Paul's New Perspective: Charting a Soteriological Journey

by Garwood P. Anderson

The debate between proponents of the old and new perspectives on Paul has been followed closely over the years, consolidating allegiances on either side. But the debate has now reached a stalemate, with defectors turning to apocalyptic and other solutions. Garwood Anderson recounts the issues and concludes that "both 'camps' are right, but not all the time." And with that teaser, he rolls up his exegetical sleeves and proceeds to unfold a new proposal for overcoming the deadlock. But in a field crowded with opinions, could anything new emerge? Anderson's interaction with Paul and his interpreters is at the highest level, and his penetrating and energetic analysis captures attention. What if Paul's own theological perspective was contextually formed and coherently developed over time? Have we askedjustification to carry a burden it was never meant to bear? Would fresh eyes and a proper sequencing of Paul's letters reveal Paul's own new perspective? Might we turn a corner and find a bold and invigorating panorama of Pauline soteriology? This is a Pauline study worthy of its great theme, and one that will infuse new energy into the quest for understanding Paul's mind and letters.

Genres: Biblical Studies, Theology

457 pages, Hardcover

Published September 29, 2016

Reviews

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Summary: Argues that both the traditional Protestant perspective and the New Perspective on Paul are each partly right, based on the idea that Paul's ideas on salvation developed as he wrote over a period of time and addressed different circumstances.

If you follow the discussions in biblical theology at all closely (something of a personal idiosyncrisy), you may be aware that since the work of E. P. Sanders over thirty years ago (and followed by contributions and modifications by James D. G. Dunn and N. T. Wright, among others), there has been what is called the "New Perspective on Paul (NPP)," It argues that the Traditional Protestant Perspective (TPP), traced back to Luther with its focus on justification not by works of the law but by grace through faith, is a mistaken reading of Paul. Beginning often with the book of Galatians, these proponents argue that "works of the law" are the defining boundary markers of God's covenant with the Jews that kept Gentiles outside the covenant promises of God. These proponents emphasize that Paul's emphasis is that by faith (or the faithfulness of God through Christ), Gentiles are included in God's covenant and part of God's family apart from the boundary markers defined by the Jewish law. Those from the TPP fire back that this ignores the argument of Romans as well as passages like Ephesians 2:8-9 that focus on works more broadly, and for a forensic idea of justification where the righteousness of Christ is imputed by faith to those who believe.

Paul's New Perspective could be a game-changer in this discussion. Garwood P. Anderson argues that the "contradictory schools of Pauline interpretation are both right, just not at the same time." What Anderson contends against advocates of these contrary schools is that a static understanding of Paul's thought is not the best way to understand the Pauline corpus as a whole, but that Paul's thought developed over time and that a developmental understanding (not that Paul changed his mind) best explains the aspects of the Pauline corpus that each perspective has difficulties explaining.

The book divides into three parts. Chapters 1-3 explore the landscape of the discussion between the two perspectives as well as more recent post-NPP contributors. As part of this, in chapter 2 he considers three key passages in which Paul is seemingly uncooperative with either perspective: Philippians 3:1-11, Romans 3:21-4:8, and Ephesians 2:1-22.

In chapters 4 and 5, Anderson then contends for a particular itinerary of Paul's ministry and the writing of his letters that lends itself to his thesis. He would contend for both an early date, and southern setting for the letter to the Galatians, next the Thessalonian and Corinthian correspondence, followed by Romans. He believes Romans is not Paul's last work but that Philippians as well as the contested letters to Philemon, Colossians, Ephesus, and the Pastorals followed and are genuinely Pauline. While a number of critics would dissent, there is critical support for this chronology and Pauline authorship and Anderson briefly outlines the basis for these judgments, which are critical to his contention that a significant enough period of time elapsed in the writing of the Pauline corpus for Paul's understanding of the salvation wrought by Christ to develop toward the vision of cosmic reconciliation (carefully delineated by Anderson) apparent in Colossians and Ephesians.

