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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 April 2015
This book, the latest in Wright's series on ‘Christian Origins and the Question of God’, is a daunting phenomenon: over 1500 pages, packaged in two volumes, containing (I reckon) more than 800,000 words. Building on his earlier publications, and referring across to companion volumes – not even this gigantic text is self-sufficient – Wright here advances in full the synthetic vision of Paul's theology which he has developed and promoted over more than thirty years. The scale reflects his ambition: to integrate all the motifs in Pauline theology within a single large-scale schema; to elucidate its Jewish roots and its points of interaction with Graeco-Roman philosophy, religion and politics; to engage in most of the recent debates on Pauline theology; and to defend and advance his own distinctive theories on justification, covenant and the Messiahship of Jesus, against critics who have lined up against him on several sides. The structure and size of the project create considerable repetition. Many topics are opened, postponed for several hundred pages, then discussed and then later reprised, while the reader is liable to be wearied by a prose style which often seems excessively baggy. Wright strives to keep our attention with arresting metaphors, engaging illustrations and a knock-about lecture-hall style, but the latter is often tetchy in its criticism of others, and descends too often to caricature. Indeed, the standard of intellectual engagement with contrary opinions is often disappointing, and hardly improved by grand generalisations about ‘Enlightenment frameworks’ and ‘postmodern moralism’. It is only rarely that this large work engages in detailed exegesis (close engagement with texts, in debate with a range of exegetical options): the opening discussion of Philemon, the focused study of Galatians 6:16 and the close analysis of Romans 9–11 (the highlight of this work) are among the exceptions. Of course one cannot advance a thesis of such breadth without sacrificing some depth in textual debate, but the effect is to lessen considerably the persuasiveness of the whole.
N.T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, Parts I and II, III and IV (Christian Origins and the Question of God; 2 Vols) (London: SPCK, 2013), pp. xxvi +1658. £65.00(pbk).
2 The dialogue is largely Anglophone: less than 60 of the 1,300 items in the bibliography are in German.
3 The dismissal of those who argue for the non-Pauline authorship of Colossians and Ephesians is a case in point (pp. 56–61); the detailed historical, literary, stylistic and content-focused arguments current in scholarship deserve much better than this. Wright may come to regret some of his rhetoric: post-Holocaust sensibilities are noted sympathetically at times, but then apparently ridiculed as ‘the tearful misted-up spectacles of post-holocaust western thinkers’ (p. 1413). He promises fuller engagement with others in his forthcoming Paul and his Recent Interpreters; but the inadequate comprehension of (e.g.) Bultmann and Martyn, and his hostility to rival interpretations of Paul, suggest that his polemical perspective will skew his analysis.
4 The necessity to read Paul's letters as coded speech is thus a continuing weakness in Wright's case, although only one element of our continuing debate (see pp. 1307–19). Wright wonders why I identify some passages in Josephus as a coded critique of Rome, but do not find the same in Paul. The answer is simple: Josephus was writing, as Paul was not, for an audience which included Roman officials, including his imperial sponsors.
5 Readers with less than 60+ hours at their disposal might welcome some reading guidance: in my judgement the most creative and significant theses of this book reside in chs 2, 7, and 9–11; even those constitute a taxing 860-page read.
6 For a better reading, see Watson, F., Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (London: Continuum, 2004), pp. 329–41, 436–9Google Scholar.
7 To dub Martyn's reading of Paul non-Jewish, even anti-Jewish (pp. 612; 1481; parallel to Nazi erasure of Jewish history, p. 1477, n. 8!) will horrify those who understand Martyn's concerns. Wright's tone here becomes so irritable, and the picture so distorted, that scholars who know Martyn's work but are favourable to Wright are likely to squirm with embarrassment.
8 And for good reason: it is a large and unsupported step to read the narrative links as signalling not only recapitulation (Abrahamic ‘multiplying’ echoes the instructions to humanity) but also reversal (Abraham is intended to reverse Adam's fall).
