A Lutheran Response to the New Perspective on Paul

by ERIK M. HEEN

What is this new perspective? At its core is the recognition that Judaism is not a religion of self-righteousness whereby humankind seeks to merit salvation before God. Paul's argument with the Judaizers was not about Christian grace versus Jewish legalism. His argument was rather about the status of Gentiles in the church. Paul's doctrine of justification, therefore, had far more to do with Jewish-Gentile issues than with questions of the individual's status before God. http : / /www. thepaulpage. com/

If there has been one development in biblical scholarship over the last generation that challenges the way confessional Lutherans relate to their theological tradition, the "New Perspective on Paul" (NPP) would be it. According to the NPP s historical-critical revision of the role of "justification" in the Pauline corpus, Luther's reading of Paul is largely in error. Rather than representing a theological breakthrough that recovers the liberating power of the gospel and establishes the doctrine upon which the church stands or falls, justification in the NPP is reduced to a term Paul invokes to express his conviction that Gentiles need not conform to Jewish "ceremonial" law in order to become followers of Messiah Jesus and full members of the people of God. In short, the NPP has completely redefined justification. It no longer is the critical expression of Christian soteriology, but rather a reflection of a dated practical ecclesiology of the primitive church (when Jewish-Gentile relations were particularly problematic).1 It might appear, therefore, that, "The 'Lutheran Paul' has already been crucified and buried by New Testament scholars for some time, although there are still a few attempting to raise him from the dead."2 Because of the increased range of the NPP, including its popularization through publications by high-profile New Testament scholars, it is appropriate to review for contemporary Lutheran theology the gains and losses that come

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with this new "school" of New Testament studies. Only some aspects of this project can be carried out in this context. The analysis begins with a brief description of the NPP. Part two notes the most significant contributions for Lutheran theology. We conclude with observations concerning the shortcomings of the NPP. Chief among its shortcomings is its misapprehension of Luther, as well as, its failure to appreciate the theological trajectory that flows from his exegetical and hermeneutical insights.3 As more than one observer has noted, "The strength of the new perspective does not rest on the accuracy of its depiction of Luther."4 The New Perspective on Paul The exegetical and historical work that falls under the NPP designation represents a broad and complex spectrum of interests. Fortunately, the history of the NPP has been charted out in a number of easily accessible works, including some that are internet-based. 5 What follows is the briefest of summaries, highlighting the points that particularly challenge confessional Lutherans as articulated by the most prominent proponents of the NPP: Krister Stendahl, E.P Sanders,James Dunn, and N.T.Wright. Krister Stendahl The NPP is not really so "new,"6 hence the recent move of N.T. Wright to try out the label of the "Fresh Perspective on Paul."7 Articulate and persuasive advocacy for the NPP in its most recent dress dates from the 1960s. The Swedish Lutheran exegete Krister Stendahl s two famous articles ("Paul Among Jews and Gentiles" and "The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West")8 set the tone of the discussion by questioning the adequacy of Luther's Augustinian-influenced reading of Paul at several points. Front and center is the claim that justification, rather than representing the scopus of Paul's theology and the "criterion for the really true gospel . . . was hammered out by Paul for the very specific and limited purpose of defending the rights of Gentile converts to be full and genuine heirs to the promises of God to Israel."9 Other differences

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between Paul and Luther are drawn out by Stendahl. Let two examples suffice: i) Stendahl contrasts Paul's "robust" conscience with Luther's introspective guilt before God; 10 2) Stendahl plays off Paul's focus on the church and the Jewish people against Luther's focus on salvation of the individual.11 From Stendahl's perspective, the primary error of Luther, which led to all the others, was the way in which he re-contextualized Paul into the theological and anthropological categories of late medieval Germany 1 2 E.P Sanders In 1977, . P. Sanders published Paul and Palestinian Judaism, a book that has remained central in the NPP project. Sanders describes how New Testament scholarship, beginning with Friedrich Weber in the nineteenth century, increasingly portrayed Second Temple Judaism in terms of legalist works-righteousness, that is, the logical antithesis of Christianity 13 In Paul and Palestinian Judaism Sanders indicates how a misuse of rabbinic texts and an improper exegesis of the New Testament reinforced this persistent characterization of Judaism in Christian biblical theology. Sanders then offers another understanding of Second Temple Judaism, which he labels "covenantal nomism." Of primary importance here is the observation that God's gracious election of Israel establishes the covenant. The law is experienced as a gift of God (rather than a burden) that guides the people of Israel in its covenantal obligations while providing a means of atonement for transgressions.The law, therefore, has nothing to do with meriting salvation. It is, rather, a means of maintaining the elect status granted to Israel by God as structured by covenantal obligations. "Salvation is by grace but judgment is according to works; works are the 14 condition of remaining 'in', but they do not earn salvation." James Dunn James Dunn 1 5 and N.T.Wright are the most high-profile New Testament exegetes that have pushed the NPP further in the decades since Stendahl and Sanders' breakthrough studies. Dunn spelled out

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what was implicit in Sanders work: "The Judaism of what Sanders christened as 'covenantal nomism' can now be seen to preach good Protestant doctrine: that grace is always prior; that human effort is ever the response to divine initiative; that good works are the fruit and not the root of salvation."16 As Stephen Westerholm has astutely noted, while this characterization does save Judaism from explicit "legalism," post-Reformation concepts (nestled under the rubrics of "grace" and "works") are still imposed anachronistically upon Second Temple Judaism.17 Yet if one grants Dunn's pointthat Paul is not reacting to a religious ethos that is centered in "works righteousness"then what is Paul's post-Damascus problem with Judaism? The primary failing of first-century Judaism, according to Dunn, is not (the sixteenth-century's backward projection of) legalism and self-righteousness, but its exclusivity. Here Dunn's exegetical focus is on the phrase "works of the law" in Paul, which he understood primarily as signifying those laws that traditionally separated Jews from Gentiles, specifically the "boundary markers" of circumcision, as well as food and liturgical regulations. When Paul says that justification is by faith and not by "works of the law," his intent is to remove all cultural barriers that would restrict membership.18 N.T.Wright N.T.Wright shares Dunn's analysis that the problem with Judaism (from Paul's perspective) is its ethnocentrism. In his latest writing on the subject Wright notes that "the point of the covenant always was that God would bless the whole world through Abraham'family . . . the unfaithfulness of the Israelites is not their lack of belief. The point is that God has promised to bless the world through Israel, and Israel has been faithless to that commission!'19 Although Wright separates himself from the "old perspective" on Paul, a tradition that understands "legalism" and "self-righteousness" as problematic anthropological issues (such failings are not limited to "Judaism"), one wonders how the characterization of Israel as being fundamentally faithless to God by means of a narrow ethnocentric interpretation of the law, in the end, escapes the net cast by the term "legalism."20 In fact, such curvatus

