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SBL responses to The Deliverance of God

What happened at the SBL book review session of Doug Campbell's The Deliverance of God are starting to appear. You can listen to it all here courtesy of Andy Rowell. Chris Tilling has posted a brief post, which is attracting some interesting comments, including Douglas himself although he's calling himself Rachel (his wife!). Michael Gorman, of the respondents to the book is making various bits of his response available through his blog (see also earlier posts). Hopefully Sean is going to share some of his thoughts soon. Having listened to the session, it does feel that Chris is right that no one 'provided a clear refutation of his exegetical claims' during that session. I guess the next stage will be to see the various reviews that will emerge in some of the big name journals over 2010. The current view seems to be that, whilst many favour Campbell's overall thesis, they are not convinced with his reading of Romans 1-3, which he claims is Paul's dismantling the argument of his opponent (which is 1.18-32).

Let me encourage those who have not got a copy of the book, to put it down on your christmas list. This is a book that cannot be ignored.

The Faith of Jesus Christ: Exegetical, Biblical and Theological Studies

This book is out at SBL according to Michael Bird and due for publication in the UK in January with Paternoster. Click here for introduction and sample chapter.

Contents:

Preface  - Michael F. Bird and Preston M. Sprinkle

Foreword -  James D.G. Dunn

1. Introduction: Problems and Prospects for a New Testament Debate - Michael F. Bird

I. Background of the Debate
2. Debating the Faithfulness of Jesus Christ in Twentieth-Century Scholarship -  Debbie Hunn 

3. Pistis with a Preposition and Genitive Modifier: Lexical, Semantic, and Syntactic Considerations in the pistis Christou Discussion - Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts

II. Pauline Texts in Contention
4. The Faithfulness of Jesus Christ in Romans 3:22  - Douglas A. Campbell

5. Saving Faith: The Rhetoric and Semantics of pistis in Paul - R. Barry Matlock 

6. pistis Christou Terminology in Philippians and Ephesians - Paul Foster

7. Faith in Christ: Some Exegetical and Theological Reflections on Philippians 3:9 and Ephesians 3:12
  Richard H. Bell

III. Pauline Exegesis, Hermeneutics, and Theology: Mediating Proposals and Fresh Approaches
8. The Faith of Christ  - Mark A. Seifrid (Southern Baptist Theological Seminary)

9. By Faith (of Christ): An Exegetical Dilemma and its Scriptural Solution - Francis Watson

10. pistis Christou as an Eschatological Event - Preston M. Sprinkle 

11. The Faithfulness of Jesus Christ as a Theme in Paul’s Theology in Galatians - Ardel B. Caneday

IV. The Witness of the Wider New Testament
12. The Faith of Jesus Christ in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts - Peter G. Bolt

13. The Obedient Son: The “Faithfulness” of Christ in the Fourth Gospel - Willis H. Salier

14. James 2:1 in the pistis Christou Debate: Irrelevant or Indispensable? - Bruce A. Lowe

15. On the Sidelines of the pistis Christou Debate: The View from Revelation - David A. deSilva

V. Historical and Theological Reflections
16. pistis Christou in the Church Fathers and Beyond - Mark W. Elliott

17. From Faithfulness to Faith in the Theology of Karl Barth - Benjamin Myers 

Wright is Writing Volume 4 of Christian Origins and the Question of God

Tom Wright is currently residing at the Centre for Theological Inquiry where he is working on volume 4 of his new testament theology which will focus on the letters of Paul. In the last few years some big books on Paul have been published including Francis Watson's Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (2005) and Douglas Campbell's The Deliverance of God (2009), how Wright will respond to these will be interesting, as will, how much this piece of work will differ from his short work Paul: Fresh Perspectives (2005). There is also the question of whether his emphasis on 'empire' will be muted after John Barclay's deep critique at last year's SBL.

Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Volume IV of Christian Origins and the Question of God) combines history and theology (exegesis being a branch of both), using the worldview-analysis outlined earlier. I shall examine (i) Paul’s characteristic praxis, stories and symbols, and his answers to the key worldview questions; (ii) his theology in terms of the revision, by means of Christ and the Spirit, of the central Jewish topics of monotheism, election and eschatology. At each point we see Paul in implicit dialogue and/or confrontation both with other Jewish readings of scripture and with hellenistic and Roman ideologies. His central aim was to found and maintain united and holy Christ-communities as a sign of new humanity to the wider world.

