Another review of Douglas Campbell's The Deliverance of God has appeared in The Expository Times by Jane Heath. Here are some extracts:
There are some books that are not merely right or wrong. One can chip away at cracks in the argument, but they remain monumental structures that stand out in the landscape. Lesser pilgrims can but visit them with respect and build round them with care. The Deliverance of God is a book like this. The exegesis may not convince all readers. The systematic problems may not be resolved to quite the extent Campbell suggests. The very method raises questions. For all that, Campbell’s work is an original and powerful model of how to write theology, because it seeks to integrate the various different sub-disciplines of theology on a scale and with a vision that is worked out in immense detail. It is also a penetrating and provocative critique of the use that has been made of Romans in every branch of theology in the last twenty centuries, especially in the last five. Any critique of Campbell must start from and move within this recognition of his book’s outstanding value.
... The Deliverance of God is an exciting and challenging book. Though charged with passion, it never sacrifices clarity, even across its thousand page spread. It aims to offer deliverance both to Pauline interpreters who are trapped in contractual frameworks in their exegesis and to a beleaguered church that is divided and in some ways limping under the legacy of the Reformation. It is written from the heart of Protestantism, but with a strongly ecumenical outlook that seeks ultimately to abandon the Protestant-Catholic divide in this discussion. It stems from long, contemplative study and its profound intellectual engagement with the history and exegesis of Paul in the West will make it a benchmark of scholarship, whose arguments and implications will be debated in the
academy for decades to come.
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