I’m not a scholar, nor a scholar’s son. I have only a dilettante interest in Judaism. My interest in Jewish writings has come about through my interest in the Jewish Messiah who, unbeknown to most Jews, ushered in his kingdom in ‘already and not yet’ form 2,000 years ago. There are encouraging signs that many Jews are coming to faith in Jesus today. But that’s another issue. So I’m a dilettante - Jewish Messiah- loving Christian. It’s good to be able to see things through Jewish eyes and get a feel for how Jews see things (1 Corinthians 9.20).
But I’m annoyed on two fronts. First, some voices today are claiming Reformed evangelicals are preaching a false gospel. This is owing to the fact that we have (apparently) misunderstood the Judaism of Paul’s day and swallowed the false assumptions of Luther who was himself labouring under gross misapprehensions about the ‘merit theology’ of the Jews Paul was opposing. So the Reformation got it wrong, apparently.
I’m annoyed, secondly, because I feel some theologians today are trying to hoodwink me by postmodern slippery-semantic word playing. Like ‘merit’, for example. The bones I have to pick start with Paul and Palestinian Judaism by E.P. Sanders and continue with recent attempts to deconstruct Judaism, Luther and Paul. Sanders dismantles the traditional view of Second Temple Judaism as pursuing righteousness through law (’merit theology’) and in its place suggests ‘covenantal nomism’. To quote Tim Gallant on his http://www.rabbisaul.com/nomism blog:
