Sanders/Dunn "Fork in the Road" in the Current Justification Controversy

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in A Companion to the Current Justification Controversy, contributed to and edited by John W. Robbins, published in 2003. The original languages used in the footnotes have been left out for space, though transliterations have been left in.

The current controversy between the traditional Reformation position, on the one hand, and the “Shepherd” position, on the other, over the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith has a history. Evangelicals were confronted in the 1970s by several forks in the road where they chose the wrong road because their guides were highly respected theologians. The “Shepherd fork” that asks evangelicals to opt for justification both by a living faith in Christ and by the works this living faith produces came in the early to mid-70s and has continued to plague the church to this day. The next significant fork on this wrong road where many evangelicals took a second wrong road was at the “Sanders/Dunn fork” in the late 70s and early 80s.^[1] Now it is a truism that when one loses his way he should retrace his steps if he can, locate the fork (or forks) where he chose the wrong road, and take the other road. In order to assist evangelicals to retrace their steps, since O. Palmer Robertson has addressed the “Shepherd fork,”^[2] I propose in this essay to address the second fork in the road, the “Sanders/Dunn fork.”

The Most Debated Topic among Paul Scholars Today

The most debated topic among Paul scholars today is Paul’s understanding of the law and more specifically the meaning of his key phrase, “works of law” (erga novmou, erga nomou).^[3] By this phrase he summarily characterized what he was so strongly setting off over against his own doctrine of justification by faith in Jesus Christ, namely, justification by “works of law.” Obviously, we will not be able fully to comprehend the precise nature of the doctrine Paul wants to put in its place if we do not grasp the precise nature of the teaching he so vigorously opposed. This debate is raging today between Protestant Pauline scholars, particularly German Lutheran scholars and historic Reformed theologians, on the one hand, and the “new perspective” views of E. P. Sanders, James D. G. Dunn and their followers, on the other. The former view – the “traditional Reformation view” – contends that Jews in general in Paul’s day and the Pharisees in particular were obeying the law to accumulate merit before God for themselves and thereby to earn salvation, and that this is the reason Paul appears at times to inveigh against the law: His kinsmen according to the flesh or at least a large portion of first-century world Jewry (not all Jews, of course, since there was always “a remnant chosen by grace,” Romans 11:5) had come to view the law legalistically as the instrument for the acquisition of righteousness. C. E. B. Cranfield has argued that Paul’s criticism of the law was a criticism of its then-current perversion into the legalism of works-righteousness; it is thus the “legalistic misunderstanding and perversion of the law,” not the law itself, which kills.^[4]

Sanders’ “Covenantal Nomism”

The traditional Protestant view had not gone unchallenged, of course. For example, in 1894 C. G. Montefiore, a distinguished Jewish scholar, had argued that the rabbinic literature of the time speaks of a compassionate and forgiving God and of rabbis whose daily prayer was “Sovereign of all worlds! Not because of our righteous acts do we lay our supplications before you, but because of your abundant mercies” (b. Yoma 87b).^[5] And in 1927 G. F. Moore had urged in his Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era^[6] that the earliest literature of rabbinic religion spoke constantly of grace, forgiveness and repentance. But New Testament theologians had largely ignored the implications of such studies. The publication of E. P. Sanders’ programmatic Paul and Palestinian Judaism^[7] in 1977, however, brought a “rude awakening” to what Dunn calls the “quiet cul-de-sac” that the field of New Testament study had become, making it necessary for anyone earnestly desiring to understand Christian beginnings in general or Pauline theology in particular to reconsider the traditional Protestant view.^[8]