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in se (self-absorption)whether experienced on the individual or collective level (for example, that of the late medieval Western church)is what Luther identified as the primary expression of the human bondage to sin. When one is turned in upon oneself, then even the good gifts of God (like the Torah, or episcopacy, or even the insights of the Reformation) can be so twisted that they function against God's intention. The fundamental theological problem that stands behind the presenting symptoms of "legalism" and "selfrighteousness" in the "old perspective" is idolatry. Idolatry confusing the creator with the creaturely creation (Rom 1:25)is the inevitable result of the alienation from God that sin effects. One might even posit that Luther appropriated this fundamentally Jewish concern about the dangers of idolatry from his close reading of Paul (for example, R o m 1:18-2:16). For Luther the only alternative to idolatry is the apprehension that through Christ one is justified by grace through faith. Justification, properly understood, therefore, is the litmus test of one's orthodoxy.21 Positive Contributions of the New Perspective Before turning to a criticism of the NPP's understanding of Luther, as well as, the Reformation tradition that flows from him, it is appropriate to acknowledge the positive contributions that have come with the multi-faceted work of the NPP. There are, of course, many details of exegesis that have been pushed forward in countless ways in the generation of scholarship on Paul since the 1960s. The most well known, no doubt, is the spirited debate over the meaning of pistis Christou (faith in Christ/the faithfulness of Christ).22 New Testament study is clearly both livelier and more precise because of such discussions. Secondly, the NPP has stimulated, in a variety of ways, new interests in the historical study of Luther.23 Yet, clearly, the most important benefit of the NPP has been a heightened awareness of the anti-Judaism that has long been endemic in certain strains of New Testament exegesis. The pejorative characterization of Judaism that has served as a foil for the construction of a supercessionist Christian theology has been exposed for what it is, a breach of the Eighth Commandment. The fact that post-holocaust German

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Lutheran New Testament scholars, among others, continued to perpetrate the stereotypes of the "legalist" and "self-righteous" Jew,24 revealing a stunning insensitivity to the complicity of Christian antiSemitism to the genocide that occurred in the historic home of Lutheranism, is cause for lament. Movement toward repentance for "a kind of Christian discourse that can be held partly responsible for Nazi genocide" 25 can be discerned. In 1994, for example, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) repudiated Luthers violent anti-Jewish invective and acknowledged the Lutheran theological tradition's complicity in anti-Semitism.26 The ELCA also encourages Lutheran-Jewish dialogue at various levels and has published guidelines to do so.27 Historically, those who were engaged by the NPP, particularly Krister Stendahl, took the lead in calling the question of both the explicit and implicit bigotry in characterizations of Judaism by Lutheran exegetes. The church should be deeply grateful for the leadership NPP scholars have provided the academy and the church in this area. Criticism of the New Perspective While both Dunn and Wright bristle under what they consider to be an unfair characterization of their positions by critics,28 one might question how apt are their characterizations of Lutheranism's "old perspective" on Paul, especially those ofWright. 29 My criticism of the NPP in this article does not lie with its attempt to recover a more historically accurate portrayal of Second Temple Judaism, but rather with its characterizations of Luther and subsequent Lutheran theology in doing so, especially the NPP s understanding of law and justification. The scholars who have moved the NPP forward are, largely, New Testament exegetes, many of the Reformed tradition, who trace their theological heritage to Calvin rather than Luther.30 They are not church historians, Reformation specialists, or particularly wellversed in contemporary Lutheran theology. For whatever actual reasons, the fact that "Lutheran" has become a pejorative term in NPP scholarship indicates an alienation from the contemporary expression of Lutheranism as a living and varied theological tradition.

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A clear counter-example to the NPP's caricature of Lutheran New Testament scholarship and theology may be found in Krister Stendahl who was an important and engaged participant in North American Lutheranism from the time of his arrival from Sweden in the 1950s until his death in 2008. In 1984 he left Harvard Divinity School to become bishop of the Stockholm diocese of the Church of Sweden, a position he held for four years.Though Stendahl critiqued Luther's understanding of Paul, he was careful not to characterize the confessional movement within the wider church catholic that he served as a priest and bishopLutheranismin negative terms. It is time that others in the NPP followed Stendahl's lead in this regard. Other vocabulary than "Lutheran" should be found to label whatever one considers to be the most unfortunate legacies of the sixteenthcentury Reformation. The Law: Law and Gospel Perhaps the most misunderstood term in Lutheran theology within the NPP is "Law."31 Representative is Wright's characterization of "the Lutheran scheme whereby the law is a bad thing abolished in Christ."32 Rather than simply being a "bad thing," "Law" in Lutheran theology, in fact, has points of overlap with Paul's multivalent (and Jewish) understanding of "Law,"33 while it is also to be distinguished from it in a variety of ways. It should be noted, at the outset, that the "Law" has always been a lively and much disputed topic among Lutherans since the sixteenth century. The Lutheran theological tradition will, for example, speak of various "uses" (usus) of the law. Luther spoke of two uses,34 Melanchthon introduced a third.35 The Lutheran Orthodox could speak of four.36 The modern Lutheran theological tradition has not been in agreement as to what degree Melanchthon's innovation in particular preserves or distorts Luther's understanding of justification.37 Though there exists within contemporary Lutheranism various schools of thought regarding the "number" of the uses of the law and the best way to describe them, the terminology used by all Lutherans (usus), however, intends to articulate God's use of the law, as opposed to a human employment

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of it. As David Lose puts it, "[One recognizes] the law . . . not simply from what it says (content) but from what it does (function)."38 The impetus for this language comes from Luther's understanding of scriptural hermeneutics based in a carefully wrought distinction between law and gospel.39 Timothy Wengert describes this distinction in the following terms:
Not an excuse to separate Old and New Testaments, as some caricature it, this distinction, first developed by Luther in his early biblical lectures and refined between 1518-1521 at the height of his case with Rome, has first and foremost to do with the effect of the biblical text on the hearer, that is, its use by God God speaks a word that kills called law, and a word that makes alive called gospel 40

Wengert here describes the second or "theological" use of the law (usus theologicus) and its dialectical relationship with the gospel. It is to be distinguished from the first or "civil" or "political" use of the law (usus pohticus) that is understood by Lutherans to order human community (and creation). One might observe that this first use of the law is similar in some respects to Torah ("law" in Jewish discourse) understood as God's gift to Israel. That is, the usus pohticus outlines human responsibilities archetypically represented by the two tables of the Ten Commandments. The first table describes obligations in one's relationship to God; the second table delimits commandments regarding one's relations with neighbors. The Ten Commandments, in fact, are central to the Lutheran catechetical tradition, beginning with Luther's own small and large catechisms.41 At least in my knowledge of the NPP literature, however, the political use of the law is never referred to in discussions of the "Lutheran" understanding of law even though it is more similar, in some respects, to the Torah understood as a revelation of God's will expressed in commandments (mitzvot) by which individuals are to regulate their lives in interacting with one another and with God. The political use of the law, in Lutheranism as in Judaism, is experienced as a gift by a gracious and involved God to instruct humans in their responsibilities, especially to one another and creation.42 Transformed by faith, the law can even be a source of joy.43

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The focus of the NPP is, however, not on the political use but on the "theological" use of the law in Lutheranism. Unfortunately, more often than not the law in its usus theologicus is simply misunderstood in the NPP, for example, as a "bad thing abolished by Christ." As noted above, in its theological use (based in Luther's understanding of R o m 3:20), law is always paired dialectically with gospel. Both together are understood as the Word of God. The law, in other words is not a "bad" thing but the active, lively Word of God that drives one to Christ. The lawafter the fallreveals and judges human sin;44 the gospel reminds one of God's promises. Thus, as Wengert notes, it is not as though law is simply to be equated with Israel and the Old Testament and gospel is to be equated with Christianity and the New Testament. Rather, God's judgment on sin and God's promise of mercy are held together, the one not existing without the other. What is "bad" in the usus theologicus is not the law (of God), but the persistent sinfulness of humanity. Law and Gospel and the Theology of the Cross In the Lutheran tradition, the cross uniquely epitomizes the dialectical relationship between law and gospel. That is, the cross is, simultaneously, an attack upon sin and the revelation of the depth of God's mercy Reflection on the revelation of God on the cross led Luther to formulate what the tradition has since come to call "the Theology of the Cross."45 First articulated in the Heildelberg Disputation of 1518 (LW 31:39-50), it is the impetus for Luther's penchant for paradox, for example, that the revealed God is hidden on the cross. Here Luther sees himself following Paul, especially as expressed in the Corinthian correspondence (1 Cor 2; 2 Cor 10-11) and in Gal (3H3).46 In Luther's understanding there are only two kinds of theologian; one is either a theologian of the cross or a theologian of glory.47 The former believes in the tender-heartedness of God, all experiences to the contrary; the latter's piety is based on the belief that suffering is an evil avoided by those who merit the grace of a benevolent God. The first relies on the mercy of God; the second on one's own righteousness and/or one's good fortune.The former perceives God

