TOWARD A NEW

PERSPECTIVE ON PAUL

A Changed World

The Post-War Era

World War II fundamentally changed the conditions for research on Judaism and early Christianity.
When the atrocities of the death camps became widely known, time was ripe for a serious
reassessment of the synthesis between theology and biblical scholarship. It became increasingly
evident that there was a direct relationship between the anti-Jewish Christian theology and the
industrialized mass murder of six million Jews. The Christian church that almost twenty centuries had
defined itself in contrast to a distorted picture of Judaism no doubt shared the responsibility for the
worst crime against humanity in history.

A tangible step on the way toward increased understanding between Christians and Jews was the
establishment of various organizations like The Council of Christians and Jews in the United
Kingdom, founded in 1942, and I:Amities Judeo-Chretienne de France, founded in 1947. The same
year, more than sixty Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish theologians met in Seelisberg at the
International Conference of Christians and Jews with the purpose of promoting "brotherly love
toward the sorely-tried people of the old covenant."' When the World Council of Churches met for its
constituent general assembly in Amsterdam in 1948, the relationship between the church and the
Jewish people was also on the agenda. In one document, it was clearly stated that the churches "in the
past have helped to foster an image of the Jews as the sole enemies of Christ, which has contributed to
antiSemitism in the secular world" and that anti-Semitism "is a sin against God and man,"' revealing
that an awareness of the liability of the church had begun to take shape. Within the Protestant
churches, official commissions started to form with the aim of dealing with matters pertaining to the
relations of the church with the Jewish people.

Prior to the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), the relations between the Roman Catholic
Church and Judaism were not that formalized, but dependent on certain individuals and organizations
within the church. In spite of this, several concrete results could be noticed, not the least of which
were changes in certain liturgical texts. In 1955, Pope Pius XII introduced a genuflection at the prayer
for the Jews in the Good Friday liturgy, and in 1960 Pope John XXIII removed the adjective peril,
"faithless," so that the prayer was now simply "for the Jews." In September 1960, Pope John XXIII
instructed the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity to prepare a declaration for the forthcoming
council regarding the relations of the church with the Jews. Five years later the declaration Nostra
Aetate, concerning the relations of the church with the non-Christian religions, and including a
specific passage on the Jews, was voted through by a large majority. The declaration states that "the
Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God,"3 but also mentions that many Jews
interfered with the spreading of the gospel. "Jerusalem did not recognize the time of her visitation," it
is stated, "nor did the Jews in large number accept the Gospel; indeed not a few opposed its
spreading." 4 The church is presented as the new people of God, and no explicit comments touch
upon the old accusation that the Jews should be considered guilty of deicide.

Earlier drafts of the document had been much more far-reaching, but had to be rejected for
political reasons. One version from 1964 even expressed the gratitude of the church toward the
Jewish people and clearly repudiated the charge of deicide.b The final official declaration is no doubt
a watered-down version compared to previous drafts, but still probably represents the most radical
attempt to clarify the relationship of the Christian church to Judaism. It is, furthermore, clear that
there were strong forces striving to work for an even more radical wording.

Even though this incipient change, both in the Protestant churches and the Roman Catholic
Church, meant a certain improvement of the official relations between Christianity and Judaism and
led to some practical alterations, one must also point out that among the absolute majority of scholars
and theologians, the attitude was "business as usual." It is worthwhile to notice that Bultmann in his
works at the end of the 1940s not only passed on the classic view of Judaism without reflection, but
also, only a few years after the war, formulated his thesis that the purpose of Jewish law was to lead to
death. Did he, in the unspeakable sufferings of the Jewish people under the Nazi regime, see the
fulfillment of the "curse of the law" (Gal 3:13), or was he simply unable to discern the connection
between a specific theology and its practical consequences? As we have seen above, Kasemann and
Bornkamm also reproduced a traditionally Lutheran and basically anti-Jewish view of Judaism. The
connection between anti-Jewish theology and anti-Jewish political ideology is, however, not entirely
uncomplicated. Although the works of Bultmann, Bornkamm, and Kasemann are based on a very
negative image of Judaism, Bornkamm and Kasemann were active in the German Confessing Church
(die Gekenfze, ue Kirche), which openly opposed the Nazi ideology, and Bultmann at least supported
it.6

But even though most scholars and theologians continued to repeat the traditional stereotypes
about Paul and his relationship to Judaism, others seriously started to ponder other alternatives, often
inspired by the evolving Jewish-Christian dialogue. An excellent example of this is Krister Stendahl,
with whose work we have already become acquainted.

Exeg etical Reorientation-Krister Stendahl

Krister Stendahl (1921-2008) earned his Ph.D. from Uppsala University and was New Testament
professor at Harvard Divinity School between 1958 and 1984. He went on to serve as the Bishop of
Stockholm until 1988, then returned to the United States where he was for many years a prominent
figure in the Jewish-Christian dialogue. As early as the beginning of the 1960s, he held a series of
lectures bearing witness to a rare ability to assume a critical stance toward his own tradition and a far-
reaching desire to understand the New Testament against the background of its proper context.
Stendahl's works contain many of the basic perspectives later to be found in more recent research on
Paul, which means that he must be regarded as an extraordinarily farsighted scholar.

In contrast to many other Lutheran scholars, Stendahl makes a clear distinction between the
original meaning of the text, its impact on society during the course of history
(TX~crkungegesclaiehte), and the meaning it may have for the present-day church. Such a
hermeneutically flexible attitude does not make it necessary to strive for a complete unity between the
historical meaning of the text and the theology of the church. It is rather natural, Stendahl claims, that
the church emphasizes other aspects than the author originally stressed. In the article discussed above
in the section on Kasemann, "Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West," Stendahl points out
that there is a considerable difference between Paul's original intention and the interpretation ascribed
to him by the Reformation, and just this is what Kasemann criticizes.

In a famous essay, "Paul among Jews and Gentiles," published only in 1976, but also based on
lectures held in the beginning of the 1960s, Stendahl argues that the relationship between Jews and
non-Jews wholly determined Paul's theology, not least his emphasis on "justification by faith alone,"
which Stendahl claims has been fundamentally misunderstood. The problem Luther wrestled with-
how to find a merciful God-was not Paul's quandary. Paul's main interest was instead precisely the
relationship between Jews and non-Jews. His reasoning on justification must also be seen as a special
and unique argument in this complex of problems, Stendahl argues, and does not create a contrast
between "Christianity" and "Judaism" or between "the law" and "the gospel."

The same misunderstanding concerns Paul's so-called conversion. It was not a question of Paul
converting from one religion, Judaism, to another, Christianity, as most people have understood the
texts in Acts, Stendahl asserts. Paul's own narrative of his changed outlook in Galatians 1:13-16
should rather be seen as one similar to the vocation of prophets we know from Isaiah and Jeremiah,
where we also find allusions to the non-Jewish peoples. Isaiah 49:6 states that God will make his
servant "a light to the nations" so that the salvation of God "may reach to the end of the earth."
Similarly, Jeremiah is given the mission to be "a prophet to the nations" (der 1:5). According to
Stendahl, Paul serves the same God as before, admittedly in a different way, but still directly linked to
what was already part of Jewish tradition. Here again Stendahl maintains that we can see what
determines Paul's theology: the conviction that he has been called to be an apostle to the non-Jews and
not the conception that humans must be delivered from Jewish legalism or a guilt-ridden conscience.

