New Perspectivism on the Dividing Line

Elijah. Hi, Elijah. How are you doing, Dr. White? Thank you for having me on, brother. I really appreciate it. Yes, sir. Your ministry has been a blessing to me, and your labor in the field has definitely brought me through in understanding reformed faith much better.

You are not alone in that. I'm getting lots of contact from people going,. Hey, that's what happened to me, too.

Yeah, yeah, it's common. You're definitely not wrong when you speak. As long as Calvary Chapel keeps pointing their followers to the Bible, they're going to come to reformed theology. It turned out that way in a weird sense for me.

New Perspectivism and Its Intellectual Roots

But my question concerns new perspectivism. I have a close friend who is a brother in the Lord, and lately he's been quite a fond influence of such men as E .P. Sanders and N .T. Wright in respect to their view of Paul and new perspectivism.

And I've done a little research in regards to what it is, and I've listened to your debate with Father Mitch Pacwa on justification, because it's relevant. And it's helped me a lot in understanding, you know, just from the Protestants.

But I'm still a little foggy on the essential issues, really, of new perspectivism and the implications of their view of justification, and exactly how would you recommend me approach and view of it?

Well, let me see if I can get somebody in channel, or maybe Sir Brass can do this. But I think that on Sermon Audio someplace, some presentations that I made at a church in Texas, I think it was San Antonio, I don't remember.

But I did a weekend on new perspectivism. I know that at Grace Covenant Church in St. Louis, I did a weekend on new perspectivism as well, though I don't know if those are online. I think somewhere, my lectures specifically on N .T. Wright's book on Paul, What the Apostle Paul Believed in Justification, are available online.

Yeah, I did actually get one of your lectures, I forgot where it was. I think it was Grace Church that you just spoke of. Dayspring Fellowship, right. Yeah, yeah, you did. You were going through N .T. Wright's book a lot, and the implications of him a lot, which it was helpful as to what he believed.

I was just wondering if there was a direction that you would have me go. No, I mean, because when I was in Interact, it kind of makes sense why he's been into the whole... I'm over in Philadelphia, so he's attended Philadelphia Biblical University.

So he's taking whole courses on Israel. It's like a one-year course on Israel, and you can go to Israel after that.

Pre-Judaism and whatnot. Second Temple Judaism. Tanniatic or Second Temple Judaism.

Yeah, so it kind of makes sense now why he went that direction. Right. Because I guess, looking back in hindsight, that he's been reading up on that. But how exactly would you have me approach understanding the issues better, and the issue of justification?

I mean, is there a difference between Old Testament justification and how one... Does he see the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament in the way the Apostles interpret the Old Testament and whatnot?

The Presuppositions Behind New Perspectivism

Yeah, well, see, to really be into New Perspectivism, especially if you're talking the E .P. Sanders perspectives of it... See, there's a lot of conservative, or at least formerly conservative people that have bought into the N .T. Wright stuff because they are so impressed with N .T. Wright and his scholarship and things like that, but they still try to remain in conservative churches.

E .P. Sanders is no conservative. He's as far to the left about as you can get. And the foundation... I think what really needs to be understood is the foundations of New Perspectivism. Many people want to be on the cutting edge of theology.

They want to be in with the cool guys. I mean, right now it's cool to be this. Ten years from now it won't be, but right now it's cool to study this stuff and to say you read N .T. Wright and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Ten, fifteen years from now that won't be the case. That's just the way the fads go. But the problem is so many of the people that buy into that and they go, oh, this is really neat, they don't recognize the foundations upon which the seminal writers in this field are working.

I think if you'll look at D .A. Carson's lectures on New Perspectivism, Sinclair Ferguson's stuff on New Perspectivism, Guy Waters' materials, highly recommended by J. Ligon Duncan on New Perspectivism, if you'll get hold of that material, you'll start seeing a constant theme because these folks recognize where this is really coming from, the origin and source of this stuff.

And the origin and source of this stuff comes from a much more liberal view of scripture. I mean, for example, fundamental to at least the original forms of New Perspectivism is an extremely limited Pauline corpus.

If you allow the extended Pauline corpus, the traditional Pauline corpus, what the New Testament claims is actually Pauline, there's no way you could make the assertions that Paul believed the things that Sanders and others conclude that he believed.

You have to understand, they're not looking at what they consider to be non-Pauline material. They're not looking at the pastoral epistles. I mean, if the pastoral epistles are factored in, then Paul taught something different than what they conclude, but they don't think he taught the pastoral epistles.

