A Lutheran Look at The New Perspective On Paul PDF

A
Lutheran Look at the New Perspective on Paul

Introduction
Five hundred years after the Reformation, Luther’s declaration about the importance of
justification still has the power to stir the blood of any soul that cares about the pure
teaching of the Word:
Here is the first and chief article…Nothing in this article can be conceded or given
up, even if heaven and earth or whatever is transitory passed away. As St. Peter
says in Acts 4[:12]: “There is no other name . . . given among mortals by which
we must be saved.” “And by his bruises we are healed” (Isa. 53[:5]). On this
article stands all that we teach and practice against the pope, the devil, and the
world. Therefore we must be quite certain and have no doubt about it.
Otherwise everything is lost, and the pope and the devil and whatever opposes
us will gain the victory and be proved right.1
Elsewhere, he puts it even more pointedly: quia isto articulo stante stat Ecclesia, ruente
ruit Ecclesia.2
I begin by quoting Luther because we need to see clearly what the stakes are. If the
New Perspective on Paul3 is correct, then the Reformation’s doctrine of justification is a
great mistake, and our understanding of what constitutes the Church crumbles into
sand. Should anyone think this a gross exaggeration or a matter of hyper-Lutheran
bloviation, consider what a popular Christian magazine recently wrote about N.T.
Wright’s4 theology:
Wright's goal in his teaching and writing is to massively revise the way
Christianity has been articulated for generations. Christian faith, for Wright, is
not about going to heaven when you die. It is not about the triumph of grace
over the law of the Old Testament. He says its key doctrine is not justification by
grace alone, the cornerstone for the Protestant Reformers. The church has
misread Paul so severely, it seems, that no one fully understood the gospel from
the time of the apostle to the time a certain British scholar started reading Paul
in Greek in graduate school.5

1
SA II. Robert Kolb, Timothy J. Wengert, and Charles P. Arand, The Book of Concord: The Confessions
of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000).
2
WA 40/3.352.3 “If this article stands, the Church stands; if it perishes, the Church perishes.”
3
Abbreviated from here on out as NPP or simply NP.
4
One of the most prolific and popular exponent of the NPP among evangelicals.
5
Byassee, Jason. “Surprised by N.T. Wright.” ChristianityToday.com, April 8, 2014.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/april/surprised-by-n-t-wright.html.
1
At the heart of the NPP is the thesis that Luther gives us a biased reading of Paul. Its
proponents believe that it is high time for a new approach and to read Paul with fresh
eyes. We will attempt to outline typical NPP thinking in the first part of the essay. For
now it is enough by way of introduction to understand that the NPP is a direct attack on
Reformation’s teaching on justification.
At the outset I suppose I should take a page out of the book of all those fine scholars
who gently explore the flaws in the NPP only after first extolling all its insights and
benefits. We could praise the NPP for its renewed zeal in exploring the primary texts of
1st century Judaism and its diligent exegetical efforts to explore all the contours of Paul’s
thought. We could duly note its proponents’ warnings not to read the later Rabbis’
overtly work-righteous thinking back into 1st century texts. We can affirm the
importance of seeing Christianity as not merely an individual affair, but as a faith that
joins us to the People of God. We could also heartily agree that to portray 2nd temple
Judaism as if it were a monolithic monument to salvation by works is to twist the truth.
I’m just not altogether sure we really needed the NPP to make us aware of any of those
things. In any case, to praise its virtues would sound hollow coming from one who sees
the terrible havoc it has wreaked on the fundamental meaning of the Christian faith. To
praise the NPP would be for me like a man surveying the devastation of a town in the
aftermath of a tornado and saying, “Well, at least we got some rain!”
So do not expect an impartial analysis of the NPP to come out of this essay. I am
profoundly prejudiced against it, primarily because I believe that souls are at stake here
and that those who are persuaded to accept its errors will lose the certainty of their
salvation. I humbly pray that the source of my bias is not ego or a spirit of
contentiousness, but a faith-filled dedication to the three “Sola’s” of the Reformation:
sola Scriptura, sola Gratia, and sola Fide. After summarizing the basic positions taken by
the three most popular expositors of the NPP, we will use these three touchstones to
evaluate them. As we do so, may it be with the prayer in our hearts that the same Spirit
may breathe in us that once moved Luther to write, “The Holy Spirit is no Skeptic, and it
is not doubts or mere opinions that he has written on our hearts, but assertions more
sure and certain than life itself and all experience.”6
Overview of the New Perspective: How Luther Got the “Problem” Wrong
Although the NPP is not really ‘new,’7 the three giants in the current movement would
undoubtedly have to be E.P. Sanders, James D.G. Dunn, and N.T. Wright. Before we
examine each of their ‘perspectives’ in turn, let’s begin with a summary of the NPP from
a webpage dedicated to its exposition:

6
Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, Vol. 33: Career of the Reformer III, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C.
Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann, vol. 33 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1999), 24.
7
As Timothy Wengert says, “It is somewhat disingenuous to call this perspective ‘new,’ since the church
father, Jerome, had already argued that when Paul used the term ‘law’ in Romans and Galatians he
only meant the ceremonial law.” in “The ‘New’ Perspectives on Paul at the 2012 Luther Congress
in Helsinki.” Lutheran Quarterly 27, no. 1 (March 1, 2013): 89.
2
What is this new perspective? At its core is the recognition that Judaism is not a
religion of self-righteousness whereby humankind seeks to merit salvation
before God. Paul’s argument with the Judaizers was not about Christian grace
versus Jewish legalism. His argument was rather about the status of Gentiles in
the church. Paul’s doctrine of justification, therefore, had far more to do with
Jewish-Gentile issues than with questions of the individual’s status before God.8
Put briefly: in his exposition of justification by grace alone through faith, Luther simply
got it wrong. He was addressing his own problems, not Paul’s.
One of the reasons these exponents of the NPP feel Luther got it wrong was due to his
bringing his own medieval Catholic presuppositions to the text of Paul. He wondered
how he, a sinner, could find salvation and be right with God. We might agree that one’s
background and experience will have some impact on how a person reads a text and
what questions he may ask of it. No doubt that was true also of Luther. But the same
could also be said of the writers of the NPP. In the end, the only question that matters
is which ‘bias’ more accurately reflects the concerns of the original.
For the NPP, a key context for reading was the centuries long record of anti-Semitism in
the West. After the Holocaust, it became impossible to ignore the fact that disdain for
Jews was a bias with a murderous bite. All Christian writings were scrutinized for anti-
Semitism, the New Testament included. A new zeal for understanding 1st Century
Judaism on its own terms was born,9 along with a desire (for Christians at least) to
rehabilitate the interpretation of the New Testament from any whiff of perceived race-
hatred. As much as possible, NPP scholars wanted to demonstrate the continuity
between Paul’s thinking and that of his Jewish contemporaries, since emphasizing the
differences (as had previously been done) could easily be seen as being an anti-Semitic
move.10
E.P. Sanders
In his influential book Paul and Palestinian Judaism, E.P. Sanders laid the foundations for

8
Mark M. Mattison, “The New Perspective on Paul | The Paul Page.” Accessed October 7, 2014.
http://www.thepaulpage.com/new-perspective/.
9
See for example E. P. Sander’s comment, “The general Christian view of Judaism…[is] as a religion of
legalistic works-righteousness…One of the intentions of the present chapter…is to destroy this
view. This will be accomplished…by showing that [such a position] as it applies to Tannaitic
literature, is based on a massive perversion and misunderstanding of the material” in Paul and
Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977,
59.
10
See, for example, James D.G. Dunn’s remark, “[Since Luther] the hermeneutical mistake was made
of…assuming that [what] Paul was protesting against in Pharisaic Judaism [was] precisely what
Luther protested against in the pre-Reformation church—the mistake, in other words, of assuming
that the Judaism of Paul's day was coldly legalistic, teaching a system of earning salvation by the
merit of good works with little or no room for the free forgiveness and grace of God ….It was this
depiction of first-century Judaism which Sanders showed it for what it was—a gross caricature,
which, regrettably, has played its part in feeding an evil strain of Christian anti-Semitism,” in The
Theology of Paul the Apostle. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub, 1998, 142-143.
3
the NPP with a study of the sources of 2nd Temple Judaism. No one can doubt his
erudition, although it was clear from the outset of his study where he was headed (see
footnote 9).

Sanders declares that he intends to compare “an entire religion, parts and all” to
discover the similarities and differences between 1st Century Judaism and Paulinism.11
His method, he feels, stands in sharp contrast to those who only look at “reduced
essences” and “individual motifs.”12 He defines his search for a religion’s essential
pattern in the following terms:
A pattern of religion, defined positively, is the description of how a religion is

perceived by its adherents to function. “Perceived to function” has the sense not
of what an adherent does on a day-to-day basis, but of how getting in and
staying in are understood: the way in which a religion is understood to admit and
retain members is considered to be the way it “functions.”13
For sources in his quest for 1st century Judaism, Sanders “examines not only the early
Rabbinic (Tannaitic) literature, but also the Dead Sea Scrolls, and a selection of the
Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphical writings (Ben Sirach, 1 Enoch, Jubilees, the Psalms of
Solomon, and 4 Ezra).”14 Notably absent from his analysis are the Christian gospels, no
doubt because he would consider their depictions of the Pharisees as “polemical
attacks.”15
In his description of Paulinism we notice a similarly selective pattern of gathering

evidence. Because of the consensus of historical-critical scholars, he examines only
those letters “whose authenticity is unquestioned,” namely: Romans, 1 and 2
Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. This eliminates the
“deutero-Pauline” letters including Ephesians and the Pastorals.16 The omission is not
insignificant.
What he discovered from the sources was that 1st century Judaism was not a works-
righteous religion at all, but a religion founded on God’s grace and mercy. To use

