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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

N.T. Wright on Reaction to the New Perspective on Paul

From Wright's "Redemption from the New Perspective? Towards a Multi-Layered Pauline Theology of the Cross":

I am saddened that many have imagined they have nothing to learn from Sanders’s massive scholarship and have run howling back into the arms of Luther. In some cases—these are, I think, the saddest of all—they have been reduced to appealing over the head of the New Testament to the tradition of the sixteenth century, which is all the more ironic when we reflect that Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, and the rest would certainly have advised us to read the New Testament even better than they did, not to set up their own work as a new authoritative tradition, a fixed lens through which the Bible would have to be viewed for ever afterwards.
Absolutely true. By the way, Wright's paper offers an excellent introduction to what the New Perspective is and how it developed.

Check it out.

2 comments:

  1. it makes me wonder how "semper reformanda" seems to be a convenient "switch" thats toggled on and off.

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  2. Good point, Sung. Actually, come to think of it, I've never seen it turned on by those who claim it. I mean, for one thing--they're using a phrase from a dead language to express the concept of always reforming!

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