The following is the conclusion from an article I wrote for Pro Pastor, 2.2 (Fall 2023): 2-10. It is the lead article in the downloadable PDF copy of the magazine.
CONCLUSION
If N. T. Wright is correct that the Jews who opposed Jesus and Paul did not hold to a system of works-righteousness, why does he not demonstrate this point from Scripture? Why does he find the authority for his claims in literature outside the Bible? If the Protestant tradition has wrongly retrojected sixteenth-century Roman Catholicism onto the biblical characterizations of Pharisees and Judaizers, one needs to demonstrate from the biblical text itself Protestantism’s mischaracterization. Appealing to literature outside the Bible to correct this alleged error is to commit the very same mistake.
The reality is that Scripture itself is sufficient in its depiction of both the Pharisees and Judaizers. The apostle Paul testifies that he was a Pharisee, “advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers” (Gal 1:14). Thus, should not Paul’s own characterization of the doctrinal opponents he faces suffice as authoritative? If not, why not? Paul notes, “If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed” (v. 9). When Paul, a Jew and former Pharisee, conclusively and emphatically announces this curse upon his Judaizing opponents in Galatia who proclaim a “different gospel,” we are obliged to account for his characterization of their teaching and practice within his letter to the Galatians, whatever it is. And if the “different gospel” they preach is not a system of works-righteousness, then we are obligated to demonstrate this from the apostle’s portrayal of them, not by looking in extrabiblical literature.
The Gospels, the Book of Acts, and Paul’s letters unequivocally characterize the Jews as rejecting Jesus of Nazareth, their long-awaited promised Messiah. The Pharisees and chief priests regarded Jesus as a threat and disrupter to their dominance over Jewish religious life (John 11:48). Their religious zeal to maintain the purity of the law of Moses, the Temple, and synagogues from Jesus’s teaching about God’s kingdom consumed them to conspire against him and put him to death.
Some Jews, who professedly acknowledged Jesus as the promised Messiah, zealously insisted upon the permanence of the Mosaic law with its requirement of circumcision and observance of food laws and holy days, thus regarding the Messiah as subject to the law covenant rather than fulfilling it. They preached that Gentiles must receive circumcision whereby they would then become Abraham’s seed (Acts 15:1; Gal 5:2). Such Judaizers inverted the gospel promise, namely, that Gentiles and Jews, together, become Abraham’s seed by belonging to Jesus Christ, who is the true seed of Abraham (Gal 3:16, 29). The Judaizers’ prioritizing of Abraham over his Seed, the Messiah (3:16), and of Mosaic law over the one who perfectly fulfilled the law (4:4), is the fundamental error Paul counters in his letter to the Galatians.
Whether Paul’s opponents taught a system of works-righteousness must be demonstrated or invalidated on the authority of the biblical text, not from outside of it. The validity or invalidity of Luther’s lens of medieval Roman Catholicism or Wright’s lens of Second Temple Judaism must be assessed by the ultimate standard of biblical truth. Scripture’s portrayal of the theological errors of both the Pharisees and Judaizers is utterly sufficient—otherwise, Scripture no longer stands as the norming norm. •