BY FAITH, NOT BY SIGHT: PAUL AND THE ORDER OF SALVATION (2nd edition), by Richard Gaffin

A Brief Book Summary from Books At a Glance

About the Author

Richard B. Gaffin Jr. (ThM and ThD, Westminster Theological Seminary) is Professor Emeritus of Biblical and Systematic Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. He is also the author of Resurrection and Redemption: A Study in Paul’s Soteriology. He serves on the Committee on Foreign Missions of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and as an Elder of Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Ambler, Pennsylvania.

Overview

By Faith, Not by Sight is a reworking of four lectures delivered in 2004 whose purpose was to address matters in Pauline scholarship which had become more widely discussed because of the work of proponents of the so-called New Perspective on Paul. Gaffin aims to treat Paul’s theology, with specific focus on the issues that the New Perspective raises, from an orthodox and confessional position. Those issues include the order of salvation including justification and its place both present and future, as well as how union with Christ centers Paul’s coherent system of soteriology.

Table of Contents
1  The Order of Salvation and the Theology of Paul?
2  The Order of Salvation and the “Center” of Paul’s Theology
3  The Order of Salvation and Eschatology – 1
4  The Order of Salvation and Eschatology – 2?

Summary

1. The Order of Salvation and the Theology of Paul?

Gaffin begins by situating his study within the field. The study of Paul today is dominated by loosely connected reinterpretations of some of Paul’s most basic assumptions, reinterpretations, therefore, of Pauline theology itself. These are together called “the New Perspective on Paul.” The newness of the New Perspective comes from a reassessment of Second Temple Judaism and its importance for Paul which began to be incorporated into Protestant scholarship in the last quarter of the twentieth century by Krister Stendahl and E. P. Sanders.

Gaffin’s interest for his study lies in the difference between

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