I am just beginning to prepare to lead a study of Paul's Letter to the Romans. I remembered an essay that I first read in college, by Soren Kierkegaard, titled "Of the Differenced Between a Genius and and an Apostle." In it SK makes a number of points which I find helpful, but what I want now is the basic point that what is important about Paul is the fact that God set him apart as an apostle. Paul's gifts and his character and and his upbringing and so forth are, by comparison, unimportant.
I also remembered an essay written by CS Lewis, "Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism," in The Seeing Eye, in which he spoke against those who seek to understand a story by looking behind the story to the motives and circumstances of the author and, almost invariably, find things there which would have surprised the author very much. We must respect the author, Lewis seems to say, by taking what he wrote as being the most important thing. If this is true of ordinary authors, then it must be all the more true for apostolic ones!
If we believe that Paul is an Apostle of Christ (and if we believe Christ to be the risen Lord) then we must take what Paul said as the most important thing. We must also presume that what Paul said was what Paul meant to say. And finally we must presume that what Paul said was and is completely true and profoundly important.
This does not mean that what Paul said will be easy for us to understand. On the contrary, Christianity is hard to understand, precisely because it is true; the only simple religions are the made up ones. (Lewis) But the fact of Paul being an Apostle of Christ means that when we do not understand, it is we who do not understand. We will profit not at all from supposing we can "correct" Paul or deconstruct him.
I think we can be fairly certain that God, through Paul, has not undertaken to teach us things about First Centrury Judiasm. This is not to say that First Century Judiasm is an uninteresting or an unimportant subject. It may sometimes even be important to understanding what God, through, Paul is saying. But it is not God's subject matter, I dare say. Neither was it Paul's, except tangentially.
I am saying all of this, because I am just beginning to try to understand the "new perspective on Paul" which is not so new by now. But it is new to me in some sense. Ever since I became serous about studying the Bible, roughly 10 years ago, my reading has been guided by orthodox, Reformed views of the Bible, those of Calvin particularly. I am frankly suspicious of a new perspective that differs from this, but not totally closed to it.
So I poked around on the internet a little bit (and also in my library at home, where the pickings are pretty slim for a new perspective) and I learned that the so called new perspective grew out of the work of E. P. Sanders starting in the late 1970s. I have fired off an order to Amazon.com but have yet to read anything written by Sanders. I gather at second hand that Sanders main contribution was to show that First Century Judiasm was different than what many Christians for a very long time have inferred from their reading of the Bible.
Sanders demonstrated that Jews did not simply suppose that salvation could be earned through good works but, rather, that they understood that they were saved because God had chosen them, and that their proper response was to obey God, something that Sanders called "covenantal nomism." Their obedience was the mark of their chosenness and their responsibility if they wished to remain chosen. Or something like that.
I remembered having seen the word "nomism" before! It was in the title of a book edited by Don Carson, Justification and Variagated Nomism, which I added to may Amazon order. When I have finally finished reading it, I expect that I will conclude that things in the First Century were not quite so simple as Sanders described them --- i.e. that the Jews had many and complicated views about justification. That also seems plain to me from simply reading the Bible.
Whatever the state of First Century Judiasm, we must assume that Paul understood it better than we do, and better than Sanders or Carson or anyone else whose books we can order. It is hard for me to believe that the early Church Fathers and their successors until Sanders have misread Paul in any way that matters very much. But I keep my mind open a crack to what may be useful from modern scholarship.
The term, "new perspective on Paul," was first coined, as I understand it, by James D.G. Dunn in a piece which he wrote in 1983. In it he credits Sanders with giving us a fresh opportunity to rethink Paul from the perspective of the First Century, Paul's own perspective, rather than continuing to view Paul through the lens of the 16th Century, Luther in particular. If the "new perspective" is, indeed, the original perspective of Paul, the Apostle, then that has got to be a good thing!
I added one of Dunn's books to my Amazon order. Thus far I have read only his original essay, in which he coins the term "new perspective on Paul." In it he says that until Sanders, many made the mistake of reading Paul in light of Luther's fixation on Justification by faith, vis-a-vis justification by works, which caused them to read Paul incorrectly as reacting against "works righteousness." What Paul was really reacting against (says Sanders) was covenantal nomism as understood and practiced by First Century Jews--- i.e. the idea that salvation belonged only to the Jews.
Bottom line for now: as we get into our study of Paul's Letter to the Romans, let us be very careful and not be too certain at first that we understand properly the Judiasm of the First Century, and let us be aware that, for the past 30 years or so, this has been one of the hottest topics among New Testament scholars. A lot has been written and we should have a look at some of the best of it ---- all and only becasue we really want to hear what God is saying through Paul in his Letter to the Romans.
