E. P. Sanders, who understands Paul’s perspective on the law to be completely out of keeping with the typical understanding evident in the mass of Jewish literature contemporary with Paul. Sanders finds no rational way to explain this disconnect, and, as a result, he concludes that Paul’s logic works backward, “from solution to plight.” In other words, Paul’s experience of the risen Jesus causes the apostle to invent a “problem with Mosaic law” so as to rationalize his transformation.
