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The Apostle Paul and the Christian Life: Ethical and Missional Implications of the New Perspective
The "new perspective" on Paul, an approach that seeks to reinterpret the apostle Paul and his letters against the backdrop of first-century Judaism, has been criticized by some as not having value for ordinary Christians living ordinary lives. In this volume, world-renowned scholars explore the implications of the new perspective on Paul for the Christian life and church. James D. G. Dunn, N. T. Wright, Bruce Longenecker, Scot McKnight, and other leading New Testament scholars offer a response to this How does the apostle Paul understand the Christian life? The book makes a fresh contribution to the new perspective on Paul conversation and offers important new insights into the orientation of the Christian life.
224 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2016
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99 people want to read
About the author
Scot McKnight
209 books541 followersScot McKnight is a recognized authority on the New Testament, early Christianity, and the historical Jesus. McKnight, author or editor of forty books, is the Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary in Lombard, IL. Dr. McKnight has given interviews on radios across the nation, has appeared on television, and is regularly speaks at local churches, conferences, colleges, and seminaries in the USA and abroad. Dr. McKnight obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Nottingham (1986).
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 1, 2018
This is an excellent book thst discusses the New Perspective of Paul (NPP) from an ethical and missional standpoint. Tara Beth Leach's chapter was incredible and truly showed the balance that can be had between the OPP and the NPP. NT Wright's chapter was challenging and yet extremely enlightening. I recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about the NPP.
October 13, 2025
In this volume of essays, contributors offer reflections and proposals for how the new perspective on Paul (NPP) can have implications for churches and faith beyond being a theological and hermeneutical approach to the Pauline corpus. For those unfamiliar, the new perspective on Paul [generally] reframes the main problem he engages throughout his letters in contrast to the traditional perspective, particularly with treatment of the phrase “works of the law”. In the traditional perspective, Paul is combating a Judaism that has always been a works-based religion (therefore “works of the law” means any efforts to earn salvation) with the good news of grace and works-free salvation, with a deeper issue of sin separating individuals from God which could only be overcome by the justifying work of Jesus’ crucifixion. On the other hand, the new perspective starts with an understanding of Judaism not originating as a works-based religion, but being grace-based in the election and faithful obedience found in covenantal relationship with God. In the new perspective’s case, Paul is then not battling “works of the law” as any effort to earn salvation as much as “works of the law” as the identity markers of Israel that Jewish Christians were trying to force gentile Christians into adopting, rather than accepting their faith in Christ as the identity marker bringing all nations into the fold of God’s people. The traditional perspective places focus on an individual’s standing before God, judgment, and seeking salvation apart from one’s own efforts. The new perspective sees the people of God expanding to include gentiles by faith in Christ as opposed to finding inclusion by means of conforming to particular Jewish identity markers (circumcision, dietary restrictions, etc.). I am putting this crudely and generalizing the best I can as a layperson just to give an idea for those unfamiliar.
Jimmy Dunn contributes the first entry, focusing on Paul’s potent letter to the Galatians to affirm that faith in Christ is a full response to the gospel of Christ, and cannot be added to with conversion to Judaism. “What the gospel demands of would-be respondents is faith in Jesus Christ. And second, it warns that any addition to that fundamental demand undermines and destroys its fundamental character.” Dunn makes clear “Works of the law were not an essential addition to or expression of faith–without which faith could not be regarded as real faith. By ‘works of the law’ Paul would certainly have been thinking of the two confrontations just described…circumcision and food laws.” (p7) Baptism is the new act of expression of faith to be welcomed into Christ, but even then, Dunn points out that the act of baptism is not faith itself. Dunn adds too that salvation is of faith alone as well as by Spirit alone. “There is no way of being Christian, according to Galatians, other than faith-and-Spirit working through love” (p15). His practice suggested for the church is “to identify any particular ‘work’ as an essential mark of the Spirit, any particular ritual obligation as an essential condition for having the Spirit, would be to misunderstand and cloud the essential faith-Spirit nexus at the center of Paul’s gospel and theology” (p17).
Lynn Cohick centers Ephesians in her entry. She sums up her explanation of NPP by suggesting that Paul has theologically shifted keeping Torah from being a universal mandate for God’s people to a sociological category to display and express Jewish heritage, thereby resisting an insistence upon gentile believers keeping Torah as well. In Ephesians, the church combats the powers and authorities by not letting these sociological differences become barriers to unity in Christ in love (Eph. 3:10). Practically, this means resisting temptations to privilege one ethnic or racial approach over another in diverse churches.
