Protestants, Catholics, and New Perspectives on Paul

The following exchanges took place between me and a friend.  It concerns the New Perspectives on Paul, and I thought it would be of interest to some.

From the Mailbag:

I’ve been a part of a conversation about NPP elsewhere and have read some online, but I'm apparently a little slow on the uptake and am still trying to get a handle on all the key points of the New Perspectives on Paul, as well as the theological impact of the reinterpretations.

1. So far, I know of NPP’s reinterpretation of “works of the Law” and of the term, “Gospel.” Are there others? A concise, bulleted list would be helpful, but I know that there is not necessarily consensus among the NPP writers.

2. How do the NPP reinterpretations really affect traditional protestant teaching? Just how far-reaching are the reinterpretations? I know that some protestants believe that the reinterpretation of “works of the Law” results in an undermining of sola fide, which is why many are critical of NPP. However, when I look at what most protestants believe about justification ~ that’s it’s by faith alone, but that “real” faith will have good works ~ I don’t see that NPP is really such a deviation from traditional protestant teaching. And yet, there are countless protestant articles online condemning NPP as heresy.

3. How do the ideas espoused by NPP writers compare to those of the RCC and the EOC, specifically as they relate to justification? I've read both that the ideas are closely aligned with the RCC and that the NPP is anti-Catholic. So, which is it?

4. Is the scholarship found in NPP “good?” Should these reinterpretations be given serious consideration?

In general, if you never read Luther (for instance), the New Perspectives on Paul [NPP] are not going to flame your jets. if you do, you're probably aware of how Luther's interpretation of "Works" and its opposition to grace is the cornerstone of his understanding of scripture. 

If you kick the props out from under that understanding and see Torah-keeping in a more comprehensive way (see especially the foundational essays of Stendahl and Sanders), one of the foundational concepts of the Reformation just isn't supported by the texts.

Not that the Reformation collapses: it was a complicated chunk of history. But one of its crucial exegetical linchpins just... isn't there. It was a distortion caused by a peculiarity of the Lutheran conscience.

So yes: it's a big deal.

From the Mailbag:

My confusion lay in why protestants are so opposed to this scholarship when, though espousing sola fide, in practice justification is by faith proven to be "real" by works. IOW, a faith+works justification, it seems to me.

Yes, but notice that you begin by assuming that "faith" and "works" (understood as being somehow in opposition) and "justification" are valid categories, which NPP calls into question. It interrogates whether the Reformation ginned those up out of a mistaken notion of Paul's intentions, and concludes that, mostly, it did.St. Augustine: "No, seriously. I suck. God rocketh through grace, but I feel just awful about that fruit and all those books and all that concupiscencia. Don't get me started on my need for grace. Really."

From the Mailbag:

I am also unclear as to how far-reaching the reinterpretations are ~ what other areas of theology are affected by the reinterpretations, and how NPP theology compares to that of the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Well, the RCC to some degree anticipated the theological categories Luther would employ: Augustine, for example, has much to say about justification and sanctification (and Luther was steeped in Augustine, in my view to an unhealthy degree).

But since the RCC has a certain disposition towards what the Reformation would disparagingly call "Works," it's much less wed to the alleged divisions between grace / faith and works. The RCC has never strictly speaking seen any percentage in opposing those things soteriologically. The Reformation saw every percentage in it, and puts its eggs almost exclusively in that basket.  More metaphors will be butchered for your entertainment at a later time.

I think some Catholics might find themselves uncomfortable with the NPP revisionism: the idea that the New Testament is almost obsessed with the problem of gentiles would require some rewriting of Catholic exegesis, probably much less so at a fundamental level, but still very seriously.

As for the EOC: they are not terribly interested. Their exegesis has always been rooted in a very-nearly semitic habit of seeing salvation as inclusion into story. They are not discommoded.