Sanders, in the name of what he terms “covenantal nomism,” challenged the traditional view as being simply a myth. He argues, first, that traditional Protestantism, particularly Lutheranism, has been guilty of reading back into New Testament times late Jewish sources (such as those from the fifth century adthat picture the final judgment as a matter of weighing up merits and demerits) and thereby inappropriately construing the conflict between Paul and his Jewish opponents in terms of debates that occurred at the time of the magisterial Reformation between Luther and Rome; and second, that conversely first-century Palestinian Judaism had not been seduced by merit theology into becoming a religion of legalistic works-righteousness wherein right standing before God was earned by good works in a system of strict justice. He contends rather (1) that the covenant, the law, and the Jews’ special status as the elect people of God were all gifts of God’s grace to Israel; (2) that the Jews did not have to earn – and knowing this were not trying to earn – what they already had received by grace; (3) that Judaism did not teach that “works of law” were the condition for entry into the covenant but only for continuing in and maintaining covenant status (that is to say, that salvation comes not from meritorious works but through belonging to the covenant people of God),^[9] which “pattern of religion,” Sanders contends (I think wrongly), is also found in Paul; and (4) that the only real bone of contention between an (at times) incoherent and inconsistent Paul (who was not unwilling to distort his opponents’ positions at times in order to safeguard his own) and his Jewish contemporaries was not soteriology (what one must do in order to be saved) but purely and simply Christology (what one should think about Christ). Which is just to say that Paul saw Christianity as superior to Judaism only because while the Jews thought they had in the covenant a national charter of privilege, Paul viewed covenantal privilege as open to all who have faith in Christ and who accordingly stand in continuity with Abraham. Or to put it more simply, Paul viewed Christianity as superior to Judaism only because Judaism was not Christianity.

It is indeed true, as Sanders demonstrates from his in-depth examination of the Qumran literature, the Apocryphal literature, the Pseudepigraphal literature, and the rabbinic literature of the first two-hundred years after Christ that one can find many references in this material to God’s election of Israel and to his grace and mercy toward the nation. And, of course, if Sanders is right about the non-legalistic nature of Palestinian Judaism in Paul’s day, then Douglas J. Moo is correct when he asserts that the traditional Reformation view of Paul’s polemic “is left hanging in mid-air, and it is necessary either to accuse Paul of misunderstanding (or misinterpreting) his opponents, or to find new opponents for him to be criticizing.”^[10] Regarding the first of these possibilities, I can only say that the modern scholar, whether Christian or Jew, who supposes that he understands better or interprets more accurately first-century Palestinian Judaism than Paul did, is a rash person indeed! Moreover, Sanders makes too much of his, in my opinion, methodologically flawed findings on the “non-legalistic” character of first-century Palestinian Judaism, since first-century Palestinian Judaism, as he himself recognizes, also taught that the elect man was obligated, even though he would do so imperfectly (for which imperfections the law’s sacrificial system provided the remedy), to obey the law in order to maintain his covenant status and to remain in the covenant. But this is to acknowledge, as Moo notes, that

even in Sanders’s proposal, works play such a prominent role that it is fair to speak of a “synergism” of faith and works that elevates works to a crucial salvific role. For, while works, according to Sanders, are not the means of “getting in,” they are essential to “staying in.” When, then, we consider the matter from the perspective of the final judgment – which we must in Jewish theology – it is clear that “works,” even in Sanders’s view, play a necessary and instrumental role in “salvation.”^[11]

Moo goes on to note in the same connection:

...there is reason to conclude that Judaism was more “legalistic” than Sanders thinks. In passage after passage in his scrutiny of the Jewish literature, he dismisses a “legalistic” interpretation by arguing that the covenantal framework must be read into the text or that the passage is homiletical rather than theological in intent. But was the covenant as pervasive as Sanders thinks? Might not lack of reference in many Jewish works imply that it had been lost sight of in a more general reliance on Jewish identity? And does not theology come into expression in homiletics? Indeed, is it not in more practically oriented texts that we discover what people really believe? Sanders may be guilty of underplaying a drift toward a more legalistic posture in first-century Judaism. We must also reckon with the possibility that many “lay” Jews were more legalistic than the surviving literary remains of Judaism would suggest. Certainly, the undeniable importance of the law in Judaism would naturally open the way to viewing doing the law in itself as salvific. The gap between the average believer’s theological views and the informed views of religious leaders is often a wide one. If Christianity has been far from immune to legalism, is it likely to think that Judaism, at any state of its development, was?^[12]

In support of Moo’s contentions one could cite, as samplings of Judaic thought in this regard, Sirach (also known as Ecclesiasticus) 3:3, 14-15, 30-31, a second-century bcJewish writing, that teaches quite clearly that human good deeds atone for sins:

3 Whoever honors his father atones for sins,... 14 For kindness to a father will not be forgotten, and against your sins it will be credited to you; 15 In the day of your affliction it will be remembered in your favor, as frost in fair weather, your sins will melt away.... 30 Water extinguishes a blazing fire: so almsgiving atones for sin. 31 Whoever requites favors gives thought to the future; at the moment of his falling he will find support. (See also Sirach 29:11-13 and Tobit 4:7-11.)

