The Letters of Paul

Paul of Tarsus is the earliest Christian author whose writings survive; his letters precede the Gospels. His influence on Christian theology is unequalled: Luther, Calvin, Barth and the major Protestant theologians defined themselves largely in relation to him.

The Pauline corpus

Pauline theology

The righteousness of God

The righteousness of God is the keystone of Romans. Luther underwent a hermeneutical revolution on grasping that δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ in Rom 1:17 denotes not the punitive justice by which God condemns sinners but the righteousness he gives as a gift, an iustitia aliena, a righteousness from outside. This understanding stands at the heart of sola fide.

In Christ

The phrase ἐν Χριστῷ is the central category of Pauline mysticism, occurring some eighty-three times in the undisputed letters. It expresses the believer’s real union with the risen Christ: participation in his death and resurrection (Rom 6:3-11), adoption as sons of God (Gal 3:26-28), and renewal of the divine image (2 Cor 3:18; Col 3:10). For Mannermaa it is the category that brings Pauline soteriology close to Orthodox theosis.

The New Perspective on Paul

Since E. P. Sanders’ Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977), the New Perspective has unsettled the classical Protestant reading. It questions the picture of first-century Judaism as a religion of works and merit against which Pauline polemic was supposedly directed.

Foundational texts

Romans 3:21-26

These six verses are the locus classicus of Pauline soteriology. They compress six affirmations: the revelation of a righteousness apart from the Law (iustitia extra nos); its universality, for all who believe, Jew and Gentile alike; its gratuity, δωρεάν; its christological ground in redemption; the blood of Christ as ἱλαστήριον, alluding to the mercy seat of Lev 16; and a twofold purpose, to display God’s righteousness and to justify the one who has faith in Jesus.

Galatians 2:15-21

A note on translation: πίστεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ may be read as an objective genitive, “faith in Jesus Christ,” which is the traditional rendering, or as a subjective genitive, “the faithfulness of Jesus Christ,” denoting Christ’s own obedience. The question has been debated since Richard Hays’ study of 1983 and remains unsettled.

Paul reasons from the great theological themes of Israel rather than from a system. Each section follows one theme from its Old Testament elaboration to its Pauline appropriation, marking the continuity and the displacement.

Creation, Adam and sin

Old Testament elaboration

The priestly account makes humanity the image of God (Gen 1:26-27), while the Yahwistic account narrates transgression and the entry of death (Gen 3). The Old Testament nevertheless builds no doctrine of original sin: Adam is scarcely mentioned after Gen 5. Awareness of an innate corruption is expressed elsewhere, in penitential prayer — “in sin did my mother conceive me” (Ps 51:5) — and in the observation of Gen 6:5 and 8:21 on the inclination of the human heart.

Pauline appropriation

Paul makes Adam a typological figure and not merely an ancestor: “Adam, who was a type of the one to come” (Rom 5:14). The structure of negative solidarity — one man, a universal consequence — becomes the model of redemptive solidarity (Rom 5:12-21; 1 Cor 15:21-22, 45-49). The displacement is considerable: a marginal motif in the Old Testament becomes a pillar of theological anthropology.

Covenant and promise

Old Testament elaboration

Two covenant models coexist. The Abrahamic covenant is unconditional: God alone passes between the divided animals (Gen 15:17-18) and binds himself unilaterally. The Sinai covenant is conditional and bilateral, attended by blessings and curses (Deut 27–28). The failure of the second leads to the announcement of a new covenant, with the Law written on hearts (Jer 31:31-34) and the Spirit given with a heart of flesh (Ezek 36:26-27).

Pauline appropriation

The argument of Gal 3:15-18 rests entirely on the chronological priority of the Abrahamic promise: the Law, coming four hundred and thirty years later, cannot annul a prior undertaking. At 2 Cor 3:3-6 the contrast of letter and Spirit, tablets of stone and tablets of flesh, weaves together Jer 31 and Ezek 36. The allegory of Gal 4:21-31 presses further still, ranging Sinai on the side of slavery.

The righteousness of God

Old Testament elaboration

צְדָקָה is not first an abstract norm but a relational conduct: God’s fidelity to his covenant. This is why the psalms can plead to be saved by God’s righteousness (Pss 71:2; 143:1), which would be incoherent were the term to denote punitive justice alone. Deutero-Isaiah sets righteousness and salvation in parallel: “my righteousness draws near, my salvation has gone out” (Isa 51:5; cf. 45:21; 46:13).