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at work in the profanity of the world; the later seeks God in holiness. "A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil," says Luther, "a theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is" (Thesis 21). At the heart of the Lutheran suspicion of self-righteousness, then, is not a medieval obsession with guilt and the introspective conscience, but the experience of the cross of Christ.48 The connection between the cross (as revelatory of both God's wrath against sin as well as God s mercy) and Luther's understanding of the theological use of the law should be clear. It should also be understood, however, that from Luther's perspective the dialectical tension between law and gospel, as well as all deeply felt issues of theodicy that real human suffering surfaces, will only be resolved on the day of Christ. Until then the "already/not yet" tension that results from an inaugurated eschatology is experienced by the Christian, as Luther world say, in terms of the paradox simul iustus et peccatorone is both fully justified and fully a sinner before God.49 Given that all of this (i.e., the law/gospel dialectic, its relationship to the Theology of the Cross, the acknowledgement of God's alien and proper work) is the context of Luther's understanding of the theological use of the law, to characterize it as "a bad thing abolished in Christ" falls somewhat short of the descriptive mark. Faith Luther's understanding of faithseen from within a theological world in which terms such as law and gospel seek to describe the sinner's actual experience of the liberating power of God's Wordis, then, something rather different than it is often portrayed in the NPP.This essay will return to this issue below when the focus is on justification. It needs to be said here, however, that faith is not so much about granting cognitive assent to soteriological propositions (e.g., about the atonement) but is rather to be understood as trust in God's promise to be a God of mercy even when one experiences only suffering and the cross. Gerhard Forde observed that many crucial biblical texts that factored in Luther's understanding of the Theology of the Cross came from the Old Testament.50 That is, no doubt, because Luther,

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though known in the NPP for his New Testament exegesis, focused his exegetical labors largely on Old Testament texts.51 Through his close reading of the entire Bible, Luther perceived that there are clearly people of faith in both testaments. For Luther, the dynamic dialectic of law and gospel is continuous across the grand sweep of the history of God with fallen humanity.52 Indeed, Luther recognized as early as Genesis 3:15 a clear statement of what has been called the protoevangehum. Even as Adam and Eve begin to suffer the punishment for their sin (the verdict of death) and are banished from the immediate presence of God, they are nourished by the promise of the gospel. That is, as they leave the garden of Eden they too experience faith, understood as a newfound trust in the goodness of God, a trust that comes in response to God's promise that Eve's offspring will bruise the head of the serpent, Satan.53 One of Luther's favorite canonical paraphrases of faith is found at Hebrews 11 :i. He never tires of quoting it: "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Luther applies it with equal measure to characters in the Old Testament narrative, to those in the New, as well as to his own contemporaries. In commenting on one of Jacob's setbacks at the end of Genesis 27, Luther characteristically notes:
This, then, is one of the wonderful examples of the divine government by which God shows that He requires confidence in His Word and promises, even if the opposite of what is contained in the promise happens He does so in order that we may accustom ourselves to trust in God in things that are absent and are placed out of our sight For Jacob has the promised blessing, but he has it in accordance with faith, which is a matter of things that are hoped for, not of things that are visible (Heb 11 1) Thus I believe that God, who promises, loves me, has regard for me, cares for me, and will hear me, and this I regard as something present and at hand, although it is not visible Therefore Jacob lives in faith alone He is wretchedly cast out, is lonely and destitute, and has nothing in his hand but a staff and a morsel of bread in a little sack This is the beginning of the blessing, for what is begun through faith is not yet in one's possession but is hoped for 54

One might suggest that such an understanding of faith has significant areas of overlap with Paul's understanding of pistis (1 Cor 13:12; 2 Cor 4:8, 5:1-7; R o m 8:24-5). Mark Seifrid, for instance, has argued

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that Luther and Paul share a similar understanding of the relationship between God's promise and the response of faith. For both, the divine word of promise not only defines faith, it creates it.55 Luther and the jews Given Luther's sense that the law/gospel dynamic characterizes the Word of God from the point of the fall of Adam forward, as well as his understanding of the universality of faith across both Testaments, his relationship to Judaism is complex.56 As most Christian exegetes of his period, Luther distinguished between Israel before the Incarnation (of the pre-existent Christ) from the Judaism that persisted after the revelation of God in Christ crucified and risen.57 Before Christ incarnate there were always faithful Jews, those who believed in the promises of God. Abraham, of course, establishes the archetype of such faith for Luther (as well as Paul).58 After the historical Jesus, faith, though it is contiguous with the faith of Abraham (or even that of Adam/Eve or Jacob), also changes in that the revelation of Christ crucified and risen provides an objective, incarnate center.59 Rabbinic Judaism, of course, does not acknowledge what Luther understood to be God's unique and necessary offer of forgiveness in the Christ event and therefore, according to Luther, cannot experience the benefits of Christ's salvine work as articulated by the doctrine ofjustification. But neither would the "papists," "Turks," or "sectarians" (i.e., those of the radical Reformation). Luther's polemic was unleashed on all those who did not hold to an understanding of the gospel in terms of the passive righteousness found in Christ.60 Jews, in particular, did not escape his ire. However, Luther's theological focus was broader than Judaism. What Luther saw as symptomatic of rabbinic Judaism (legalism and self-righteousness) was not a problem with Judaism, per se. Rather, it is a problem of the sinful self. The religious instincts of the old Adam and Eve lead to legalism and self-righteousness. The world is divided between theologians of glory and theologians of the cross. The division is not static. All Christians, even Lutherans who have been taught the doctrine of justification, because of the

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assault of sin, confuse the active righteousness of the law with the passive righteousness granted by Christ. The only remedy from such confusion is to be confronted daily by the Word of God encountered as both law and gospel. The devil, that great trickster, was a cunning adversary in Luther's eyes precisely because he enjoyed exploiting the good gifts of Godlike the Torah, or the church catholic, or the insights of the Reformation, or even one's conscienceagainst God's original intent for such things. The desires of theflesh(concupiscentia) and particularly its idolatrous projections that constantly replace God the Creator with creaturely images of God were understood by Luther as part-and-parcel of the human condition. Such captivity to the epistemology of the old humanity can only be broken by a continual preaching that makes actual the victory of Christ over sin and death on the cross for the hearer. Given the vulnerability of Jews in Reformation Europe and beyond, they suffered most from Luther's apocalyptic polemic against what he construed were the enemies of the gospel.61 Luther was clearly trapped by the biases and prejudices of his era. He, too, by means of his inability to discern the presence of GodChrist crucifiedin the "other," unwittingly became a theologian of glory, especially in his later writings against the Jews. Nobody's righteousnessa theologian of the cross might remind those who come after Luthershould come at anyone else's expense.The price, the death of God's own Son, has already been too high. The Moral and Ceremonial Law In the NPP discussions on the role of the law m Paul, Dunn's interpretation of the expression works of the law, as noted above, has been influential. The phrase occurs at Galatians 2:16; 3:2, 5, 10, 12; and Romans 3127.The locus classicus is Galatians 2:16:
yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in [or faithfulness of] Jesus Christ And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in [or the faithfulness of] Christ, and not by doing the "works of the law," because no one will be justified by the works of the law [NRSV]

