In the thirty years since its inception, the so-called New Perspective on Paul (NPP) has attracted both eager followers as well as vehement critics for its treatment of the gospel. Some of the most trenchant criticisms have come from scholars, often of the Reformed tradition, who allege that the New Perspective undermines the traditional doctrine of “justification by faith.” My aim, then, is to assess the proposals of leading New Perspective scholars N.T. Wright and James D.G. Dunn in order to better understand just what they have done with justification. (And this is only meant to be a kind of ‘readers’ introduction; for me, it was important to come to an understanding of the essential argument so that I could engage faithfully with recent New Testament theology, I hope it might serve the same purpose for you). In my read of things, it becomes quickly apparent that the new understanding of Paul around the issue of justification, far from undermining the gospel, actually encourages a richer and fuller understanding of the gospel and its implications for people of faith.
What is now known as the New Perspective on Paul first emerged in the wake of new thinking about the nature of first century Palestinian Judaism. In 1977, E.P. Sanders published Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Fortress Press), in which he challenged the widely held (Protestant) idea that Judaism was a fundamentally legalistic religion wherein salvation had to be merited by “works of the law” – a kind of works-righteousness system. Sanders’ basic claim was that salvation in Judaism had, rather, to do with grace on the basis of covenant. For some New Testament scholars, Sanders’ work signaled the opportunity to shed the traditional “Lutheran” slant and to read Paul afresh. One of those scholars was N.T. Wright, who took Sanders’ cue without delay and, in 1978, published “The Paul of History and the Apostle of Faith” (Tyndale Bulletin), in which he announced that the long-time Protestant construal of Judaism, and of Paul, had been misleading at best. In 1982, James D.G. Dunn coined the term “the New Perspective on Paul” in his Manson Memorial Lecture by the same title. In the lecture, Dunn celebrated the opportunity Sanders had provided for Paul’s letters to be read in Paul’s own context and on Paul’s own terms.
Seeing Paul and Judaism in a different way results, of course, in changes in how Paul’s theology is understood, especially wherever it concerns the relationship between Jews and Gentiles. And this is where the New Perspective challenges the traditional, Protestant perspective – namely Luther’s understanding of Paul on the matter of justification. The “Lutheran” idea is that justification is primarily concerned with how a person comes to be saved, or declared righteous before God (emphasizing soteriology). In the New Perspective, “justification…is not a matter of how someone enters the community of the true people of God, but of how you tell who belongs to that community.”[1] The other matter of definition to settle here is about ‘the gospel.’ The traditional understanding has been that the gospel is that Jesus – in his death and resurrection – has effected salvation for those who put their trust in him. Tom Wright has written extensively to substantiate his view that Paul’s use of the gospel is “not referring to a system of salvation, although certainly the gospel implies and contains this, nor even to the good news that there now is a way of salvation open to all but, rather, to the proclamation that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth has been raised from the dead and thereby demonstrated to be both Israel’s Messiah and the world’s true Lord.”[2]
A fair assessment of New Perspective proposals must begin with the basic observation that the proponents of the New Perspective simply do not intend to deny the traditional doctrine of justification by faith. In What Saint Paul Really Said, Wright maintains the forensic aspect of justification, in his discussion on Paul’s use of ‘righteousness’ as a legal metaphor wherein justification means the declaration of acquittal.[3] And, in the introduction to an essay about justification, James Dunn makes it clear that he is not at all interested in attacking the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith, only that he wants to highlight other, oft-neglected aspects of “a larger, still richer doctrine.”[4]
In order to explain how it happens that some aspects of justification came to be neglected, Dunn describes certain negative effects of the influence of Luther’s conversion and rediscovery of justification by faith, which, overall, had to do with “the reflection backwards of Luther’s [conversion] experience on to Paul.”[5] One of the effects was that justification became about the individual finding peace with God, and of course the person of faith does find peace with God, but it is important to recognize that that is not all justification is about. Wright and Dunn agree, “Justification by faith is not only about and not reducible to how the individual sinner can find peace with God; for Paul it was also, and integrally so, about how God has broken down barriers between individuals and peoples, that is, for Paul, ‘the dividing wall’ between Jew and Gentile.”[6]