Paul's reasoning on justification in Romans and Galatians must also be understood in connection
with the relationship between Jews and non-Jews, which Stendahl argues does not have any bearing
on the all-embracing question of whether humanity in general can be saved, or how a person's deeds
will be judged some day. The question of justification should instead be related to those matters that
constitute the actual center of the letter, namely Romans 9-11, according to Stendahl, where Paul deals
with God's plan for the final salvation all of humanity and how the mission to the Jews fits into this
plan. After emphasizing God's promises to Israel in the beginning of Romans 9, Paul continues by
noting that the refusal of the Jewish people to accept Jesus as the Messiah of Israel has led to the
situation where salvation now has been offered to the non-Jews. Stendahl argues that, according to
Paul, God's plan seems to have anticipated the "no" of the Jews so that non-Jews also could be
included in God's "yes." And in the end, Israel also will be saved (Rom 11:26-27), and there is
evidently no contradiction between God's promise to Israel and the fact that non-Jews have been
offered the same opportunity for salvation. Ultimately, Stendahl argues, this is exactly what the term
usually translated "justification" means, namely "victory" and "salvation," and that God's
righteousness in the end will set everything right.'

Stendahl's work has been extremely important for the development of the new view on Paul and
has served as an inspiration for many scholars. What has already been pointed out, but deserves
highlighting again, is the fact that much of what has come to characterize the latest research on Paul
was already present in Stendahl's works in the 1960s. But those who questioned the traditional view of
Paul in the 1960s and 70s had a common problem: the total dominance of the prevailing paradigm
regarding Judaism in antiquity. Even those who did not share the view that Paul rose in rebellion
against a dead, legalistic, self-righteous, and fundamentally perverted Judaism were confronted by a
wall of Protestant lack of understanding -and not infrequently by a theologically motivated
disinclination to understand. What was needed was a radical calling-in-question of the foundations of
the predominant paradigm-a sweeping criticism of the negative Christian image of Judaism-so
convincing that it simply had to be taken seriously.

The Prerequisite-A New View of Judaism

E. P. Sanders and Covenantal Nomism

In 1977, the American scholar Ed P. Sanders published the book Paul and Palestinian JudaL,n. This
study, his first larger work, has probably contributed to the change in the view on ancient Judaism
more than any other scholarly work of the twentieth century. Sanders was professor at McMaster
University in Canada between 1966 and 1984, then at Oxford University in Great Britain until 1990,
when he moved to Duke University in the United States.

Although many of Sanders's conclusions had been hinted at in the works of other scholars, it was
not until the emergence of Sanders's study that a true breakthrough was noticeable among New
Testament scholars with regard to Paul's relationship to Judaism. However, Sanders's settlement with
earlier research on Judaism has probably been more important than his suggestion about how Paul
should be related to it. As we shall see, the conclusion concerning Paul that Sanders arrives at is in
fact rather traditional, and the works of many later scholars stand out as far more radical.

T he Pattern of Religion

Sanders notes that both Montefiore and Moore had made important contributions to the view of Paul's
relationship to Judaism. As we saw in the previous chapter, they found it incomprehensible that Paul
should have ignored the atonement institution found in rabbinic literature and reached the conclusion
that he must have been familiar with some other kind of Judaism. When using the idea of how the
individual attains salvation in rabbinic Judaism as a starting point, Paul's criticism of Judaism seems
to rest on a fundamental misunderstanding. The flaw of previous scholarship, according to Sanders,
was that it mainly focused on how certain individual Pauline motives also could be found in Jewish
thinking. But what is really required, Sanders asserts, indicating his basic method, "is to answer the
question of the basic relationship between Paul's religion and the religion reflected in Palestinian
Jewish literature.""

Accordingly Sanders wants to broaden the issue to include a more basic comparison between the
religion of Paul and Palestinian Judaism, especially with respect to the fuzzctiozz of religion. This
Sanders calls the "pattern of religion," which focuses on how "getting in" and "staying in" are
perceived by the adherents of a certain religion. Sanders pays attention to individual motives only if
they can be related to this overarching pattern, that is, their significance in the pattern of admitting and
retaining members. By analyzing texts composed in the land of Israel between 200 BCE and 200 CE,
Sanders thus aims at understanding the principles for the starting point of the religious life, its end,
and what takes place in between.

Sanders starts his survey with a blistering criticism of how the notion of legalism and work-
righteousness in rabbinic Judaism had been passed on from generation to generation. The main
problem, Sanders states, is that New Testament scholars uncritically had taken over Weber's view of
rabbinic Judaism without checking whether the sources supported this notion. This brings to the fore
an important problem in all scholarship, namely, that most scholars are reduced to relying on other
scholars when it comes to matters lying outside their own special field. A New Testament scholar
must have a competence in a wide range of areas-philology (Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic), Greco-
Roman religion, cultural and social history, Jewish studies, theology, and textual criticism. But few
scholars are experts in more than one of these fields. In fact, most scholars have a good command
only of parts of a larger field of scholarship. When it comes to matters outside the primary
competence of the individual scholar, he or she is reduced to the standard views available in
secondary literature.

These conditions are especially pertinent in the field of rabbinic literature. In order to master
rabbinics, the scholar certainly must have a profound knowledge of Hebrew and Aramaic but also has
to be intimately familiar with the literary genre as such. Rabbinic literature does not present a well-
laid systematic theology, but is made up of extensive halakic discussions and creative, sometimes
very imaginative, interpretations of the biblical text. The topic under discussion is often only hinted at
since the rabbis assumed the reader to be conversant with the argument. To pan out "rabbinic
theology" from this literature is an extremely difficult task, and requires a broad range of experience
and a careful mode of procedure. There are indeed many pitfalls, and conclusions too hastily drawn
may have far-reaching consequences, as the case of Weber and Jewish legalism clearly demonstrates.

Covenantal Nomis m

Sanders continues his survey by scrutinizing the rabbinic Tannaitic literature, that is, the literature
evolving during the period between the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE and the
completion of the Mishnah roughly around 200 CE, focusing on how the rabbis regarded the role of
the covenant, the salvation of the individual, and the restoration of a broken relationship with God.

Sanders's reading of the Tannaitic literature completely contradicts the picture forwarded from
Weber onwards. In fact, the entire interpretive framework upon which the traditional description of
ancient Judaism was based is faulty, according to Sanders: the starting points were wrong, the texts
were consistently misunderstood, and they were interpreted by means of a specific theological
preunderstanding. This, Sanders states, is why the traditional picture of Judaism, from which the
absolute majority of New Testament scholars started, in no way should be relied on.

The fundamental error, Sanders claims, is that scholars such as Weber and Bousset completely
overlooked the importance of covenantal theology in rabbinic Judaism. The covenant is nothing less
than the very key for correctly understanding the statements concerning punishment and reward in
rabbinic Judaism. The foundation is the electionthe idea that God has chosen Israel and entered into a
covenant with the Jewish people. Israel in its turn has accepted the status as God's chosen people and,
accordingly, the special conditions the covenant implies.