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Many in the NPP have followed Dunn's suggestion that by works of the law Paul is speaking specifically of what he calls boundary markers, that is, those things that most clearly set the people of Israel apart from Gentilescircumcision, dietary and liturgical regulations. In his most recent responses to criticism that he has unduly restricted the Mosaic code to ritual or the ceremonial law, Dunn has been at pains to note that he does "not want to narrow 'the works of the law' to boundary issues."62 Dunn's earlier expressions were less careful. In the past he has suggested that "the works of the law which [Paul] has in mind belong to what has often been called the ritual or ceremonial law."63 Similarly, such rituals (circumcision, dietary regulations, sabbath observance), "functioned as badges of covenant membership." 64 One gets the sense that the purpose of so limiting works of the law to boundary markers or "badges of covenant membership" is that Paul might be spared in the NPP from criticizing the law too deeply. Yet, as has been pointed out, such a distinction (Torah vs. badges of covenant membership) seems to have been influenced by the classic Christian taxonomy that distinguishes between the moral and ceremonial law of Israel.65 In this Christian scheme, the essence of the law is understood in terms of its moral commandments epitomized by the Decalogue. The ritual aspects of the law then become secondary, reduced to ceremony without religious or moral function. From a traditional Jewish perspective, however, such a division of the law is highly problematic since all mitzvot are understood as divine revelation that one is obligated to observe.66 Here Luther may, oddly, be closer to traditional Jewish understandings of Sinaitic law than that found in the New Perspective.67 Luther's point is simply that the post-Damascus Paul came to understand that though the law is holy and good it does not justify one before God. Only faith in what has been won by the cross of Christ is able to do so. If the problem of humanity is that it is captive to sin and death, then the answer to that is not the law, but trust in what God has wrought for humanity through Christ crucified and risen. Here, Luther assumes, he is following Paul's exegetical logic in Galatians, which he may well be doing.

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Law (Torah/nomos) as Scripture The discussion concerning Pauls understanding of law in the NPP is largely focused on the social function of law, that is, the (ceremonial) law that separates Jews and Gentiles. Law (nomos) in Pauls discourse, however, as all readers of the New Testament are aware, can also refer to Scripture, particularly the Pentateuch (Rom 3:19a, 3:21b; 1 Cor 9:8, 9; 14:21; Gal 3:10). Gods "mscnpturated" Word is also the law (Torah/nomos) of God. It has long been proposed that one of Paul's scriptural proof texts that supported his early persecution of the church was Deuteronomy 2i:22-23 68 It seemed evident to the pre-Damascus Paul that Jesus, who was "hung on a tree," could not be the Messiah since such a death fell under the curse of the law. To proclaim the Crucified One to be the Messiah of Israel was blasphemy. According to the Torah, Jesus was cursed not "The Beloved One of God" (Mark 1:11; Col 1:13). After Damascus, however, Paul expresses a radically different understanding of God's intent in the text of Deuteronomy 21. It still refers to Jesus. The curse of the law still adheres. Yet, after Damascus, the salvific subtext "for us" is revealed to Paul. Note the flow of Galatians 3:10-13:
For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the things written in the book of the law" [Deut 27 26] Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for "The one who is righteous will live by faith " [Hab 2 4] But the law does not rest on faith, on the contrary, "Whoever does the works of the law will live by t h e m " [Lev 18 5] Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for usfor it is written, "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree" [Deut 21 23]

In this text, which displays a remarkable mtertextuahty with a variety of Old Testament passages (Deut 27:26; 21:23; Hab 2:4; Lev 18:5), the relationship of the two citations from Deuteronomy are particularly important. By the first, Paul notes that the curse of the law falls on those who do not obey "all the things written." It is a curse that falls, apparently, on all who choose to observe the Mosaic law, Jews and Gentiles alike. Through the second citation from Deuteronomy, linked by means of the Stichwort "curse" (katara;

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epikataratos) to the first, Paul flatly states that Christ too was cursed by the law in the event of the crucifixion. Yet rather than reading this text as beforeto prove the blasphemous nature of the early church's kerygmaPaul discerns salvific intent in it. Christ became a curse "for us" in order that, as he says in the next verse, "in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith." This Galatians' text indicates that Paul's interpretation of Scripture, after Damascus, found a new focusChrist crucified and risen.The lawunderstood both as the Mosaic code and as Scripturewas radically re-interpreted after his experience with the risen Christ. Similarly, it might be argued, Luther's understanding of both Scripture and the law was radically transformed as he came to realize the meaning of the righteousness of God in terms of the justification of the sinner.69 Luther, as did Paul, came to understand how easy it was to abuse Scripture, to use it to serve one's own ends and against the intention of God. For Paul, his zealousness for the lawincluding the nomos "Scripture"had led him to become an enemy of God's Messiah by means of his persecution of the church. For Luther, his zealous pursuit for active righteousness before God led him to become an enemy of the God of grace, a God who gives passive righteousness freely in Christ. In both cases, Paul and Luther later came to understand that zeal to protect (i) the righteousness of God, (2) the righteousness of God's people, and (3) Holy Scripture, had led them astray It was a lesson neither would forget. For both exegetes, Scripture's revelation of the enormity of God's grace (viewed through Christ crucified and risen) as well as their experience of sin's ability to twist that grace into something like its polar opposite was the basis of their own scripture-based constructive attempts to describe the work and benefits of Christ. This they did in very different cultural worlds at very different times. For Paul, the application of this theological insight led to the redefinition of Israel to include,paradoxically, Gentiles. For Luther it led to the redefinition of the church from that constructed by dogma to that which, from the time of Adam and Eve, the living Word of God assembled. It was an assembly that experienced the Word as both law and gospel, through which justification occurred by means of responses of faith

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to the proclaimed promises of God. In particular this faith was characterized by the promise of God, localized by revelation in the Christ event, that sin and the deep-seated alienation that comes with it would not have the last word in the relationship between the Creator and that which has been created. In the creaturely newness that comes with justification, daily life (that earthy sector that had been made profane by the holiness claimed by to the Roman church) now became for Luther the site of the continual activity of God through one's service of neighbor. Justification Finally, a few words must be said about justification and the specter of Luther's introspective and guilty conscience that haunts many discussions of Luther's theology in the NPP. Again, in the critical area of justification, the NPP has a narrow understanding of what this technical term suggests both in Luther's theology and to those who have followed him. In the NPPjustification is often reduced to a thin understanding of forensic justification interpreted as the mere imputation of righteousness.70 That is, justification is thought to be a kind of legal fiction71 that declares a sinner righteous before God on the basis of a belief in the atoning significance of the death of Jesus. For those who have such righteousness imputed to them, life goes on largely as before (in antmomian Lutheranism72), though it may be that the recipients are marked by the removal of guilty feelings about wrong doing and/or claim the smug assurance of salvation understood as the escape of God's judgment at death. N.T. Wright sums up what is at stake for him in his battle against such a traditional understanding of justification:
the sigh of relief which is the characteristic Christian reaction to learning about justification by faith ("You mean I don't have to do anything? God loves me and accepts me as I am, just because Jesus died for me?") ought to give birth at once to a deeper realization down exactly the same line "You mean it isn't all about me after alP I'm not the center of the universe? It's all about God and his purposes?" The problem is that, throughout the history of the Western church, even where the first point has been enthusiastically embraced sometimes particularly where that has happenedthe second has been ignored

