Rethinking Paul
Protestant Theology and Pauline Exegesis

This book offers theological reading of contemporary Pauline scholarship, exploring how it deepens, broadens, enriches, and challenges traditional Protestant paradigms.

Edwin Chr. van Driel (Author)

9781108482226, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 6 May 2021

350 pages
15 x 23 x 3 cm, 0.65 kg

'… provocative and illuminating. … it clearly shows the transformations in theology that might occur if systematic theologians engaged biblical scholarship with greater care, rigor, and depth.' Aaron Klink, Religious Studies Review

In this book, Edwin van Driel analyzes contemporary Pauline exegesis and its implications for Protestant theology. Over the last several decades, scholars have offered fresh interpretations of the apostle, including the New Perspective on and the apocalyptic reading of Paul. Van Driel juxtaposes these proposals with traditional Protestant understandings of Paul and argues that the crucial difference between these two readings lies not in how one understands isolated Pauline notions but in different assumed narrative substructures of the apostle's writings. He explores how these new exegetical proposals deepen, broaden, enrich, and challenge traditional Protestant theological paradigms, as well as how they are situated alongside current contextual conversations on theological anthropology, social imagination, and the church's mission. Van Driel's volume opens up new avenues for interdisciplinary exploration and cooperation between biblical scholarship and theology.

1. The narrative substructure of Paul's thought
2. Justifying faith
3. Jesus' faith
4. The return of the faithful one
5. Atoning faithfulness
6. Resurrection and justification
7. The Pauline ordo salutis
8. Church and Salvation
9. Christ and history
10. History and Israel
11. The narrative of Paul's gospel
12. Doing Pauline theology.

Subject Areas: Theology [HRLB], Biblical studies & exegesis [HRCG], New Testaments [HRCF2]