Justification and New Perspective 13

Why do we have to choose? How about trying to understand Pauline theology through the entire Pauline corpus? I'm sick of these false dichotomies.

What does this mean: "Ecclesiology, so devalued into a voluntary society for low church evangelicals, is at the heart of the Pauline gospel?" Whom among "low church evangelicals" is that meant as a burn?

John (#3) -

I'm wrestling right with you.

"I don't think the final salvation objective is Jew + Gentile: that's too ethnic/ethnocentric (as if it's all about national differences) and too anthropocentric.

Yes, Jew + Gentile is not salvation "objective" or goal. But isn't Wright banging this drum to remind us that, on the other hand, God's MEANS of salvation is very much bound up in His covenant with an ethnic people, Israel, through whom blessings would then extend to all nations? I think we must wrestle with your very good question: To what extend is God's rescue plan for humanity actually "about national differences"? God elects a people to be "holy, set apart" (i.e, different) from other nations, IN ORDER to bring salvation to all peoples through Israel --> fulfilled in Christ, the faithful Israel.

"Long before the Jew/Gentile distinction there were "just" human beings who were created in God's image to care for the earth and then fell into sin, dragging creation down with them."

Precisely, but... After falling into sin, God then chose an ethnic group from out of the rest of humanity to become his chosen instrument through whom he would right the wrongs of the world...who failed in this task, but then Christ, the "faithful Israelite", succeeded.

Again, I think the Wright forces us to read Romans, Ephesians, Colossians, and the rest through COVENANTAL lenses -- which then often exposes the overly individualistic gospel of the Old Perspective.

What do you think? I appreciate your challenge and questions.

"Is this the central theological difference: seeing Paul through the personal salvation mode or seeing Paul through the union of Jews and Gentiles mode?"

Yes, I believe this central difference. And so we must ask the reason 'Why'? Why do they view salvation differently?

I believe Wright would point to the downplaying of the Abrahamic covenant in. So, my questions to you all are:

What is the purpose of the Abrahamic Covenant to NPP and OPP? Do they answer this the same or differently? More to the point, how are ecclesiology and soteriology related?

My hunch is OPP wants salvation to, like John (#3), go "far enough", which most likely means dealing with the sin problem within the human individual. And, Wright and NPP would agree with OPP on this point, but would gently remind them that in order to deal with individual sin, God chose the messier way of covenant with Abraham's "called out" descendants (ecclesiology?), and therefore the rest of the salvation story is very much bound up in the centrality of God's saved people group (ecclesiology), the true, multi-ethnic Israel now in Christ, inviting others "into Christ" (ecclesiology). And the question of individual salvation from sin (soteriology) is more in the background of Paul's thought (it is actually dealt with by virtue of becoming part of the redeemed Israel of God (again, ecclesiology) (cf.Gal 6)).

In other words, is soteriology subservient to ecclesiology in Paul, because one's individual sin is taken care of by way of being found engrafted into the Body of Christ, who is the True Israelite, and representative of the new humanity? Just as the first Adam was our federal head bringing us under sin and condemnation, so the second Adam Christ is our representative head of the redeemed, new humanity (cf. Rom 5; 1 Cor 15). Those who are "in Christ" (ecclesiology?) are therefore forgiven of individual sin (soteriology) because they are no longer "in Adam" but "in Christ".

How are soteriology and ecclesiology related in Paul's thought according to Wright/NPP and OPP? Is one secondary, or subservient, to the other? It seems that the OPP has often emphasized (an overly individualistic) soteriology at the expense of a more Pauline emphasis on a corporate, ecclesiological soteriology which comes out esp, in Eph. 2 as Wright has shown us.

I'm anxious to hear your thoughts. Just thinking out loud again...

How does Jews+Gentiles fit with Romans 11, where Jews seem to be shut out for a season and gentiles have the inside running.

"I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. 26And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written".

Was Jews+Geentiles still in the future when Paul wrote Romans? When was it fulfilled?

John (#3): Please carry on!
Jeremy (#6, #8): I think we need to keep wrestling like this.

