On Paul

The Emeritus Professor of Divinity at the University of Durham, whose commentaries on the Gospel and on the Epistles of John, on the Acts of the Apostles, and on Pauls letters to the Romans and to the Corinthians continue to be widely used, has published a second volume of essays on Paul (see Essays on Paul, 1982). Apart from the introduction (Paul and Jerusalem, 126), most of the essays were written since Barrett published an introduction to Pauls life and thought (Paul, 1994); many first appeared in Festschriften. The first six essays are grouped under the heading Foundations; the rest of the studies analyze Developments. In Paul and Jerusalem Barrett recounts the tw o pictures of the apostles relations with the Christians in Jerusalem that emerge from the evidence of Pauls letter to the Galatians, on the one hand, and from the narrative in the book of Acts, on the other. Readers will readily recognize Barretts styl e: always close to the text, tracing the meaning that the author wants to convey and basing historical reconstruction on this meaning, with minimal interaction with secondary literature. [Full Review]

In the eleven essays which make up this volume by C. K. Barrett we can discern three closely related directions of focus. The first concerns Pauls theo logical reasoning. In Christocentricity in Antioch (1997), for example, Barrett suggests that the agreement reached between Paul, Peter, and James at the so-called Jerusalem council (Gal 2:110) was essentially pragmatic a nd failed to address the underlying theological question of the status of Gentiles in the church. What we see in Pauls response to Peter at Antioch, Barrett argues, is his realization that this pragmatic approach was a mistake and that the question of missionary methods among Gentiles could only be resolved by a christocentric approach that refused to accept any practice if its implications would undermine the reality and power of the Christ event. Barrett returns to this emphasis on Pauls theological motivations in Paul: Mi ssionary and Theologian (1992). Against the common trend to deny that Paul was a systema tic theologian, Barrett argues that it is not necessary to write a textbook in order to be a systematic theologian. It is necessary to think systematically (57). This, Barrett urges, is precisely what Paul did. In fact, Barrett suggests that it was out of the theological questions raised by his Damascus road experience that Pauls missionary strategy was born. [Full Review]