the basis of Christ alone, or whether grace merely establishes the arena in which man’s Spirit-assisted covenant faithfulness becomes the decisive factor.

So it is not surprising that some NPP scholars can find “grace” in that period and yet miss the problem. That is often exactly the kind of thinking Jesus and the Apostles were opposing: God is gracious to provide a way of salvation, but the penitent sinner’s cooperation with that gracious offer becomes, in the end, what saves him.

That is why the older Protestant critique still stands. Paul is not merely opposing ethnic boundary markers or a narrow Jewish nationalism. He is opposing every form of boasting before God, including religious systems that speak much of grace while still locating the decisive difference in man.

Amen Rich! That's what I was trying, in my not as thorough way, to get at in my response.

 

[arapahoepark]

I agree that Horton’s book on justification, along with the Carson-edited volumes on Justification and Variegated Nomism, are probably among the most comprehensive refutations of the New Perspective on Paul. I also think The Torah Story is helpful in pushing back against the claim that, once we have supposedly recovered “what Second Temple Judaism really believed,” the traditional Protestant reading of Paul simply collapses.

One of the key issues is that Scripture provides its own exegetical and prophetic fulfillment of earlier Old Testament passages, even within the Old Testament itself. Once that is understood, we should be cautious about treating later Jewish interpretive schools as though they provide the controlling framework for understanding what the Scriptures actually taught. They may provide historical context, but they do not norm the interpretation of inspired revelation.

That is one of the strengths of Carson’s work. It demonstrates that there was no single, uniform “Second Temple Judaism” on these questions. There were multiple strands of thought. And, significantly, much of what predominated in the period was precisely the sort of error that Christ and Paul had to confront.

I also find it strange when the NPP presents itself as a kind of recovery of historical accuracy, as though the Reformers crudely imagined that Jews believed men were saved by works entirely apart from grace. That was not the Reformation objection. The concern was not merely with a religion that used the word “works” instead of the word “grace.” The concern was with any system that turns grace into a kind of enabling principle by which man’s own covenant faithfulness, penitence, obedience, or cooperation becomes the decisive ground of acceptance with God.

In other words, the issue is not solved by finding “grace” in Rabbinic or Second Temple sources. Semi-Pelagian systems have always spoken of grace. The question is what grace does, and whether the sinner is justified by grace alone through faith alone on the basis of Christ alone, or whether grace merely establishes the arena in which man’s Spirit-assisted covenant faithfulness becomes the decisive factor.

So it is not surprising that some NPP scholars can find “grace” in that period and yet miss the problem. That is often exactly the kind of thinking Jesus and the Apostles were opposing: God is gracious to provide a way of salvation, but the penitent sinner’s cooperation with that gracious offer becomes, in the end, what saves him.

That is why the older Protestant critique still stands. Paul is not merely opposing ethnic boundary markers or a narrow Jewish nationalism. He is opposing every form of boasting before God, including religious systems that speak much of grace while still locating the decisive difference in man.

Indeed. Most of the reaction was largely against shallow pop- Evangelical (and largely strawman) interpretations. Once there was push back against these misrepresentations it was either ignored by certain people, or in the case of Dunn actually, a fair amount of pull back.

 

[Ploutos]

I almost wanted to do a separate thread on this, but I won't.

I'm continuing my indepth perusal of the book of Romans, and today I have really been struck by the 5th and 6th verses of the fourth chapter.

"But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness, even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works."

I can't help but think about the ways in which this strikes at the New Perspective, at Federal Vision, and at Roman Catholicism all at once. For the New Perspective to work, you essentially have to redefine faith. Federal Vision (if I understand it correctly) essentially defines faith as faithful obedience, and of course Rome believes we are justified by faith which is formed by love.

