×

Gratitude for the New Perspective on Paul but Resistance to Its False Dichotomies

Moisés Silva explains why we can be grateful to the “new perspective on Paul”:

first, for reminding us of what was obvious long before E. P. Sanders’s Paul and Palestinian Judaism came on the scene, namely, that it is quite unfair and inaccurate to paint postbiblical Judaism with the broad, indiscriminate brush of “legalism” and self-righteousness; and

second, for helping us to see more clearly that Paul’s overarching interest in Galatians 2-3 was not precisely to expound the doctrine of justification but to address the Jewish-Gentile question in the church and thereby to clarify who are the true descendants of Abraham.

But one exaggeration doesn’t deserve another:

But to acknowledge that much is hardly to accept other exaggerated claims—for example, the tendency to seek right-standing with God by human effort was not much of a problem in Judaism (and therefore that such a thing was outside Paul’s purview), or that the doctrine of justification by faith alone, as understood in Protestant theology, does not play a significant role in Galatians 3 (let alone that it was foreign to Pauline thought!). (228)

Later in the essay Silva puts it well:

It would be folly to deny that (exclusivistic) national and sociological commitments on the part of Paul’s Jewish contemporaries were an integral part of the attitudes the apostle was combatting.

It is no less ill-advised, however, to deduce that first-century Judaism was free from the universal human tendency to rely on one’s own resources rather than on God’s power.

Why should it be thought that ethnic pride and (personal) self-confidence are mutually exclusive factors? (246)

Again, contra the either-or advocates:

It is high time that we eschew false dichotomies. The NT does reflect certain sociological concerns not fully appreciated by the Reformers, but it hardly follows from this fact that other elements they saw in the text are false.

Again, we may readily agree that Protestantism has often caricatured rabbinic Judaism and that, in the process, it has failed to provide a complete picture of Paul’s though. None of that means, however, that the traditional doctrine of justification by faith is in need of overhauling. (247)

Source: Moisés Silva, “Faith Versus Works of Law in Galatians,” in Justification and Variegated Nomism: The Paradoxes of Paul (ed. D. A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid; WUNT 181; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), 217–48.

LOAD MORE
Loading