I see problems where Wright says Jews were "at dire risk through sin" (p.147) and "Jews (were) already within the covenant but needing to be renewed" (p.147). It seems to me that Jews were not at dire risk but on the contrary were condemned through sin, and were not within the covenant except that they needed a bit of a renewal. Wright doesn't adequately distinguish between saved OT Jews who were saved by faith, not law, and unsaved OT Jews who, not having faith, were condemned by law. Further, Wright says (p.148) works of law are not moral good deeds but things keeping Jews and Gentiles apart. I think works of law include moral good deeds, which, done by the unsaved under law, were not at all the same as good works done by the saved, and the major act of Jesus was to abolish the condemnation of sin, whether under law or otherwise, and as a minor consequence enable Jews to partake of salvation by faith equally with Gentiles. Gentiles had even in OT times been able to be saved by faith in God, just as Jews. Before Abraham, promise of salvation was given in Gen 3.15.

Wright uses (to me) opaque metaphors in saying that Israel presented a 'roadblock' to the promises and so they couldn't 'flow out' to the Gentiles until the Messiah came. I've not come across anywhere where he explains what these metaphors are supposed to signify.

(pp.168-175 USA are pp.144-151 GB)

I am a taker. As long as there are human divisions, we need this perspective. Individual salvation alone has not brought about reconciliation with one another effectively. (it should have but perhaps because in the interest of such salvation, we neglected the new community in Christ). Any contact in cross-cultural situations or gender wars and even denominational divisions... there are still those who are "in" and those who are "out" based on human viewpoints.

The new perspective helps us remember that united in Christ means something about how we respond to one another in the family. Because we are all sons of God through faith in Christ and there is neither Jew nor Greek, Slave or Free, Male or Female for we are all one in Christ.

That individual salvation should produce something... a new community that is unlike anything we know.

I think the reason that NT Wright seems to beat the Jewish drum so much is that the Jews (in his day and Paul's) had turned their purpose and place in redemption history into an hyper-ethnocentric religion. This was their "sin." Paul was countering the hyper-ethnicity of aberrant Judaism. Jesus had come as the true obedient Israelite and fulfilled Israel's purpose so that the greater purpose (that John in #3 addresses) of a "new humanity" envisioned in God's covenant with Abraham can come about.

The only way to balance the scales is to stress ecclesiology as the mother of soteriology until the cancerous erosion caused by Western individualism is obliterated from the gospel..."He [Jesus] took the fall and thought OF ME above all..." is very popular.

John at 16

I really like your first paragraph. Your ending seems too strong for me; perhaps in the empasis of the words "of me". I immediately think of the second part of the twentieth verse of Galations: "The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." How about emphasizing the words "above all" in the last sentence?

SamB @ 18,

He's quoting a song, the popularity of which is a sign of how individualistic theology has crept into the church.

Appreciate Cramer #21, as the issue doesn't seem to be low or high church. I think historically those terms refer more to worship practices, view of sacraments, priesthood, etc. American primitivism or restoration movements like Churches of Christ (Campbellites) and Missionary Baptists have a low church practice, but a high, almost Roman Catholic view of themselves as the true Bride of Christ.

I think there is a huge HERMENEUTICAL issue here. What are Paul's letters? What is Romans? We evangelicals have tended to read them as if they were abstract theological documents, from which we could mine our doctrinal ore, and then put the ore into piles called soteriology or ecclesiology or . . . Or we read them as if they were written to provide individual devotional fodder.

I'm learning to read them as church-strengthening, community-establishing documents from perhaps the greatest church planter in our history. Which means that by their very nature they are ecclesial, while their content addresses the gamut of individual and corporate issues related to Paul's gospel. At least that's how I'm seeing it nowadays.

Just to be clear, I believe that the recovery of a Jewish Jesus as Messiah, the new perspective on (Jewish) Paul's conversion, and all that follows are great gifts to our reading of the Bible and receipt of the Gospel. We have needed these correctives.

I fear, however, that Tom is so concerned still to push against the alternatives that he sometimes pushes too hard--whether in stridency or in metaphor or in other problems as noted here (and in classes of mine at Regent in which his books have been discussed).

So I'm grateful, as I say, for the Sanders-Dunn-Hurtado-Wright work--of course I am! I want to build on it--and, lest I be accused of false modesty--correcting it to some extent by reframing the issues (again) in the full context of the Bible's story that does not start with Abraham and does not end with Israel or the Church or both. It starts with God, humanity, and the rest of creation, and that's how it ends, too. And I think that distinction is a fruitful one some of us, at least (including me), have not yet fully internalized