To this, Paul says that the believer does not work. Paul says that the believer, at the moment of justification, is ungodly, and that in his state of ungodliness his faith is counted for righteousness. And righteousness is imparted to man apart from works. You can't believe any of those heresies and hold to a straightforward reading of these passages. I'd be interested to see what a Catholic commentator like Fitzmyer does with these verses, because to me they present a serious challenge to the Roman Catholic (and FV and NPP) view of salvation.

However, there's a broader and even more fruitful take-away for me from this passage because it's compelling me to think more generally about how we read Scripture. The Bible is not a catechism or a systematic theology. It doesn't present things in bullet-point fashion like a theological treatise. It doesn't say Trinity or hypostatic union and it doesn't list the five solas. And yet it's not as if the Bible is unclear or ambiguous on these issues. Faithful theology draws straight from the material that Scripture provides, and these verses are an instance of that. Since it's not a systematic theology, though, one has to understand the sense of the text. What is the directionality and orientation of the text? What is it setting out to do? Is Paul setting out to carve out a role for works, to defend and save a place for our works as part of what justifies us? That's not a tenable interpretation of the thrust of the passage. Sure, maybe Paul doesn't paint this as starkly as a Reformed catechism might, but the thrust of his text is so plainly to diminish the role of works, and to separate merit of works from salvation (think of verse 2 - "he hath whereof to glory, but not before God" - and verse 4 - "but to him that worketh... not of grace, but of debt"), that we ought to be compelled to lean in the same direction. Anybody who wants to upshift the role of works in the economy of our salvation has to swim upstream in passages like this.

I'm not totally opposed to prooftexting - I think one can claim that individual verses or otherwise short chunks of Scripture can give clear and sufficient explanations of many key doctrines. It can be a quick and memorable way to defend or argue for those doctrines - and for one's own devotional life, knowing key prooftexts can (or at least has, in my own experience) help the reader to more readily see those concepts elsewhere. Knowing Ephesians 2:8-10 by heart, I'm going to be more attuned to the thrust of other Scripture passages that emphasize God's economy of grace in places like Psalm 51 or Micah 6 or Deuteronomy 7. But I'll freely grant that there are places where Reformed theology might seem at first glance to run counter to a plainer reading of the text. I think this is one reason why the doctrine of transubstantiation eventually took hold - because the language of Christ's fleshly presence in the Eucharist was sufficiently strong that it didn't seem much of a leap to toss in a medieval application of Aristotelian categories to explain the mechanics behind this. (Even less of a leap when one has already started drawing a direct mechanical connection between the act and the outcome, ex opere operato.) In some ways the Protestant take on these verses might seem a bit more convoluted especially if you start getting deep into Calvin's ideas about what happens when we partake of the supper. So one might argue that all sides take some verses in their plain sense and push and pull at others to get them to fit into a system.

However, when one goes beyond proof-texting to system-texting - gathering the meaning not just of a snippet but of the whole? It's not just the thrust of these verses but of the whole book of Romans. And it's not just the thrust of Romans but of the whole of Scripture. Just like when Arians try to build a case on Colossians 1 - well, is Paul here trying to limit and circumscribe the person and work of the Son, or is he trying to exalt it? And then when you go beyond that to the whole of Scripture: is Scripture trying to limit and circumscribe the Son, to say "here shall he go and no further"? Square that with the way the WHOLE Old Testament points to Christ and the whole New Testament is explicitly about him. "My glory I will not give to another" - which he then proceeds to do from Genesis 3 to Revelation 22 and virtually every chapter in between. And likewise with transubstantiation - THAT is what we were waiting for? The promised Messiah, predicted for thousands of years, so that we could... corporeally chew on him with our physical mandibles? That's the central message which looms so large in recent encyclicals in which the importance of the Word is almost completely eclipsed by the central mysticism of the sacraments?

