Reading Paul: traditional, new perspective and other approaches

Program / Course 7: New Testament Theology and History / Lesson 5.4

What you will learn

• Describe the traditional Protestant reading of Paul and its roots in Augustine and the Reformation.
• Explain the New Perspective on Paul and its main claims.
• Describe other approaches, including the apocalyptic and the Paul within Judaism readings.
• Evaluate the approaches fairly, noting the strengths and objections of each.

The big idea

Paul has been read in different ways in each age. The traditional reading, shaped by Augustine and the Reformers, takes Paul to be answering the question how a guilty sinner can be made right with God, and answering that it is by faith and not by works. The New Perspective, which began in the 1960s and 1970s, argues that first-century Judaism was a religion of grace, and that Paul was mainly concerned with who belongs to God’s people. Other approaches stress God’s cosmic victory in Christ, or Paul’s life as a Jew. These readings overlap and conflict, and the debate is still active.

Key terms

Traditional reading

The way of reading Paul that comes from Augustine, Luther and Calvin and sees justification by faith as Paul’s answer to the human problem of sin and guilt.

New Perspective

A group of approaches since about 1977 that stress Paul’s Jewish setting and read his teaching on law and faith in terms of who belongs to God’s people.

Covenantal nomism

E. P. Sanders’ term for the pattern of Judaism he found in the sources: one enters the covenant by God’s grace, and keeps the law to stay in it.

Boundary markers

Practices such as circumcision, Sabbath and food laws that marked Jews as distinct from Gentiles. James Dunn argued that these were the main target of Paul’s phrase works of the law.

Apocalyptic Paul

An approach that reads Paul mainly in terms of God’s invasion of the world in Christ to defeat the powers of sin and death, and not mainly in terms of individual guilt.

Paul within Judaism

A recent approach holding that Paul remained a faithful Jew and addressed Gentiles about how they could join God’s people without becoming Jews.

Introspective conscience

A phrase used by Krister Stendahl in 1963 for the Western habit of reading Paul as if he struggled with personal guilt in the way Augustine and Luther did.

Background

Augustine, in the fifth century, read Paul in the light of his own struggle with sin and God’s grace, and in debate with Pelagius, who taught that human beings could do much good by their own power. Luther, in the sixteenth century, read Romans as the answer to his anguish about whether he was acceptable to God. Calvin and others built on this. Their reading shaped the Protestant understanding of Paul, and it has influenced Catholic discussion too.

In the twentieth century, new knowledge about ancient Judaism, including the Dead Sea Scrolls and rabbinic texts, led scholars to ask whether the traditional reading had understood Paul’s setting. Their work does not agree on all points, and each approach has defenders and critics. This lesson describes them and does not choose between them.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: The traditional reading

In the traditional account, Paul teaches that all people are sinners, that the law reveals sin but cannot save, and that God declares righteous those who trust in Christ, whose righteousness is credited to them. Judaism in Paul’s day, in this view, is often seen as a religion in which people tried to earn salvation by works, and Paul’s gospel is the answer to that. The reading has strengths: it treats Romans 1 to 5 as a coherent argument about sin and justification, and it has fed deep devotion and reform.

Its critics argue that it has sometimes read Paul as a Christian of the sixteenth century, and has depicted Judaism unfairly as legalism, which fed long-standing contempt. Defenders respond that the traditional reading does not need a caricature of Judaism, and that Paul’s own words about the impossibility of earning righteousness (Romans 3:20, Galatians 2:16) are plain.

Step 2: The New Perspective

In 1963 Krister Stendahl argued that Paul did not suffer from a troubled conscience, as Philippians 3:6 shows (‘touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless’), and that the question of Romans was more about how Gentiles are included. In 1977 E. P. Sanders published Paul and Palestinian Judaism, arguing that Judaism of the period was not a religion of earning salvation. It taught that God had chosen Israel by grace, and that obedience was the way of staying within the covenant. He called this covenantal nomism.

James Dunn, who gave the New Perspective its name in 1982, argued that ‘works of the law’ meant boundary markers such as circumcision, Sabbath and food laws, so that Paul’s concern was Gentile inclusion. N. T. Wright developed a version in which justification is God’s declaration that a person belongs to the covenant family, resting on Christ’s faithfulness and received by faith, and in which the gospel fulfils God’s promises to Israel. Wright argues that this does not remove the question of sin and salvation but places it within a larger story.

