Biblical studies and theology can be either as dry as dust or explosive. For explosive think Rob Bell on eternity or Karl Barth on Romans; for dry as dust try … No – I won’t fall into that one. But I am in the middle of one book on a subject that has the potential of being a bomb thrown into the middle of our church life. In The New Perspective on Paul Kent L. Yinger (great name!) gives a broad overview of a school of thought that studies Paul and his letters in a fresh way.

Key to this New Perspective is the revelation that the Jews of Jesus’ and Paul’s time did not believe that their salvation depended on them keeping the law in all its detail. In general they were not legalistic about their faith. On the contrary, the consensus view of the time was that their relationship with God depended on God’s grace in choosing them to be his people. He had also prepared the sacrificial system for them should anything go wrong in their walk with him. Keeping the law for them was not about trying to please God but rather their expression of love towards him and the badge with which they showed the world how different and special they were. Think how different our reading of Paul – and Jesus for that matter – would have to be if we were to adopt New Perspective thinking!

Controversial? It certainly is. Already two giants of Christianity in the West, the American John Piper and the English and the former Anglican bishop Tom Wright, have been having a spat on one particular aspect of the New Perspective. Wright is one of the movement’s main specialists and has written extensively on the subject.

Some are calling for a marriage between the emerging church and the New Perspective theology – and from my limited reading about this subject, that seems like an exciting prospect. So over the next few weeks I’ll bring you some morsels from Yinger’s book and we can explore some of the ideas together.