So with the way of salvation, all of Scripture points in the direction of it being wholly of grace and earned solely by faith - not faithful obedience, not faith formed by love, but faith that we have while yet ungodly. It's in Romans, it's in Ephesians, it's in Galations, it's in Peter's writings, it's plastered all over the Old Testament but especially in Genesis, Deuteronomy, and Psalms. It's easier to explain the verses that speak of works then it is for synergists or nomists to explain the verses that cut works without qualification from the ground of our salvation - just like it's in the end easier to ascribe a spiritual meaning to the talk about the real presence, or easier to squeeze "The Father is greater than I" into a hypostatic paradigm than to fit thousands of other verses into a subordinationist mdel. "I have upheld my integrity", claims the psalmist of Psalm 26. That is easy to explain when we think of Christ's righteousness as becoming truly ours or (even better) hear Jesus speaking in that psalm.

All that to say, these two verses strongly support a standard Reformed view of works and faith while also buttressing the fortress comprised of all the other verses that speak in the same direction. Is the Bible aiming to lift us up at God's expense? Is it aiming to exalt works? Can you honestly read Romans 4, or Romans 1-16, or Genesis-Revelation, and come away with the sense that yes, that is what God wanted to communicate in the book? That it's about us, and what we can do? That it was written to show us that he is here to help in case we've only mostly figured out our way? All the passages that speak of God's sovereign and inscrutable choice of Israel not only apart from but often in direct contrast to their actions - all the tales of Israel's failures and God's forbearance (forbearance - Rom. 3:25!) - these are really meant to highlight OUR contribution?

Nonsense. Utter nonsense, I say. The Reformers were absolutely dead on in grasping what Paul meant and seeing how it makes perfect sense of the rest of Scripture.

 

[MW]

I am persuaded a solid case can be made that Paul is engaging in what we would call systematic theology to a certain extent in Romans. The old view is that Paul was writing to Rome to garner support for further missions and was in a certain sense outlining to them the gospel that he preached. I wouldn't say this is all that he was doing, since he was also dealing with pastoral issues between Jews and Gentiles; but Romans, of all his letters contains a specific logical structure. Hence we have things like the Romans road.

Not that it comes up to the full extent of what systematic theology is warranted to do. Given that dogmatics is post-canonical and falls within the domain of the dogmatic authority of the church acting without inspiration and with the need to correct what has gone before, there are obvious discontinuities. But who cannot see specific dogmatic categories in Pauline development of a two Adam theology in connection with a clear distinction between law and gospel, faith and works. In this he is already showing the way of logically putting together the "development" of specific themes in a way that goes beyond "biblical theology" per se. Hence we can conclude that our federal theology is not an addition to the Bible, but a genuine completion of the lines of thought already drawn by the inspired apostle.

Likewise, in this more systematic treatment, we see the importance of the theological common-place. This has crudely been laid aside by modern "biblical theologians" as if it is foreign to the nature of Scripture. But Paul again has shown the way that certain texts become key battle grounds in the war for revealed truth. God Himself makes explicit statements that are to give leading direction to the way we think about certain topics. These have a certain "regulative import," while others are subordinated to them and must be understood in the light of them. "Proof-texting," as it has come to be called, has its place since it draws our attention to these theological common-places, which enable us to order our theology around them.

 

[py3ak]

I almost wanted to do a separate thread on this, but I won't.

I'm continuing my indepth perusal of the book of Romans, and today I have really been struck by the 5th and 6th verses of the fourth chapter.

"But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness, even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works."

I can't help but think about the ways in which this strikes at the New Perspective, at Federal Vision, and at Roman Catholicism all at once. For the New Perspective to work, you essentially have to redefine faith. Federal Vision (if I understand it correctly) essentially defines faith as faithful obedience, and of course Rome believes we are justified by faith which is formed by love.

To this, Paul says that the believer does not work. Paul says that the believer, at the moment of justification, is ungodly, and that in his state of ungodliness his faith is counted for righteousness. And righteousness is imparted to man apart from works. You can't believe any of those heresies and hold to a straightforward reading of these passages. I'd be interested to see what a Catholic commentator like Fitzmyer does with these verses, because to me they present a serious challenge to the Roman Catholic (and FV and NPP) view of salvation.

