I’ve been reviewing some older critiques of “the new perspective on Paul” that mention specifically its lack of a theology of sin and salvation. It seems to me, however, that it’s more accurate to say that “the new perspective” broke the hegemony of a certain account of what Paul must have meant by the plight and the solution.
That is, many interpreters had assumed that for Paul, the problem is that humans are sinners and the solution is salvation. Humans are unrighteous and are at enmity with God, and they need righteousness and must be set right with God.
The revolution in Pauline studies that led to a global re-reading of Paul’s texts (all of them, not just our favorite ones) demonstrated that while all this is true, it is part of a much larger picture of what is wrong and how God has acted to set things right.
Grasping this more robust and far-reaching Scriptural depiction of what is wrong leads to a greater appreciation for God’s manifold action in Christ, and to a greater understanding of how God’s people inhabit and embody the massive (and under-explored) reality called “salvation.”
I say all this just to note that N. T. Wright in Paul and the Faithfulness of God does a very nice job of demonstrating what Paul saw as “the plight.” It wasn’t just that humans needed righteousness. In fact, the problem went beyond humans. It was cosmic in scope, including the entire creation.
What happens, then, when we put together these three elements, cross, resurrection and spirit? Paul has revised his previous understanding of the plight of the world, of humans and of Israel in line with his revision of monotheism itself. Standing behind it all was the strong early Christian belief that in Jesus and the holy spirit the covenant God had returned at last, and had acted decisively to judge and save. The sudden brightness of this light cast dark shadows: if this was what it looked like when YHWH returned, all sorts of things were called into question. The resurrection of Jesus constituted him as Messiah, but he remained the crucified Messiah, and if in the strange purposes of the One God the Messiah, his one and only true ‘son’, had had to die, it could only mean that the plight of Israel was far worse than had been thought. The resurrection itself demonstrated that the real enemy was not ‘the Gentiles’, not even the horrible spectre of pagan empire. The real enemy was Death itself, the ultimate anti-creation force, with Sin – the personified power of evil, doing duty apparently at some points for ‘the satan’ itself – as its henchman. Finally, the experience of the spirit revealed the extent to which hardness of heart and blindness of mind had been endemic up to that point across the whole human race. All these were there in Israel’s scriptures, but so far as we know nobody else in second-temple Judaism had brought them together in anything like the form we find them in Paul. It looks very much as though it was the gospel itself, both in proclamation and experience, which was the driver in bringing Paul to this fresh understanding of ‘the plight’ from which all humans, and the whole creation, needed to be rescued (761-2).
Earlier Jewish writers had seen quite a bit of this, of course. But for Paul the nature and extent of ‘the enemy’ and ‘the problem’ were revealed precisely in the act of their overthrow. The full horror of the threatening dragon became apparent only as it lay dead on the floor. The hints had been there already, including the biblical warnings about the corrosive and destructive principalities and powers standing behind outward political enemies and operating through the local and personal ‘sin’ of individuals. Neither Saul of Tarsus nor Paul the Apostle would have supposed one had to choose between the partial analyses offered by Genesis 3, Genesis 6 and Genesis 11: human rebellion, dark cosmic forces and the arrogance of empire all belonged together. A thoughtful and scripturally educated Pharisee could have figured that out already. But for Paul all of these were seen afresh in the light of the gospel. The fungus that had been growing on the visible side of the wall could now be seen as evidence of the damp that had been seeping in from behind. The worrying persistent and ingrained sin of Israel, not merely of the nations, was the tell-tale sign that the principalities and powers of Sin and Death had been at work all along in the covenant people, as well as in the idolatrous wider world (763).
Paul’s robust monotheism allowed fully for the fact of rebellious non-human ‘powers’ luring humans into idolatry and hence into collusion with their anti-creational and anti-human purposes. Sin in the human heart, darkness in the human mind, dehumanized behaviour in the human life: all went together with the rule of dark forces that operated through idols, including empires and their rulers, to thwart the purposes of the one creator God. And Israel, called to be the light of the world, had itself partaken of the darkness. Israel, too, was ‘in Adam’ (771).
Faith Improvised 
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imaginewithscripture
Reblogged this on Imagine with Scripture.
Andrew
This all makes it seem like Paul was the source of some type of innovative thinking about redemption (by ‘this’ I’m not sure if that means NT Wrights perspective on a Paul, or your perspective on NT Wright). The idea Paul was the source of some type of innovative understanding should be critically examined for a number of reasons.
