Some Thoughts on EP Sanders

This is an excerpt from a paper I have written for a discussion of the New Perspective for the Pacific NW Presbytery of the PCA:

The NPP movement first began to take shape with the publication of Sanders?E Paul and Palestinian Judaism in 1977. The bulk of Sanders?Etreatise was an examination of Second Temple Judaism, which, he claimed, had been grossly misunderstood and mischaracterized by generations of scholars. Contrary to the common portrait, which claimed that Judaism was a system of merit and works-righteousness, Sanders argued that Judaism was in fact a covenant theology. Jews did not believe that they could become acceptable to God through their own works, through their faithfulness to Torah. They knew that they had been elected by grace, and brought into the covenant by that electing grace. Torah-keeping was for the purpose of ?staying in?Ecovenant, not for the purpose of ?getting in?Ethe covenant. Sanders argued that the Law never envisioned or required perfect obedience. In fact, the Torah included provisions for atonement for those who sinned, and someone who sinned and took advantage of these sacrificial provisions would still be regarded as a ?Torah-keeper.?E Thus, when Sanders says that Torah-keeping was the way of ?staying in,?Ehe includes recourse to the sacrifices as part of ?keeping the Law.?E This system Sanders described as ?covenant nomism.?E As Sanders himself explains,

Covenantal nomism is the view that one?s place in God?s plan is established on the basis of the covenant and that the covenant requires as the proper response of man his obedience to its commandments, while providing means of atonement for transgression?E Obedience maintains one?s position in the covenant, but it does not earn God?s grace as such?E Righteousness in Judaism is a term which implies the maintenance of status among the group of the elect.

More fully,

(1) God has chosen Israel and (2) given the law. The law implies both (3) God?s promise to maintain the election and (4) the requirement to obey. (5) God rewards obedience and punishes transgression. (6) The law provides for means of atonement, and atonement results in (7) maintenance or reestablishment of the covenantal relationship. (8) All those who are maintained in the covenant by obedience, atonement and God?s mercy belong to the group which will be saved. An important interpretation of the first and last points is that election and ultimately salvation are considered to be by God?s mercy rather than human achievement.

Sanders did treat Paul in his book, in a 100-page chapter, but Sanders?Etreatment of Paul has not met with much affirmation from other NT scholars. Paul?s opposition to Judaism did not include any criticism of covenant nomism per se; Paul opposed Judaism, Sanders argued, simply because it was ?not Christianity.?E For Sanders, the center of Paul?s thought was less a covenant theology than the idea of ?participation.?E Unsatisfying as many scholars found Sanders?Etreatment of Paul, however, his work, once accepted, forced scholars to re-examine Paul. For centuries, after all, Protestant scholars had concluded that Paul was addressing a Jewish form of late medieval Catholic theology in his letters. If second-temple Judaism was not a religion of merit and works-righteousness, then why was Paul opposed to it? Why was Paul condemning efforts to be ?justified by the works of the law?E What was he going on about?

Several answers have been offered to these questions. Some have concluded that Paul misunderstood or misrepresented the Judaism from which he came. The Judaism attacked in Paul?s letters is a straw man. Others have concluded that Paul is inconsistent in his views on the Law and Judaism. Even some who do not accept the thrust of Sanders?Ethesis have given Paul a fresh look, trying to understand Paul as a Jewish theologian within the context of first-century Judaism. At its broadest, the NPP is the effort to understand Paul in the context of first-century Jewish concerns; more narrowly, the NPP has been an effort to understand Paul against the background of a first-century context as described by Sanders.

I do not have the expertise to offer a thorough critique of Sanders work, but I can register a few reservations about his basic thesis. First, Sanders ignores or dismisses the gospels as reliable historical sources for Judaism. In the gospels, there is evidence aplenty that some Jews at least saw their performance of the law as a cause for boasting and as a source of confidence before God. Second, a number of scholars have commented on the absence of ?covenant?Eterminology and thought from the second-temple Jewish sources, and also have suggested that the evidence Sanders himself presents is could be interpreted as evidence of legalism. Third, it is essential to distinguish between official theology and actual belief and practice. Even if Sanders were entirely right about the essential contours of Jewish theology, that does not prove that Jewish life was free of legalistic boasting. To return to the earlier point, the gospels indicate this distinction: Jesus both tells His disciples to follow what the Pharisees teach, but warns them not the follow their example.

