The New Perspective on Paul*

When chatting with other New Testament specialists I occasionally mention the fact that I am engaged in writing a commentary on Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome. The most frequent response is one of surprise, sometimes even amazement— “Not another commentary on Romans!” The underlying implication is that we have had quite sufficient commentaries on Romans, that surely there can be nothing new or novel to say on such a well-worked document, that a new commentator is bound to spend most of his time simply repeating the thoughts of his predecessors. I cannot say that I am particularly taken aback by such responses, because when I was first invited to write the commentary my own reaction was more or less the same—a rather stultifying sense that it had all been said before, that interpretation of Pauline theology had lost a lot of steam, and that the really interesting and challenging frontiers in New Testament studies were to be found elsewhere. I do not for a moment want to suggest that a commentator should refrain from re-expressing the old truths and rich insights of former days and previous commentators on Paul. Mere novelty is not of itself a mark of merit, and novelty for its own sake should certainly not be encouraged in an interpreter or expositor of any. text. As students of Paul we all would be the poorer if scholars like F. F. Bruce or Otto Kuss or Heinrich Schlier had refused to distil their lifetime’s study of Paul into single volumes, simply because they did not have some revolutionary new theories to put forward. Nor do I wish to imply that fresh thought on particular points of Pauline theology or lively debate on particular passages within the Pauline corpus has been lacking. If we think only in terms of the last few years, for example, there has been more than one controversial reconstruction of Pauline chronology. 2 Older emphases on the significance of Paul’s conversion for his subsequent theology, and on the importance of the apocalyptic aspect of his teaching have been strongly and fruitfully revived. There has been a challenging reappraisal of the way in which Paul was regarded in the ancient church. Interesting new hypotheses on the development of Paul’s thought between his writing of Galatians and his writing of Romans have been formulated, and the posing of sociologically inspired questions has thrown up some important new insights. The old introductory questions as to the occasion for and situation addressed by particular letters still provokes heated controversy, and we can even say that a new subdivision of the literary criticism of the letters has recently