Chapters 6 through 8 then turn to an exegesis of the relevant passages following this developmental chronology, followed by a concluding chapter summarizing his argument. In these he shows particularly how the New Perspective gets Galatians more or less right on "works of the law" but that Paul's use of "works" in later letters is not equivalent but reflects a developing understanding of the grace of God apart from human effort. He also argues that, while important, justification is not the center of Paul's understanding of salvation, that the language of reconciliation informs this, and that perhaps most central is the idea of union with Christ.

I've tried to summarize in several hundred words a detailed argument that runs to nearly 400 pages in Anderson's book and thousands of pages of writing over the years. No doubt I've glossed over many matters in both his and others' scholarship. What I appreciated in this work is an effort to listen to the whole canonical Pauline corpus rather than to force it onto the Procrustean beds of either the old or new perspectives, either by ignoring uncooperative passages or dismissing books as pseudo-Pauline. What he proposes is not a compromise between the two perspectives, a via media, but rather a different way of conceptualizing Paul's emerging perspective on salvation that allows for the intellectual growth of core convictions in a coherent and non-contradictory fashion.

Anderson speaks of having "friends" in both "camps." I hope that his effort to articulate a "third way" will not result in "unfriendly fire" from both sides but rather promote the kind of theological reconciliation that would seem to be the fruit of the reconciliatory work of Christ, of which he writes, that enriches for all our grasp of the great salvation that is ours in Christ. I found that true for myself in the reading of this work, and trust it will be so for others.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher . I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll reviewing be this on my blog soon. 4 stars for the substance of the argument, but there were more typographical/syntactical errors in the book than is typical, and I found the author's style a bit clunky and so had a bit of a hard time reading it.

This is essentially a via media between the New Perspective on Paul and a more traditional "Lutheran" understanding of Pauline soteriology, showing where they are right and where they err. Anderson's novel proposal for holding together the elements of both that we see in the Pauline corpus is through development. From the foundation of a 13-letter corpus and Galatians as the earliest letter, Anderson traces elements of Paul's soteriology (justification, grace, salvation) from Galatians to Romans and beyond, showing that Paul's "old" perspective was essentially NPP and his settled "new" perspective was essentially OPP (which I think is quite clever!), with Romans as the transition.

[Joe Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

In recent years, a growing number of Pauline scholars have sought to push beyond the bitter debates that have taken place over the last few decades between proponents of the so-called old and new perspectives on Paul. In Paul’s New Perspective, Garwood P. Anderson makes a substantial contribution to this quest for a more nuanced via media by introducing a relatively unexplored proposal to the conversation: an ambitious developmental approach to Paul’s soteriology.

In Anderson’s eyes, “Paul’s letters show evidence of both a contextually determined diversity and also a coherent development through time” (p.7). This conviction enables him to say that “both ‘camps’ are right, but not all the time” (p.5). He begins Paul’s New Perspective with a survey of the sprawling landscape of recent books on Paul. Anderson’s impressive familiarity with the relevant works of well-known “new perspective on Paul” (NPP) luminaries like Sanders, Dunn, and Wright is evident. He also introduces readers to the more recent contributions of other scholars like Bird, Gorman, and Barclay. To call Anderson “well-read” seems like a real understatement, and his nuanced engagement with an intimidatingly large pile of Pauline literature is both helpful and at times illuminating.

Bridging Perspectives on Paul

Anderson highlights a number of themes raised by the NPP that he thinks constitute real, genuine advancements in our understanding of Paul, and he has no problem praising the NPP for these accomplishments. Nevertheless, Anderson also subjects the movement to more skeptical questions and qualifications. For example, he praises the NPP for rightly emphasizing how Paul “leveraged justification toward the reconciliation of peoples into one Abrahamic family,” but he also criticizes NPP theologians for (at times) paying insufficient attention to the vertical dimension of justification (pp.382-383). I think Anderson should be applauded for his willingness to embrace and work with the strengths of the NPP, especially since he positions himself as one of its admiring critics.