11
Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977, 16.
12
Ibid., 12. As examples of ‘reduced essences’ he points to faith vs. works; liberty vs. law. While he sees
some value in exploring theological motifs, he states that in practice they have skewed the truth
because, “One starts with Pauline motifs and looks for their origins in Judaism, but the various
elements of Judaism are not considered for their own sake.” The skewing occurs because
“precisely the same motif [can] occur in two different religions but to have a different
significance” (Ibid., 13). In other words, the motifs are not situated in their proper contexts and
interpreted in the light of the whole pattern of each religion respectively.
13
Ibid., 17.
14
As summarized in James A. Meek, “The New Perspective on Paul: An Introduction for the Uninitiated.”
Concordia Journal, July 1, 2001, 209.
15
Sanders, op.cit., 426. Also because he believed that ancient Judaism should be understood on the basis
of its “own self-preservations,” which of course assumes that Christianity cannot be a continuation
of what is authentic in Biblical Judaism.
16
Sanders, op.cit., 431.
4
Sander’s own terminology “getting in” was by God’s gracious election. It was God who
initiated the covenant with Israel prior to his giving any laws that demanded their
obedience. Thus it was “totally gratuitous, without prior cause in those being
elected.”17
Now Sanders is fully aware that someone could point to passages where Israel—alone
of all the nations—accepted the offer of the covenant (and the law along with it). In so
doing Israel might appear to have acquired some merit. Other passages ascribe the
giving of the covenant to “the merit found either in the patriarchs or in the exodus
generation or on the condition of future obedience.”18 Sanders brushes off any
possibility that these notions of human merit could attenuate God’s grace by saying that
the Rabbis were all giving answers to the basic question of why God chose the Jews. As
such they were fashioned for narrow, homiletical purposes and were not intended to
serve as a systematic theology. In any case, we may at least say that “for the rabbis
divine grace and human merit were not perceived as mutually exclusive.”19
The Israelite’s obedience to the law within the covenant is seen as a proper response to
the grace of election. Indeed, “God made the condition for remaining in the covenant
the free intent to obey the commandments.”20 We might sum up Sander’s thought by
saying that if ‘getting in’ is by grace, then ‘staying in’ is by works. Nevertheless, Sander’s
exact wording is important here. According to him, the Jews did not feel the yoke of the
Law to be a burden. They gave themselves to obeying it joyfully and voluntarily. Nor
did they suppose that for obedience to count, it had to meet a demand of complete
perfection. “No rabbi took the position that obedience must be perfect.”21 The free
determination to obey is what mattered, and “God was merciful towards those who
basically intended to obey even though their performance was far from perfect.”22
These Jews were considered righteous and blameless, even though they were neither
perfect nor sinless.23
This understanding that obedience would not and could not be perfect was
presupposed by the provision for atonement within the covenant. “The universally held
view is this: God has appointed means of atonement for every transgression except the
intention to reject God and his covenant.”24 The means of atonement before God (who
was always ready to forgive) was repentance. “Repentance was considered to be the
condition on the basis of which God forgives.”25

17
Sanders, op.cit., 87.
18
Sanders, op.cit., 87
19
As paraphrased by Stephen Westerholm in, Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul
and His Critics. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2004, 128-129 (ebook pagination). Westerholm is
summarizing pages 89-100 in Sanders’ Paul and Palestinian Judaism.
20
Sanders, op.cit., 93. See also page 75.
21
E. P. Sanders, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People. Fortress Press, 1983, 28.
22
Sanders, Palestinian Judaism, 125.
23
24
25
5
Sanders found the basic pattern of religion described above to be at the heart of all
brands of 2nd temple Judaism,26 a pattern that he calls “covenantal nomism”:
Briefly put, covenantal nomism is the view that one’s place in God’s plan is
established on the basis of the covenant and that the covenant requires as the
proper response of man his obedience to its commandments, while providing
means of atonement for transgression.27
This, Sanders believes, is a description of a religion of grace. In defining Paul’s problem

with Judaism as ‘works-righteousness,’ Lutherans have simply misread the Apostle.
As a matter of fact, Sanders feels, Paul held many beliefs that were consistent with this
basic pattern of covenantal nomism. He states:
[With respect to] the point which many have found a decisive contrast between
Paul and Judaism—grace and works—Paul is in agreement with Palestinian
Judaism…There are two aspects of the relationship between grace and works:
salvation is by grace but judgment is according to works; works are the condition
of remaining ‘in’, but they do not earn salvation.”28
There are, to be sure, major differences Judaism and Paul, but not in the way that
Lutheranism has traditionally understood them. Paul himself was not particularly
burdened by sin before his conversion (witness his explicit claim to being ‘blameless’ in
Philippians 3:6). Prior to his conversion to the belief that Jesus was the universal Savior,
Paul had felt no need of one.29
But once Jesus revealed himself to Paul as the Savior of all, the Apostle realized his
plight, indeed the plight of all humanity, was that we needed not only to be cleansed
from our sin, but even more to be liberated from its power.30 Paul may sometimes use
justification language as a ‘transfer term’31 to describe how one ‘gets into’ the new
covenant, but this does not form the center of his thought. The key point, rather, is that
one has been transferred from the power of sin to the Lordship of Christ, so that ‘in
union with him,’ one can now live in the power of his resurrection and in the hope of

26
Sanders is not trying to argue for the existence of a “uniformity of systematic theology” among Jews of
the time. He understands that there were different sects with different emphases. Nevertheless he
believes there was “a basic consistency in the underlying pattern of religion,” and that the various
sects had “more in common than just the name ‘Jew’” Palestinian Judaism, 423.
27
28
29
30
Sanders, Palestinian Judaism, 453, 465, 467-68.
31
It may be helpful here to note that Sanders describes Paul’s use of justification/righteousness language as
a ‘transfer terminology’ in contrast to its usage in Judaism. In Palestinian Judaism, righteousness
language was never used to speak of the way someone “got into” the covenant. It was rather used
to describe a person who kept the law and thus maintained his covenantal status (‘staying in’
versus ‘getting in’). N.T. Wright, as we will later see, does not view justification as a transfer
term.
6
future glory. It is this ‘mystical’ or ‘participatory’ language that forms the beating heart
of Paul’s message.32
Now any Lutheran would want to ask some obvious questions here: why then did Paul
spend so much time in Romans describing God’s massive wrath against “all the
godlessness and unrighteousness of humankind” (Ro 1:18), concluding that man was
unable to do anything good (Ro 3:12) and therefore under God’s righteous
condemnation (Ro 3:19-20)? Sanders answers by saying that Paul was not arguing from
plight to solution (as most Lutherans suppose); rather, “Paul thought backwards from
solution to plight. He was less concerned with the form that the plight took than that it
corresponded to the solution which he was convinced was correct: salvation is found in
Christ.”33
Elsewhere, Sanders elaborates:
The point is made explicitly in Gal. 2:21: if righteousness could come through the
law, Christ died in vain…. If his death was necessary for man’s salvation, it follows
that salvation cannot come in any other way and consequently that all were,
prior to the death and resurrection, in need of a savior.34
James Meeks gives an excellent summation:
Even Romans 1-3 does not, in Sander’s view, describe what is wrong with
humankind, but only demonstrates the need of a Savior. The only ‘defect’ in the
Law is this: “If the death and resurrection of Christ provide salvation, and
receiving the Spirit is the guarantee of salvation, all other means are excluded by
definition. This leads to Sanders’ oft-cited assertion that “this is what Paul finds
wrong with Judaism: it is not Christianity.”35
To recap Sander’s basic position: 2nd Temple Judaism was not a religion of works, as
some have supposed. It was rather founded in the grace of the covenant. God chose
Israel out of all the other nations to be his own, and he expected them to obey the laws
he gave them. ‘Getting in’ to the covenant was a matter of grace; ‘staying in’ was a
matter of obedience. All the legal material found in Tannaitic literature must be
understood as presupposing the covenant of grace. Pious Jews of the time did not feel
any burden of achieving perfection according to the law. Even Paul considered himself
‘blameless’ prior to his conversion, but not because he believed he had done everything
flawlessly. A Jew was righteous if he had the sincere intention to do the law. If one
stumbled at any point, there was always recourse to the mercies of God through
repentance.

32
Sanders, Palestinian Judaism, 497-498. One can observe his debt to Albert Schweitzer here who also
regarded justification as a ‘subsidiary crater’ to Paul’s mystic ‘ἐν Χριστῷ’ theology.
33
Sanders, Paul, the Law, 123.
34
35
Meek, op. cit., 214. He is citing from Palestinian Judaism pages 484 and 552 respectively.
7
For Paul, then, the chief difference between Judaism and Christianity was that Jesus and
his saving grace replaced God’s gracious choice of Israel for ‘getting in.’ He is the
universal Savior for Jew and Gentile. The doctrine of justification was formulated not so
much as the center of Paul’s theology, but as a recognition that the death of Christ
(solution) required the corresponding malady of universal sin (plight). Thus Paul makes
his case for justification only after grasping that Christ is the answer, that is, he argues
from solution to plight rather than (as many have supposed) from plight to solution.
The true center of Paul’s theology is to be found in his ‘participationist’ language. To say
that one is ‘in Christ,’ is to say that he is in the covenant of Christ. Paul, too, clearly
expected obedience to the moral guidance of the Spirit as a condition for ‘staying in the
covenant.’ One can therefore say that both the Jews and Paul taught ‘covenantal
nomism,’ with the chief difference being in the foundation for the covenant: God’s
choice of Israel or God’s gift of Christ.
James D.G. Dunn
James Dunn would probably see himself as someone who refined E.P. Sanders’
exposition of Paul.36 It was he who coined the term ‘New Perspective on Paul.’ Like
Sanders, Dunn would agree that the pattern of Judaism in the 1st century is ‘covenantal
nomism,’ in which entry into covenant status is by grace, while doing the law was the
means for staying in the covenant.37 Also like Sanders, Professor Dunn restricts his
consideration of the evidence to Paul’s ‘unquestioned’ letters.38 This is helpful to him in
making his case since he admits that Ephesians 2:8-9 looks “very much like a
confirmation” of the thought that Paul’s theology sets “‘working for a reward’ in
antithesis to ‘not working but simply believing.’”39 The gospels are dismissed as
‘problematic’ documents with a theology that is at best ‘allusive’ and at worst
‘intangible.’40
Dunn’s key insight comes in his explication of what Paul was saying when he set faith in
opposition to ‘the works of the law’:
[Paul’s] denial that justification is from works of law is, more precisely, a denial
that justification depends on circumcision or on observation of the Jewish purity
and food taboos. We may justifiably deduce therefore that by “works of law "
Paul intended his readers to think of particular observances of the law like
circumcision and the food laws. His Galatian readership might well think also of
the one other area of law observance to which Paul refers disapprovingly later in

