Okay so this
first part has more to do with the “new perspective” than on “justification”
(though I am assuming most know little about either, so I hope it will all be clear by
the end) but my interest in this began when I got a chance to use “justification”
as paper topic in one of my systematic theology classes. It gave me an excuse
and the time to research the so-called “new perspective” and see what it was
all about. After looking at the argument
I realized the it was kind of an important contribution to
Biblical scholarship that was widely misunderstood, but more importantly it
seemed to be right.
So, I will make
this as brief as possible so as not to bore you to death but here is
justification in a nutshell. Aw who am I
kidding… prepare to be bored. The term
justification (dikaiosis) comes from
something Paul kept referring to in his letters in which he says we are
justified by grace and by faith and at other times we are just justified (Rom. 2-5; Gal. 2-3). Based on these passages the doctrine
was formed (mainly by Martin Luther) that said justification by faith is God’s
powerful, cosmic and universal act by which He has both set free and vindicated
the sinners who by faith trust in Christ’s work and they can now stand in right
and faithful relation to God.[1] Yeah, let that sink in for a second… This
came about because Luther was trying to counter-act the Catholic notion that
they still had to earn salvation through works and in one sense Luther was not
wrong.
However, over
the last thirty-forty years there has been a challenge to this which has become
affectionately known as the “new perspective on Paul” or also known as “covenantal
nomism”. This idea has predominantly
been developed through the work of E.P. Sanders, James Dunn, N.T. Wright and
many more, who show that the “old perspective” was extremely deficient in its
understanding of Paul and Second-Temple Judaism. It is worth noting that for the academics who
held firmly to the Reformers views, this initially did not set well and some
even warned people to stay away from such thinking (see John Piper for that
faulty argument).
Nevertheless, the
first-century Palestinian Jews have suffered at the hands of the early Catholic’s
and Martin Luther’s bad anthropology. It
stemmed from figures like Ignatius and Augustine who believed that the Jewish
Law was part of some legalistic merit-theology within Judaism. This is to say,
that to the extent the Jews could follow the Law they could thereby amass good
works and compensate for sin so to become justified before God. The new perspective revealed that this was never
the case, but rather Israel’s salvation always rested on God’s covenant of grace made with
Abraham (Genesis 12:2-3) and any good Second-Temple Jew, including Paul, knew
that. Evidence that this was part of Jewish
religious thinking comes from a hymn at the end of the Community Rule of Qumran scroll (1QS 11.11-15):
As
for me, I stumble, the mercies of God shall be my eternal salvation. If I
stagger because of the sin of flesh, my justification shall be by the
righteousness of God which endures forever… He will draw me near by his grace,
and by his mercy will he bring my justification. He will judge me in the
righteousness of his truth and in the greatness of his goodness he will pardon
my sins. Through his righteousness he will cleanse me of the uncleanness of man
and of the sins of the children of men.[2]
So then, what
was the point of the Law? The Law had a
multifunctional role in Israel’s self-understanding: in one facet it is what
to set them apart from the rest of the world, in another facet, God made it the
central avenue for Israel to be faithful to God through
fidelity to God. And yet in another facet,
it would also be the way to re-manifest God’s work through people in the world. At its core, the Abrahamic/Mosaic covenants still
required faith in God’s work of grace if the Jews were to really invest and commit
their entire lives to its practice, even in the face of uncertainty (just like
in Christianity). It was precisely
because Luther was shaping his doctrine on false Augustinian thinking,
as-well-as his own European racial prejudice towards the Jews, that he and
others drew wrong and anti-Semitic interpretations on Paul and even Jesus. This is most plainly exemplified in 2
Corinthians 3:5-11, as it has been used to set Christianity over and against
Judaism all because Paul draws a stark distinction between the old and the new
covenant:
… Not that we
are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but
our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new
covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the
Spirit gives life. But if the ministry
of death, in letters engraved on stones, came with glory, so that the sons of
Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his
face, fading as it was, how will the ministry of the Spirit fail to be even
more with glory? For if the ministry of condemnation has glory, much more does
the ministry of righteousness abound in glory. For indeed what had glory, in
this case has no glory because of the glory that surpasses it. For if that
which fades away was with glory, much more that which remains is in glory.
Whatever Paul was meaning here
(as this could serve as a perfect text to try reinterpreting Paul for yourself),
it was not painting a negative picture of Judaism as if it was God’s failed
project and now we need to root out its Jewishness. This is what Luther tried to do. However, as Dunn has said, resting in God’s
grace and faithfulness was always the axiom of Judaism, so Luther did not
actually stumble onto something new by showing that the first church was teaching
this.[3] Paul knew Judaism was not distinct from Jesus (or what was becoming Christianity) but that Judaism had in fact reached new
levels of fruition in Christ’s work.
This then raises
the question, if Paul and his Jewish contemporaries knew that salvation was wrapped
up in God’s grace and faith, what was justification all about? (To be continued)
[1]
A.E. McGrath. Dictionary of Paul and His
Letters (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity 1993), 518.
[2] Geza Vermes. The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English (New York: Penguin Press,
1997), 116.
[3] James D.G. Dunn, ed: J. K. Beilby & P. R. Eddy. Justification:
Five Views (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press 2011), 182.
