Paul and the New Perspective: The Complete Course (12 lectures)

If two or more of the following sound like you, this course may be a good fit.

• You have heard both that “the New Perspective is a heresy that erases grace” and that “the old perspective misread Paul,” and you want to check the evidence for yourself.
• You wonder whether Paul's opponents really were “people trying to earn salvation by good works.”
• E. P. Sanders, James D. G. Dunn and N. T. Wright are often grouped together, but you would struggle to explain what each of them actually argues.
• You want to know why scholars interpret phrases like “works of the law,” “justification” and “the righteousness of God” so differently.
• You believe in “faith alone,” yet passages about God “repaying each according to their works” leave you unsure how to hold the two together.

About the course

This course is a Theology Select Shop re-edit of Taehoon Kim's lecture series “Study on Perspectives on Paul,” taught with pastors and church members. Opening Sanders's Paul and Palestinian Judaism and Dunn's The New Perspective on Paul and The New Perspective on Paul: What Is It?, it reads the works passage by passage as they challenge the “old perspective” on Paul (the traditional reading since Luther). Lectures 1–2 map the old and new perspectives; lectures 3–7 follow how Sanders reread first-century Judaism (covenantal nomism: God first chose a covenant people by grace, and obedience to the law is how one stays within that covenant) and Paul's soteriology.

Lectures 8–12 turn to Dunn: what “works of the law” means in the Antioch table incident of Galatians 2, the critiques of Dunn (including Seyoon Kim's) and his responses, whether Paul truly broke with the law, and finally how to understand justification by faith alongside the place of obedience at the final judgment. Wright is introduced in the overview in lecture 1, with a full reading of Wright offered as a follow-up course after lecture 12.

Difficulty: ★★☆
Provocativeness: ★★☆

Editor's note: What stands out most is that this course is not a summary of conclusions but a record of the reading process. The instructor reads the scholars' own sentences aloud, then alternates between what each claim rests on and where critics push back.

Instructor

Pastor Taehoon Kim

Creator of the Teacher Kim English channel on YouTube

Doctor of Ministry student, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Translator of Peter J. Williams's Can We Trust the Gospels? (Korean edition, Gameun, 2022) and other works in biblical studies

Course contents

Lecture 1: How Does the New Perspective on Paul Differ from the Traditional View? (1:38:01)
Lecture 2: The Issues at Stake — Does the Gospel Change? (1:24:22)
Lecture 3: Sanders's Challenge — Rereading Judaism (1:42:05)
Lecture 4: Covenantal Nomism — Grace and Obedience (1:48:04)
Lecture 5: In Christ — Reading Paul on Salvation (47:01)
Lecture 6: Paul's Soteriology — When Is Salvation Complete? (1:21:59)
Lecture 7: From Sanders to Dunn — What Changed? (1:13:37)
Lecture 8: Galatians 2 — What Are the Works of the Law? (1:27:14)
Lecture 9: Objections to the New Perspective — How Did Dunn Respond? (1:16:11)
Lecture 10: Works of the Law — Only Ethnic Boundary Markers? (1:36:10)
Lecture 11: Paul and the Law — A Real Break? (49:58)
Lecture 12: Faith and Final Justification — Why Does Obedience Matter? (1:18:36)

Taught by Taehoon Kim as lectures 1–12 of “Study on Perspectives on Paul,” from 2024 through February 2025.