WORD STUDY PROJECT

WORD STUDY PROJECT

Covenantal nomism is the outlook that one's location in God's design is established on the cornerstone of the covenant and that the covenant needs as the correct answer of man his obedience to its commandments, while supplying means of atonement for transgression…. Obedience sustains one's place in the covenant, but it does not profit from God's grace as such…. Righteousness in Judaism is a period which suggests the upkeep of rank amidst the assembly of the elect. This covenant connection was regulated by the regulation, not as a way of going into the covenant, or of profiting deserve, but as the way of dwelling within the covenant; and that encompassed the provision of forfeit and atonement for those who confessed their sins and therefore repented…. This mind-set Sanders distinuished by the now well renowned saying “covenantal nomism”—that is, “the upkeep of status” amidst the selected persons of God by discerning the regulation granted by God as part of that covenant relationship.

Dunn is often misrepresented on this issue, as though he constrains “the works of the law” to the “boundary markers,” without permitting that the entire Torah is in outlook when Paul uses the phrase. But just the converse is the case. He states, in issue of detail, that circumcision and the other ordinances were not the only differentiating traits of Jewish self-identity. To referee from what one may part simultaneously from the editors' aims, it would appear that the argumentation is as follows: Second Temple Judaism was diverse; thus, there were legalists in Paul's day; thus, Paul is contending against the “legalists” (as are against to the “covenantal nomists”). Time will notify how the reviewers propose to chase this clear-cut agenda. But at this stage of the game, one senses that the whole enterprise may well ...