Abstract
N. T. Wright, Pauline Perspectives: Essays on Paul, 1978–2013, SPCK: London, 2013; 864 pp.: 9780281063666, £45.00 (pbk)
This collection of essays by N. T. Wright is a companion volume to his massive Paul and the Faithfulness of God and it features a sway of studies on the apostle Paul written between the years 1978 and 2013. It is a convenient follow-up to Wright’s earlier collection of Pauline studies The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991) which covers the years 1982–93. The essays here include a wonderful mix of reactionary and programmatic pieces about Pauline theology and its context. The essays were originally written for a mixture of ecclesial and scholarly audiences, with the result that the current collection consists of a kind of bridge between the Church and Academy.
The essays are grouped chronologically/geographically, based on the location of Wright’s appointment as a scholar and pastor during his career. These locations include Oxford and Cambridge (Part One), Lichfield and Westmisnter (Part Two), Durham (Part 3) and St Andrews (Part Four). The topics of the essays consider variably, ranging from wading into the Ernst Käsemann and Krister Stendahl debate about justification and salvation history from the 1970s, reviewing landmark commentaries on Romans, responding to polemical critiques concerning justification and the New Perspective on Paul, exploring the importance of the Israel-story for Galatians and Romans, offering reflections on history and trends of Pauline scholarship, plotting the meaning of messiahship for Paul’s Christology and identifying the significance of the Roman Empire for Paul’s theology and praxis. All that and more. What stands out is that Wright is able to bring together so many themes, backgrounds, texts and dialogue partners and systematize them in a way that is at once aesthetically pleasing and also intellectually compelling. In places where readers disagree with Wright’s conclusion on a given subject, they still enjoy the sublime scholarly story that Wright weaves together even if it carries one or two erroneous details in the plot. For instance, I remain unconvinced that ‘become the righteousness of God’ in 2 Corinthians 5.21 means ‘the covenant faithfulness of the one true God, now active through the paradoxical Christ-shaped ministry of Paul’ (p. 73). Nonetheless, Wright’s attempt to situate righteousness, covenant, and apostleship together is a creative piece of exegesis and one that provides much pause for thought.
Eager students wanting a prepatory reading list for tackling Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God would do well to focus on the essays found in Part Four. These essays, all written at St Andrews since 2010, contain signature Wrightonian thoughts concerning the importance of the Abraham story for Romans 4, the significance of Israel’s missiological vocation for Romans 2—3, the meaning of Christos as ‘messiah’ rather than a proper name in Galatians, and Paul’s employment of Israel’s Scriptures as the grand narrative which drives his theological discourse.
The book makes for a stimulating collection of essays by one of the leading Pauline scholars of our generation. I am highly reticent to expect anyone to read more than the whopping 1700+ pages which comprise Paul and the Faithfulness of God; that said, this collection too has an important place by providing a prequel to that work as it documents key moments in Wright’s earlier engagement with Paul which culminated in the publication of his recent magnum opus.