646 - The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology

The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology
By N. T. Wright
Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1992. 316 pp. $25.95.

N. T. Wright of Oxford University is producing a five-volume New Testament theology under the general title Christian Origins and the Question of God. Encompassing the whole New Testament, this project will be "focused centrally on Jesus and Paul" (Vol. I., The New Testament and the People of God.) The monograph here under review comes as an appetizer for the larger work, but, in its own right, it is a full course meal, indeed a rich banquet. I find it immensely suggestive in its thesis and overall design and repeatedly exhilarating in its fresh and cogent treatment of classic, but still controverted, Pauline texts. The historical method is rigorous, the conversation with other scholars is wide, generous, and incisive, and the theological interest is appropriate to the subject matter. It will repay close study by anyone seeking to read Paul in historical context and in conversation with current theological, ecclesial, and ecumenical concerns.

In Wright's view, Paul's thought is grounded in Jewish covenant theology with its twin pillars of monotheism and the divine election of Israel, and it centers in Christ as the climax of this covenant relation. That the covenant is sustained and fulfilled through the death and the resurrection of Jesus as Messiah sets Paul the task of redefining monotheism and election in terms of christology and pneumatology. Wright develops this reading of Paul's theology under two major

647 - The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology

heads, "Studies in Christology" and "Paul and the Law," through richly detailed exegetical probes into select Pauline texts, concluding with a discussion of "Christ, the Law and the People of God: the Problem of Romans 9-11" and a recapitulation on "The Nature of Pauline Theology."

For Wright, Paul's christology is grounded in the Jewish understanding of Israel as the new Adam, that is, as the new messianic humanity. Messiahship is primarily a communal role and identity, within which a specific individual may figure representatively. Just as Israel is called to be the new Adam, God's rule of the world through an obedient new humanity is realized in Messiah Jesus as last Adam, that is, true Israel (1 Cor. 15:20-57). But Jesus does not simply replace Israel or the old Adam. Rather, he shoulders the vocation of Israel in all its ambiguity, including not only its call to covenant (that is, torah) obedience but also its failure to render that obedience. Thus, Israel makes good its vocation in him at the same time that Israel's failure to make good its vocation apart from him is redeemed by him (Rom. 5:12-21). In this two-fold sense, Jesus as the Christ is the climax of the covenant.

Though neglected in much Pauline study, the Messiahship of Jesus is important to Paul. Philippians 2:5-11 presents Jesus as true Adam and as embodying the divine character, in exercising true lordship, not as a position that justifies grasping exploitation but as calling for self-giving love. Colossians 1:15-20 sets forth divine creative wisdom as dwelling in Israel and the world and, consummately, in Christ, a challenge both to merely transcendental dualisms and to merely immanental pantheisms. In I Corinthians 8, Paul reformulates the Shema christologically as a boundary marker vis-a´-vis not only paganism and its many gods but also Judaism, insofar as "at the heart of [Paul's] monotheism, redefining election also, there stands the crucified and risen Messiah, Jesus."

In chapters on Galatians 3:10-14, and 15-20; 2 Corinthians 3:18; Romans 7; 8: 1-1 1, and 8:3, Wright argues that Paul's view of the torah, though complex, is not incoherent. While the Law is unambiguously positive as God's call for right covenant relations, he focuses primarily on, so to speak, the positive character of its negative role, in not only exposing human sin but also "piling up the sin of the world in one particular place, that is, in Israel ... in order that it may then be dealt with in the death of the Messiah." "The death of Jesus is thus understood in covenant-renewing terms," that is, as "vicarious representative suffering."

Wright's is not a radically revisionist reading like, for example, Lloyd Gaston's Paul and the Torah. But it is as radical in its own way, going to the roots of Paul's thought and engaging afresh the theological, anthropological, and ecclesial vision Paul presents.

J. Gerald Janzen

Christian Theological Seminary
Indianapolis, IN