Subtle Appeal

The Subtle Appeal of the New Perspective on Paul

0:01 Under the new perspective identified, it's subtle appeal. We've considered its leading proponents, its major tenets, and its growing influence. Now, fourthly, it's subtle appeal.

0:16 What is it about the new perspective that seems to be so attractive to some evangelicals, even to a growing number of professedly Reformed evangelicals? Well, of course, there's a degree of subjectivity in trying to answer that question. And Ligon Duncan offers some helpful suggestions, so this guy Waters, I'll draw from their insights and offer some thoughts of my own. First of all, the new perspective appeals to those who are concerned to put great emphasis on the centrality of the concept of covenant in the Bible.

0:46 Certainly, we would agree, I trust, that the divine covenants, properly understood, form the skeletal framework of redemptive history and redemptive revelation and really do hold a crucial place in our understanding of the Bible as a whole. However...

0:59 However, there is around today what one has called a kind of imbalanced covenant romanticism that has captured current study of Paul in which the covenant with Israel has become the unexamined basis for resolving all questions about his soteriology. We have covenant families, covenant businesses, covenant schools, covenant this and covenant that. Before you know it, we'll be able to buy covenant chewing gum and covenant deodorant. I did have something else there, but I thought, no, that'd be too crude, so I took that out.

1:26 The new perspective, as you may have noticed, speaks a lot about... the covenant.

1:32 Related to this, some new perspective writers are fond of associating a Lutheran doctrine of justification with anti-Semitism.

1:40 One might argue that the new perspective, in fact, began as a reaction against anti-Semitism. In a reaction to the Holocaust and the anti-Semitism displayed in Germany prior to World War II, it has arisen out of a scholarly academic climate

1:58 of seeking to stress similarities and continuities between Judaism and Christianity. Well, that has found, it seems, a connecting point with the current reaction against dispensationalism that is gaining force among American evangelicals. Especially the reaction against it in Paedo-Baptist circles where there can be the tendency to overly flatten any differences between the old covenant and the new.

New Perspective's Appeal as a Corrective to Antinomianism

2:24 Secondly, the new perspective is attractive to some evangelicals because it seems to offer a needed corrective to antinomianism. Wright argues that the gospel, is the proclamation of the lordship of Christ. He puts great emphasis upon this, which in a sense we might agree with rightly understood. He emphasizes that it is a call to submission to Christ's lordship in every realm of life and society.

2:49 He does this, though, in the context of positing a false dichotomy. He tells us that the gospel is about Christ's lordship, not justification.

2:59 As one has rightly commented, to ask the question, is the gospel about Christ's lordship or justification by faith, is a bit like asking the question, which leg do you want me to chop off? Furthermore, the new perspective argues that Paul and his doctrine of justification is not addressing obedience to the law as such, but Jewish exclusivism. The works of the law Paul sets over against his doctrine of justification are Jewish boundary markers by which the Gentiles were excluded from God's covenant people. Otherwise, Jews and Christians were not at odds about the importance and place of obeying the law.

3:35 Faith, obedience, and Christianity as well as in Judaism is that faith by which alone we are justified, recognized or declared to be covenant members. And it is the necessary means for maintaining covenant membership, which is how they define justification. It's the necessary means for maintaining then justification. The idea that we are justified once and for all on the basis of the righteousness of another through faith, conceived of as a passive reception and resting upon Christ and not as active covenant devotion to Christ, leads to antinomianism, it is thought.

4:09 The new perspective emphasizes the important role of obedience and faithfulness to the covenant. And this has found a connecting point with evangelicals who are concerned about the problem of easy believism. It is common for new perspective advocates to caricature the traditional Protestant doctrine of justification. The traditional doctrine, it is implied, completely separates faith and works as though it's not important how we live and what we do.

4:32 Of course, this is a caricature of reformed doctrine. Certainly, there are a lot of...

4:36 There are a lot of antinomians in our day who abuse the doctrine of justification in that way as there were in Paul's day. But the reformed doctrine of justification that's set forth in our confessional standards does not teach that how we live doesn't matter. On the contrary, for example, the Westminster Confession, the Baptist Confession, both state in the chapter on justification in paragraph 2, that faith thus receiving and resting on Christ and His righteousness is the alone instrument of justification, yet it is not alone in the person justified but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith but worketh by love. Luther especially is abused on this point.

Ignorance of Reformed Doctrine and Historical Theology

5:12 Yet it was Luther who said, Our faith in Christ does not free us from works, but from false opinions concerning works. It is from the foolish presumption that justification is acquired by works. And I believe we heard some other quotes earlier this week confirming that Luther did not in any way downplay the importance of works or the place of works as fruits of faith and evidences of faith. Thirdly, one reason the New Perspective appeals to some is simply an ignorance of what the Reformers actually taught and what the Reformed doctrine of justification actually is.

5:50 There is, it seems, both a historical and theological ignorance in our day that leaves people open to a teaching like this. As Ligon Duncan comments, if you don't know what the Reformers said, now this is such an important statement because it goes back to the introduction of Dr. Waldron's lectures where he underscored, why it is important for us to know and to understand the history of the church and the history of dogma and what these men taught. He says, If you don't know what the Reformers said, then you are vulnerable to having someone else tell you what they said and tell you wrong, and you'll have no way of telling the difference.

6:31 Now, this ignorance of historical theology is even seen in some degree in some of the scholars who promote the New Perspective. When you're reading some of them, you want to ask yourself at times, has this guy ever really read Luther or Calvin? Or, hey, have you ever heard of a guy named John Owen? He destroyed that argument over 400 years ago.

6:49 Lee Gaddis, in an article critiquing James Dunn, takes him to task for his evident lack of first-hand knowledge of Luther's writing and his failure to seriously interact with Luther's own exegesis. After quoting some of the sweeping statements that Dunn makes about Luther and his theology, Gaddis declares that in Dunn's work, he had just quoted, and after a search of Dunn's other writings, it is revealed, quote, that every time Dunn quotes Luther, he has gleaned the quotation or opinion indirectly from another writer rather than from Luther's works themselves. Ligon Duncan, in the article referenced above, also mentions on page 13 an essay by Carl Truman that speaks to this problem. He says, Carl Truman, who used to be at Aberdeen and who is now at Westminster Seminary, has done a good job of demonstrating the want and inaccuracy of pro-NPP historical assessments of Luther and the Reformers. In an essay originally delivered in 2000 to the Tyndale Fellowship at Cambridge called A Man More Sinned Against Than Sinning, A Portrait of Martin Luther in Contemporary New Testament Scholarships and Casual Observations of a Mere Historian. Sounds like one of those old Puritan titles to a book. Truman shows the deficiency of the NPP's account of the Reformers' teaching on Paul, the Law, and Justification.

