Friday, November 27, 2009

I don't like the "new" in the "New Perspective"

It's too bad the "New Perspective on Paul" is saddled with the term "new". If there is one way to make Evangelicals squirm is to call something "new" ("New Age"). The irony of course is that the "New Testament" is immune from this prejudice. In the case of Paul, new-phobia is unfortunate because the New Perspective is really aimed at recovering the old Paul, the Paul before the newer Pauls of Augustine, Luther, Calvin et. al.--which to 2000+AD Evangelicals appear to be the old, true Paul. The New Perspective particularly hits home in Evangelical circles because the issues involved do not hinge on presuppositions that Evangelicals would necessarily disagree with (unless of course the issue is whether Paul truly wrote this or that letter--but even here the New Perspective usually concentrates on those letters which are not in question). This is not true with Historical Jesus research. We could call the movement the "True Perspective" but that comes across as arrogant. Anyway, we seem to be stuck with "new", so maybe we need some new strategies to overcome new-phobia.