Within the framework of the covenant, God has given Israel the Torah, the commandments,
which every individual is expected to keep to the best of his or her ability. God certainly punishes
transgressions and rewards obedience, but Sanders, in contrast to Weber and in line with Montefiore
and Moore, points out that the Torah itself offers a system for expiating transgressions. The pattern,
Sanders states, is as follows:

God has chosen Israel and Israel has accepted the election. In his role as King, God gave
Israel commandments which they are to obey as best they can. Obedience is rewarded and
disobedience punished. In case of failure to obey, however, man has recourse to divinely
ordained means of atonement, in all of which repentance is required. As long as he maintains
his desire to stay in the covenant, he has a share in God's covenantal promises, including life
in the world to come. The intention and effort to be obedient constitute the conoition for
reznaininq in the covenant, but they do not earn it.9

Thus whoever violates the commandments of the Torah can become reconciled with God, and
the relationship between God and the individual can be restored. Keeping the Torah is not a means by
which the individual can earn his or her place in the world to come, but a manifestation of a desire to
remain in the covenant God has entered into with the Jewish people. This means that the rabbis were
perfectly aware of the fact that the commandments were going to be violated, and precisely because
of this there were far-ranging discussions on how various sins should be expiated. The individual
striving to live according to the Torah fails now and then, but uses the opportunities the Torah offers
to maintain a relationship with God. Such an individual is considered "righteous," and all the
promises of the covenant are valid-even the one concerning a place in the world to come. The
discussions about punishment and reward in Tannaitic literature, Sanders emphasizes, must be seen
against this background-the basic pattern of rabbinic Judaism, which Sanders summarizes in the
phrase covenantal nornidrn:

Briefly put, covenantal nomism is the view that one's place in God's plan is established on
the basis of the covenant and that the covenant requires as the proper response of man his
obedience to its commandments, while providing means of atonement for transgression. 10

Sanders then proceeds to examine the apocryphal and pseudepigraphal Jewish literature and the
literature from Qumran. Even though he finds some deviations from the Tannaitic pattern of
covenantal nomism regarding specific details and how various aspects are emphasized, Sanders still
arrives at the conclusion that in principle all literature he has examined bears witness to the same
basic pattern-covenantal nomism. The Qumran sectarians indeed defined the covenant in a much
narrower way than other groups, believing that they alone were included in the "true" covenant, while
all other Jews and non-Jews were outside it, and consequently in the end would face a terrible fate. But
essentially the religious system of the Qumran community also presupposed that remaining within the
covenant was ultimately dependent on the grace of God: "the means of atonement are not precisely
identical, but there is agreement on the place of atonement within the total framework," Sanders
states."
 In only one text, Sanders found that covenantal nomism had collapsed and been replaced by
legalistic perfectionism. The author of the apocryphal book 4 Ezra advocates an extreme degree of
law-observance in order to enable the individual to remain in the covenant, and seems to have
excluded the option of contrition and restoration. In 4 Ezra, there are no signs of divine grace, and
only the one who can live a perfect life can hope to be saved. Hence, according to the author, those
who finally, and after severe suffering, are saved will be a very small number. Sanders believes that
4Ezra represents the opinion of an extreme minority and that its deep, dark pessimism must be seen
against the background of the time when it was written-as a result of the destruction of Jerusalem and
the temple in 70 CE. These views, Sanders claims, were not widely held prior to the fall of the temple,
and the survey of Jewish literature proves that they cannot be judged as representative for the period
after the destruction of the temple either.

Thus Judaism during the period in question, 200 BCE to 200 CE, was, according to Sanders,
characterized by covenantal nomism, a type of religion where Torah observance was related to the
idea that the Jewish people had entered into a covenantal relationship with God. God ultimately
guarantees everyone who remains in the covenant a place in the world to come, not as a result of
human achievements, but because of God's mercy.

Sanders's showdown with the traditional view of ancient Judaism undoubtedly implied a serious
challenge to New Testament scholarship. Jewish "legalism" and "works-righteousness" had
constituted such a perfect background for explaining both Jesus and Paul. The idea of covenantal
nomism as the characteristic pattern of Judaism thus called in question virtually all previous
scholarship on Jesus, Paul, and the early Jesus movement. If the Pharisees did not represent legalism
and hypocritical works-righteousness, why did Jesus criticize them? If it was possible to be
reconciled with God within the framework of Judaism, what was the point of the redeeming death of
Jesus? And why did Paul criticize the Torah if it was only a token for the will to live in communion
with God?

These and similar questions were the direct consequences of Sanders's study. His presentation of
Judaism would eventually result in a completely new direction with regard to the study of Paul. While
previous scholarship mainly had taken for granted that Paul opposed Judaism, some scholars now
started to ponder if it was possible to make Paul fit in with the Judaism of the first century CE. This
new direction would eventually lead to a new opposition: between the traditional view of Paul and a
new perspective in which the conflict between Paul and Judaism is significantly downplayed.
However, as will be evident in chapter 6, Sanders's revision of first-century Judaism has not
convinced all scholars, and there are indeed reasons to question whether Sanders was correct in all
his conclusions. Before we engage in studying the development of the so-called new perspective on
Paul, however, we will first see how Sanders viewed Paul's relation to a Judaism characterized by
covenantal nomism.

New Perspectives on Paul

From Solution to Plig ht-Sanders on Paul

In Paul and Palestinian JudaLi,n Sanders begins his description of Paul's religious system by
questioning an important point of departure for Bultmann and Bornkamm, among others. They
assumed that Paul first presented the reasons as to why humans were in need of salvation and then
presented the solution to the problem-Christ. Thus according to the traditional perspective, Paul's
argument runs from plujht to solution. According to Sanders, however, Paul's reasoning was rather
the opposite: Paul, in fact, started with the solution-God's redemption in Christ-and then went on by
explaining why humanity was in need of being saved in this specific way.

As Stendahl had done before, Sanders notes that Paul, prior to his experience on the road to
Damascus, hardly expressed any need for salvation. Nor did Paul seem to have found it impossible or
even difficult to live according to the Torah. Paul's conviction that both Jews and non-Jews were in
need of salvation, Sanders argues, seems rather to have its basis in the idea that God actually had sent
Jesus with the purpose of saving the world. Thus if God really had sent Christ as a savior, such a
savior, of course, must have had been needed. With Paul the train of thought thus runs directly counter
to the Protestant scheme from law to gospel, Sanders claims. Paul, in short, argued "backwards" from
solution to plight.

Paul represents another type of religion than the one found in the Jewish literature, Sanders
argues. There are certainly many points in common: for example, Paul seems to share the view that
salvation comes about by grace, while deeds constitute a necessary condition for remaining in contact
with God. But according to Sanders, Paul's attitude to the Torah is without precedent in Jewish
tradition. The main difference is that the term "justification" in Jewish thinking means that the
individual who lives according to the Torah retains his or her status a s a member of the covenant
with God. But with Paul "justification" simply means being saved through Christ, which in turn means
that the believer surrenders to the supremacy of Christ. "Justification" with Paul is what Sanders labels
"a transfer term" and is only related to the issue of how to become a member of the religion, not how
to rernahi in the system.

Paul's religion, Sanders claims, is characterized by the individual's submission to the supremacy
of Christ and hence his becoming a partaker of Christ's death and resurrection. Those who have been
united with Christ in this manner have also been liberated from the power and resulting impurity of
sin, from immoral living, and from "idolatry."
 Paul does not deny that there is a righteousness coming from the law (Phil 3:9), but that is
another kind of righteousness than the one that comes from faith in Jesus, which is the only one that
leads to salvation. For this very reason, all other attempts to attain salvation are wrong. Paul's main
objection to the Torah, according to Sanders, is that it does not constitute the way to salvation staked
out by God. This is why it is wrong to follow the Torah. Not that the Torah per se is something evil,
and certainly not because it represents a striving for self-righteousness. Instead, Sanders states that
Paul's problem with Judaism is simply that it kr not ChhrLitianity. Thus in Sanders's view Paul denies
three vital aspects of Judaism: the election, the Torah, and the covenant.

