John M. G. Barclay

Paul, Philemon and the Dilemma of Christian Slave-Ownership

By any standards, discussion of Pauls reaction to slavery and slave-ownership is exceptionally complex and controversial. There are more than enough difficulties in attempting to grasp the true character and significance of slavery in the Graeco-Roman world of the first century, due not merely to the fragmentary and one-sided nature of our evidence but also to the deep-rooted political and philosophical commitments which influence almost every significant treatment of the topic. But to discuss Paul in relation to slavery is to add further complications. If, with the majority of scholars, we bracket off Col 3. 22–4. 1, Eph 6. 5–9, 1 Tim 6. 1–2 and Tit 2. 9–10 as Deutero-Pauline, we are left with comparatively few texts which refer directly to the institution of slavery: Gal 3. 28 (cf. 1 Cor 12. 13), 1 Cor 7. 21–24 and the letter to Philemon are all that remain. But even these texts contain sufficient complexities and ambiguities to render an assessment of Pauls view of slavery far from straightforward. Moreover, varying ideological commitments play a significant role in interpretation here too.

There is Neither Old Nor Young? Early Christianity and Ancient Ideologies of Age

Instructions given to the ‘older’ and ‘younger’ in some early Christian texts prompt inquiry into the rationale for this polarity and its ideological freight. Demographics suggest that the adult population rarely contained more than two generations, and comparative study indicates that where age was marked these categories usually sufficed. Their ambiguity and flexibility made them suited to ideological deployment, legitimating the power of the ‘older’. 1 Peter, 1 Clement , the Pastorals, and Polycarp demonstrate this phenomenon in early Christianity, with 1 Tim 4.12 and Ignatius Mag . 3.1 as exceptions that prove the rule. But why are age qualifications absent from the authentic Paulines?

Food, Christian Identity and Global Warming: A Pauline Call for a Christian Food Taboo

Meals and food were clearly important in establishing early Christian identity, and Paul stresses two principles that govern Christian practice: that food can only be eaten in an orientation of thanksgiving to God, and that care must be taken concerning the effects of eating on others. In some cases, he insists, this may require Christians to abstain from certain foods. Given the scale of the damage caused by greenhouse gases arising from global livestock production, it is argued here that Christians now have an urgent responsibility to reduce greatly, or even cease, their consumption of meat.

Paul and the faithfulness of God.

N T Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God, 4 (London: SPCK, 2013), pp. 1712. £65.00 This book, the latest in Wrights 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 Pauls 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.

Pushing Back: Some Questions for Discussion

An appreciative and critical response to C. Kavin Rowe’s World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age which identifies two significant questions. First, does Rowe over-simplify matters by presenting the church in Acts as a threat to ‘pagan culture’? Secondly, is the issue for Luke whether the Christian movement is politically ‘seditious’ or, more broadly, whether it fosters criminal activity? On both counts, does Rowe exaggerate the ‘tension’ he detects in Acts?

Meat, a Damaging Extravagence: A Response to Grumett and Gorringe

This response to the preceding articles by Grumett and Gorringe develops the case for the growing damage caused by livestock production and calls for a Christian response that includes, at least, major reduction in the consumption of meat and dairy products.

Is it Good News that God is Impartial?: A Response to Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary

The publication of a major new commentary on Romans is an event in New Testament scholarship, and ‘major’ is the word here in more senses than one. Not only is this commentary on a phenomenal scale (over 1000 double-columned pages of text), the culmination of 25 years of research and reflection, it also offers a significantly fresh reading of the fullest statement of Paul’s gospel, and thus constitutes a new trajectory in the interpretation of Pauline theology. In a heavily overcrowded field, Jewett has skilfully selected representative scholarship (both German and English) with which to interact, keeping his argument from entanglement in the innumerable thickets of exegetical opinion. He offers a new and sometimes provocative translation, with extensive notes on each textual variant, and provides an original structural analysis of each section of text, paying unusual attention to its rhetorical features. In the exegesis itself, philological discussion of key Greek terms is illuminated by choice comparative samples, cited in full. Jewett’s writing style is admirably clear, with sufficient repetition of critical points to keep alive a clear line of interpretation throughout this enormous volume. The discussion of Pauline theology is conducted with a passion one associates with Ernst Käsemann, whose lectures on Romans Jewett heard in Tübingen; and it is Käsemann andDunnwhoform the principal dialogue partners throughout. In short, this is more than just an impressive piece of scholarship; it offers a strong and novel reading of one of the most important documents in the Christian tradition and in Western cultural history. Jewett is to be roundly applauded not only for his sheer doggedness in bringing this task to completion (no mean feat in itself), but for the intellectual energy and

