Dunn and Wright on Paul
The Paul Page has posted a conversation between James D. G. Dunn and N. T. Wright on current issues in Pauline studies. Dunn and Wright are two of my favorite New Testament scholars. Dunn’s work on the Holy Spirit was an important impetus toward my dissertation topic; Wright is just good all around.
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Darrell Pursiful
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I like them both–been following Dunn ever since reading his Unity and Diversity in Early Christianity in college. But I fail to see why everyone is so excited (positively and negatively) over their “new perspective on Paul.” The roots of this go back AT LEAST since Krister Stendahl’s classic essay, “Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West.” And, weren’t you and I both taught this at SBTS straight out of E.P. Sanders? I thought this was standard consensus and then, all of a sudden, I find all these evangelicals–previously champions of Wright–now freaked out by his view of justification. Weird.
Yes, Michael, I distinctly remember reading both Stendahl and Sanders in Dr. Borchert’s Paul seminar. I guess the excitement is that, in Dunn (and especially Wright), the “new perspective” now has a popular voice. More people outside of scholarly/academic circles are being confronted with what has been more or less commonly understood among experts in the field for some time.