However, there's a broader and even more fruitful take-away for me from this passage because it's compelling me to think more generally about how we read Scripture. The Bible is not a catechism or a systematic theology. It doesn't present things in bullet-point fashion like a theological treatise. It doesn't say Trinity or hypostatic union and it doesn't list the five solas. And yet it's not as if the Bible is unclear or ambiguous on these issues. Faithful theology draws straight from the material that Scripture provides, and these verses are an instance of that. Since it's not a systematic theology, though, one has to understand the sense of the text. What is the directionality and orientation of the text? What is it setting out to do? Is Paul setting out to carve out a role for works, to defend and save a place for our works as part of what justifies us? That's not a tenable interpretation of the thrust of the passage. Sure, maybe Paul doesn't paint this as starkly as a Reformed catechism might, but the thrust of his text is so plainly to diminish the role of works, and to separate merit of works from salvation (think of verse 2 - "he hath whereof to glory, but not before God" - and verse 4 - "but to him that worketh... not of grace, but of debt"), that we ought to be compelled to lean in the same direction. Anybody who wants to upshift the role of works in the economy of our salvation has to swim upstream in passages like this.

I'm not totally opposed to prooftexting - I think one can claim that individual verses or otherwise short chunks of Scripture can give clear and sufficient explanations of many key doctrines. It can be a quick and memorable way to defend or argue for those doctrines - and for one's own devotional life, knowing key prooftexts can (or at least has, in my own experience) help the reader to more readily see those concepts elsewhere. Knowing Ephesians 2:8-10 by heart, I'm going to be more attuned to the thrust of other Scripture passages that emphasize God's economy of grace in places like Psalm 51 or Micah 6 or Deuteronomy 7. But I'll freely grant that there are places where Reformed theology might seem at first glance to run counter to a plainer reading of the text. I think this is one reason why the doctrine of transubstantiation eventually took hold - because the language of Christ's fleshly presence in the Eucharist was sufficiently strong that it didn't seem much of a leap to toss in a medieval application of Aristotelian categories to explain the mechanics behind this. (Even less of a leap when one has already started drawing a direct mechanical connection between the act and the outcome, ex opere operato.) In some ways the Protestant take on these verses might seem a bit more convoluted especially if you start getting deep into Calvin's ideas about what happens when we partake of the supper. So one might argue that all sides take some verses in their plain sense and push and pull at others to get them to fit into a system.

However, when one goes beyond proof-texting to system-texting - gathering the meaning not just of a snippet but of the whole? It's not just the thrust of these verses but of the whole book of Romans. And it's not just the thrust of Romans but of the whole of Scripture. Just like when Arians try to build a case on Colossians 1 - well, is Paul here trying to limit and circumscribe the person and work of the Son, or is he trying to exalt it? And then when you go beyond that to the whole of Scripture: is Scripture trying to limit and circumscribe the Son, to say "here shall he go and no further"? Square that with the way the WHOLE Old Testament points to Christ and the whole New Testament is explicitly about him. "My glory I will not give to another" - which he then proceeds to do from Genesis 3 to Revelation 22 and virtually every chapter in between. And likewise with transubstantiation - THAT is what we were waiting for? The promised Messiah, predicted for thousands of years, so that we could... corporeally chew on him with our physical mandibles? That's the central message which looms so large in recent encyclicals in which the importance of the Word is almost completely eclipsed by the central mysticism of the sacraments?

So with the way of salvation, all of Scripture points in the direction of it being wholly of grace and earned solely by faith - not faithful obedience, not faith formed by love, but faith that we have while yet ungodly. It's in Romans, it's in Ephesians, it's in Galations, it's in Peter's writings, it's plastered all over the Old Testament but especially in Genesis, Deuteronomy, and Psalms. It's easier to explain the verses that speak of works then it is for synergists or nomists to explain the verses that cut works without qualification from the ground of our salvation - just like it's in the end easier to ascribe a spiritual meaning to the talk about the real presence, or easier to squeeze "The Father is greater than I" into a hypostatic paradigm than to fit thousands of other verses into a subordinationist mdel. "I have upheld my integrity", claims the psalmist of Psalm 26. That is easy to explain when we think of Christ's righteousness as becoming truly ours or (even better) hear Jesus speaking in that psalm.

