In the three essays about the phrase “justification by grace through faith,” I explored the phenomenon of word meaning drift. Since language is a living thing, meanings drift, and sometimes flip, over time. For instance, in Jacobean English “awful” meant “worthy of awe,” but if today I told you that God was truly awful, you …
In the previous essay I said that Orthodoxy missed the opportunity to deal with the Protestant problem 500 years ago when the problem was far more solvable. (Of course there were huge barriers to dialog back then that no longer exist today, so that period had barriers all its own.) Doing something about it today …
Imagine a world in which the Orthodox Church suddenly embraced my proposed application of the "new perspective" on the doctrine of justification (that is, what I've been writing about for the last several essays, starting here). Now this isn't going to happen anytime soon. The folks in charge of Orthodoxy for the last few decades …
In the previous essays of this series I made the following parallel: Early Gentile Christianity's relationship to Judaism and Jewish believers is parallel to Protestantism's relationship to contemporary Orthodoxy. Allow me to make clear that this parallel is far from exact and is also problematic. Where Orthodoxy and Protestantism are the same (both Christian), Judaism …
In the last essay I ended by saying that the church, being a new creation, was not obligated to the Mosaic Law (the Torah), but to a new law of love (Gal. 5:14). This is not to imply that this new church was antinomian. Even a cursory reading of Paul's letters indicates that he assumed …
In the previous essay I observed that, according to N.T. Wright, the significance of the doctrine of justification by faith has to do with the basic requirements for Christian table fellowship. Wright's claim is based on a particular understanding of the Judaism of Jesus' and St. Paul's day. Within Protestant circles Judaism was historically considered …
In a recent essay I mentioned that in my opinion "the new perspective" on justification by faith had implications for Orthodoxy, if we would take it seriously. At the time I was asked to expand that thought but I've been hesitant because Orthodoxy doesn't seem to take kindly to critiques from outsiders, especially Protestants. The …
Continue reading The “New Perspective” and Orthodoxy, 1 of 6
Alongside listening to and reading James Dunn (see here and here), in an attempt at balance I have been reading Guy Prentiss Waters' Justification and the New Perspectives on Paul (and have John Piper's The Future of Justification in line after I'm done with Waters). The difference in analytical style is so striking that I …
Continue reading St. Paul, Prof. Dunn, Dr. Waters, and Bultmann (the theologian, not the schnauzer)
I just ran across this summary of the Protestant doctrine of justification from Alister McGrath's Iustitia Dei in a footnote (#335) in James Dunn's The New Perspective on Paul, rev. ed., p. 80f: Justification is defined as the forensic declaration that the believer is righteous, rather than the process by which he is, made righteous, …
Just Another Jim 