8:02 I also came across the following very interesting admission by N.T. Wright just a few weeks ago in one of his newest books, The Law and Justification, in one of his newest works. He says, Like too many New Testament scholars, I am largely ignorant of the Pauline exegesis of all but a few of the Fathers and Reformers.

8:20 The Middle Ages and the 17th and 18th centuries had plenty to say about Paul, but I have not read it. And I just note at the bottom, leaving out the 16th and 17th centuries, by the way, bypasses two of the greatest eras in church history, the Puritan era and the era of the Great Evangelical Awakening in Great Britain and North America, both of which, uh, are very, uh, one major emphasis in those periods of church history was the doctrine of justification by faith. Um, now this ignorance is not only a matter of the relative ignorance of historical theology in some New Testament specialists,

9:00 there is a great deal of ignorance of the Bible in the average evangelical church and therefore of what the Bible teaches about justification. I preached a series of sermons a few years ago in our church on the doctrine of justification and I referred to it in the beginning as the doctrine everybody thinks they know but so few people really do.

Diminishing Sin and Emphasizing Social Dimensions

9:22 Due to the fact that there is so little doctrinal preaching in our day and so little sound exegetical and expositional preaching in our day, American evangelicals are susceptible to whatever comes down the pipe including the new perspective. Fourthly, the new perspective effectively diminishes the issue of sin which is very attractive to our modern climate. There is, there is a great emphasis put upon the social dimension of salvation, bringing the Jews and Gentiles together. The real problem here was Jewish exclusivism.

9:52 Justification is all about breaking down social barriers. It's not about how a sinner who stands condemned before God's law with no righteousness of his own can find acceptance with God. As Ligon Duncan puts it, the minute you say that justification is not about your relationship with God, it is about relationships in the covenant community, you have already diminished sin.

10:15 Even though some of these men would protest that the issue of forgiveness of sins is important, the reality is that their emphasis upon the breaking down of social barriers constitutes a de-emphasis upon the problem of man's lost and condemned state and sin under the wrath of God. This is the problem, we are told, of that confounded, introspective conscience of the West that we unfortunately inherited from Augustine and Luther and Calvin. That's not a problem Paul felt or his hearers felt or that Jesus felt. That's not a problem Paul felt or his hearers felt or that he speaks to in his doctrine of justification.

10:50 In fact, just as a sideline without getting off on another one of these little areas related to this new perspective, some of them actually teach that Paul arrived at his doctrine of sin that first there was his experience of Christ on the Damascus Road and then his understanding of sin flowed out of that rather than sin and the consciousness of sin having a place in driving the sinner to Christ. His doctrine of sin was developed in order to support his understanding of Christ and justification that he had come to rather than vice versa. And so they tried to argue that that's part of the problem with those who approach justification as the answer to a troubled conscience that that wasn't really even Paul's approach to it. And of course you want to ask the question what about the first three chapters of Romans before he ever gets to the doctrine of justification? But I won't spend a lot of time on that but you will come across that when you read these guys and they have a very sophisticated way of seeking to argue that point and even why Paul starts with that in Romans and so forth.

12:12 Fifthly, the emphasis of the new perspective upon the social dimension of Christianity is itself a source of its attraction.

12:19 Especially in the context of a reaction against what has been called the pietistic retreat of fundamentalism and the excessive pietism of much of Reformed Christianity. American Christianity is far too concerned about the individual's soul and the individual's relationship to God we are told. The emphasis of the new perspective on the relational aspect and community aspect of Christianity is viewed as something refreshing. This also may be part of its attraction to Reformed theonomists.

12:49 Andrew Sandlin, who is friendly toward the new perspective, writes, It should come as no surprise that we proponents of Christian culture should be attracted to the new perspective. Attracted, I might add, because we believe it draws close to the biblical picture. For one thing, it softens the radical gospel law distinction that usually, though not always, reduces to a two-kingdom theory. The church is the realm of grace.

13:10 Gospel and society is the realm of nature. Law, as Karl Barth correctly noted in his famous essay on gospel and law. It was precisely this sharp gospel law distinction that propelled the class of Christians to the collapse of orthodox Protestantism in the face of Nazi Germany. The new perspective, conversely, militates against social antinomianism.

13:28 It exalts the law, though never at the expense of the gospel. For another thing, the NP champions the lordship of Christ as perhaps the central message of the faith. Incorrectly identifying the gospel as the message of the lordship of Christ, Tom Wright and others open the way to a full-orb gospel whose goal is the subordination of all things, not merely spiritual things, to the reign of Jesus Christ, art, music, education, politics, technology, entertainment. These and all other facets of life must fall within the purview of the gospel.

13:56 That is the rule of Jesus in the world. Now, I don't want to comment on the things he said and the relative accuracy or inaccuracy of things, but I just quoted him as an example of how theonomists can be attracted to the new perspective, okay? Because of its emphasis upon the community social aspect of Christianity. All right, Sixley.

Academic Credibility and Ecumenical Concerns

14:24 You can just read the sixth one, seventhly. Move on to seven.

14:30 One very important avenue of appeal for the new perspective is the ecumenical... Well, let me go ahead and read the sixth one.

14:36 The new perspective, particularly as developed by N.T. Wright, would seem to appeal to evangelicals who desire to take the Bible seriously while maintaining credibility within the mainstream academic world. Wright professes to take Scripture seriously and to derive his views from the exposition of Scripture, yet he does so in a way that allows him to embrace various commonly held hermeneutical presuppositions in the less-than-evangelical world of biblical scholarship.

15:03 And you'll see some of that later. Thus, if you're a guy who still wants to claim to be an evangelical and to be someone who believes the Bible and yet at the same time you have a hankering for academic accolades and acceptance, N.T. Wright might be attractive.

15:15 Now, that's a personal judgment, okay? I can't prove that, but it seems to be something that would be an attraction to N.T. Wright.

15:24 Seventhly, one very important avenue of appeal for the New Perspective is the ecumenical concern to find a solution to the division between Protestants and Roman Catholics.