36
Consider his remarks regarding where Sanders could have improved his presentation in Jesus, Paul, and
the Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians. Westminster John Knox Press, 1990, 185.
37
Dunn, James D. G. The Theology of Paul the Apostle. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub, 1998,
338.
38
Ibid., 13.
39
Ibid., 354.
40
Ibid., 13.
8
the same letter - their observance of special days and feasts (Gal. 4.10).41
When Paul used the expression ‘works of law,’ he did not mean good works in a general
sense. According to Dunn, the context forces us to conclude that he is being much more
specific than that. Paul is rather denying the notion that ritual observances (such as
eating kosher or being circumcised or observing Sabbath) can justify. This was a false
idea firmly embedded in the covenantal nomism of Paul’s Jewish contemporaries.
Although the entire law was important, these practices served as identity markers or
badges. Their observance demonstrated that Jews enjoyed status ‘within the
covenant.’42
Dunn hastens to add:
We should not let our grasp of Paul’s reasoning slip back into the old distinction
between faith and works in general, between faith and ‘good works.’ Paul is not
arguing here for a concept of faith which is totally passive because it fears to
become a ‘work.’ It is the demand for a particular work as the necessary
expression of faith which he denies….
Nor should we press Paul’s distinction between faith and works into a dichotomy
between faith and ritual… What he is concerned to exclude is the racial not the
ritual expression of faith; it is nationalism which he denies not activism.
Whatever their basis in the Scriptures, these works of the law had become
identified as indices of Jewishness, as badges betokening race and nation —
inevitably so when race and religion are so inextricably intertwined as they were,
and are, in Judaism.43
The Jews were guilty, in short, of excessive national pride. This was the chief problem
Paul had to deal with as Apostle to the Gentiles. Dealing with it formed the impetus for
his preaching of the cross:
The whole point of Jesus’ death on the cross was to remove the boundary of the
law and its consequent curse, to liberate the blessing promised to Abraham for
all to enjoy (Gal 2.21; 3.13-14)… As Gal 1.15-16 indicates, the leading edge of
Paul’s theological thinking was the conviction that God’s purpose embraced
Gentile as well as Jew, not the question of how a guilty man might find a
gracious God. It was round this conviction and as an expression of it that the
other central emphases of Paul’s theology first took shape.44
Meek’s remark is apropos, “The implication of this line of reasoning is startling: it seems
that Christ died, not to save us from our sins but merely to clarify a misunderstanding

41
Dunn, James D. G. The New Perspective on Paul. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2008, 108.
42
Ibid., 194.
43
Dunn, Jesus, Paul, and the Law, 198.
44
Dunn, The New Perspective on Paul, 140.
9
about the intent of the law and the boundaries of the covenant people.”45
N.T. Wright
This brings us at last to N.T. Wright. One of the great popularizers of the NPP, he is
someone whom many American and British evangelicals would claim as their own. This
probably owes more to his powerful writing and speaking style than to any real affinity
with classical evangelicalism. His position on Scripture, for example, is probably best
described as postmodern fuzzy.
Consider the following:
The risen Jesus doesn’t say, “All authority in heaven and earth is given to…the
books you chaps are going to go and write.” He says, “All authority has been
given to me.” The phrase authority of scripture can only, at its best, be a
shortcut for the authority of God in Jesus, mediated through scripture…. The
authority of scripture is therefore the dynamic, not static, means by which God
transforms humans into Jesus-followers and therefore kingdom-workers.46
For all his claims to be setting out a ‘fresh way’ of talking about biblical authority, canny
readers will recognize in this scheme the same kind of obfuscation Seminex47 displayed
in its heyday. Jesus, and a believer’s ‘dynamic’ and personal relationship with him, is set
against the staid and static books written about him. What is left unanswered is the
question: how can we possibly know what the nature of Christ’s authority might be
apart from what those books authoritatively declare? Instead of reducing scriptural
authority to the gospel—as the Seminex-ers did—Wright reduces it to the “big story” of
“God establishing his kingdom on earth as in heaven.”48 But whether it’s gospel
reductionism or kingdom reductionism, it amounts to the same kind of ‘fuzzy’ that, in
essence, denies the formal principle of the Reformation.49
Another postmodern aspect of his thinking can be seen in his emphasis on the Bible as
story, a story that “we must learn how to tell.”50 Of course the Bible is story, but it is
not just story nor is it all story. It also articulates many doctrinal truths. Wright uses the
concept, however, to persuade people to put less emphasis on what the Bible actually
says:
This is an organic story about God and the world. God’s authority is exercised not
to give his people lots of true information, not even true information about how

45
Meek, op. cit., 221.
46
N. T. Wright, Surprised by Scripture: Engaging Contemporary Issues. HarperOne, 2014, 28, 29.
47
The Lutheran students and professors who walked out of Concordia St. Louis in 1974 to form their own
“seminary in exile.” They were protesting the fact that the orthodoxy of their theology was
coming under church scrutiny.
48
Ibid., 28
49
This is the principle that Scripture alone is the final authority in all matters of faith and teaching.
50
Ibid., 28
10
they get saved (though that comes en route). God’s authority…is about God
reclaiming his proper lordship over all creation…through obedient humanity.51
The goal of his project becomes clear enough. In identifying Scripture as “story” he
becomes free to maneuver around its plain sense. If Scripture’s “big story” is about
God’s kingdom, and God’s reclaiming his proper Lordship, then it’s not “just about how
to get saved, with some cosmology bolted on the side.”52 So, for example, even though
the creation text in Scripture speaks about God forming the first man out of the dust of
the ground, in Wright’s reading it becomes: “God chose one pair from the rest of early
hominids for a special, strange, demanding vocation.”53
But at this point, we are not so much interested in what he does with the creation
account. We are merely taking note of his hermeneutical method. He views biblical
passages through the lens of his preferred narrative. What the text plainly says is not
what it means. We will see this same approach when we discuss his treatment of
justification.
Along with Dunn, Wright asserts that the key issue in Judaism with which Paul takes
issue is not work righteousness but the matter of the overweening national pride of his
people:
If we ask how it is that Israel has missed her vocation, Paul’s answer is that she is
guilty … of what I call 'national righteousness’, the belief that fleshly Jewish
descent guarantees membership of God's true covenant people. . . . Within this
‘national righteousness’, the law functions not as a legalist’s ladder but as a
charter of national privilege, so that for the Jew, possession of the law is three
parts of salvation.... Over against this abuse of Israel's undoubted privileged
status, Paul establishes, in his theology and in his missionary work, the true
children of Abraham, the world-wide community of faith.54
Thus Paul is really locked in disagreement with those Jews who interpreted the
covenant in rigidly ethnocentric terms, and all his statements must be understood in
that light. The Reformation theologians, operating within their own limited historical
horizon, simply misidentified the problem, and so misread Paul. Summarizing N.T.
Wright’s position in his essay “The Paul of History” (see reference below), Westerholm
writes:
“The real Judaism was not a religion of legalistic works-righteousness,” [rather it

51
Ibid., 29
52
Ibid., 28, 29
53
Ibid., 37
54
N. T. Wright, “The Paul Of History And The Apostle Of Faith.” first published in Tyndale Bulletin 29
(1978): 61–88. Accessed in electronic form from ntwright.com, 11/09/2014. Again, it is difficult
for a Lutheran to see much difference between the legalism on display by a crass attempt to merit
salvation by works and the legalism Wright describes of Jews believing the mere external
possession of the law being ‘three parts of salvation.’ The two are pretty much of a muchness.
11
was] “based on a clear understanding of grace,” … good works were meant to
express “gratitude and demonstrate that one is faithful to the covenant” (79-
80)…[We] must use other categories to understand Paul than “the thin, tired,
and anachronistic ones of Lutheran polemic” (87): “the tradition of Pauline
interpretation has manufactured a false Paul by manufacturing a false Judaism
for him to oppose” (78).55
What distinguishes N.T. Wright’s take on the New Perspective is that he is not content
to simply disagree with what he calls the Lutheran understanding of justification. He
feels he must mock it. Consider what he says about imputed righteousness:
If we use the language of the law court, it makes no sense whatever to say that
the judge imputes, imparts, bequeaths, conveys, or otherwise transfers his
righteousness to either the plaintiff or the defendant. Righteousness is not an
object, a substance or a gas which can be passed across the courtroom….To
imagine the defendant somehow receiving the judge’s righteousness is simply a
category mistake.56
A more profoundly skewed caricature of what Lutherans confess could hardly be

imagined! No Lutheran has ever said that the judge’s own righteousness is imputed to
anyone. And yet the good Bishop of Durham counsels us to beware the blogs because
so many ‘mean and untrue things’ are said on them. He, on the other hand, advocates a
more balanced discussion and means to engage with his critics pastorally, confident that
he is open to be changed himself in the process. Yet in the end he still implies that he—
in contrast to nearly everyone else—is the only one who is using at least 80% of the
pieces of the jigsaw puzzle in constructing the full picture of Paul’s teaching. He seeks to
hear the entire chord instead of isolated notes. Or to use another metaphor he didn’t,
he strives to grasp the entire elephant while the rest of us poor mortals have been
content heretofore to grasp merely parts of it.57
So then what is justification by faith, and what is its significance in Paul’s theology,
according to Wright? To grasp what he is saying, we first must understand what
justification by faith is not. It obviously has nothing to do with the imputation of
righteousness. And it is not in itself the gospel. The gospel in its purest form is
something else.58 We are mistaken, Wright asserts, if we suppose that the Good News
Paul proclaimed deals primarily with the question of how individuals get to heaven, or
how a person can know he is right with God. These questions, alas, have led to a

