The New Perspective, Mediation, and Justification

Editor’s Note: The following is the complete chapter as it appeared in R. Scott Clark, ed., Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry: Essays by the Faculty of Westminster Seminary California (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2007), 137-63. In 2021, the publisher returned the publication rights to the copyright holder and the chapter is presented here as a service to the public by the Heidelberg Reformation Association. The material is copyrighted. All Rights Reserved. You are welcome to link to this chapter but you are not entitled to reproduce it in any way without permission of the copyright holder.

Introduction

After all these centuries the Reformation’s doctrine of justification is still disputed in some circles, particularly among a relatively small but vocal group associated with the so-called new perspective on Paul.¹ The various positions of this group have been subject to considerable critique and rebuttal in scholarly literature, for its underlying analysis of both ancient Judaism and Paul’s theology.²

1. Normally traced to Krister Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscious of the West,” Harvard Theological Review 56 (1963): 199–215; reprinted in idem, Paul among Jews and Gentiles and Other Essays (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976); and E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977). The label was coined in 1983 by James D. G. Dunn; see his “The New Perspective on Paul,” in Jesus, Paul, and the Law: Studies in Mark and Galatians (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1990), 183–214. A view over thirty years old is hardly “new” anymore. Cf. the overview by Michael B. Thompson, The New Perspective on Paul (Cambridge: Grove, 2002).

2. General critiques include Peter Stuhlmacher, Revisiting Paul’s Doctrine of Justification: A Challenge to the New Perspective; with an Essay by Donald A. Hagner (Downers Grove,

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Because of the wide availability of thorough reviews and critiques of the new perspective, I will not rehearse it in detail here.³ I will briefly describe the new perspective’s core ideas and methods, comment on a few of these, and then spend the bulk of my time on an exposition of key notions in Paul recognized in the Reformed view on justification, which often get overlooked in the debate today. It is my opinion that confessional Reformed and Lutherans are fundamentally agreed on the essence of justification as consisting of the forgiveness of sins and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness as a gift by grace through faith alone, but that the Reformed wing of Protestantism has from very early on expressed this in distinctive ways through biblical notions of the covenant mediation of Christ.⁴ I will illustrate this viewpoint with a survey exegesis of Romans 5.

IL: InterVarsity, 2001); Seyoon Kim, Paul and the New Perspective: Second Thoughts on the Origin of Paul’s Gospel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002); Stephen Westerholm, Israel’s Law and the Church’s Faith: Paul and His Recent Interpreters (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988); idem, Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004); D. A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid, eds., Justification and Variegated Nomism (2 vols.; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001–4); A. Andrew Das, Paul, the Law, and the Covenant (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2001); Mark Seifrid, Justification by Faith: The Origin and Development of a Central Pauline Theme (Novum Testamentum Supplement 68; Leiden: Brill, 1992); and Richard Gaffin, “Paul the Theologian,” Westminster Theological Journal 62 (2000): 121–41. Francis Watson’s recent work, “Not the New Perspective” (paper presented at the British New Testament Conference, Sept. 2001), is particularly interesting since he had previously defended a new perspective position in his Paul, Judaism, and the Gentiles: A Sociological Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). For critique of Sanders’s analysis of ancient Judaism, see, e.g., Mark A. Elliott’s massive work: The Survivors of Israel: A Reconsideration of the Theology of Pre-Christian Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000). A review of this book by a scholar of ancient Judaism, Johannes Tromp, expresses doubt that E. P. Sanders’s views are all that influential except possibly among New Testament scholars, but “I have never noticed much of it among students of Judaism”; see Journal of Theological Studies 52 (2001): 772. Cf. the rather strident review of Sanders by another expert in ancient Judaism, Jacob Neusner in History of Religions 18 (1978): 177–91.

3. Many shorter critiques by other notable scholars are handily available through a web page devoted to discussion of the issues both pro and con: “The Paul Page,” http://www .thepaulpage.com (accessed Sept. 2004).

4. Significant work on this has been done in the past by the Reformed (e.g., Cocceius, Witsius, Owen), but it is, alas, lost from view in modern debates. Cf. covenant mediation expressed as “surety” in WLC 71: “How is justification an act of God’s free grace? Although Christ, by his obedience and death, did make a proper, real, and full satisfaction to God’s justice in the behalf of them that are justified; yet inasmuch as God accepts the satisfaction from a surety, which he might have demanded of them, and did provide this surety, his own only Son, imputing his righteousness to them, and requiring nothing of them for their justification but faith, which also is his gift, their justification is to them of free grace” (emphasis added).

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The Fundamentals of the New Perspective

While new perspective scholars differ in many particulars, at least three points derived from E. P. Sanders form nonnegotiable ideas for their position.⁵ First, Protestant analysis of Paul’s Jewish-Christian opponents (or even of Judaism itself) consistently presents them as what could be called “rank” legalists. That is, one’s acceptance by God into eternal life is based solely on one’s own meritorious obedience to the law: solis operibus. Sanders writes: “The frequent Christian charge against Judaism, it must be recalled, is not that some individual Jews misunderstood, misapplied and abused their religion, but that Judaism necessarily tends toward petty legalism, self-serving and self-deceiving casuistry, and a mixture of arrogance and lack of confidence in God.”⁶ Instead, Sanders identifies ancient Judaism, including Paul’s Jewish-Christian opponents, as holding to what he describes as a nonlegalistic “covenant nomism,” identified by the language of “getting in” by grace but “staying in” by works of obedience to God’s law.⁷ N. T. Wright summarizes: “Judaism, he [Sanders] insisted, was and is a perfectly valid and proper form of religion. Paul’s only real critique of Judaism, according to Sanders, was that it was ‘not Christianity.’”⁸

Second, what began as a new perspective on Second Temple Judaism against a supposed Protestant misinterpretation turns without further ado into a complete recasting of Paul’s theology.⁹ Notably,

5. See N. T. Wright’s remarks on Sanders’s importance in What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 20: “He [Sanders] nevertheless dominates the landscape, and, until a major refutation of his central thesis is produced, honesty compels one to do business with him. I do not myself believe such a refutation can or will be offered; serious modifications are required, but I regard his basic point as established.”

6. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 427 (emphasis original).

7. Sanders writes: “The pattern is this: God has chosen Israel and Israel has accepted the election. In his role as King, God gave Israel commandments which they are to obey as best they can. Obedience is rewarded and disobedience punished. In case of failure to obey, however, man has recourse to divinely ordained means of atonement, in all of which repentance is required. As long as he maintains his desire to stay in the covenant, he has a share in God’s covenantal promises, including life in the world to come. The intention and effort to be obedient constitute the condition for remaining in the covenant, but they do not earn it” (ibid., 180, emphasis original).

8. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 19.

9. Sanders and others give very little attention to classic Protestant authors when rejecting Protestantism’s views on ancient Judaism. For example, Martin Luther is cited only once in

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Sanders himself did little exegesis of Paul, and his own sketch of Paul’s theology has gained few followers. Nevertheless, we are confidently told that Sanders’s conclusions on ancient Judaism lead necessarily to a complete reworking of Paul and—relevant for our purposes here—a reworking of Paul’s doctrine of justification in all of its essential elements. Wright, for example, indicts the church—principally because it has misunderstood ancient Judaism and has “ransacked” Paul for mere proof-texts; therefore the Christian church has misunderstood Paul on justification “for nearly two thousand years” and “has systematically done violence to that text [Romans] for hundreds of years.”¹⁰

Third, in consequence of the other two points, any reading of Paul that looks suspiciously like the Protestant view is ipso facto mistaken and excluded from consideration in the new perspective.¹¹ Correlative with this point is the curious fact that the new perspective Paul looks remarkably like his “covenant nomist” opponents described in Sanders’s portrait of ancient Judaism. If the Judaism of Sanders teaches that one “gets into” covenant fellowship and salvation through a gracious, corporate divine election, one retains title to these blessings only through a sort of nonmeritorious obedience through works of law keeping.