From the Mailbag:

So when you say that the NPP position is that the NT is almost obsessed with the problem of gentiles - what do they say that Paul offers as the solution to the problem? Is it clear that the original gentile converts were not taught or required to observe Torah? Since I started studying the Bible from a different perspective (than the one I was raised with) I have been often left with the feeling that it all makes more sense if you're Jewish , but I'm somewhat unsure what it all means for me as a gentile.

Well, you'd do better to think in terms of what it would mean to you as a first century Gentile invited through the back door into the Jewish notion of the Kingdom of God in opposition to the Roman Empire... but that's a hard chasm to bridge.

The New Testament makes several points about this whole Gentile-Jew-Christianity thing. 

If you were to look at Mark, the earliest gospel, you'd find very little to recommend Gentile Christianity. A Syro-Phoenician woman is called a dog, and only wins Jesus' favor by agreeing it's so.

A Roman centurion "defects" to Jesus' kingdom and scores, but it's conspicuous that he's defecting.

Roman influence is regarded as demonic. 

It's very political that way.

By the time of Matthew and Luke, though, some considerable re-remembering of the Jesus Tradition is needed, the Romans are made a bit less culpable in Jesus' crucifixion, and some of the more peculiar semitic qualities of the gospel are just a bit muted. (Then you get to the gospel of John, which is damned near anti-semitic.) In Acts, Luke is almost exclusively concerned with stabilizing the uneasy relationship between Gentile and Jewish Christians, and you can really see Acts as a sort of polemic or apology for Gentile Christianity as much as anything. "Dude. I was speaking metaphorically. Chill on the whole grace / works thing, 'kay?"

In Acts, the Jewish root of Christianity is made explicit first in the sermons of Peter (who converts far-flung Jews) and Stephen (whose name is conspicuously Gentile and whose self-sacrifice I believe intentionally mirrors that of Jesus and functions as a sort of cracking out of Judaism and into the Gentile world).

The peace that Luke makes between Gentiles and Jews in Acts is that Gentile converts must abstain from porneia, that is, idolatrous temple-sex, meat offered to idols, and strangled meat.

Paul, writing probably before Mark was finished and certainly before Luke was finished, though, has a different approach to things. He sees the experience of the Holy Spirit through Jesus' name to be itself a constituting feature of the Kingdom of God, and in 1 Corinthians (which I think is his earliest epistle, though Galatians is also a contender) he is already excusing eating meat offered to idols. This is a peculiar conflict (and not the only one) between Acts and the Epistles. But he does argue with a peculiar abhorrence of porneia, a term which in Paul's Septuagint (Greek translation of parts of the Old Testament) is a term the prophets use vigorously as a metaphor for idolatry.

In Galatians, Paul's at it again, but this time, he's concerned specifically with circumcision. He and Luke disagree a bit about some of the details (Peter's opinion for instance, which Luke needs to be on the winning side as a means of preserving unity), but they concur in the conclusion, which is that Gentiles need not be circumcised.Best Exegete of His Day: Still, I Can't Cut Him That Much Slack

What's particularly interesting about Galatians is that in this discussion of a narrow question ("Must Gentile converts be circumcised?") Paul employs some really bold and intrusive rhetoric. He "personifies" the Torah in himself in a speech to Peter in Galatians 2, saying that he [that is, himself as he relates to the Torah] was "crucified with Christ," nevertheless he lives by "the faith of the Son of God." (Notice in Galatians 3 Paul marks God's acceptance of the Gentiles as evidenced by freaky shit.) Conspicuously, the "faith" or "fidelity" here is not opposed to "Works" in a vacuum. That is, works, or even law, is not the problem. The problem is making a vital spiritual experience of the Holy Spirit evidenced by freaky shit contingent on a requirement of the law, circumcision.

Luther took this rhetorical move so seriously that he constructed a much more generic theory of "works" and "grace" out of it. In his short commentary on Galatians he explicitly sees the Law as a prison, which Paul does not in my (and the NPP) reading.

Comments

[Susan R]

Otter, can you expound on the following intriguing statement?:

[The] exegesis [of the EOC] has always been rooted in a very-nearly semitic habit of seeing salvation as inclusion into story.