Anderson’s overarching thesis, broadly speaking, is that while the NPP gives a compelling reading of the early Pauline epistles (especially Galatians), its interpretation of Paul becomes progressively less persuasive in the Apostle’s later letters (p.384). Meanwhile, the “traditional Protestant perspective” (TPP)—his term for what many call the “old perspective”—fails to be consistently persuasive in its readings of the early epistles, but displays a more satisfactory understanding of Paul’s soteriology in his later letters. Consequently, Anderson believes the “besetting fault” of NPP scholars to be their tendency to read Romans through the lens of their interpretation of Galatians, while he thinks TPP adherents typically err by reading Romans according to their understanding of Ephesians (p.84).

In terms of the authorship and dating of the thirteen letters traditionally attributed to Paul, Anderson is persuaded by the South Galatians hypothesis, which causes him to see Galatians as the Apostle’s earliest extant letter, written around AD 49. He sides with more conventional scholarship in dating Romans to AD 56-58 (p.164). Less conventionally, Anderson accepts authentic Pauline scholarship for all of the “disputed epistles.” It should be noted that this is something of a minority position in some of the more critical quarters of Pauline scholarship, especially with the pastoral epistles. Based on these methodological conclusions, Anderson develops his argument regarding the maturing trajectory of Paul’s soteriology, working with a thirteen-letter Pauline corpus that dates “from AD 49 to the mid-60s” (p.166).

A Soteriological Journey

To flesh out the defining characteristics of his proposal, Anderson delves into a few “markers of the itinerary,” which for him demonstrate a traceable pattern of development in Paul’s soteriology over the course of his letters. First, he looks at the topic of “works” and “works of the law.” Anderson disagrees with the conventional interpretations of both the NPP and TPP because they both consider the two terms to be interchangeable, while he is convinced they are not. NPP scholars generally read “works” as a shorthand for “works of the law,” by which they primarily mean practices related to Judaism’s social boundaries (p.381). TPP proponents, on the other hand, see “works of the law” as a phrase that functions as a synecdoche for “works” in general, understood as “soteriologically deficient human effort” (p.381). Distancing himself with both of these positions, Anderson maintains that “‘works,’ used absolutely, marks an abstracting and generalizing development in Paul’s soteriology, from a remonstrance against Jewish particularity… to a more settled antithesis between works and grace” (pp.381-382).

This “settled antithesis” leads to a similar kind of argument regarding the development of “grace” in Paul’s letters. In this area, he does well to engage extensively (and mostly appreciatively) with John Barclay’s excellent recent work, Paul and the Gift. Anderson suggests that “this incongruous grace of God takes its very particular shape as the antithesis of human accomplishment increasingly throughout the Pauline corpus… specifically in Romans and patently thereafter” (p.382).

Justification in the Context of Pauline Soteriology

The final “marker of the itinerary” that Anderson examines—Paul’s evolving language for describing salvation itself—was actually the most interesting and thought-provoking for me. Looking at the Pauline corpus as a whole, Anderson notes that justification language is found most often in the context of discussions related to the common membership of Jews and Gentiles in the one family of God, especially in Galatians and Romans (pp.382-384). However, in the later letters, Anderson argues that other soteriological idioms like salvation and reconciliation come to predominate. Hence, he thinks these later letters give evidence of a Pauline soteriology that becomes progressively more abstract and expansive. He asserts that this mature version of Paul’s soteriology focuses:

[N]ot merely on the drawing of Jew and Gentile into the family of Abraham but the reconciliation of humanity to God and the cosmos to its Creator—and not only the reconciliation of humanity to God but the transformation in Christ of the Adamic race into bearers once again of the divine glory. (p.14)

In general, Anderson believes that some scholars seek to make justification do too much heavy lifting, forgetting that Paul’s soteriology “reaches extensively and intensively well beyond the bounds of justification” (p.384). This is not to say that Anderson sides with people like Albert Schweitzer, who once described justification as being a mere “subsidiary crater” in Pauline theology (p.10). Rather, he’s emphasizing the need for justification to be seen as part of a larger, more complex vision of reconciliation and salvation (pp.388-391). In regards to this part of his thesis, I’m in agreement, but I do wonder how much this conclusion can be described as being similar to the TPP’s reading of Paul. This may be an area where Anderson’s approach to Paul is relatively unique.

