We are looking at the new perspective debate and to do that we are working our way through Tom Wright’s Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision. 

Wright’s argument is that one can’t simply read 1:18 and then 3:19-20 and conclude that in between all Paul was saying was “So all are sinful and need saving” (202). Instead, Wright sees more of a theodicy at work: God is showing himself faithful to his covenant promises to redeem the world through Israel.

Romans 3:25-26 show that Paul is concerned with “God’s own righteousness”, and I quote from the ASV:

“whom God

set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show
his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done
aforetime, in the forbearance of God; for the showing, I say, of his righteousness at this present season:
that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith
in Jesus.”

Wright observes that the NIV’s “justice” misjudges the evidence … but there is no reason here to get into translations. The reason for Abraham is not illustrative but substantive: he emerges because of God’s promises to Abraham, not simply because he proves that it is all by the individual’s exercise of faith.

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In the 5th chp of NT Wright’s new book, Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision

, Wright explains the significance of Abraham in the middle of Galatians. Three issues emerge in chps three and four, and it gets to the heart of Tom Wright’s proposal within the new perspective — and it is not a denial of personal salvation but a placing of personal salvation within the context of what God is doing in history — and that dimension is too often ignored in the old perspective and another context is given — God’s plan for personal salvation is what drives that reading of Scripture. Here are the three major themes for Galatians 3-4:

1. The covenant and promise to Abraham.
2. The Law
3. The Messiah

The the point of the section is to show how the Law fits into all of this: “it gets in the way of the promise to Abraham” (123). How? It chokes the promise within Israel’s failure, it threatens to divide the family of God, and it locks up everything in the prison house of sin. God thereby makes his purposes clear: to carry on the single plan with Israel (and Abraham) on the basis of faith and the Torah makes that faith-response the clear implication of the whole plan. Even the curse passage (3:10-14) is connected — not to human sin — but to the inclusion of Gentiles in Abraham’s blessing and that we might receive this promise on the basis of faith.

Here it is:

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We begin today a new series about the new perspective, and we will be discussing Tom Wright’s new book , a book that responds to John Piper’s criticism of Wright and the New Perspective (Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision

). Today I want to begin with two preliminary comments, and I’m open to corrections if my sketch below is not entirely accurate.

How do you understand the “new perspective on Paul”? What do you think is its primary contribution? Which of the new perspective writers do you read the most and why and what do you like about them? How significant do you think this debate is?

First, there is no such thing as the new perspective if one think it refers to some body of doctrine. The New Perspective, therefore, deserves a brief sketch as to how it arose and what it means. It begins with Krister Stendahl’s famous chapter in his book Paul Among Jews and Gentile
. This was back in 1976 and Stendahl argued that the post-Reformation doctrine of justification was rooted, not so much in 1st Century Judaism or the apostle Paul, but the “introspective conscience of the West.”

Many folks thought Stendahl’s major point was brilliant; the essay was formative. But it was EP Sanders who took the substance of Stendahl and established it on the basis of evidence from Judaism.

So, in 1979 1977 EP Sanders wrote Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion
. Like it or not, this is the most influential book of the second half of the 20th Century when it comes (1) to our understanding of Judaism and (2) how to understand Christianity’s relationship to Judaism in light of #1. This book simply must be read by all seminary students. Sanders argued that Luther imposed his complaints with Roman Catholicism upon Paul’s complaints with Judaism. Sanders argued that Luther got it wrong and that Judaism was not a works-righteousness religion. It was instead a religion of what he called “covenantal nomism.” The covenant got you into relationship with God and the law was given to maintain that relationship. Therefore, much of our reading of Paul since the Reformation has been wrong.

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