Paul and Palestinian Judaism (492n57), when Sanders argues that Paul does not have a forensic view of imputed righteousness as found in Luther’s commentary on Galatians.

10. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 115–17. Wright cites no sources as examples of the offenders he has in mind.

11. This is not my opinion alone, but is illustrated very pointedly by Watson: “In interpreting the relevant Pauline texts, the new perspective repeatedly performs a characteristic exegetical manoeuvre in three steps. Here’s how it works. Step one: we observe that a Pauline text appears to be contrasting the logic of the gospel with the logic of a Jewish or Jewish Christian understanding of the law. Paul speaks of grace over against law, faith over against works; he seems to set believing the gospel of divine saving action over against practising the law. Step two: we know, however, that the point of these Pauline antitheses cannot be to contrast the gospel’s emphasis on divine agency with a Jewish emphasis on human agency. If we think we see this antithesis between divine and human agency in Paul, we’re still held captive by the ideology of the Reformation, resulting as it must do in a hostile caricature of Judaism. But how do we know that an antithesis between divine and human agency cannot be present in Paul’s texts? Because Sanders has taught us that Judaism was and is a religion of grace; and, on this matter, Sanders speaks not only the truth but also the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Step three: we must therefore read the Pauline antithesis differently, as an ‘ecclesiological’ statement about the nature of the people of God. For Paul, ‘faith’ represents an inclusive understanding of the people of God as including non-law-observant Gentiles; ‘works’ represents an exclusive understanding of the people of God according to which full conversion to the practice of Judaism is a necessary precondition of salvation. What Paul is propounding is, in effect, an inclusive, universal, liberal form of Jewish covenant theology”; “Not the New Perspective,” 14 (emphasis original).

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“In Paul, as in Jewish literature,” Sanders writes, “good deeds are the condition of remaining ‘in,’ but they do not earn salvation.”¹²

Methodological Difficulties in the New Perspective

Four consistent methodological problems in the new perspective literature should at least give one pause when accepting their conclusions. Many people regard exegesis as a neutral or even a scientific procedure that, if done correctly, will yield consistently true results, but exegesis is performed by human beings who begin with their own prejudices, areas of expertise as well as of ignorance, and prior theological commitments that inevitably shape their exegetical conclusions.¹³ One can always learn something valuable from careful exegesis no matter how much the interpreter’s viewpoint and conclusions diverge from one’s own, but it is far less satisfying and instructive to read exegetes who time and again evidence errors of exegetical method and dismiss carefully researched positions out of hand. It leads to the suspicion that the conclusions are not as self-evident and well established as claimed.

The first methodological problem is a pervasive tendency in new perspective scholars to use a word, word group, or a phrase in Paul as levers to shift our understanding of Paul’s doctrines from what has been painstakingly established to their own eccentric interpretations. The exact way this is done may vary, but the leverage takes place in significant ways nevertheless. Here are some examples.

Occurring several places in Paul (e.g., Rom 3:22; Gal 2:16; 3:22; Phil 3:9), the phrase πίστις Χριστοῦ is the subject of ongoing dispute and is variously interpreted: (1) the believer’s trust in Christ (brought out by rendering “faith in Christ” as found in most English versions); (2) Christ’s own fidelity or faithfulness to God; (3) Christ’s own faith in God; and (4) faith that has a more generic relation to Christ,

12. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 517.

13. This conclusion is supported by Wright in a most candid statement: “Many New Testament scholars use detailed exegesis as a way of escaping from heavy-handed and stultifying conservatism; any attempt to reconstruct the sort of system from which they themselves are glad to be free” (What Saint Paul Really Said, 21). Exegesis in this light is not the neutral Wissenschaft as often imagined.

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communicated by “Christic faith.”¹⁴ I am not interested in entering this debate here, but merely showing how this phrase is used to pry too large a load.¹⁵ For example, Douglas Campbell, after discussing πίστις in Romans 1:17 (“from faith to faith”) and in Paul’s citation of Habakkuk 2:4 (“the righteous one will live from faith”), claims that this use of πίστις settles not only the πίστις Χριστοῦ debate in favor of meaning 2, but actually leads to an inevitable reworking of everything we thought Paul has said.¹⁶ Here is Campbell’s own breathtaking conclusion:

With the establishment of this equation between ἐκ πίστεως, Hab 2:4, and the faithfulness of the Messiah in [Rom] 1:17, much in the rest of Paul’s argument within Romans is both resolved and clarified. . . . Probably all that can be claimed at this point is that the burden of proof now rests firmly on those who would read many of these genitives and arguments in a way that does not link πίστις with Χριστός in a subjective fashion, that is, as an elliptical reference, mediated by the terminology of Hab 2:4, to his death on the cross. Yet even this minimal concession opens up the possibility of a major reevaluation of Paul’s argument in Romans (especially chaps. 1–4), and of his theology as a whole.¹⁷

Time does not allow us to illustrate this methodological problem more fully. Yet one will find the phrase δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ (righteousness of God), the whole δικαιο word group (righteous, righteousness, justify), and ἔργα νόμου (works of law) receiving particular attention in new perspective literature as words and phrases that warrant the recasting of Paul’s whole theology and especially his

14. For a survey of the options, see Richard B. Hays and Luke Timothy Johnson, The Faith of Jesus Christ: The Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1–4:11 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001).

15. Is it improper to recall Virgil’s mens agitat molem here (Aeneid 6.727)?

16. Douglas A. Campbell, “Romans 1:17: A Crux Interpretum for the Πίστις Χριστοῦ Debate,” Journal of Biblical Literature 113 (1994): 265–85. By the way, meaning 2 for πίστις Χριστοῦ would communicate what the Reformed called “the active obedience of Christ” (discussed in chapter 8 below) and is therefore not a revolutionary concept for us, though I still prefer meaning 1 for other linguistic and exegetical reasons.

17. Ibid., 284–85 (emphasis added). For follow-up critique, see Brian Dodd, “Romans 1:17: A Crux Interpretum for the Πίστις Χριστοῦ Debate?” Journal of Biblical Literature 114 (1995): 470–73.

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doctrine of justification in the way in which new perspective adherents desire.¹⁸

In all this flurry of claims about a few pivotal words and phrases, however, an exegete must firmly grasp and act upon this fundamental truth: a complex conception like justification in the teaching of Paul cannot be constructed in whole or even in large part by simple analysis of a few words or phrases.¹⁹ Word and phrase studies certainly have their place in the process, but a complex conception must be established by statements and larger units of discourse. As just one simple example of this, even a surface reading of Romans 4:5–8 shows that Paul views justification to be a multifaceted concept that involves “the one who does not labor” but instead “trusts in the one who justifies the ungodly” and receives a “reckoning of righteousness” that can, as its flip side, be described as “not reckoning sins” because “blessed are those whose sins are forgiven” (quoting Ps 32). Works, faith, ungodliness (simul iustus et peccator), reckoning righteous, the forgiveness of sins, and more must all factor into our grasp of Paul’s conception of justification. These issues are not established by simple analysis of words alone, but by reading contexts and evaluating larger units of discourse.²⁰

18. Cf. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 544: “The debate about righteousness by faith or by works of law thus turns out to result from the different usage of the ‘righteous’ word-group.” For Dunn and others the supposed Hebrew meaning of Paul’s phrase δικαιοσὺνη θεοῦ becomes “a key to his exposition in Romans”; James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1–8 (Word Biblical Commentary 38A; Dallas: Word, 1988), 41. One extreme example of a similar methodological problem is Wright’s attempt to fix the content of Paul’s gospel (εὐαγγέλιον) by locating “the Jewish usage of the relevant root” in two verses in Isaiah. In consequence, he believes that the referent of Paul’s gospel is the announcement that Gentiles join Israel in return from (Babylonian?) exile; see What Saint Paul Really Said, 43. If this procedure were valid we could just as likely trace Paul’s gospel to Jer 20:15, where the prophet curses the man who brought the “gospel” of his birth to his father; hence, the gospel would be viewed as a curse.