15:37 If you have faith in Christ, that is, if you confess Christ as Lord or if you're baptized, you're a member of the Covenant. In a nutshell, that's the doctrine of justification according to the New Perspective. It's all about inclusion, not exclusion. The old Protestant doctrine was the bone of contention between Rome and Protestantism, but the old doctrine was wrong according to the New Perspective, so the bone of contention is removed.

16:03 N.T. Wright, for example, is very upfront about the ecumenical implications of his doctrine. Listen to these quotes.

16:10 He says, Paul's doctrine of justification impels the churches in their current fragmented state into the ecumenical task. It cannot be right that the very doctrine which declares that all who believe in Jesus belong at the same table, Galatians 2, should be used as a way of saying that some, who define the doctrine of justification differently, belong at a different table. The doctrine of justification, in other words, is not merely a doctrine about a doctrine which Catholic and Protestant might just be able to agree on as a result of hard ecumenical endeavor. It is itself the ecumenical doctrine, the doctrine that rebukes all our petty and often cultural-bound groupings and which declares that all who believe in Jesus belong together in one family. The doctrine of justification is, in fact, the great ecumenical doctrine. Quoting him again, Many Christians, both in the Reformation and in the Counter-Reformation traditions, have done themselves and the church a great disservice by treating the doctrine of justification as central to their debates and by supposing that it describes that system by which people attain salvation.

17:19 You know, he kind of always irritates me when he says it that way. I mean, that's not what we say, that it describes the system by which people attain salvation. But anyhow, they have turned the doctrine into its opposite. Justification declares that all who believe in Jesus Christ belong at the same table no matter what their cultural or racial differences.

Alarming Implications: The Reformation Was Wrong

17:42 Let's move now from the subtle attractions to consider, sixthly, its alarming implications. It's always good to ask the question when you're preaching or teaching, so what? What does this mean, practically? What are the implications of this?

18:02 What are the implications of this new perspective on justification if it comes to the fact that if it comes to the fact that if it comes to the fact that if it comes to the fact that if it comes to the fact that if it comes to be the commonly accepted interpretation which some have argued it already has in the general world of biblical scholarship?

18:16 By the way, can I pause and just ask Dr. Ward, what would you say to that? Pastor Donnelly, Ted Donnelly told me that he believed it was already the generally accepted understanding in the world of biblical scholarship. But is that, what would you say that's,

18:35 how would you evaluate that statement? I guess, it might be an accurate statement. Mm-hmm. If you're not studying, it would be an accurate statement if you took additional, if you took American or just scholarship, Christian scholarship, including all the liberal schools, you might say it.

19:13 I don't think it's true of American. Okay. Or a more conservative scholarship, although it is certainly one option out there. I think that'd be more of a stable regard.

19:30 Okay. Okay. All right. Implications.

19:34 First of all, if the new perspective is right, the Reformation was wrong. Luther was wrong. Calvin was wrong. All the Reformers were wrong.

19:44 The Puritans were wrong. Our Baptist forefathers were wrong. Bunyan was wrong. Spurgeon was wrong.

19:49 Our confession of faith is wrong and our catechisms are wrong. The whole Protestant Reformation was a big mistake.

20:00 What's that? For example, to borrow a way of illustrating this, here's some Ligon Duncan with some additions of my own. Let's take the shorter catechism. An answer to the question, what is justification?

20:11 The catechism says, justification is an act of God's free grace wherein he pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in his sight only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone. Now, if we asked N.T. Wright to comment on that, what would he say?

20:20 Well, if we apply his theology to that statement, we could assume that this is he would probably say something like this. Now, if we ask N.T. Wright to comment on that, what would he say?

20:27 Well, if we apply his theology to that statement, we could assume that this is he would probably say something like this. There are really four problems with that statement. One, it is based on a misunderstanding of what justification is. Justification has to do primarily with how you know you're a member of the people of God.

20:38 Two, this definition introduces a concept that is foreign to the teaching of Paul in the New Testament as a whole, the concept of imputation. Justification is not about anything being imputed to us. Thirdly, the writers of the Catechism of the New Testament have said that justification is an act of God's free grace wherein he pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in his sight only for the righteousness of God. Now, if we ask N.T. Wright to comment on that, what would he say? Well, if we asked N.T. Wright to comment on that, he would say anything being imputed to us.

20:59 Thirdly, the writers of the Catechism put this question in the wrong section of the Catechism. They put it in the section which deals with soteriology, the doctrine of salvation. Justification belongs in the realm of ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church. Fourthly, the role of faith is misunderstood in the Catechism.

21:13 The Catechism has faith as the instrument by which Christ and justification in him is received as though justification has to do with how we get saved. But faith is the badge of membership of the covenant. It is the basis in which we know that we are a part of God. It is the principle in which we are justified or it is how we know that we are covenant members.

Implications for Hymnody and the Gospel Itself

21:31 So we need to change our Catechism if Wright is right. Secondly, if the new perspective is right, we need to rip out of our hymn books many of our favorite hymns and the favorite hymns of our ancestors. My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. Nope.

21:48 Ripped that one out of the hymnal. Jesus, thy blood and righteousness, my beauty are my glorious dress. No, that's got to go too. Thy works, not mine, O Christ, but thy goodness to this heart.

22:01 They tell me all is done. They bid my fear to part. Thy righteousness, O Christ, alone can cover me. No righteousness avails save that which is of thee.

22:10 Sorry. Rip it out. How about and can it be? That's my favorite hymn.

22:16 No condemnation now I dread. Jesus and all in him is mine. Alive in him my living head and clothed in righteousness divine. Well, it may be your favorite hymn, but I'm sorry.

22:27 It's based on false doctrine. Get rid of it. Well, not only the Reformation itself and our hymnals, but more importantly, thirdly, if the new perspective is right, our entire understanding of the Bible and of our relationship to God and of what it means to be a Christian and of the gospel itself are wrong. And fourthly, if our understanding and preaching of the gospel are wrong, we are under God's anathema and curse.

22:54 Contrary to some of the advocates of the new perspective, justification is an integral part of the biblical gospel. I quote Wright, for example, by the gospel, Paul does not mean justification by faith. Justification is a second-order doctrine. Paul begins his exposition of the doctrine of justification in Romans with these words, For the gospel is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.

23:22 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written that just shall live by faith. Paul begins this whole polemic and argument in Galatians with these burning hot words of warning, Galatians 1, 8 and 9. But even if we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you than that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, in case that seems too strong and you wonder, did he really say that?