Sanders also ignores Flavius Josephus’ frequent insistence that God’s grace is meted out in response to merit,^[13] and he simply discounts the argument of 2 Esdras^[14]as an atypical exception here.^[15] And Qumran document 1QS 11:2, 3 states: “For I belong to the God of my vindication and the perfection of my way is in his hand with the virtue of my heart. And with my righteous deeds he will wipe away my transgressions.”^[16] 1QS 3:6-8; 8:6-10; 9:4 also attribute an atoning efficacy to the Qumran Community’s deeds. Turning to the New Testament, one may also cite here the opinion of the “believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees” (Acts 15:5) who declared: “Unless you [Gentiles] are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved” (Acts 15:1). I grant that the focus of these Acts verses is directed toward what the Pharisee party in the church thought Gentiles had to do in order to be saved, but it is surely appropriate to conclude, first, that they would have believed that they themselves had to do the same thing in order to be saved, and second, that they were apparently reflecting what at least the Pharisees – the strictest sect of Judaism – would also have believed.

Moreover, in Paul’s “allegory” in Galatians 4:21-31, wherein he first declares that “Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem [literally “the now Jerusalem,” t? nun Ierousal?m], because she is in slavery with her children,” thereby placing “the now Jerusalem,” which stands within his “Hagar-Sinai-lawbondage” matrix, in bondage to the law (4:25), and then contrasts “the now Jerusalem” with “the Jerusalem that is above [literally “the above Jerusalem,” h? an? Ierousal?m]” that is “free” and the Christian’s “mother,” it is apparent that Paul’s expression, “the now Jerusalem,” goes beyond the Judaizers who were troubling his churches and, in the words of Ronald Fung, “stands by metonymy for Judaism, with its trust in physical descent from Abraham and reliance on legal observance as the way of salvation.”^[17] In sum, Paul by this allegory is saying that the nation of Israel, because of its unbelief and bondage to the law, is in actually a nation of spiritual Ishmaelites, sons of the bondwoman Hagar, and not true Israelites at all!

Finally, if the foregoing data are not sufficient to show Sanders’ error, and if one is willing as I am to give Paul his rightful due as an inspired apostle of Christ, then as the coup de grâce to his “new perspective” on first-century Palestinian Judaism, Paul writes in Romans 9:30-32, 10:2-4:

When then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but Israel, who pursued law [as a means to] righteousness,^[18] did not attain [the requirements of that] law. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works [of law^[19]].... For I can testify about [the Israelites] that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. Christ is the end of “law-keeping” [literally “law”] as a means to [eis^[20]] righteousness to all who believe^[21] (emphasis supplied).

In sum, while both Judaism and Paul viewed obedience to the law as having an appropriate place in the covenant way of life, there was this difference: whereas Paul viewed the Christian’s obedience as (at best) the fruit and evidentiary sign of the fact that one is a member of the covenant community, Judaism saw obedience to the law as the instrumental basis for continuing in salvation through the covenant. Thus, the legalistic principle – even though it occurred within the context of the covenant as a kind of “covenantal legalism” – was still present and ultimately that principle came to govern the soteric status of the individual. This is just to say that Second Temple Judaism apparently over time became focused more and more on an “instrumental nomism” and less and less on a “gracious covenantalism of faith.” Paul rightly saw that any obligation to accomplish a works-righteousness to any degree on the sinner’s part would negate the principle of sola gratia altogether (Romans 11:5-6), obligate him to obey the whole law (Galatians 3:10; 5:3), and make the cross-work of Christ of no value to him (Galatians 2:21; 5:2).^[22] Finally, Paul does not represent Christianity as superior to Judaism only because of a kind of dispensational shift within salvation history from Judaism to Christianity. His differences with Judaism were far more radical and passionate than that.