Finally, when it comes to Paul, there is solid ground for thinking that, at least at points, he is rebutting a legalistic Judaism. Many NPP writers interpret the Jewish ?boasting?Ethat Paul addresses in Romans as a ?nationalistic boasting?Ethat has to do with Israel?s status as the elect nation and in the Torah and other benefits of the covenant that come with election. Israel, on this view, does not boast of her performance of the law, but of her possession. Wright comments:

This “boasting” which is excluded [in Rom 3] is not the boasting of the successful moralist; it is the racial boast of the Jew, as in 2:17-24. If this is not so, 3:29 (“Or is God the God of Jews only?”) is a non sequitur. Paul has no thought in this passage of warding off a proto-Pelagianism, of which in any case his contemporaries were not guilty. He is here, as in Galatians and Philippians, declaring that there is no road into covenant membership on the grounds of Jewish racial privilege.

But when Paul addresses the ?Jew?Edirectly in Romans 2:17, however, the issue is not merely the possession of Torah but its performance. Paul insists that the ?Jew?E(which should probably taken as a representative of the whole nation of Israel) has broken the commandments (vv. 21-24), and the rhetorical heat of Paul?s questions suggests that Paul is trying to convince a Jew who is reluctant to admit his own sinfulness. As Simon Gathercole comments:

Paul?s indictment expressed in 2:3 is that his interlocutor is deceived about his potential to evade condemnation on the Day of Judgment . . . . . The energy and extent of Paul?s attempt to persuade his interlocutor of Israel?s sinfulness and guilt is further evidence that this was precisely what was missing in the self-assessment of the Jewish nation . . . . Paul must have regarded Israel?s sinfulness as a serious gap in the knowledge of his interlocutor.

Thus, from Paul?s vantage, Israel?s confidence is based on her erroneous sense that she has performed the law with sufficient success to receive commendation at the judgment. Paul?s argument assumes that his opponents believe that their standing before God in the judgment is based on their adequate performance of Torah.

Similarly, in Romans 4:1-8, Paul is not only at pains to show that Abraham was justified apart from Torah (a point he develops later in the chapter, vv 9ff.), but also at pains to show that Abraham?s righteousness is reckoned to him apart from anything Abraham did. Righteousness, and the promises that accompany that status (4:13ff) are not wages paid to a meritorious workman, but grace given without consideration of works, and even, as Pau
l’s quotation of Psalm 32 indicates, in the face of evil deeds (vv. 7-8). The fact that Paul inquires into Abraham as ?our forefather according to the flesh?Eindicates that he has the Jews in view. In all likelihood, he is addressing an interpretation of Abraham that highlighted his merit and saw his standing as a wage earned.

Thomas Schreiner?s nuanced assessment seems reasonable to me:

It is not the case that all Jews without exception were legalists, though a tendency to boast in our works is a common human problem. Yet some of Paul?s Jewish opponents fell prey to it. Neither is it the case that the Old Testament taught such legalism yet now Paul opposes it. Nor was legalism formally enshrined in the teachings of the Judaism of Paul?s day. Scholars recognize that Judaism was diverse in the Second Temple period, and thus some segments of Judaism probably emphasized grace more than other segments . . . . . Statements that emphasize God?s grace exist [in Jewish literature], but so do statements that emphasize the contribution of human beings. The tension between these competing statement is not clearly resolved in the literature, suggesting that at least some Jews did not assign the same priority to grace as did Paul, in the sense that they conceived of human works as contributing to salvation.

Frances Watson offers this somewhat more sympathetic summary of Sanders?Eachievement, but still points to limitations:

Sanders’ argument successfully marginalizes the previously dominant metaphor of “earning” or “meriting” salvation ?Esalvation understood as the “wages” or “reward” for work done, a metaphor which is held to represent the quintessence of Jewish “legalism.” But Sanders does not succeed in eliminating the idea that divine saving action, however understood, is conditional on faithful although not sinless law-observance. This view may not be universal in the sources, but it is nevertheless widespread. If, for some Jews at least, law-observance is indeed a condition of divine saving action, then there is no longer any reason to deny that Paul might have contrasted this emphasis on human action with his gospel’s emphasis on the radical priority of divine action. There is no reason why he should not have said that the way of righteousness is the faith that recognizes and acknowledges God’s prior saving action, and not those human actions that may be described as “works of law.”