File this under “Wish I’d Said That.”

Nicholas Perrin’s review of Guy Waters’ book Justification and the New Perspectives on Paul is now online at the N. T. Wright Page. (HT: Alastair, review originally published in the Westminster Theological Journal, 2005, 67, 381-390.)

The opening paragraphs of the review are quoteworthy:

A story is told of an American tourist, who just having returned from his first trip to Europe, gathers his friends together to tell them of his travels. “Upon my word,” the man began excitedly, “sometimes it was difficult to deal with the Europeans. When I sat down for soup in Paris, they called for une cuiller. When I did the same in Berlin, they gave me ein Loeffel. And the whole time all I wanted was a spoon, which is of course what it is.” In some ways, entering into the conversation of contemporary New Testament studies, and within this field the sub-specialty of Pauline studies, is like going abroad. One cannot get very far without soon finding that the vast array of theological judgments and ways of speaking about Paul are rooted in and informed by an equally broad and diverse spectrum of assumptions, faith-commitments and worldviews.

This reality poses two sorts of challenges for the critically-responsible exegete of Paul. In the first place, the Pauline student must be willing to learn how different scholars use different terms in different ways. The student must, in other words, get at least as far as the tourist who in recounting his travels remembered the French and German equivalents for the English word “spoon.” But there is a second requirement in faithfully interacting with the primary sources and the relevant secondary literature, one that is just as important as the first: the ability to understand others on their own terms. The annoyed American tourist wants to correct the German and French waiters, because they failed to use familiar language. He strikes us a naive not only because he in effect collapses the distinction between the sign (“a spoon”) and that which the sign signifies (an implement used in eating soup), but also because he believes that his linguistic system is the one to which all other systems are relative.

Read the entire review here, and Waters’ response here.

This strikes me as the perfect metaphor for which I have been searching as I have done reading on the many sides of the “justification wars” this summer. I don’t doubt that there are some substantive differences at certain points between the sides, although I increasingly doubt that those differences are necessarily at the level of “heresy” or “threats to the gospel” as some have been characterizing them. In far too many cases, once I have read from all sides, I come away with the impression that one theologian is damning another for ordering his soup in French instead of English. Freedom Fries anyone?

This entry was posted on Monday, September 4th, 2006 at 10:08 am and is filed under Post-conservative Evangelicalism, Rants, Reviews, Theology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.