Category:New Perspective on Paul (subject)

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New Perspective on Paul

Overview

The "Old" Perspective on Paul maintained that while "Late Judaism" was a religion based on "works" and characterized by legalism, Paul believed that salvation came by grace through faith. Paul's rejection of the Law was radical; he saw the Law as an antagonistic force from which human beings needed to be redeemed.

Early critics of the old perspective included Claude Montefiore, George F. Moore, and Krister Stendahl. They stressed that Paul (or his interpreters) misunderstood the true essence of ancient Judaism.

The turning point came with the publication of Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977 Sanders), book. Sanders stressed that Second Temple Judaism was not the legalistic religion of past caricatures. Grace played an important role in the soteriology of the period. God's election was the necessary premise for "getting in" the covenant while the Law was the condition for "staying in." People kept the commandments of the Law not in order to be redeemed but because they had been redeemed. Sanders gave the name "covenantal nomism" to this Jewish pattern of religion, which he found as the common denominator in all varieties of Second Temple Judaism (with the only exception of 4 Ezra).

In Sanders' view Paul proposed a different "pattern of religion", where Jesus' grace replaced the old covenant. Paul's thought moved from solution to plight. His entire worldview was reshaped by his personal encounter with Jesus. There is nothing inherently wrong with the Law except that the Law is not Christ."What is wrong with Israel's righteousness by Law... is that it is not based on faith in Christ... and that it prevents Gentiles from being on equal footing with Jews" (Sanders 1986, p.79).

Dunn and Wright tried to understand Paul more in a line of continuity with the Jewish covenant. According to Dunn and Wright the "failure" of Judaism was not legalism or works-righteousness, but "national righteousness."

The attempt of the authors of the New Perspective was to provide a new version of Christian supersessionism, which no longer were based on anti-Jewish or even anti-Semitic premises. The grace of Christ "superseded" the grace of the Mosaic covenant, not because of some inherent flaw in Israel's religion, but because God began a new era in Jesus Christ. "Paul's message is not the antithesis of Judaism (or of the OT law) but is a Christologically reconfigured continuation or climax of the same" (Yinger, p.89).

Against the New Perspective, the Radical New Perspective on Paul stressed that in his letters Paul addressed a non-Jewish audience, being a proponent of two-ways of salvation. The Jewish covenant remained valid for the Jews, while the new covenant in Christ is a path to salvation for the Gentiles.