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And with that sometimes willful ignorance there has crept back into theology, even into good, no-nonsense, copper-bottomed Reformation theology, the snake's whisper that actually it is all about us, that "my relationship with God" and "my salvation" is the still point at the center of the universe. I am the hero in this play.73

Few Lutherans of any stripe, I think, would resonate with such a characterization of justification. Nor would they assent to Wright s understanding that salvation for Western Christians means simply going to heaven when you die.74 What a "good, no-nonsense, copper-bottomed Reformation theology" might be is anyone's guess given the fact that Luther's theology is grounded in the folly of the cross through which God upends all earthly wisdoma theology that in the end can only be articulated through dialectic and expressed in paradox. One might rather ask, "What is, then, the Lutheran understanding of justification if the cardboard character Wright and others in the NPP hold up is not it?" The truth is, among Lutherans, the nature of justification has like God's usus of the lawbeen much discussed and debated.75 Similar to the developments concerning the law introduced by Melanchthon (i.e., his articulation of the third use of the law), the tendency by some in the Lutheran tradition to follow Melanchthon's narrowing of the "metaphors for the essence of human salvation to a single one: forensic justification,"76 remains a talking point. But, clearly, even in the period of Lutheran Orthodoxy, when the metaphor of forensic justification dominated the discussions of soteriology, there was never a question that it could occur without the accompanying good works. In Lutheran Scholasticism, forensic justification does not mean that sanctification or regeneration or conversion or renovation or good works77fruits of the efficacy of the Word effected by the Holy Spiritare somehow out of the theological picture. Clearly in Lutheran Pietism, a movement that flowed out of seventeenth-century Orthodoxy, sanctification and regeneration were major foci of concern. The notion that forensic justification somehow gives license to rationalize the behavior of the old Adam while it encourages antinomianism is simply a misreading of the Lutheran theological tradition, from Melanchthon forward. Given Paul's defense of the grace of God against his

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distracters' claims of antmomianism in Romans 5:19-6:2, one is tempted to say, from Paul forward. The NPP, in fact, seems to have been little touched by the refinements in the understanding of Reformation history and theology that have come with the Luther Renaissance.78 Beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century and moving through the twentieth, this ad fontes movement recovered Luther's own writings after centuries of neglect. What has developed in response to this rediscovery might even be called a New Perspective on Luther.79 Based in historical-critical research, the Luther Renaissance recovered a Luther that moved beyond the post-Reformation codifications of Orthodox Lutheranism (that had become largely misunderstood) to a new appreciation for the depth and complexity of Luther's own exegetical and hermeneutical insights. One of the results of this movement "back to Luther" is that a more full-bellied understanding of justification has been recovered, one that incorporates what traditionally has been the dogmatic domain of sanctification. Oswald Bayer's Living by Faith Justification and Sanctification (1984), exemplifies this trend. In remarking on Luther's 1539 work, On the Councils and the Church, Bayer notes:
in reference to this work, we face the question of the relationship between justification and sanctification Luther himself did not raise this question, since for him justification by faith alone meant that everything was said and done, living by faith is already the new life When, nevertheless, Luther speaks about "sanctification" he simply talks about justification Justification and sanctification are not for him two separate acts that we can distinguish, as though sanctification follows after justification, and has to do so In talking about sanctification Luther stresses the institutional side of the event of justification In keeping with the first and second tables of the Decalogue he differentiates the spiritual and the secular "regime and government" of God, the church belonging both to the spiritual realm and the secular just as well 8o

Alongside of recovering a fuller sense of what justification signifies for Luther stands also the new Finnish interpretation of Luther based in the work ofTuomo Mannermaa. 8l This school finds in the Eastern Orthodox notion of theosis a helpful analogy for understanding justification in Luther. Whatever one thinks of the Finnish school in general,82 it is further evidence of how twentieth-century scholars

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determined that justification in Luther inevitably involves the active transformation of the participant into something newly created by God.83 Such a new perspective on Luther should put to rest the old dichotomy often drawn in the NPP between the participatory Christology of Paul and the Lutheran forensic understanding of justification/imputation. 84 Further, as Bayer noted above, there is also an "institutional side of the event of justification." The church is also central in Luther's understanding of justification. Such an observation should put to rest another old saw that justification is merely about the individual's salvation in Luther, representing a narrowing of Paul's eschatological vision that sees God at work in the world among Jews and Gentiles collectively as "peoples."85 Justification, rightly understood, is a mark of the church, the communion of saints. Justification, then, is for Luther something altogether different than the way it is portrayed in most NPP descriptions. It signals a new creation by the effective or performative Word of God.86 It is not somehow divorced from the activity of the Holy Spirit.87 At one level it does address concerns and real lives of individuals (how could it not?) But justification, for Luther, is also experienced within the wider eschatological movement towards the renewal of creation effected by the Word.88 This inaugurated eschatology involves the church. There is no justification without the means of grace. There is no means of grace without the church and the gospel of Jesus Christ it proclaims in Word and Sacrament. Both the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper are central, for Luther, to the church's proclamation of the in-breaking Kingdom of God. Baptism is, in fact, a rite that spells the death for the individual and the rebirth of one justified in Christ. In the Eucharist, which is both the assembly's celebration of the real presence of Christ and a participation in it, Christ is found precisely where he has promised to be, in the midst of the assembly that is marked by its common meal. The body of Christ, the church, is no empty metaphor for Luther. It exists, not for its own self-justification, but that it might serve the world in the name and through the ministry of Christ crucified and risen by means of the priesthood of all believers.

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Introspective Conscience? Since the appearance of Stendahl's "The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West" a generation ago, the Lutheran understanding of justification has been directly linked to a reading of Luther s own religious experience that highlights a preoccupation with guilt.89 It is, in particular, Luther's understanding of the law (as that which always accuses) that is held responsible for his anguished and terrified conscience. Given this perspective, Stendahl addresses a primary hermeneutical question as to the universal applicability of Luther's understanding of the law:
[One might question] the need for a sense of failure under law and sin as the waythe only way, as it is sometimes suggestedto experience the reality of salvation through Christ What are we to make of it when it is suggested that the chief role of the law is to accuses uslex semper accust as they said in the 16th century ? Did Paul think the only way to become a good Christian was out of frustration and guilt?90

Concurrent with Stendahl's critique of Luther was the success of Erik H. Enkson's Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (1958),published in the heyday of North America's infatuation with Freudian psychology In this work, Erikson focuses on Luther's ''identity crisis" that was marked by "neurotic suffering . . . obsessive scrupulosity, moral sadism, and a preoccupation with dirtying and infectious thoughts," not to mention depression, melancholy and a host of other symptoms of a deeply disturbed psyche brought on by "Luther's lifelong burden of excessive guilt."91 According to Erikson, Luther struggled with these characterological issues and the identity crisis they eventuated. The creative solution won at great personal cost that finally resolved the inner turmoil is what Luther came to call justification. As Erikson notes, "Few men before him gave more genuine expression to those experiences which are on the borderline between the psychological and the theological than Luther."92 I have my suspicions that the psychological readings of Luther found in Erikson and Stendahl may have more to do with their individual experiences of truncated Lutheran pietism than with careful readings of Luther. Yet, whatever the origins, their characterizations of Luther's introspective conscience and feelings of

