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Paul, a New Covenant Jew: Rethinking Pauline Theology. By Brant Pitre, Michael B. Barber, and John A. Kincaid. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019, xvii + 304 pp., $35.00 paper.
Paul, a New Covenant Jew is something of an innovation in a field that has long been dominated by scholars of a Protestant persuasion. Brant Pitre, Michael P. Barber, and John A. Kincaid present, as Catholic scholars, a new foray in the study of Pauline theology. By self-consciously approaching Paul from this theological perspective, the authors do their readers a service, allowing them not only to follow along more clearly, but also to look at a contemporary discussion through fresh eyes. What Pitre, Barber, and Kincaid mean by "a Catholic perspective" is that they have two primary emphases that have been neglected by Protestant scholarship: a liturgical angle and a "both-and" approach that "has the potential to integrate seemingly disparate positions on topics such as Paul's relationship to Judaism, his apocalyptic outlook, his Christology, his theology of atonement, his view of justification, and his theology of baptism and the Lord's Supper" (p. 9, italics original).
In the first chapter, this "both-and" approach comes to the fore as the authors discuss the place of Paul in relation to Judaism. They helpfully review the discussion on Paul's identity and relationship to Judaism under three broad categories: Paul as a "former Jew," Paul as an "eschatological Jew," and Paul as a "torahobservant Jew" (pp. 11-38). The authors propose instead that Paul should be seen as a "new covenant Jew," a category deriving from Paul's understanding of himself, based on Jeremiah 31, as one of the "ministers of a new covenant" (2 Cor 3:6). This definition incorporates several aspects of the previous views, yet forges a new path in describing the continuities and discontinuities of Paul with the Judaism of his day. To view Paul as a new covenant Jew, as Pitre, Barber, and Kincaid argue, makes sense of his relationship to the law and to the people of Israel and explains his standing as a convert-not to...