Theologically, this demonstrates a deep inner coherence throughout Paul’s theology, reconciling otherwise puzzling topics (e.g. the classic stand-off between ‘justification’ and ‘being in Christ’), and reframing ‘ethics’ and ‘ecclesiology’ in a more central and positive role than usual. Historically, I shall reconstruct Paul’s worldview and mindset in terms of a complex but coherent relationship (part derivation, part confrontation, part creative engagement) with the multiple worlds of C1 Judaism, Hellenism and Roman imperialism.

The Deliverance of God

I have the Deliverance of God. A copy of the book that is. Flip it's big! You can see why it took Douglas over fifteen years to write. It is without a doubt the book on Paul to read this year, all 1300 pages. Fantastic front cover, designed, like his previous book, by his wife Rachel. (The front cover says a foreword by N. T. Wright, but this doesn't appear, although he does write some words for the back cover). The only initial and relatively minor annoying feature is the lack of footnotes and instead an end 'notes' section. Douglas' thesis, if you've not read his work (like The Quest for Paul's Gospel, which is like a trailer/preview of Deliverance) before will utterly challenge how you interpret Paul's letters, especially Romans. I was fortunate to have been taught by Douglas for two years during my undergraduate degree (2002-3), which I discovered after reading the preface was still relatively early on in the book's development, and have been convinced of his reading of Paul for a while. It's still great to read it in its final form ... and will now be very interesting to see how its received. There is a special seminar devoted to it at SBL with Michael Gorman, Alan J. Torrance and Douglas Moo offering responses. One other small note for now is that you can find a reference to this page on my blog on p. 1041, footnote 10.

I know Douglas is taking something of a short break now in terms of new projects, although at some point in the future we should a book length treatment on Paul's biography. But for now we will just enjoy the Deliverance of God.

Douglas A. Campbell interviewed about new book

Michael Bird has a 3 part interview with Douglas Campbell about his forthcoming book The Deliverance of God. The book has taken a long time to deliver, but its finally coming in May time. It will be the book of 2009 on Paul and perhaps for many more years to come. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Krister Stendhal (1921-2008)

Halden shares the news that Krister Stendhal has died. Stendhal was a New Testament scholar must famously known for his groundbreaking essay “Paul and the Introspective Consciouness of the West” (first published in 1963 in the Harvard Theological Review), which later appeared in his most celebrated book, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles. In this essay he challenges the "Lutheran" reading of Paul, which is early precusor to much that has followed in Pauline theology (Sanders, Dunn, Wright, Watson, Stowers, Campbell).

Ten Indisepensable Journal Articles on Paul's Theology

1. John Barclay, 'Mirror-Reading a Polemical Letter: Galatians as a Test Case', JSNT 31: 73-93 (1987)

2. J. Louis Martyn, 'Apocalyptic Antinomies in Paul's Letter to the Galatians; NTS 31: 410-424 (1985)

3. J. D. G. Dunn, 'The New Perspective on Paul', BJRL 65: 95-122 (1982-1083)

4. Douglas Campbell, 'The Meaning of PISTIS and NOMOS in Paul: A Linguistic and Structural Investigation', JBL 111: 91-103 (1992)

5. Richard B. Hays, ' "Have we Found Abraham to Be Our Forefather According to the Flesh?" A Reconsideration of Rom 4.1', NovT 27: 76-98 (1985)

6. Krister Stendhal, 'The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West', HTR 56: 199-215 (1963)

7. N. T. Wright, '‘aJrpagmov~ and the Meaning of Philippians 2.5–11’, in JTS 37: 321-52 (1986)

8. Francis Watson, 'The Authority of the Voice: A Theological Reading of 1 Cor 11.2-16', NTS 46: 520-536 (2000)

9. J. Christiaan Beker, 'Contingency and Coherence in the Letters of Paul', USQR 33: 141-151 (1978)

10. Jouette M. Bassler, 'Divine Impartiality in Paul's Letter to the Romans', NovT 26: 43-58 (1984)

The Faith of Jesus Christ, SBL Seminar

As well as the AAR meeting, the Society for Biblical Literature (SBL) meeting happens at the same time in the same location. This seminar on the pistis Christou debate will be a definite highlight. It was in 1991 (I think) at SBL that Richard Hays (arguing for 'faith/fulness of Christ') and Jimmy Dunn (arguing for 'faith in Christ') had a famous debate. (You can find both these papers in Hays' 2nd ed. of The Faith of Jesus Christ, Eerdmans 2002)  Michael Bird is editing a collection of papers (I'm guessing emerging out of this seminar) on this topic.