Interestingly, Anderson believes both that participatory union with Christ is the “red thread of Pauline soteriology” and that justification itself should nevertheless be regarded as broadly—if not strictly—forensic in nature (p.391). Hence, he calls justification “the forensic dimension of Pauline soteriology.” It’s interesting to place this dimension of Anderson’s work in conversation with the writings of Michael Gorman, another Pauline scholar who highlights the theme of participation in Christ.

Though they both regard union with Christ as a central thread, Anderson parts from Gorman by understanding reconciliation to be a fruit of justification rather than a part of it (p.327). Gorman, on the other hand, writes that, “The terms ‘justification’ and ‘reconciliation’ are… essentially synonymous for Paul” (Inhabiting the Cruciform God, p.56). It seems to me that Gorman bases this conclusion on a differing reading of Romans 5 and by placing more emphasis on the covenantal dimension of justification, among other things. The important result of this analysis, for our purposes, is that both agree that reconciliation is a relational metaphor, but differ on how that impacts the nature of justification. By viewing reconciliation as part of justification, it is obviously easier for Gorman to conclude that justification itself possesses a significant participatory dimension.

On my part, I’m still more sympathetic to Gorman’s arguments, but Anderson’s work gives thoughtful readers of Paul much to ponder. I do think it’s worth amentioning that Anderson at one point does describe “the forensic dimension of salvation, justification itself” as being “incomprehensible apart from the believer’s participation in Christ” (p.138). So in the end, maybe Anderson and I aren’t actually so far apart. Finally, he elegantly articulates something important about the centrality of union with Christ near the book:

The constant in Pauline soteriology, transcending the undisputed and disputed letters, the apologetic and constructive, the exigent and the measured, is that salvation—acquittal and vindication, incorporation and transformation—is wrought in the union of humankind with the crucified and resurrected Christ by faith, effected in sacrament, whereby his atonement and victory our made ours… For Paul, salvation is through Christ, because it is in Christ. (pp.391-392)

Regardless of disagreements I may have about other aspects of Anderson’s proposal, I think this statement hits the nail on the head.

Conclusion

To summarize, Anderson proposes a developmental thesis in Paul’s New Perspective. He sets out an argument that seeks to demonstrate that “the new perspective on Paul is Paul’s oldest perspective… and the ‘old’ perspective describes what would become (more or less) Paul’s settled ‘new’ perspective” (p.379). By development, he means “traceable change that happens over time, resulting in a trajectory” (p.157). I’m not the only one to make this observation, but one of the vulnerabilities of Anderson’s ambitious proposal is that it depends (maybe more than he would like to admit) on a set of presuppositions regarding the dating and authenticity of Paul’s letters.

If one doesn’t share his views on these methodological issues, his thesis becomes less plausible. To give one example of this, if the South Galatian hypothesis was demonstrated conclusively to be wrong, resulting in a noticeably later dating of Galatians, then that would make his developmental hypothesis at least somewhat less likely. I don’t think this is necessarily a fatal flaw in Anderson’s proposal, but it’s obviously worth keeping in mind. I also can’t resist adding that one notices an absence of serious engagement with the “apocalyptic” school of Pauline interpretation, though that may beyond the scope of this work.

Anderson believes that the TPP gives a better reading of Paul’s later letters, and describes himself as “almost…but not quite” convinced by the NPP (p.56). I feel the same way about his overall proposal. It’s very thorough, ambitious, and theologically rich, and I appreciate his emphasis on union with Christ as a central category for Pauline soteriology. I also am impressed with his evenhandedness and charity in how he engages with differing perspectives. Nevertheless, I remain somewhat more persuaded by the NPP than he is, for whatever it’s worth. Paul’s New Perspective truly is a fresh proposal for getting beyond the debates between the NPP and TPP, and it hopefully will at the very least cause other scholars to look afresh at the possibility for development in Paul’s theology, even if they hesitate follow all the details of Anderson’s proposal. This is definitely a book well-worth reading with much to appreciate, regardless of which Pauline camp you ultimately favor.