19. We are not talking here about concrete objects in the world but complex theological conceptions. In other realms of life, one would need to perform similar global analysis to grasp ideas such as democracy, freedom, common law, and the like.

20. N. T. Wright warns that Rom 4 is not “a mere proof from scripture of the abstract doctrine of justification by faith”; The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 36, though we are not told why this doctrine must be “abstract” here. See also his conflation (e.g., What Saint Paul Really Said, 160) of the conceptions of “faith” and “faithfulness” simply because the term πίστις in Greek can have either (discrete) meaning—as clear an example of Barr’s “illegitimate totality transfer” as any, though Wright provides several others in his writings.

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A second common methodological problem in new perspective interpreters involves something more subtle and entails many inter-related issues. Put simply, justification for them is not a definitive declaration by God that the sinner is accounted righteous in Christ by faith alone, but—and here the new perspective interpreters will vary in the details—it is some sort of ongoing relationship in covenant involving both God’s obligation to save his covenant people and the individual’s own obedience to maintain covenant with God. One of the linchpins of this argument is that the Jewish conception of justify, righteousness, and so on (all in the δικαιο word group in Greek) differs from “the typical Greek worldview” as follows: “For whereas in Greek thought ‘righteousness’ or ‘justice’ was an ideal norm by which particular claims or duties could be measured, in Hebrew thought ‘righteousness’ was more a concept of relation.”²¹ Specifically, these conceptions for the Jew worked within “a relationship of mutual obligation” so that for us it means “to be acquitted, recognized as righteous, . . . to be counted as one of God’s own people who had proved faithful to the covenant.”²² Hence, Paul turns out to be a “covenant nomist” like his opponents.

While Dunn quotes many secondary sources to justify this claim of the opposition of Jewish and Greek thought on the issues of justice and justification, one will be hard pressed to find a “typical Greek” who held to an abstract notion of justice or a typical Jew—including Paul himself—who did not conceive of the law of Moses as a norm by which sin was accounted as transgression.²³ This latter view is clearly taught in Romans 5:13–14. The Greeks, however, had a long-standing debate over whether societal norms were rooted merely in νόμος (custom) (i.e., arbitrary human inventions and changing societal norms) or φύσις (nature) (i.e., the unchanging nature of reality and fundamental existence), and their popular conception of certain transgressions as personal affronts to certain gods (e.g., violation of the strict demands of hospitality overseen by Zeus Xenios) is ignored

21. James D. G. Dunn, The Epistle to the Galatians (Black’s New Testament Commentaries; London: Black, 1993), 134; cf. idem, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 341–42.

22. Dunn, Theology of Paul, 342; and idem, Galatians, 134–35 (emphasis added).

23. For Dunn’s sources, see Theology of Paul, 341–42n27.

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by new perspective advocates. Even the most idealized conception of law by the Greeks (e.g., Plato’s Laws) recognized that each polis had its own distinct ancestral laws (similar to Rome’s mos maiorum) that were not abstract but operated within the whole Mediterranean notion of eusebeia or pietas toward parents and superiors in complex interrelations of patronage or formal friendship. One could easily assert that the Greek (and Roman) notion of justice was relational and not abstract if given to oversimplification,²⁴ but a more accurate evaluation of Paul’s historical backdrop would be inconvenient for the rhetorical appeal of the new perspective.

The third methodological problem haunting new perspective exegesis is the consistent tendency to limit the meaning of Paul’s own teaching to what his supposed Jewish contemporaries either taught or what they would have understood. We are told that this is reading Paul historically in light of his contemporaries rather than through the improper lenses of the Reformation or of contemporary Western theological interests foreign to the ancient Jewish world. The last thing I want to do is commend reading the New Testament in a historical vacuum,²⁵ but there are obvious limits here when the Paul of the new perspective becomes indistinguishable from his opponents.²⁶ Let me illustrate with one notable example.

In Galatians 5:3, Paul reasserts his most dire warning to the Galatians by testifying that to accept the way of law keeping for justification embodied in taking on circumcision (cf. Acts 15:1, 5) means that they would then be personally under obligation “to perform the whole law,” for they will have been cut off from Christ (the covenant mediator) and have fallen from grace (Gal 5:2, 4). This text, in association with Galatians 3:10, has been taken to indicate that Paul interpreted the

24. This is not to say that there was no differences of thought between Paul and, say, contemporary Greeks like Epictetus or Plutarch or Romans like Seneca or Pliny the Younger. One will also need to take into account the heavy influence of pagan philosophy on Jewish authors such as Philo (Platonism) or the author of 4 Maccabees (Stoicism). All of this, however, is another essay. See “Nomos,” in Der Neue Pauly: Enzyklopädie der Antike (ed. Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider; Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler, 2000), 8.982–85, esp. 984.

25. See Steven Michael Baugh, “Paul and Ephesus: The Apostle among His Contemporaries” (PhD diss., University of California, Irvine, 1990).

26. See Watson’s telling statement quoted above that the theology of the new perspective Paul “is, in effect, an inclusive, universal, liberal form of Jewish covenant theology”; “Not the New Perspective,” 14.

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law to require perfect and entire obedience “that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear” (Acts 15:10). Yet, this interpretation does not fit Sanders’s view that both Paul and contemporary Judaism taught a more relaxed view of the law in the form of covenant nomism. In other words, Paul cannot be interpreted to view the law as imposing an exacting and exhaustive requirement for personal obedience for Sanders or his whole analysis of Paul’s opponents would end in failure.²⁷

Initially in Paul and Palestinian Judaism, Sanders saw Paul in Galatians 3:10 holding “that one must achieve legal perfection.” In contrast, “The Amoraic literature always emphasizes that one should confirm the law, not keep it without error. . . . Human perfection was not considered realistically achievable by the Rabbis, nor was it required.”²⁸ Later on, however, Sanders changed his view to assert that Paul too did not believe that the law required perfection.²⁹

This seems to run against the obvious import of Galatians 3:10 and even more clearly 5:3, where Paul says that the Galatian who “attempts to be justified by the law” (5:4) is severed from Christ and from divine grace and would be under personal obligation to fulfill the whole law (ὀφειλέτης ἐστὶν ὅλον τὸν νόμον ποιῆσαι). The question has its own importance for reading Paul, but what is under review here is merely how Sanders deals with this verse and its context. He does give 5:3 a few pages of treatment in his later book, Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People.³⁰ Sanders’s conclusion is that Paul is merely “reminding his converts that, if they accept circumcision, the consequence would be that they would have to begin living their lives according to

27. For citation of literature and discussion of this issue, see my “Galatians 5:1–6 and Personal Obligation: Reflections on Paul and the Law,” paper read at the 2004 national meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in San Antonio, Texas.

28. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 137. As an aside, Sanders’s treatment here of the Hebrew verb יָקִים (confirm) in Deut 27:26 cited by Paul in Gal 3:10 can be challenged. קוּם in the Hifil is found in very interesting connections with oath and covenant stipulations in the Old Testament to show that the law imposed a rigid obligation for personal performance of its commandments (e.g., 1 Sam 15:11; 2 Kgs 23:3), which is transgression of the covenant by not “keeping” (הֵקִימ) its terms (Jer 34:18).

29. Sanders notes that he changed his view in Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 23.

30. Ibid., 27–29.

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a new set of rules for daily living.”³¹ Paul’s anguished, dire, and blunt warning of 5:1–6 (i.e., ἴδε ἐγὼ Παῦλος λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι in 5:2) becomes for Sanders a mild bit of advice about a change of ethics of very little consequence. What is important to us here, however, is how Sanders arrives at this unsatisfying interpretation. Here is the sum of his argument in his own words:

It would, in short, be extraordinarily un-Pharisaic and even un-Jewish of Paul to insist that obedience of the law, once undertaken, must be perfect. Such a position would directly imply that the means of atonement specified in Scripture itself were of no avail. Appeal to Paul’s pre-Christian views lends no support to the position that the weight of Paul’s argument in Galatians 3 rests on the word “all” in 3:10, or to the position that Paul came to his negative stance on righteousness by the law because it cannot be adequately fulfilled. Paul’s Pharisaic past counts heavily against both positions.³²

In other words, the new perspective Paul can never break out of the box of his supposed pre-Christian convictions about the nature of the law and its righteousness. Paraphrased, the reconstructed ancient Judaism of the new perspective acts as a filter through which Paul must pass. Anything he says that does not conform to the views of this censorship board must be scrubbed of all offending material. In the end, it seems obvious to conclude that if Sanders and his followers were right we would be left with the urgent question of why this Paul, doomed to his Pharisaic prison, has not faded into the same obscurity and anonymity as his nameless opponents at Galatia rather than being a continuing major contributor to the most robust and exciting theology on the planet two millennia later.

A fourth methodological problem is the rather abrupt way we are told that justification is not a definitive, judicial act of God but a process connected with continuance in the covenant relationship. Though the exact nuance will vary from one new perspective propo-

31. Ibid., 29.

32. Ibid., 28. This stratagem is used often by new perspective interpreters, for instance: “When Paul speaks of justification he is operating within the whole world of thought of second-temple Judaism” (Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 117). Rather Paul is operating in the thought world of Christianity (cf. 1 Cor 2:8–13 or 2 Cor 3:14–18).

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nent to another, continuance in the relationship is made to depend on some form of the believer’s obedience and works.³³ In Sanders’s terminology one may “get in” by grace, but one “stays in” by works of obedience.³⁴

The viewpoint of justification as a process is substantiated by the previously discussed issue of “justify” and related Greek words as distinctively relational terms for Paul. Support for justification as a process is said to come from the verb tenses Paul uses when expressing δικαιόω (justify) in various contexts in his epistles. This point comes up particularly in Dunn’s treatment of the aorist participle δικαιωθέντες in Romans 5:1, so I will use this as the occasion to begin our survey of Romans 5.

Covenant Mediation in Romans

We open Romans 5 conscious of entering Paul’s epistle in progress, with some key notions already carefully laid down by the apostle. All the world, both Jew and Greek, is under indictment to God’s law, condemnation, and wrath (3:9, 19–20), so that only through the one mediator between God and man (1 Tim 2:5) through whose propitiatory death (Rom 3:25) and fulfilling of the law’s demands can God’s forgiveness and justification extend as a free gift to the profane and ungodly who put their trust in the Savior (3:26; 4:5–12; cf. 2 Cor 5:21; Eph 2:8–9; Titus 2:14).³⁵

33. Here Paul’s often misunderstood “obedience of faith” (Rom 1:5; 16:26) is sometimes invoked as “one of Paul’s key phrases” (Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 160) to show that “faith” is really tantamount to “faithfulness” or works of obedience; cf. Dunn (Theology of Paul, 360–61 [esp. n107] and 635), who via the etymology of the word ὑπακοή (obedience) derived from ὑπό (under) and ἀκοή (hearing) connects the phrase obedience of faith with the Hebrew word שָׁמַע and Paul’s phrase hearing of faith (Gal 3:2, 5). This is an extreme example of the well-known etymological fallacy; cf. D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies (2nd ed.; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 28–33.

34. Never mind that this is precisely what Protestants have labeled “legalism” rather than the scarecrow easily knocked over by champions of the new perspective.

35. One will note that I accept the Pastoral epistles and other so-called deuteropauline books as Pauline in origin. Dunn defends his rejection of these books in a brief footnote, Theology of Paul, 13n39, which necessarily skews the results of his so-called Pauline theology. In my mind, significant works such as E. Randolph Richards’s Secretary in the Letters of Paul (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2.42; Tübingen: Mohr, 1991) or Anthony

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Having Been Justified

Romans 5 then opens with the stunning words: “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (5:1–2 ESV). Paul says that we have now been justified and in consequence have peace, access, and standing in God’s grace, which gives us sure hope for the future. This means that God has already rendered his verdict of the last day in our favor through Jesus Christ. Justification is accomplished. To all appearances, this seems to be communicated rather neatly by the lead aorist adverbial (or circumstantial) participle in 5:1: δικαιωθέντες, rendered “since we have been justified.”³⁶

Two issues need to be briefly addressed before going further: the meaning of the word δικαιόω and the significance of the aorist tense form of the participle δικαιωθέντες. While I have already stated that our grasp of Paul’s complex conception of justification by faith alone cannot rest on such questions alone, it is still necessary to treat them.

The verb δικαιόω has four identifiably distinct meanings in the Greek New Testament:³⁷

To judicially pronounce acquittal from charges of wrongdoing and, consequently, to declare someone’s just status according to a legal or moral standard. In most New Testament contexts, the final judgment is the setting, and the legal

Kenny’s Stylometric Study of the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986) must be answered by those who reject Pauline authorship of these New Testament books.

36. All major English versions render the participle δικαιωθέντες causally: “Since we have been justified.” NRSV infelicitously renders the aorist participle as “since we are justified by faith” (emphasis added), which would be appropriate if the participle had been expressed in its perfect tense form.

37. Cf. BDAG 249: (1) to take up a legal cause, show justice, do justice, take up a cause (no New Testament examples); (2) to render a favorable verdict, vindicate; (3) to cause someone to be released from personal or institutional claims that are no longer to be considered pertinent or valid, make free/pure; (4) to demonstrate to be morally right, prove to be right. Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, and H. Stuart Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon (9th ed.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), in both the main text (429) and the supplement (42), point to other meanings: “demand as a right,” “consent,” “punish,” “brought to justice,” in addition to the Septuagint and New Testament meanings (e.g., “pass sentence; pronounce and treat as righteous”).

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standard is the divinely issued law (from general or special revelation) (Matt 12:36–37; Luke 18:14; Rom 8:33–34). The antonym is “condemn” (Rom 8:33–34).³⁸

To set someone free from some offense or guilt; to purify from sin, rendered “to clear” or “to purify from” (Acts 13:38– 39; Rom 6:7).
To demonstrate that one is right in word or deed. The setting may be a formal public setting (courtroom). The idea carries with it the proving of one’s veracity or rightness. “Vindicate” is the closest English rendering (Matt 11:19; Luke 10:29; Rom 3:4 [quoting Ps 51]; 1 Tim 3:16; Jas 2:21, 24).
To publicly acknowledge the rightness of someone (Luke 7:29).³⁹

In Romans 5:1 (and 5:9), meaning 1 is clearly intended by δικαιωθέντες. When we look at what Paul says through this verb with this meaning, we find that the rendering of this positive verdict about believers is before God (versus man as Luke 16:15) (Rom 2:23; 3:20; Gal 3:11) as a gift (Rom 3:24) to those deserving condemnation (4:5; 5:6–10) by faith alone in Christ (3:26, 28, 30; 4:2; 1 Cor 6:11; Gal 2:16–17; 3:8, 24; 5:4; Titus 3:7) and is tantamount to “credit righteousness to someone” or “account someone as righteous” (λογίζεσθαι τινί [εἰς] δικαιοσύνην; e.g., Rom 4:3, 6) and involves the forgiveness of sins (4:6–8). This surely informs how we must read δικαιωθέντες in 5:1 and 5:9.