1. Paul’s exegesis was based upon old covenant scripture. There is nothing novel if Paul understood correctly what the author intended. (Paul’s exegesis would be a ‘correction’ to previously flawed alternatives)
2. Paul would claim everything he espoused would be in line with his Messiah and the other disciples (so Paul would claim orthodoxy)
3. Paul’s references to ‘mystery’ and treatment of revelation would presuppose consistency with previous revelation. It might also presuppose partial revelation to prior prophets at least (since that was the source of his scriptural authority) but this does not require a change in understanding God’s intent as communicated in the covenant.
4. Modern scholars can’t find a single innovation in Paul’s thinking that can’t be found in the law, prophets, or words of the Messiah.
Christian scholars might understand Paul differently, but this would make the innovation a product of modern scholars thinking, not Paul; so obscures Paul’s actual accomplishment by mistaking ‘intended meaning’ with ‘interpretation’.
timgombis
I realize it’s always precarious to quote someone without giving too much larger context, but Wright does point out time and again throughout this section that Paul is in direct continuity with Israel’s Scriptures and is a faithful expositor of them. The “revision” comes to his own contemporary Jewish assumptions about what those Scriptures said. Some aspects of the Abrahamic promises and prophetic promises of renewal had been neglected and others over-emphasized. So, Paul is revising a Jewish vision — and remaining Jewish — and is also returning to the Scriptures in his letters.
Andrew T.
Ok, so NT Wright is clear about the notion ‘this’ is us trying to understand Paul? Fair enough.
However, I’d still point out – if there is a reason we need to revisit this at all, it is because we don’t understand Paul’s presuppositions about identity (and, I would add, we choose to be ignorant of its context).
Simply revisiting Paul will provide us with sufficient tension to impel us to ask questions. Problems can’t be ‘solved’, if first they’re not recognized, of course – so that’s helpful at lest.
But I’ve said this before, we’re pushing Paul through modern notions, not ancient ones. The ‘Jewishness’ Paul is being viewed through, and credited with, is an entirely modern concept constructed since Christ’s death largely by rabbinical writings.
Before the civic Roman province, there were no ‘Jews’! At best, there were Israelites, Judeans, Edomites, Hebrews, Babylonians, Assyrians et. etc.
The whole identity tension about ‘who was in and who was out’ of special covenant status with God arose because Judah’s foray into Babylon corresponded with, and was exasperated by an Edomite revolt against Judean authority; which had never abated [2 Kings 8:16-22] When foreign armies entered Jerusalem, Edomites who lived in Judah and were in rebellion against Judah, were exempt from conquest because they fought against Judah and supported foreign invaders; they stood at the gates and cheered [Oba 1:10-11]
Israel, which was not Judah and was never known as ‘Jews’ were gone, of course, into Assyria. What do we see immediately after Judah’s return, but Ezra’s concern about Judah’s identity. There were some who claimed to be Judeans but were not [Ezra 2:59]. Of course the previous Edomites still inhabited Judah, and Jerusalem. The return of Judean was a massive threat which is why the rebuild of the temple encountered resistance.
Then there is also the overthrow of the actual Judean aristocracy (set up after the fall of the Seleucid empire) in favour of an Edomite aristocracy with Herod at its head, in the revolt against the Hasmonean dynasty. So ‘Jewish’ is clearly a moniker which does little to help capture Paul’s actual assumptions.
How many biblical scholars do you know actually trying to de-tangle Paul’s assumptions by looking at history? How many are aware that demographically Israelite Judeans were a minority in contemporary ‘Jewish culture’ which was as much a civic title as a religious one. How many even differentiate between Edomite and Judean Jews, or Judeans and Israelites? If what we consider ‘Jewish’ today is really an emergent rabbinic perspective that arose in response to Christianity’s Messianic claims (at least this is what Alan Segal shows) why would we try to foist this view upon Paul at all?
We do need to be understanding Paul’s perspective aright, but that is as far from us as he is. We cannot simply assume a modern Jewish perspective explains Paul nicely when it too is anachronistic a post-Christian invention. Only history and a fearless treatment of Israelite identity can provide us with a proper lens – and I doubt few scholars are committed to this.
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Jeffrey
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