It is difficult to find a brief layman's explanation of the "New Perspectives on Paul" (NPP). To rectify the problem I humbly offer "The Idiot's Guide to the New Perspective on Paul"

An analogy:
Imagine a church that has the following rule: EVERYONE WHO ATTENDS THIS CHURCH MUST WEAR A SUIT. The church has the rule to keep out the bums, reasoning that bums can't afford suits.

The people in the church know very well that wearing a suit in and of itself doesn't make one a Christian. They simply have the requirement for the purpose of excluding others who are not like them. They want the church for themselves, and want to keep the bums out.

In this analogy the root problem is that Christians want to exclude others. There is nothing inherently wrong with someone wanting to wear a suit. The problem is that they are using their preference for suits as an arbitrary rule to exclude others.

As we noted in our last post [Part 1] Arminians see the atonement of Jesus Christ as being provisional in nature. Not only is the atonement provisional but it is more specifically provisional in Christ Jesus. Only those who come to partake of Christ partake also of the atonement available through union with Him. Since we come to be in union with Christ by faith we also come to benefit from the atoning benefits of His blood through faith (Rom. 3:25). The atonement is one of those gracious spiritual blessings that we come to share in when we are united to Christ by faith and is probably foundational to all of the other spiritual blessings in Christ (Eph. 1:3, 7).

Calvinist James White insists that the message Christians should give to the lost is that Jesus does not "merely try" to save them but that He "saves them perfectly" (Youtube video link, beginning at 28:15). By "perfectly" White means that God has by a mere decree unconditionally chosen to save (regenerate and bring to faith) certain of the lost and unconditionally damned the rest of mankind. This is not hyper-Calvinism or some form of philosophical-theological, first-century pagan fatalism. This is basic, Classical Calvinism.

Nevermind that the apostle Paul, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, instructed a young pastor named Timothy that God our Savior "desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth" (1 Timothy 2:4 NASB). Statements throughout the New Testament such as this one must experience a vast change in prima facie meaning in order to support Calvinism.

Kenneth D. Keathley, Professor of Theology and Dean of Graduate Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, has completed his latest book, Salvation and Sovereignty: A Molinist Approach, published by B&H Academic. Today's post will interact with his chapter on Overcoming Grace (pp. 101-37).

From the back cover of the book, one reads the following: "Salvation and Sovereignty begins with author Kenneth Keathley asking, 'What shall a Christian do who is convinced of certain central tenets of Calvinism but not its corollaries [conclusions]?' Like many, he suspects the usual Calvinist understanding of sovereignty (that God is the cause of all things) is not sustained by the biblical witness as a whole."