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guilt have continued to influence the more popular understandings of Luther's theology that circulate in much of the secondary literature.93 The obvious question that Erikson's analysis raises, of course, is: "Why should the psychological pathology of a medieval monk provide the basis for a healthy modern individual's experience of God?" The question that emerges out of Stendahl's more circumspect critique is more subtle: "What if I don't feel guilty before God? Does God expect one to manufacture feelings of guilt in order to be justified?"The obvious response to such implied questions is: "It is time we moved beyond Luther and his unique theological paradigm based on what we now know was a damaged and rather peculiarly introspective medieval conscience." The deep irony here is that Luther, who is held up as the exemplar of the introspective conscience in the NPP, was after his theological breakthrough deeply suspicious of what one might call religious feelings. The last place one should go for evidence of either one's judgment or one's justification before God is to one's own psyche. The answer does not lie within. As a theologian of the cross, Luther understood well that suffering and acute feelings of alienation from the goodness of God as well as doubt in the mercy of God belie the reality of God's love. The dynamic of law and gospelGod's alien and proper workmakes any easy correspondence between one's experience of God and the truth about God simply impossible. An understanding of justification that reduces it to a quieting of the conscience cannot be laid on Luther's shoulders.94 Actually, as Heiko Oberman suggests, "It is precisely this conventional, conscience-oriented morality that man's innermost self struggles to fulfill, and that Luther, to the horror of all well-meaning, decent Christians, undermined. The issue is not morality or immorality, it is God and the Devil."95 Conclusion The NPP, an enterprise made up of largely New Testament scholars, has brought significant gains in our exegetical understanding of New Testaments texts on the basis of its historical-critical revision of the theological character of Second Temple Judaism. It has called

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the question, in a way that cannot and should not be ignored, of the horrific legacy of anti-Judaism in the biblical theologies that trace themselves back to the exegetical and hermeneutical insights of Luther.Yet, it must also be asked,To what extent do the majority of NPP practitioners actually have a knowledge of Luther's complex dialectical theology or a feel for the variegated confessional tradition that goes by the rubric Lutheranism? It is possible, of course, to chose isolated statements from Luther and Melanchthon or the long period of Lutheran Orthodoxy that followed, without much concern for situational context or issues of historical development, and construct a caricature of Lutheranism's understanding of law or justification. Similarly, it is possible to identify more recent tradents of Lutheranism who exhibit a profound insensitivity to the suffering ofJews that, in part, is due to an unreflective Christian supercessionism. Yet, at least for this Lutheran, when I read such NPP characterizations of Lutheranism or the "old perspective," I do not recognize them as adequate, even for paraphrases. Often, the proposed alternatives to the Lutheran position on any number of issues seem more Lutheran than what they presumably critique.96 The law in Lutheranism is more than "a bad thing" terminated in Christ. The lex semper accust of the Reformation is not about guilt or about the search for a gracious God. It is about how God approaches the world, from beyond itself, both to attack sin experienced archetypically as idolatry and stunningly to offer it the grace of reconciliation experienced as new creation. Justification is a more full-bellied concept than the descriptors forensic or imputed suggests to most people. Its focus is not about little me and my guilt but the restoration of a creation alienated from its Creator through deep-seated and often hidden sinfulness.The church, the body of Christ in the world, is anything but marginal in this picture but is indeed the institutional side of justification, experienced as participation in Christ for service to the world. As apparently all recognize, the time has come to move beyond the New Perspective on Paul to something like a Fresh Perspective.97 One of the recognizable virtues of such a development in New Testament studies, I suggest, will be the absence of the rubric "The Lutheran Interpretation of Paul" that functions as a foil for a more

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correct and enduring hermeneutic. Given a wider knowledge of the NPP's shortcomings in its description of the Lutheran understanding of law and justification as outlined above and easily available elsewhere in more sophisticated form, one might hope that the days, in which the pejorative understanding of Lutheran in the discussions that swirl around the designator New Perspective on Paul, are limited.

NOTES
i. This is a paraphrase of N.T.Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 119. Wright has responded to criticism of this view in T. Wright, Justification. God's Plan and Paul's Vision (Downers Grove: IVP, 2009), 132. 2. David A. Brondos,"Did Paul Get Luther Right?" Dialog 46:1 (2007), 24. See the response by Risto Saarinen,"How Luther Got Paul Right," Dialog 46 2 (2007), 170-73. 3 See the similar approach of Wilfried Harle, "Rethinking Paul and Luther," Lutheran Quarterly 22 (2006), 303-17. 4 Timothy George, "Modernizing Luther, Domesticating Paul Another Perspective," in The Paradoxes of Paul, vol. 2 of Justification and Variegated Nomism, ed D. A. Carson, Peter T. O'Brien, and Mark A. Seifnd (Grand Rapids' Baker, 2004), 442. 5 The literature is vast. The descriptions and analyses of Stephen Westerholm, I believe, are particularly helpful See his Perspectives Old and New on Paul. The "Lutheran" Paul and His Critics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004); and " T h e ' N e w Perspective' at Twenty-Five," in The Paradoxes of Paul, vol. 2 of Justification and Variegated Nomism, 1-38. See also The Paul Page (online at http://www.thepaulpage.com), maintained by Mark M. Mattison 6 Various early twentieth century Jewish and Christian precursors are often cited, including W Wrede, A. Schweitzer, G. E Moore, H. Loewe, R.T. Herford, S. Schechter, C. Montefiore, A. Buchler, A. Marmorstein, J. Z. Lauterbach, L Fmkelstein, and H.-J. Schoeps. C. Marvin Pate, The Reverse of the Curse: Paul, Wisdom, and the Law (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 408, makes the claim that the N P P is "but an old view with a 'face lift,' namely, the espousal of the tertiary usage of the law that was formulated by such theologians as Melanchthon and Calvin." 7.
2005).

See, for example, N.T.Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress,

8. These articles from the early 1960s are published together in Krister Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976). 9. K. Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles, 2 10. Mickey L. Mattox, "Martin Luther's Reception of Paul," in A Companion to Paul in the Reformation, ed. R.Ward Holder (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 118, observes that Luther was quite aware of the "robust" righteousness of Paul's conscience before his conversion/call. 11. See further N.T. Wright, Justification, 10, 23. 12 Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles, 85-86 13 E.P Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1977), 57.

