In Part 1, I ended by asking what
justification was all about, according to the new perspective, if it is not
actually the moment of salvation. Perhaps
I should start by spilling the beans on why Paul drew his distinction between
the first covenant (letter of the law)
and the second covenant (faith by grace)
which as I said before was not Paul setting Judaism over and against Christianity
(1 Cor. 3:5-11). To put it as succinctly
as possible: The Law of Moses could only point to moral uprightness but could
never actually produce it and, more importantly, there is a powerful “law of
sin”, meaning humans are bound to death, which in turn made all attempts by
humans to do good and obey the will of God inadequate and ultimately futile
(Romans 7:15; 21-24).[1] This is why
Paul had both good and bad things to say about the law, but knew full well that
Jesus met its requirements and was its fulfillment (Rom. 8:3-4).
More to the point of justification,
any attempt for the “unclean” Gentile Christians to obey Jewish law was not
necessary to be accepted into the inner circle of the Church. Paul lays this out most clearly in Galatians
2:15-4:11: Here Paul is having to deal with the Galatians who had come to
believe (by the influence of the agitators) that they had to become
circumcised, follow dietary laws and so forth before they could be part of the Christian
community that lived and fellowshipped together. Paul rails against this declaring a new
freedom. Christ fulfilling the law resulted
in the freedom of the Gentiles to now belong to God without being set apart by the
law, because all of them were now set a part by the Spirit. Paul even goes as far to illustrate a similar
incident between him and Peter in which Peter allowed himself to be persuaded
away from fellowshipping with the Gentiles. He suggests that because of this,
Peter had become like an unclean pagan by the very act of excluding the
Gentiles (Gal. 2:14).
Therefore, “justification by faith”
is not the means by which human relationship is established with God, but
rather justification by faith (at the core of Paul’s theology) is that God has
justified or included the once “pagan/unclean” Gentiles to now sit at the same
table in fellowship with the Jews. Through Christ we all now belong at the same
table of fellowship representing a merging of heaven and earth by way of Jew
and Gentile.
In some sense, the new perspective
is really not that new at this point. I think it is certainly time to take its
contribution and begin applying it in fresh new ways. This does not mean that
the new perspective does not need to be challenged and critiqued in some areas
either, nor do any of its advocates suggest to. But, it has highlighted the need to continue
breaking new ground when it comes to reading Paul, and the other NT authors,
historically. Scripture is not just
about where we have been but it is a guide to where we should be going. As we
reason its discourse it ultimately sets the standard for how we are to be an
alternative way to the patterns of this world and that alone should encourage
us to recapture what is really being said.
[1] Richard B Hays. The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to
New Testament Ethics (New York: HarperOne Publishing 1996), 44.
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