9 The claim to ‘plenty of evidence’ (pp. 792, 811) notwithstanding. On the crucial pages (pp. 181–4), most weight is placed on Philo's reference to the Jewish people as priests for the world; but that, as Wright himself notes, concerns intercession and representative praise, which is a long way from ‘putting the world to rights’ (p. 182). Following up cross-references to Wright's earlier work (p. 181, n. 407) will lead to no additional evidence: that Israel is or will be the true humanity does not imply that through Israel God will redeem the rest of the world. In fact, as Wright notes, many Second Temple texts are content for God to save Israel even if other nations perish (pp. 792–3).
10 And to Rom 3:2, where the oracles of God are ‘entrusted’ to Israel; surely, Wright insists, for the sake of the nations (pp. 836–9). However, the entrusting could be for the sake of later Jewish generations and/or for the sake of future believers in Christ (see Rom 15:4). The companion essay on Romans 2:17–3:9 (Wright, N.T., Pauline Perspectives: Essays on Paul, 1978–2013 (London: SPCK, 2013), pp. 489–509Google Scholar) does not add materially to the argumentation. When Paul cites the promises that God would bless the nations in Abraham and his seed, he indicates that they were fulfilled in Christ (Gal 3:1–16; Rom 4:1–25), not that this blessing was a mission that Israel failed to accomplish.
11 Pistis in the sense of faithfulness (i.e. trustworthiness, dependability) is never unambiguously attributed to Jesus by Paul; obedience and faithfulness are not semantically equivalent. Wright insists that Jesus’ pistis does not designate his faith in God (p. 842), so at that point there is no parallel with what is said of Abraham and of believers in Rom 4.
12 See Matlock, B., ‘Detheologizing the pistis Christou Debate: Cautionary Remarks from a Lexical Semantic Perspective’, NovT 42 (2000), pp. 1–23Google Scholar. As Matlock makes clear, one picks out the sense of a word from its context: God's pistis in Rom 3:2 (alongside reference to his ‘truth’ and ‘righteousness’) clearly betokens his ‘faithfulness’, but this cannot determine the sense of pistis Christou in 3:21–6, where the context, with the verbal form pisteuein, helps us pick out the sense ‘faith’.
13 Wright notes the difference from Wisdom 10 but says: ‘I still see broad convergence at a deeper level: telling this story is the key to God's dealings with the world’ (p. 1184, n. 56, emphasis his). But it makes the world of difference how one tells the story of Israel, and appeal to a lowest common denominator illuminates nothing. See further my Paul and the Gift (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, forthcoming).
14 Wright is anxious to distance himself from Reformation readings (pp. 850, 1003–6), to the extent of suggesting that Rom 4 is ‘hardly at all soteriological’ (p. 1002), except in the sense that (on his reading) Abraham's family was called to rescue the world from its plight. But it is the means of God's calling, and the basis for the covenant, which fascinates Paul; the Gentile horizon of the covenant rests on its character as an unconditioned gift.
15 Among the weaknesses in the current form of his argument is that it requires taking ‘Israel’ in Rom 11:25, as well as 11:26, to mean ‘the people of God in Christ, both Jews and Gentiles’. But the ‘hardening upon part of Israel’ (or ‘upon Israel for a time’) in 11:25 clearly echoes 11:7, where the meaning of ‘Israel’ is unambiguous. There are not ‘two Israels’ in Rom 9:6 or anywhere else in Rom 9–11. Rom 9:6 indicates only that not all those who are ‘descended from Israel (ex Israel)’ are Israel. God makes his choice among the descendants, on his terms alone.
16 According to Wright, Lutherans tend to say ‘that God has cut off the Israel-plan and done something completely different’ (p. 499). Reformation thought is divided: ‘is the law a good thing (Calvin) or a bad thing (Luther)?’ (p. 514). This is so crude, and so misleading with regard to Luther, that one wonders what level of readership Wright expects.
17 Wright, N. T., The New Testament and the People of God (London: SPCK 1992), pp. 32–7, 81–118Google Scholar.
18 There is a hint of the latter in the claim that ‘the principal and ultimate goal of all historical work on the New Testament ought to be a more sensitive and intelligent practice of Christian mission and discipleship’ (p. 1484). That is, of course, one possible purpose for historical scholarship. But then one should clarify how commitment to such a goal has influenced this project from the start and all along the way.
