Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul

Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul. By J. Louis Martyn. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1997. xvii + 334 pp. $39.95 (cloth).

"The only real antidote to whatever distortion of the gospel arises is simply the gospel itself, proclaimed once again." Those words from J. Louis Martyn long ago in a semester seminar on Galatians were mysterious at first. In time, they began to clarify Paul's complex preaching strategy in Galatians. They also characterize Martyn's own apostolic labors on Paul's theology, represented by this impressive volume of essays, written and rewritten over the course of more than thirty years of teaching and studying Paul.

"Antidote" signals both serious opposition (see Martyn's essay on "Apocalyptic Antinomies") and that the outcome is a matter of life and death because "the truth of the gospel" (Galatians 2:5) is at stake: a distorted version of the gospel is as poisonous to the church as nerve gas. This is war! As Martyn explains in "From Paul to Flannery O'Connor with the Power of Grace," Paul's apocalyptic gospel is less about unveiling than a dynamic invasion. In the same essay, Martyn describes himself as one of those who has been "seized by Jesus Christ" (p.279), committed to the confession that Jesus is Lord, the Christ, God's Messiah. Martyn follows both Paul and Ernst Kasemann in viewing the gospel as "the event that defines the category of God's power," being itself God's powerful invasion of the world to bring about new creation.

So if the truth of the gospel is at stake and we are at war, then all's fair, right? In the same essay, Martyn contrasts two kinds of power, represented graphically in the civil rights struggle during the Montgomery bus boycott of the winter of 1955-1956. The power of the city fathers is revealed to be the power of the Old Age, quid pro quo, this for that, as if that were the only kind of power and as if those who had it had all the power there was and could do whatever they wanted. But the power on the other side of the table does not accept this agenda. The black community knows that there is power of a different order, not visible to Old-Age eyes, but finally invincible because it is the power of the unconditional love of God revealed in the crucifixion of his Son. This grace is powerful enough to keep that community walking on sore feet every day, instead of riding the segregated buses, and singing of God's "amazing grace" to the unredeemed world (summarized from pp. 288-89). The gospel itself, preached once again, is the only real antidote to the distortions that oppose it.

Martyn's analysis of the power of the cross in the world is further explicated in his perceptive essay on Galatians 2:16, "God's Way of Making Right What is Wrong." In the midst of his typically thorough treatment of the biblical text, he comments about Paul: "No one in the early church held more tenaciously to the vision of church unity than did Paul, and no one paid a higher price for that vision" (p. 154). Martyn himself has devoted many years to showing that in Galatians Paul is "formulating a polemic neither against Judaism nor against Jewish Christianity" (p. 155). On another front, Martyn has tirelessly opposed both ancient and modern versions of "the doctrine of the two ways," namely that human beings can by our own actions or our own believing, choose our way to getting right with God. Martyn insists, with Paul, that "what makes transgressing members of God's people right with God is God's forgiveness" (p.144). It is the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, his obedient death on the cross which is at the same time the righteousness of God (Romans 5:8), that puts us right with God.

Throughout these essays, one finds an exacting scholar, a brilliant theologian, and a wise pastor. Martyn is trusted by biblical scholars because he has a habit of saying something quietly after long years of thinking about a text that suddenly changes the way we all read it. His earlier books on history and theology in the Fourth Gospel and in its interpretation simply reshaped all serious discussion of the Gospel of John. His stunning new commentary on Galatians (Anchor Bible, Volume 33A, New York: Doubleday, 1997) is already making the same impact on Pauline studies. As a theologian, Martyn repeatedly demonstrates an uncanny ability to discern what must be defended at all costs and where unnecessary quarreling can be abandoned to serve the shared vision, a gift of the Spirit urgently needed in today's contentious churches. It is also Paul the prophetic pastor whose voice Martyn hears and amplifies in these essays. Ministers of the gospel will find here unsettling wisdom expressed with powerful precision. I will reach for this book whenever I am tempted to forget that "the crucifixion is the invading apocalypse of God's unconditional grace that brings us to life in the midst of death" (p. 296).

A. KATHERINE GRIEB

Virginia Theological Seminary

Alexandria, Virginia

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