23:57 Well, let me say it again. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you, then what you have received let him be accursed. He was saying that with reference to the gospel of justification by faith alone which he then sets out to defend, not merely with an air of academic detachment but with a heart full of flaming passion because of the eternal issues that are at stake. This is not just a peripheral matter as some of these men would have us believe, a secondary matter that has to do with ecclesiology and not soteriology.

24:28 No, Paul himself tells us that it is at the heart of the gospel. This is no mere academic issue. The glory of God is at stake. Christ is at stake.

24:37 Our entire understanding of the Bible and of the gospel is at stake. The eternal destiny of the never-dying souls of men is at stake. The spiritual health and peace and assurance and happiness and motivation of God's people is at stake. And so as we turn now to a critique of the new perspective, may God help us to do so with a proper sense of the urgency and dead seriousness of the matters that we will be considering.

Critique: The Historical Problem of Second Temple Judaism as a Religion of Grace

25:02 So, we come to unit two. We come to the new perspective critiqued. Now I want us to consider first of all part one, the historical problem with the new perspective. Was Second Temple Judaism really a religion of grace?

25:22 I trust you have noticed that much of the entire new perspective approach to Paul is based on this assertion or assumption. One might argue that the assertion or assumption that the Judaism of Jesus' time and of Paul's time was a religion of grace is the linchpin, the keystone the foundation, the cornerstone, the bedrock of the new perspective. And that assertion or assumption is primarily based upon the findings and conclusions of E.P. Sanders and his book Paul and Palestinian Judaism. So it all starts right here. James Dunn puts it this way. Judaism is first and foremost a religion of grace.

26:03 Somewhat surprisingly, the picture Sanders painted of what he called covenant gnomism is remarkably like the classic Reformation theology of works. That good works are the consequence and outworking of divine grace, not the means by which that grace is first attained. The Judaism of what Sanders christened as covenantal gnomism 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 fruit and not the root of salvation.

26:35 So based on Sanders' work we are to believe that Judaism of that day was a religion of grace, that what the Jews of that day had to offer to the Jews of that day was a doctrine after all. Well, there are several problems with this. First of all, even if one accepts Sanders' survey as a balanced overview of the relevant literature available, there are flaws in Sanders' approach to interpreting the material that he surveys. And let me say first that I've carefully read his book myself so I can speak from what I myself have read.

27:11 I have found few more powerful refutations of his conclusions than I have found in my own research. One of the flaws is that he approaches Palestinian Judaism in a way that is not sufficiently nuanced to take in all the subtle underlying themes and differences of opinion that are evident in the many teachers and bodies of material that he surveys. He makes it clear very early that he is not concerned with the diversity of the teachings of the literature on specific questions of soteriology. His concern is with what he calls the literature.

27:46 An overall pattern that he defines as how you get in the religious community and how you stay in. That's what he means by a pattern of religion. How you get in, how you stay in. He's not concerned with details of soteriology just this general overall pattern of religion that you find in the literature.

28:06 How you get in, how you stay in. The pattern he says in Second Temple Judaism is you get in by grace or by God's gracious initiative and you stay in by God's grace. Now the problem is that this category is so broad and so flexible and so vague that it's able to incorporate a large range of contradictory ideas and practices. For example, there are the various answers the rabbis gave as to why Israel was chosen of God and taken into covenant relationship.

28:37 His quotations demonstrate several reasons commonly argued for why God chose Israel. One is because though the covenant was offered to all, he gave a list of quotes which show that. A second is that God chose Israel at the time of the Exodus because of the Exodus generation's fulfillment of certain commandments. He then gives a list of quotations.

28:59 A third is that God chose Israel due to the merit of the patriarchs. Sanders comments in that section that the motive of making God's choice seem non-arbitrary is clear here. If Israel was especially chosen or if the tribe of Judah was especially favored by God, then he can explain why God made the choice he did. Another common reason given for why God chose Israel is that he did it on the condition of foreseen future obedience.

29:26 Quote, this is an evaluation now he makes a list of quotations he gives. God perceives that Israel will fulfill the Torah and therefore chooses Israel to receive it. Another explanation given is that God chose Israel for his own name's sake in order to fulfill God's will. But then the question is pushed back to why did God choose Abraham?

29:50 Sanders comments the only answer is that God foresaw that Abraham's descendants would keep the commandments. Then he says at one time the rabbis can say that Israel merited the reward of the Exodus because of fulfilling some commandments or other. While others they can say that Israel did not have any merits or that the rewards were given before the commandments were fulfilled. He goes on to argue that still we must see the pattern of religion as one of grace not one of earning salvation.

30:26 Why? He says because even if election has been earned in the past there is no fault that subsequent Israelites must follow the law of God. He says that even if election has been earned they must continue to earn their place in the covenant as individuals. No, but if that covenant in the past was made on the basis of foreseen obedience that is not grace Dr. Sanders.

30:58 It is not sola gratia salvation by grace alone and it is certainly not to use the words of good Protestant doctrine. It has been wondered how Sanders would interpret our Lord's parable that he stood and prayed with himself God I thank you that I am not like other men. Extortioners, unjust, adulterers or even as this tax collector I fast twice a week I give tithes of all that I possess. Consistent with how he interprets rabbinic literature I can imagine Sanders that he was not like other men because of God's grace. And yet we know that Jesus spoke that parable to those who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and the introduction to the parable tells us that. And Jesus goes on to say that the publican went down to Israel by faith and the people by grace and God gave them the law and keeping the law or the intention

32:27 and effort to be obedient to the law is the means of staying in. The law also provides means of atonement for the sins of those intending literature actually reveals about the views these men taught about atonement. According to the rabbis surveyed, how were sins to be atoned for? Well, several options were given.

32:56 Some argued that the ceremonial sacrifices, particularly on the day of atonement, atoned for sins, but that's not all. Repentance itself was viewed by some as a means of atonement. Also, personal suffering was viewed as a means of atonement. For example, he quotes Rabbi Nehemiah who said, Now, as you can tell, that sounds very similar to Roman Catholic penance theology.

33:29 Even death was argued by some of the rabbis to be a means of atonement. Now, of course, Sanders puts his spin on the material. He says, If there was a dispute, it was not over the question of whether or not one's sins would be forgiven, but over what were the conditions to which God attached his promise of forgiveness. So, in other words, he is implying that we're supposed to accept that as long as people believe that sins can be forgiven, that's a religion of grace.

34:00 Regardless of what they believe the conditions are for receiving that forgiveness. Or regardless of what they understand to be the basis of that forgiveness. Well, that's the kind of confusion that runs throughout Sanders' book. And I could go on for a long time just quoting from his book itself.

