Justification Reconsidered

Rethinking a Pauline Theme

Stephen Westerholm

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U.K.

© 2013 Stephen Westerholm

All rights reserved

Published 2013 by

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

2140 Oak Industrial Drive N.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505 / P.O. Box 163, Cambridge CB3 9PU U.K.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Westerholm, Stephen, 1949–

Justification reconsidered: rethinking a Pauline theme / Stephen Westerholm.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8028-6961-6 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Justification (Christian theology)

2. Bible. Epistles of Paul—Theology.

I. Title.

BT764.3.W38 2013

234′.7—dc23

2013011135

Contents

Preface

1. The Peril of Modernizing Paul

2. A Jewish Doctrine?

3. Are “Sinners” All That Sinful?

4. Justified by Faith

5. Not by Works of the Law

6. Justification and “Justification Theory”

7. In a Nutshell

Scripture Reference Index

Preface

Those of us brought up, not simply on the letters of Paul, but on a distinctive way of reading those letters, do well to engage with those who read Paul differently. We learn most, it seems, from those with whom we differ. They may see what we have missed. They may see correctly what we have misperceived. And even when we are convinced that the misperceptions are theirs, the raising of fresh questions invigorates our reading of familiar texts and increases our appreciation of those whose careful reading of Paul led them to insights that we, till now, have taken for granted.

In this short work, I engage with scholars who have posed fresh questions, and proposed fresh answers, regarding the familiar texts in which Paul speaks of justification. Though many have been convinced by their interpretations, my own reinvigorated reading of Paul has led me, in these particular instances, rather to question the claims of the revisionists; I attempt here to explain why. By now a generation of scholars has arisen for whom the more recent proposals represent the only way of reading Paul to which they have been seriously exposed. I trust they may find, in reading these pages, that older interpreters saw aspects of the texts they have missed, or construed them in ways more faithful to Paul. If, in the end, they retain their loyalty to newer perspectives, perhaps they will grasp better the challenge faced by those who first proposed them.

Let me stress that attention in this study is confined to the theme of justification in Paul and, more specifically, to recent revisionist proposals about how it is (and is not) to be understood. Topics that go undiscussed are not deemed unimportant, or even less important than those here treated; but we confuse rather than clarify what Paul has to say about justification when we try to include, in the meaning of this term, other sides of his thought. Justification is one way in which Paul depicts human salvation; what he has to say is essential to that topic, but still only ...