Category Archives: New Perspective on Paul

N.T. Wright and Martin Luther agree on the Gospel

The Gospel in a Nutshell

N.T. Wright: “When Paul talks about “the gospel,” he means “the good news that the crucified and risen Jesus is the Messiah of Israel and therefore the Lord of the world.” Now, that’s about as brief as you can do it” (Interview with Trevin Wax).

Martin Luther: “The gospel is a story about Christ, God’s and David’s son, who died and was raised and is established as Lord. This is the gospel in a nutshell” (Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings).

[HT: ]

What Saint Paul Really Said – Podcast

Well, after several months of waiting, the new podcast is actually complete! 🙂

This third podcast is on the topic of What Saint Paul Really Said , a book by N.T. Wright. In the podcast we cover the first chapter of the book where Wright deals with the 5 most influential Pauline scholars of the 20th century. You will certainly learn something new in this podcast, so I encourage you to listen to all of it. Please let me know what you think and if you have any questions about the information I summarized. Next time I hope to push even further into Wright’s book.

What Saint Paul Really Said

The Significance of Jesus’ Resurrection for Saul of Tarsus

The significance of Jesus’ resurrection, for Saul of Tarsus as he lay blinded and perhaps bruised on the road to Damascus, was this. The one true God had done for Jesus of Nazareth, in the middle of time, what Saul had thought he was going to do for Israel at the end of time. Saul had imagined that YHWH would vindicate Israel after her suffering at the hand of the pagans. Instead, he had vindicated Jesus after his suffering at the hand of the pagans. Saul had imagined that the great reversal, the great apocalyptic event, would take place all at once, inaugurating the kingdom of God with a flourish of trumpets, setting all wrongs to right, defeating evil once and for all, and ushering in the age to come. Instead, the great reversal, the great resurrection, had happened to one man, all by himself. What could this possibly mean?
Quite simply, it meant this: Jesus of Nazareth, whose followers had regarded him as the Messiah, the one who would bear the destiny of Israel, had seemed to Saul rather to be an anti-Messiah, someone who had failed to defeat the pagans, and had succeeded only in generating a group of people who were sitting loose to the Torah and critical of the Temple, two of the great symbols of Jewish Identity. But the resurrection demonstrated that Jesus’ followers were right. In his greatest letter, Paul put it like this: Jesus the Messiah was descended from the seed of David according to the flesh, and marked out as the Son of God (i.e. Messiah) by the Spirit of holiness through the resurrection of the dead (Romans 1:4). The resurrection demarcated Jesus as the true Messiah, the true bearer of Israel’s God-sent destiny.
But if Jesus really was the Messiah, and if his death and resurrection really were the decisive heaven-sent defeat of sin and vindication of the people of YHWH, then this means that the Age to Come had already begun, had already been inaugurated, even though the Present Age, the time of sin, rebellion and wickedness, was still proceeding apace. Saul therefore realized that his whole perspective on the way in which YHWH was going to act to unveil his plan of salvation had to be drastically rethought. He, Saul, had been ignorant of the righteousness of God, ignorant of what YHWH had been planning all along in apocalyptic fulfillment of the covenant. The death and resurrection of Jesus were themselves the great eschatological event, revealing God’s covenant faithfulness, his way of putting the world to rights: the word for ‘reveal’ is apokalypso, from which of course we get “apocalypse”. Saul was already living in the time of the end, even though the previous dimension of time was still carrying on all around him. The Present Age and the Age to Come overlapped, and he was caught in the middle, or rather, liberated in the middle, liberated to serve the same God in a new way, with a new knowledge to which he had before been blind. If the Age to Come had arrived, if the resurrection had already begun to take place, then this was the time when the Gentiles were to come in.
Saul’s vision on the road to Damascus thus equipped him with an entirely new perspective, though one which kept its roots firm and deep within his previous covenantal theology. Israel’s destiny had been summed up and achieved in Jesus the Messiah. The Age to Come had been inaugurated. Saul himself was summoned to be its agent. He was to declare to the pagan world that YHWH, the God of Israel, was the one true God of the whole world, and that in Jesus of Nazareth he had overcome evil and was creating a new world in which justice and peace would reign supreme.
Saul of Tarsus, in other words, had found a new vocation. It would demand all the energy, all the zeal, that he had devoted to his former way of life. He was now to be a herald of the king.

– N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, pgs. 36-37: Eerdmans Publishing 1997

Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study

This is Fee’s most recent work on the Apostle Paul and his theology. I do not own it, but from the reviews I’m posting below, I really do look forward to it and I would definitely recommend it to others already.

Here is the information on the book:

Pauline Christology Cover

Description: An exhaustive study of Pauline Christology by noted Pauline scholar, Gordon Fee. The author provides a detailed analysis of the letters of Paul (including those whose authorship is questioned) individually, exploring the Christology of each one, and then attempts a synthesis of the exegetical work into a biblical Christology of Paul. The author’s synthesis covers the following themes: Christ’s roles as divine Savior and as preexistent and incarnate Savior; Jesus as the Second Adam, the Jewish Messiah, and Son of God; and as the Messiah and exalted Lord. Fee also explores the relationship between Christ and the Spirit and considers the Person and role of the Spirit in Paul’s thought. Appendices cover the theme of Christ and Personified Wisdom, and Paul’s use of Kurios (Lord) in citations and echoes of the Septuagint.

