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The New Perspective on Paul and Preaching

5/26/2016

As one surveys the landscape of biblical and theological writing in the last half-century, it is hard to think of a plot of ground whose appearance has changed more than Pauline studies. In the late 1970s, a little movement began that has become known as the "New Perspective" on Paul (henceforth, NP). The NP has given rise to a whole slew of scholarly publications proffering new insights on Paul, as well as an equal number of works qualifying or combatting the NP. In all, literally hundreds (if not thousands) of books, articles, and essays have been published in the last forty years or so, and the ground is still shifting, so to speak.

So what's a preacher to do when Sunday rolls around and the text is from Paul? This was my lot a few weeks back. Here I offer a few thoughts on how to preach Paul in a world where scholars are still arguing about, well, almost everything about the apostle's theology.

First, a little background.

It all started in 1977 when E. P. Sanders published a book called Paul and Palestinian Judaism. Sanders probably didn't realize it at the time, but his study created a seismic rumble in the scholarly world whose reverberations are still being felt today. In Paul and Palestinian Judaism, Sanders didn't so much argue for a different view of Paul, but a different view of first-century Judaism. In particular, Sanders noticed that the dominant trend in Christian NT scholarship (let's call it the "Old Perspective" [OP]) was to view Judaism as a legalistic, works righteousness religion to which Paul provided the antidote. However, as Sanders pored over the Jewish sources themselves, the legalistic Judaism thesis just didn't seem to square with the data. So, Sanders proposed a new paradigm called "covenantal nomism"—the idea that Judaism was essentially a religion of grace based on a covenant relationship with God and that "works" were done as a result of that relationship, not in order to earn it.

Sanders' ideas were picked up and developed by others, most notably N. T. Wright and James D. G. Dunn, and resulted in the NP. As NP interpreters are keen to point out, there actually is no such thing as the New Perspective on Paul. In fact, Sanders, Wright, and Dunn themselves disagree on numerous key points (as they have noted in numerous places). Nonetheless, the NP has become an umbrella term to designate a range of perspectives that share certain characteristics. In my view, the following elements at least are central to the NP:

Paul the Christian was a Jew who was saturated in Israel's Scriptures and story.
Paul's primary problem with Judaism was not legalism, but ethnocentrism.
"Works of the law" in Paul are not good things one does to earn salvation, but the works Jews did to demonstrate their identity as God's covenant people—i.e., the works of the Mosaic law.

(For more on the NP, see this article by Simon Gathercole [slightly negative toward the NP, but informative nonetheless].)

Now for the preaching bit: This year, my church is reading through the entire New Testament together to the tune of six chapters a week. Each Sunday, we preach on the texts from that past week. I don't know why, but when the preaching team was divvying up the preaching dates, I picked the Galatians week. (Those of you who know Paul well will recall that all three of the NP elements noted above come to a head in this epistle.)

In contemplating what tack to take, I felt that it would be best to pick a passage that really lay at the heart of the epistle. For me, the obvious candidate was Gal 2:11–21, which, in terms of current scholarly discourse, was a leap from the frying pan into the fire. In the brave new post-NP world, the meaning of virtually every key theological phrase in this passage is contested: "sinners," "justified," "works of the law," "faith in Jesus Christ," etc.

Here was my thought process going in:

A sermon is not the appropriate place to pontificate on scholarly debates about Paul. Nevertheless, it is irresponsible to be totally ignorant of current Pauline scholarship. So, I wanted to demonstrate an understated awareness of the issues (likely observable only to someone in-the-know) yet at the same time take positions that I could proclaim boldly.
What the text meant is fine in the academy, but the Church needs what it means. So, although I wanted the congregation to get a sense of what Paul was really up against, I needed to make the text say something to people for whom confidence in Torah observance is not a huge temptation.
In line with the point above, I wanted to deal not only with what the text says explicitly, but also what it implies. With the NP, I would agree that Paul is not pushing back against legalism per se, but rather a mis-reading of redemptive history resulting at least partially in ethnocentrism. Nevertheless, what Paul does say implies that legalism is not a legitimate option. Similarly, I would affirm with the OP that justification by faith ≠ covenant membership (as N. T. Wright has argued), although it does imply covenant membership as well as ecclesial unity.

You can listen to what I did, but here is a brief summary:

Hook: I talked about how easily we forget basic things we know are true, and how this is the essential problem Paul is dealing with in Galatians—they have forgotten the truth of the gospel.
Gal 2:11–14. On the dispute with Peter, I raised the question of why food laws and circumcision were such a big deal, and used some Jewish martyr stories from 2 Maccabees 6–7 to try to give the congregation a sense of why this stuff was such a big deal for Jewish Christians.
Gal 2:15–21.
- (1) Justification: I took a standard forensic/law court position on—to justify is "to declare to be in the right"/"to declare righteous."
- (2) "Works of the law": I affirmed that Paul is talking about keeping the Mosaic law, not legalism. However, what Paul does say would also rule out pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps—if keeping the Law God gave in the Old Covenant isn't going to justify you, neither are any other good deeds.
- (3) Faith in Jesus Christ. I took a standard objective genitive interpretation here. I'm simply not terribly convinced by the subjective genitive at this point, and it seems that either view implies the idea of the other (why have faith in Jesus if he hasn't been faithful?), so I'll go with the tradition for now.
- Application. I made two points:
  - Justification by faith in Christ means there is no room to boast, and there is no reason to wait.
  - Justification by faith in Christ means the justified are unified.

In these last two points, I tried to give a nod to what I think are the best insights of both the OP and the NP in Gal 2:11–21. The OP reminds us that we have no hope for justification apart from faith in Christ—neither the works of the Mosaic law nor our own self-justifying strivings will suffice. At the same time, the NP highlights an important ecclesial/sociological dimension of the passage: Those who are justified by faith in Christ are simultaneously unified in Christ—Jew and Gentile, bricklayer and banker, secretary and student. In Christ all the justified are made one.

I am an expert on neither Galatians nor preaching. However, as I reflect on my little sermon in the context of all the ink that has been spilled over NP/OP issues over the last 40 years, I can't help but wonder if we could have saved some trees and time by preaching key texts like Gal 2:11–21 a few more times before firing off another book or article. Many of the stark dichotomies between OP and NP seem to dissolve or become irrelevant when one stands before a congregation waiting to hear from God:

Justification as soteriological or ecclesiological? Both.

Legalism or ethnocentrism? Neither.

Faith in Jesus or the faithfulness of Jesus? Yes, both/and, hallelujah and amen!

Of course, none of this is to undermine the need for serious theological discourse beyond the pulpit. The Church will always need pastors and it will always need theologians. However, perhaps the Church's theologians will serve her best when they have refined their ideas in the fire of preaching.

What do you think? How have you dealt with New and Old Perspectives on Paul in your preaching?

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