This means that, in the New Perspective, justification is the ecumenical doctrine. For Wright, the fact that Paul is talking about something other than how a person comes to be saved is unmistakable: “It is blindingly obvious when you read Romans or Galatians…that virtually whenever Paul talks about justification, he does so in the context of a critique of Judaism and of the coming together of Jew and Gentile in Christ.”[7] That Paul has the membership dimension of justification in view is indicated when he addresses justification in Galatians 2:16, which occurs in the context of Paul’s rebuke of Peter for having withdrawn from table fellowship with Gentiles. Dunn’s conclusion about the passage is, “When Paul said in effect, ‘All are justified by faith and not by works’, he meant not ‘Every individual must cease from his own efforts and simply trust in God’s acceptance,’ however legitimate and important an interpretation of his words that is. What he meant was, ‘Justification is not confined to Jews as marked out by their distinctive works; it is open to all, to Gentile as well as Jew, through faith.’”[8] Still, the New Perspective is also insistent that the two dimensions of justification not be set in antithesis. While traditionalists are anxious that the ecclesiological emphasis detracts from the soteriological significance of Paul’s theology, Wright and Dunn are actually concerned to maintain (or perhaps recover) the full implications of the gospel.
The concern for a fuller doctrine is represented further in that Wright and Dunn also recognize a whole other dimension of Paul’s theology of salvation that must not be neglected – that is the “in Christ” dimension. In a public conversation between Wright and Dunn about Jesus and Paul, Wright identifies the mistake of putting Romans 1-4, about judicial matters (that is, justification), in antithesis with Romans 5-8, about “mystical” matters (of being “in Christ”). Wright sees the divide as mistaken especially in light of passages like Galatians 3 and 4, where everything from Romans 1-8 is brought together. Dunn adds that the antithesis of justification and union with Christ fails to take seriously passages like 2 Corinthian 5:21 and Philippians 3, which are about the righteousness of God “in Christ.” Union with Christ should not be set in antithesis to justification because for Paul they are integrated.[9]With this participationist dimension in view, it is arguable that salvation is not only concerned about, nor is it coterminous with, justification by itself.
If we consider together the key elements of the Wright and Dunn’s New Perspective on justification, being careful to understand them on their own terms, it is arguable that they maintain the classic doctrine of justification by faith in principle, while also appreciating the other aspects of Paul’s thinking on the full implications of the gospel. As we have observed, if the new perspective on Judaism is accurate, then Paul would have understood justification in terms of membership with the covenant people of God, implying at the same time that the individual members have been declared righteous before God. You simply cannot have one without the other. The gospel announcement creates allegiance to Christ and it leads to justification in both senses – the declaration that one is righteous and that all who believe in Jesus Christ belong together. Justification is for those whose allegiance to Jesus is complete, so that justification assumes or implies that the gospel has been heard in faith, and the judicial aspect of salvation has been realized. And salvation also means union with Christ, whereby the person of faith are caught up in participation “in Christ.” Again, you cannot have one without the other, for it is “in him” that we “become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
[1] Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997).
[2] N.T. Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul.” Justification in Perspective (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), 248-9.
[3] See Wright, What, 96-99.
[4] James D.G. Dunn, “The Justice of God” (Journal of Theological Studies 43, 2003), 2.
[5] Ibid., 3.
[6] N.T. Wright and James D.G. Dunn, “An Evening Conversation on Jesus and Paul,” (www.thepaulpage.com/
Conversation.html, Matt Mattison, Ed. 2007).
[7] Wright, “New Perspectives,” 247.
[8] Dunn, “Justice” 14.
[9] Wright and Dunn, “Conversation.”