Religion & Spirituality Inside

The best book on Palestinian Judaism avaiable. Sanders is one of the best in his field. Excellent research. Presented well for all who have interest and some background.
Rating: 5 / 5

Sanders has written a big book with lots of details. Obviously, there is still a lot of research and discussion to be done to come up with an accurate description of the patterns of religion exhibited by each form of Judaism. But at a general level, I though his case was more-or-less convincing.

Evangelicals who pick this up to read for the first time will be amazed at how little is said about Martin Luther or about traditional Protestant dogma. Sanders is aiming for specific historians of rabbinical thought. These men were not from the reformation but from liberal Protestantism, as far as I can tell from Sanders footnotes. The impression gathered from his book indicates that these people would have no real commitment to the “particularity” of the Christian religion–specifically the claim that Jesus’ death and resurrection really happened in space/time history and that they even constituted the liberation of the world from sin, guilt, and death. Instead, Christianity was reduced to an abstract confidence in the benevolence of God and his willingness to forgive. To explain the divide between Christianity and Judaism, then, required that the latter be understood as an abstract need to earn God’s favor by being good enough.

According to Sanders the Rabbis were massively misunderstood, even to the point of claiming that they had a doctrine of “a treasury of merits” by which people could be forgiven because of past works of superogation done by the fathers. Obviously the most superstitious forms of Medieval Roman Catholic theology were being imposed on these people.

Of course, this hardly means that the Rabbis were good Protestants in how Sanders claims they formulated their doctrine. The essentials of Protestant soteriology are, frankly, a lot more specific than a “pattern of religion” that begins with grace. (This lack of clarity is seen in the idea, expressed by some, that “The Rabbis were not pelagians.” Fine. But there is still the issue of whether they understood being justified as being made righteous personally, rather than being declared righteous judicially. These issues would be of importance to conservative Evangelicals but are simply not on Sanders radar.)

Sanders discussion of Paul is a mixed bag.

First off, readers who have caught wind of the controversy might be shocked to find out that Sanders denies that Paul’s soteriology fitted into the pattern of “covenantal nomism.” Rather, mystical union with Christ–”participationist eschatology”–is the pattern of his religion. As has been pointed out, his analysis substantially resembles Richard Gaffin’s _Resurrection & Redemption_.

Second, Sanders denies Pauline authorship to a number of the canonical books ascribed to him. This skews his entire discussion, in my opinion.

Third, Sanders claims that Saul the Pharisee had no real crisis of conscience due to some problem he perceived with the Law or with himself in regard to the Law. Rather, when he learned that God had raised up Jesus, he deduced from Jesus being sent as savior that there must have been something deficient in the law. While this is somewhat problematic, it is also a salutary response to the sort of Christless liberal Christianity that mutates it into a general principle of grace. Sanders is claiming that the particularity of Jesus dying and rising from the dead was all-important to Paul.

As part of this issue, Sanders analyzes Paul’s appeal to “faith,” not as a real principle that he gained from the Scriptures, but rather as an ad hoc alternative to “Law.” His main argument is that Romans 3.21-31 defines faith as receiving the gratuity of salvation, whereas Romans 4.1ff and the example of Abraham show faith as an active trust in God’s future promises. This is fascinating because Sanders is using traditional exegesis of a specific passage (Romans 3.21-31) to undermine traditional theology, which sees Paul as making a substantial point from Scripture with forceful argumentation. N. T. Wright has defended traditional theology by pointing out that Sanders problem is that he is being too traditional in his exegesis. The phrase translated as “faith in Jesus Christ” is actually referring to “the faith of Jesus Christ.” Romans 3.21-31 is not speaking of the faith of the believer but rather about the faith of Jesus. Thus, there is no conflicting definition of the believer’s faith in the two passages.

Is this a worthwhile book for an Evangelical to read? I’m not sure. I only read it because of all of the cries of alarm that have been sounding forth. If I had been allowed peace I would have stuck with N. T. Wright, who is much better than Sanders, in my opinion, in any number of ways. Right now, I think that the “discussion” (to use a flattering term) among Evangelicals is so polarized that no one has a right to make any statements about Sanders unless he has read him for himself.

Sanders does show that the historical claims of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century liberals were unfounded. He does not, in my estimation, prove that the Rabbis were orthodox Protestants in their soteriology. Nor, for that matter, does he absolutely prove that there was no merit legalism in first-century Judaism, because it is impossible to prove a universal negative. He does show that the case has not yet been made.

Many are now claiming that anyone who adopts Sanders basic position is allowing non-inspired documents to determine the meaning of Scripture. But that is not true. Even if Sanders is not convincing to some, the fact remains that there is no evidence in the New Testament that Jesus or the Apostles thought the Pharisees taught that one must earn one’s salvation. If there were merit legalists in first-century Palestine, they were not important enough to elicit a response in the canonical Scriptures. In my opinion, Sanders book is helpful in confirming what we ought to already know.
Rating: 3 / 5

If anything is to be said about this volume, its impact has changed Pauline scholarship until the present time. Many distinguish between pre-Sanders and post-Sanders Pauline scholarship. This was in many ways the begining of the movement now known as the “new perspective on Paul.” Most of this volume is an evaluation of second temple Judaism. Sanders believes that in the second temple period there was a united pattern of religion. This falls into the rubric of soteriology. This pattern of religion Sanders calls Covenantal Nomism. This idea is that those in the covenant with Israel are in the covenant by grace, and they remain in by obedience to the law, however, not in such a way as to say salvation is earned. Obedience does not earn but maintains ones covenant status. Sanders fights against the idea that Jewish soteriology was simply a “weighing of the scales” where one’s merits and demerits were weighed against one another. This idea was popularized by Weber and despite the fact that several Jewish scholars have fought against it, it was universally accepted. Sanders certainly has valid criticisms of previous second temple scholarships, however, he overreacts. Rather than seeing Judaism as a religion of works, Sanders sees Judaism as a religion of grace. When looking at the evidence from this period however, neither picture is accurate. There is a much greater diversity of opinions in second temple literature than either position will admit. For example, Josephus, who seems to be entirely ignored in this volume does not talk in terms of national covenant. Also, Philo talks in very different categories. Books like IV Ezra (which Sanders admits) and II Enoch do portray a type of legalism. On the other hand, the Testament of Moses sees both entrance and continuation in the covenant as matters of grace.

Sanders treatment of Paul in the second section of this book has not been as influential as his evaluation of second temple literature. He believes that Paul talks not so much in forensic as participationist categories. For Paul, the law never required perfect obedience. In fact, he never saw a problem with the law until he found Christ. His thought was from solution to plight. He saw that Christ was the only way to righteousness, therefore law-righteousness must be inadequate. Sanders famous line states that “Paul’s problem with Judaism was that it was not Christianity.” Sanders treatment of Paul is really only largely evaluated in his next volume “Paul, the law and the Jewish People”
Rating: 3 / 5