So how does that fit in a conservative church where everybody in the pews believes Paul wrote 1st, 2nd Timothy and Titus, but the pastor's functioning on the idea that, no, he didn't write any of those things, and so I don't need to worry about what he said about justification there, because that's a later development, that's a later stage, it's an evolutionary stage, blah, blah, blah.

You know, if you have to take seriously what Philippians 3 .9 says, that sort of throws a monkey wrench into the ideas of the righteousness of God being solely a description of who God is, and what his dealings are, and has nothing to do with something that can be transferred from God in the sense of a righteous status, it messes everything up.

And I don't know how people live with that. I don't know how they live in these two very contradictory worlds, but they do. And I'm sort of looking at some of the stuff that's coming up on my screen right now, there's some people posting a few things that I've done on the subject, on New Perspectivism.

JamesWhiteMP3 is at theopedia .com slash newperspectivism, so I guess you can track that down, it's available there. But anyway, so, from my perspective, sort of looking at it presuppositionally, the battle is not in going toe-to-toe with a New Perspectivist in the text, because that's not going to expose the presuppositions of their position.

You've got to back up and ask some basic fundamental questions about what Scripture is to these folks. Is it consistent with itself? Is it inspired? And you will almost always end up discovering that along with this, maybe not even in a really conscious way, but along with this comes a degradation of their view of Scripture.

And I know one thing for certain. The Federal Vision folks, who come to many of the same conclusions as New Perspectivism, but from a very different approach. They come from a confessional approach, but end up at many of the same conclusions about justification.

I have yet to see anyone embracing that perspective where it has increased their confidence in the consistency and inspiration of Scripture. I just haven't seen it. And so, those are some of the things that I think have to be looked at from a presuppositional perspective.

You have to deal with them first. You have to be able to say, no, wait a minute, okay, all issues of Second Temple Judaism aside, is there a consistent message to be found in the New Testament concerning how a person is made right before God?

And in the vast majority of theological seminaries today, that is not the case. That is not the conclusion. That's not the belief. Most people don't know that, but it sounds like you do know that. And so, honestly, if you've already come to the conclusion that there is no answer to this question, then you get to pick, well, these are the books I think Paul wrote, and I take them to mean this, and you can take those books if you want, and we can put that in opposition to Peter.

I mean, you know, James has a completely different perspective, and blah, blah, blah, blah, and you just cut the New Testament apart, and honestly, you have nothing left to say once you've gotten to that point.

I really think that, once again, it is grossly inconsistent for people to talk about being Christians and yet view Scripture in a way that Jesus could never have viewed Scripture. I mean...

As if it's inconsistent with itself.

Oh yeah, I mean, I trust Jesus for my salvation, but his view of Scripture sure was wacky. I mean, what is that?

Ephesians 2:8 and the Faithfulness of Christ

Well, one of the things that I actually kind of haggled with him was, I said to him, I don't know how it came into topic, but I said, you know, when the Apostle quotes an Old Testament passage, and he gives a completed or more fulfilled understanding of that passage, that you wouldn't, in reading the Old Testament, by reading that, you wouldn't even get that kind of application or interpretation.

When he does that, you know, I see that as being the true and fulfilled meaning of the text, of that Old Testament passage. I mean, he said, well, you know, I wouldn't, I mean, interpretation, you know, fulfillment would be where you would get that.

I mean, I haven't gone in depth, because I know there's a wide range of beliefs when it comes to New Perspectivism, where you can believe there's, like, no one agrees with anybody, I mean, ET standards, you know, throws everybody else out, and I mean, they all do it.

So I told him, email me, you know, please email me kind of more of a summary of what exactly you believe concerning justification and what Paul believed, you know, why, you know, those texts. But how exactly would you reconcile their interpretation of an Ephesians 2, when he says, if I'm saying that correctly, when he says, because they interpret it as being faithful, because they say that, well, you know, we, you know, new research, exactly, is that true, or?

No. I mean, obviously, the general place where that has come in is talking about faith in Christ as faith, the faithfulness of Christ. And that's generally in context where you have, in Romans 3, for example, through faith in Christ, that is through the faithfulness of Christ, it's a genitive construction that can be taken either as a subjective or objective.

That's not the case here. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves is a gift of God. The idea of, for by grace you have been saved through faithfulness, I've never heard anyone even present that.

And the idea of new research, oh yeah, right, okay.

Yeah, it's really anthropocentric, so I mean...

And to think that you're the first one to have ever figured this stuff out, you're the first one to have ever seen this, I get really worried about people who actually really believe that. That scares me a little bit.

But yeah, I've never heard anyone attempting to establish that diapistos in Ephesians 2 .8 should be taken as faithfulness, as if that means somehow faithfulness at the end of life or something along those lines, because this doesn't make any sense in context.