I think context is the crucial issue. In the light of what are we reading this? I'm a person of very limited brain, and I'm going to read Paul in light of what I have studied and what I know - ie. Palestine in the first century and especially first century Judaism. You could ask, "Can he be lifted out of that context?" and I would start stumbling. I do not want to say that what I do is the end all and be all and that everyone who wants to read Paul must do it the way I do it. On the other hand, when I see a sentence that had a perfectly clear meaning in its original context taken out of that context and used some other way in a later context, then I kind of shudder.
With the modern appropriation of Paul, I feel like I'm stuck... Paul was entirely in favour of good works. The works he had in mind, against which he was polemicising in Galatians and Romans, were those works that make you Jewish and distinguished you from Gentiles... Paul loved good deeds! He recommends them to people all the time. But if you take his statement "righteousness by faith, not by works" out of its context - the question whether or not Gentile converts need to be circumcised - if you take it out of that context and put it in another context, I always kind of shudder at this.
- E.P. Sanders, Paul, Context and Interpretation
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