Longenecker dives deep into torah observance across Paul’s letters, and discusses what works of faith look like, namely, like Christ himself. Though works of the law as ethnic identity markers are not explicitly what capture family membership, faith is the badge of membership, and there are works of faith that are evidence of the Spirit’s work: Longenecker names burden bearing, caring for the poor, resisting greed, and foiling divisions instigated by powers and principalities. Longenecker affirms the traditional perspective’s emphasis on humanity’s sinfulness and finds it tying into the problem of NPP’s Jewish identity markers, as cosmic powers use Torah and the sinfulness of humans to stir up division in God’s people.
Patrick Mitchel points out the correctives presented by the NPP by including narrative dynamics and a lived faith. This quote in particular was impactful for me: “The ‘anxious Protestant principle’ of not importing works into salvation has tended to marginalize what Paul has to say on the Christian life. In other words, the priority of how to “get in” has tended to make secondary the importance of the life lived once ‘in’” (p81). Mitchel proposes that Paul made a case in Galatians 3 for the purpose of Torah never being justification, but to form Israel’s called identity then and be a source for Christian wisdom now. Mitchel also confronts a historically dominant view of the flesh and spiritual nature battling within the individual Christian with the way Paul conceives of the flesh as entirely incompatible with the kingdom, and therefore that life according to the flesh captures an ordering of life contrary to Christ that believers no longer inhabit. Paul clearly addresses problems where Christians seem to be following the pattern of the flesh, but the contention is that life by the Spirit results in not gratifying the flesh. Ultimately, this all serves the purpose of love within God’s family.
Timothy Gombis then centers Paul’s identifying the people of God within the Biblical narrative. This leads Paul’s thinking to become eschatological, informing the present life of the church with a future reality of the Spirit permeating a multiethnic reality. According to Gombis, Paul does not think of the church as replacing Israel, but that the missional identity of Israel and the way it was to inhabit God’s purposes point to God’s vision for the church to be likewise holistic and pervasive. Through Jesus, the heart of this has been revealed: a new-creation people of God that is animated by cruciform love. When this is done, the Spirit unleashes resurrection power on God’s people much like was done upon Christ.
Scot McKnight explores old perspective, new perspective, and post-new perspective (Paul within Judaism), ending with the contention that the new perspective is most likely and presents the challenge to the church of being a fellowship of different people, learning from one another in love–a rugged covenant commitment to one another.
Tara Beth Leach discusses Wesleyan-Holiness theology in conversation with NPP. Not being Wesleyan, it didn’t resonate quite as much with me, but the historical emphases there are still vaguely familiar. Ultimately, her appeal is to view the church as a symphony as Christ’s body, a corporate reality of holiness rather than individual.
Lastly, N.T. Wright engages in an interplay between Paul and missional hermeneutics. Wright points out that “mission” as popularly conceived today, in church growth and individual evangelism, is nearly void from his letters. Rather, his letters express the mission of the church being the symbol of the good news about Christ in holiness and unity. Resurrection life in the church as an outpost of God’s kingdom should shine like a light in dark times.
Overall, I found the essays altogether reinforce that Paul’s message was centrally about a collective community (as opposed to individual salvation and living), breaking down sociocultural divides, and seeing faith in Christ as not without effect but resulting in a Spirit animated character that conforms to the love of Christ.
B/c it is a collection of essays, I give some grace for difference in style etc. Also, would love to see more books like this that have more focus on ecclesial implications of newer proposals in Biblical studies.
Jimmy Dunn contributes the first entry, focusing on Paul’s potent letter to the Galatians to affirm that faith in Christ is a full response to the gospel of Christ, and cannot be added to with conversion to Judaism. “What the gospel demands of would-be respondents is faith in Jesus Christ. And second, it warns that any addition to that fundamental demand undermines and destroys its fundamental character.” Dunn makes clear “Works of the law were not an essential addition to or expression of faith–without which faith could not be regarded as real faith. By ‘works of the law’ Paul would certainly have been thinking of the two confrontations just described…circumcision and food laws.” (p7) Baptism is the new act of expression of faith to be welcomed into Christ, but even then, Dunn points out that the act of baptism is not faith itself. Dunn adds too that salvation is of faith alone as well as by Spirit alone. “There is no way of being Christian, according to Galatians, other than faith-and-Spirit working through love” (p15). His practice suggested for the church is “to identify any particular ‘work’ as an essential mark of the Spirit, any particular ritual obligation as an essential condition for having the Spirit, would be to misunderstand and cloud the essential faith-Spirit nexus at the center of Paul’s gospel and theology” (p17).