The issue of the aorist tense form of δικαιωθέντες in 5:1 arises because of Dunn’s warning:

Somewhat surprisingly, this is the first time Paul uses δικαιόω in the aorist in Romans—apart from 3:4 (God) and 4:2 (Abraham). In more general references and references to fellow believers the present indicative (3:24, 26, 28; 4:5) and future (2:13; 3:20, 30)

38. See esp. Prov 17:15:

מַצְדִּיק רָשָׁע וּמַרְשִׁיעַ צַדִּיק תּוֹעֲבַת יְהוָה גַּם־שְׁנֵיהֶם

(he who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous / are both alike an abomination to the Lord) (ESV), which is rendered rather freely in the Septuagint as ὃς δίκαιον κρίνει τὸν ἄδικον, ἄδικον δὲ τὸν δίκαιον, ἀκάθαρτος καὶ βδελυκτὸς παρὰ θεῷ.

39. BDAG 249 §2a renders “tax-collectors affirmed God’s uprightness.” This meaning is possibly subsumed under #3 above.

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have predominated. The tense here certainly indicates an act of God in the past, but that should not be allowed to dominate the doctrine of justification drawn from Paul to the extent that it has, or to overwhelm the force of the other tenses.⁴⁰

It is not easy to see what it is that concerns Dunn here about how the aorist in 5:1 has “dominate[d] the doctrine of justification” or “overwhelm[ed] the force of the other tenses,” but he feels strongly enough about the issue to repeat his warning in his book on Paul’s theology:

Too much weight should not be put on the aorist tense at the beginning of 5.1—“having been justified from faith. . . .” For that simply emphasizes the beginning of the salvation process. As the whole conception of God’s righteousness has indicated, justification is not a once-for-all act of God. It is rather the initial acceptance by God into restored relationship.⁴¹

In the end, it seems that Dunn wants to color his doctrine of justification with relational hues, and in this last quotation one can see how he uses his relational understanding of “the righteousness of God” (1:17) to lever the whole concept of justification. What is particularly lacking here is the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the sinner as the sine qua non of Paul’s view of justification in favor of more generic relational ideas.⁴²

To get back to δικαιωθέντες, the question of Greek verb tense forms and the present and future collocations of δικαιόω elsewhere in Romans that Dunn mentions is a complex one that requires more discussion than can be spared here. Suffice it to say that specialists on the Greek verb system would admonish us against making precipitate conclusions on the mere occurrence of a verb in different tense forms.⁴³

40. Dunn, Romans 1–8, 246.

41. Dunn, Theology of Paul, 386 (and n212) (emphasis added). It should be noted that many of the things in Dunn’s book are perfectly sound.

42. For example, note the apposition in this statement: “God would not justify, could not sustain in relationship with him, those who did not rely wholly on him” (Theology of Paul, 379). Are “justify” and “sustain in relationship” truly synonymous ideas for Paul?

43. Cf. Buist M. Fanning, Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990); Stanley Porter, Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament (Studies in Biblical Greek

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In my own view, one must be particularly careful comparing verb tense forms from one mood to another, since factors often guide the use of a “default” or “unmarked” form in particular situations. This is true even within the same mood depending on the construction.

Careful examination shows that what Dunn identifies as “the present indicative (3:24, 26, 28; 4:5)” of δικαιόω in Romans turns out, in fact, to be three participles and one infinitive with no use of the present indicative for δικαιόω in Romans at all.⁴⁴ The present tense form of the attributive and substantive participles of δικαιόω in Romans (3:26; 4:5; and 8:33) can all be accounted for as characteristics of God: he is the justifier. This is not because justification is a present process, but because in Greek the present participle in this use signifies a characteristic action or feature of someone: one who judges (2:1, 3), one who labors for wages (4:4), one who wills or runs (9:16), one who believes (10:11), one who teaches (12:7), one who exhorts (12:8), one who loves (13:8), and so on. This is why some common participles became nouns or acted as labels for individuals.⁴⁵

The causal participle δικαιωθέντες in 5:1 and 5:9 is adverbial, however, and the aorist form has a straightforward sense: the event to which it refers is antecedent to the main verb’s statement: “We have [ἔχομεν] peace with God.” In other words, the justifying verdict referenced by the participle must be viewed as completed in order to lead to the consequence of peace with God and the other benefits of access and standing in grace leading to confident boasting even

1; New York/Bern: Peter Lang, 1989); idem, Idioms of the Greek New Testament (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992); K. L. McKay, A New Syntax of the Verb in New Testament Greek: An Aspectual Approach (Studies in Biblical Greek 5; New York/Bern: Peter Lang, 1994); idem, “Time and Aspect in New Testament Greek,” Novum Testamentum 34 (1992): 209–28; Stanley E. Porter and D. A. Carson, eds., Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics: Open Questions in Current Research (Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement 80; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993); and Albert Rijksbaron, The Syntax and Semantics of the Verb in Classical Greek: An Introduction (2nd ed.; Amsterdam: Gieben, 1994).

44. The forms are δικαιούμενοι (Rom 3:24), δικαιοῦντα (3:26), δικαιοῦσθαι (3:28), and δικαιοῦντα (4:5). It is worth adding that δικαιόω appears several times in Galatians as present indicative forms expressing a “gnomic” or “omnitemporal” truth (2:16; 3:8, 11) or a connative nuance (5:4); cf. Porter, Idioms of the Greek New Testament, 32–33.

45. That is, the noun ὁ ἄρχων (the ruler) began life as a participle; and ὁ βαπτίζων (the Baptist) became a title for John even after he died, showing that this was not some sort of ongoing process; cf. Judas who was labeled ὁ παραδιδούς (the betrayer) in the Gospels (e.g., Matt 26:25).

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in tribulation as Paul’s discussion moves ahead in 5:2–5. While this one participle does not conclusively settle the whole issue of when believers are justified, it must not be preemptively muzzled of its contribution to the doctrine.⁴⁶

What is most interesting about δικαιωθέντες in 5:1 is that Paul repeats it in a fascinating and unequivocal statement in 5:9. In fact, the whole of this section (5:1–11) is building to a unified climax from the foundation of what proceeds, because we are justified by faith. Let us look at this development in 5:1–11, then return to δικαιωθέντες in 5:9.

Paul claims that in consequence of being justified by faith, we have peace with God through Christ (5:1). This peace is the consummate benefit of covenant blessing won for us by Christ’s death (5:10a) and life (5:10b). Peace, access to God, and permanent standing in his grace as a sure possession (5:1–2) are the great benefits conveyed in the covenant of grace,⁴⁷ which are expressed in its great “covenant formula,” God is our God and we become his prized possession.⁴⁸ As a result, we “boast in hope of the glory of God” (5:2). Our versions want to avoid the negative implications of the English word boast for καυχάομαι in 5:2–3 by rendering the word as “rejoice” (AV [5:2], NIV, ESV), “exult” (NASB), or “glory” (AV [5:3]) and so are trying to capture the exultant, joyful confidence that flows from the sure foundation of being justified and standing in grace.⁴⁹ This confidence is so powerful and unshakable that even tribulations are turned from

46. For a parallel example of a causal participle with a present tense main verb within Romans itself see 6:9: “Since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again” (NIV) for Χριστὸς ἐγερθεὶς ἐκ νεκρῶν οὐκέτι ἀποθνῄσκει. Clearly, “being raised” must be a prior event to “not dying again.”

