Zeal for Paul but Not According to Knowledge: Douglas Campbell’s War on ‘Justification Theory’

Abstract

Douglas Campbell’s The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul is a thoroughgoing critique of what Campbell calls ‘Justification theory’ (JT, ‘a fundamentally contractual and hence also individualist and rationalist soteriology’), which he takes to be the underlying cause of a vast range of historic and current difficulties in reading Paul. Campbell aims to eliminate JT from Paul, both criticizing it in its own right and displacing it via a ‘rhetorical’ and ‘apocalyptic’ rereading of Rom. 1–4 and related texts. In this way, he hopes to lead Pauline scholarship not only ‘beyond the “Lutheran” reading of Paul’ but ‘beyond the protests of “the new perspective” as well’, declaring his book to be ‘an important moment in the advance to ecclesial and scholarly triumph of the participatory and apocalyptic gospel’. This review essay follows closely Campbell’s account of JT and its difficulties, offers a methodological and substantive critique of his ‘theoretical description’ of JT and its ‘conventional reading’ of Romans, and identifies and critiques the key moves that make up Campbell’s rereading of Rom. 1–4.