Lynn Cohick centers Ephesians in her entry. She sums up her explanation of NPP by suggesting that Paul has theologically shifted keeping Torah from being a universal mandate for God’s people to a sociological category to display and express Jewish heritage, thereby resisting an insistence upon gentile believers keeping Torah as well. In Ephesians, the church combats the powers and authorities by not letting these sociological differences become barriers to unity in Christ in love (Eph. 3:10). Practically, this means resisting temptations to privilege one ethnic or racial approach over another in diverse churches.
Longenecker dives deep into torah observance across Paul’s letters, and discusses what works of faith look like, namely, like Christ himself. Though works of the law as ethnic identity markers are not explicitly what capture family membership, faith is the badge of membership, and there are works of faith that are evidence of the Spirit’s work: Longenecker names burden bearing, caring for the poor, resisting greed, and foiling divisions instigated by powers and principalities. Longenecker affirms the traditional perspective’s emphasis on humanity’s sinfulness and finds it tying into the problem of NPP’s Jewish identity markers, as cosmic powers use Torah and the sinfulness of humans to stir up division in God’s people.
Patrick Mitchel points out the correctives presented by the NPP by including narrative dynamics and a lived faith. This quote in particular was impactful for me: “The ‘anxious Protestant principle’ of not importing works into salvation has tended to marginalize what Paul has to say on the Christian life. In other words, the priority of how to “get in” has tended to make secondary the importance of the life lived once ‘in’” (p81). Mitchel proposes that Paul made a case in Galatians 3 for the purpose of Torah never being justification, but to form Israel’s called identity then and be a source for Christian wisdom now. Mitchel also confronts a historically dominant view of the flesh and spiritual nature battling within the individual Christian with the way Paul conceives of the flesh as entirely incompatible with the kingdom, and therefore that life according to the flesh captures an ordering of life contrary to Christ that believers no longer inhabit. Paul clearly addresses problems where Christians seem to be following the pattern of the flesh, but the contention is that life by the Spirit results in not gratifying the flesh. Ultimately, this all serves the purpose of love within God’s family.
Timothy Gombis then centers Paul’s identifying the people of God within the Biblical narrative. This leads Paul’s thinking to become eschatological, informing the present life of the church with a future reality of the Spirit permeating a multiethnic reality. According to Gombis, Paul does not think of the church as replacing Israel, but that the missional identity of Israel and the way it was to inhabit God’s purposes point to God’s vision for the church to be likewise holistic and pervasive. Through Jesus, the heart of this has been revealed: a new-creation people of God that is animated by cruciform love. When this is done, the Spirit unleashes resurrection power on God’s people much like was done upon Christ.
Scot McKnight explores old perspective, new perspective, and post-new perspective (Paul within Judaism), ending with the contention that the new perspective is most likely and presents the challenge to the church of being a fellowship of different people, learning from one another in love–a rugged covenant commitment to one another.
Tara Beth Leach discusses Wesleyan-Holiness theology in conversation with NPP. Not being Wesleyan, it didn’t resonate quite as much with me, but the historical emphases there are still vaguely familiar. Ultimately, her appeal is to view the church as a symphony as Christ’s body, a corporate reality of holiness rather than individual.
Lastly, N.T. Wright engages in an interplay between Paul and missional hermeneutics. Wright points out that “mission” as popularly conceived today, in church growth and individual evangelism, is nearly void from his letters. Rather, his letters express the mission of the church being the symbol of the good news about Christ in holiness and unity. Resurrection life in the church as an outpost of God’s kingdom should shine like a light in dark times.
Overall, I found the essays altogether reinforce that Paul’s message was centrally about a collective community (as opposed to individual salvation and living), breaking down sociocultural divides, and seeing faith in Christ as not without effect but resulting in a Spirit animated character that conforms to the love of Christ.
B/c it is a collection of essays, I give some grace for difference in style etc. Also, would love to see more books like this that have more focus on ecclesial implications of newer proposals in Biblical studies.
September 30, 2017
Сборник есета с различна стойност - като цяло добри, макар и не най-доброто от много от авторите им.
Ударението върху някои важни практични аспекти на новата перспектива върху Павел са много ценни и в повечето случаи съвсем ясно изказани.
Ударението върху някои важни практични аспекти на новата перспектива върху Павел са много ценни и в повечето случаи съвсем ясно изказани.
May 10, 2017
A good book to get you up to speed on the New Perspective on Paul (NPP). Deals with deep theological issues.
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