*Disclosure: I received this book free from IVP Academic for review purposes. The opinions I have expressed are my own, and I was not required to write a positive review.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Those who walk down the middle of the road, it is said, are likely to get run over by both sides. That is where Garwood Anderson has chosen to daringly place himself in his Paul's New Perspective. In the current debate on justification between those who hold to the Traditional Protestant Perspective (TPP) and the New Perspective on Paul (NPP), Anderson charts a third way.

Generally adherents of the TPP see justification as the essence of Paul's theology concerning how humans get right with or are reconciled to God ("get saved"). It becomes the central, driving metaphor regarding God's work in Christ around which all other terms orbit. For many interpreters, "Justification is like a person with three full-time jobs surrounded on every side by the underemployed" (384).

The NPP offers a helpful corrective to, on the one hand, unnecessarily narrowing justification to individualistic concerns. They see justification as covenantal membership. On the other hand, the NPP views the Christ event as being even more expansive than justification, while including that. Paul's much larger vision is that God's purpose is to bring all of creation, both seen and unseen, together in Christ.

What does Anderson think of all this? That both perspectives are right--just not at the same time. Both see true aspects of Paul's thinking, but Paul emphasized them at different times as his own thinking developed. Both the TPP and the NPP tend to see all of Paul's letters (or at least the undisputed ones) has having been written in a very short span. Therefore, they are often studied as virtually a single work. Anderson contends that the letters were written over a longer span and show development in Paul's thinking, though without changing his mind. Paul began with a specific idea that Torah obedience ("works of the law") is not able to reconcile us to God and later expanded this idea to cover any kind of merit.

As Anderson argues, "Justification is the language of choice when at stake is the place of Gentiles in the covenant or the relationship of Jews and Gentiles to each other" (284). When his concern broadens, so does his vocabulary. In Paul's later writings, for example, he uses salvation to describe ultimate deliverance from wrath to come and a restoration that is also forthcoming. Salvation, the larger term, includes justification (308). In addition, Anderson contends, Galatians is not a brief summary of Romans, despite having certain features in common. It was written significantly earlier with Romans showing important developments in his thinking.

To summarize: "The thesis of this study is that the [NPP] is Paul's oldest perspective and that the 'old' perspective [TPP] describes what would become (more or less) Paul's settled 'new' perspective (p. 379).

One of the values of the book is the very clear summary of the TPP/NPP debate which has been going on in academic circles for at least fifty years, some aspects of which have recently reached into the congregational level. Anderson then gets to his own constructive proposal in the second half of the book. For students and others ready to go deeper, here is a worthwhile resource.

Another virtue is Anderson's attention to style, making the book a pleasure to read throughout. Even his footnotes benefit from this, as when he says: "I realize that I risk diving into deeper hermeneutical water here than my swimming ability justifies" (385).

Speaking of risk, is Anderson's project worth the threat of getting hit by traffic going both ways? I think it is.

[Joel Wentz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really compelling argument that is meticulously researched, simply bogged down slightly by length and a bit of overly dense, meandering writing.

Full disclosure: I am a huge fan of the work of N.T. Wright, and have found his "new perspective on Paul" arguments much more convincing than the typical Protestant/Lutheran perspectives espoused by the current, Neo-Reformed camp (a la Piper and the Gospel Coalition). With this in mind, I actually found Anderson to bring a remarkably thoughtful and balanced critique of this "new perspective," while still holding onto the important insights from that camp. His framing of the development of Paul's thought just makes SO MUCH sense, and it is well-supported by careful exegesis. I'm extremely impressed by the scope of his argument, and while I found him just a bit too "kind" to the Traditional Protestant Perspective, I'm quite persuaded by his explanation of the maturation of Paul's thought over time, and especially the way Paul employed terms like "justification," "salvation," and especially "reconciliation."

That last one is a key insight of Anderson's, as he rightly points out that the theme of "reconciliation" is woefully overlooked in most Pauline studies today, in favor of the over-analyzed debates on what to do about "justification." His overall tone is one of finding a "middle ground," and seeking out what both sides get correct, which is quite refreshing in the midst of so much polemical back-and-forth.

