Category Archives: New Perspective on Paul

Piper on Wright on justification

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I’ve just made a start on John Piper’s important book on N.T. Wright’s teaching on the doctrine of justification.

Entitled The future of justification, it is available for free download here.

A helpful chapter-by-chapter summary has been posted here.

And here’s the blurb:-

N.T. Wright, a world-renowned New Testament scholar and bishop of Durham in the Church of England, has spent years studying the apostle Paul’s writings and has offered a “fresh perspective” on Paul’s theology.

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What did Paul really mean?

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Do we need to reframe our preaching and teaching on justification by faith in the light of the ‘new perspective on Paul’?  British scholar Simon Gathercole has a useful article in Christianity Today.…

Rom 3:22; Gal 2:16 – faith in, or faithfulness of Christ?

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The issue

Lee Irons summarises the issue:

‘As is well-known, the phrase pistis Christou in Paul’s writings (e.g., Gal 2:16, 20; Rom 3:22; Phil 3:9) is grammatically ambiguous. The genitive Christou could be taken in an objective sense (“faith in Christ”) or a subjective sense (“Christ’s own faith”). Since the Greek word pistis can also mean “faithfulness,” most who hold to the subjective genitive interpretation render the phrase “the faithfulness of Christ.”’

Scholars (e.g. Leon Morris, Dictionary of Paul and his Letters) tell us that the Greek word ‘pistis‘ usually means ‘faith’, but can occasionally signify ‘faithfulness’. …

What is ‘The New Perspective on Paul’?

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Well, let it be said first of all that ‘The New Perspective on Paul’ is no longer very new.  It has been around for perhaps 30 years, and was first labelled as such by Prof J.D.G. Dunn in the early 1980s.  Nor is it a single perspective, but several, although it has to be said that they have a certain amount in common.

The leading concepts are:-

1.  Covenantal Nomism.  This is the idea that 2nd Temple Judaism (i.e.…

Fault-lines in Evangelicalism

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We have been witnessing a number of important trends within evangelicalism. I’ve been trying to sort out in what I fondly call my mind what some of these trends might be, and how they might be connected to each other. The following basic analysis emerged.

1. New ways of doing church. This trend reacts against traditional passive/conformist approaches, and prefers authenticity to slick professionalism. Interested in developing ‘fresh expressions’ of church. It emphasises development of communities of faith, not just individual salvation.…