New Perspectives on Paul
The gospel’ is not ‘you can be saved, and here’s how’; the gospel, for Paul, is ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’......Faith itself, defined conveniently by Paul as belief that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead, is the work of the Spirit, accomplished through the proclamation. - N.T. Wright "The last generation or two of New Testament scholarship has shed some light on how to read Paul. This is another complicated issue—if also controversial. But it is also an important one for understanding Paul, especially Romans. N. T. Wright in particular has been a strong proponent of rethinking the message of Romans in light of the Jewish thought world behind the person of Jesus and into which Paul was speaking. In other words, how would people back then have understood what Paul was saying? As the argument goes, Romans is often understood as showing the personal path to salvation, “how I can get right with God.” But this is a peripheral (although legitimate) issue. According to Wright and others, there is a bigger issue that captures Romans from beginning to end: not personal salvation, but how Jews and Gentiles together can be one people, reconciled to God, united in the risen Messiah, not divided by longstanding ethnic issues. This may seem a bit anti-climactic for contemporary Protestant readers of Romans. But the Jewish/Gentile issue was a huge problem in the early church. Many Jewish Christians felt that Gentiles had to become Jewish first (through law-keeping, especially circumcision) before bring granted Christian fellowship. Paul says, “No. Gentiles can enter our fellowship as Gentiles. Both groups are on equal footing.” This created tensions (see Acts), especially since the Old Testament requires circumcision for non-Israelites who want to join to fold (e.g., Exodus 12:48). So, Paul spends some time arguing his case (see Galatians)." - Peter Enns |