A LUTHERAN RESPONSE TO THE NEW PERSPECTIVE ON PAUL 287 14. E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 544. 15. Dunn's most recent statement of his views can be found in the introductory essay to a volume that collects his most important contributions on this issue: James D. G. Dunn, "The New Perspective:Whence,What and Whither?" chap 1 in The New Perspective on Paul Collected Essays (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 1-88. 16. J. Dunn, "The Justice of God. A Renewed Perspective on Justification by Faith (1991)," in The New Perspective on Paul Collected Essays, 193. 17. See Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul, 443-44. 18. See also N.T. Wright,Justification, 116-17. 19. N.T. Wright, Justification, 6j, responding to John Piper, The Future of Justification. A Response to NT Wright (Wheaton: Crossways, 2007). 20. Note the criticism of Caroline Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs. A Study of Kinship and Ethnicity in the Letters of Paul (New York: Oxford, 2007), 8: "The familiar portrait of Ioudaioi as arrogant, exclusive, and limited by ethnic identities surfaces here in contrast to universalizing Christianity which insists that God's grace cannot be limited." 21. See Luther's Works (hereafter LW followed by volume and page numb er), Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann, ed. (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1955-1986), 26:395. 22. One need only check any recent commentary on Galatians, Philippians, or R o mans where this phrase occurs (Gal 2: 16, 20; 3.22; Phil 3:9; R o m 3122,26; Eph 3:12) to gam access to the issues at stake in the interpretation of this Greek genitive construction. For a summary, see James D.G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids. Eerdmans), 379-85. 23. See, e.g., Mickey L. Mattox, "Martin Luther's Reception of Paul," 97; Risto Saarmen, "The Pauline Luther and the Law: Lutheran Theology Reengages the Study of Paul," Pro Ecclesia 25:1 (2006), 64-86. 24. See the scathing criticism of Bultmann, Kasemann, and Hamerton-Kelly in Daniel Boyarm, A Radical Jew. Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 209-19, especially 213. 25. The characterization is Boyarm's, A Radical Jew, 219. 26. The statement may be found at http://www2.elca.org/ecumen1cal/1nterrel1g10us/ jewish/declaration.html. 27. The guidelines are available at http//www2.elca.org/ecumen1cal/mterrehg10us/ j ewish/ guidelines. html. 28. N.T. Wright, Justification, 21, 94. Dunn has responded to the characterization that he has repudiated the doctrine ofjustification under the rubric of "Anti-Lutheran?" in "The N e w Perspective on Paul: Whence, What and Wither?" 17-22. 29. Dunn is more nuanced m his criticism of "Lutheramsm." See "The N e w Perspective on Paul: Whence, What, and Wither," 18 (footnote 76). 30. N.T.Wright clearly expresses his preference for Calvin over Luther (e.g.,Justification, 72-73). Dunn acknowledges the shaping influence of Calvin and his Scottish Presbyterian heritage ("The New Perspective on Paul: When, What and Wither," 18). See Wright's evaluation of Lutheramsm in "New Perspectives on Paul," Justification in Perspective Historical Developments and Contemporary Challenges, ed. Bruce L. McCormack (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), 263. 31. For a general introduction to various understandings of Law in medieval Catholicism, Luther, Calvin, and the anabaptist tradition, see Randal C. Zachman, "What do Theologians Mean by Law?" Word & World 21:3 (2001), 235-42.

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32 N T Wright, Justification, 244, cf 246 33 The meaning of the term "law" (nomos) in Paul can refer to (1) the Sinaitic law or more generally to the revealed will of God (halakah), (2) the Pentateuch in particular or Scripture (in general), (3) more general principles or statutes or forces or authorities For fuller discussion, see Michael Winger, By What Law? The Meaning of Nomos in the Letters of Paul (Atlanta Scholars Press, 1992) 34 O n the two uses of the Law see, e g , LW 26 308-09 35 See the discussion m Timothy J Wengert, Law and Gospel Philip Melanchthon's Debate with John Agricola ofEisleben over Poetitentia (Grand Rapids 1997), 177-210 36 The Lutheran Orthodox could speak of the political, the elenchtical, the pedagogic, and the didactic use of the Law See Heinrich Schmid, The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 3rd ed reprint, ed Charles A Hay and Henry E Jacobs (Minneapolis Augsburg, 1961), 515-16 37 For a historical review that is positively disposed to the third use of the Law, see Scott R Murray, Law, Life, and the Living God The Third Use of the Law in Modern American Lutheranism (Saint Louis Concordia, 2002) A critique of the third use may be found in Steven D Paulson, "Law and the Danger of Freedom," Word & World 21 3 (2001), 270-78 38 254 39 O n the origin of Luther's distinction between Law and Gospel in 2 Cor 3 6, see Gerhard Ebelmg, " T h e Letter and the Spirit," in Luther An Introduction to His Thought (Philadelphia Fortress, 1972), 93-124, also Gerhard Ebeling, " T h e Beginnings of Luther's Hermeneutics," Lutheran Quarterly 7 (1993), 129-158, 315-338, 415-468 40 Timothy J Wengert, " T h e Rhetorical Paul Philip Melanchthon's Interpretation of the Pauline Epistles," in A Companion to Paul in the Reformation, ed R Ward Holder (Leiden Brill, 2009), 139 Emphasis added 41 See Timothy J Wengert, "Diagnosing with the Ten Commandments," in Martin Luther's Catechisms Forming the Faith (Minneapolis Fortress, 2009), 25-44, also Wengert, " T h e Small Catechism A Simple Guide for the Book of Faith," in Lutheran Study Bible (Minneapolis Augsburg Fortress, 2009), 1530-35 Lohse, Martin Luther's Theology, 274, discusses the complex relationship between the Mosaic law and natural law m Luther O n this point, see also Wengert, "Diagnosing," 27-8 42 R Kolb, "Contemporary Lutheran Understandings of the Doctrine of Justification," m Justification What's at Stake in the Current Debates ed Mark Husbands and Daniel J Treier (Downers Grove InterVarsity, 2004), 163, also D Lose,"Martin Luther on Preaching the Law," 257 43 See Reinhard Hutter, Bound to Be Free Evangelical Catholic Engagements in Eccleswlogy, Ethics and Ecumenism (Grand Rapids Eerdmans, 2004), 11 44 The law of God, according to Luther, existed before the fall, but functioned differently than after sin and death entered the picture See Lohse, Martin Luther's Theology, 2 7 3 45 The literature is vast See Walter von Loewenich, Luther's Theology of the Cross, trans Herbert J A Bouman (Minneapolis Augsburg, 1976), Gerhard O Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross Reflections on Luther's Heidelberg Disputation, 1318 (Grand Rapids Eerdmans, 1997), Anna M Madsen, The Theology of the Cross in Historical Perspective (Eugene Pickwick 2007) David J Lose, "Martin Luther on Preaching the Law," Word & World 21 3 (2001),

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289

46 O n Paul see Charles B. Cousar, A Theology of the Cross The Death of Jesus in the Pauline Letters (Minneapolis Fortress, 1990) 47. See G. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross, 2. 48. See theses 23 and 24 of the Heidelberg Disputation. See also the discussion of Luther's distinction between Gods opus ahenum (alien work) and opus proprium (proper work) found in Timothy J.Wengert, '"Peace, Peace . . . Cross, Cross' Reflections on H o w Martin Luther Relates the Theology of the Cross to Suffering," Theology Today 59.2 (2002), 199-200. Given the central role of suffering in the theology of the cross, it has come under review and criticism withm contemporary Lutheramsm. See, e.g., MaritTrelstad, ed., Cross Examinations Readings on the Meaning of the Cross Today (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006) 49. See LW 26:8-9 O n the meaning of the simul, see R Kolb, "Contemporary Lutheran Understandings of the Doctrine of Justification," 172-73; W. Harle, "Rethinking Paul and Luther," 313-15. 50. G Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross, 8. 51. See the classic study by Heinrich Bornkamm, Luther and the Old Testament, trans. Eric W. Gritsch and R u t h C. Gritsch (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969) 52. James S. Preus, From Shadow to Promise Old Testament Interpretation from Augustine to theYoung Luther (Cambridge Havard University Press, 1969) traces Luther's understanding of "faith" m the Bible, including the Old Testament witness See especially 209-10. 53 Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis, LW 1 196-198 54. LW 5-183 55 Mark A. Seifrid, "Luther, Melanchthon and Paul on the Question of ImputationRecommendations on a Current Debate," m Justification What's at Stake in the Current Debates ed. Mark Husbands and Darnel J. Treier (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2004), 146. 56. For a review of the literature see Thomas Kaufmann, "Luther and the Jews," m Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Germany, ed. Dean Phillip Bell and Stephen G. Burnett (Brill: Leiden, 2006), 69-104 57. See, for example, LW 26 396. 58. O n Abraham as the archetype of faith m Luther see LW 26:239. O n the faith of the partnarchs see also p. 351 and 360 59 LW 26.239. 60. O n Luther's distinction between "passive" and "active" righteousness, see his introduction to the 1535 Commentary on Galatians, LW 26:8-9 R Kolb, "Contemporary Lutheran Understandings of the Doctrine of Justification," 162, paraphrases these terms thus. "'Active righteousness' designates the fulfilling of all the commands to action that make up God's design for human life 'Passive righteousness' refers to the human being's being what he or she was designed by the Creator to be in relationship to God. This relationship was never constituted as a reward for performance " 61. See Mark U. Edwards, Luther's Last Battles Politics and Polemics (Ithaca- Cornell University, 1983). Also, Heiko A Oberman, Luther Man Between God and the Devil, trans. Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 12, 67-74; Ken Sundet Jones, " T h e Apocalyptic Luther," Word & World 25 3 (2005), 308-16. 62. J Dunn, " T h e N e w Perspective on Paul: Whence, What and Wither?" 25-6 63. J. Dunn, " T h e N e w Perspective on Paul: Whence, What and Wither?" 105. 64. J. Dunn, " T h e N e w Perspective on Paul: Whence, What and Wither?" 99. 65. See Timothy George, "Modernizing Luther, Domesticating Paul," 457; also Kathy Ehrensperger and R.Ward Holder, ed , Reformation Readings of Romans (New York:

