Oh, the joy of learning something new! Our academic system doesn’t really encourage contact between the different disciplines, and my Greek sucks, so my knowledge of current NT-exegetics is really limited. So a book like this is wonderful – it presents the ”New Perspective on Paul”, roughly, by showing the way Paulinian theology aligns with Hauerwas and Yoder.
This means that, as someone fairly well acquited with the latter two (though Yoder’s engagement with Judaism is something I haven’t gotten around to looking at yet) this is an discussion on their work that does not feel like something one has already read better in the original.
The presentation of the ”new” (well, new for me) reading of Paul (i.e. Luther was wrong) was very good, and of course this reading will fit very well with both Yoder and Hauerwas. I do not agree 100% with Harink’s reading of Hauerwas (I do not think that Hauerwas would claim that the chruch should act today the same way Paul instructe the church to do then, which seem to be the idea here: i.e. a ”isolationist strategy”.), but the connections are illuminating none the less.
I haven’t read N.T.Wright much (either) but the strong and detailed criticism of his reading of Paul was a bit surprising to me – i.e. surprising tha he would have suche a vulgar supersessionist reading of Paul – I’m curious if Wright has reacted to criticism of this typ in his later production (this book is from 2003).
We need more books like this, that bring togethere ethcis and dogmatics with biblical studies.
