The classic Lutheran interpretation had the effect that, when I first read Galatians, and arrived at the point where Paul lists the works of the flesh and says \u201cthose who do such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God\u201d, I thought either I had misunderstood or Paul was not being consistent. When I read James D. G. Dunn\u2019s work on Paul\u2019s writings, suddenly they made sense.<\/p>\n
One might perhaps ask why, if Paul had in mind the \u2018ritual\u2019 laws that distinguished Jews from Gentiles, he didn\u2019t use precisely such a distinction as some of his later interpreters have between \u2018moral\u2019 and \u2018ritual\u2019. The answer is simple: he didn\u2019t because he couldn\u2019t, not merely because moral and ritual overlap in laws such as that regarding the Sabbath, but also because the covenant was a whole and one could not simply pick and choose from it. But, having set it aside so as to incorporate the Gentiles, and for that reason alone, one could still look to the Law for moral guidance, since its moral principles were the same as those under the new covenant. And so it is that Paul cites the Law as authoritative on moral matters and even says what are otherwise incomprehensible things like \u201ccircumcision doesn\u2019t matter \u2013 keeping the commandments does\u201d. All of this makes sense from the perspective of the \u201cnew perspective\u201d.<\/p>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the latest issue of Christianity Today, Simon Gathercole offers a somewhat appreciative but also critical evaluation of the new perspective on Paul. For me, the new perspective\u2019s major conclusions (such as that \u201cthe works of the Law\u201d in Paul\u2019s writings were not good works in general but symbols of the separateness of the Jews […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n