47. The continuing state or condition of “standing” in grace is implied in the perfect tense form of ἑστήκαμεν (in which we stand or exist) (cf. BDAG 483 §5) and confirmed by the “confident boasting” that follows in 5:2b–5.

48. See esp. Ezek 37:24–28 for these themes clearly expressed of the new covenant. Old Testament scholars today recognize the covenant formula (Bundesformel) as “the chief thread through the labyrinth of the Bible”; see Otto Kaiser, “The Law as Center of the Hebrew Bible,” in “Sha‘arei Talmon”: Studies in the Bible, Qumran, and the Ancient Near East Presented to Shemaryahu Talmon (ed. M. Fishbane and E. Tov; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1992), 96 (and 93–103 for the broader argument). This is not a new observation; see, e.g., the discussion of the formula foederis by Turretin, Institutes 2.179–80 §12.2.17; 2.232 §12.8.3.

49. See the brief but helpful note in Douglas Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (New International Commentary on the New Testament; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 301–2.

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their expected course as threats to our hope to become instruments of endurance, proven character, and further hope (5:3–4). The links of this chain of confident hope to an even more sure hope are tempered by tribulation’s fires through the Holy Spirit poured out upon us (5:5).

Justification and Mediation

In Romans 5:6–11, Paul grounds these glorious blessings of 5:1–5 in the mediation of Christ.⁵⁰ In this section, Christ’s mediation is not the shocking thing; the objects of his mediation are. Contrast here the psalmist’s righteous indignation: “Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? / And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? / I hate them with complete hatred; / I count them my enemies” (Ps 139:21–22 ESV). Yet it is precisely the morally incapacitated (Rom 5:6a), the ungodly (5:6b) who are not only not righteous but not even good (5:7), the sinners (5:8) who are God’s enemies (5:10) and therefore prime objects for the psalmist’s loathing for whom Christ died to deliver from God’s well-deserved wrath (5:9).⁵¹

This stunning section, 5:6–11, performs two vital functions for Paul’s argument on justification. First, it shows how God can be just and the justifier of the wantonly corrupt (5:6; cf. τὸν ἀσεβῆ in 4:5) who nevertheless turns in trust to Christ (cf. 3:25–26). How can this be, since to justify the guilty is declared to be abominable to God (Prov 17:15)? The answer Paul supplies in Romans 5:6–11 is the effective intervention of Christ as our substitutionary mediator (cf. 1 John 1:9; 2:1–2). The stress here shows Paul’s vital second point: it was while we were in this forlorn state that Christ intervened. One may die for a worthwhile (ἀγαθός) individual (Rom 5:7), but Paul’s relentless argument is that we cannot even make that claim as the

50. Rom 5:6 begins with γάρ (for), signaling that what follows are the underlying truths of the previous assertions. The variation ἔτι γάρ in the beginning of 5:6 is caused by the repetition of ἔτι later in the verse, not because γάρ was in doubt.

51. The adjective ἀσθενής is normally rendered “weak,” but the idea here is our incapacity and helplessness to redeem ourselves (cf. BDAG 142–43 §2), while ἀσεβής (ungodly) has negative connotations of someone who is wantonly evil and corrupt (so Rom 1:18–32, issuing from ἀσέβεια). Paul contrasts starkly with Greek moral philosophy, where a “good man” (καλοκἀγαθός) was a very obtainable ideal. For God’s mercy toward his enemies, see esp. Christ’s teaching in Matt 5:43–45 and Luke 6:27–36.

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reason for Christ pitying us. This shows beyond any doubt or confusion that Paul thoroughly repudiates any kind of synergism in his soteriology, including what Sanders labels “covenant nomism.” We can have no claim on God derived from anything in ourselves as worthy of redemption. In contrast, Christ’s mediation is so thoroughly effective that Paul moves us to conclude that not only are we now justified and reconciled through Christ, but the ultimate outcome is a guaranteed salvation from divine wrath in the future (5:9–11).

The temporal dynamic in what was just said should not be minimized. If our being justified is presented as the grounds for current blessings in 5:1, this is underlined unambiguously in 5:9 when he says that we are now justified (δικαιωθέντες νῦν), leading to future deliverance (“salvation”) from divine wrath.

If we were unsure of the completed character of justification (δικαιωθέντες) in 5:1 (due to Dunn’s warning to the contrary), we cannot be so now. The blood of Jesus is the ground of this justification that we possess now—in this era. For us the last-day verdict has already been rendered at the resurrection of Jesus “for our justification” (4:25), so that we possess it now in anticipation of that future day of God’s righteous judgment when his wrath is unleashed upon the unjustified, according to Paul’s gospel (2:16; cf. 2:4–5 and 1:18). We possess it now, because the blood of our mediator has now, in this age, been spilt as the propitiation of wrath (cf. 3:25).

Paul hammers this present justification home with an unequivocal parallel in 5:10–11: “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled [κατηλλάγημεν] to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled [καταλλαγέντες], shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation [νῦν τὴν καταλλαγὴν ἐλάβομεν] (ESV, emphasis added). The force of the aorist participle καταλλαγέντες in 5:10 is a current reality shaping the future (σωθησόμεθα, we will be saved); reconciliation is clearly now (νῦν in 5:11) our possession as a gift flowing from Christ’s mediation analogous with justification in 5:1 and 5:9.⁵²

52. Another parallel later in Romans has virtually the same aorist participle and particle construction: “And, having been set free [ἐλευθερωθέντες] from sin, [you] have become slaves of righteousness. . . . But now that you have been set free [νυνὶ δὲ ἐλευθερωθέντες] from sin

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While we have not discussed the full doctrine of justification by way of δικαιωθέντες in 5:1 and 5:9, we have looked carefully at this evidence, which must form a significant part of the foundation for the doctrine. The completed character of this referent is all the more evident both because of the linguistic evidence we have reviewed and because of Paul’s statements connected to this concept linking justification now with the finished, effective mediation of Christ in this age guaranteeing the future blessings for his people.

The Development of Paul’s Thought

Nothing is more important for the successful interpretation of Paul’s epistles than the ability to explain the development of his thought. This comes to play in Romans 5 in relating 5:12–21 with what he has said before. In 5:12, the marker of this development is the phrase διὰ τοῦτο, which is usually not difficult to understand—but it is here: “More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man . . .” (5:11–12 ESV, emphasis added). Wright notes: “Perhaps the most important point about the whole section is the significance of διὰ τοῦτο at the start of 5.12.”⁵³

Normally, διὰ τοῦτο draws out a conclusion from the foregoing and is rendered “therefore” (e.g., Matt 6:25; 12:27; Luke 14:20; cf. BDAG 225 §B2b), even if the reason for the conclusion follows the clause marked by διὰ τοῦτο.⁵⁴ But as the commentators note, διὰ τοῦτο seems “peculiar” in Romans 5:12, since, as Douglas Moo says, 5:12–21 “makes better sense when viewed as the basis for what has just been said” in 5:1–11 rather than vice versa.⁵⁵ Normally, one marks the basis or rationale for what has just been said with γάρ (for) or equivalent expressions, but not διὰ τοῦτο.

and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life” (6:18, 22 ESV).

