When evangelicals consider spirituality, they place a high priority on spontaneity, equating it with authenticity.  Especially when it comes to prayer we are largely resistant to anything planned or intentional.  “Ritual” in prayer and worship is something of a four-letter word for us, usually preceded by the adjective “dead.” I once asked an undergraduate class how they […]

I’ve dipped into the new NIV for one reason or another recently and I must say that I really like it.  I’ve typically cited two passages in classes to highlight certain inadequacies of English translations.  The updated NIV nails them. The first is 1 Corinthians 3:16-17.  I use this text to point out that English […]

In a recent conversation about the relationship of divine and human action in salvation, someone used the following analogy.  This person was trying to demonstrate that salvation is pure gift and demands passivity from human recipients.  The magnitude of the gift is so overwhelming that any human involvement in the salvation transaction diminishes God’s glory. He […]

My posts since early August have been working toward what I’m calling the grammar of the gospel.  It’s something I’ve been thinking about for quite a while, it rides just under the surface of debates in Pauline studies over the last three decades, and has much to do with Scot McKnight’s new book, The King Jesus […]

I’m taking up a few more considerations this week with the aim of getting to grips with the grammar of the gospel.  A misconstrued gospel grammar relies upon setting Judaism over-against Christianity as a religion of legalism wherein God’s grace must be supplemented by works. Though very common, I don’t think this depiction of Judaism […]

Father in heaven, you are the Creator of all things.  This is your world and you rule it from the heavens.  There is no other God but you alone.  And you are faithful.  You say things and you do them.  You speak, and then you perform it.  You are completely unlike us—we say things and […]

I’ve understood the terms “legalism” and “ethnocentrism” roughly along the following lines: Legalism: seeking to accumulate merit through doing good deeds with the goal of presenting a claim to God for salvation. Ethno-centrism: the notion that God’s salvation is limited to those who are “within the Law,” those who are ethnic Jews or who convert […]

In my CT article on Paul, I stated the following: The problem in the early church, therefore, was not the temptation toward legalistic works righteousness. They faced the communal challenge of incorporating non-Jewish converts into the historically Jewish people of God. First-century Judaism didn’t have a legalism problem; it had an ethnocentrism problem. The first […]

Robert Gundry sums up a traditional Protestant conception of first-century Judaism: [T]he question is whether [Jews of Paul’s day] thought meritorious works on their part were needed to supplement God’s grace. Yes, they did, as another Dead Sea Scroll attests: “Now we have written to you some of the works of the Law …. And […]

In my CT article on Paul, I questioned the common assumption that Paul left a legalistic Judaism at his conversion for the freedom of Christianity.  Robert Gundry responded in a letter to the editor: In “The Paul We Think We Know,” Timothy Gombis stated that “[f]irst century Judaism didn’t have a legalism problem.” Instead, “it […]