Interesting. Here's a an excerpt concerning Romans 2:1-16 from:
New Perspectives on Paul, by N.T. Wright
In reading N.T. Wright and listening to some of his lectures I think he may have identified errors in the Protestant "system." Namely, that since the Reformers, Protestants have held to incorrect views about Paul and what he really said. Wright gets a lot of opposition from Calvinists, especially in the USA (he's been called a heretic), etc.N.T. Wright wrote:3. Final Judgment According to Works
The third point is remarkably controversial, seeing how well founded it is at several points in Paul. Indeed, listening to yesterday’s papers, it seems that there has been a massive conspiracy of silence on something which was quite clear for Paul (as indeed for Jesus). Paul, in company with mainstream second-Temple Judaism, affirms that God’s final judgment will be in accordance with the entirety of a life led – in accordance, in other words, with works. He says this clearly and unambiguously in Romans 14.10–12 and 2 Corinthians 5.10. He affirms it in that terrifying passage about church-builders in 1 Corinthians 3. But the main passage in question is of course Romans 2.1–16.
This passage has often been read differently. We heard yesterday that Augustine had problems with it (perhaps the only thing in common between Augustine and E. P. Sanders). That is hardly surprising; here is the first statement about justification in Romans, and lo and behold it affirms justification according to works! The doers of the law, he says, will be justified (2.13). Shock, horror; Paul cannot (so many have thought) have really meant it. So the passage has been treated as a hypothetical position which Paul then undermines by showing that nobody can actually achieve it; or, by Sanders for instance, as a piece of unassimilated Jewish preaching which Paul allows to stand even though it conflicts with other things he says. But all such theories are undermined by exegesis itself, not least by observing the many small but significant threads that stitch Romans 2 into the fabric of the letter as a whole. Paul means what he says. Granted, he redefines what ‘doing the law’ really means; he does this in chapter 8, and again in chapter 10, with a codicil in chapter 13. But he makes the point most compactly in Philippians 1.6: he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion on the day of Christ Jesus. The ‘works’ in accordance with which the Christian will be vindicated on the last day are not the unaided works of the self-help moralist. Nor are they the performance of the ethnically distinctive Jewish boundary-markers (sabbath, food-laws and circumcision). They are the things which show, rather, that one is in Christ; the things which are produced in one’s life as a result of the Spirit’s indwelling and operation. In this way, Romans 8.1–17 provides the real answer to Romans 2.1–16. Why is there now ‘no condemnation’? Because, on the one hand, God has condemned sin in the flesh of Christ (let no-one say, as some have done, that this theme is absent in my work; it was and remains central in my thinking and my spirituality); and, on the other hand, because the Spirit is at work to do, within believers, what the Law could not do – ultimately, to give life, but a life that begins in the present with the putting to death of the deeds of the body and the obedient submission to the leading of the Spirit.
In "reading Paul" how N.T. Wright does, it takes me past the Reformation to the first century. This is something Protestants claim to do (the historical grammatical hermeneutical principle, interpreting the Bible in its historical context and setting, etc.). But do they really do it? Or are they proof-texting theologies from circa 16th century?
In Calvinism V. Non-Calvinism debates, arguments are given from scripture. But all too often the first century Jewish-Christian context is ignored -- and blatantly so by Calvinists, especially (it's just horrible). Texts are given to support or refute a doctrine when...did Calvinism or Arminianism even exist in the Apostles world? We know the precursor to Calvinism was around via the philosophers; many Calvinists actually "praise" them (odd).
Steve said in his Romans 9 lecture, "Why did Paul suddenly go off into an excursus on "Calvinism?" (that this was something he wondered about till he found out Paul wasn't talking about it -- at all)! I wondered about that too, Steve: great lecture
Nap time, thanks,
Rick
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