THE gap between conservative Evangelical and liberal Christians is never wider than it is when the doctrine of atonement is at issue.
In this very accessible venture into such contested theological territory, two New Testament scholars from Duke Divinity School in the United States declare upfront that “the ‘gospel’ frequently being proclaimed . . . is damaging, aggressive, and hurtful” and, furthermore, is responsible for “an especially damaging definition framing Jews” thus contributing to centuries of anti-Semitism leading to the Holocaust.
The “gospel” that they have in their sights is based on penal substitution as the key to Paul’s exposition of the work of Christ. This they condemn as distorting the image of God into that of a severe sovereign motivated by retributive justice.
They call this Justification Theory (JT) which, although based on just ten per cent of the Pauline corpus, has, they believe, achieved dangerous levels of acceptance at the expense of Paul’s overall emphasis on God as loving Father, and on the faith of Jesus crucified, risen, and ascended as the key to our own salvation and eternal destiny. Douglas Campbell and John DuPue describe Paul’s gospel as essentially “participatory, resurrectional, and transformational” in opposition to an overbearing emphasis on faith in Jesus’s death as the penalty paid for sin and the purchase price for our salvation. “It is time for the JT tail to stop wagging the Pauline dog.”
Essential to the argument is the intriguing theory that, in the passages cited most often in support of JT, Paul is deploying a form of Socratic dialogue in vogue at that time. Words attributed to Paul, and cited in support of JT, are here attributed to the Jewish Christians who have misled, for example, the Galatians, and who may be en route to likewise misleading the church in Rome.
This re-presentation of the relevant texts is skilfully executed and has a transformative effect on how verses are opened up to radical reinterpretation. It certainly paves their way towards a serious challenge to JT as the key to Paul’s soteriology, and a more consistently coherent account of his overall theological position. But it is very speculative, and is supported by little evidence other than its hermeneutical utility.
Although acknowledging the pioneering work of E. P. Sanders, J. D. G. Dunn, and N. T. Wright in revealing new perspectives on late Second Temple Judaism and Paul’s theology, Campbell and DuPue develop their case through them and beyond them towards an ever more radical reappraisal.
They argue that such new perspectives fall short when it comes to alleviating the burden of guilt borne by Jews and, by extension, all non-believers. That can be achieved only when trust in the faith of Christ which took him, and takes us, through death to resurrection life through the power of the Holy Spirit is affirmed over against a legalistic and contractual approach to salvation. The way Paul shows God’s plan in the death and resurrection of Jesus to have been anticipated by the account of Abraham’s faithfulness indicates that this was “God’s plan for Israel all along”.
Paul’s epistles comprise a complex body of teaching open to a range of interpretations. This book challenges one interpretative trajectory in order to demonstrate that JT is by no means the only way open to us when it comes to what it means for Paul to proclaim Jesus’s death as “for us” — and there is just enough here to suggest that going “beyond justification” may, indeed, be a better way. Judge for yourselves.
The Rt Revd Dr John Saxbee is a former Bishop of Lincoln.
Beyond Justification: Liberating Paul’s gospel
Douglas A. Campbell and John DuPue
Cascade Books £28
(978-1-5326-7898-1)
Church Times Bookshop £25.20