In a later book, Paul, the Law, and the JeawLi h People (1983), Sanders repeats his basic
understanding of Paul's view of the Jewish law, but more extensively develops how he conceives that
Paul related to the Jewish people and to Judaism in general. Sanders argues that Paul actually created
a "third race," that is, a new ethnic group in addition to Jews and non-Jews-the "Christians" (although
Paul does not use this term). What speaks in favor of this, Sanders claims, is that Paul considers both
Jews and non-Jews to unite with Christ in the same way-by faith. Even though a Jew who wants to
become a member of the Jesus movement does not have to abjure anything and in theory can continue
observing the Torah, it is no longer merely enough to be a member of the Jewish people to be
included in God's salvation. The condition for entry is now faith in Jesus, and that goes for both Jews
and non-Jews.

At the same time, there are certain doubts whether to identify this new group as "Israel." Sanders
is of the opinion that Paul actually considers Jews and non-Jews to be the "true Israel," but notes at the
same time that Paul does not employ this term. Only in one instance does Sanders believe that Paul
applies the label "Israel" to both Jesus-believing Jews and non-Jews. The interpretation of this verse
is, however, not entirely clear. In Galatians 6:16 Paul writes: "As for those who will follow this rule -
peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God." Before the phrase "upon the Israel of
God," the Greek text has the conjunction kay usually translated as "and" or "as well." This is how the
NRSV, quoted above, has understood the phrase. Sometimes, however, kai can have an epexegetical
function, and then mean "that is," in this case serving as a description of "those who will follow this
rule." The difference in meaning is, of course, considerable. In the latter case, the non-Jews to whom
the letter is addressed are included in "God's Israel" while in the former case "Israel" represents a
separate group to which Paul also wishes peace and mercy. Sanders argues that the second
interpretation is the most likely one, but also notes that Paul refrains from using the term "Israel" for
Jesus-believing Jews and non-Jews, probably because he knows that "Israel" also exists in the sense
"Jews who do not believe in Jesus," and that this Israel will also eventually be included in the salvation
of God (Rom 11:26-27).

According to Sanders, Paul's critique of Judaism includes two main points: first, the inability of
the Torah to lead any individual to righteousness in the sense of "salvation," and second, the idea that
the Jewish people, through the covenant, enjoy a special standing in relation to God. The opposition
between Judaism and Christianity thus still remains also in Sanders's interpretation. At the same time,
one should observe that even if Sanders in fact arrives at roughly the same conclusion as the
upholders of the traditional paradigm regarding the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, he
does it in a new manner, which to a certain extent takes the sting out of the anti-Jewish theology that
characterized the absolute majority of previous scholarship. Paul's problem with the Torah is not that
it is impossible to keep or that it leads to self-righteousness. The fundamental problem with the Torah
and Judaism is simply that God has chosen to save humanity by other means, that is, by faith in Jesus.

Sanders's controversy with the earlier view of Judaism and his understanding of the Torah and
Paul's relation to the Jewish people led to a number of new studies on Paul. Some scholars, as we
shall see later in this chapter and in chapter 6, also assumed a critical attitude to Sanders's
interpretation of Paul, while others seriously tried to consider the consequences of Sanders's revision
of ancient Judaism. Among the first was the British Professor of Divinity, James D. G. Dunn, who
coined the term "the new perspective on Paul." However, before we deal with the emergence of this
new perspective on Paul, we shall take a brief look at a rather different approach taken by the Finnish
New Testament scholar Heikki Raisanen, who already in 1983 had incorporated some of Sanders's
fundamental conclusions on ancient Judaism in his work. Thus while being based primarily on
assumptions from the traditional perspective on Paul, Raisanen's approach could nevertheless be said
to form a kind of a bridge between the old and the new perspective on Paul.

The Inconsistent Paul-Heikki Raisanen

Ina rather controversial book, Paul azzd the Larn (1983), Heikki Raisanen, for many years Professor
of New Testament Exegesis at the University of Helsinki, seriously questioned the fairly common
assumption in the beginning of the '80s that "all the problems of the early Christians concerning the
Torah were solved by Paul's clear, cogent and penetrating thinking."12 Raisanen's picture of Paul's
view of the Torah is not exactly covered by words like "clear" or "cogent," rather it is aptly framed
by his conclusion: "Paul's thought on the law is full of difficulties and inconsistencies."13 As an
inventory of Pauline contradictions (from certain points of view, of course), this book is a
masterpiece.

In the introduction, Raisanen makes the important observation that even though scholars, with
few exceptions (he specifically mentions Percy Gardner, James Parkes, Paul Wernle, and Alfred
Loisy), regard Paul as a logical thinker and the theologian par excellence of Christianity, there seems
to be little consensus about what he really meant. As we also have noted, scholars often reach
diametrically opposed views with regard to Paul's intention. Raisanen concludes:
 We thus face a curious dilemma. On the one hand, the clarity, pro- foundity and cogency of
Paul's theological thinking is universally praised. On the other hand, it does not seem
possible to reach any unanimity whatsoever as to what his message really was. 14

The problem is, Raisanen states, that scholars who have perceived inconsistencies in Paul's
writings have downplayed them in various ways, and tensions have been resolved by, for example,
theological dialectics, theories of interpolation, or theories of development. Raisanen, however, has
no intention of trying to explain away Paul's inconsistencies in a similar way. Instead, his aim is to test
Paul's reasoning with regard to the law and pay attention to both the internal consistency and the
validity of the premises.

Now Raisanen is quite aware of the limitations of his approach and is readily willing to admit
that analyzing Paul from the point of view of common sense logic runs the risk of being somewhat
anachronistic. Thus Raisanen does not mean to suggest that his approach is the one and only approach
for understanding Paul, nor that it is the most important one. But the fact that Paul has become a
theological authority calls for an investigation of his way of reasoning, not least because Paul's
argumentation is often referred to as the role model for interreligious dialogue. Raisanen believes
that his work will primarily affect "the theological cult of the apostle who may indeed have been at his
best in areas other than speculative theology.""

The influence from Sanders is clearly visible in Raisanen's acceptance of the idea of "covenantal
nomism" as a dominant theme within ancient Judaism. Raisanen states that when "the Jewish religion
of Paul's day is allowed to speak for itself, the notion of it as perverted anthropocentric legalism turns
out to be a vicious caricature."" Firstcentury Judaism was not characterized by legalism, Raisanen
continues in full agreement with Sanders, and Torah observance never functioned as a means to enter
the covenant, only as an expression for wanting to stay within it. In sum: with regard to first century
Judaism, Raisanen has in all essentials taken over Sanders's view, which seems to have been quite
natural: in the preface of the book he reveals that he had been thinking along the same lines even
before reading Sanders.

Concerning Paul's view of the Torah, however, Raisanen differs significantly from Sanders. For
example, contrary to Sanders, Raisanen maintains that Paul affirms the election, the covenant, and the
giving of the law:

God has not revoked the election of Israel (Rom 9.4f.). Perhaps contrary to the inner logic of
his position, Paul explicitly acknowler)ges (in Romans, at least) the covenant as a gracious
act of God in his conscious reasoning. He pays, we might say, lip service to covenantal
nomism.]'
 Nevertheless, characteristic of Paul is that his thinking often develops in several directions
simultaneously, Raisanen states. Thus when it comes to election, covenant, and Torah, Paul may pay
"lip service" to covenantal nomism, but he certainly also effectively abrogates the very fundamentals
of Judaism: "He points in one (covenantal) direction and goes in another."18 According to Raisanen,
many of the problems Paul gets involved in stem precisely from the discrepancy between what Paul
really says and the logical conclusion of his way of arguing, of which Paul may not have been really
aware.