Step 3: Objections and other approaches

Critics of the New Perspective, such as D. A. Carson, Peter O’Brien and Mark Seifrid, who edited a large study called Justification and Variegated Nomism, hold that Jewish texts contain more variety than Sanders allowed, including some with a concern to earn favor. They argue that Paul’s words in Romans and Galatians are about all human striving, and not only identity markers. John Piper and others defend the Reformation reading with this argument. Stephen Westerholm has argued that the traditional reading was truer to Paul than the new one allowed.

Other approaches go beyond the debate. Apocalyptic readings, associated with Ernst Käsemann and J. Louis Martyn, stress that Paul describes God’s invasion of the world in Christ to rescue humanity from the powers of Sin and Death. The Paul within Judaism approach, represented by Mark Nanos, Paula Fredriksen and others, holds that Paul never left Judaism and addressed Gentiles about their place in God’s plan. Feminist, postcolonial and political readings ask what Paul’s letters mean for women, slaves and empire.

Step 4: How to read in this debate

A student does well to read Paul’s text first, and then the interpreters. Ask what question each interpreter is asking, and what evidence in the letters supports the answer. Notice where positions overlap. Most agree that Paul teaches that salvation is God’s gift through Christ, and that faith is the way it is received. Most agree that Gentiles belong to God’s people without circumcision. They differ on emphasis and on what the underlying problem is.

Catholic and Orthodox readers join these discussions with their own traditions, and often welcome the New Perspective’s reminder that Paul was a Jew, while holding to their own teaching on grace and the church. The Joint Declaration of 1999 between Catholics and Lutherans shows that old disagreements can be narrowed. The debates are ongoing, and no approach has settled all questions.

1. What strengths do you see in the traditional reading of Romans, and what weaknesses?
2. Why might Sanders’ findings about Judaism change how Paul is read?
3. How does the meaning of ‘works of the law’ affect the interpretation of Galatians 2:16?
4. What difference does it make to read Paul as a Jew who remained a Jew?
5. What does Philippians 3:6 suggest about Paul’s view of his past?
6. How can a reader stay fair to a tradition they disagree with?

Examples

Different perspectives

Lutheran and Reformed view

These traditions hold that the Reformation reading is true to Paul. Many Lutheran and Reformed scholars accept that Judaism had more grace than some earlier writers claimed, while insisting that Paul teaches justification by faith apart from works as the answer to human sin.

Catholic view

Catholic scholars such as Joseph Fitzmyer have contributed to Pauline study across approaches. The Church teaches that justification is a gift of grace which renews the person, and sees much in the New Perspective that fits the Church’s emphasis on the community of the covenant.

Orthodox view

Orthodox writers usually do not frame Paul around the Reformation question. They read Paul with John Chrysostom and other Fathers, who commented on every letter, and stress union with Christ, the Spirit and the church. They find the New Perspective’s attention to Paul’s Jewish setting congenial but not decisive.

Jewish view

Jewish scholars such as Daniel Boyarin and Pamela Eisenbaum have written about Paul as a Jewish thinker, and have differed about whether he stayed within Judaism. They have helped Christians see how Paul’s language would sound to Jewish ears.

Scholarly view

Most scholars hold that the older view of Judaism as legalism was mistaken, and that Paul must be read in his Jewish setting. They disagree on how far this changes the reading of justification.

Why it matters

How Paul is read has shaped churches, nations and personal lives. Many people have found peace in the traditional reading, and others have been alienated by harsh portraits of Judaism. Knowing the approaches helps readers hear Paul in his own voice, speak fairly of other traditions, and see the long conversation of which they are a part.

Common misunderstandings

Knowledge check

Think it through

1. How has your own church or background shaped the way you read Paul?
2. Why does it matter to be fair to first-century Judaism when reading Paul?
3. Can the traditional reading and the New Perspective be combined? How?
4. What would you want to ask a scholar from each approach?

Independent assignment

One verse, three readings

In your own notebook, write 350 to 500 words. Choose Galatians 2:16 or Romans 3:28. State how the traditional reading, the New Perspective and one other approach might each explain it. Then write a paragraph on which explanation seems best to fit the context of the letter, and why. Do not send this to anyone.

Further study

• Martin Luther, The Small Catechism Read for the Lutheran summary of the faith that Luther drew from Paul.
• John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion Read selectively on justification and faith in Book 3.
• Augustine of Hippo, Confessions Read the account of his conversion in Book 8 and note its use of Romans 13.
• N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God Read selectively for the author’s reading of Paul on resurrection.
• Philippians 3:6 Paul’s account of his blamelessness.
• Romans 11:1 Paul says he is an Israelite.
• Romans 3:28 Justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.