34:15 I will assure you, If you ever read that book, it will not convince you that the Judaism of Paul's day was religion of grace.

34:22 Not if you have a biblical understanding of what grace is. It will not convince you of that. I have no fear of any of you reading that book and coming away being convinced that the Judaism of Paul's day was religion of grace.

Flaws in Sanders' Approach and Understanding of Grace

34:37 It's amazing to me that scholars can simply accept his interpretation of Palestinian Judaism as a proven fact and then confidently assert on the basis of that that the Judaism of Jesus and Paul's day was a religion of grace. I believe it is safe to say that Sanders and the New Perspectives argument that Second Temple Judaism was a religion of grace, good Protestant doctrine, is more a revelation of their own faulty understanding of what grace is than it is a revelation that the Reformation has misunderstood the issues Paul was addressing. You see, part of the problem is that grace can become a very flexible term depending upon who is using it. Mark Seifried makes these comments about Sanders' use of grace.

35:19 Mark Seifried makes these comments about Sanders' use of grace. Mark Seifried makes these comments about Sanders' use of grace. For him, that is for Paul, grace does not have to do simply with the priority of divine election and favor. In Sanders' paradigm, grace, or God's gracious election of Israel, loses its biblical contours because it is not defined in relationship to Israel's recalcitrance and rebellion, a condition that Paul regards as extending into the present, Romans 10, 19 to 21.

35:48 Second Temple Judaism continues. Judaism could hardly have forgotten about grace and election so long as it engaged the Scriptures. But that does not mean that it widely embraced an understanding of grace along the lines of Paul's fault. One of the amazing things about grace is that it is an exceedingly elastic concept.

36:07 So that's the first problem. There are flaws in Sanders' approach to the material he surveys. Secondly, another major problem in Sanders' and the New Perspective as a whole is a failure to properly distinguish between Paul and Jesus. Secondly, another major problem in Sanders' and the New Perspective as a whole is a failure to properly distinguish between Paul and Jesus.

36:20 Thirdly, another major problem in Sanders' and the New Perspective as a whole is a failure to properly distinguish between Paul and Jesus. The Jews were not Pelagian in their understanding, but what he describes is very similar to Semipelagianism. A kind of teaching that regards acceptance with God is based both on grace and good works. It's a description that fits very well with the very issues Luther and Calvin were addressing in the Reformation.

36:44 The charge is often made that the Reformers, by reading into the Scriptures their own controversy with the merit theology of Rome, assumed that the Jews advocated a kind of proto-Pelagianism in which one is saved by pulling himself up by his own bootstraps to an acceptable standard of righteousness. The Reformers are said to have mistakenly read this kind of Pelagianism into their interpretation of the issue Paul was addressing with the Jews in his doctrine of justification. Well, one problem with that is the failure to distinguish between Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism. The Reformers opposed the doctrine of justification taught by the Roman Catholic Church not because it was Pelagian, but because it tried to make justification partly on the basis of grace in Christ and partly on the basis of human effort and the endeavor to cooperate with that grace and thereby merit further grace. It was a kind of semi-Pelagianism that they were attacking, a kind of synergism. So the parallel that they drew between Rome and the Judaistic heresy that Paul was fighting with was not that it was pure Pelagianism, not that it was salvation solely on the basis of human effort, and the attempt to pull yourself up by the bootstraps. No, the problem with the Jews was similar to Rome because there was a mingling of grace and works as the basis of one's acceptance before God.

38:02 As Cornelius Venema comments, the irony here is that Sanders' description of covenantal gnomism closely resembles a kind of textbook description of semi-Pelagian teaching and therefore lends unwitting support to the Reformation argument. To put the matter in the traditional language of the doctrine of justification, covenantal gnomism fits rather comfortably with the idea that the justification and acceptance of the righteous now and in the future depends upon the works of obedience to the law that follow and are added to God's gracious initiative. If that is the case, then what Sanders calls covenantal gnomism bears remarkable formal similarities to the kind of semi-Pelagianism that marked the medieval Roman Catholic doctrine of justification. Let me just add that while Sanders' Judaism has parallels with semi-Pelagianism, there are some points that are not. There are points in which it sounds like plain old Pelagianism. For example, Sanders says, it is important to note that the rabbis did not have a doctrine of original sin or of the essential sinfulness of each man in the Christian sense. It is a matter of observation that all men sin.

39:08 Men have apparently the inborn drive towards rebellion and disobedience, but this is not the same as being born in the state of sinfulness from which liberation is necessary. Sin comes only when man actually disobeys. If he were not to disobey, he would not be a sinner. The possibility exists that one might not sin.

39:26 Now, he is arguing here that this is what he has derived from reading the rabbis in the Judaism of that time, that that's what they believed. Now, that, my dear friends, is classic Pelagianism. And yet this is what Sanders tells us the rabbis taught. Then he can turn around and tell us that the Judaism of Paul's day was a religion of grace, and Dunn can make the absolutely ridiculous statement that the Judaism of Paul's day can now be seen to preach good Protestant doctrine.

Discrepancy Between Rabbinic Literature and Popular Belief

39:54 Third. It must be pointed out that whatever Second Temple literature might say or be interpreted as teaching, that doesn't mean that what the rabbinic scholars wrote is what the Jews of Paul's day actually believed. Sanders may be able to strain the literature to show us to teach a religion of grace, but even if we try to put the best possible construction on the literature that he surveys and give Dr. Sanders all the rope we can, there is still such a parallel emphasis upon the necessity of obedience to the law to maintain God's favor, found in that literature, and such an emphasis on merit in the literature that it would not be surprising if that teaching was understood in the common mind in a purely legalistic manner, especially in light of the fact that getting into salvation in God's favor was viewed merely as a matter of being born an Israelite. There's no concept of personal conversion in the literature as far as I can tell. You are in by natural birth, or one might be a proselyte who gets in by circumcision, and from that point you stay in by obedience. You see, thus there's no real emphasis upon conversion by grace, while there is a lot of emphasis about the necessity to keep the law in order to remain in God's favor.

41:08 Now, we all know that in our own day in the statements of theologians or creeds of denominations are not always an accurate reflection of what is actually believed and practiced in the hearts and lives of the rank and file people and pastors. For example, most Protestant denominations have an evangelical creed. The Church of England has 39 articles which contain basically good Reformed doctrine, but is what is written in that document an accurate reflection of what is really believed in most of the Anglican and Episcopalian churches? No, it's not.