Raisanen examines the inconsistent Paul in five main chapters, and we will briefly summarize
some of his most important conclusions. One fundamental problem is that Paul never really explains
what he means by the term "law" (fzomos), which, according to Raisanen, leads to much confusion.
For example, in contexts where the word nomod clearly denotes the Torah, Paul seems to be
simultaneously arguing that the non-Jews are subject to the Torah and that they have been liberated
from it. Moreover, Paul seems to imply that no one can fulfill the law and Jews and non-Jews are thus
under sin on the same terms, but at the same time it is equally clear that Paul believes that some non-
Jews actually do what the law requires. But despite Paul's negative view on the possibility of fulfilling
what God requires in the Torah, "the Christians" are both able to fulfill the Torah and do fulfill the
Torah, while it is not obvious what they fulfill since Paul often reduces the Torah to a moral law,
ignoring its ritual side (except when among Jews for missionary reasons). In general, however, Paul
did not live among non-Jews as a Torah observant Jew, Raisanen claims. Furthermore, Paul generally
states that the purpose of the law was a negative one: to increase sin and even bring about sin. But in
some instances he argues the oppositethat the purpose of the law was positive-to lead humanity to life.
"These problems," Raisanen states,

indicate that Paul vacillates in his theological attitude to the law. All his "main" letters,
Romans included, witness to a process of thought that has not come to an end. Paul is still
looking for arguments for a radical stance toward the law, while at the same time trying to
maintain a more conservative outlook.19

The fundamental reason why Paul ends up with this peculiar view of the law (which he
predominantly developed during the conflict with the "Judaizers," especially during the Antioch
incident) is the inner struggle with an issue that cannot be solved: the problem that a divine institution,
the Torah, has been abolished through Christ, Raisanen states. The fundamental problem Paul faces,
and which he is unable to solve, is the question of why God gave this weak and imperfect law in the
first place. According to Raisanen, Paul gives two incompatible answers:

Either he must attribute to God an unsuccessful first attempt to carry through his will (as if it
took God a long time to devise an adequate means for this), or else he gets involved in the
cynicism that God explicitly provides men with a law "unto life" while knowing from the
 start that this instrument will not work .20

None of these, however, are really satisfactory. Thus the insolvable psychological conflict
caused by Paul's unconscious attempt to live, on the one hand, totally oriented to the new Christ
experience, while on the other hand trying to relate this new experience to the authoritative tradition
(which, among other things, claimed a divine origin of the Torah) is the main reason for his failure
to formulate a consistent theology on the Torah, according to Raisanen.

To some extent, it could be argued that Raisanen's carefully outlined study displays a tendency
similar to the one he finds with Paul. Not even Raisanen seems to be able to completely break away
from the old. Having deconstructed the Christian myth of ancient Judaism as characterized by
legalism and works-righteousness, Raisanen's main problem (as it is Sanders's) is to explain Paul
against a new view of Judaism. However, Raisanen clearly accedes to the traditional assumption that
Paul broke with Judaism, an assumption he never questions, and even though he aims at studying the
logic of Paul's way of arguing, it is evident that the traditional paradigm still constitutes the
fundamental background that determines the internal consistency and the validity of the premises. In
this regard, Raisanen's study could be regarded as a parallel to Sanders's interpretation of Paul. Both
scholars have come to realize that there is something fundamentally wrong with the traditional view
of first-century Judaism, and both scholars find new ways of legitimizing the traditional view-that
Paul ultimately abandoned Judaism. For the subsequent development of Pauline studies, it should,
however, be noted that Raisanen's analysis clearly acknowledges that abandoning Judaism was no
easy task even for Paul, the advocate of the law-free gospel. As such, Paul and the Law thus opens the
door to a road seldom traveled until then-a Paul fully rooted within Judaism. In this process, the so-
called new perspective on Paul has been of vital importance.

The New Perspective on Paul fames D. G. Dunn

In 1982, James D. G. Dunn, for many years the Lightfoot Professor of Divinity at Durham University,
delivered a lecture at the University of Manchester, published the following year as "The New
Perspective on Paul." In the introduction he notes that previous research on Paul certainly has resulted
in some important conclusions, for instance in the field of rhetoric and sociology. Yet in none of
these recent studies has Dunn found "what amounts to a new perspective on Paul ."2' The only work
Dunn considers to have really broken the mold is Sanders's Paul and Palestinian Judalilrn.

Dunn fully accepts Sanders's critique of the Protestant scholarly tradition, which has created and
maintained the idea of a fundamental antithesis between Paul and Judaism. With the idea of covenantal
nomism, Dunn states, Sanders has now given New Testament scholars

an unrivalled opportunity to look at Paul afresh, to shift our perspective back from the
 sixteenth century to the first century, to do what all true exegetes want to do-to see Paul
properly within his own context, to hear Paul in terms of his own time, to let Paul be himsel
£22

At the same time, Dunn notes that Sanders himself has failed to consider the consequences of his
own work. Instead of exploring how Paul's theology might be explained against the background of
Jewish covenantal nomism, Dunn states, Sanders was still too busy ferreting out the differences
between Paul and first-century Judaism. Dunn's observation is correct, for it really seems as Sanders
already presupposes in his basic assumptions a distinction between Paul and Judaism. Thus in reality,
Sanders starts from the very picture of the relationship between Paul and Judaism he aims at
criticizing. Sanders's intention, we recall, was to compare Paul's religion with Palestinian Judaism,
but since he takes for granted that Paul represents a different religious system, it is precisely the
differences that come to the fore. According to Dunn, Sanders's reconstruction for this reason is only
a little better than the traditional view. "The Lutheran Paul," Dunn states, "has been replaced by an
idiosyncratic Paul who in arbitrary and irrational manner turns his face against the glory and
greatness of Judaism's covenant theology and abandons Judaism simply because it is not
Christianity."23

Dunn's critique is well founded, but could also be leveled against his own suggestion concerning
how Paul should be understood, which clearly demonstrates how difficult it is to exchange one
interpretive paradigm for another one. In spite of the best intentions and a considerable hermeneutic
consciousness, Dunn too finally slips back into the traditional opposition between Paul and Judaism,
as we shall see.

The fundamental problem with the Torah and Judaism, according to Sanders, was that God after
all had opened another way to salvation by faith in Jesus. But with the opposition Sanders creates
between the Torah and faith in Jesus, it becomes difficult to understand how Paul on the whole could
give a positive verdict on Jews and Judaism and even claim the superiority of the Jewish people as,
for example, in Romans 9:4-5:

They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of
the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and from them,
according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever.

The same can be said of Romans 11:1-2, where Paul poses the question, "has God rejected his
people?" but immediately answers: "By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham,
a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew." This means,
Dunn argues, that Sanders's black-and-white opposition between Paul and Judaism is not credible.
Instead, Dunn believes that the new perspective on first-century Palestinian Judaism, opened up by
Sanders, really can be used for understanding Paul's theology. As his point of departure, he uses
Galatians 2:16, a passage which at first seems to create precisely a clear-cut opposition between faith
and works:

We know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus
Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in
Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works
of the law.

