I received (and finished reading) Wright’s Paul: Fresh Perspectives yesterday. It does what it attempts to do pretty well, although it is hardly breaking much new ground. Having read notes from AAPC2005 and attended one of Wright’s lectures at the University of Nottingham, there was little that was unfamiliar here. However, it does represent an improvement on some of Wright’s earlier treatments of this subject, in my opinion.

Wright doesn’t really engage with the concerns of his Reformed critics that much. However, he devotes the book to giving the big picture. Those who grasp the big picture that he is presenting will begin to make sense of his claims about justification. Wright makes clear that justification must always be understood within the larger framework of the covenant, which is concerned with much more than merely saving individuals from sin. As he points out, the fact that the covenant had a promise of land and a family as absolutely central elements should teach us that the covenant was intended to deal with the fracturing of human relationships and humanity’s relationship with the non-human creation and not just the individual’s relationship with God (which is not remotely near as dominant a theme in the text of Scripture as it is in much contemporary Christian thought).

The chapter on creation and covenant (which is substantially the same as the lecture that I attended in the University of Nottingham) is probably one of the strongest in the book. The rest of the book is also far more openly Trinitarian than some of his previous work. Wright deals with the three worlds that the apostle Paul inhabited and the manner in which they intersect. Wright writes at length about the manner in which monotheism, election and eschatology are rethought and reworked around the Spirit and the Son. I greatly appreciated this.

This book displays Wright’s rhetorical genius and depth of insight in a number of places. Perhaps one of the stand-out features of this book for me were the points when Wright explored the significance of the creation of a Jew-Gentile family. Much of the urgency of Paul’s mission was created by the fact of the judgment coming in AD70. If strong relationships between Jew and Gentile parts of the Church were not formed during this intermediate period the Church would split into different parties following the great tensions that would result following the Fall of Jerusalem. The creation of a new Jew-Gentile body would also serve as notice to the powers that their time was up.

Overall the book is a very solid treatment of the subject, without having much to say that will surprise the person who has been reading Wright for a while. On occasions, I do have a sense of unfulfilled promise when reading this book. Wright is retreading familiar ground when I would like to see him try to tackle some new areas. In particular, I would love to see Wright treat the faith of Christ (rather than the faith of the believer) as the marker of the people of God. I would like to see him make more of the eschatological character of justification; he has been inclined to parallel Pauline views of justification far too closely with Jewish understandings of his time in the past, not making enough of inaugurated eschatology. He makes some very positive moves in this direction in this book, but he could say more. Justification receives very little direct treatment in Paul: Fresh Perspectives.

I would also love to see him explore the manner in which Paul’s thought is shaped by the book of Leviticus, for example (this is an area where Wright is very weak, it seems to me; he really doesn’t know his OT as well as he should). The OT/NT divide really seems to leave certain questions unaddressed as they don’t quite fall into the job description of either OT or NT theologians.

I would love to see a discussion of the manner in which the Law brings death and prepares Israel as a sacrifice. As James Jordan points out, it is strange that so many NT theologians focus on the Law bringing death reflexively (as we find ourselves unable to keep it) and fail to appreciate that the connection between the flesh and death is formed primarily by the ‘ceremonial’ laws of the book of Leviticus, rather than by the ‘moral’ Law of Exodus 20. It is primarily the ceremonial parts of the Torah that give Death its power. Circumcision fits into this whole order of having to cut off the flesh (when God comes in judgment He will cut off all flesh that has not had its flesh cut off). These sorts of connections can help us a lot. Once we have drawn the above connection the identification of the works of the Law as ceremonies of the Torah makes a lot more sense, for example. If we fail to make such connections I really doubt if we are getting into Paul’s mind in the manner that we ought to be.

I probably would have preferred a book more akin to The Climax of the Covenant, in which Wright could write some thought-provoking and ground-breaking exegetical and theological essays and engage with critics directly in some of them. This is something that he will not be able to do so easily in his forthcoming big book on Paul. However, the big book on Paul will presumably render Paul: Fresh Perspectives out of date, just as Paul: Fresh Perspectives now supersedes What St Paul Really Said in a number of ways. However, as Paul: Fresh Perspectives is largely based upon a lecture series, I suppose that it didn’t take that much extra time out of Wright’s schedule to prepare it and makes sense for that reason.

David Field has a long list of quotations from the book here.