MetaCatholic

Although he deals with “solution to plight” later in the series , (which I think is an important emphasis) I’d personally like to argue that this was not only derived from his commissioning experience, but an earlier and perhaps quite primitive mirror-version of his later theology underlies his persecution, and is not entirely unrelated either to the apostolic preaching, or the transmission of the Jesus tradition. … Paul knew the general story of Jesus; he knew Jesus had been viewed by Paul’s Pharisaic peers and the Jewish elders as a Law-breaker - “soft” on Sabbath and the purity regulations, to be sure - even finally condemned as “unrighteous” according to the highest Jewish court.

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What makes me wonder this is Chris Tilling’s eight petal tulip and the questions that make him critical of it:
In order to make people feel guilty, we invent ways of convincing people that they are sinners. We have to make a problem for them, for Jesus to be a real solution. But is that really [...]

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Michael Bird begins 2008 by announcing the demise of the “New Perspective on Paul” era. While I regard NPP as a useful shorthand for describing a number of views, I’m not entirely sure the differences between many of its leading proponents aren’t nearly as great as those between “NPP scholars” and others. I’m not totally [...]

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(For the earlier posts on Piper’s book The Future of Justification, see, in order, here, here, here and here. I expect this to be the final post in this short series).
Another part of Wright’s summary of Paul that Piper objects to strenuously is his characterisation of the gospel. For Wright, the good news is understood [...]

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(For the earlier posts on Piper’s book The Future of Justification, see, in order, here, here and here)
Piper spends two chapters looking at justification and law-court imagery. This has been at the heart of Wright’s argument for nearly three decades. Wright argues that God’s final judgement is in view, and that justification is about [...]

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I begin this third post looking at Piper’s critique of Wright with an attempt at a longish summary quotation. (You can find the first post here, and the second here.) I have tried to mark off the main line of his thought, and used ellipses to mark missing material.

It has seemed to most interpreters of [...]

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Yesterday, I began looking at Piper’s arguments against Tom Wright and the New Perspective (NPP) more generally. Today I move onto a significant introductory comment, which I think says a great deal about why there is such an impasse here. Piper gets into his argument with the idea that “common-sense” tells us that interpreting the [...]

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I’ve noted before that Tom Wright has become a particular target of concern among many, especially American, evangelicals. This seems to be in large part due to his clarity of expression, overt commitment to Scripture, and vast literary output. Although his opponents express themselves as being against the New Perspective on Paul (NPP) more generally, [...]

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One new-to-me blog I’ve come across as a result of John Hobbins’ map is Biblical Theology. It’s a fairly clear and clearly conservative voice on biblical studies. The most recent article (at the moment) starts a series on the New Perspective. It does try to be fair to Sanders, and is certainly fairer than many [...]

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There’s been a sudden spate of posts about justification. In one strand Michael Pahl stirred up some comments with his post “Justification is the heart of the gospel”? which he also followed up here. In the other strand Michael Bird draws attention to a post by Paul Helm on justification and sanctification. Mike follows Helm [...]

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