Pauline appropriation

Three features make this verse decisive in Rom 4 and Gal 3: the vocabulary of imputation, the priority of faith over circumcision (Rom 4:10-11) and its priority over the Law (Gal 3:17). Hab 2:4, “the righteous shall live by his faithfulness”, supplies the programmatic verse of Rom 1:17. The contemporary debate over “the righteousness of God”, whether a divine attribute or a communicated gift, turns precisely on the relational range of צְדָקָה.

The Law

Old Testament elaboration

Torah is received as a gift and not a burden: Ps 119 makes it the object of a hundred and seventy-six verses of praise. Lev 18:5 promises life to the one who keeps it, while Deut 27–30 sets out the twofold sanction of blessing and curse, and Deut 21:23 declares accursed the one hanged on a tree. Second Temple Judaism reads the Law within a covenant already granted by grace, what E. P. Sanders termed covenantal nomism.

Pauline appropriation

Gal 3:10-14 superimposes the two curses of Deut 27:26 and 21:23: Christ, in undergoing the second, absorbs the first. Rom 7 maintains that the Law is holy, just and good while observing its inability to deliver. Rom 10:6-8 makes a bold move in applying to Christ what Deut 30:12-14 said of Torah: it is neither in heaven nor beyond the sea, for the word is very near.

Sacrifice and atonement

Old Testament elaboration

The Yom Kippur ritual (Lev 16) organises annual purification: blood is sprinkled on the כַּפֹּרֶת, the mercy seat covering the ark, and a second goat carries the iniquities into the wilderness. Passover (Exod 12) belongs to another logic, that of deliverance by the blood of the lamb. Isa 53 transposes the category onto a person whose life is offered as אָשָׁם, a guilt offering (53:10).

Pauline appropriation

Rom 3:25 presents Christ as ἱλαστήριον, the term by which the Septuagint renders precisely כַּפֹּרֶת. The place of atonement becomes a person, and the annual rite a single event. 1 Cor 5:7 mobilises the other logic: “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.” Rom 4:25 takes up the double formula of Isa 53, delivered for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

Election, the remnant and the nations

Old Testament elaboration

Israel’s election is gratuitous and without prior motive: “it was not because you were more numerous… but because the Lord loves you” (Deut 7:7-8). It is oriented toward the nations from the outset, since the promise to Abraham includes the blessing of all the families of the earth (Gen 12:3). The prophets develop the category of the remnant (Isa 10:20-22; 1 Kgs 19:18) and the universalism of the Servant, “a light to the nations” (Isa 49:6; cf. Isa 2:2-4).

Pauline appropriation

Rom 9–11 concentrates some thirty citations in ninety verses. Paul shows there that election was never mechanical — Isaac and not Ishmael, Jacob and not Esau (Gen 21:12; 25:23; Mal 1:2-3) — that the call of the nations was announced (Hos 2:23 read beyond its context), that a remnant remains (1 Kgs 19:18) and that the hardening is temporary. The conclusion at Rom 11:26, “all Israel will be saved”, remains contested between ecclesial and ethnic readings.

The Spirit and the new heart

Old Testament elaboration

The רוּחַ is creative breath (Gen 1:2), then an occasional power given to judges and prophets. Prophetic hope universalises and interiorises the gift: Ezekiel promises a heart of flesh and the Spirit placed within (Ezek 36:26-27), Jeremiah the Law written on the heart (Jer 31:33), Joel an outpouring on all flesh (Joel 2:28-29).

Pauline appropriation

Rom 8 makes the Spirit the principle of filial life and of freedom, and Gal 5:22-23 describes its fruit where the Law produced only the recognition of transgression. At 2 Cor 3 the confrontation of the veiled Moses and the ministry of the Spirit organises the whole argument. The fulfilment of Ezek 36 is thus the key to the Pauline articulation of justification and sanctification.

Resurrection and eschatology

Old Testament elaboration

Hope of an individual resurrection is late. The vision of the dry bones (Ezek 37) concerns national restoration rather than the fate of persons. Isa 26:19 and Dan 12:2 state an awakening of the dead, the latter with a twofold outcome. Hos 6:2 and 13:14 supply a vocabulary that primitive Christianity would reuse.

Pauline appropriation

1 Cor 15 builds its argument in three movements: the primitive creed (vv. 3-7), the impossibility of separating Christ’s resurrection from that of believers (vv. 12-19), then the Adamic typology and the final victory, sealed by the citation of Isa 25:8 and Hos 13:14 (vv. 54-55). The spiritual body of 1 Cor 15:44 is not an immaterial body but a body animated by the Spirit, a distinction decisive against any Platonising reading.

Continuity and displacement