Overall, this is a dense read. It is academic in nature, and he spends quite a bit of time on methodology (especially his dating of the Pauline corpus) that may turn off more casual readers. But if you are keyed into the conversations around Paul, this book is really an outstanding overview/summary of the scholarly debates that are happening right now, as well as a very compelling proposition for a middle ground. For the theologically-minded, I highly recommend it!

[Chris Woznicki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paul’s new perspective is Paul’s old perspective.

That’s the Garwood Anderson’s thesis in Paul’s New Perspective. In this long (+400 page) but very readable book Anderson argues against those advocates of The New Perspective on Paul and those of the Traditional Protestant Perspective (sometimes called the Lutheran view) showing that neither camp really gets Paul right. Paul cannot be understood simply from the NPP nor can he be understood simply from the TPP, rather what we see in Paul is development. Paul begins with the concerns brought up by NPP advocates and by the end of his career ends with concerns of the TPP.

Summary

Paul’s developing soteriology is supposedly seen in his development from concentration on “works of the law” to works more generally. Anderson argues that Romans, is a sort of transitional letter marking the shift between Paul’s old perspective and Paul’s new perspective. In Romans we see the transition between “the largely horizontal crisis of Gentile covenant membership independent of the law to a more vertically oriented reconciliation to God gained by faith apart from works, works of any kind.” (13)

Never disparaging either the NPP or the TPP, Anderson argues that both positions get a lot about Paul right, and that both sides have helped the church understand something important about its relation to God and the world. Some figures, like Wright, get it more right than others. For instance Wright in PFG rightly describes Paul’s logic as going vertical to horizontal, however the emphasis in Wright’s work is horizontal to vertical. Similarly, Dunn has helped reveal the horizontal problems Paul was dealing with when it came to the law’s role in acting as a dividing role between Jews and Gentiles.

In order to establish the case that Paul’s “new perspective” is actually his “old perspective” and that the traditional perspective is actually Paul’s “new perspective” Anderson has to establish this chronologically from his letters. Anderson notes that this is a bit problematic, as the position he argues for is not the majority view of critical scholarship (its not idiosyncratic either).

• Galatians is the Earliest Letter, dated around 49AD
• Romans is dated around 56-58AD
• The Thessalonian and Corinthian Correspondence fall between Galatians and Romans
• Philippians was composed in Rome
• Colossians, Ephesians and Philemon are authentic and written from Rome
• Paul survived his Roman imprisonment, turned his attention east and wrote the Pastoral Letters.

Having established the provenance of these letters Anderson turns his attention to two topics Works/Grace and Justification/Salvation in light of his reestablished order of letters. From this new order he shows that with regards to works, his early topic of “works of the law” shifts to “works” (full stop) with Romans acting as a transition between these two positions. Grace also follows this pattern. Beginning with Romans, grace is opposed to and excludes works. Concerning justification/salvation, in his later letters Paul recedes from the language of justification and prefers to use language of salvation and reconciliation. These two sections are made up of indepth exegetical and lexical work.

Assessment

So how convincing is Anderson’s argument that the New Perspective is Paul’s is actually Paul’s old perspective? I guess that comes down to one important factor, how convincing do you think Anderson’s assessment of Paul’s literary itinerary is? Do you find it plausible that Galatians is Paul’s first letter? If you think Galatians & Romans are fairly closely dated that his argument doesn’t really work. Do you buy a Roman (as opposed to Ephesian) provenance of the Prison letters? If you don’t then that throws a wrench in his entire reading of Pauline development as well. The problem with Anderson’s propsal is that you have to hold to a lot of minority positions regarding the composition of these letters. Neither the NPP or the TPP hangs upon one’s acceptance of a particular dating of Paul’s letters, but Andersons’ thesis certainly does. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Anderson’s explanation is wrong. In fact, I would argue that it has a lot going for it! It breaks down some of the false dichotomies of the NPP/TPP debate, allows the church to incorporate the best of both perspectives, and has a lot of explanatory power. (His thesis even helps explain some of the concerns brought up by Apocalyptic readings of Paul!) But the fact that his whole argument is built upon the foundation of dates makes his foundation rather feeble. If one can decisively show his dating of Paul’s letters are wrong, his argument (in my opinion) falls apart.

