Reviewing The Paul Debate is a strange experience, in that one is reviewing a book that is itself a response to reviews of a book (Wright’s 2013 Paul and the Faithfulness of God). The Paul Debate is not a condensed version of PFG, but rather a ‘response to the five most questioned elements of my book’ (p. vii), with one chapter given over to each. This being said, chapter 1, somewhat strangely titled ‘Paul and the Messiah,’ functions as a mini-synthesis of Wright’s two large-scale theses in PFG: that Paul invents what we might call Christian theology, but does so with the specifically social purpose of sustaining Christian communities; and that the contours of this theology are the typically Jewish concepts of monotheism, election, and eschatology, freshly reworked around Messiah and Spirit. Chapters 2–5 more directly address issues raised in the reviews. Chapter 2, ‘How to Begin with Jesus,’ takes up Paul’s Christological monotheism, arguing that this arose out of Jewish expectation of the return of yhwh to Zion coupled with the fact of Jesus’s resurrection. In chapter 3, ‘Apocalyptic,’ Wright affirms much of what his ‘apocalyptic’ interlocutors want him to affirm—the cross and resurrection are decisive for Paul; they thicken the ‘plight’ beyond Gen 3–11 and Israel’s failure; and they serve as his epistemological starting point—while insisting that a more historically descriptive account of apocalyptic sits well with his own scheme of covenantal narrative. Chapter 4, ‘The Justified People of God,’ takes up Paul’s modified view of election and, after a discussion of various forms of scholarly anti-Judaism, the remainder of the chapter treats incorporative Messiahship and Paul’s narrative construal of Israel’s ‘long exile,’ only turning to justification proper on pp. 88–91. Finally, chapter 5, ‘Theology, Mission, and Method,’ despite the title, is largely a discussion of method, and defends his own (‘abduction’) against criticism, appealing to a series of questions that remind that a writer’s (not least Paul’s) presentation of her work does not equate to the process at which it was arrived. The Paul Debate provides, in condensed form, Wright’s take on certain key issues at the heart of his project. While it is not likely to lead to a rapprochement with his reviewers, read in conjunction with those reviews (see pp. 109–10), it is perhaps most useful as a window for students into some of the critical questions swirling about Pauline interpretation today.
Benjamin J. PetroeljeSchool of Divinity, University of Edinburgh
