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New Perspectives on Paul

Interesting link from Amy about how many scholars have been reconsidering Paul. Bill Cork comments:

Paul needs to be understood in context. He only discusses justification in two letters, Romans and Galatians, both of which have the context of how can Jews and Gentiles both be members of the new covenant in Jesus Christ. Paul's response is that we are members of this covenant (justified) not through the Law (the Torah, the Mosaic Covenant) but through Faith.

Paul is thus not interested in the question of Luther, how can I, wracked with guilt and a troubled conscience, find peace with God.

I'd say this insight is taken for granted today by most Biblical scholars, Catholic and Protestant; and as such, it provides an opportunity for ecumenical advance because it gets us out of the passions and blinders of 16th century polemics to ask what Paul meant to his first hearers.

It seems like the whole "Salvation Formula" (to borrow from the Zipster) is something that really took a life of its own around the time of the Reformation. Our mutual contagiousness is so striking when you see how most everyone of that era and beyond was afflicted to a greater or lesser degree; saints like St. Alphonsus de Ligouri and St. Philip Neri were at points in time afflicted with terrible scrupolosity and dark doubts about their salvation. My impression is that Eastern Christianity was somewhat protected from this disease given their distance and almost hermetically sealed environment. Perhaps I'm wrong, but they seem to have mostly avoided the whole pox of seeing our relationship with God as contractual rather than familial. Of course when individualism became big in Western society it's not surprising that salvation came to be seen solely in individualistic terms.