55
Westerholm, op.cit. 177 (e-book).
56
N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? 1
edition. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997, 98.
57
A paraphrase of his discussion in Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision. InterVarsity Press, 2009,
19-37.
58
Here we see how Wright, along with Dunn and Sanders, follow Albert Schweitzer in seeing justification
as less than central to Paul’s gospel. Schweitzer called justification “a subsidiary crater” of Paul’s
thought.
12
theology in which God’s purposes orbit around the self-centered religious ego, rather
than the other way round.59
The gospel is rather the story of how God becomes king of the world. That story finds
its focal point in the narrative of Jesus of Nazareth. Paraphrasing Paul’s opening words
in Romans, Wright declares that the gospel is, “[Paul’s] announcement that crucified
Jesus of Nazareth had been raised from the dead; that he was thereby proved to be
Israel’s Messiah; that he was thereby installed as Lord of the world. Or to put it yet
more compactly: Jesus, the crucified and risen Messiah, is Lord.”60
A couple of things to note here in passing: there is little mention of the wrath of God
against sinful humankind, an item Paul has quite a bit to say about in the chapters that
follow. “In fact this gospel says little or nothing about personal sin and forgiveness,
individual redemption, atonement, or any of the other great soteriological doctrines.”61
Many have noticed the lack of clarity in Wright’s language on these matters, and the
impression one gets of the gospel Paul proclaimed—at least so far as individuals are
concerned—is one of (to use George Orwell’s memorable phrase) “sheer cloudy
vagueness.”
As we have seen, Wright would argue that to use individualistic categories is to read
Paul with the wrong lens. He therefore substitutes a lens of his own which he feels is
much more consonant with 1st century Jewish concerns. The genuine gospel narrative is
about God’s covenant with Israel and all of Paul’s writings need to be read against this
covenantal backdrop. God called Abraham to remake the world after Adam’s fall.62 But
Israel according to the flesh failed to carry out their God-given vocation. In fact, they
couldn’t since they were still ‘in Adam,’ and as such “as human, and fallen, as everyone
else.” 63 They demonstrated this failure in the way they turned their “privilege into
boast and [their] safeguarding symbols [i.e. possession of the Torah, Sabbath,
circumcision] into badges of superiority.”64
Because of their disobedience, Israel after the flesh experienced the curse of exile, as
had been predicted in Deuteronomy 27-29.65 This curse was to be understood as
covenantal and national, not individual and personal. What’s more, in this respect fallen

59
Justification, 24-25; or What Saint Paul Said, 45.
60
What Saint Paul Said, 46.
61
Phil Johnson, “A Defense of the Old Perspective on Paul.” Accessed September 9, 2014.
http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/new_p.html.
62
“Israel’s vocation had to do, in other words, with the creator’s plan for the whole creation. God called
Abraham to deal with the problem of Adam.” N.T. Wright, “Romans and the Theology of Paul.”
In Pauline Theology, Volume III, 30–67. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995.
http://ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Romans_Theology_Paul.pdf. Accessed: 12/31/2014
63
64
N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology. 1st Fortress Press ed
edition. Minneapolis: Fortress Pr, 1992, 243.
65
An exile that persisted even after the return to the land because it was now under “Roman occupation and
overlordship,” Climax,. 141.
13
Israel became a stand-in for all peoples since the Torah “pil[ed] up the sin of the world
in one particular place, that is, in Israel.” 66 Only God could rescue his people from this
plight and, in his covenantal faithfulness,67 that’s exactly what he did.
God intended Jesus, as Messiah, to be the new Israel. By offering true obedience68 and
by suffering the nation’s curse, Jesus fulfilled Israel’s covenant and demonstrated God’s
faithfulness. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, God ended the exile and set his
people free from sin and death.69 Through Jesus, God inaugurated the Age to Come,
and “Gentiles were now to be summoned to join Israel in celebrating the new day, the
day of deliverance.”70 In Abraham’s seed, truly, all the nations of the earth were now
blessed.71 Thus the gospel Paul proclaimed to the Romans can be summed up more
completely as follows:
[It is] the royal proclamation of King Jesus as lord of the world…[It] reveals or
unveils God’s own righteousness, his covenant faithfulness, which operates
through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for the benefit of all those who in turn
are faithful (‘from faith to faith’). In other words, when Paul announces that
Jesus Christ is Lord, the lord of the world, he is in that very act and
announcement unveiling before the world the great news that the one God of all
the world has been true to his word, has dealt decisively with the evil that has
invaded his creation, and is now restoring justice, peace, and truth.72
This is why Wright makes a sharp distinction between the gospel and justification by
faith, between the righteousness of God which Paul proclaims in Romans 1:17 (which is
essentially God’s faithfulness to his covenant) and the righteousness of faith of which
Paul speaks in Romans 3:28. In his thinking, one is cause and the other is effect.73
The gospel as cause reveals how God—the faithful God of the covenant74--has dealt

66
Climax, p. 152.
67
N.T. Wright’s standard translation for δίκαιοσυνη θεοῦ wherever it appears.
68
Wright prefers the translation of “faithfulness of Jesus Christ” where the expression διὰ πίστεως Χριστοῦ
occurs. This is essentially how he renders it in his translations of Philippians 3:9 and Romans
3:26, cf What St. Paul Said, pp 123 and 128 respectively.
69
What St. Paul Said, p 51.
70
What St. Paul Said, p 51.
71
Whatever is useful in this paraphrase of N.T. Wright’s theology is to be ascribed to Westerholm,
Perspectives, see especially pages 178-180. Whatever its failings, I own.
72
What Saint Paul Said, p. 109. He didn’t add “and the American way,” but I’m sure that was just an
oversight.
73
What Saint Paul Said, p. 129.
74
According to Wright, the ‘righteousness of God revealed in the gospel’ (Romans 1:17) has nothing to do
with God’s declaring guilty sinners righteous, but with God’s faithfulness to the covenant, which
according to Wright, is Paul’s chief concern. God’s faithfulness to the covenant is demonstrated
διὰ πίστεως Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ, that is, through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ (note: not faith in
Jesus). This is what inspires not just faith, but faithfulness on our part. For a discussion of the
entire question of the meaning πίστις Χριστοῦ, see Aaron Jenson’s “Faith in Christ: An Answer to
the ΠΙΣΤΙΣ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΥ debate,” a Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary senior thesis from 2015.
14
decisively with sin, death, and all the evil in creation through the crucifixion and
resurrection of King Jesus. Messiah Jesus is now Lord of the world. The effect of the
gospel is justification by faith. God has declared—defined—“who the true Israel is in
advance of the eschatological showdown75”:
Justification in the first century was not about how someone might establish a
relationship with God. It was about God’s [declaration], both future and present,
of who was, in fact, a member of his people. In Sanders’ terms, it was not so
much about ‘getting in,’ or indeed about ‘staying in,’ as about ‘how you could tell
who was in.’ In standard Christian theological language, it wasn’t so much about
soteriology as about ecclesiology; not so much about salvation as about the
church.76
This kind of justification must be understood, then, in opposition to other ways of

drawing the boundary markers of the people of God. The Jewish boast was not a
“proto-Pelagianism” (of which they were not guilty, since Judaism was a religion of
grace), but a national boast that they were, by race, “inalienably the people of God.”77
With this boast, some Jews defined covenant membership in terms of “badges of [their]
race” such as circumcision, Sabbath-keeping, their possession of the Torah as a national
charter.78 Against this, Paul declares that faith and faith alone is the true “badge of
covenantal membership” in the people of God—without regard to race, culture, or
religious observances—even if those observances have been spelled out in the Torah.
“There is no road into covenant membership on the grounds of Jewish racial
privilege.”79
Throughout the focus of N.T. Wright’s definition remains on the corporate body of
believers, rather than on the individual sinner:
Justification means that those who believe in Jesus Christ are declared to be
members of the true covenant family, which of course means that their sins are
forgiven, since that was the purpose of the covenant…. It means that they are
declared, in the present, to be what they will be seen to be in the future, namely,
the true people of God. Present justification declares on the basis of faith, what
future justification will affirm publicly (according to [Romans] 2:14-16 and 8:9-
11) on the basis of the entire life. 80
Since he includes within his definition of faith not merely the purely passive idea of the
hand that receives forgiveness from God, but also the active quality of ‘faithfulness to
the covenant,’ some have also seen in Wright a more ominous shift to faithfulness as

75
76
77
What Saint Paul Said, p. 129, 126.
78
What Saint Paul Said, p. 132, 122.
79
What Saint Paul Said, p. 129. See also p. 133.
80
15
being an instrumental cause in the final vindication of God’s people. This he specifically
denies, though even the language of his denial makes one wonder:
Allegiance to this Jesus must be total. One of Paul’s key phrases is ‘the
obedience of faith.’ Faith and obedience are not antithetical. They belong
exactly together. Indeed, very often the word ‘faith’ itself could properly be
translated as ‘faithfulness,’ which makes the point just as well. Nor of course
does this then compromise the gospel or justification, smuggling in works by a
back door…. Faith, even in this active sense, is never…a qualification, provided
on the human side, either for getting into God’s family or for staying there once
in. It is the God-given badge of membership, neither more nor less. Holiness is
the appropriate human condition for those who, by grace alone, find themselves
as believing members of the family of God.81
While faith and obedience are certainly not antithetical, they do need to be
distinguished when speaking about the faith that justifies. Since to Wright justifying
faith is not a matter of salvation (rather: a badge of those who belong to the family of
God), one might say that this need not be considered an issue. Yet his language on this
score is very ambiguous. And this in an article of doctrine that has endured many
ambiguities and misunderstandings in the past—to the detriment of anxious
consciences! At the very least one can say that his language demonstrates the typical
way in which those in the Reformed tradition absorb law into gospel, throwing both into
confusion.
Finally it is worth asking what insights—new and fresh—does Wright’s take on Paul’s
gospel and justification bring to the contemporary church? In answer, Wright would say
that his gospel leads to the destruction of the “false dichotomy” between preaching the
gospel and seeking social justice. In the gospel proclamation of Jesus as Lord, Christians
must seek “to bring that lordship to bear on every aspect of the world.”82 What is more,
this new perspective on justification helps Christians avoid the danger of individualism
that the old [Lutheran] perspective brought with it. It brings them into community with
others.
And what a community it will be:
The doctrine of justification, in other words, is not merely a doctrine which

