An article from our parishioner Eric Hawkes.

The New Perspective on Paul
By: Eric Hawkes

Unknown to most Catholics, even most Catholic theologians, recent Protestant research on Paul’s letters has led to a major break-through that has the potential to bridge the Catholic-Protestant divide.

The research began following World War II. After the world became aware of the terrible treatment of the Jews during the holocaust, Christian theologians sought to remove any anti-Semitic bias from their theology. The Catholic Church published Nostra Aetate, which condemned the view that God had rejected the Jews and chose Christians in their place. Protestants re-examined their assumptions regarding the Jewish religion. Some of these assumptions went from as far back as the Church Fathers, to include St. Augustine himself.

Augustine’s seminal work, The Confessions, was a spiritual masterpiece. However, theologically speaking, it understood Paul’s writings within the question of, “how can I appease my guilty conscience and be righteous before God?” This line of thinking resonated with both St. Augustine and Martin Luther as each of them struggled with personal sin and “earning God’s mercy as a sinner”. At the time that Augustine wrote Confessions, he was defending the faith against the heresy of Pelagianism, which taught that salvation could be earned through good moral works, apart from grace. By reading Paul in this light, Augustine could use Paul’s writings to defeat his contemporaries, the Pelagians.

But was answering the question, “how are we justified by God?” actually Paul’s purpose in writing his letters? The Protestant scholar Krister Stendahl didn’t think so. In his essay “Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West”, Stendahl argues that this reading misses Paul’s point. In fact, Stendahl goes so far as to state that Paul would not be interested in that question at all. Rather, Stendahl sees Paul’s letters centered on the question, “how are the promises of God to Israel fulfilled in both Jews and Gentiles?” Stendahl argues that since Augustine, the West had badly misinterpreted Paul, especially Romans and Galatians. He concludes that it was this wrong interpretation of Paul that led to the Reformation.

At the same time, another Protestant scholar, E.P Sanders, published Paul and Palestinian Judaism. Based on newly available Dead Sea Scrolls, the 5th century B.C. Judaism was not at all like how Augustine and later theologians had envisioned it. They saw Judaism as a works-righteouness religion where good works and living according to the law was rewarded with salvation.

Sander’s study of the Dead Sea Scrolls convinced him that in the 5th century B.C, Judaism did not, in fact, teach a form of “proto-Pelagianism”. His work showed that Jews believed membership in God’s covenant was a grace and not something earned. The law was to be kept as a sign of those in the covenant. Sanders called this theology “covenant nomism” as opposed to the “works-righteousness” that more modern readers thought Paul was opposing.

Sander’s historical research into ancient Judaism along with Stendahl’s fresh take on Augustine motivated James Dunn, another Protestant scholar, to coin this new way of thinking about Paul, “the New Perspective of Paul” (NPP), as opposed the old, Augustinian view of Paul. This new view contends that Paul was not arguing how we are saved, (i.e. is it by faith or by works?), but rather, Romans and Galatians were intended to explain how Jews and Gentiles could be in the same Church. Paul’s answer is that it is through faith that we are justified in Christ (or as Catholics would say “in the Church”), not by circumcision, avoiding meat, or any other specifics of the law.

Proponents of NPP ask the question, “what is the mystery kept secret for all of history that is suddenly revealed by Jesus Christ?” Paul’s answer, his ‘gospel’ if you will, is that the secret kept hidden from mankind and revealed by Jesus is that the promises that God made with Israel are now available to Jews and Gentiles. Reading from Ephesians, “the Gentiles are co-heirs, members of the same body, partakers of the promise in Jesus Christ through the gospel (Eph 3:5-6).” Paul, as a former Jew, must have been very excited about this revelation from God. It was a reason for great joy and Paul knew that this message must be spread to the whole world at any and all cost. This was the good news that the world desperately needs to hear; Jews and Gentiles are now united in Christ, a first in the history of the world. Could God be so generous as to put Gentiles on the same footing as His own chosen people, Israel?

This is also why Paul spends a great deal of time in his letters trying to resolve disputes within the Church. Reconciliation is not simply about being reconciled to God (Rom 11:12; 2 Cor 5:21) but being reconciled to one another in the body of Christ (Eph 2:16; Col 1:21-22). 1st and 2nd Corinthians were largely meant to reconcile disparate factions of the Church in Corinth, just as Galatians and Romans were meant to restore unity between Jewish and Gentile parties. Paul’s gospel was about God, through Christ, uniting the human race as His ultimate divine plan. All are invited to His divine Sonship. That was the mission of His Son, Jesus Christ. The Church had to be a showcase of this reconciliation for the gospel to have any practical meaning. Truly, the Church had to ‘catholic’, which is Greek for universal.

This is why Paul tells us, for instance in Galatians, that he had earlier gone to Jerusalem to present the gospel he preached, bringing Barnabas and Titus with him (Gal 2:1-2). Barnabas and Titus were not randomly chosen companions; the fellowship between Barnabas, the Jew, and Titus, the Gentile, in Paul’s mind, was the gospel.

Although many Protestant theologians have trumpeted the NPP, other Protestant scholars are more cautious. They recognize that if Stendahl, Sanders, and Dunn are right, the historical basis for the Reformation, Sola Fide, can be resolved. Paul was never trying to tell us how we are saved (Faith vs. works), but that Paul was trying to explain how we are united as sons and daughters of God, Jews and Gentiles alike. In that context, the schism between Catholics and Protestants is the ultimate slap in the face to Paul, who was writing to unite everyone in Christ, not to divide us.

The New Perspective on Paul is a major step forward in healing the Protestant-Catholic divide. It is also an excellent starting point for future progress with Protestants as well recognizing our common “covenant nomism” found in ancient Judaism. Unlike past attempts, it is not a Catholic attempt to “win a debate” with Protestants, but Protestants reading the bible in a new light and finding a biblical interpretation that just happens to resolve old difficulties.