In TIME magazine’s recent 10 Ideas That Are Changing the World, number 10 was Re-Judaizing Jesus.In it, David vam Biema writes:
This [idea] is seismic. For centuries, the discipline of Christian “Hebraics” consisted primarily of Christians cherry-picking Jewish texts to support the traditionally assumed contradiction between the Jews — whose alleged dry legalism contributed to their fumbling their ancient tribal covenant with God — and Jesus, who personally embodied God’s new covenant of love.
He continues: The shift came in stages: first a brute acceptance that Jesus was born a Jew and did Jewish things; then admission that he and his interpreter Paul saw themselves as Jews even while founding what became another faith; and today, recognition of what the Rev. Bruce Chilton, author of Rabbi Jesus, calls Jesus’ passionate dedication “to Jewish ideas of his day” on everything from ritual purity to the ideal of the kingdom of God — ideas he rewove but did not abandon.
There is a lot to be said about this idea, and a lot that has been written (most of it can be found at www.thepaulpage.com), and there is no doubt, as the article argues, that it has been the catalyst for a huge re-think in Christian theological circles.
As you can imagine, the fact that Jesus was Jewish is not the crucial revelation; rather, its the shift in the understanding of Jesus’ relationship with his Judaism. In the theological world, this idea is known as “The New Perspective on Paul,” and it’s appropriate that TIME magazine gave this “idea” such recognition, because it may turn out that it will have greater ramifications than Luther’s 95 Thesis—but I certainly hope not!
Over my next few posts, I’m going to try to lay out the the”old perspective” in light of the “new” in the hopes of, at least, clarifying the areas of disagreement. This disagreement also exposes the faulty view that academic theological debates have no bearing on “everyday people,” as it were. From the para-church to the Pope, anyone who is currently in contact with Christianity–at any level– is interacting with these ideas, and whether they know it or not, has already been affected in some way .
As the writer of Ecclesiastes says, “. . . there is nothing new under the Sun (1:9),” and the “New Perspective” can be seen as yet another iteration of a misunderstanding of the Gospel based, in part, on a shallow view of the nature of human existence, and the current manifestation of a theological system with too high a view of human freedom and ability, and too low a view of the Cross.
This is by no means intended to be an exhaustive overview, but in light of some of the theological themes we’ve been discussing on this blog, I thought this may be interesting, and is in the hopes that “we won’t be fooled again.”
5 comments
Sean Norris says:
Apr 29, 2008
Love it Jady! Cannot wait for your upcoming posts!
Drake says:
Apr 29, 2008
keep it coming!! i would love a 4 part blog series from JDK.
John Stamper says:
Apr 29, 2008
Hey Jady. Can’t wait to hear your thoughts.
In the meantime, have any of you all read “The Attractions of the New Perspective(s) on Paul”? The author (J. Ligon Duncan) quotes our beloved Paul Zahl at length and with great approval.
I really liked the piece though I’d be especially curious to hear what you all think of it.
One of the the things I liked especially about it is that its focus is not simply on discussing the NPP itself — as a set of claims or propositions about St. Paul and the NT — but that it talks about why a person is ATTRACTED to such claims. So in that sense it is much like Forde and Luther’s emphasis on being a THEOLOGIAN of glory rather than just the theology as such. Also serious reflections on the pastoral implications of such theology (a big emphasis of Fitz in his books).
Should anyone wish to find the article, just GOOGLE the following text (and use the quotes:
“The Attractions of the New Perspective(s) on Paul”
Jeff says:
Apr 29, 2008
Bruce McCormack had us read a lot of NPP for his course on the development of the doctrine of justification since Luther.
The discussion of the final book concluded with his saying, “Look. The New Perspective is nice and all, but its totally bogus. They’re trying to find the center of Paul: is the center justification? Or is the center integration? Its neither. Its the cross. You start with the cross and work your way out. So the first step is that God himself died and was resurrected. Now if you think that integration between Jews and Gentiles is prior to justification when the centraldogma is the death of Christ, then you don’t understand Paul at all.”
Why are people so afraid to mention the demonstrable FACT of Holocaust guilt?
Trevor says:
May 6, 2008
Totally bogus seems right. I just noticed this sentence glancing over Jady’s post a second time,
“Bruce Chilton, author of Rabbi Jesus, calls Jesus’ passionate dedication ‘to Jewish ideas of his day’ on everything from ritual purity to the ideal of the kingdom of God”
As to ritual purity, my basic study and understanding of the 4 gospels is that Jesus was totally against the idea of “ritual purity” in the pharisaical sense. His disciples were like totally never washing their hands before meals and the Jews were always getting pissed! And here’s a great quote from Luke 11:
37When Jesus had finished speaking, a Pharisee invited him to eat with him; so he went in and reclined at the table. 38But the Pharisee, noticing that Jesus did not first wash before the meal, was surprised.
39Then the Lord said to him, “Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. 40You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? 41But give what is inside the dish to the poor, and everything will be clean for you.
Now it seems like Paul, having grown up in the tradition of the pharisees, kept the laws of ritual purity. Whether they were sincere or just out of habit, I do not know. Does anybody?
But as for Christ and his disciples, when they fasted or bathed in a certain way, or were anointed with oil, is was not about ritual, it was about direct communion with their life-source, with their creator, in a fashion that was pleasing to Him. Not pleasing to them because they thought it was pleasing to Him, you see? That’s the pharisee. Christ’s life is such a direct break with the hypocrisy that ruled the synagogue in those days.