From ”Emerging Scholars”: These newly discovered evidences had enabled us to gain new insight into the nature of Jewish thought and practice during the Second Temple period \u2014 the time of Jesus and Paul \u2014 and were making it quite clear that the Jews of Paul\u2019s day were not trying to \u201cearn their salvation\u201d by building a strong moral r\u00e9sum\u00e9. Instead ancient Jews understood themselves to already be God\u2019s chosen people simply because, well, God had chosen them and thus they took their responsibility to keep the Law (i.e., the Torah) to be a consequence (rather than the antecedent) of their divine election. E.P. Sanders famously labeled this pattern of religion as \u201ccovenantal nomism,\u201d which is a handy bit of jargon. But the upshot of all this was that ancient Jews do not seem to have been proto-Pelagians who were attempting to hoist themselves into God\u2019s good graces by their own moral bootstraps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a result of these developments in Judaic studies, many scholars no longer thought it plausible to interpret Paul\u2019s critique of the Judaism of his day and the \u201cJudaizers\u201d (as they are sometimes called \u2014 Christians who were requiring Gentile converts to be circumcised) in his letters to the Galatians, the Philippians and the Romans as being that they were trying to \u201cearn their salvation.\u201d So far as we have evidence, there is no reason to think Paul\u2019s Jewish or \u201cJudaizing\u201d interlocutors would have been thinking that way.3 Nor was it any longer possible to understand Paul as Martin Luther had, seeing him as being a recovering legalist who had formerly struggled with an agonized, guilty conscience under the impossible moral burden of \u201cthe Law.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
March 2008 – I was interested in your mention of ”D.A. Carson-Justification and Variegated Nomism.” Around 2008 at the evangelical church I was working at at at the time, this tome (two volumes if I remember) was sitting on the pastor”s desk. The New Perspective, it seemed, as a bad thing. I ran across a blog that gave a critique of the book (I found it today at http:\/\/www.thepaulpage.com\/Tendentious.pdf) that said that “Although the overall tenor of the various contributions to this volume lends qualified support to Sanders\u2019s thesis, the title, introduction, and conclusion all steer the reader toward a more critical judgment of his work. Carson concludes, Covenantal nomism \u201cis too doctrinaire, too unsupported by the sources themselves, too reductionistic, too monopolistic\u201d (548). Such a ringing conclusion, while not lacking in rhetorical flourish, hardly does justice to the actual content of the essays. Carson thus detracts from the carefully nuanced studies that he is supposed to be representing.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the church the issues were known by the pastor at least, but the people wouldn”t know and still don”t know there is even an issue. The pastor told me at the a professor from the nearby seminary had told him it was best not to mention N.T. Wright.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(It was around that time he gave a Galatians sermon where he said ”some people are trying to earn their way to heaven by being good fathers, etc.” I interpreted it as a real case of intellectual laziness or irresponsibility.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From ”Emerging Scholars”: These newly discovered evidences had enabled us to gain new insight into the nature of Jewish thought and practice during the Second Temple period \u2014 the time of Jesus and Paul \u2014<\/p>\n