Abstract
It would be hard to overstate the significance of the concept of grace within the Christian tradition. It is easy to think of examples that illustrate its importance for Christian theology: Marcion’s suggested fissure between the God of grace revealed by Jesus and the God of capricious vindictiveness found in the Old Testament; the terms of debate between Augustine and Pelagius and the consequences of that debate in Christian theology; Luther’s “rediscovery” of God’s gracious character and the elevation the three Reformation era “solas” (sola gratia alongside of sola scriptura and sola fide); and, course, the celebration of God’s grace in cherished hymns of old, like “Amazing Grace,” and in more contemporary worship songs.
John Barclay’s most recent book, Paul and the Gift, considers Paul’s theology of grace or divine beneficence as it emerges in his letters to the Galatians and the Romans. The book contains eighteen chapters, divided into four parts: the first part considers the meanings of ‘gift’ and ‘grace’ (chaps. 1–4); the second explores notions of the divine gift in Second Temple Judaism (chaps. 5–10); the third conducts a careful reading of Galatians (chaps. 11–14); and the fourth interprets significant portions of Romans (chaps. 15–17) and provides a comprehensive conclusion for the book as a whole (chaps 18), followed by an appendix, bibliography, and indices.
The first part of Paul and the Gift lays out the conceptual and theoretical basis for the remainder of the book. Chapter one acquaints the reader with anthropological categories of gift-giving and surveys of ancient Greco-Roman practices of benefaction. Barclay is unsatisfied in large part with modern notions of the “pure gift,” which he defines as “the notion of the gift as ideally ‘free’ from obligation, and unreciprocated, given without a return” (p. 52, emphasis original). This notion of “pure gift” has clouded our understanding of grace in Pauline theology. To clarify our understanding of God’s grace, Barclay applies Kenneth Burke’s concept of “perfection” to grace in chapter two. Perfection “refers to the tendency to draw out a concept to its endpoint or extreme” (p. 67). Barclay posits six “perfections” related to God’s grace that undergird the rest of the book: the superabundance of the gift, the singularity of the giver, the priority of giving, the incongruity between the gift and its recipient, the efficacy of the gift, and the non-circularity of the gift, meaning it cannot reciprocate (p. 69). The payoff of this categorization is the recognition that, “Rival claims to maintain or defend the principle of ‘grace’ may turn out to constitute not different degrees of emphasis, but different kinds of perfection” (p. 0, emphasis original). The idea that expressions of divine beneficence arise through different perfections and combinations of perfections allows Barclay to compare how Paul, other Second Temple texts, and even Paul’s interpreters understand grace in the remainder of the book.
Before examining either Romans or Galatians (the putative topic of his book), Barclay presents a thorough and informed overview of how previous interpreters have understood grace in Paul’s letters (chap. 3). In just over one hundred pages, Barclay interrogates the writings of Marcion, Augustine, Luther, and Calvin before turning to twentieth-century interpreters (Barth, Bultmann, Käsemann, and Martyn) and representatives of the so-called New Perspective on Paul (Sanders, Dunn, Wright, and so forth). Readers of Paul and the Gift will find in this chapter a nuanced and balanced discussion of some of the most vexing problems related to Pauline theology. In addition, Barclay draws on the six perfections of grace to demonstrate how these readers of Paul “perfect” the concept of grace in their own ways, which results in an insightful comparison of these different interpretations.
Nearly a book in its own right, Barclay’s six chapters on the different understandings of God’s grace in Second Temple Judaism cover significant ground, including the Wisdom of Solomon, the writings of Philo of Alexandria, the Hodayot from Qumran, the Book of Biblical Antiquities by Pseudo-Philo, and 4 Ezra. Likewise, the section on Galatians amounts to a commentary on nearly the whole text of one of Paul’s most important letters. Though not as comprehensive as his exploration of Galatians, Barclay’s treatment of Romans gets to the heart of Paul’s articulation of God’s grace in Romans, especially in comparison to the other texts from Second Temple Judaism.
In important ways, Paul and the Gift takes up and expands upon the work of E. P. Sanders, whose Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1977) led to a seismic shift in scholarly and, to some degree, popular understandings of Paul. Sanders famously argued against Reformation-era constructions of the works-based righteousness of Judaism and the grace-based religion of Paul. In contrast to this false dichotomy, Sanders maintained that all forms of postbiblical Judaism affirm God’s grace. As Sanders maintained, Second Temple Judaism was everywhere and entirely a religion of grace. On this, Barclay remarks, “Sanders is right that grace is everywhere, but this does not mean that it is everywhere the same” (p. 316, see similar statements on pp. 2 and 565). While Barclay applauds the historical significance of Sanders’s basic thesis, he insists that it is time to move beyond his approach. In his attempt to show how Paul’s view of God’s grace basically aligned with other views in Second Temple Judaism, Sanders’ work flattened the diverse views, and even debates about God’s grace found within the texts of this period. This flattening was owing in large part to a lack of conceptual clarity in Sanders, and a tendency that Barclay thinks has continued in both proponents and opponents to Sanders’ thesis (see treatment on pp. 151–165). What is needed, Barclay concludes, is an analysis that shows how “Paul emerges as one participant in an ongoing Jewish dialogue in which the motif of grace was perfected in various ways, with no single or predominant form” (p. 321). Barclay’s study has demonstrated this “Jewish dialogue” with great success.
Those who make their way through Barclay’s Paul and the Gift will reap great insights and interpretative benefits, as I have in reading through it. Because the grace of God is arguably one of the most significant aspects of Paul’s theology, readers will walk away from their study of Paul and the Gift with a clearer understanding of Paul’s thinking and a secure handle on the wide variety of interpretations of Paul. In addition, readers will come away with a greater appreciation for the social location of these interpreters and how that social location shapes the way they “perfect” Paul’s thinking on grace. In short, Barclay offers a significant contribution to scholarship on Paul that will also be of interest to pastors, educated laity, and those who find themselves interested (or perplexed) by Paul.