Just a few days ago I finished listening to a recent talk by Sinclair Ferguson on the New Perspective on Paul (NPP) that was simply outstanding. I had some quibbles here and there, but over all the talk was powerful, sane, balanced, and directed the critique where it mattered. The talk is available online, and when I get back in town tomorrow (I am leaving this morning), I will try to add a link to that talk here.
The thing I appreciated the most was the fact that Ferguson critiqued the NPP like a grown-up. Without any hyper-ventilation at all, he refused to blur things that are quite distinct Moreover, it was very clear that he understood exactly why the NPP holds such an attraction to those steeped in American pietist traditions. Ferguson clearly belongs to that informed wing of the historic Reformed faith that understands exactly what is going on here.
So here is one line of thought that Ferguson’s comments inspired. This is not what he argued, but rather simply a rabbit trail from some of his comments that I decided to follow. He argued (quite rightly, in my view) that the persecutor Saul was wound tight on the Damascus road. The NPP wants to argue that Saul simply came to the recognition that Jesus was the Messiah, and that this necessitated an adjustment of those famous boundary markers like the sabbath, circumcision, etc. The problem with Judaism, it has been famously argued, was simply that it was not Christianity. And that is all.
Now I think Ferguson is quite right to argue that Saul was under the burden of the law, and that he felt that burden subjectively. The law was a riding crop, bringing him to Christ. Now his experience of guilt was not exactly like Augustine’s or Martin Luther’s (because his sins and background were not the same), but I believe it is clear from the book of Acts and from Paul’s letters that Saul’s conversion was not just a paradigm shift — although it was certainly that as well. Paul describes his pre-Christian life as wicked and insolent, and not just mistaken. He was almost certainly involved in the debates with Stephen, and did not just show up at the execution. “What’s all this? Can I hold your coats?”
But suppose for a moment that this is not true. Suppose Saul was thinking robust, sunny, and self-congratulatory thoughts right up to the moment that Christ appeared to him. “Here I am, according to the law blameless.” Dumdedumdedum, clippity cloppity, wham!
So what? Guilt is objective. Subjective responses to guilt can vary according to the experience and psychology of the individual. The pietist tradition that wants everyone to have the same psychological conversion experience is wrong. But the law of God is a constant. If Saul did not feel guilty about what he was doing, he ought to have. A robust conscience under such circumstances has a name — a hardened or seared conscience. Saul did not just need to change his mind. He needed a new heart.
Ironically, a lot of the NPP is driven in varying degrees by various forms of Holocaust guilt, and NPP scholars have wanted to say that Pharisaism was really a religion of grace, not works-righteousness. But like all makeshift attempts to get away from the truth, this sets us up for something worse, in this case, a really vicious anti-Semitism. Second Temple Judaism was really living according to the grace of God, no problems in that department at all, and God destroyed Jerusalem simply for being Jewish? Jeepers.