F. DAVID FARNELL: BASIC DEFINITION AND DESCRIPTION OF THE NEW PERSPECTIVE ON PAUL

Recent decades have witnessed a change in views of Pauline theology. A growing number of evangelicals have endorsed a view called the New Perspective on Paul (NPP) which significantly departs from the Reformation emphasis on justification by faith alone. The NPP has followed in the path of historical criticism’s rejection of an orthodox view of biblical inspiration, and has adopted an existential view of biblical interpretation…

One will see through this faculty series of articles that when all the dust clears and the issue is seen for what it really is, the NPP supports a mixture of faith and works for justification, thereby violating the sole fide principle, so long held by orthodox Protestantism (as well as by the faithful church from the earliest centuries, e.g., Augustine). It truly is a revisionist hermeneutic that fatally undercuts this vital doctrine. Not only is the NPP, “ at heart, a counter to the Reformational view,” but it constitutes an assault on the gospel of God’s grace (cf. Gal 1:8-10). This is at heart the definition as well as a description of the NPP.

F. David Farnell, Associate Professor of New Testament at Master’s Seminary, (Online source)