Dunn’s “New Perspective”

James D. G. Dunn, who accepts, not without some reservations, Sanders’ understanding of first-century Palestinian Judaism, in his Jesus, Paul and the Law^[23] urges that Paul’s “works of law” phrase does not refer to works done to achieve righteousness, that is, to legalism, but to the Mosaic law particularly as that law came to focus for Israel in the observance of such Jewish “identity markers” as circumcision, food laws, and Sabbath-keeping. That is to say, Paul’s “works of law” phrase refers to a subset of the law’s commands, encapsulating Jewish existence in the nation’s covenant relationship with God or, to quote Dunn himself, “the self-understanding and obligation accepted by practicing Jews that E. P. Sanders encapsulated quite effectively in the phrase ‘covenantal nomism.’”^[24] In sum, for Dunn the heart issue for Paul was the inclusion of Gentile Christians in the messianic community on an equal footing with Jewish Christians. In other words, for Paul his bone of contention with Judaism was not so much with an imagined attempt to acquire a merit-based righteousness before God as much as it was with Israel’s prideful insistence on its covenantal racial exclusiveness: Israel shut Gentiles out of the people of God because they did not observe their ethno-social “identity markers.” And apparently many Jewish Christians wanted Gentile Christians to observe these Jewish “identity markers” before they would or could share table fellowship with them (see Acts 10:28; Galatians 2:11-13). Paul by his “works of law” phrase was opposing then the Old Testament ritual laws that kept Israel in its national identity (see Numbers 23:9) apart from Gentiles.

Whereas Sanders’ conclusions, in my opinion, go too far, Dunn’s interpretation of Paul’s concern, in my opinion, is reductionistic and does not go far enough. Paul was indeed concerned with – and vigorously opposed – the spirit of racial exclusiveness within Messiah’s community, but this does not appear to be his concern in his sermon in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch when he declared that “through [Jesus] everyone who believes [pas ho pisteu?n] is justified [dikaioutai] from all things [apo pant?n], from which you could not be justified by [keeping] the [whole] law of Moses” (Acts 13:39). Nor does he hesitate to relate his “works of law” terminology universally to “no flesh” (literally “not...all flesh,” ou…pasa sarx] in Romans 3:20,^[25] which surely includes both Gentiles (see Romans 3:9) who obviously were not obligated to observe Israel’s circumcision or food laws but who, according to Paul, were nonetheless regarded by God as transgressors of his law (see Romans 1:18-32) and the people of Israel who were obligated to observe and who were in fact observing their national identity markers (see Romans 2:25-29) but who also, according to Paul, were still regarded by God as transgressors of his law (see Romans 2:21-24), both accordingly standing under the law’s condemnation.^[26] Which is just to say that Paul’s “works of law” phrase in Romans 2:20 intended more than simply observance (or in the case of Gentiles, non-observance) of Israel’s national identity markers. The phrase included observance of God’s moral law, too. But if the phrase in 3:20 includes observance of the moral law of God as well, it surely means the same in 3:28 where Paul declares: “For we maintain that a man [any man; see 3:29-30] is justified by faith apart from [legalistic] works of law.” And immediately after he establishes mankind’s guilt before God in terms of the inability of the “works of law” to justify anyone (3:20) Paul places those “works of law” as the false way to righteousness over against and in contrast to faith in Christ’s saving work as the one true way to righteousness (see Romans 3:21-25: dikaiosun? theou dia piste?s I?sou Christou). Then when one takes into account Paul’s reference to human “boasting” both in 3:27 (kauch?sis) and 4:2 (kauch?ma) and his insistence in Romans 4 that Abraham was not justified by his “works” (ex erg?n, 4:2) or by his “working” (ergazomen?, 4:4-5) – which words, given their proximity to Romans 3:20 and 3:28, are almost certainly his theological shorthand for his earlier “works of law” expression – it should be again apparent that Paul’s “works of law” phrase intends more than the observance (or in the case of Gentiles, non-observance) of certain Jewish identity markers since Abraham lived before the giving of the ritual law of the Mosaic Law to Israel.^[27]

Then to Peter who, after enjoying table fellowship with Gentiles for a time at Antioch, succumbed to the pressures of the Judaizers Paul said:

We [apostles] who are Jews by birth and not “Gentile sinners” know that a man is not justified by observing the law [ex erg?n nomou], but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law [ex erg?n nomou], because by observing the law [ex erg?n nomou] no one [note again the universality in ou…pasa sarx, “not...all flesh”] will be justified [Galatians 2:15-16].

