Abstract
Barclay’s new book on the idea of χάρις, a term which he prefers to translate more frequently as ‘gift’ rather than the more familiar ‘grace’, is a superlative study in every way. The book breaks fresh ground not only in terms of its comprehensive treatment, but more importantly because of the perspicacious intellectual framework through which the concept is analysed and the incisive textual exegesis of relevant Second Temple and Pauline texts. The result is a study that breaks fresh ground in Pauline scholarship in regard to Paul’s central understanding and depiction of the Christ event.
The volume is arranged in four parts. The first of these constructs the intellectual edifice and the contextual frame for understanding Paul’s use of χάρις language. The opening chapter examines anthropological perspectives on the concept of ‘gift’ and the practice of gift exchange. Barclay takes the work of French anthropologist Marcel Mauss as a seminal, but not unproblematic, milestone in the academic study of the system of gift exchange. Mauss identified three elements in gift exchange: ‘the obligation to give, the obligation to receive, and the obligation to return’ (p. 15). Barclay sees these interdependent elements as helpfully alerting modern readers to ‘the role of gifts in the creation of social solidarity, and the patterns of obligations which the represent and induce’ (p. 17). Barclay continues by surveying anthropological studies on gift exchange subsequent to Mauss’ work. Here he draws upon the insights of a number of anthropologists. This leads him to articulate five guiding perspectives for the ensuing study. First, adopting a broad definition of ‘gift’ that includes favours, benefactions and services of various kinds. Second, it is important to understand the role of gifts within the larger matrix of social exchange. Third, it is important to understand the types of relationships that arise through the practice of gift exchange. Fourth, the fundamental premise is that gifts carry an expectation of return. Thus the expected reciprocity functions to create social bonds. Fifth, it is important not to dichotomise the understanding of gifts based upon modern notions. Ancient gift giving could be ‘both “voluntary” and “obliged”, both “disinterested” and “interested”, both “generous” and “constrained” by the social connections they represent’ (pp. 22–23).
In the same chapter, Barclay explores gift giving in the Greco-Roman world. He careful navigates readers through a wealth of primary texts and extensive discussions in the secondary literature. Importantly, he notes that despite the asymmetrical nature of human and divine relationships, the religious expectation of gift reciprocity is closely modelled on human forms of gift exchange. In a subsection entitled ‘Were the Jews Different?’, Barclay interacts with Seth Schwartz’s suggestion that, contrary to wider practice in the ancient Mediterranean world, Jews practiced a gift giving tradition that was based on a ‘rejection of reciprocity’. While Barclay notes a heightened religious imperative for alms giving in Torah legislation, he comes to the view that the notion of gift giving was not qualitatively different between ancient Jews and their non-Jewish compatriots in antiquity. Thus Barclay states, ‘[t]he Jewish ideology is undergirded not by the ethos of a “pure,” unreciprocated gift, but by an emphasis on the certainty of reciprocation from God’ (p. 44).
In the second chapter, ‘The Perfection of Gift/Grace’, Barclay considers whether it is legitimate to seek the ‘perfection’ or endpoint to the concept of χάρις. Then he offers a sixfold taxonomy that provides the analytical frame for much of the discussion that follows. Finally, he concludes by suggesting how ‘recognition of the polyvalence of “grace” might clarify ambiguities that surround this subject and still bedevil analyses of Judaism and of Paul’ (p. 67). The six perfections of grace that Barclay assembles are the following. First, superabundance: that is divine gift or grace is abundant in terms of size, significance, or permanence. Second, singularity: here attention is focused on the giver’s exclusive act of benevolence or goodness. Third, priority: chronologically the divine gift is not a reaction to a request, but an act of spontaneous generosity. Fourth, incongruity: in comparison to human gifts the divine act of grace is made without regard to the status of the recipient. Fifth, efficacy: the effect of the gift is that it fully achieves what it was designed to do, and such gifts are the sole and sufficient cause of human response. Sixth, non-circularity: such gifts are not defined in terms of reciprocity or exchange. The third chapter in this first section is a lengthy intellectual history of the understanding of χάρις in Pauline thought (pp. 79–193).
