A very happy New Year to all my readers! In 2019, I went through Genesis 1.1-11.9. It was quite a new experience for me and I enjoyed it so much that I decided that I would continue this practice. In 2020, I will begin with the Gospel According to John. It will take much longer to complete the study of the Gospel and I will begin with it next week. However, my first post in that series refers to a school of interpretation known as “The New Perspective on Paul” and I think it is important for the readers to have some idea of what this school of interpretation is and a brief idea of what the controversy surrounding it is.
E.P. Sanders, James Dunn, N.T. Wright. These three names are associated with what Dunn first called “The New Perspective on Paul” in his 1982 Manson Memorial Lecture at the University of Manchester, England.1 This school of thought concerning how to interpret Paul’s writings has sparked no small amount of controversy among Christian scholars. And primarily through the prodigious work of Wright, the new perspective has gained a lot of momentum and a sizable following over the past few decades.
It behooves all Christians, then, to understand what this new perspective is and whether it offers a valid and valuable critique of Reformation and post-Reformation interpretation of the Pauline corpus or if it is a dangerous school of thought that undermines the very nature of the gospel. Before I proceed with my evaluation, I will address briefly a few negative reviews.
In his article N.T. Wright and the New Perspective on Paul, Ligon Duncan opens by quoting Article 33 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism about the meaning of the word ‘justification’.2 This is a dishonestly prejudicial way of opening an article that supposedly aims to understand the new perspective, because one of the major points of departure of the new perspective from traditional Reformed thought is about the meanings of the words cognate with ‘justification’. Hence, to define the word by reference to a catechism right at the start is a way of loading the dice!
Douglas Brown is more forthright about his position, when he opens his article An Overview Of The New Perspective On Paul with the claim, “The New Perspective on Paul is a major deviation from New Testament teaching.”3 Honesty notwithstanding, this is hardly a way of actually reviewing a school of thought when you announce your conclusion right at the start without any justification (pun intended). Later in his review, Brown states that the new perspective “does nothing less than overturn the Reformation.”4 But this, as also most of the other claims made by Brown, is unsubstantiated. Indeed, when he makes claims about the views of Sanders, Dunn, and Wright, he rarely actually gives any direct quotes from their works. Indeed, there is not a single instance in which Brown actually engages with any direct quotes from the proponents of the new perspective, which should lead a discerning reader to question his initial statement as well as the other claims he makes in his review.
Bryan Chapell takes a different approach in his article An Explanation of the New Perspective on Paul, when he makes an ad hominem argument claiming that Sanders and Dunn “are not traditional Evangelicals” without actually engaging with their views.5 All his arguments are based on proof texting of bible verses without actually dealing with the interpretation of the Greek text of scripture. Chapell maintains his ad hominem approach throughout the article and, in a section titled “Who Finds the New Perspective Appealing?” opens with the declaration that “The polar ends of the PCA political spectrum have found the New Perspective appealing for differing reasons.” No one wants to be identified as an extremist and this statement induces the reader to want to have nothing to do with a school of thought that is appealing to extremists. This is not an argument but the use of the ‘guilt by association fallacy’ and should be rejected right away as being baseless.
Even John Piper, who wrote The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright, does not manage to engage with the views of the new perspective. Piper regularly simply quotes English translations of contentious verses. His refusal to debate on the basis of the Greek text is evident when he writes, “I do not think it is accurate to say that ‘the only way’ to demonstrate a new meaning like Luther’s (or Wright’s) is to show that it is ‘what the word would have meant at the time.’”6 I do not understand how else a new meaning could be established without knowing what it meant at the time. This kind of dismissive approach to the writings of the proponents of the new perspective is characteristic of those who oppose it and reveals a failure to actually engage with the Greek text of scripture, preferring rather to keep espousing precisely those views that are being challenged.
So let us proceed to my assessment of the new perspective. Contrary to Brown’s claim, the new perspective does not overturn the Reformation. Rather, the proponents of the new perspective aim to understand the New Testament authors as first century Jews (except for Luke), who held to priorities that first century Jews did. They aim to understand the Greek of the New Testament as it would have been used by first century Jews and Gentiles rather than as understood by sixteenth century Europeans. However, rather than challenge the interpretations of Sanders, Dunn and Wright, those who oppose the new perspective seem to oppose the very idea of trying to understand what the New Testament meant to the original audience. This is quite disconcerting because it shows a greater commitment to views about scripture than to the text of scripture itself.
I, for one, am glad that Sanders, Dunn, and Wright, among others, have renewed our engagement with the text of scripture. I am glad that they have once again done what the Reformers did five centuries back. I do not agree with everything they propose. For example, I do find issue with the interpretation of the critical phrase πίστεως Χριστοῦ (pisteos Christou), in that I think that the Genitive form πίστεως (pisteos) itself is used, if prefixed by a preposition, to mean ‘faithfulness’ rather than ‘faith’.7 However, I applaud the drive to go back to the text of the scriptures in the original languages in an attempt to understand what those texts meant.
The problem with those who oppose the new perspective is that they treat the works of the Reformers as authoritative rather than face the claim made by those who propose the new perspective that the Reformers misinterpreted Paul. It is easy to declare that this or that author is teaching incorrect ideas and Christians, unfortunately, have been quite adept at this. However, without genuine engagement with the author’s writings and, in this case, the original text, such declarations are specious at best.
I urge the reader to actually read the works of Sanders, Dunn, and Wright to determine if they are interpreting the scriptures in a valid and convincing way. The standard should not be to test if they are being true to the writings of Luther and Calvin and the other Reformers, but if they are being true to the scriptures. I believe that, for the most part, the new perspective writers have latched onto a key element about Paul, namely that he was a first century Jew, and have rightly attempted to interpret Paul’s writings in that light.
1. James D.G. Dunn. Origins of The New Perspective on Paul. (Accessed on 27 December 2019)↩
2. Ligon Duncan. N.T. Wright and the New Perspective on Paul. (Accessed on 27 December 2019)↩
3. Douglas Brown. An Overview Of The New Perspective On Paul. (Accessed on 27 December 2019)↩
4. ibid.↩
5. Bryan Chapell. An Explanation of the New Perspective on Paul. (Accessed on 27 December 2019)↩
6. John Piper. The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright. p. 61 (Accessed on 27 December 2019)↩
7. For a brilliant opposing view see Arland Hultgren. (1980). The Pistis Christou Formulation in Paul. Novum Testamentum, 22(3), 248-263. doi:10.2307/1560601. (Accessed on 27 December 2019)↩
Purposes Crossed 