The Cambridge Companion to St Paul

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: I have never taken the time to study St. Paul; having read both the letters of Paul and the deutero-Pauline letters in the New Testament, this book comes as a welcome next step in understanding him. As those who have read him know, Paul is not always the easiest to follow, especially given his intricate weaving together of different styles of thought within his letters: Pharisaic/Rabbinic, Hellenistic, apocalyptic and early Christian.

This book covers what you would expect a "companion" to cover: Paul's life and context, historiographical issues, his letters and his purported letters (the "deutero-Pauline epistles": those letters in the New Testament that most scholars do not believe were written by Paul). However, several other essays whose topics might be unexpected - such as interpretations of Paul in the second century (the most enjoyable and fascinating essay in the book for this particular reader) - also find their way into the book.

While many simply see Paul as some sort of proto-Reformation-era de-/re-former (a la Luther), this book moves beyond these tired (and, it would seem at this point, largely incorrect) interpretations of Paul. Paul is not so easily reduced to a late-Medieval Roman Catholic reformer; he stands - however ambiguously and uncomfortably (for us no less than him!) - without such hermeneutical concealing. Rather than preach a reductive "doctrine of justification", Paul emerges from his letters (via this book) as being someone who has a rather mystical understanding of the eucharist as union, sees salvation as pertaining to a particular community (not merely individuals), and preaches "justification" as being far more than a type of legal status: it is being brought into the family of God (via baptism) as a child of God, participating now in God's new work in the world. The reduction of Paul to legal[-istic?] terminology fails to see him as a member of a community who preached to and from that community; it ignores the fundamentally relational element of Paul's thought.

This book is well worth the read. It is not difficult reading, but having read Paul first will greatly increase what you pull from this book. While it may be true that Paul has managed to upset just about everyone since the time of his writing, these essays are highly informative and helpful "for those with ears to hear". The Cambridge Companion to St. Paul engages and mediates him well.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent overview of current debates
Review: This collection of essays is a fine collection, offering challenges to interpretations of Paul that have dominated Western Protestant Christendom since the Reformation. I only have one caveat to offer. Many seem to have as a particular, though implicit, target the so-called 'Lutheran Paul.' The previous reviewer writes, in a concise précis of this critique, 'Rather than preach a reductive "doctrine of justification", Paul emerges from his letters (via this book) as being someone who has a rather mystical understanding of the eucharist as union, sees salvation as pertaining to a particular community (not merely individuals), and preaches "justification" as being far more than a type of legal status: it is being brought into the family of God (via baptism) as a child of God, participating now in God's new work in the world.' There is only one problem - with a little nuance here and there, that is precisely the Lutheran understanding of Justification in its relation to the Incarnate Christ's Person and Work. In short, we would look at all that and say, yes, that's justification all right. So let this book enlighten you as to the many fresh readings of Paul that you can find out there, but realize that the putative target of many critical challenges is in fact a straw man. In fact, if you're not careful it just might make you a Lutheran.