Catholic and Protestant might just be able to agree on, as a result of hard-
working ecumenical endeavor. It is itself the ecumenical doctrine, the doctrine
that rebukes all our petty and often culture-bound church groupings, and which
declares that all who believe in Jesus belong together in the one family.83

81
82
83
16
While doctrinal discussions will persist even in this community, they need not and must
not divide Christian from Christian, lest they fail to heed the lesson of Galatians 2!84
In completing his review of those who before him had gone on a quest for the ‘real’
Jesus, Albert Schweitzer came to the conclusion that the ‘real’ historical Jesus his
predecessors had found was merely a projection of their own rationalism, liberalism,
and modern theology. The same might be said of N. T. Wright. In his quest for the ‘real’
gospel and for what St. Paul was ‘really’ saying, he came up with a gospel that looks very
much what an English churchman of the late 20th and early 21st century could love and
long for.
What Shall We Say Then?
The New Perspective presents a clear challenge to confessional Lutheranism. If the

center will not hold, can the rest of our teaching long endure? Wright, in particular, has
thrown down the gauntlet. We need to respond and there can be no better response
than to test the spirits by means of the three great ‘sola’s’ of the Reformation: sola
Scriptura, sola Gratia, sola Fide—Scripture, Grace, and Faith Alone.
Under ‘Scripture Alone’ we will consider the hermeneutical problems in the New
Perspective’s approach. Under ‘Grace Alone and Faith Alone’ we will examine how pure
grace fares under the New Perspective’s regime. We will also challenge some of its
overly confident assertions about the nature of second Temple Judaism. We will pause
to critique their portrayal of Lutheranism itself, since they use it as a foil to their
exposition of what St. Paul ‘really’ said. We will show what Paul meant by excluding
‘law-works’ (χωρὶς ἔργων νόµου) from his conception of how grace works and what faith
does. Finally we will zero in on the precise nature of faith in justification, demonstrating
the forensic nature of God’s justifying verdict as the central doctrine of the gospel.
Scripture Alone

When Lutheran’s confess “Scripture alone,” they mean:

That the only rule and guiding principle according to which all teachings and
teachers are to be evaluated and judged are the prophetic and apostolic writings of
the Old and New Testaments alone, as it is written, “Your word is a lamp to my feet
and a light to my path” (Ps. 119[:105]), and Saint Paul: “If . . . an angel from heaven
should proclaim to you something contrary, . . . let that one be accursed!” (Gal.
1[:8]). Other writings of ancient or contemporary teachers, whatever their names
may be, shall not be regarded as equal to Holy Scripture, but all of them together
shall be subjected to it, and not be accepted in any other way, or with any further
authority, than as witnesses of how and where the teaching of the prophets and

84
17
apostles was preserved after the time of the apostles.85
Scripture is therefore the sole source of doctrine. As “the pure clear fountain” it is the
touchstone “according to which all teachers and teaching are to be judged and
evaluated.”86 Extra-biblical materials, historical reconstructions, and contemporary
concerns cannot be placed on the same level as the Scriptures, much less rule over them
as interpretive lenses to determine what they say.
Intimately related to this is the Lutheran hermeneutical principle: Scriptura suipsius

interpres est—Scripture is its own (best) interpreter. This has direct application to one’s
exegetical method. Any understanding of what Paul really meant must begin with what
he says in his actual writings, especially as their meaning is understood in the nearer
context. Following that the wider context of Scripture may be considered and parallel
passages brought to bear. Only when this exegetical task is complete can extra biblical
sources be considered, and then only in order to add color and depth to the
understanding previously won from the Scriptures alone. Such extra biblical sources
cannot be used to set aside doctrines clearly stated in the Scriptures nor add new
content to them.
The New Perspectivists fail to meet this test in a number of ways. Their reconstructions
become interpretative lenses which they claim help them understand Paul better, but
which in fact skew Paul’s meaning. Their use of ‘parallel’ ideas gleaned from extra
biblical sources appear to be more significant to them in unlocking what Paul meant
than parallel expressions found in what Paul actually said. These shaky parallels are
further undermined by the fact that the validity of their interpretation of the extra
biblical rabbinic sources has itself been called into question.
What makes this even more strange is the way they will a priori exclude from
consideration canonical Scriptures like the gospels and even some letters of Paul, while
citing text after text from the Dead Sea Scrolls and Rabbinic literature. Finally, one might
seriously question whether or not they have allowed 20th and 21st century concerns
determine their interpretations, so that Paul—by means of a latter-day pesher
midrash87—speaks to contemporary issues rather than as a 1st century Christian.
Narrative Reconstructions
Wright provides the clearest example of this approach with his “Israel and the Exile”
motif which, as we have seen, informs to a large degree not only his interpretation of

85
Robert Kolb, Timothy J. Wengert, and Charles P. Arand, The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000), 486.
86
Robert Kolb, Timothy J. Wengert, and Charles P. Arand, The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000), 527.
87
A pesher midrash is a type of 1st century hermeneutical technique in which the application serves the
interpretation. The ‘then’ of the prophet’s original situation along with the meaning of his words
in that context (historical-grammatical method) is swallowed up by the ‘now’ of interpreter’s
application, “This concerns…”
18
the book of Romans, but of almost the entire New Testament. He declares that God
always intended to create “a worldwide family of faith” from Abraham’s children. It was
Israel’s calling to carry out a pivotal role in God’s plan. But they failed, just as Moses
predicted they would in Deuteronomy 27-29. As a result, the covenantal curses came
down upon the nation and they were carried off into exile.
Even after the so-called “return” in 537 BC and up to the time of Jesus, there was a
persistent sense that Israel was still in exile, still scattered among the nations. The full
restoration promised in Deuteronomy 30 had not yet taken place. Only by the
covenantal faithfulness of God (=the righteousness of God) in sending the true Israel,
Jesus, could these promises be realized, and only then after the climactic death and
resurrection of the Messiah. In him all the curses upon Israel for its disobedience were
exhausted, and sin decisively dealt with. In him now the promises made to Abraham
can be fulfilled: both Jew and Gentile can sit down together in one family (=be justified),
a family of faith.88
Now there are certainly things we can learn from trying to discern the various scriptural
narratives that implicitly lie in the text. No one can doubt, for instance, that behind
Romans 5:12-21 lies the basic gospel story and Genesis 1-3, with which Paul assumes
familiarity as he makes his monumental comparison of Adam and Christ. Drawing out
what is truly implicit can indeed bring Paul’s words into sharper focus. But what Wright
does in his reconstructive narratives is to create a misleading tapestry interwoven here
and there with a few threads of truth.89 This then he imposes on the text in such a way
that ‘the story’ becomes the primary focus rather than what the text itself is actually
saying.
In effect, Wright’s narrative obfuscates rather than illuminates the text. And so “the
righteousness of God” cannot be “a righteousness from God” or “a justifying verdict that
God pronounces,” but rather must be “the faithfulness of God to his covenantal
promises to Abraham.” Paul’s ultimate concern is not (as was Luther’s) how the
individual sinner is rescued from the plight of sin, but how God remained faithful to his
covenantal promises. He demonstrated this faithfulness by rescuing Israel from its
plight of exile so that he could open the way for the creation of Abraham’s worldwide
family of faith. If Wright wanted to speak of exile as a governing metaphor in 1 Peter,
we might grant his case. But there at least one has actual words that signal the

88
See Wright’s discussion of this in The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology,
Minneapolis: Fortress Pr, 1992, 141-143. Also see his Paul: In Fresh Perspective, Minneapolis,
MN: Fortress Press, 2009, 139-140. In this narrative, take note again of the emphasis on the
corporate nature of the covenantal restoration: Paul is not talking about the failure or restoration of
individuals as such, but of the nation of Israel, into which the Gentiles can now be grafted.
89
Some of his observations are at points, useful. Indeed, ideas of rescue from exile may, along with other
themes and ideas, lie in the background and form part of Paul’s thought world. But this does not
make exile into a governing metaphor. Wright gives it far too much emphasis in his interpretation.
19
presence of the picture in the mind of the holy writer.90
Wright’s overarching narrative, then, becomes the means by which he can redefine
salvation and justification. Salvation is not so much individual as it is corporate.
Justification is not about a sinner receiving a verdict of righteousness from God, but a
faithful God keeping his covenant and inviting all—Jew and Gentile—to the ecclesiastical
feast of the family of God. This feast is a foretaste of that eschatological banquet at
which shall sit all those who have shown themselves to be faithful to the covenant in
this life.91
False Trails and Misleading Parallels
E.P. Sanders has undoubtedly contributed to scholarship in his analysis of Second
Temple Judaism. In his efforts to find parallels between the message of Judaism and the
message of Paul, however, we can detect a number of flaws. First, in his zeal to correct
the interpretation of Tannaitic Judaism then current in the world of scholarship, he fell
into the common error of believing that there was a single underlying ‘pattern of
religion’ among all the sects of Judaism, with a single common approach to salvation
(covenantal nomism).