Then, after asking the “Judaized” Gentile Christians of Galatia the twin questions: “Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law [ex erg?n nomou], or by believing what you heard [ex ako?s piste?s]” (Galatians 3:2), and “Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law [ex erg?n nomou] or because you believe what you heard [ex ako?s piste?s]” (Galatians 3:5), he declares:

All who [hosoi, “As many as”] rely on observing the law [ex erg?n nomou eisin] are under a curse, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone [pas] who does not continue to do everything [pasin] written in the Book of the Law.” Clearly no one [oudeis] is justified before God by the law, because, “The righteous will live by faith” [Galatians 3:10-11; see also Romans 3:21-28; 4:1-5; Titus 3:5].

Who are these people who are “relying on observance of the law” for their salvation? Once again we are struck by Paul’s universalistic language. It is true that in his letter to the Romans Paul describes the Jew as one who “relies [epanapaue¯] on the law” (Romans 2:17). And it is also true that in the context of the Galatians letter his most immediate opponents are the Judaizers and his Gentile converts who had succumbed to the teaching of the Judaizers. But Paul’s “no flesh” (ou…pasa sarx) expression in Galatians 2:16 appears once again to be applicable to anyone and everyone^[28] – Jew or Gentile, the latter of whom had no obligation to observe circumcision or Israel’s food laws – who trusts in his own law-keeping for salvation. And the same must be said for his “as many as” (hosoi), his “everyone” (pas) and his “no one” (oudeis) in Galatians 3:10-11. Finally, his descriptive “everything [pasin] written in the Book of the Law” in Galatians 3:10 suggests once again that he intended by his “works of law” expression not only Israel’s identity markers of circumcision, food laws, and Sabbath-keeping but also the moral law.

Conclusion

It would appear then from these Biblical references, first, that the “new perspective” theologians have not done adequate justice to Paul’s teaching when they insist that first-century Palestinian Judaism was not a religion of legalistic works-righteousness, for it clearly was (as were, of course, the myriad religions of the Gentiles), even though its legalism expressed itself within the context of God’s gracious covenant with them in terms of a “maintaining” of covenantal status; second, that by his “works of law” expression Paul intended not just the ceremonial aspects of the law but the whole law in its entirety; and third, that “there is more of Paul in Luther”^[29] and the other Reformers with respect to the critical salvific matters that concerned them in the sixteenth century than some of the “new perspective” theologians are inclined to admit.^[30]

In sum, these “new perspective” suggestions that would have Paul saying either more or other than he should have said (Sanders) or less than he actually and clearly intended (Dunn) are “blind alleys” which the church must reject if it hopes to understand Paul’s doctrine of justification.^[31]  And I fervently hope that evangelicals who have taken the influential “Sanders / Dunn fork in the road” will retrace their steps in the light of what I have pointed out in this essay and choose to come down once again on the side of the historic Reformation position on the doctrine of justification by faith alone in the preceptive and penal obedience of Christ alone for their justifying righteousness before God. For Paul insists

1. that there is only one Gospel – justification by faith alone in Christ’s righteous obedience and redeeming death alone (Romans 1:17; 3:28; 4:5; 10:4; Galatians 2:16; 3:10-11, 26; Philippians 3:8-9);

2. that any addition to or alteration of the one Gospel is another “gospel” that is not a gospel at all (Galatians 1:6-7);

3. that those who teach any other “gospel” stand under the anathema of God (Galatians 1:8-9); and

4. that those who rely to any degree on their own works or anything in addition to Christ’s doing and dying to obtain their salvation nullify the grace of God (Romans 11:5-6), make void the cross-work of Christ (Galatians 2:21; 5:2), become debtors to keep the entire law (Galatians 5:3), and in becoming such “fall from grace” (Galatians 5:4), that is, place themselves again under the curse of the law.

Therefore, what one thinks about justification is serious business indeed. The destiny of his own soul depends upon it. Quite correctly did Martin Luther declare Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith alone to be the article of the standing or falling church.^[32] And John Calvin, declaring it to be “the main hinge upon which religion turns”^[33] and “the first and keenest subject of controversy” between Rome and the Reformers of the sixteenth century,^[34] states: “Wherever the knowledge of [justification by faith alone] is taken away, the glory of Christ is extinguished, religion abolished, the Church destroyed, and the hope of salvation utterly overthrown.”^[35]