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A while past I promised Jock that I’d say something on Paul and the so-called ‘new perspective’. Indeed, some of what Jock disagrees with me on over salvation, as far as I understand his position, is to do with this. Two words of warning to commence: the first is that there are many new perspectives; indeed, almost as many as there are old ones.
That said, it amounts to this. In the 1960s and after, some scholars in the Protestant tradition became impatient with the way their own traditions had treated St Paul. In the aftermath of the war and of the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls, scholars looked again at first century Judaism, and as they did so, they began to see that their predecessors hadn’t understood it aright; this led some, in particular E.P. Saunders, James D.G. Dunn, and Tom (NT) Wright to argue that to see Paul was rejecting ‘works’ as having any part in salvation was too simplistic by half, if only because it presupposed a version of what was meant by ‘works’ which was that of a sixteenth century Protestant and not a first century Jew. Essentially the argument is that Luther and his successors transferred to Paul their own obsession that works don’t obtain salvation for us; quite who has ever argued they did is a moot point.
For Dunn and company, ‘works of the law’ are effectively badges of covenantal belonging – part of the idea that adhesion to the Torah made you a better person in the eyes of God – well Abraham didn’t and he was still adjudged righteous by God. For those of the new perspective, the old Protestants are pursuing their own argument with their own understanding of Catholic teaching when they argue that Paul is arguing that you can’t be saved by works: the Jews did not believe you could be; but they did believe that God regarded you as righteous if you were an observant Jew.
God judges us, Wright and company argue, on the lived life: have we believed in Christ and has that shown fruit (think about the parable of the talents); works are the result of our righteousness, and we shall see at the Last Judgement that this is so.
But faith itself requires our affirmation – and, Wright suggests, is in that sense a work and a fruit of the Spirit within us. We cannot believe effortlessly. Faith is not simple intellectual assent. At its most extreme, the new perspective argues that it is by Christ’s faith, not our own, that we are saved; His faith being exemplified in His sacrifice on Calvary.
Whilst the new perspective writers are agreed that Penal Substitution atonement is not as important to Paul as their predecessors thought, they’ve not managed to agree what theory is.
Catholic writers like Taylor Marshall have pointed out that this new perspective is not terribly new – it is more or less what the Catholic Church has always argued, as its tradition carried forward with it a living understanding of the Jewish tradition. In many ways it brings Protestantism closer to the Catholic and Orthodox understanding of these things – which hardly recommends it to old style Protestants.
We had a course yesterday at work – compulsory, so I went. A very fierce and whippet-thin woman (goodness, she was even thinner than me) lectured us for about half an hour on the importance of good ‘life-habits’ and bringing them into the work place. So, she was keen to know (in the break out sessions) whether we exercise, and if so how, and how many times a week. (I think the male colleagues whose answer was that he did a lot of ‘horizontal jogging’ three times a week and twice on Sundays may have baffled her at first). Did we eat healthily? Again, at the break out session we were asked to share our habits (in case anyone is interested there was a general view that what I eat a day would keep a half-starved rabbit going) and compare notes. By the end we’d got the message – a healthy mind in a healthy body makes us good worker bees. Maybe that wasn’t what she meant, but it was how it came across.
So, we are redeemed, we are saved. He is Risen indeed. St Paul tells us that without the Resurrection we are still in our sins. What he never tells us is that now we are saved we can go on in whatever way we think fit. There were clearly those in Corinth who thought that now they were saved they could do anything they liked – fornicate, have incest, whatever took their fancy, and that because they were saved that was fine. St Paul had no time for such nonsense.
Over coffee with a colleague the other day the subject of the Government’s Same Sex marriage bill came up. At work I try to avoid controversy. I don’t expect people to agree with me, and everyone is entitled to their view, and the work place is not, for me, somewhere for argument over things unconnected to my job. My colleagues, to a woman, agreed with the Government, and while I tend to keep my views to myself, it was noticed that I had said nothing. So my view was sought, and I gave it. It went better than I had thought, but as we walked back to the office, one colleague said to me: ‘I didn’t know you were a Christian, you seem so normal!’ It took me aback, and it was only talking to Chalcedon on the way home that I began to wonder about it.
One of the things which made me wonder about dear old Luther when I was being taught about the Reformation at College was learning that he thought that the Epistle of St. James was an ‘epistle of straw’. In all fairness, it should be noted that Luther himself retracted that opinion after 1522, and later praised the contents of the Epistle; still, it is a reminder of the fallibility of all humans.
All Along the Watchtower 
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