Ben Witherington: The New Perspective on Paul and the Law– Reviewed
(The following is a brief section from my forthcoming two volume work on NT Theology and Ethics, entitled The Indelible Image. This portion of course is a subsection of the chapter on Paul.)
The ‘New Perspective’ on Paul
There is something of a small war going on in Pauline circles on the issue of ‘the New Perspective on Paul’ which actually also involves ‘the New Perspective on Early Judaism’. This sometimes heated debate was set in motion by the work of Ed Sanders beginning in 1977 with Paul and Palestinian Judaism, and followed in subsequent years by a series of equally influential studies such as Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, and Jesus and Judaism.<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[1]<!–[endif]–> One of the great concerns or burdens of Sanders work was to demonstrate that the old, sometimes even anti-Semitic contrast between Christianity as a religion of grace and Judaism as a religion of works, including salvation by works, involves a caricature of early Judaism. He set in opposition to this notion the idea of covenantal nomism, that is that the obedience one reads about in the OT and early Jewish religion was not obedience in order to obtain right-standing with God, but obedience in response to the divine initiative which was prior. Sanders was particularly unhappy with older German Lutheran scholarship, that in his view perpetuated such stereotypes, and it was on the basis and back of his work that ‘the New Perspective on Paul’ was launched as well. …
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