53. Wright, Climax of the Covenant, 35.

54. E.g., John 5:16: “And this was why [διὰ τοῦτο] the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because [ὅτι] he was doing these things on the Sabbath.”

55. Moo, Romans, 317, with detailed discussion of διὰ τοῦτο on 316–18, esp. n17. The phrase is “peculiar” according to Otto Michel, Der Brief an die Römer (14th ed.; Kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar über das Neue Testament 14; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1978), 186.

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The problem, however, with seeing 5:12–21 as a conclusion arises because of the difficulty of seeing what exactly it connects to in the foregoing discussion of Romans to that point. Various proposals include that Paul is making only a general summary conclusion of all of 1:17–5:11, or that he is concluding 5:1–11 in a general way, or that he is more specifically picking up something from 5:11 alone.⁵⁶

Because we are more acclimatized to the gospel than they would have been in Paul’s day, perhaps we have lost the sense of just how radical Paul’s statements about Christ’s substitutionary mediation are in 5:6–11. While Jesus and the prophets did announce his redemptive death (e.g., Mark 10:45; Isa 53:10–11), nevertheless, it ran counter to other Scripture principles:

Son of man, when a land sins against me by acting faithlessly, and I stretch out my hand against it and break its supply of bread and send famine upon it, and cut off from it man and beast, even if these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness, declares the Lord God. . . .

Or if I send a pestilence into that land and pour out my wrath upon it with blood, to cut off from it man and beast, even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live, declares the Lord God, they would deliver neither son nor daughter. They would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness. (Ezek 14:13–14, 19–20 ESV)

Truly no man can ransom another,

or give to God the price of his life,

for the ransom of their life is costly

and can never suffice,

that he should live on forever

and never see the pit. (Ps 49:7–9 ESV [MT 49:8–10])

The question now stands out a little more urgently from what Paul has just said in Romans 5:6–11: How can it be then that Jesus Christ the Righteous One (1 John 2:2) could give himself for us? Notice the repeated emphasis in Romans 5:6–11:

56. See Moo, Romans, 316–17, for survey of different opinions. The view I advance here is similar to Moo’s and Michel’s, but I express it a little differently.

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Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. . . . Christ died for us. . . . Shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. . . . We were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (ESV, emphasis added)

The same emphasis on mediation of both condemnation and justification is found in 5:12–21:

Therefore . . . through one man . . . through one man’s trespass . . . by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ. . . . one man’s sin . . . one trespass . . . because of one man’s trespass . . . through that one man . . . through the one man Jesus Christ . . . one trespass . . . one act of righteousness . . . by the one man’s disobedience . . . by the one man’s obedience. (ESV)

The point of 5:12–21 is to explain how it is that Christ could die on our behalf (ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν).⁵⁷ More pointedly, how could his mediation be effective for those who have no active involvement at the time when the intervention is accomplished, yet the intervention forms the sufficient ground of the tremendous results obtained? Paul has strongly asserted the principle of substitutionary mediation in 5:1–11, and in 5:12–21 he is indeed making a conclusion, but the conclusion is not what one might have thought. The conclusion Paul is eliciting from 5:1–11 is not the comparison between Adam and Christ given in the second half of the chapter. Instead, Paul is concluding that Christ’s obedience and mediation bring saving results that can be explained only on analogy with Adam. In other words, much of Paul’s statements in 5:12–21 are a restatement of the effective mediation of Christ already taught in 5:1–11. Where he wants to take us in concluding his earlier thought is to the infallible outcome of this free, gracious substitutionary mediation.

57. This phrase from Rom 5:8 occurs elsewhere in key places: Rom 8:31–34; 2 Cor 5:21; Gal 3:13; Eph 5:2; 1 Thess 5:10; and Titus 2:14.

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Here are the results in isolation from the argumentation of the passage:

The free gift . . . the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift . . . the free gift . . . much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ . . . justification and life for all men . . . the many will be made righteous . . . grace abounded all the more . . . grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Rom 5:15–21 ESV)

Paul is saying that if Christ died for us when we were utterly incapacitated to contribute to the saving outcomes we enjoy (justification, reconciliation, salvation from wrath), then we must conclude that—just as in Adam all die—in Christ we enjoy a wholly free and gracious justification based upon his comprehensively effective mediation. The conclusion from this conclusion must await a few chapters of explanatory material (Rom 6–7), but Paul says it very succinctly: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (8:1 ESV).

Part of what makes this understanding of 5:12–21 work is a particular analysis of its internal structure and its subsequent main point. As I have already stated, the main point of 5:12–21 is not exactly the comparison of Christ to Adam. The comparison serves to underline Paul’s real point that Christ’s mediation on our behalf—while we were yet God’s enemies—was categorically effective wholly apart from our personal involvement through our works in obedience to the law.

Almost all interpreters today see that 5:12 introduces a comparison that is broken off in order for Paul to explain important material (5:12b–14) and to qualify how Adam and Christ are not comparable (5:15–17), before resuming the comparison in 5:18–21.⁵⁸ Paul signals that he is resuming his point introduced in 5:12 in two ways. First, he repeats the introductory phrase of 5:12 (ὥσπερ δι ̓ ἑνὸς ἀνθρώπου

58. So commentaries by Dunn, Wright, and Moo; cf. Cranfield, Michel, Murray, and F. Blass, Albert Debrunner, and Robert W. Funk, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), §451.1.

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. . . εἰς πάντας ἀνθρώπους) with only slight variation in 5:18 (ὡς δι ̓ ἑνὸς παραπτώματος εἰς πάντας ἀνθρώπους). Repeating the substance of an earlier statement is one way an author signals a return to a suspended point.⁵⁹ Second, Paul introduces 5:18 with the conjunctive combination ἄρα οὖν (so then [NASB]). Versions that render ἄρα οὖν as “therefore” (AV, ESV, NRSV) or “consequently” (NIV) do not express the nuance well, since this makes 5:18 seem like a conclusion from the foregoing rather than Paul bringing us back after a digression: “Now then! [back to the point].”⁶⁰ Paul uses ἄρα οὖν together with the same function, for example, in 7:25 (resuming the discussion in 7:15–18) and 8:12 (resuming the point of 8:4–5).

It is important to understand ἄρα οὖν correctly in 5:18, because it shows that the main point of 5:12–21 is expressed in 5:18–21. We often focus on the earlier section, particularly on the densely packed 5:12, at the expense of fuller examination of 5:18–21, which is the heart of the issue and a particularly clear expression of Christ’s substitutionary mediation in both its positive and negative aspects—what is termed in Reformed theology as the active and passive obedience of Christ elaborated elsewhere in this volume. It is also here that Paul’s view of justification is further elaborated.

Justification cannot rely in any way upon personal obedience to God’s law. Interpreters sometimes point to Paul’s expression the obedience of faith in 1:5 as communicating that our obedience expressed as covenant fidelity is the operative means for our justification.⁶¹ They may further point to πίστις (faith) also communicating “faithfulness” and try to blend the two meanings together,⁶² but in our Romans text Paul clearly attributes our “justification of life”—which is contrasted with “condemnation” in Adam—to the obedient performance of righteousness (δικαίωμα) through the one man, Jesus Christ (5:18). In all

59. One of the clearest and most interesting examples of this is Eph 2:1, which introduces an idea with καὶ ὑμᾶς ὄντας νεκροὺς τοῖς παραπτώμασιν καὶ ταῖς ἁμαρτίαις ὑμῶν and does not give its main verb until 2:5 after repetition of the same words with slight variation: καὶ ὄντας ἡμᾶς νεκροὺς τοῖς παραπτώμασιν συνεζωοποίησεν [= main verb governing accusative participle phrase in 2:1 and in 2:5] τῷ Χριστῷ.

