About This Book

Maria Pascuzzi puts Paul in his place without losing sight of his status as an apostle. For those who want an introductory textbook that might become the standard introduction to the subject, she has given a lively Paul who stands out from both his Jewish and Roman contexts. She sorts through the vast literature on the transformed rabbi, not shying away from historic and contemporary controversies, and enlightening contentious partis pris.  Her trim but ample book can inform without riling Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and even secular readers.

Pascuzzi’s approach to Paul is thematic, not chronological, or epistle-by-epistle.  Ten chapters are organized around the Roman and Jewish contexts, Paul’s distinctive message of “cruciform” faith, his criticism and appreciation of Judaism, the Gospel community, his attitude toward sexuality and women, and his anti-imperial challenge.  She presents also the various ways that Paul has been read, throughout time, by the early church, Luther, and contemporary scholarship.

Her irenic tone does not mean that she does not take stands on Paul. In Chapter Ten, for example, which could serve as an example of her method throughout the book, she supports the view that Paul preached a dangerous, anti-Imperial message (one that the anti-Christian West might now especially heed) even though he also famously counseled obedience to the authorities in Romans 13: 1-7.  Her evidence is his subversive appropriation of Imperial titles for Jesus Christ in every epistle, his rejection of the Roman patronage economic system for self-sufficient and “abasing” manual labor (2 Cor 11:7), and shared collection (Gal 2:1-10), and his counsels to avoid imperial courts (1 Cor 6:1-9), and temples (1 Cor 8:10).  So why should “every person be subject to the governing authorities” (Romans 13:1)?  These seven verses in Romans, according to John C. O’Neill, “have caused more unhappiness and misery in the Christian East and West than any other seven verses in the New Testament by the license they have given to tyrants, and the support for tyrants the Church has felt called on to give.” 

Pascuzzi explains this “contradiction” by offering contemporary scholarly perspectives: the Anglican, N.T. Wright, argues that the passage, in fact, demotes the imperial authorities by placing them below the one true God; post-colonial theorists demonstrate that subjugation requires ambivalent and pragmatic strategies for survival.  This forceful lining up of the crucial arguments is Pascuzzi’s methodology.

A second dispute that Pascuzzi negotiates is the traditional Lutheran-Catholic difference on Paul’s criticism of the “law.” She presents this as the “old” and the “new” perspective on Paul, which she attributes to Luther and summarizes neatly thus:

Paul was a Jew who tried to earn his salvation by doing the works of the law. However, he was always frustrated and discouraged because no matter how hard he tried, he could never quite do them perfectly (Rom 7: 7-25).  In consequence, he was filled with anxiety, afraid he would not attain salvation.  Then, one day, Paul had an encounter with the Risen Lord.  As a result, Paul converted from Judaism, a legalistic religion of works-righteousness, to Christianity, which he perceived to be a superior religion of grace. (138)

She recounts an unfortunate consequence of this interpretation, one that is still frequently heard from the pulpit and in schools, which was both anti-Catholic and anti-Judaism: Roman Catholic works of mercy, devotions, and even sacraments were seen as Pharisaical attempts to buy grace. The breakthrough to a new perspective came, Pascuzzi maintains, first from a Lutheran revisionist, Krister Stendahl, who argued that Luther misread Paul as a result of his own anxiety and scrupulosity, for Paul in fact shows a “robust” conscience, one that was “as to righteousness under the law, blameless” (Philippians 3:6). Further, scholars have added a new perspective that Paul rejected the law, not because it failed to yield grace, but because it excluded Gentiles (“covenantal nomism”), but of course academic consensus on this point has not been reached.  The heart of Pascuzzi’s book is thus the heart of Paul’s theology.

Two more areas of even more contemporary controversy, not only academic, occupy two more chapters: Paul’s sexual ethics, and his view of women. She negotiates these choppy waters not by offering the usual excuse that Paul was a product of benighted times, but by probing Paul’s Greek, and by comparing Hellenistic, Roman, and Jewish sources to discover an original thinker who promoted “cruciform living,” and “total body ethics,” beyond sex and gender.  The linguistic evidence for Paul’s condemnation of homosexuality is there, she maintains, as well as that for women deacons, but she claims that such evidence alone cannot settle current cultural and intra-ecclesial wars.  She lays the foundations, however, for using Paul today.  The reader at times wishes to know Pascuzzi’s own conclusions on such questions, but she (and/or her publisher) probably decided that this textbook was not the place to do so.

Features of the trim paperback (not expensive for a undergraduate textbook) include extensive footnotes on nearly every page; excellent bibliographies, key Pauline passages, and questions for reflection for every chapter; engaging sidebars; precise chapter summaries; decent photographs; and suggested Internet links. I’d also recommend it for an adult formation group at a parish or church: it’s readable and yet scholarly, and it wouldn’t immediately start a fight.  It might even help a priest stop one.

Kenneth Colston’s reviews and essays have appeared in New Oxford Review, LOGOS: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, Commonweal, St. Austin’s Review, The New Criterion, and First Things

“This is an excellent introduction to Paul and his theology. Pascuzzi draws on her years of teaching Paul to fashion what would be a very serviceable text on Paul in seminary and graduate theology courses. Her approach is to place Paul in his context in both Judaism and the Greco-Roman world and then to explore key concepts of Paul’s theology that cut across his letters. Each chapter includes a set of discussion questions and a bibliography for further reading. Also included are a number of helpful maps, charts, and illustrations.”