This, Dunn states, is probably the first time Paul formulates the idea of righteousness through
faith in Jesus, and he asserts that it is important to see that Paul pronounces this statement when giving
his version of what happened when he and Peter were at loggerheads in Antioch (Gal 2:11-14).
According to Dunn, the Jesus-believing Jews in Antioch had accepted non-Jews in their community
and had also come to an agreement that they did not have to become Jews to be part of the Jesus
movement. At the common meals, the Jesus-believing Jews had abandoned the Jewish dietary precepts
and other distinctive Jewish cultural features, such as the rules regarding ritual purity, tithing, and
idol food. What the delegation from James reacted against was precisely that the Jesus-believing Jews
had abandoned the traditional Jewish lifestyle, and it was in order to demonstrate their fidelity to
Jewish faith that Peter, Barnabas, and "the other Jews" began avoiding the communal meals. This
behavior aroused Paul's anger and resulted in a sharp admonition against Peter, who was accused of
being a hypocrite.

Dunn argues that Galatians 2:16 must be understood as a part of what Paul said to Peter, and it is
evident that Paul is speaking from a Jewish perspective and is using the Jewish covenantal
terminology. In the previous verse (2:15), Paul writes: "We ourselves are Jews by birth and not
Gentile sinners." This indicates, Dunn continues, that Paul in 2:16 refers to something all Jews in the
Jesus movement were in agreement on. Thus from this assumption, Paul's understanding of
justification does not at all differ from how Jews in general understood the term. Paul's reasoning,
Dunn argues, presupposes the covenant and the election and alludes to the view on "righteousness"
presented in the Psalms and Isaiah. Thus the righteousness of God is the same thing as God :s
recognition of Israel on the bases of the covenant.

When it comes to the idea that justification is by faith, Paul is also in agreement with mainstream
Judaism, according to Dunn. The very idea of the covenant in Jewish tradition rests on the foundation
that God is the initiator of the covenant with the Jewish people and the belief that God, by grace,
upholds it. Hence, the central question is regarding which point Paul and the Jews outside the Jesus
movement were at variance. Is it faith in Jesus that is the problem, or the idea of justification by faith?
Dunn argues that the dividing line was between those who believed that Jesus was the Messiah and
those who did not. Thus all Jews agreed that Jews within the covenant were righteous, and that this
righteousness, given by grace, comes from faith, not from works of the law. The law, Dunn sums up,
only functioned as an identity marker of covenantal status, and Jews in general did not believe they
were made righteous by observing the Torah.

But if it only was the faith in Jesus that separated Jesus-believing Jews from the Jews outside the
Jesus movement, and both groups agreed that righteousness comes from faith within the limits of the
covenant, what is it then Paul objects to? The mistake Sanders made, Dunn claims, is that he believed
that Paul's statement in Galatians 2:16-"no one will be justified by the works of dae faro"-means the
same as "no one will be justified by the faro." But Paul had no objections against the law as such, but
the works of the faro understood as Jewish marks of identity. What Paul ultimately reacted against,
Dunn argues, was Jeroisla particularism, the tendency of defining the covenant in ethnic terms, where
works of the law, primarily the food laws, circumcision, and the Sabbath celebration, create a
distinction between the Jew and the non-Jew, and where the covenant is reserved for Jews. Of course,
Paul did not object to statements like "you shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Lev 19:18) in the
Torah. It is not covenantal nomism Paul criticizes, but he objected to an overly narrow interpretation
of the covenant in Jewish tradition that excluded everyone else but Jews. To assert that God's actions
toward a person should depend on works of the law (in the sense of Jewish identity markers)
contradicts that righteousness depends on faith in Jesus, Dunn states. By this, the meaning of the
covenant is not invalidated, but expanded to include all believers, regardless of ethnic identity.

Peter's mistake in Antioch, Dunn continues, was that he thought that Jewish identity was
compatible with faith in Jesus, and that the works of the law were still relevant, and for that reason
were a natural response to God's grace in a covenantal context. But in reality, Dunn says, there is only
one identity marker that unites all believers-faith in Jesus-and that makes all other markers
superfluous. Thus to summarize,

the decisive corollary which Paul saw and which he did not hesitate to draw, was that the
covenant is no longer to be identified or characterized by such distinctively Jewish
observances as circumcision, food laws and sabbath. Covenant works had been too closely
identified as Jemieh observances, covenant righteousness as national righteousness.24

Undoubtedly, Dunn makes important observations. It is correct that Sanders focused too much on
the difference between Paul and Judaism without seriously studying how Paul could be understood
within the framework of covenantal nomism, and that he opened an unnecessarily wide chasm
between two separate religious systems. The reminder that Jews in general probably shared the view
that righteousness is connected to the covenantal context and is the result of faith, not works, also
constitutes an important component in the understanding of Paul's relationship to Judaism.

In general, Dunn has rather convincingly shown that Sanders's idea of covenantal nomism can
very well be used also for understanding Paul. However, one cannot help wondering if Dunn also
failed to draw the right conclusions from his observations. Dunn rightly criticizes Sanders for having
focused too much on the dissimilarities between the religion of Paul and Palestinian Judaism. As we
noted above, Sanders presupposes a distinction between two ideological systems. Yet one might argue
that Dunn is working from a similar assumption. For instance, Dunn's reading of the Antioch incident
is vital for his argument. Dunn claims that the problem in Antioch was that important aspects of the
Torah, especially the food regulations, had been set aside. But as indicated in chapter 1, this is far
from certain, and in this respect, Dunn too seems to operate with the basic assumption of a sharp
opposition between Judaism and Christianity. Thus regarding Paul's relationship to Judaism, the
traditional distinction between Judaism and Christian remains also in Dunn's interpretation, although
it focuses on other aspects and is expressed in another manner. In Dunn's reconstruction, the
Protestant opposition between the law and the gospel is certainly done away with, but only replaced by
a new one-between Jewish particularism and Christian universalism, which, in effect, is between
Jewish and Christian identity. In fact, Dunn clears away the foundation for Judaism just as efficiently
as Luther did. In a world where traditional Jewish identity markers no longer are valid, clinging to
them becomes a manifestation of particularism, which in Dunn's reconstruction is what Paul regarded
as the cardinal error of Judaism.

However, in "A New Perspective on Paul," Dunn clearly demonstrates what Sanders failed to do
in both Paul and Palestinian JudaLim and in Paul, the Law; and the JewwLih People that a new view on
first-century Judaism is of immense relevance for reinterpreting Paul, and that there are serious
alternatives to the traditional, absolute contradiction between the Torah and the gospel of Jesus Christ.
As such, Dunn's article belongs to the rather few scholarly contributions that have had a radical
impact on the whole field of research, even though one may not agree with his conclusions. As the
starting point for a scholarly alignment that aims at understanding Paul from within Judaism, not
outside, in contrast to, or apart from Judaism, Dunn's interpretation certainly can be regarded as a
significant breakthrough in Pauline scholarship. With the publication of Dunn's article, the "new
perspective on Paul" was born.25

