Warning: The legalists are here! Or is it the hypocrites?

Most people are familiar with the Pharisees. Or at least they think they are - A bunch of skulking, petty, crooked nosed legalists who have nothing better to do with their time than impose rules on common people in order for them to gain some kind of merit which will enable them to go to heaven. In other words, the Pharisees appear in the Gospels and in pantomime fashion a plethora of boos and hisses resounds in the average reader's mind along with the thought: "warning the legalists are here!"

That was the common consensus on the Pharisees for quite a while. In 1977, however, a historian called E. P. Sanders published a book called Paul and Palestinian Judaism in which he argues that Jews at the time of Jesus were not legalistic. They didn't think that obeying the Law would enable them to be justified. Rather they believed that they were part of God's people already and that keeping the law was simply a way of "staying in" the covenant. In other words, works of the Law were not a way of "getting in", but of "staying in". The Pharisees, to New Testament scholars, turned from being the legalistic bad guys into being the grace-filled party which tried to make the law accessible to all common Jews.

The influence of E. P. Sander's book was simply enormous. It kick-started the New Perspective on Paul, which is a new way of reading Paul - in this perspective Paul is not opposing legalism, he is opposing ethno-centric Jews. The reformers' talk of legalism was simply anachronistic - an importation of 16th century ideas (notably the legalism of the Catholic Church) onto first-century texts. Other scholars such as James Dunn and Tom Wright have taken on Sander's ideas and completely reread Paul and the Pharisees.

Needless to say, Sander's thesis has been met with fierce criticism from the Evangelical camp. Particularly noteworthy is Simon Gathercole's response in Where is Boasting: Early Jewish Soteriology and Paul's response in Romans 1-5. Gathercole reexamines the evidence from early Judaism and argues that Sanders has overlooked evidence which points to the fact that many Jews of the first century saw the Law as a way of obtaining salvation. I think Gathercole makes a strong case and has helpfully shown many of the flaws in Sander's logic.

Having read Luke 11 this morning and Jesus' response to the Pharisees, I was reminded of Ligon Duncan's comments on the Pharisees and legalism. Ligon Duncan is an evangelical who could not be more fiercely opposed to E. P. Sanders' thesis. However, he acknowledges that one benefit of Sanders work is that it re-orientates us towards the Pharisees, although he says that simply reading the Gospels properly should help us do this. He points out the fact that Jesus never actually accuses the Pharisees of taking the Law too seriously. He accuses them of being hypocrites. In other words, people who instruct others to follow the law, but fail to do it themselves. They tithe from their spice-rack, but neglect justice; they lay heavy burdens on people, but do not help them to carry it. Check out the brief video here.

Returning to the pantomime analogy, it seems that when you read the Gospels at face value, our response to the Pharisees should not be "warning: the legalists are here!" but rather "warning: the hypocrites are here!". Interestingly, Jesus encourages people to do what the Pharisees teach (Matthew 23:1-3), but not what they do. They have excellent theology, but awful practice. The "Pharisee in each of us" then is no longer so much about our attempts to add to our salvation, but our propensity to have a good belief system and good theology, but a bad practice. We don't want to be Pharisees, but for a very different reason than is usually put suggested.

"Warning: the hypocrites are here!"