Tuesday, December 04, 2007

D.A. Carson on VanLandingham

D.A. Carson has a review at RBL of Chris VanLandingham’s Judgment & Justification In Early Judaism And The Apostle Paul. In short (and with obvious nuancing) VanL. argues that in Judaism and in Paul, justification/savlation is essentially by works. The coming of dikaiosyne makes possible the dispensation whereby humans can be acquitted on the basis of their works.
Carson's critique is right on the mark as some of VanL's conclusion are eccentric and peculariar (but always interesting). For one, Paul did not teach that Christ's death only atoned for preconversion sins and, second, Paul was not an advocate of some kind of perfectionism.
For those interested I have a full length article review of VanL's book coming out in Bulletin of Biblical Research in 2008.

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