41:39 Southern Baptists that I came from have Reformed roots, and in their doctrinal statements they speak of justification and conversion in very orthodox terms, and thankfully there are many Southern Baptists who are very orthodox in their understanding of these doctrines. But do those statements in that history really reflect the rank decisionism that we see in many of those churches and in evangelicalism in general in our day? One day someone might read one of our sermons against decisional regeneration and then compare it to the creeds of the evangelical churches in our day. Then they might write a book in which they argue that what we preached against was not really a problem in our time period, and then they may come up with some wild theory as to what it was we were actually preaching against as opposed to what we appear to be preaching against. Well, what everyone thinks about the rabbinic literature, the fact is that works righteousness is always the religion of the unregenerate heart in every generation. So, do you have a question? Oh, those quotations were excellent.

43:04 I was going to refer to that. Do you remember the quotations, Dr. Walter? It would be a real stretch to try to make a religion of grace out of those quotations, and that was a sampling of a strain, at least a strand, of, of Jewish teaching in that time period.

New Testament Contradicts Sanders' Model of Judaism

43:21 It clearly was not a religion of grace. All right, so I pointed out that even if one accepts Sander's survey as a balanced overview of the relevant literature, there are flaws in Sander's approach. There's a failure by him to properly distinguish between pure Pelagianism and a kind of semi-Pelagianism, and whatever Second Temple literature might say or be interpreted as teaching, that doesn't mean that what the rabbis wrote is what the Jews of Paul's day actually understood. Now consider, fourthly, more recent studies of Second Temple Judaism have seriously challenged and debunked Sander's model of covenant gnomism.

43:56 These studies have shown that it is, in fact, not an adequate explanation of all the evidence. We saw that this week, didn't we? In other words, it has shown that Sander's is selective in the literature he uses in such a way as to give a prettier picture of Second Temple Judaism than is really true. I am not an expert on rabbinic literature, obviously, but there are men who are, and who since the publishing of Sander's work have studied the literature extensively and have argued that his pretty picture is simply wrong.

44:27 I've listed a few of the books I'm aware of in the footnotes, some of which I've read all or parts of. One very lengthy book that challenges Sander's is Justification and Variegated Gnomism, Volume 1, edited by D.A. Carson, Peter O'Brien, and Mark Seifert.

44:46 In the final section of the book entitled Summaries and Conclusions, Carson summarizes the current state of affairs in light of the various chapters and studies that are given in the book. He points out, for example, that there is a lot of Jewish literature that Sander's never dealt with, which gives a much more legalistic picture of Judaism. And, of course, this is joined to the misleading nature of the slant Sander's puts on the literature that he does survey. This leads to a fourth problem with Sander's argument that Judaism was a religion of grace.

45:17 It is soundly contradicted by the New Testament itself. Surely, surely, in attempting to understand the Judaism of that day, the New Testament should be included as one of our major sources, don't you think? I mean, if you're a liberal who doesn't even believe in the inspiration of Scripture, it would only seem common sense that the New Testament is the best source to go to to find out what the Judaism of New Testament times was like. But this is especially true for those of us who believe that the New Testament is the Word of God, that unlike any mere human writing, it is God-breathed, infallible, inerrant, and authoritative.

45:56 Well, what is the picture of the Judaism of that day that we get from the New Testament? Does the New Testament depict it as a religion of grace, a religion akin to good Protestant doctrine? I should think not. Jesus and the apostles consistently describe it as apostate, as being marked by externalism, ritualism, legalism, hypocrisy, and self-righteousness.

46:19 Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount exposed the practice of religion that marked the scribes and Pharisees as being purely external and self-focused. He pointed out that they did their righteousness to be seen of men and for the praise of men, not out of love and gratitude to God for his grace. When the scribes and Pharisees were offended at Jesus because he ate with publicans and sinners, he said to them, I did not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance, implying that they considered themselves to be righteous, and because they considered themselves to be righteous, they had cut themselves off from the salvation he had promised them. They had come to give.

46:53 Remember our Lord's encounter with the rich young ruler. The young man wanted to know what good thing he could do to inherit eternal life. And when he was questioned, he seemed to really think that he had sufficiently kept all the commandments from his youth up. Remember when Jesus was in the house of Simon the Pharisee.

47:11 Simon was troubled because our Lord was kind to a sinful woman. And in that context, Jesus pointed out that it's those who see themselves as having been forgiven much who love much. The point was that Simon obviously didn't see himself that way. He was self-righteous.

47:28 What about the parable of the Pharisee and the publican in Luke chapter 17? We are told that Jesus spoke it to those who trusted in themselves that they were righteous. He described the Jewish leaders in one place as those who justify themselves before men, who declare themselves righteous before men. Remember the words of contempt that the Pharisees heaped upon the blind man Jesus had healed.

47:53 When the poor man dared to question them. They said, you were completely born in sins and are you teaching us? And do you catch the implication? You were completely born in sins.

48:05 We were not. We are righteous. How dare you teach us? Sounds pretty self-righteous to me.

48:10 Well, I could go on and on. What about the picture of the Judaism of that time that we get from the apostles? The New Perspective tries to put a twist on that picture and to fit it into their reconstruction of Paul's doctrine. But what else is one to think whose mind has not been tainted by recent scholarly opinions when he reads words like these written to the Jews or about the Judaism of Paul's day?

48:37 Romans 10.3 For they being ignorant of God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own righteousness have not submitted to the righteousness of God. And again, I know that the New Perspective tries to put a certain spin on this text. Many like them as we'll see later.

48:52 But what about those poor ignorant people? Who have lived for the past 2,000 years of church history without the advantage of Sanders' great scholarship and so-called groundbreaking book? Naive, simple-minded, though well-meaning Neanderthals like Luther and Calvin and Owen and many others. Should it be surprising that it has seemed very clear to them and to us by a simple reading of the New Testament that one of the problems with the Jews in the days of Christ and the apostles was a kind of external legalistic confidence in their own righteousness for acceptance with God?

49:20 As one has commented, If the average Bible-reading Christian takes a dim view of first-century Judaism, it is evident where he got that dim view. Read through the New Testament and simply mark every polemical comment directed at the Pharisees, Sadducees, the circumcision of the Jews, and so on. The evidence is so clear that it takes about three years of graduate work and theological studies on average to erase it. Here might be a good place to point out that when Sanders gets to the part where he tries to compare the picture of Judaism that he has gathered with the writings of Paul, he makes several admissions that should greatly concern us and immediately raise red flags.