60. Cf. J. D. Denniston, The Greek Particles (2nd ed.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1978), 32–43.

61. For recent discussion, see Moo, Romans, 51–53; cf. C. E. B. Cranfield, The Epistle to the Romans (International Critical Commentary; Edinburgh: Clark, 1975), 1.66–67. The same phrase occurs in Rom 16:26, but the authenticity of the text is uncertain.

62. E.g., both points are made by Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 45, 109, 160.

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of Romans 5, we have been led inexorably to see that our justification and all of its soteriological concomitants have no dependence upon our personal performance of the law’s demands whatsoever, but are wholly dependent on our mediator’s effective intervention, which we appropriate by faith alone.

Hence, Paul can unequivocally denominate us as “those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness . . . through the one man Jesus Christ” (5:17 ESV, emphasis added). When Paul says that we receive righteousness as a gift, he is expressing what Protestants have all along described as the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to sinners sola gratia, sola fide. Righteousness is bestowed upon us as a divine gift.⁶³ To deny this and to attribute even a part of our righteousness to our own obedience to the law’s demands is to make Christ’s death pointless and to nullify God’s grace (Gal 2:21; cf. 3:21; 5:1–6). Christ’s substitutionary mediation is nowhere more clearly expressed by Paul than when he says, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (2:20 ESV).

Both Dunn and Wright work very hard to show that the phrase the righteousness of God (δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ) in Romans 1:17 and elsewhere (Rom 3:21–22; 10:3; 2 Cor 5:21) refers to God’s own fidelity to his covenant promises. It may not be immediately clear why this is so important to them, but it appears that they see this as the Protestant claim of imputed righteousness: that somehow God’s own righteousness is imputed to us directly. Wright expresses this most clearly when he discusses righteousness and justification in an imagined Hebrew law court: “To imagine the defendant somehow receiving the judge’s righteousness is simply a category mistake. That is not how the language works.” God’s people will be justified, “but the righteousness they have will not be God’s own righteousness. That makes no sense at all. God’s own righteousness is his covenant faithfulness.”⁶⁴ This is nice rhetoric, but it misses the point entirely. The Protestant understanding of imputed righteousness is that we receive the gift of Christ’s

63. Cf. Rom 5:11, where it is said that we also receive reconciliation: τὴν καταλλαγὴν ἐλάβομεν.

64. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 98–99 (emphasis original). Cf. Dunn, Romans 1–8, 40–42.

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righteousness through his obedient life and death as Second Adam in our stead. It is the genuinely human righteous obedience to all of God’s righteous commands as one born under the law (Gal 4:4) that he performed on our behalf and in our stead and, as Paul explicitly says in Romans 5:17, that we receive as a divinely initiated gracious gift through Jesus Christ.⁶⁵ “To be in Christ is to have his (and only his) faithfulness as the mark of one’s own covenant fidelity.”⁶⁶

Conclusion

In fairness, the methodological and exegetical weaknesses found in representatives of the new perspective on Paul would be problematic in members of any school. The defenders of the new perspective, however, are energetic and effective rhetoricians, which covers over their interpretive blemishes with an appealing veneer and results in some popular appeal for their ideas.

Paul’s forcefully clear focus on Christ’s substitutionary mediation in Romans 5 relates to justification. While there is room for a fuller presentation of Paul’s doctrine of justification or a fuller discussion of Romans 5 (e.g., Paul’s presentation of the law, imputation, transgression, Adam in 5:13–14), I concentrated here on clear and necessary conclusions from Romans 5: the righteousness resulting in divine approval at the last day comes to us as a free gift of the righteousness of Christ as Second Adam and our mediator. It is his obedience to the covenant stipulations of the law imputed to us that forms the only ground of our justification, an eschatological verdict rendered now in Christ. The soteriology offered by Paul’s opponents insofar as it is evidenced in Romans (and Galatians)—whether one sees it as Sanders’s “covenant nomism” or as any other kind of synthesis that somehow imports our works of obedience into our justification—is just what Paul’s teaching in Romans 5 decisively undercuts. Any syn-

65. Paul expressed the same concept in other places as well, even if by slightly different wording; e.g., Rom 10:6; 1 Cor 1:30; Gal 5:5; Phil 3:9; 2 Tim 4:8; and Titus 3:5–7.

66. Bruce W. Longenecker, “Defining the Faithful Character of the Covenant Community: Galatians 2.15–21 and Beyond,” in Paul and the Mosaic Law: The Third Durham-Tübingen Research Symposium on Earliest Christianity and Judaism (ed. James D. G. Dunn; Tübingen: Mohr, 1996), 83 (emphasis original).

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thesis makes Christ’s substitutionary life and death gratuitous and undermines God’s grace (Gal 2:21).⁶⁷

Justification is indeed based on a human obedience to the law of God, and that loving obedience was entire and perfect in every respect, but no human after Adam—being helpless, impious enemies of God (cf. Rom 3:9–20) who have defaced the divine image and are therefore devoid of the glory of God (3:23)—did or even could ever fulfill God’s holy law for righteousness, except one: the one man, Jesus Christ. That is Paul’s incontestable message in Romans 5 and has been a continuing hallmark of Reformed interpretation to this day.

Wright begins one of his books by saying, “Covenant theology is one of the main clues, usually neglected, for understanding Paul.”⁶⁸ By “covenant theology” he probably means the theology of Second Temple Judaism as described by Sanders rather than the thoroughly biblical covenant theology surveyed in this collection. Nevertheless, Wright and other new perspective proponents have indeed done New Testament scholarship a service by discussing justification as a decidedly covenant issue. This is precisely the insight of confessional Reformed theology, whose insights should no longer be overlooked.⁶⁹ This is particularly urgent today because of the isolation of Old Testament and New Testament scholarship from each other, which was not the case when the main lines of Reformed covenant theology were being worked out, with its soteriology centering on the suretyship of our covenant mediator Jesus Christ.⁷⁰

67. See esp. James D. G. Dunn, “Paul’s Understanding of the Death of Jesus,” in Reconciliation and Hope: New Testament Essays on Atonement and Eschatology Presented to L. L. Morris on His 60th Birthday (ed. Robert Banks; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 125–41, esp. 139–41, where he raises objections to the idea of Christ’s substitution.

68. Wright, Climax of the Covenant, xi.

69. See also the remarks of Kim (Paul and the New Perspective, 83) in this regard: “The traditional interpretation may need to be augmented by the consideration of the fundamental covenantal dimension of the doctrine of justification which the New Perspectivists stress. It appears that further work is needed to clarify the relationship between the covenantal and forensic dimensions of justification.”

70. For a stimulating introduction to an important covenant theologian and biblical scholar, see Willem J. Van Asselt, The Federal Theology of Johannes Cocceius (1603–1669) (trans. Raymond A. Blacketer; Leiden: Brill, 2001).

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Note: A special thanks to Courtney Litts for her efforts in helping us to get this chapter formatted to publish here.

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Post authored by:

S. M. Baugh
The Rev. Dr. S. M. Baugh is Professor Emeritus of New Testament at Westminster Seminary California, where he taught Greek and New Testament from 1983–2021. He is author of two grammars of New Testament Greek, a contributor to the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, the commentary on Ephesians in the Evangelical Exegetical Commentary series, The Majesty of High (on the Kingdom of God), and numerous articles. He is a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
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