Jacob Neusner challenges Sander’s whole approach, characterizing his use of the
sources as “ignorant” and “profoundly flawed.”92 His first charge is that Sanders
mishandles the Tannaitic evidence by making the assumption that the Mishnah’s
quotation of a first century Rabbi can be relied upon as an accurate reflection of what
he actually said. This is by no means certain. Secondly, Neusner considers Sanders’
single ‘pattern of religion’ to be a fabrication. Most scholars now believe that the
Judaism of the 1st century was fluid, a broad sea with many diverse currents, not one
‘Judaism,’ but many.93

Finally, and perhaps most damningly, Neusner points out that with Sanders’ emphasis
on the covenant and election, he is using categories not suggested by the material itself:
Neusner…argues that the Mishnah is silent on the covenant and election, not
because these are so thoroughly assumed that they need not be mentioned, but
because it wishes instead to speak of other things. The argument from silence is
always a dangerous one….He has imported categories foreign to the Jewish
materials, rather than letting his understanding of Judaism develop organically
from those materials.94

90
E.g παρεπιδήµοις (1:1); τὸν τῆς παροικίας ὑµῶν χρόνον (1:17); ὡς παροίκους καὶ παρεπιδήµους (2:11);
µὴ ξενίζεσθε τῇ ἐν ὑµῖν πυρώσει πρὸς πειρασµὸν ὑµῖν γινοµένῃ ὡς ξένου ὑµῖν συµβαίνοντος
(4:12); Ἀσπάζεται ὑµᾶς ἡ ἐν Βαβυλῶνι (5:13).
91
See above, page 16.
92
as qtd. in Meek, op.cit., 216.
93
94
20
In other words, he—like Wright—imposes a template on what he sees in the Rabbinic
sources and then imposes it upon his interpretation of Paul. It’s hard to see how a
flawed interpretation of Judaism could lead to an accurate depiction of Paul.
Also questionable is Sanders’ confident assertion that no Jew—including Paul—felt the

burden of perfect obedience (see above, note 28). In this he sees a parallel with Paul’s
‘confidence in the flesh’ as expressed in Philippians 3:5-6. It is a mystery to this
interpreter of Paul how anyone could confuse Paul’s depiction of his prior, self-
righteous, Pharisaic self with the deep sense of sin expressed by him in so many places
as a converted man who now understood the reality of his sin (Romans 7:15-25; 1
Corinthians 15:9; 1 Timothy 1:13). And even if it were true that the Pharisees lived lives
relatively untroubled by guilt, this is by no means sufficient evidence to conclude that
no one recognized the Law’s demand for perfect obedience and the consequent plight
of sin prior to the arrival of the Christian gospel.
A. Andrew Das, after carefully presenting the extra-biblical evidence declares:
Sanders minimized the fact that perfect conduct always remained the ideal…[He]
was wrong to claim that the halakah never required perfect obedience…While
affirming with Sanders the importance of God’s election and merciful regard
toward the Jewish people, the Jews did maintain that the Law enjoins perfect
obedience—contrary to the claims of “new perspective” Pauline scholars.95
Ignoring Scriptural Evidence
What makes this all the more maddening is that the NPP-ers ignore the evidence
presented by the Scriptures themselves. In case one might think that this is just a typical
‘precritical’ Lutheran trying to make an easy point with his co-religionists, consider the
fact that the omission is so glaring that Rabbi Neusner says:
I do not understand why Sanders does not begin his work…with an account of
the Old Testament legacy available to all the groups under discussion…It seems
to me natural to give the Old Testament a central place in the description of any
system resting upon…the Mosaic revelation and the prophetic writings.96
As we have seen, Sanders, Dunn, and Wright in developing their theories all exclude
from consideration the gospels and those writings of Paul that some scholars consider
to be pseudepigrapha. Even if one did not believe in their inspiration, couldn’t one
point out that these writings are very early—as early or even earlier than many of the
writings which they do cite? Couldn’t they be used to give a more complete picture?
What is more incredible, however, is Dunn’s concession that Ephesians 2:8-9 reflects the
possibility that “the issue [has moved] from one of works of law to one of human

95
A. Andrew Das, “Beyond Covenantal Nomism: Paul, Judaism, and Perfect Obedience.” Concordia
Journal 27, no. 3 (July 1, 2001), 241.
96
21
effort.”97 This is a stunning admission and exposes a serious flaw in the NPP advocates’
thinking. For the sake of argument, let’s grant their belief that Ephesians was written
later, after Paul’s death, by some unknown disciple of his. It would still indicate that
three centuries before Augustine, someone had (mis)understood Paul to be speaking
against work-righteousness in general, and not merely ceremonial badges of the
covenant or an exclusivist nationalism. A Lutheran ‘reading’ of Paul, therefore, can trace
its roots back to (at the very least) the early 2nd century.
While we don’t need the arguments of scholars to buttress our certainty of the
inspiration of the Bible, evidence like this certainly serves to underline the conclusion of
one writer, “All our understanding of First-century Judaism ought to come primarily
from the Scripture itself and not the musings of twenty first century scholars who
themselves refuse to bow to the authority of Scripture.”98
Pesher Midrash
It is a commonplace among NPP-er’s to view Luther as having read his own problems
with medieval Catholicism into the text of Paul. Once this skewed interpretation was
amplified by the reformers who followed, it served as a kind of tradition that prevented
generations of readers from seeing “what St. Paul really said.” Only the heavy lifting of
scholars like Sanders, Dunn, and Wright could bring Paul’s meaning back into the light.

What makes this critique of Luther so ironic and self-serving is the way the NPP-ers
themselves practice the same art they accuse Luther of, as we have seen. The problem
isn’t really sin, they affirm, but the problem of getting Jews and Gentiles together at one
table. After the devastation of the holocaust, such a doctrine seems suddenly relevant.
With the scandal of a divided Christendom, who’s to say that justification is unimportant
—even if it isn’t the center of Paul’s thought? Justification is about community, Wright
tells us and the more we get together, overcoming our ‘petty church groupings,’ the
happier we’ll be.

We’ll leave for the next part a discussion of how accurate their understanding of Luther
is. For now we merely content ourselves with saying that when the principle of Sola
Scriptura is abandoned, many strange things happen. This is the case because, given our
treacherous hearts, the easiest thing in interpretation is to find what you’re looking for.
The hardest is to see what is actually there.
Grace Alone and Faith Alone

How does Grace Work?
If it were up to the NPP-er’s alone to interpret it, Romans 3:23 would be among the
most obscure texts in Scripture. Who really knows what Paul meant by saying that we

97
James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle, Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub, 1998,
371.
98
Phil Johnson, “A Defense of the Old Perspective on Paul.” Accessed September 9, 2014.
http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/new_p.html.
22
are justified “freely by his grace”? His later and contrasting expression “works of law”
(Ro 3:28) is equally obscure. According to Dunn, it must be unpacked to mean identity
markers like circumcision and the food laws. According to Wright, who interprets it
more or less in line with Dunn, the words denote the ethnic badges of the covenant
such as Sabbath keeping and the possession of the Torah. Excessive ethnic pride or
Judaic nationalism—not Judaism per se—this is what Paul opposed. This is what was
preventing Jew and Gentile from uniting in one church. As for Judaism itself, it simply
was not a religion of legalistic work-righteousness, but a religion of grace.
Part of the problem the NPP-er’s have in talking about grace can be traced to their
misunderstanding of what Lutheranism says on the whole matter. They have
manufactured a false Luther for themselves to fight! For one thing, confessional
Lutherans have never suggested that the genuine adherents of 1st century Judaism were
legalistic. Along with Jesus and Paul, we recognize that, while there were legalistic
Pharisees and Judaizers, there were also many in Israel who were joyfully waiting for
their Messiah to come to fulfill the Old Testament prophecies and bring the forgiveness
of sins. People like Elizabeth, Mary, Zechariah, Joseph, Simeon, Nathaniel and others
come to mind. Professor Armin Panning, commenting on Paul’s words in Galatian 2:16,99
makes this point so beautifully:
The Jews who truly understood the nature of this covenant with God [i.e. the
Sinaitic covenant—ed.] never trusted or relied on their performance of these
special regulations as the reasons why God should be gracious to them…When
they brought their sacrifices, it was not viewed as something they did for God;
their sacrifices served, rather, as reminders of God’s great promise. . . .of the
Savior of the world [who] would one day suffer and die in their place.100

The NPP-ers’ misunderstanding on this score leads to a similar distortion in their
description of what Luther himself stood against. Wright clearly intends to take a
sarcastic swipe at Lutheranism when he denies that Paul was opposing “Jews
attempting a kind of proto-Pelagian pulling themselves up by their moral bootstraps.”101
There is, however, no stream of medieval Catholicism that I am aware of that denied the
need for grace in salvation. Predestinating grace, operative grace, cooperative grace--all
played their role in the transformation of the sinner into the one who was—by means of
the process—ultimately made righteous.102

In other words, Luther was not reacting to a doctrinal system that replaced grace with

99
[We who are Jews by birth] “know that a man is not justified by observing the law but by faith in Jesus
Christ.”
100
The People’s Bible: Galatians, Ephesians. (Milwaukee: Northwestern Publishing House), 1997, 45.
101
What St. Paul Said, 119. For an excellent analysis for the many ways in which the NPP-ers distort and
misrepresent not only Luther, but medieval Catholicism, see Aaron T. O’Kelley, Did the Reformers
Misread Paul?: A Historical-Theological Critique of the New Perspective. Wipf and Stock Publishers,
2014. He characterizes Wright’s description of Luther as ‘a sweeping caricature,’ 13.
102
Kelly Misread Paul? 8ff.
23
‘crass work righteousness.’ For Luther, the question rather was whether or not, in the
matter of one’s ultimate salvation, grace could be combined with the merit of works
without ceasing to be grace.

In their definition of how grace works, both Sanders and Wright describe the Old and
New Covenants’ way of salvation in a manner very similar to the way medieval
Catholicism conceived of the sinner’s path to heaven. For Sanders, as we’ve seen,
elective grace is the only way of ‘getting in’ to the covenant. ‘Staying in’ requires a
persistent good intention to do what God says (with sacrificial provision for failure). For
Wright, one’s present ‘justification’ by faith certifies that he is indeed ‘in’ the covenant.
But God will declare Christians just at the last day on the basis of their faithful
obedience.

As we have seen, Wright is typically vague on how one’s obedience or ‘faithfulness’
serves this process. He denies that it has anything to do with salvation. But it is hard to
escape the idea that in some way, God’s gracious enabling of our faithfulness has
something to do with our ultimate standing before God. Stripped of the modern
terminology, medieval Catholics would have recognized both Wright’s and Sander’s
positions as compatible with their own.

For Luther and those who followed him, any insertion of works into the article of
salvation vitiated grace. Luther would have agreed heartily with Augustinian proverb,
“Gratia vero nisi gratis est non est gratia.”103 The Confessions specifically condemn the
notion that good works are necessary for salvation, declaring, “Good works must be
completely excluded from any questions of salvation as well as from the article on our
justification before God.”104

But enough on Luther, medieval Catholicism, Wright, Dunn and Sanders. The real
question is: what did Paul mean by setting grace in sharp contradistinction to ‘works of
law’? Let’s begin by asking what the phrase ‘works of law’ means within the context of
Paul’s writings. Understanding this term is crucial for understanding grace alone and
faith alone. We will note that the ‘gospel plus works’ doctrine of covenantal nomism is
precisely the teaching which Paul opposes in his letters to the Galatians and Romans.
Note what Paul sets in parallel alignment to "works of law" in Galatians 3:
You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?

Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was publicly displayed as the crucified One.
This one thing I want to learn from you:
by law works (ἐξ ἔργων νόµου)
did you receive the Spirit or

103
Unless grace is completely free, it isn’t grace.
104
FC Epitome IV.7. Emphasis mine.
24
by hearing and believing the message?( ἐξ ἀκοῆς πίστεως)
Are you really so foolish?
You began by the power of the Spirit (πνεύµατι)
Are you going to reach your goal by your own human power? (σαρκὶ)
Paul is contrasting the power of the Spirit who works through the gospel message with
the power of human beings who operate by doing what the law requires. He sees the
matter as an either/or situation. Either you will receive the Spirit from the gospel, or you
will try to "reach your goal" by your own powers. But you cannot have it both ways. You
cannot get into the covenant by grace and then maintain your position by your own
deeds. We note especially here that Paul’s concern is not merely the entry into the
covenant, but the covenantal goal—undoubtedly a reference to the final verdict at the
last day. This goal will be reached, Paul says, not by human effort but by the Spirit’s
power—by grace and faith alone! Works are excluded.
It is just this "sharply antithetical"105 language that NPP-ers too lightly pass over in their
presentation of the biblical evidence. For example, consider once again what they say
Paul’s problem with the law “really” was. How true is it to say that when Paul uses the
expression ἔργων νόµου, he has in mind primarily the Jewish “badges of belonging” such
as circumcision and Sabbath-keeping? While it certainly includes those matters, is it
true that Paul is merely critical of Jewish ethnocentrism, and that he really means to say
no more than that Gentiles don't have to keep food laws in order to be recognized as
God's people?
A key text in support of their point of view would be Galatians 2:11ff. Obviously the
matter of Gentiles and Jews eating together is the presenting problem, but is it the
entire problem? A brief glance at the rest of Galatians 2 makes it obvious how
reductionistic this notion is. Paul introduces the term in ἔργων νόµου in verse 16. In verse
19, in a parallel expression, Paul broadens out his subject matter to speak of the law
quite generally, “By law (διὰ νόµου) I died to the law (νόµῳ)” (v. 19). It would be absurd
to restrict Paul’s conception of ‘law’ to keeping kosher: “By observing the food laws, I
died to the food laws.” Clearly, when someone dies, he is not merely free from dietary
laws, but from all requirements of the Mosaic code.106 The second expression, stated in
so broad a fashion, defines in context what Paul means by his first expression “works of
the law.”107 It may have somewhat of a negative edge to it, but it is Paul’s way of
referring to works demanded by the law.

105
An expression borrowed from Moises Silva.
106
This is corroborated by Paul’s use of a similar argument in Romans 7:1-6.
107
Das makes this same argument in Paul, the Law, and the Covenant,156-157. Paul, he says, moves
easily from the Peter incident to a general discussion of the law since adherence to food laws
implies an acceptance of the entire law (see also Galatians 5:2-3). This interpretation is also
confirmed by the parallels in Romans where Paul, in a similar way, speaks of dying to the law. In
that context there is no question about Paul’s referring to the entire Mosaic code especially in its
moral significance (Romans 7:1-6).
25
This broad understanding of “works of the law” is confirmed by yet another parallel
phrase occurring in verse 21: “If justification (comes about) by means of the law (διὰ
νόµου) then Christ died for nothing.” Substituting a phrase like ‘observing dietary
restrictions’ trivializes the death of Christ.108 No Jew of any stripe would say, “We are
justified by keeping kosher.”
Once again we see Paul’s sharp antithesis. Either one keeps the law and is declared
righteous on that basis (in which case, Christ died for no reason at all), or Christ’s death
is the basis for God’s declaring all humanity righteous (in which case a law-based
righteousness falls to the ground). There is no contextual warrant for reducing these
parallel expressions to mean merely “badges of belonging” or “identity markers.”
Instead, as one critic of the new perspective explains:
Paul’s elaboration [of ‘law works’] seems to have more to do with the law as a
whole… Paul’s point is that the law as such cannot justify. A better approach
would begin not with the boundary marking features of the Law, but with the
Law in its entirety: obedience to the Law requires obedience to all its commands.
This obedience would certainly include those aspects of the Law which
distinguish the Jews from the Gentiles. An acceptance of what the Law requires
of new converts in circumcision or food laws would signal a willingness to obey
the whole Law. Paul could move very naturally from a review of his critique of
Peter at Antioch to a discussion of the Law itself.109
Faith Not Works
The touchstone of justification by faith alone serves to underline and support this whole
approach. This point is best made by examining Paul’s discussion of Abraham in Romans
4. At issue is the question of whether the Abraham account can be claimed by the
‘justified by works’ party (εἰ γὰρ Ἀβραὰµ ἐξ ἔργων ἐδικαιώθη). In Tannaitic Judaism,
Genesis 15:6 (the citation which dominates the chapter) did not play a great role in the
Rabbis understanding of Abraham. Far more frequent were references to Genesis 22
and the binding of Isaac, “The[eir] one recurring concern is to point out that Abraham
obeyed the Torah even though it had not yet been given to the Israelites.”110
With Genesis 15:6, however, Paul sharply disassociates Abraham from the law and
works of the law. What’s at issue is whether or not ‘works’—very generally stated
(ἔργα—v. 2)—were involved in Abraham’s attaining the blessed condition of
righteousness before God. Furthermore, in Romans 4:4-5 the contrast is not between
covenant badges and faith(fulness), but between "working" and "trusting." These ideas
are presented in the broadest possible terms, with God's crediting righteousness to the
one who simply trusts (πιστεύοντι) in his promise of forgiveness for the ungodly, apart

108
A similar trivialization would occur if we would read “all who rely on their Jewish ethnic identity”
(Ὅσοι γὰρ ἐξ ἔργων νόµου) are under the curse (Galatians 3:10).
109
Das, “Beyond Covenantal Nomism,” 244. Das also argues that Ma‘ase ha-Torah as it is used by
4QMMT from Qumran is a phrase that “refers to all the Law requires” (ibid., 245).
110
Silva, Abraham, Faith, and Works, 256.
26
from any kind of activity that might merit righteousness as a wage (τῷ δὲ µὴ ἐργαζοµένῳ
πιστεύοντι δὲ ἐπὶ τὸν δικαιοῦντα τὸν ἀσεβῆ--verse 5).
Paul’s extraordinary formulation of the object of faith in verse 5—τὸν δικαιοῦντα τὸν
ἀσεβῆ—deserves further comment. Our faith is in the God who declares innocent not
only the ones with good intent, or those who are in covenant with him. He justifies not
only those who believe or who are going to believe. Our faith rests in the God who
justifies the ungodly, those who do not believe, the irreverent world which Paul had
earlier described in 1:18ff as being in massive revolt against him and who are therefore
the objects of his well-deserved wrath (Ἀποκαλύπτεται γὰρ ὀργὴ θεοῦ …ἐπὶ πᾶσαν
ἀσέβειαν καὶ ἀδικίαν ἀνθρώπων).
The paradox is so sharp that it cannot fail to raise the question of God’s justice. How
can the LORD issue such a verdict himself when he warned his own people against
judges who do such things (see Exodus 23:7 and Isaiah 5:23)? Paul could not have made
such a statement if he had not already resolved this very question in chapter 3. If
someone should ask “How can ‘all who sinned’ be ‘justified freely by his grace,’’ (23-24),
Paul’s answer is: the law’s just demand was fully met in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus
(ἱλαστήριον... ἐν τῷ αὐτοῦ αἵµατι—25). All of Wright’s blasphemous verbiage (about the
judge’s righteousness being like some gas freely floating around the courtroom) meets
its refutation here. This verdict is not sourced in the Judge himself, but in Christ’s
vicarious, redeeming work. It is located in him and nowhere else.
Furthermore, Jesus’ death was a decisive demonstration of God’s absolute justice (πρὸς
τὴν ἔνδειξιν τῆς δικαιοσύνης αὐτοῦ—26). He thus remains a just judge even when he
declares innocent those ungodly sinners who have put their trust in Jesus (εἰς τὸ εἶναι
αὐτὸν δίκαιον καὶ δικαιοῦντα τὸν ἐκ πίστεως Ἰησοῦ—26). Clearly faith is not a work in this
context, nor a matter of persistent faithfulness. In fact, Paul specifically excludes such a
notion (λογιζόµεθα γὰρ δικαιοῦσθαι πίστει ἄνθρωπον χωρὶς ἔργων νόµου—28).
After making that extraordinary statement in chapter 4, Paul’s followup citation of

Psalm 32 serves to reinforce the idea that forgiveness and justification cannot be a
matter of works (χωρὶς ἔργων—verse 6). David had no works to claim before God. His
sins of adultery and murder cried out to high heaven. Only a justifying verdict of
forgiveness, the non-imputation of sin (µακάριος ἀνὴρ οὗ οὐ µὴ λογίσηται κύριος
ἁµαρτίαν) could restore him to a blessed and right relationship with his God. It strains
credulity to believe that with this broad expression— χωρὶς ἔργων—Paul is excluding no
more than practices of ethnic pride.111
Justification Only A Group Thing?
We have seen how Wright and Dunn transform the significance of justification into a

111
Wright’s problem with imputed righteousness is demolished here, not only by Paul’s direct assertion of
it in verse 6 (µακαρισµὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ᾧ ὁ θεὸς λογίζεται δικαιοσύνην χωρὶς ἔργων), but by the
parallel phrases in the citation from Psalm 32. Wright’s issue is not with Luther, but with Paul.
27
assertion of one’s belonging to a group, rather than being a declaration to an individual
of a right status before God. So is justification a group or and individual thing? In reply
we may say: that’s the wrong question, really, embracing as it does a false antithesis. If
an individual is declared righteous from sin, he is transferred from belonging to the
sinful descendants of Adam and is now identified with the new humanity in Christ
(Romans 5:15-21). The one follows the other.

