Four Views on the Apostle Paul (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology)

This is a very interesting and informative book. I had no idea that there were so many schools of thought about Paul's theology (I still fall in line with Schreiner and believe in grace alone through faith and substitutionary atonement). This is a good companion book to "The Nature of the Atonement," which addresses the center of Christ's work of atonement (Schreiner also contributed to this text). I recommend it for anyone interested in Pauline studies

The book follows the pattern of the “Counterpoints” series, whereby each view receives responses from the sparring partners. The Reformed view on Paul is presented by Thomas R. Schreiner. Schreiner summarises Paul’s framework of thought in this way: “the apostle teaches that the new exodus, the new covenant, and the new creation have arrived in Christ. But a crucial proviso must immediately be introduced. Even though the new age has been inaugurated in Jesus Christ, it has not been consummated.” Also “One of Paul’s fundamental frameworks, then, is the already but not yet character of his eschatology.” The substitutionary death of Christ on the cross is appropriated by faith in Christ (objective genitive) and repentance. Thus forensic justification plays a key role in salvation. Schreiner surprisingly affirm salvation as a process that awaits consummation in future. Although justification does not mean moral transformation of a Christian and is not based on good works, “the good works constitute necessary evidence that one is justified” (a point very similar to that of J. Dunn and N. T. Wright). Schreiner’s supersessionism is evident in his understanding of the church in Paul as the “assembly of God” in the OT and in spiritual circumcision as initiation in Christ’s community: “Such appropriation suggests that it is fitting to say that the church of Jesus Christ is the “true” Israel for Paul.” Also “Indeed, ethnic Jews who fail to believe in Jesus are not saved (9:30-10:21, esp. 10:1) and hence do not belong to God’s people.” The second position is that of a Roman Catholic, Timothy Luke Johnson. He gave a very broad survey of Paul’s theology with plenty of textual references. It was interesting to observe how close Reformed and Catholic positions can be when the text of Pauline corpus (and not technical dogmatic formulations) is closely followed. The third perspective is a “Post-New Perspective” account by Douglas A. Campbell. Campbell supports the new approach to Judaism propagated by the NPP, but disagrees that Dunn’s understanding of “works of the law” as ethnic boundary markers resolves the problem of “Lutheran” Paul. Campbell suggests the key to unlock Paul’s theology is to understand the apostle’s gospel as revelation of the triune God and his mission in the world. Romans 5-8 is the key passage to comprehend Pauline theology. It is commendable to see Campbell’s claim that Paul works with the view of a triune God, whereby the persons of the Godhead are fully divine and their activities are perichoretic in nature or as Campbell calls it “an inchoate trinitarian grammar.” Campbell believes that ethnic, social and gender distinctions will be transcendent: “The brothers are consequently related to one another personally and even narratively, and in bodily terms, but not biologically or ethnically. The community is constituted in some sense beyond gender and race.” According to Campbell, Paul works retrospectively from solution (Christ’s revelation that enlightens the problem) to plight (the problem of sin). Campbell follows Kümmel, suggesting that Paul in Rom 7 is not describing personal inner torment under the Torah. Thus Rom. 7 should remind the brothers of a constant threat to turn away from freedom of Christ to the demands of Torah that lead to agony and death. Finally, Mark D. Nanos presents a fully-Jewish Torah-observant Paul. Nanos claims that it is misleading interpretations of Paul by Christians that depict a distorted picture of Judaism and cause many Jewish scholars to disregard Paul in general. Both Jews and Christians misunderstood Paul, who was a first century Torah-observant Jew, representing a variant of a first century Judaism with a focus on Jesus Christ. Paul’s mission after his Damascus experience was to bring God’s Word to the nations so that through the restoration of Israel all the nations would be reconciled with the God of Israel. The application of Torah requirements varies depending on identity of a person: “the dissociation from Torah fidelity described in Paul’s position on Torah for non-Jews does not extend to all of humankind as if it applied equally to Jews, including Christ-following Jews….So-called freedom from Torah only applies specifically to “non-Jews who are Christ-followers.” So in Christ Jews remain Jews and gentiles remain gentiles, so that God would be God of the nations and not only the God of Jews or only the God of gentiles. Schreiner correctly contends that Paul continued to keep the Torah faithfully on the evidence of such passages as 1 Cor 9:20-21 (cf. Col 2:16-23). Michael F. Bird presents very helpful summary of these views and their respective critiques. As it is usually the case, it is better to compare the views before contrasting them. If I would choose the best points from all four views, it would be (Campbell’s) Paul with Trinitarian framework who taught those who are justified by God experience salvation as transformation and union with Christ (Johnson), demonstrating authenticity of their righteous status by good works until the consummation of time (Schreiner) and accepting each other as Jews and gentiles alike, preserving respective ethnic identities in Christ (Nanos).

Book have Interesting perspectives about apostle Paul. It worth to read to increase your knowledge about New Testament.

The literature on and around Paul is extensive, even if we include only those works published in the past 20 years. This book slips to three stars due to the quality of its competitors in this space. The essays are good and somewhat structured around the editors request. The replies are not so structured. I like the response format and do appreciate the replies; but they tend more to be adornment for the responding author's work than a critical review of the essay being reviewed. Michael Bird's introduction and conclusion are informative and do some framing of the authors and their perspectives. Compared to other books in this series ("views" and/or "counterpoints"), Bird's intro and conclusion should be considered exemplary. On a side note, but one which can impinge on reading pleasure, I find Bird stretches too much to be an expert and his vocabulary sometimes become both verbose and obscure. I would not call this an introduction to Paul. There are better surveys. I would not say that the individual essays do justice to the work and perspectives of the individual authors. There are better options for survey works (such as Zetterholm's "Approaches to Paul" (also a Kindle book) and, certainly, the individual authors have several works each which are better on those specific topics. However, this is a middling ground that does inform, provoke thought, and provides options around which those thoughts can wander.

Very Intriguing! Was assigned this book for a class and it was a very dense and hard read with challenging concepts!