I find Gorman’s definition of justification in terms of the restoration of right covenant relations less than convincing, mainly because, though he recognizes a legal/forensic aspect to the language of justification ( Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in . . . . Continue Reading »
Michael Gorman makes the interesting suggestion ( Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology , 73-4) that “the first half of Romans is essentially an expansion of Galatians 2:15-21,” moving from “justification” to . . . . Continue Reading »
Yahweh shows Abram the starry heavens and says “so shall your seed be.” Abram believes, and Yahweh counts it as righteousness (Genesis 15). When Paul quotes this in Galatians, he emphasizes the singleness of that Seed: The Seed is Christ.Paul claims that the seed promised to Abram is . . . . Continue Reading »
NT Wright, once again, explicates the “shape of justification” ( Paul and the Faithfulness of God) , setting it interestingly in the context of Paul’s doctrine of election, reshaped by the work of the Spirit. That perhaps another day. For now, an observation on Wright’s . . . . Continue Reading »
With the thousand-page second volume ahead of me, it may be a bit premature to review NT Wright’s long-awaited Paul and the Faithfulness of God . If I wait until volume 2, though, I’ll likely forget what I wanted to say about volume 1. So here goes: Not a review but a report from a way . . . . Continue Reading »
Wright ( Paul and the Faithfulness of God ) provides a superb summary of Paul’s teaching concerning baptism, starting with the essential point: “Baptism is a community-marking symbol, which the individual then receives, not first and foremost as a statement about him- or herself, but as . . . . Continue Reading »
NT Wright observes ( Paul and the Faithfulness of God , 385 ), “It it still common to find ‘the church’ and related topics tucked away towards the back of studies of Paul, the assumption being that what mattered was sin and salvation and that questions about church life were . . . . Continue Reading »
N.T. Wright’s long-awaited forthcoming Paul and the Faithfulness of God is full of juicy little polemics, few juicier than this one: “the scholarly construct of a ‘parousia’ in which the space-time universe would cease to exist, followed by the second-order construct of a . . . . Continue Reading »
For all of Badiou’s aspirations to novelty, he falls into some very old early modern canards in his discussion of Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism . How, he asks, “does genuine saintliness . . . bear the ordeal of a History that is at once fleeting and monumental, one in which . . . . Continue Reading »
Badiou ( Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism ) gets a lot wrong. Primarily, what he gets wrong is the very modern effort to fit universalize Paul into a herald of “the Event.” Badiou has no interest or belief in the specifics of the gospel Paul preaches, only in the formal . . . . Continue Reading »
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