03/08/04
ROMANIST DRIFT
AND THE NEW PERSPECTIVE ON PAUL
American Protestantism is drifting closer towards Romanism. This movement is originating from a variety of sources. The public education system undermines Protestantism by questioning the veracity of Biblical tenets like creationism. The political system undermines Protestantism by questioning the perspicuity of scripture (e.g., Presidential candidate John Kerry publicly argues that scripture is not clear on the issue of sodomy), and offering its supposed lack of clarity as justification for humanist government. The public media undermines Protestantism by eroding Biblical morality and more recently even promoting Romanist movies (like The Passion). Immigration policy undermines Protestantism by allowing illegal immigrants from primarily Roman Catholic countries to flood into our nation and remain here.
A new source of Romanist drift comes by way of the so called New Perspective on Paul, promoted especially by N.T. Wright. Below is information on this theological movement.
The
New Perspective on Paul and Justification
New
Approaches of Biblical Theology to Justification
Dr. Douglas F. Kelly
Several influential works in the 20th c. Biblical Theology movement have called
into question the accuracy of the traditional Reformational understanding of
Paul’s teaching on Justification as objective acquittal from guilt and entrance
into a righteous status with God by grace through faith, as opposed to Jewish
trust in works’ righteousness. To quote Tom Holland (ch. 9, p. 1): “It has been
claimed that the Reformers read their own debate with Rome into Paul’s debate
with Judaism. Biblical theologians are now claiming that Paul’s understanding
of justification was not about being acquitted from sin, as understood by the
Reformers. Rather, the term is claimed to be about being part of the covenant
community.”
I. RE-INTERPRETATIONS OF PAUL ON JUSTIFICATION
This reappraisal (and to some degree, rejection – varying with particular
scholars) of the Reformed/Lutheran exposition of justification came in different
stages. I can only mention a few of the seminal works in this process. W. D.
Davies after the Second WW properly reacted against Bultmann’s attributing to
Paul a heavily Hellenistic background of thought. His most influential work was
Paul and Rabbinic Judaism.
N. T. Wright (What St. Paul Really Said) states:
"Davies’ work signals a new attitude to Judaism on the part of post-war
scholarship. Until then, Judaism had been regarded by most Pauline expositors
as the great exemplar of the wrong side of religion. It represented human
self-effort, legalism, prejudice and pride… But with Davies the whole scene
changed, in line with the work of Karl Barth, with the so-called ‘biblical
theology’ movement, and of course with the post-war reaction against the vile
anti-Semitism which caused the holocaust. Judaism was suddenly in vogue; Jewish
ideas were regarded as good… [Davies] at least demonstrated that one could not
dislocate Paul from his Jewish setting without doing him great violence"
(p. 16, 17).
Davies’ ideas on Paul and Judaism were taken much further by his student, E.
Sanders, in his famous work, Paul and Palestinian Judaism. As N. T.
Wright put it:
"His major point … can be quite simply stated. Judaism in Paul’s day was
not, as has regularly been supposed, a religion of legalistic
works-righteousness… Most Protestant exegetes had read Paul and Judaism as if
Judaism was a form of the old heresy Pelagianism, according to which humans
must pull themselves up by their bootstraps and thereby earn justification… No,
said Sanders. Keeping the law within Judaism always functioned within a
covenantal scheme. God took the initiative, when he made a covenant with
Judaism; God’s grace thus precedes everything that people (specifically, Jews)
do in response. The Jew keeps the law out of gratitude…not, in other words, in
order to get into the covenant people, but to stay in. Being ‘in’ in the first
place was God’s gift. This scheme Sanders famously labeled as ‘covenantal
nomism’ (from the Greek, nomos, law). Keeping the Jewish law was the human
response to God’s covenantal initiative.
Sanders thus, at a stroke, cut the ground from under the majority reading of
Paul, especially in mainline Protestantism" (What St. Paul Rally Said,
18, 19).
