Paul Against the Jews?

Perhaps the most controverted aspect of Paul’s thought has been his thinking about Judaism and its relation to the Jesus movement. Martin Luther convinced Protestants for centuries that Paul was attacking first-century Judaism for teaching salvation by works. But the “New Perspective on Paul,” a movement led by James Dunn and N. T. Wright, showed that Jews of Paul’s day held to a “covenantal nomism” whereby God elected Jews by grace but required obedience to remain within the covenant. So Jewish salvation was actually by grace, but faithfulness was necessary to remain in salvation.