Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The "Lutheran" Paul and His Critics

Trinity Journal, Fall 2004 by Berding, Kenneth

Stephen Westerholm. Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The "Lutheran" Paul and His Critics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004. 488 pp. $35.00.

Stephen Westerholm, associate professor of biblical studies at McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario), began writing Perspectives Old and New on Paul as a revision of his earlier study on the same topic, Israel's Law and the Church's Faith: Paul and His Recent Interpreters (1988). Indeed, certain sections of Israel's Law find their way into Perspectives substantially unchanged (compare chs. 2-6 in Israel's Law with chs. 6-10 in Perspectives), or they form the basis for discussions at a few points in Perspectives (compare ch. 6 in Israel's Law with ch. 16 in Perspectives; also chs. 9-10 in Israel's Law with ch. 19 in Perspectives). Nevertheless, the scope of Westerholm's new book has been significantly increased and many issues have been clarified.

The book is divided into three sections. Part One is a summary of the positions of Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and Wesley respectively on the question of Paul and the law. Chapter 5 recaps the positions of these four influential authors through the use of seven theses -five areas in which these authors are in agreement and two that they all confront but at which they do not agree. The broad areas of agreement about Paul's interpretation of the law are dubbed, for the purpose of later discussion, the "Lutheran" Paul.

Part Two is a topical summary of key areas of reaction against the "Lutheran" Paul during the past century. The casual reader of the table of contents might suppose that Westerholm has simply summarized the positions of various twentieth century interpreters on Paul and the law. In actual fact, Westerholm has selected certain key points at which the "Lutheran" Paul has been "attacked" and then has summarized the views of two, three, or four spokespersons on those topics. Topics include the charge that justification by faith is merely "polemical" or "subsidiary" (Wrede, Schweitzer, ch. 6); the reassessment of Judaism as a religion of works (Montefiore, Schoeps, Sanders, ch. 7); the challenge against an introspective Paul (Kümmel, Stendahl, ch. 8); the question of whether Paul saw the righteousness of the law as good (Wilckens), bad (Bultmann), or indifferent (Sanders) (ch. 9); the question of whether Paul shifts significantly in his understanding of the law (Drane, Hübner) or is bedeviled by internal contradiction (Räisänen) (ch. 10); and the insistence that what Paul faulted with the Jews was ethnocentrism (Wright, Dunn, Longenecker, Donaldson, ch. 11). In ch. 12, Westerholm summarizes significant "Lutheran" responses to these "attacks" (Cranfield, Schreiner, Das, Thielman, Seifrid). Chapter 12 highlights four ancillary areas of study that function, in his view, in a mutually supportive position with a "Lutheran" view of justification by faith, including "Paul's anthropology, his rhetoric, his apocalyptic worldview, and his theology of the cross" (Laato, Thuren, Aletti, Martyn, Becker). Westerholm ends Part Two with a compendium of quotes from leading critics of the "Lutheran" Paul before he launches into a critique of their positions in Part Three.

Whereas Parts One and Two are a roadmap through the often confusing literature on Paul and the law, Part Three (approximately forty percent of the book) is Westerholm's own contribution to the discussion. He labors to contextually define what Paul means when he writes of "righteousness," the "law," "works," and "faith" (chs. 16-17). Chapter 18 is a brief evaluation of Sanders's description of first century Judaism. Chapter 19 walks us through the letters of Paul in reference to "justification by faith." Chapter 20 evaluates Paul's teaching about "law" and boils it all down to nine theses.

Westerholm basically agrees with proponents of the "new perspective" that the Judaism of Paul's day "knew and depended on God's grace and did not promote a self-righteous pursuit of salvation by works" (p. 444), though he argues for greater diversity on this formulation than Sanders has allowed, since it is not true in all instances. He also agrees that when the proponents of the "new perspective" describe the occasions of Paul's conflicts in terms of "boundary markers" and ethnocentrism that they have often described those occasions correctly. But he would insist that in the end what should determine our understanding of Paul must be the basic arguments put forward by Paul in his letters, rather than a transfer of readings onto Paul's texts that have been determined by the supposed sociological occasion. At this point, and at most points, Westerholm is squarely in the "Lutheran" camp.

This book is a significant addition to the ongoing discussion of Paul and the law. My only criticism relates to Westerholm's decision to use hybrid Greek-English words, such as "dikaiosness" and "dikaiosify," rather than English glosses like "righteousness" and "justify." At first I thought this was a good idea since misunderstandings often are intensified through the use of such glosses, but as I read Part Three, I found the use of this device increasingly grating.