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& T Clark, 2008), 73-74, F M Zahl, "Mistakes of the N e w Perspective on Paul," Themehos 27 1 (Autumn 2001), 5-11 66 Emil L Fackenheim, What is Judaism? An Interpretation for the Present Age, (New York Summit, 1987), 137, notes in Judaism "a distinction between 'laws that, had they not been revealed would have to be invented,' and such 'against which Satan and the Gentiles argue' " Traditionally, the 613 mitzvot, contain both and are to be observed because of their divine origin See further, "'Moral' versus 'merely ceremonial' mitzvot?" in What is Judaism, 137-42 67 Luther's classic statement on this issue may be found at LW 26 122-23 68 See the discussion m R o y A Harnsville, Fracture The Cross as Irreconcilable in the Language and Thought of the Biblical Writers (Grand Rapids Eerdmans, 2006), 20-23, 45, 76, also M Hengel and A M Schwemer, Paul Between Damascus and Antwch, 99-101 See also R o y A Harnsville, "Fracture as the Meaning of the Cross," Lutheran Quarterly 22 (2008) 427-46 69 The classic description of his theological "breakthrough" is given by Luther in his Preface to Latin Writings, LW 34 335-37 For other descriptions see H Oberman, Luther Man Between God and the Devil, 153-54, Martin Lohrmann, "A Newly Discovered Report of Luther's Reformation Breakthrough from Johannes Bugenhagen's 1550 Jonah C o m mentary," Lutheran Quarterly 22 (2008), 324-30, Bernhard Lohse, Martins Luther's Theology, 85-95, and Mickey L Mattox, "Martin Luther's Reception of Paul," 95 70 O n the debate that is currently engaging sectors of the evangelical community, set Justification What's at Stake in the Current Debate, particularly the first two chapters by R o b e r t H Gundry, " T h e Nommputation of Christ's Righteousness," 11-45, and D A Carson, " T h e Vindication of Imputation O n Fields of Discourse and Semantic Fields," 46-78 71 O n the charge that justification is based in a "legal fiction," see Bruce L McCormack, "What's at Stake m Current Debates over Justification," m Justification What's at Stake in the Current Debates, 106-10, and Wilfried Harle, "Rethinking Paul and Luther," 304-05 72 The description of Wright m Justification, 33 73 N T Wright, Justification, 25 74 N T Wright, Justification, 10 75 For an overview with significant bibliographic references, see Robert Kolb, "Contemporary Lutheran Understanding of Justification," 153-76 76 Wengert, Law and Gospel, 179 O n Melanchthon's understanding of "forensic justification," see further pp 179-185 For a less technical discussion see Mark A Siefnd, "Luther, Melanchthon and Luther and Paul on the Question of Imputation," in Justification What's at Stake in the Current Debates, 137-52 77 See discussions in the compendium of Lutheran Orthodox, Heinrich Schmid, The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 441-49 78 For an overview of the development in Luther studies, see Bernhard Lohse, Martin Luther An Introduction to His Life and Work (Philadelphia Fortress, 1986), 199-235 79 See Mickey L Mattox, "Martin Luther's Reception of Paul," 99 80 Oswald Bayer, Living by Faith Justification and Sanctification, trans Geoffrey W Bromiley (Grand Rapids Eerdmans, 2003), 58-59, see also Gerhard Forde,"Justification and Sanctification," in vol 2 of Christian Dogmatics, ed Carl E Bratten and Richard W Jenson (Philadelphia Fortress, 1984), 425-44

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81. See Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, Union with Christ. The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998); Lars Aejmaelaeus and Antti Mustakalho, eds , The Nordic Paul. Finnish Approaches to Pauline Theology (New York: T & T Clark, 2008). 82. For a short critique see R. Kolb, "Contemporary Lutheran Undestandings of Justification," 155-56. 83. This is a classic refrain in Luther. One articulation of the mterconnectedness of faith and good works is found in his "Preface to R o m a n s " (.0^35:365-80). For commentary on this text in connection with N P P claims, see W. Harle, "Rethinking Paul and Luther," 312. 84. See R. Saarmen in " T h e Pauline Luther and the Law," 72; also W. Harle, " R e thinking Paul and Luther," 310.This development in 20th-century Luther studies and theology, however, is not generally recognized in the NPP. 85. See Stendahl's comments on R o m 9-11 in Paul among Jews and Gentiles, 4-5. One, however, does not need to make a choice between Paul's arguments that work on a more collective level (as in R o m 9-11) and those that speak from the perspective of the first person. 86. The stress on the efficacy of the Word in Lutheran theology has a natural point of contact with the emerging interest in speech-act theory. See the discussion in Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 63-75. 87. See N . T . Wright's characterization of "justification" m Justification, 10. 88. O n "faith" as an act of divine agency "parallel to that by which old creation had its beginnings," see S. Westerholm, "Sinai as Viewed from Damascus," 160-61; R. Kolb, "Contemporary Lutheran Understandings of the Doctrine of Justification," 169. 89. K. Stendahl, Paul among Jews and Gentiles, 79. 90. K. Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles, 38 91. E. Enkson, Young Man Luther, 16, 61, and 258. 92. E. Enkson, Young Man Luther, 256. Enkson is here describing Freud's analysis of Luther. 93. Risto Saarmen,"How Luther Got Paul Right," 172, suggests that the beginmngs of the modern "recovery" of Luther's "guilty and introspective conscience" is to be found in the "existential" response to the Catholic scholar Demfle's accusation of Luther's sexual sins in 1903. 94. See further, M. Seifrid, "Luther, Melanchthon and Paul on the Question of Imputation," 148-49; T.Wengert, " T h e Small Catechism: A Simple Guide for the Book of Faith," 1531. 95. H. Oberman, Luther. Man Between God and the Devil, 155. In a similar mode, see W Harle, "Rethinking Paul and Luther," 309-10 96. See R. Saarmen, " T h e Pauline Luther and the Law," 73, where he notes, " M y argument is that, in many respects, Luther is closer to the 'new perspective' than has been assumed." 97. See, for example, N.T. Wright, Justification, 175.

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