Wright goes on to reveal the cultural, political atmosphere to which Sanders’
re-interpretation of Paul so strongly appealed in the late 20th c., with its
concern for a positive attitude towards Jews and other minorities: “But his
practical agenda is very clear: Christians should regard Jews with a good deal
more respect than in the past, and in particular should not saddle them with a
form of religion of which they are innocent. Pauline Christians and the
successors of first-century Judaism should not anathematize each other as they
have often been wont to do.” (Ibid.)…
N.T. Wright spoke at the January 2003 Calvin College lecture series (see http://www.calvin.edu/january/2003/wright.htm ). Here is how it is described:
N.T. (Tom) Wright
St. Paul in the Big Picture: The Apostle and the Gospel in the 1st and 21st
Century
Underwritten by: Lawrence D. Sr.
and Dolores Bos
Paul was a zealous Jew whose explosive
meeting with Jesus led him to believe that Israel’s God had declared Jesus to
be the Messiah, and hence the true Lord of the whole world. N.T. Wright, Canon
Theologian of Westminster Abbey and author of What St. Paul Really Said,
determines the best way to understand Paul 20 centuries later. He will explain
that Paul’s commission to be the “apostle to the Gentiles” led him to hammer
out a theology that was essentially a Jewish message for the pagan world,
reshaped around Jesus, energized by the Spirit, and taking shape as a deeply
personal and political message. Rediscovering his complex but breathtaking
vision of God, the world and the gospel is a central element in the urgent
tasks facing today’s church.
http://www.trinityfoundation.org/reviews/viewhorror.asp?ID=28 :
“…Friends, We have just learned (from Bishop Wright himself) that Bishop N. T. Wright, Bishop of Durham in the apostate Anglican Church and leading spokesman for the New Perspective on Paul and new Quest for the Historical Jesus movements, will be a featured speaker at the Auburn Avenue Pastors Conference in Louisiana in January 2005. Helen Straughan, the Bishop's Administrative Assistant, also referred us to Jeffrey Steel of the John Knox Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Ruston, Louisiana, for details. (Steel is a supporter and colleague of Steve Wilkins in the Louisiana Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in America. You can view Steel in his clerical costumes at www.johnknoxpca.org.) The Auburn Avenue Pastors Conference is the annual conference sponsored by the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church of Monroe, Louisiana. The Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church is a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. Both the denomination and that particular church profess to believe the Scriptures and the Westminster Confession of Faith. The Auburn Avenue Church has also adopted a "Summary Statement" that contradicts the Scriptures and the Westminster Confession of Faith). At the Auburn Avenue Pastors Conference next month, January 2004, the AAPC, in addition to its own clergymen, Steve Wilkins and Rich Lusk, will feature speakers John Frame (they seem to have given Mr. Frame an unearned doctorate at their church website) of the Formerly Reformed Theological Seminary; the perennial conference favorite Douglas Wilson (the AAPC has not yet awarded him a doctorate) from Moscow, Idaho; and Dr. John Armstrong, a Baptist who heads the misleadingly named "Reformation and Revival Ministries."
http://www.banneroftruth.org/pages/articles/article_detail.php?195 :
“…Wright hints at his
ecumenical agenda in his discussion of the gospel. His view of the gospel
appears to be part of an endeavor to shift the focal point away from what
divides Evangelicals and Roman Catholics, thus bringing them into
ecclesiastical communion. Evangelicals and Roman Catholics have no difficulty
agreeing that Jesus is Lord. The area of disagreement involves Jesus as Savior.
As already stated, Roman Catholics believe that Christ is sacrificed anew in
the Mass and that partaking of the elements grants atonement. This is a denial
of the sufficiency of Christ's atoning death.
Wright argues that the
phrase "the righteousness of God" refers to God's covenant
faithfulness and that it never refers to the imputation of Christ's
righteousness.
The most disturbing
material in Wright's book is that which sets forth his view of justification.
His effort to take the doctrine out of the realm of soteriology and to put it
in the realm of ecclesiology is undoubtedly motivated by his desire to tear
down what divides Evangelicals and Roman Catholics. His view of justification
is an attack on the very heart of the gospel. Paul warned of the danger of
preaching another gospel in Galatians 1:8, "But if we, or an angel from
heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached, let him be
accursed." Paul, by using the words "any other gospel" (emphasis
added), shows that he is attacking all other forms of the gospel, including
therefore a proto-Pelagianism in the book of Galatians. It is against the
backdrop of this attack that the true doctrine of justification shines so brightly
and clearly. An unbeliever stands guilty before God as a criminal charged with
a capital offense. He can only escape the judgment he deserves by believing in
Christ who lived a righteous life and died an atoning death for sinners. Men
are not waiting to stand before God as members of one of two disputing parties
in a civil lawsuit who are hoping that God will find in their favor.
Wright's view of
justification is an attempt to reverse the Reformation. We must resist such
attempts. The issue is one of life and death - eternal life and eternal death.
When theological professors and pastors abandon the biblical and confessional
doctrine of justification, they sacrifice the gospel and the souls of men.”
Dr. Sidney D. Dyer is
Associate Professor of Greek and New Testament at Greenville Presbyterian
Theological Seminary