Skeptical Presuppositions and Exclusion of Canonical Texts

50:01 For example, he excludes Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, Ephesians, and the pastoral epistles from consideration as being of questionable authenticity. That should tell us something about his doctrine of Scripture. He also points out that he will be excluding from the discussion the book of Acts, all of which is very convenient for him. There are things in some of those books that don't fit well with some of the conclusions that Sanders draws from.

50:24 I'll get to that toward the end of his book. The skeptical presuppositions that underlie Sanders' entire approach to the Word of God are evidenced in two other ways. One is that after he compares Judaism with Paul, he points out that in his judgment of the pattern of religion Paul sets out is very similar to covenantal gnomism. There are some important differences.

50:44 But then he hastens to add, it is not one of the conclusions of this study that one of the patterns which we have described is superior to the other. Now he labors to emphasize that point. He has said it a number of times that he is not intending to make a value judgment on the inferiority or superiority of either Paul or Judaism. In other words, if I might paraphrase what he at least appears to be saying, and I know I'm being a little bit sarcastic, but I think there's a place for that.

51:12 His purpose is not to find the truth or to say one religion is wrong and another is right. Well, what's your purpose then? Perhaps he finds a certain enjoyment in studying ancient documents and making comparisons for the sake of knowledge in and of itself. But then his skeptical presuppositions are especially revealed when you look back at the index of his book, the index of subjects.

51:37 Under the heading truth ultimate, he has three pages, page numbers. Page 30, page 32, and page 430. When you turn to those pages, guess what? They're all blank.

51:47 They're pages that separate chapters from one another. Now, of course, it is possible that these were simply typos. But it's very difficult to imagine how that could happen. Assuming that this was deliberate and not just a typo, what is the message that that is intended to convey?

52:07 What's that? Hmm? It was summarized by Pilate when he asked what is true. What is true.

Hermeneutical Problem: Distinguishing Old Testament from Second Temple Judaism

52:16 And then, fifthly, let me point out one other problem one often encounters with the discussions of first century Judaism in connection with the new perspective. Now, think with me here. It's the problem of failing to distinguish between Second Temple Judaism and the teaching of the Old Testament. The Old Testament scripture is often not properly distinguished from Second Temple Jewish literature.

52:40 The two are discussed as one seamless body of literature, with the impression being given that Paul's worldview and his gospel were equally informed by all the literature in an undifferentiated way. One major problem with that is the way Paul himself makes these distinctions. Throughout his writings, he only attributes divine authority to the writings of the Old Testament. We never see him do that with any other Jewish literature.

53:08 He does speak of the ancestral traditions that he received from his fathers, but we never find him attributing divine authority to them, nor does he ever base any of his arguments and his theological positions on them. Only the Old Testament scriptures are used by Paul in that way. He clearly makes a distinction between what is scripture and what is tradition. And when men try to interpret Paul based on extra-biblical Jewish literature and fail to do so, and fail to make that distinction, it of necessity leads to errors.

53:39 Whatever one argues that extra-biblical Jewish literature teaches, Paul did not look to extra-biblical Jewish literature as the basis of his teaching. All kinds of confusion comes when men fail to make this distinction between the Old Testament and Judaism, or between the Old Testament and uninspired Jewish literature. This problem is seen another way. Paul, it is argued by some of these men, never broke with his Judaistic roots.

54:04 He remained a good first century Jew. The only difference is that now he has accepted Christ as the promised Messiah. And having been called to be an apostle to the Gentiles on the road to Damascus, now he understands that Gentiles are in the covenant without becoming Jews. His gospel is nothing less than a new covenant gnomism with a virtually seamless continuity with the Judaism of his day.

54:28 Others argue, no, he made a complete break with the way of salvation taught in the Old Testament. That his doctrine of justification was something entirely and radically new and different. Well, do you see why neither of those ideas is right? The problem with both is the failure to distinguish between Judaism and genuine Old Testament religion.

54:48 This, again, is part of the confusion that often reigns when you read about the new perspective. Paul rejected Judaism as it was characterized in his day, yes, but he did not reject the Old Testament way of salvation. The way of salvation and acceptance with God in the Old Testament is one thing, the message of the gospel as revealed in the Old Testament is one thing, but the Judaism of which Paul had been a part was something different. It was a distortion of it, a perversion of it, and this is what Paul rejected.

55:17 There was a faithful remnant in those days, Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and Zacharias, Anna, Simeon, and so on. But on the whole, the Jews are represented in the New Testament as in a state of apostasy, an apostasy most clearly evident in their rejection of the teaching of both Jesus and the apostles, and, you might add, and the Old Testament. So, Second Temple Judaism and Old Testament religion are not the same thing. Paul rejected the Judaism of his day while at the same time he could affirm that the gospel he preached was the same gospel to which the Old Testament scriptures had borne witness.

Hermeneutical Problem: Denying Scripture's Authority and Sufficiency

55:52 Well, what time are we going to? Seven o'clock? Okay, let me go just a little further and I'll break the questions. The hermeneutical problems with the new perspective.

56:04 These are hermeneutical problems that grow out. They grow out of and are related to the historical problems we just considered. First of all, as we've seen, the new perspective seeks to interpret the New Testament on the basis of controversial scholarly reconstructions of Second Temple Judaism. For example, the logic goes like this, quoting from Waters, We know that Paul did not oppose Judaism as a religion of works, and we know anyway that Judaism was not a religion of works but a religion of grace.

56:36 Therefore, Paul's opposition to Judaism must have been based on some other grounds. That's the logic. As you see, this whole train of logic is based on the presumed accuracy of scholarly reconstructions of First-Century Judaism, which themselves are very questionable and controversial and in fact wrong. So, Scripture is interpreted on the basis of one's questionable interpretations of extra-biblical literature and on one's assumptions as to how much that literature actually impacted the thinking of the biblical writers.

57:11 In fact, in many cases, the extra-biblical literature is elevated to a more determinative position in our understanding of First-Century Judaism and of Paul than the New Testament is. For example, at one point, N.T. Wright argues that the New Testament is problematic for gaining a proper picture of Pharisaism, and Eddie Goodwin actually pointed this out to me in his review of N.T. Wright, in his full review, excellent review. I was able to confirm that this week because the New Testament, the people of God, was a book I never could get my hands on, but Dr. Waldron had it in his study, so I was able to confirm this quote. He tells us that the school of Hallel was the dominant party and influence in Israel during New Testament times.

