Richard N. Longenecker, Paul, Apostle of Liberty (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), xxviii + 407 Pps., $34.00.
Richard N. Longenecker is professor emeritus of New Testament at Wycliffe College, University of Toronto. He has produced many other books over the course of a long career, including The Christology of Early Jewish Christianity, Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period, New Testament Social Ethics for Today, and Introducing Romans: Critical Issues in Paul’s Most Famous Letter. This republication of Longenecker’s title from 1964 is welcome and warranted. It is welcome because it exposes the contemporary scholarly community to the ideas of this seminal text. It is warranted because it displays that Longenecker anticipated – sometimes by decades – debates that have followed its original publication.
In 1977, E. P. Sanders rocked the proverbial world of Pauline studies with his release of Paul and Palestinian Judaism, in which he presented a thesis known as “covenantal nomism,” according to which the piety of late Second Temple Judaism is characterized as one that responds within a covenantal relationship with God. In a sense, Longenecker’s title could be seen as an Evangelical response to the same issues that Sanders addresses. Longenecker’s “reacting nomism” is a brilliant anticipation of Sanders’ “covenantal nomism.” Longenecker admits that there were low points, as well as high points within the Judaism of Paul’s day.
Overall, this book highlights the creative tension that existed in Paul’s thinking and actions between “legalism” and “liberty,” or more specifically between Jewish “nomism” and Christian “freedom.” It investigates numerous historical questions, like how Paul’s preaching and actions related to the religion of Israel as displayed in the OT, how his teachings and lifestyle related to the teachings and practices of the Judaism of his era, and how what he proclaimed and what he did related to the convictions and lifestyle of his contemporary Jewish believers in Jesus. In essence, the book presents the origin and nature of Paul’s form of Christianity with respect to the OT Scriptures, the teachings of Judaism in Paul’s day, and notes the personal focus of Paul’s teaching and the correlative emphases in his own Christian lifestyle and ministry. It serves to elucidate Paul’s pre-Christian days under the Judaism of his youth, his Christian teaching regarding liberty and legality, and his personal practice of liberty as an apostle of Christ.
Highlighting as fundamental the maxim that Paul provides that he became “all things for all men” that he might save some, this book explores what exactly that meant for his gentile mission and pastoral ministry. Moreover, it explores what attitude Paul had with the Jerusalem apostles, the Jerusalem church, and the Jewish nation. Further, it seeks to delineate where, as a young rabbi, he stood with respect to the Judaism of his day. And it also seeks to explain what type of satisfaction Paul might have gotten from his pre-Christian beliefs. Notably, in discussing his Jewish background in chapter 2, Longenecker restricts the discussion to Paul’s Hebraic biographical claims made in the NT. He concludes that there is little reason to doubt that Paul was truly – as he in fact claimed – a Hebrew of Hebrews and trained at the feet of Gamaliel. In chapter 3, Longenecker analyzes the piety and theology of Judaism, which of course is the foundation upon which Paul the Christian built. Longenecker notes, in chapter 6, that at the heart of Paul’s teaching was his conviction that the Law in its contractual aspect – i.e., Jewish nomism – had come to its completion and terminus in Christ. His thought had a vital core other than just that of necessity and the practicable. In fact, it is from this core that his teaching regarding the Law, legality, and nomism stemmed.
It has been said that the term “liberty” is so porous as to allow almost any interpretation. Paul, according to Longenecker, does not attempt to balance the concepts of legality and liberty as much as he seeks to measure each of them by Christ. As such, his teachings about the abrogation of the Law and about Christian liberty can be seen, as Longenecker puts it, as two spokes radiating from a central hub. In Paul’s mind, liberty was gained by surrender within a context of obedience, and it had its true realization a real victory over circumstances. Longenecker stresses in chapter 8 that Christian liberty finds its basis in Christ and must be considered as both a gift and a demand. According to Longenecker, Paul would teach us – were he alive today – that freedom from the letter of Law is not freedom from Scripture, that liberty in Christ not only personal but also carries corporate dimensions, and that Christian liberty is not devoid of propositional content and ecclesiastical guidance.
This second edition notably includes an informative foreword by Douglas Campbell and a lengthy concluding supplementary essay/addendum by Longenecker that discusses the major developments in Pauline studies over the past fifty years or so. In what remains of this review, I would like to briefly mention the addendum. Therein, Longenecker discusses over 2,000 years of Christian scholarship, critical issues, interpretive proposals, and exegetical methods in 106 pages. It is a tall task, to be sure, but Longenecker does it nicely. Indeed, he therein surveys 20 centuries of Pauline scholarship, provides his own evaluations of certain interpretive approaches, offers some suggestions regarding how we should understand Paul and his message in the context of his own day and circumstances as well as ours, and points out some “heroes” from the history of Christianity that have been particularly formative to him throughout his career.
Paul’s teachings are vital to the Christian gospel; in fact, as J. Gresham Machen once quipped, explain the origin of Paul’s religion, and you have solved the problem of the origin of Christianity. So then, the debate over how to interpret Paul’s message is vitally important. In sum, Longenecker’s Paul, Apostle of Liberty stands as a significant and constructive evangelical study of Paul’s theology, and these two editions, separated by some fifty years, appropriately serve as “bookends” on a noted biblical scholar’s career.