BOOK REVIEWS

Apostle Paul: His Life and Theology. By Udo Schnelle, translated by Eugene Boring.Pp. 695. Baker Academic, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2005, $49.99.

The size and scope of Udo Schnelle’s survey of Paul’s life and thought brings it intoautomatic competition with James Dunn’s major work that so impressed the world ofPauline studies in 1998. In outlining his methodology in the opening section, Schnellemakes a clear distinction between his own approach and Dunn’s. Dunn uses Romans– after all it is Paul’s most mature, reflective and obviously theological letter – to forma matrix into which the whole of Paul’s thought fits. This has the effect of makingPaul’s thought relatively homogeneous and abstracted from the particular historicalcontingencies in which Paul developed his theology. In Dunn’s approach there is nosignificant development in Paul; Paul’s theological understanding is a given from theoutset, or from soon after his call/conversion. Schnelle, on the other hand, gives fullregard to the tensions, differences of emphasis and apparent contradictions in whatPaul actually says in his letters (the author regards as authentic just the usual sevenand does not cover 2 Thessalonians, Colossians, Ephesians or the Pastorals). He dealswith the differences by providing historical contexts in which particular circumstancesgave rise to individual letters and shape the specific concepts and arguments thatrespond to those circumstances. So after a methodological Prologue, the bookprovides a chronology and a life of Paul, followed by a survey of the theology to befound in each letter in sequence, and then, only in Part Two, ‘the basic structures ofPauline thought’.In this last section, Schnelle shows that it is possible to set out a unified symbolic

world of meaning in Paul from the variety of content in his letters. This world isunderpinned by a historical narrative that begins with creation and Adam, andincludes Abraham, Moses, the prophets and Jesus. Within this narrative Schnelleaims ‘to delineate the load-bearing foundations of this intellectual structure’. Whatresults is in the first place theology: The God Who Acts. Then there is incarnationaltheology: Christology: The Lord Who Is Present. The author speaks of Paul’s‘Christological monotheism’ and later uses Larry Hurtado’s word ‘binitarianism’.After a brief section on Soteriology, a Trinitarian pattern is completed withPneumatology: The Spirit Moves andWorks. He rounds off his presentation of Paul’stheology with chapters on Anthropology, Ethics, Ecclesiology and Eschatology.The bibliography and footnotes show that the work reflects very largely, but not

exclusively, the world of German-language scholarship. There is no talk here of ‘thenew perspective’ though that is where Schnelle’s work falls as he has moved far from aLutheran line of interpretation. This Paul is thoroughly Jewish, with influences fromthe Jewish Bible, Hellenistic Judaism and, in places, Hellenistic-Roman culture. Thecentre of Paul’s thought, we are told, is not righteousness/justification, a theme firstdeveloped in Galatians when Paul had to deal with Judaising Christians who hadapparently not accepted the settlement of the Apostolic Council. Here and inRomans, Paul had to discuss the status of the law and it is in that particular contextthat Paul used the language of justification and hardly anywhere else. You get an ideaof how Schnelle presents development in Paul’s thinking when he says that the earlyletters suggest that there was still a place for law (indeed Paul was never entirely law-free) and that the gospel for the circumcised was not the same as the relatively law-free

r The author 2008. Journal compilation r Trustees for Roman Catholic Purposes Registered 2007. Published byBlackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600GarsingtonRoad, Oxford OX4 2DQ,UKand 350Main Street,Malden,MA 02148, USA.

HeyJ XLIX (2008), pp. 128–180

gospel (his gospel) for the uncircumcised. But Paul became aggressively anti-Torahwhen the crisis in Galatia developed, when demands were made that the gentileChristians there should follow all the requirements of the law of Moses. When hewrote very shortly afterwards to Rome, he set out his position at greater length but inthis different context he could be much more nuanced in his interpretation of thestatus of law. Schnelle, then, does not accept Sanders’ view that there is no consistencyin Paul’s thinking about the law, though he does accept that Paul was workingtowards a fully consistent position rather than having achieved one. Nor does he hintat a division between a ritual Torah that is defunct and a moral law that still stands. Ifthe morality represented by the ten commandments endures, it is more because itcorresponds to the rational and natural morality of Greek-Roman philosophers. Anexample of how Schnelle can appropriate differences in the world of scholarship canbe found when he outlines six modern interpretations of law in Paul and he managesto incorporate elements of five of these, including Sanders; all bar Bultmann’sinterpretation (p. 280ff.).Righteousness/justification is not at the centre then, because it was a contingent

response to particular circumstances, but ‘its theological capacity cannot be restrictedto this dispute . . . [it] formulates fundamental insights that maintain their validity tothis very day’ (p. 471). What Paul is principally about is ‘transformation’ and‘participation’. The transformation of human life and history is shown to bethoroughly Christological: God has raised Jesus from the dead; in his death, sin hasbeen defeated and we can now stand with him in a state of righteousness before Godthrough our belief in that resurrection. Justification comes from faith not works of thelaw, which is too weak to overcome sin. We participate in this, we come to live ‘inChrist’, through baptism.There are some points with which some will disagree: is Paul really so negative

about the ‘body’ as Schnelle suggests? Does Paul implicitly move away from thebodiliness of our future resurrection in his later letters? Is Paul ‘clearly’ committed toa double predestination of people’s destiny? Is pistiB IZsou Xristou an objectivegenitive referring to our faith in Jesus? Is Jesus’ death as an atonement derived, notfrom Temple theology, but from a Maccabean tradition of the death of martyrsbenefiting others? Even if the reader might have particular disagreements, this book isa fine achievement and probably goes to the top of the pile of large one volumesurveys of Paul.

Harrogate Geoffrey Turner

The Quest for Paul’s Gospel: A Suggested Strategy. By Douglas A. Campbell. Pp. xi, 290,London, T & T Clark International, 2005, $44.95.

Paul’s own voice does not appear much in the opening chapters of this book,for it is a ‘strategy’. Douglas Campbell thinks that for centuries, even millennia,interpreters have read Paul from the wrong perspective when trying to grasp thecentre of his gospel and a general reorientation is needed. That much is hardly new inthe light of revisionist readings of Paul in the last thirty years, though one would beright to be cautious with any account that says that everyone has got in wrong untilme.Campbell suggests there are just three broad strategies that might be adopted in

approaching Paul’s letters. First there is the so-called ‘Lutheran’ reading which is bothderided and defended with great energy at the present time, though as Luther himselfwas more nuanced than he is often given credit for, Campbell prefers to call this the‘Justification by Faith’ reading (JF) which centres Paul’s thought on Romans 1–8

BOOK REVIEWS 129