All that to say, these two verses strongly support a standard Reformed view of works and faith while also buttressing the fortress comprised of all the other verses that speak in the same direction. Is the Bible aiming to lift us up at God's expense? Is it aiming to exalt works? Can you honestly read Romans 4, or Romans 1-16, or Genesis-Revelation, and come away with the sense that yes, that is what God wanted to communicate in the book? That it's about us, and what we can do? That it was written to show us that he is here to help in case we've only mostly figured out our way? All the passages that speak of God's sovereign and inscrutable choice of Israel not only apart from but often in direct contrast to their actions - all the tales of Israel's failures and God's forbearance (forbearance - Rom. 3:25!) - these are really meant to highlight OUR contribution?

Nonsense. Utter nonsense, I say. The Reformers were absolutely dead on in grasping what Paul meant and seeing how it makes perfect sense of the rest of Scripture.

I think you are highlighting the importance of attending to the scope of the passage, in dialogue with the scope of Scripture (to give all glory to God). That attention situates each prooftext as part of a greater whole. I think this is one reason that Reformation readings can be challenged on grammatical technicalities and still survive. People have somewhat different approaches to grammatical analysis than Calvin and Hodge did, but since they attended to the drift their overall interpretation easily survives refinements in the account of verbal aspect.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

I think you are highlighting the importance of attending to the scope of the passage, in dialogue with the scope of Scripture (to give all glory to God). That attention situates each prooftext as part of a greater whole. I think this is one reason that Reformation readings can be challenged on grammatical technicalities and still survive. People have somewhat different approaches to grammatical analysis than Calvin and Hodge did, but since they attended to the drift their overall interpretation easily survives refinements in the account of verbal aspect.

That's a good observation. The Reformed seem to be alone with it comes to considering the sweeping theology of texts and the Bible as a whole. Others tend to atomize Scripture in order to confirm their dogmatic determinations.

 

[Ploutos]

I think you are highlighting the importance of attending to the scope of the passage, in dialogue with the scope of Scripture (to give all glory to God). That attention situates each prooftext as part of a greater whole. I think this is one reason that Reformation readings can be challenged on grammatical technicalities and still survive. People have somewhat different approaches to grammatical analysis than Calvin and Hodge did, but since they attended to the drift their overall interpretation easily survives refinements in the account of verbal aspect.

See, if I could have just said it that way, I could have saved myself hundreds of words of typing! Thank you for stating that so concisely.

 

[jwright82]

That's a good observation. The Reformed seem to be alone with it comes to considering the sweeping theology of texts and the Bible as a whole. Others tend to atomize Scripture in order to confirm their dogmatic determinations.

Good point. Look at Lutheran defenses of their view of the Lord's Supper. Usually proof-texting, or at least initially the way it seems. To be fair they do have a complex theology behind it but that seems to be the work of more contemporary Lutheran's.

 

[Ploutos]

Good point. Look at Lutheran defenses of their view of the Lord's Supper. Usually proof-texting, or at least initially the way it seems. To be fair they do have a complex theology behind it but that seems to be the work of more contemporary Lutheran's.

The strength of Reformed theology is in some ways what keeps people away from it. Reformed theologians have taken the time to come to conclusions that take all the theological complexities of Scripture into account. I can't help being impressed when I read Bavinck how thoroughly the Reformed have thought through all the issues raised by their opponents and dealt with them fairly but firmly.

The flip side is that this makes it a bit harder to see the value of that when you as an individual haven't put in a commensurate amount of work. A lot of conclusions aren't immediately obvious until you've absorbed the breadth and depth of Scripture at length.