57:56 Thus, in rabbinic literature, the school of Shammai, which the Pharisees belonged to, never appears without being denigrated. Well, this characteristic denigration of the school of Shammai in the culture of that time, he goes on to imply, influenced the New Testament writers and the way the Pharisees are depicted in Scripture. Thus, he says, and I quote, such a perspective like the rabbinic view of Shammai makes it very difficult to use the New Testament as basic material in our reconstruction of the Pharisees. So this is the hermeneutics of the new perspective.

58:32 The New Testament is to be interpreted in light of and through the grid of scholarly reconstructions of Second Temple Judaism. There are major problems with this principle of interpretation. First, the Jewish literature itself must be interpreted. Second, assuming one gets the interpretation right, then it must be shown that the particular part of that literature you are interpreting was both available to Paul and was actually accepted by Paul as authoritative, or at least correct in its perspective.

59:02 Third, this method makes our understanding of Scripture to be based upon non-inspired literature and the non-inspired interpretations of that literature by non-inspired scholars. This points us then to a second major hermeneutical problem with the new perspective. This approach, now I want to be clear, so just follow with me here. I think I need to clarify this more in my notes, but this approach amounts to the denial of the principle that Scripture alone is the authoritative interpreter of Scripture.

59:40 There is an important place for scholarly investigation of historical background as a help to illuminating the Scriptures. Such investigations help us to understand God's Word. But we must always remember that no human interpretation and reconstruction of history and Bible background is itself the authoritative Word of God. When someone's reconstruction or opinion concerning that background contradicts careful exposition of how the Scriptures themselves depict that background, comparing Scripture with Scripture, then that human interpretation of history must be rejected.

60:16 The Bible alone is infallible. Fallible and authoritative and inerrant in all its parts. As such, in the language of our confession, the infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself. Thirdly, this approach to interpreting Scripture amounts to denial of the sufficiency of Scripture.

60:34 If you tell me that I cannot properly understand the Apostle Paul without also having a detailed knowledge and understanding of all the literature of Second Temple Judaism, you are in reality telling me that the Scriptures alone are not sufficient to guide and direct me in all things necessary for God's own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life. You are telling me that as a pastor, as the man of God, what Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17 is not true. Now, just hold your horses a minute. Fourth, this approach therefore directs us, in effect, to put our faith in a priesthood of scholars, not in God alone speaking to us in His Word.

61:19 Here we get to the very heart of the Reformed doctrine of Scripture. Rome argued that the Church is the infallible interpreter of God's Word. Thus, men were not directed to the Word, but to the Church as the object of their trust. The common man cannot be trusted to have the Scriptures or to interpret the Scriptures.

61:35 The Church both authenticates the Scriptures and infallibly interprets the Scriptures, and men are put to put their implicit trust in the Church and its traditions. Well, it is doubtful that most advocates of the New Perspective would ever say this, but in effect, I would argue that their approach to the Scriptures amounts to much the same thing. The only real difference is that it is not the interpretations of the Roman hierarchy and tradition that we must depend on. It is a priesthood of scholars.

62:00 We are told, in essence, that we cannot properly understand Paul unless we properly understand this other body of literature of Second Temple Judaism. But, of course, in order to properly and sufficiently understand Second Temple Judaism, we must be familiar with all the literature from that period. We must be able to read that literature and its original languages, and we must properly interpret that literature, which requires methods of interpretation very different from those we would use to interpret modern literature, we are told. Through all these places, the common Christian man or woman, as well as the ordinary pastor, at the mercy of an academic elite and its scholarly opinions, which themselves are always changing from one generation to the next.

62:41 This, in effect, is a denial of that reformation of biblical principles set forth in our Confession, Chapter 1, Paragraph 4, the authority of the Holy Scripture, which, it ought to be believed, depends not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God, who is Truth itself, the author thereof. Furthermore, this is also, in effect, a denial of the reformation doctrine of the clarity of Scripture, as set forth in Chapter 1, Paragraph 7 of our Confession, which states, All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all. Yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation, which, I would argue, the doctrine of justification by faith, or salvation by faith alone in Christ alone, would be something necessary to be known and believed and observed for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened up in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned but the unlearned, in due use of ordinary means, may attain to a sufficient understanding of them. The Confession argues that though the Bible is not equally clear in all its parts, nor is it equally clear to all, yet it is sufficiently clear for all, with respect to those things necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation. Now here's what I want to make clear. Reformed theology has never denied the place of scholarship, the important place of scholarship, or the place of the official ministry of the Word, in helping the people of God to come to clearer views

64:07 and a more full-orbed understanding of the Scriptures. The doctrine of the clarity of the Scriptures does not argue that the Scriptures are equally clear in all their parts, or equally clear to all. It does not advocate a kind of hyper-individualism, that denies the necessity and benefit of having trained teachers and scholars and guides to help us in our understanding of the Scriptures. But what it does argue, is that God spoke clearly enough in His Word alone, for all and any to discover for themselves, from His Word alone, the knowledge sufficient for salvation, and the performance of one's duty toward God and man.

64:46 It is sufficiently clear that not only the learned but the unlearned may attain to a sufficient understanding of them. Okay, let me pause there. Do you understand the point that I'm making there and what I'm not saying, but what I am trying to say? In other words, to me, any view is suspect to me that touches on something central to our salvation, that in essence is saying that we can't really understand what the Bible teaches about something so central as that, unless we have a clear understanding of all of this other literature outside of the Scriptures. And that's the problem that I have with that. That's what I'm trying to say. I'm not trying to say that there's not a place for the study of such literature.

65:49 That cannot help us in our understanding of the Scriptures and so forth. But my problem, basically what I'm saying is that the New Perspective, E.P. Sanders, and this whole revolution and the interpretation of the Apostle Paul is so rooted in an understanding of what Second Temple Jewish literature taught, that is basically saying that you can't understand the Bible without understanding all of that Jewish literature and what they actually taught.

66:30 That the Bible itself is not sufficient to give us enough information about what the Jews in Paul's day believed for us to understand what it was that Paul was arguing against in his doctrine of justification by faith. That we are at the mercy of those who are experts in the literature of that day to be able to properly understand the Bible. Now, I know that that's kind of the way that this argument may be somewhat controversial or may need to be tweaked, but I throw it out for your consideration and maybe you can criticize me and help me with a better way to express that.