All in all I would say that Paul’s New Perspective is a well written and well researched book, offering a via media in a rather creative way. Students of Pauline theology would do well to pick up this book, he does a fine job charging the various debates between NPP & TPP camps. His chapter on Post-NPP authors is fine as well. I can see myself assigning these chapters to students in a Pauline theology book, helping them get acquainted with contemporary debates in the Pauline literature. On top of all this, the summary of his position is rhetorically powerful, much like EP Sanders’ was: “covenantal nomism,” “getting in vs. staying in,” “solution to plight,” and “in short, this is what Paul finds wrong in Judaism: it is not Christianity.” Anderson’s position is quite memorable as well: “Paul’s New Perspective is Paul’s old perspective.” This catchy statement alone ensures the ideas in this book will be remembered, regardless of their staying power.

While I’m still not sure that Anderson’s proposal is convincing, it certainly is thought provoking. For that reason, I recommend you pick up this book. Its an position that deserves more thought and attention.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Challenging, but a helpful comparison between the Traditional Protestant Perspective (TPP) and the New Perspective on Paul (NPP). The writing is dense, at times turgid. Even if you have a theological background, you have to hang on to grasp all of it. The thrust is that the vertical dimension in justification (God makes me right) needs to be countered with the horizontal dimension implicit in covenanted relationships (God draws us together as his people, both Jew and Gentile). However, the well-outlined presentation is filled with so-many nuances, caveats and footnotes that one can only wonder how the humble pastor will apply it in Pauline parish pericopes. (PPP) The book may be a helpful condensation (at 500 pages) of current evolving thought on Paul's theology, but it's more likely to be used by scholars than by laity.

[Spencer R · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can read my full review on Spoiled Milks (5/11/17)

“To put it simply, the argument of this book insists that both ‘camps’ [the New Perspective of Paul and the Old/Lutheran/Reformed Perspective of Paul] are right, but not all the time,” or at least, not at the same time (5). Anderson actually thinks that the “New Perspective” was Paul’s old/earliest perspective, and the “Old/Lutheran/Reformed Perspective” was Paul’s new perspective. Anderson means to say that Paul’s early letters (e.g., Galatians), with their use of such terms as “works of the law,” reflect what the NPP says is wholly Paul. But Paul’s later letters (e.g., the prison epistles) reflect what the OPP says is wholly Pauline.

But, like all people, Paul’s theology developed. Anderson in no way says or means to say that Paul’s earlier theology was wrong. But as new situations arose, Paul, like all people, had to think through these new issues with a gospel worldview, one that believed Jesus was the Son of God who died for our sins, rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, rules and reigns at the right hand of God, and will return to save his people and vanquish his foes. Anderson says that Romans was Paul’s turning point, and that Paul’s argument has a transformation of its own. Basically, what began with the crisis of Gentiles being included into membership apart from the law would eventually move to having a “vertical” reconciliation with God, by faith, apart from works of any kind.

My main complaint is that it takes a long time (225 pages) to get to the meat of the book’s main argument, and the language in those first five chapters is very clunky. Anderson uses imagery and metaphor to draw pictures in his language, but sometimes it’s very clunky and doesn't make for a smooth read. I often asked myself if it was worth it working through the first five chapters of this book. Chapter 6-8 are definitely worth a read, but only those who are skilled in the discussions of the NPP & OPP will really find chapters 1-5 worth their while.

For those who are looking to go deeper into the N/OPP debates, Anderson’s book is a must read. His nuanced arguments shows that he has read both sides carefully (from what I can tell) as he tries to refrain from making grand, sweeping allegations. I too must agree with Anderson’s wife, he “should write more” (x).

Disclosure: I received these books free from IVP Academic. The opinions I have expressed are my own, and I was not required to write a positive review.