The New Perspective on Paul continues its movement in an incredible way. It goes to show that this is not some fly by night scholarly trend that will be here today and gone tomorrow. In fact, it is quite revolutionary. It has, in many ways, overturned the way we think as theologians and Bible scholars.
But I am still not convinced that the emperor is in fact wearing any clothes. What is frustrating in reading NPP advocates is trying to figure out exactly what they're against. They are protesters. They are doing more than simply setting forth a positive new and fresh exegesis of Paul's writings. They are reacting. They are reacting against what is perceived to be many faults and shortcomings of Western Protestant Christianity.
They are against individualism, pietism, and liberal Lutheran biblical scholarship. OK, good, so am I. But are you getting the sense with me that they are - pardon the hackneyed expression - throwing the Calvinistic baby out with the Lutheran bath water?
Yeah, I am against crass individualism, but that doesn't mean that Paul does not address the issue of what it means to be "saved" or "justified" personally before a holy and righteous God. In fact, he does. And he also speaks about the corporate life of what it means to be the body of Christ as well. Seems to me both are true - why jettison one of them for the other? Also, it seems that Paul is concerned with what happens when individuals die and how the saints go to heaven (how about the two letters of Thessalonians and the two to the Corinthians?). But, yes, Paul is also concerned with the new creation and the eschatological reality in which God's people are "declared to be in the right" where he will "set things to rights." Why the false dichotomoy?!
Its a shame that many Reformed Christians have bought into this movement hook and line (and I speak as one who was almost swept away with it myself). In their (right) zeal to see the importance of the corporate life of the church rescued from the crass individualism of American pietism, they have (wrongly) rejected those areas upon which both Reformed and Lutheran have historically agreed. And that is a recipe for a mass deception of God's covenant people.
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