The Gift and its Perfections: A Response to Joel Marcus and Margaret Mitchell

A response to the review-essays on Paul and the Gift by Professors Joel Marcus and Margaret Mitchell.

Continuing the Conversation about Grace: A Response to Paul Foster and Beverly Gaventa

I am extremely grateful to Paul Foster1 and Beverly Gaventa for the care with which they have read Paul and the Gift, and for the generosity with which they have spoken about it. Foster has given a fine summary of central elements of the book, including its anthropological tools, its taxonomy of ‘perfections’, and its engagement with Second Temple Judaism, while Gaventa has focused on its Pauline dimensions. The combination gives the reader a good sense of what the book is about, and the tone they have set provides the conditions for fruitful discussion. I am privileged both to receive this careful assessment of my work and to be given this opportunity to respond. I will focus on Gaventa’s probing questions concerning my reading of Paul, grateful for this challenging, friendly, and open-ended dialogue. Whence did Paul derive his reading of the Christ-event as gift? Did Paul’s participation in the Jewish dialogue on divine beneficence generate this interpretation of Christ, asks Gaventa, ‘or is it the Christ-event that generates Paul’s participation in the dialogue’? We need not press for an either/or decision. As Romans 9–11 suggests, Paul could draw on a pool of biblical texts which point to the mercy and benevolence of God, and as a theologian working within this biblical/Jewish tradition, the question of where and how God’s mercy is displayed was always live and serious. But the peculiar, incongruous, character of God’s mercy (as Paul reads it)—its disregard of the worth of its recipients—is not a necessary or inevitable construal of the biblical tradition (as the contemporary Wisdom of Solomon shows), and I suggest in my reading of Romans 9–11 that this has a special Christological character (Paul and the Gift, pp. 556–61). We cannot tell, of course, how Paul would have read these texts otherwise, but I do not think that a proper emphasis on the Christevent as the catalyst of all his theological reasoning needs to be played off against the fact that he is frequently dealing with topics also discussed and disputed among his fellow Jews. The second part of Paul and the Gift, with its detailed studies of Jewish texts, demonstrates that there was such discussion and dispute concerning the mercy or grace of God. But it also serves to illumine Paul’s texts at numerous points, through complex mixtures of similarity and difference, and it is surely unlikely that Paul began to think about God’s mercy/ grace only when he was encountered by Christ. In other words, I think we can understand Paul better by situating his theology alongside other participants in this Jewish discussion, but I certainly agree that we cannot understand him at all unless we see the impact of the Christ-event, and of his calling and mission to the Gentiles, on the way he figured what ‘grace’ meant. As Gaventa rightly notes, the category of gift is not the only dimension of Paul’s soteriology, and there are other themes and many passages that I have not been able to address. In fact, I think gift is not so much one among the many Pauline metaphors for salvation as the structure Continuing the Conversation about Grace: A Response to Paul Foster and Beverly Gaventa 702843 EXT0010.1177/0014524617702843 research-article2017

Stoic Physics and the Christ-event: A Review of Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul: The Material Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)

This review of Engberg-Pedersen’s important new book questions its thesis that Paul, like the Stoics, understood the pneuma to be a physical substance characteristic of the heavenly bodies in the cosmos. For all their similarities in numerous details, there seem to be substantial differences between Pauline and Stoic theology concerning the relationship between God and the world, as seen in the way Paul articulates the character of the ‘new creation’ instituted by the Christ-event.