The Consistent Paul-N. T Wrig ht

Even though Dunn coined the term "the new perspective" in 1983, some of its major components can
be found a few years earlier in an article by Nicholas Thomas (N. T.) Wright. Wright has held several
important academic positions at, for instance, McGill University and Oxford University, but now
serves as the Anglican Bishop of Durham. He has published extensively in various areas within the
field of New Testament studies, and is presently, together with Dunn, probably the most well-known
proponent of the new perspective on Paul.
 In his article from 1978, "The Paul of History and the Apostle of Faith," Wright takes his point
of departure in the discussion between Kasemann and Stendahl that we dealt with above in this chapter
and finds reason to criticize aspects of both Kasemann's and Stendahl's position. He is right in
pointing out, for example, that both scholars represent a normative theological position. While
Kasemann does so more openly, it is also clear that Stendahl is dependent on twentieth-century
theological presuppositions, for instance, in his tendency to view the Jewish people as having their
own way of salvation apart from Christ and the Christian church.26

The most important issue the debate has raised, Wright states, concerns the relation between
"theologies of history" and evils in Germany as well as "a theology which has seen `the dew' as the
symbol of all that is false and dangerous in religion."27 In the article, Wright questions "whether the
traditional understanding of Judaism and of Paul's attack on it is not fundamentally mistaken."28 His
fundamental assumptions reveal that only a year after Sanders's publication of Paul and Palestinian
JudaLi,n, the revised view on ancient Judaism, prepared by Moore, Montefiore, and Stendahl, among
others, had become a natural point of departure for some scholars. Wright thus refutes the traditional
idea that Paul found Israel guilty of "legalism" or "works-righteousness." Instead, he believes the
problem is centered around "national righteousness," the idea that "fleshly Jewish descent guarantees
membership of God's true covenant people."29 This is basically what Dunn also proposes, and the
idea of a Jewish "national righteousness" is a recurrent element within the dominant strand of the new
perspective of Paul.

In order to gain a fuller understanding of Wright's view of Paul, we will, however, turn to a
more recent presentation: the monograph Paul: In Freda Perspective from 2005. This book is based
on the Hulsean lecture series given in Cambridge University 2004, and is an excellent summary of
many important aspects of Wright's previous scholarship as presented, for instance, in What Saint
Paul Really Sail (1997) and The Climax of the Covenant (1992). In this present monograph, Wright
not only summarizes his previous scholarship but he also develops it further, which makes this book
especially apt for our purposes.

In the first chapter, Wright sketches a picture of Paul's religiouspolitical context. His first
"world" was, of course, Judaism, in which he remained, Wright states, even though he said shocking,
even destructive, things no one within that world had ever said before. Hellenistic culture, which had
permeated most of the Mediterranean world by Paul's days, constituted Paul's second world, and the
Roman Empire his third. Paul also belonged to the "family of the Messiah"-his fourth world.
According to Wright, this meant "embracing an identity rooted in Judaism, lived out in the Hellenistic
world, and placing a counterclaim against Caesar's aspiration to world dominion, while being both
more and less than a simple combination of elements from within those three."30
 Wright states that this multifaceted and complex world of Paul could be described

in terms of its multiple overlapping and sometimes competing narratives: the story of God
and Israel from the Jewish side; the pagan stories about their gods and the world, and the
implicit narratives around which individual pagans constructed their identities.31

The underlying narrative structure in Paul plays an important role in Wright's scholarship and
constitutes, in his view, the most significant development within the "new perspective," and is vital for
understanding Paul's message. Building on the work of Richard B. Hays,32 Wright suggests that
certain "controlling stories" governed Paul's way of arguing. In antiquity, Wright states, small
allusions to stories and myths shared by a speaker and the audience could evoke entire implicit
narratives. In the case of Paul, the entire narrative of Abraham constitutes, for instance, the
controlling story behind Galatians 3 and Romans 4. According to Wright, Paul believed that the
coming, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus had opened a new chapter within the story in which he
believed himself to be living.

In the first main part of the book, Wright explores three themes aimed at presenting fundamental
structures of thought with Paul. The first theme Wright labels "creation and covenant." These twin
themes were always central for Paul, Wright claims, as they always have been in Judaism. The
fundamental assumption is the belief that God, in his double role as covenant and creator God, will
rescue and deliver his people from the enemy. Originally, the covenant was established in order to
come to terms with problems within creation. God's covenant with Abraham was intended to solve the
problem of evil, and Israel was supposed to have a prominent role in the salvation of the world.
However, in a corresponding way, creation is invoked to solve problems within the covenant. Wright
continues:

In both cases, we should note carefully, it is assumed that something has gone badly wrong.
Something is deeply amiss with creation, and within that with humankind itself, something to
which the covenant with Israel is the answer. Something is deeply amiss with the covenant,
whether Israel's sins on the one hand or Gentile oppression on the other, or perhaps both-and
to this the answer is a re-invoking of creation, or rather of God as creator.33

This idea, common within Second Temple Judaism and frequently alluded to by Paul through
references or allusions to Genesis, Deuteronomy, the Psalms, and Isaiah, constituted an important
controlling narrative and remained basic "within the very Jewish thought of Paul," according to
Wright.34 This, Wright suggests, is the proper background for understanding Paul's view of human
plight and the solution to that problem.

The dilemma, Wright continues, is that the Jewish people, who through the covenant were
supposed to bear the solution, in fact were found to be part of the problem. The narrative
background-God's calling of Abraham, the creation of a family, and the promise of a landimplies that
the fracturing of human relationships constitutes the basic human predicament. This was what God's
covenant with Israel was intended to correct. The Torah, the covenant charter of Israel, defines what a
genuinely human life looks like, but those who were entrusted with the task of being a light of the
world acted precisely in opposition to God's original intention with the covenant. Instead of fulfilling
God's intention of uniting the world, the Jewish people treated the Torah as an exclusive privilege,
making it into an idol. When God fulfills his covenant through Christ, he reveals his faithful covenant
justice and deals both with the problem of sin and enabling the family of Abraham "to be the
worldwide Jew-plus-Gentile people it was always intended to be."36

This is the reason, Wright claims, why Paul seems to be dealing simultaneously with the
inclusion of non-Jews and the issue of justification, which proponents of the "new perspective" have
frequently pointed out. Wright's interpretation of Paul, however, makes it possible to integrate this
aspect with the traditional view-that Paul deals with the question of how sinners are put right with
God. According to Wright, there is no contradiction: both aspects are in fact part of the same thing,
since God originally intended to deal with the problem of sin within humanity by the creation of a
worldwide family.

The next twin themes Wright explores are "Messiah and apocalyptic." These are closely
interconnected with the previous themes "creation and covenant." Contrary to what is often assumed,
Wright suggests that the concept of the Messiah played an important role with Paul. Scholars have
usually argued that the word chrLitos, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word rnaJI ah,
meaning "anointed one," has almost entirely lost its messianic overtones and become a proper name.
Wright, however, shows convincingly that Paul also in this case built on ideas prevalent within
Second Temple Judaism, for instance, belief in a royal Messiah who would conquer evil as God's
representative, bringing the history of Israel to its climax.

Paul's conviction that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel, God's instrument in restoring humanity into
one family (contrary to Jewish national righteousness), also suggests an apocalyptic element with
Paul. Wright integrates the themes dealt with so far:

God's full and final revelation of his restorative justice, his plan to put the whole world to
rights, is what will occur at the end, with the royal presence of Jesus as judge and saviour.
But this restorative justice, this covenant faithfulness through which creation itself will be
redeemed, has been unveiled already, in advance, in the apocalyptic events of Jesus'
messianic death and resurrection.36

The identification of Jesus with the Messiah of Israel would inevitably have political
implications in the Roman Empire, Wright continues, suggesting a final set of themes: "Gospel and
Empire." Recognizing Jesus-the-Messiah as the true ruler of the world, as Paul did, means directly
confronting the imperial ideology according to which epithets like kyrios (lord) or soter (savior)
could only apply to Caesar. Even in this respect, Paul drew from Jewish tradition, Wright claims,
showing that the Hebrew Bible is full of Jewish critique of pagan rulers; from the Exodus narrative,
via the prophets, to Daniel, whose work was later used by the authors of 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch.