Subjects: Bible, New Testament, Pauline Epistles, Literature, Methods, Theological Approaches, Biblical Theology, New Testament Theology

Reviews:

Review by Matthew Montonini

Review by Don Garlington

You can purchase the book here: Continue reading Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study

OPC Report on Justification – Greek Font Problem

For those of you who might want to read this report, I finally got a hold of the Greek NT Bold font, which the report’s PDF document uses. This font will allow you do read the report with the Greek text clearly displayed (once you install it in the “fonts” under your Windows “control panel”). Here is the font:

GreekNTb.TTF

Also, for those of you who haven’t read the report or heard of it…

OPC Report on Justification

The Apostle Paul in a Sentence

This is a masterful quote describing the Apostle Paul! Amen!

Paul preached, and then explained in various pastoral, community-forming letters, a narrative, apocalyptic, theopolitical gospel (1) in continuity with the story of Israel and (2) in distinction to the imperial gospel of Rome (and analogous powers) that was centered on God’s crucified and exalted Messiah Jesus, whose incarnation, life, and death by crucifixion were validated and vindicated by God in his resurrection and exaltation as Lord, which inaugurated the new age or new creation in which all members of this diverse but consistently covenantally dysfunctional human race who respond in self-abandoning and self-committing faith thereby participate in Christ’s death and resurrection and are (1) justified, or restored to right covenant relations with God and with others; (2) incorporated into a particular manifestation of Christ the Lord’s body on earth, the church, which is an alternative community to the status-quo human communities committed to and governed by Caesar (and analogous rulers) and by values contrary to the gospel; and (3) infused both individually and corporately by the Spirit of God’s Son so that they may lead “bifocal” lives, focused both back on Christ’s first coming and ahead to his second, consisting of Christlike, cruciform (cross-shaped) (1) faith and (2) hope toward God and (3) love toward both neighbors and enemies (a love marked by peaceableness and inclusion), in joyful anticipation of (1) the return of Christ, (2) the resurrection of the dead to eternal life, and (3) the renewal of the entire creation.

( Michael J. Gorman, Reading Paul, Eugene:
Cascade Books, 2008. p. 8 )

[HT: Christ Tilling]

The Future of Justification Series by Trevin Wax

Trevin has provided a helpful review of John Piper’s new book on Justification and N.T. Wright. Here are the 18 posts, in order, for all of you to have easy access to read through them. Enjoy and please let me know what you think!

john piper speaking tom wright

1. Some Preliminary Thoughts
2. Piper’s Introduction
3. On Controversy
4. Historical Research
5. Covenant and Law-court
6. Penal Substitution
7. Defining “Righteousness”
8. Imputation
9. What is “The Gospel” Anyway?
10. The Gospel is “Jesus is Lord”
11. Our Standing Before God
12. Justification and “The Gospel”
13. Justification By Works
14. Common Ground?
15. Judaism in the First Century
16. Self-Righteousness
17. The Righteousness of Christ
18. Piper’s Conclusion

The New Perspective on Paul – Now Online

For those of you interested, Mark M. Mattison, over at the Paul Page, has just published the entire, original essay by James D. G. Dunn entitled “The New Perspective on Paul” plus Dunn’s 1990 “Additional Note.” This is the key essay in the development of “The New Perspective” (the phrase that Dunn himself coined) and it is a must read for those seeking to understand the trajectory of most New Testament scholars today.

I will refer you back to a previous post I made that contains both positive and critical analysis of this movement by two very prominent men in Pauline scholarship.

Trevin Wax Interview with N.T. Wright

Here is the full transcript of the interview Trevin conducted with N.T. Wright. This is a really great interview and I hope that every one of you will read through it or listen to the mp3 of it. The mp3 is available for direct download here.

I really appreciated Wright’s response and comments regarding his critics, in particular John Piper. Here is what Wright had to say about Piper and his new book:

Piper is in a different category. He graciously sent me an advance manuscript of his book which is critiquing me and invited my comments on it. I sent him a lengthy set of comments. I’ve only just got on email about two days ago the book in the revised form and I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet. So I cannot say whether he’s being fair or not at this stage.

But I do know that he has done his darndest to be fair and I honor that and I respect that. People have asked me if I’m going to write a response, and the answer is that I don’t know. I’m kind of busy right now. But I maybe should, sooner or later.

I would love to see that response! Pray that Wright will find the time to respond and that this Piper/Wright dialogue will continue to bear fruit for God’s Kingdom.

The breakdown of the interview is also available in individual postings. Here is the breakdown:

  1. Introduction
  2. Wright’s conversion, calling, and personal worship
  3. Wright on “the gospel”
  4. Justification by faith
  5. Justification – present and future
  6. Justification and the Roman Catholic Church
  7. Sola Scriptura
  8. Is Wright arrogant to assume he has just now figured out what Paul meant?
  9. Wright on his critics
  10. Justification in practice
  11. Wright on penal substitution
  12. Wright on the resurrection
  13. Wright on Evangelism
  14. Wright on Church and State
  15. Upcoming Writings and Conclusion