Justification and the New Perspective on Paul: Six Theses

This semester I've been working on a paper dealing with justification and the new perspective on Paul under the supervision of Dr. Craig Blomberg. It's been a taxing but rewarding endeavor and, though I'm nearly finished with the paper, I sense that I've only scratched the surface. In order to guide my exploration of the topic, I developed six theses for the traditional perspective and then six theses for the new perspective that I believe sum up the emphases of both camps. (That I arrived at six theses instead of that holy number seven probably calls attention to the incompleteness of the paper.)



The Traditional Perspective

1) The Pauline teaching on justification by faith was designed to combat Jewish (or, more precisely, Jewish Christian) legalism threatening the health of early Christian churches.

2) By “works of the law,” Paul means deeds done in response to the composite of God’s moral requirements, which are embedded in the OT law and known in at least a rudimentary way by Gentiles.

3) It follows from human depravity that human beings cannot perform the works of the law and so cannot be justified by them.

4) We are justified by the grace of God in Christ, which must be received simply through faith.

5) To be justified is to be declared righteous in the sight of God, who acts as judge in the divine courtroom.

6) This act of justification is what enables one to join in the people of God.



The New Perspective

1) Paul’s teaching on justification by faith is not designed to combat Jewish legalism penetrating Christian communities. In short, the problem is not works-righteousness but lingering covenantal nomism and nationalism.

2) By “works of the law” Paul means conformity to certain commandments especially conducive to marking off the Jewish people as God’s elect.

3) While recognizing the impossibility of human beings earning salvation, the new perspectivists stress that the problem of the “works of the law” lies not in their championing human achievement. Rather, the problem lies in imposing these Jewish boundary markers on Gentile Christians, a problem borne of the Judaizers’ failure to keep in step with the flow of redemptive history.

4) As more traditional interpreters argue, human beings are justified by the grace of God in Christ, which must be received simply through faith.

5) To be justified is to be declared righteous, but this is primarily a matter of being declared a member of the covenant.

6) The event of justification is not what enables one to join the people of God; it is a declaration of which persons truly are part of the covenant people.

Any reactions to the developments represented here?