To be charitable, Wright and Dunn evidently want to make the point that modern
Christians can fall into the trap of personalizing their relationship to God in such a way
that all that counts is the individual while the matter of his being joined to the Church
becomes almost irrelevant. This point is well taken. The problem with Wright and Dunn
is that in [over]emphasizing the corporate outcome of justification, they almost entirely
exclude the individual’s prior need for personal forgiveness from consideration. Thus
justification, according to Wright, becomes a matter of ecclesiology rather than
soteriology. Its thrust is on the affirmation of belonging to the group rather than on the
deliverance from sin.
The entry of the sinner into the covenant does not have to be set in opposition to the
resultant belonging to the group. In Romans 4, Abraham is presented as an individual
who becomes the father of a family of ‘children’ who believe as he did. David is an
individual with sins that were very specific to himself and well known to all. Notice the
close connection in thought between Paul’s discussion of Abraham’s justification and his
citations of Psalm 32, where he clearly sees expressions such as ὁ θεὸς λογίζεται
δικαιοσύνην (6), ἀφέθησαν αἱ ἀνοµίαι, ἐπεκαλύφθησαν αἱ ἁµαρτίαι (7), οὐ µὴ λογίσηται
κύριος ἁµαρτίαν (8)112 as being similar to what happened in Abraham’s case.
In the face of such contextual definitions, to define justification per se as simply an

assertion that one ‘belongs’ to the covenant people is an absurdity. The barrier that’s
being removed is the barrier between the sinner and his God, not the separating hedge
between Jew and Gentile. That the latter is also true cannot be in dispute (see
Ephesians 2:14ff). But it has happened because the former and far more critical barrier
has been decisively removed.
That justification is an individual matter also cannot be denied. David speaks of the
‘person’ (τοῦ ἀνθρώπου--6) to whom the Lord credits righteousness. He declares that
man (ἀνὴρ--8) blessed whose sins the LORD will never count against him. Abraham had
a deeply personal struggle of faith with regard to the promise, brought on by his and
Sarah’s advanced age (17-20). The fact that Paul cites these examples as typical and
normative of all who believe (24) does not change in the least the personal and
individual nature of justification.

112
“God credits righteousness,” “Iniquities are forgiven,” “Sins are covered,” “The LORD will by no
means count sin against [him].”
28
Justification by Faith Alone and the Gospel
Before concluding this analysis of the New Perspective, we should examine Wright’s
claim that the gospel of salvation should be sharply distinguished from Paul’s teaching
of justification. At stake of course is whether or not justification is central to Paul’s
teaching or, as some would have it, a mere ‘subsidiary crater.’
We would note first of all the wide variety of ways in which Paul discusses justification.
He can speak of faith credited as righteousness, righteousness being credited, or sins
not being imputed. What’s more, Paul uses many other ways of talking about
justification that do not make use of the δικ-root, and where the underlying picture is
not forensic. Paul can speak of the forgiveness of sins, as we have seen, or of
reconciliation. The essential meaning remains the same. Even some of his so-called
‘participationist’ language is probably better classified as justification talk rather than as
a sanctification thought. That is to say, when Paul talks about being ‘in Christ,’ his
emphasis is not always on life transforming results of justification, but on the believer’s
right status with God.113
So in switching up his terminology, Paul is not changing the subject, but talking about
the same thing. He is simply using an underlying picture that further enriches our
understanding of the saving power of Christ. Once a person grasps this point, he begins
to realize how central the justification concept is in Paul’s teaching, whatever words he
may be using to talk about it. This is no mere subsidiary crater.
Wright’s sharp distinction between the gospel and justification is, likewise,
unsustainable. He can only maintain it even partially by the ruse of redefining “the
righteousness of God” as God’s covenantal faithfulness in Romans 1:17. While a
complete discussion of this point really deserves its own paper,114 suffice it to be said
here that most commentators and exegetes have seen 1:17 as Paul’s announcement of
the letter’s theme. He postpones unpacking it until 3:21-26. In the latter passage, it is
clear that the best options for translating ‘the righteousness of God’ have to be either,
‘the justifying verdict from God’ (compare Philippians 3:9) or ‘God’s activity in declaring
people innocent of sin.’
Once this is understood, any great distinction between justification and Paul’s gospel
falls away. In Romans 1:16, Paul says he is not ashamed of the gospel. The reason for
his confidence, as he explains it in verse 17, is simply this: in the gospel, God reveals his
justifying verdict, a verdict that is received by faith alone. The need for a verdict of ‘not

113
He moves quite easily back and forth between what we would classify as ‘justification’ statements and
‘sanctification’ ones. Consider for instance Galatians 2:20, where the first part of the verse seems
to refer to justification (Χριστῷ συνεσταύρωµαι· ζῶ δὲ οὐκέτι ἐγώ, ζῇ δὲ ἐν ἐµοὶ Χριστός), while the
latter part moves rather seamlessly into sanctification (ὃ δὲ νῦν ζῶ ἐν σαρκί, ἐν πίστει ζῶ τῇ τοῦ
υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ἀγαπήσαντός µε καὶ παραδόντος ἑαυτὸν ὑπὲρ ἐµοῦ). Similar examples include
Romans 6:1-9 and Romans 8:1.
114
For an excellent discussion of the problems attendant to defining ‘righteous’ words in English, see
Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New, 259ff.
29
guilty’ is evident from Paul’s exposition from 1:18 to 3:20. There is a fundamental
problem of ἀδικία that runs through all human nature and all human activities. Like a
prosecuting attorney making his case before the divine bar of judgment, Paul
demonstrates that no one—neither Jew nor Gentile—has any hope of claiming to be
righteous before God. No one does good. No one seeks God. No one loves his
neighbor. All must stand silent before the wrathful Judge. All have been indicted and
are liable to the stern claim of God’s justice.115
The same intimate connection between the gospel and justification runs right through
Galatians. Paul pronounced anathemas upon those who might come along proclaiming
“a different gospel” (1:8-9). This presumably has something to do with the problem in
Galatia, a problem which is only resolved by a true understanding of justification. When
Peter breaks table-fellowship with the Gentile believers in Antioch, what’s at stake is
“the truth of the gospel” (2:14). This Paul goes on to explicate in terms of a sinner’s
justification (2:15-17). Indeed, if God’s declaration of “not-guilty” comes by keeping the
requirements of the Torah, then “Christ died for nothing” (2:21). As Paul proceeds to his
broader discussion of justification in Galatians 3, we observe that he links it closely with
his public proclamation of Christ crucified (3:1). In view of these passages, we can say
that Wright is simply wrong: there is no sharp distinction to be drawn between Paul’s
justification language and the gospel he proclaimed.116
Luther Got it Right…

Walking through the New Perspective is confusing and disorienting, like groping one’s
way through a dense fog. “What is the real problem?” one wonders. Can it really be so
trivial as the issue of whether or not Jews and Gentiles can eat together at the same
table? Did Jesus really die to make circumcision unnecessary? While it may seem new
and fresh, this take on Paul is really old and stale, as old and stale as Jerome (see note 7
above).

Similarly we might ask if it is really so complicated. Does it require knowledge of an
“Israel in Exile” narrative motif before we can grasp it? Must we understand that Paul is
arguing from ‘solution to plight’ before we can truly comprehend his line of thought? Is
the gospel really as vague as Wright would have us believe? Only when one moves into
the world of the Reformers does the fog lift again and things come into focus, sharp and
clear.

The Scriptures alone are more than sufficient to give us good understanding. The real
problem is sin, as Paul powerfully argues in Romans. The only solution is the atoning

115
ἵνα πᾶν στόµα φραγῇ καὶ ὑπόδικος γένηται πᾶς ὁ κόσµος τῷ θεῷ·(3:20).
116
Further support for the intimate connection between the gospel and justification can be seen in Romans
8:31-34. There Paul connects the extraordinary love of God in giving up his Son with the
certainty believers enjoy of God’s declaring them innocent. God’s verdict of no condemnation is
firmly linked with a creedal recitation of Christ’s work: his death, his resurrection, his exaltation
to God’s right hand, and his intercessory role in heaven.
30
sacrifice of Jesus in our place for the forgiveness of sins. Our works are excluded from
the calculation. Out of God’s sheer grace, Christ died for the ungodly. This precious gift
is received by faith, and by faith alone.

It should not surprise us that this doctrine is attacked, mocked, and vilified as
antinomian. It was so from the very beginning (see Romans 3:31; 6:15). Luther well
understood that the Church’s enemies would attempt to silence this truth. He knew it
was hard to believe since his own natural reason fought against it, along with that of
every other human being.

Nevertheless, this doctrine is and shall remain central to the Scripture and vital for the
Church:
[It] is the head and the cornerstone. It alone begets, nourishes, builds,
preserves, and defends that church of God; and without it the church of God
cannot exist for one hour…For no one who does not hold this article…is able to
rightly teach in the church.117

Nothing less is at stake. Lord, keep us steadfast in your Word!

Paul O. Wendland
Sunday, May 10, 2015

117
WA 30.II.651ff
31

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Lutheran Look at the New Perspective on Paul

A pattern of religion, defined positively, is the description of how a religion is

In his description of Paulinism we notice a similarly selective pattern of gathering

This, Sanders believes, is a description of a religion of grace. In defining Paul’s problem

Elsewhere, Sanders elaborates:

James Meeks gives an excellent summation:

Dunn hastens to add:

Consider the following:

“The real Judaism was not a religion of legalistic works-righteousness,” [rather it

A more profoundly skewed caricature of what Lutherans confess could hardly be

This kind of justification must be understood, then, in opposition to other ways of

And what a community it will be:

The doctrine of justification, in other words, is not merely a doctrine which

What Shall We Say Then?

The New Perspective presents a clear challenge to confessional Lutheranism. If the

Intimately related to this is the Lutheran hermeneutical principle: Scriptura suipsius

Also questionable is Sanders’ confident assertion that no Jew—including Paul—felt the

A. Andrew Das, after carefully presenting the extra-biblical evidence declares:

Grace Alone and Faith Alone

Note what Paul sets in parallel alignment to "works of law" in Galatians 3:

You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?

After making that extraordinary statement in chapter 4, Paul’s followup citation of

In the face of such contextual definitions, to define justification per se as simply an

Luther Got it Right…

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