The Core Assumption
Meaning lives in Paul's letters read against an accurately described Second Temple Judaism whose pattern of religion was covenantal nomism, not merit-earning legalism.
The Four Assumptions
- Where meaning lives
- Meaning lives in Paul's letters read within the actual religion of Second Temple Judaism, accurately described, rather than within the Judaism imagined by later Christian polemic.
- What the text is
- The text is a set of occasional letters addressing a concrete crisis: whether Gentile believers must adopt Jewish identity markers to belong fully to God's people.
- Who may interpret
- The authorized interpreter is the historically informed reader who lets the Jewish sources describe Judaism in its own terms before reading Paul against them.
- What counts as a good reading
- A reading is adequate when its account of Judaism matches the primary sources and its account of Paul explains why his argument centers on circumcision, food laws, and Sabbaths.
Genealogy
This method arose in the 20th c period (Opened by E. P. Sanders in 1977 and named by James D. G. Dunn in 1982).
Key proponents: E. P. Sanders, James D. G. Dunn, N. T. Wright.
Key texts: Paul and Palestinian Judaism by E. P. Sanders; The Theology of Paul the Apostle by James D. G. Dunn; What Saint Paul Really Said by N. T. Wright.
The Procedure
These are the same steps The Workshop will walk you through.
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Describe Judaism from its own sources
Read the relevant Second Temple literature and summarize its pattern of religion before opening Paul.
Why this step matters: Sanders showed that the traditional picture of a legalistic Judaism collapses when the sources are read whole; the method begins by refusing the caricature.
How to do it: Use Sanders's summary formula, election and covenant first, law as response, and check it against texts like the Dead Sea Scrolls and 4 Ezra, noting the exceptions Sanders himself records.
What goes wrong here: Describing Judaism only from Paul's polemical statements about it.
You record: A source-based description of Palestinian Judaism. Done well when: The description is built from Jewish texts and acknowledges diversity among them.
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Identify the works of the law in context
In each Pauline passage, determine whether works of the law functions as a general term for good deeds or as the specific practices marking Jewish identity.
Why this step matters: The perspective stands or falls on this exegetical question in Galatians and Romans.
How to do it: Track the argument's flow: where Paul pairs the phrase with circumcision and food laws, the boundary-marking reading gains strength.
What goes wrong here: Assuming the phrase must mean the same thing in every occurrence without argument.
You record: A contextual verdict on the phrase in each passage. Done well when: Each verdict is argued from the letter's own argument, not from the system.
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Reconstruct the controversy
State what Paul's opponents were actually requiring of Gentile believers and why it mattered to them.
Why this step matters: Paul's letters answer a real pastoral emergency about table fellowship and membership, not an abstract debate about grace and merit.
How to do it: Use Galatians 2 and Acts 15 alongside the letters to reconstruct the Antioch incident and the competing missions.
What goes wrong here: Treating the opponents as generic legalists instead of as sincere Jewish believers with a covenant theology of their own.
You record: The historical controversy behind the letters. Done well when: The opponents' position is stated in terms they themselves could have accepted.
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Restate justification accordingly
Formulate what justification by faith declares in this setting: who belongs to God's people, and on what basis that belonging is announced.
Why this step matters: On this reading, justification is first about membership and covenant status, announced in the present, with final judgment still according to works.
How to do it: Distinguish the initial declaration from the final verdict, and show how both appear in the letters.
What goes wrong here: Concluding that the perspective makes Paul indifferent to ethics or to individual salvation, neither of which its proponents claim.
You record: A restated doctrine of justification. Done well when: The formulation explains both the ethnic and the soteriological texts in Paul.
