Goodreads - share books and reviews

Charlie

Hi everyone,

I’ve recently been enjoying the website Goodreads. It’s a book catalog with some social networking functionality. You can use it to catalog your personal library, rate and review books, get book recommendations, create a to-read list, see what your friends are reading, etc. You can connect through email or facebook, and I think they have iPhone and Android apps.

If you want to join my network, you can send me a friend request on the site by typing in my email address: cpj5117ATgmailDOTcom

Discussion

What is the "New Perspective on Paul"? A Basic Explanation (Part 4)

Paul Henebury

Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

NPP righteousness versus Pauline righteousness: The “Works of the Law”

In an excellent piece for Christianity Today entitled “What Did Paul Really Mean?” (thanks, Filops!) Simon Gathercole called attention to the way New Perspective scholars interpret the phrase “the works of the law.” He writes:

According to the new perspective, Paul is only focusing on these aspects of Jewish life (Sabbath, circumcision, food laws) when he mentions “works of the law.” His problem isn’t legalistic self-righteousness in general. Rather, for Jews these works of the law highlighted God’s election of the Jewish nation, excluding Gentiles. Called by God to reach the Gentiles, Paul recognizes that Jews wrongly restricted God’s covenant to themselves.

Gathercole’s comment matches Dunn a little more than Wright, but neither scholar thinks “works of the law” means the achieving of merit through religious deeds. Certainly we can say it is doubtful if many Jews in the Second Temple period were “legalistic” in the sense that they truly believed their works were good enough. But they were still going about to establish themselves by the law:

Discussion

If you could recommend only one book....

dwayne

If there is already a thread on this, please point me to it….and accept my apologies.

If you could recommend only one book to someone serious about their walk with Christ, what would it be?

Not including any of the 66 books in the Bible….

Dwayne

Discussion