In the second part of the book, Wright outlines the shape of Paul's theology in a new way, being
deeply dissatisfied with the traditional systems. Again, the Jewish character of Paul is brought to
attention. In contrast to scholars advocating the traditional paradigm, Wright claims that Paul should
not be seen as abandoning a Jewish framework, but redefining it. Wright even states that Paul's
primary target is not Judaism, but paganism.

The first aspect Wright deals with is monotheism. The Jewish form of monotheism, which
differed substantially from the two main contemporary rivals: pantheism (especially in the form of
Stoicism) and Epicureanism, Wright labels creational and covenantal morzothees,n.37 This kind of
monotheism was characterized by the idea that the one God had created the world and remained in a
dynamic relationship to it, especially through the covenant with Israel, which was aimed at dealing
with the problem of sin in the world. The most important expression of human sin within a Jewish
theological framework was idolatry, which explains why Jewish monotheism so often was related to
the pagan world. As such, paganism embodied the human failure to live according to the intention of
the creator. According to Wright, Paul shared this basic view of monotheism, but he also redefined it
in several important directions, anticipating later developments within the church such as the doctrine
of the Trinity. According to Wright, Paul comes very close to creating a complete identification
between the Messiah of Israel (and of the world) and God.

Paul also redefined, or rather reworked election, Wright continues. This was not only an aspect
about which Paul theorized, but he also carried out in real life. Hence, Paul reworked election. While
previous Jewish ideas on election emphasized the connection between the importance of a Jewish
ethnic identity and membership in the people of God, Paul reshapes election around Jesus. According
to Paul, to have a share in the new life is not defined in terms of fleshly identity, Wright states, but in
terms of "the Messiah's own new life, a life in which all nations can share equally."38 This process,
Wright claims, means that the later idea of the church as a "third race" can be traced back to Paul, and
in this sense, Wright seems to suggest that Paul embraced a kind of replacement theology. Those who
respond to the gospel are "the people of God," "the Jews," "the Israel of God," regardless of ethnic
identity; they are given the status of dikaioe, "righteous," which should be understood in terms of
"being within the covenant." This does not mean, Wright underlines, that Paul left Judaism. In fact,
election redefined in this way creates a single people from all nations, which, after all, was God's
original intention with Israel.

Obviously, this also calls for a redefinition of eschatology. Again Paul remains deeply Jewish,
Wright points out, but his eschatology is "reimagined around the Messiah."39 According to Wright,
one of the most important features of Paul's theology can be described as inaugurated eschatology,
that is, the idea that God's ultimate future has broken into the present evil age through Jesus while the
church is in a sense living simultaneously within God's future world and the present one. Grounded in
the belief in the resurrection, Wright finds another vital aspect of Paul's redefinition of Jewish
eschatology: the idea that God already has done for the Messiah what Israel expected him to do for all
his people at the end of time. In sum: Paul reshapes all the main elements of Jewish eschatology
around Jesus.

In the final chapter, Wright brings up the issue of the relationship between Jesus and Paul. This
question, Wright states, has normally been posed in the wrong way, leading to different ways of
polarizing Jesus and Paul. The problem is that scholars often have assumed that Jesus and Paul were
trying to do the same thing. According to Wright, however, both Jesus and Paul lived in the synthesis
Wright has presented -creation and covenant, messiahship and apocalyptic, and gospel and empire-but
they hardly understood themselves as being called to carry out same task. Jesus was addressing a
Jewish world and by his death and resurrection Israel's history had been brought to its climax. Paul,
on the other hand, believed himself to have a very specific role in this cosmic drama, namely, to call
the nations and establish the worldwide community where ethnic boundaries were eliminated. Thus
the apparent differences between the message and work of Jesus and Paul is really a matter of context
and task, Wright states. In reality, Jesus and Paul "were at one in the basic vision which generated their
very different vocations."40

This is in many respects a remarkable book, first and foremost because of Wright's fascinating
presentation of Paul as completely coherent. It is quite interesting to compare Wright's view of Paul
with Raisanen's. Whereas Raisanen found Paul to be utterly inconsistent and incoherent, Wright finds
an all-embracing, wonderful harmony. Every aspect of Paul's theology is fully rooted within Judaism
in which Paul Li said to have remained. The traditional opposition between "Judaism" and
"Christianity," between "law" and "grace" is significantly toned down. In Wright's systematic
presentation, Paul finds nothing wrong with Judaism-only with unbelieving Jews who advocate
"national righteousness." They too, however, are part of the divine plan and can be grafted back in.

Wright's fundamental method of reading Paul against a carefully determined context (Jewish
theology, controlling stories, imperial ideology, and so forth) is justified. As has been pointed out
previously, no text can be read unless the reader constructs or assumes some kind of background that
makes the text intelligible. The decisive point, which Wright is very well aware of, is of course the
nature of that background. All too often Paul has been read against the Judaism-Christianity
dichotomy. In this respect, and especially in relation to the traditional paradigm, Wright undeniably
offers a fresh exegetical perspective (and indeed also a fresh theological perspective for the
contemporary church) taking Sanders's revised view of Judaism seriously. In Paul: In Freda
Perspective, he has also eloquently incorporated important aspects from one of the most recent
developments within Pauline scholarship: Paul and politics (to which we will return in chapter 7).

Both Dunn's "new" and Wright's "fresh" perspective of Paul offer challenging theological
alternatives to the traditional Lutheran interpretations without entirely undermining many of the
major aspects of Lutheran theology. As we noted above, Wright even aims at resolving the tension
between the old and the new perspectives on Paul by emphasizing that Paul dealt both with the general
inclusion of non-Jews and the issue of how individual sinners are put right with God. The same
tendency is discernible also with Dunn.' Thus even from the position of the new perspectives, a fairly
traditional Christian theology seems possible, even though some of its critics sometimes tend to view
things differently (as we will see in chapter 6).

While the new perspective most likely still represents a radical challenge to normative Christian
theology, it is today probably justified to speak of it as representing an exegetical middle position.
From the traditional standpoint, the new perspective indeed offers an alternative reading of Paul
against a more nuanced view of ancient Judaism. Yet, some scholars have gone even further with
regard to locating Paul within a Jewish context. Even though proponents of the new perspective
emphasize Paul's Jewishness, it is important to note that Dunn's Paul has abandoned important aspects
of the Torah. Wright's Paul remains within a Judaism stripped of most of its hallmarks, so redefined
that ethnicity no longer matters, and "Israel" becomes a designation for Jews and non-Jews fused
together into a third entity, indeed no longer pagan, but not really Jewish either, at least not from the
standpoint of most Jews in antiquity.

The new perspective on Paul should at least partly be regarded as a Christian theological attempt
to come to terms with the new view of Judaism while still establishing a well-defined distinction
between Judaism and Christianity. In conspicuous contrast, we will in the next chapter look at some
scholars who argue that Paul remained significantly more Jewish than the proponents of the so-called
new perspective assume. Some of them question the proposition that Paul really ceased observing the
Torah or maintained that ethnic identities no longer matter in Christ.