Inputs Required
- Paul's letters, especially Galatians and Romans
- Second Temple Jewish sources in translation
- Familiarity with the traditional Lutheran reading the perspective revises
Outputs Produced
- A description of Judaism as covenantal nomism, with its diversity noted
- A boundary-marker reading of works of the law in the key passages
- A doctrine of justification centered on covenant membership declared by faith
Quality Criteria
Under this method, a good reading is one that meets these tests:
- Judaism is described from its own sources, never from Christian caricature
- Each exegetical claim about works of the law is argued passage by passage
- The reading explains both Paul's ethnic argument and his language about sin and grace
Common Errors
- Claiming Sanders proved all Judaism was gracious, when he documented a pattern with exceptions
- Reducing justification to ethnicity and losing Paul's doctrine of sin and atonement
- Treating the New Perspective as a single position when Sanders, Dunn, and Wright differ significantly
Strengths
- It permanently discredited the caricature of Second Temple Judaism as a religion of crude merit-earning
- It restored the concrete, communal stakes of Paul's argument about Gentile inclusion
- It forced fresh exegesis of the central Pauline texts rather than reliance on inherited systems
Weaknesses and Critics
- Its pattern of covenantal nomism may flatten real diversity and real strands of merit language in the sources
- Some key texts, such as Romans 4 and 2 Corinthians 3, strain the boundary-marker reading
- The movement's three founders diverge enough that the label can obscure more than it clarifies
Stephen Westerholm: Westerholm argued that the Augustinian and Lutheran reading of Paul grasps something Sanders's pattern misses: Paul really does contrast divine grace with human doing as such, because for Paul humans are sinners who cannot commend themselves to God, not merely Gentiles excluded by markers. (Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The Lutheran Paul and His Critics (2004))
Simon J. Gathercole: Gathercole showed from Jewish texts themselves that boasting in obedience and final salvation according to obedience appear in Second Temple sources, so that Paul's polemic in Romans 2 and elsewhere does engage Jewish confidence in law-keeping, not only boundary markers. (Where Is Boasting? Early Jewish Soteriology and Paul's Response in Romans 1-5 (2002))
Internal Schools
Sanders's covenantal nomism: This school stays closest to the comparative description of religious patterns and is cautious about building a Pauline theology on the contrast with Judaism.
Dunn's sociological development: This school coined the label and developed the boundary-marker account of works of the law most systematically within Paul's theology as a whole.
Wright's covenant and exile synthesis: This school embeds the perspective in a large narrative of Israel's exile and return, and gives justification an eschatological and ecclesiological weight the others state differently.
Exemplar Readings
Works of the Law in Galatians (Galatians 2-3): The reading reconstructs the Antioch table-fellowship crisis, shows Paul's argument moving from circumcision and food laws rather than generic good works, and concludes that justification declares Gentiles full members without adopting the markers.
Romans 3:21-31 Reread (Romans 3): The reading takes the climax, that God justifies both Jew and Gentile by faith apart from works of the law, as a statement about the one God's even-handed covenant faithfulness, and tests it against the boasting language Gathercole pressed.
What This Method Cannot Do
This approach cannot settle by itself whether Paul also opposed merit theology in general, since the same letters carry both ethnic and anthropological arguments and the evidence genuinely cuts both ways. It also cannot deliver a doctrine of justification for the church without further theological work, because it is a historical-exegetical proposal about what Paul meant, not a complete dogmatics.
Site Stance
The site has not yet assigned its stance on this method. The stance assignments wait on the named reviewers, the same naming the Christian Assessment verdicts wait on. The method stands here in full in the meantime: a stance discloses the site's judgment, and it never filters what a reader may read or run. The stance values and their criteria stand on the criteria page.
Run This Method in the Workshop
Open this method on the bench →
Across the Site
This method belongs to the Theological and Canonical Approaches family. Its sources stand in the References register; its family stands among the site's tools; the positions it produces can be compared in the Diptych.
Primary Sources
- Paul and Palestinian Judaism by E. P. Sanders (1977)
- The Theology of Paul the Apostle by James D. G. Dunn (1998)
Secondary Sources
- Perspectives Old and New on Paul by Stephen Westerholm (2004)
- Where Is Boasting? by Simon J. Gathercole (2002)