Part Two comprises six chapters that analyse the notion of ‘Divine Gift in Second Temple Judaism’ (pp. 194–328). The texts or authors that Barclay examines are in turn The Wisdom of Solomon, Philo of Alexandria, the Qumran Hodayot (1QHa), Pseudo-Philo’s Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum, and 4 Ezra. This detailed textual analysis is drawn together in summary in the final chapter of this section. While Barclay argues that these texts are irreducibly diverse, nonetheless he sees them all attempting to present the idea that divine grace is ‘perfected’, although they adopting differing strategies from among the sixfold taxonomy that was described in the first section of the study. Having surveyed these Second Temple texts, Barclay argues that recognition of their different conceptualizations of the perfection of divine grace allows one to move beyond E. P. Sanders’ description of Jewish religion as a system of ‘covenantal nomism’. According to Barclay, Sanders’ representation of covenantal nomism recognizes the perfection of grace, but bases that perfection only upon the priority of the divine gift. That is grace is prior to the subsequent demand for Torah obedience. While Barclay does not deny the validity of Sanders’ observation, he sees it as incomplete and hence inadequate. Thus he states, Sanders’ ‘observations on the priority of grace are valid, but this constitutes only one of the six possible perfections of grace, and, crucially, does not entail all, or indeed any, of the other perfections. … To identify a “common pattern” in Second Temple Judaism based on the priority of grace (the covenantal foundation) is to offer a one-dimensional analysis that discovers uniformity only by downplaying every other form of difference’ (p. 319).
The third and fourth parts of the volume examine the concept of χάρις in Paul’s letters to the Galatians and Romans respectively. In regard to Galatians, Barclay argues that ‘Paul is a theologian of divine beneficence … his interpretation of this gift is Christological in focus’ (p. 445). Moreover, the divine gift is given through the event of Christ’s death and resurrection. It is argued that Paul does not utilise the perfections of superabundance and singularity in Galatians. Instead his primary resource for describing the perfection of grace is through description of its incongruity: ‘its shocking lack of match with the worth of its beneficiaries, in ethnic, cognitive, or other terms’ (p. 446). Similarly in the three chapters where he analyses Romans, Barclay finds that Paul emphasises the perfection of divine gift owing to its incongruous character.
In his final chapter Barclay offers the following observation on Paul’s conceptualisation of divine gift. ‘Paul, we have found, explores the incongruity of grace, which he relates to the Christ-event as the definitive enactment of God’s love for the unlovely, and to the Gentile mission, where the gifts of God ignore ethnic differentials of worth and Torah-based definitions of value (“righteousness”)’ (p. 566).
This absolutely splendid study contains pearls of great insight on every page. It is a beautifully crafted argument, communicated with extraordinary clarity and meticulous care. The intellectual framework is introduced with a light touch and applied in a manner that elucidates the discussion and never encumbers it. This book will be not only much-discussed in Pauline scholarship, it will be much-prized for the genuine advances it offers in understanding Paul’s thought. The gifts it offer to those who study it are presented freely to all, and although its author expects no reciprocal reward it will surely evoke heartfelt thanks from those who read it.
Reflections from the Front Line of Ministry
Judith Thompson and Ross Thompson, Mindful Ministry: Creative, Theological and Practical Perspectives (London: SCM, 2012. £15.00/$32.00. pp. xxv + 189. ISBN: 978-0-334-04375-1).
‘The task of all ministry is to awaken people to their true glory in Christ’. If I judge rightly, this passion has energised Judith and Ross Thompson through two lifetimes of committed Christian ministry and reflection. It is the guiding principle of this wise and helpful book.
Readers seeking another contribution to the modish literature on mindfulness will experience a momentary disappointment. This book is not in that territory at the boundary of meditation and CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). The Thompsons’ mindfulness is a more straightforward matter: a determined presentness to who one is with and what the situation calls for.
Indeed, mindfulness is not the book’s central preoccupation. There is a helpful taxonomy of ways we fail to engage: absent-minded ministry of disconnected theory; ego-minded ministry that seeks to impress rather than to care; mindless ministry of panic about the urgent. Within this framework they discuss eight archetypes of ministry: Apostle, Holy One, Pastor, Teacher, Leader, Go-Between, Herald, and Liberator.
But the value in this book does not depend on this elegant structure: what I found helpful was the many varied jewels strung along this golden thread. The authors have paid their dues, have learnt and reflected at length and, moreover, are honest and perceptive about their own failings and generous in offering them as lessons. They are frank and circumstantial about the demands of ministry, offering deeply rooted reflections on how and why we do ministry and, even more helpful, what it is to be a minister.
Ministry is often not complicated or obscure, but simply hard, and this book is not just a neutral ‘how to’ but a challenge to do and be it to the full. Those in full time Christian ministry, and those who want to know what that’s like, will find much that is helpful here.
JOSHUA REY
St Leonard’s Streatham