The Faith of Jesus Christ: Exegetical, Biblical and Theological Studies

Michael Bird, Highland Theological College
The Faith of Jesus Christ: Problems and Prospects

Stanley Porter, McMaster Divinity College
Lexical and Semantic Reflections on Pistis

Douglas Campbell, Duke University
The Faithfulness of Jesus Christ in Romans and Galatians

Preston Sprinkle, Aberdeen University
Pistis Christou as an Eschatological Event

Ardel Caneday, Northwestern College, St. Paul
The Faithfulness of Jesus as a Theme of Pauline Theology

Francis Watson, University of Durham
The Faith of Jesus Christ

R. Barry Matlock, University of Sheffield
The Faithfulness of Jesus Christ in Romans and Galatians

Mark Elliott, University of St. Andrews
The Faith of Jesus Christ in the Church Fathers

Benjamin Myers, University of Queensland
The Faithfulness of Christ in the Theology of Karl Barth

Douglas Campbell at SBL

Douglas Campbell, who taught me Paul at KCL is busy at SBL this year. (The book he's been working on on the problem of the JF reading is almost finished.) I've also highlighted some other interesting papers on Paul that look good.

Douglas A. Campbell, Duke University
Tit for Tat: A Rhetorical and Apocalyptic Analysis of Paul's Intertextuality in His Justification Texts
The language that Paul uses in the passages where he speaks about Justification is distinctly intertextual. Most interpreters have construed this language as an attempt by Paul to corroborate a particular account of his gospel directly, building from problem to solution. Against this trajectory, this paper will argue that Paul's use of Scripture represents a "tit-for-tat" argument with another adept Jewish-Christian exegete from whose system Paul has appropriated some of the texts that he cites. In the process, Paul constructs an argument that is framed around a web of scriptural texts linked together by shared key words. This web offers a systematic, point-by-point refutation of the opposing system of his opponent. Viewed in this light, Paul's argument from Scripture turns out to be less direct than many interpreters have supposed for the reconstruction of his own position. It deploys explicit scriptural texts, and also draws, slightly less directly, on a shared theology of divine kingship. The theology behind this argument turns out to be more apocalyptic than is usually thought.

Francis Watson, University of Durham
The Hermeneutics of Salvation: Paul, Isaiah and the Servant

John M.G. Barclay, Durham University
Why the Roman Empire was Insignificant to Paul

N. Thomas Wright, Church of England
Paul's Counter-Imperial Theology

Theme: Divine and Human Agency in Pauline Theology
Douglas Campbell, Duke University, Presiding
Susan Eastman, Duke University
Philippians 2: Divine and Human Agency in Christ's Story
J. Louis Martyn, Union Theological Seminary
The Newly-Created Moral Agent in Paul
Alan Torrance, University of St. Andrews, Respondent
Telford Work, Westmont College, Respondent

Essays by Francis Watson

[Francis Watson is now Professor of New Testament at Durham (2007-)]

Francis Watson, Kirby Laing Professor of New Testament Exegesis, Aberdeen (1999-2007) has (for a while) made available some of the papers he's given over the last few years. Watson, prior to coming to Aberdeen was at King's College London (1984-1999) is a New Testament scholar, who has also worked in the fields of Old Testament, systematic theology and Christian ethics.

The resurrection and the identity of Jesus, a paper prepared for a meeting at the Center of Theological Inquiry, Princeton (in September 2003)

Christ and Reality in Ephesians, a paper presented to the Later Pauline Epistles Section, Society of Biblical Literature, Denver (2001)

Jesus of History, Christ of Faith, a paper prepared for the working group on the Identity of Jesus, Center for Theological Inquiry, Princeton (September 2004)

Pauline perspectives, a paper presented to a Colloquium on Divine and Human Agency in Paul and Early Judaism, Aberdeen (August 2004)

Constructing a Hermeneutic: A Rereading of Romans 1-4, a paper prepared for the New Testament Graduate Seminar, Duke Divinity School (November 2004)

Scripture in Pauline Theology, a paper prepared for the SBL Pauline Soteriology Group, San Antonio (November 2004)

Theological exegesis of Genesis 18-19, paper prepared for the Society for Scriptural Reasoning, Denver, Colorado (19 November, 2001)

The Authority of Voice: A Theological Reading of 1 Cor 11.2-16, article from New Testament Studies (2000)