Paul and the Gentiles: Remapping the Apostle's Convictional World
Overview
In this first major analysis of Paul’s understanding of Gentile salvation in several years, Terence Donaldson offers a creative approach to the major themes of the apostle’s theological convictions: God, sin, the Torah, Christ, Israel, his own call, and others. According to Donaldson, Paul as a believer in Jesus Christ did not abandon his Jewish frame of reference but reconfigured it, especially by the stimulus of his mission to the Gentiles.
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Top Highlights
“Until recently it was generally assumed that insofar as ‘Israel’ continued to be a significant theological category for Paul it was as an appellation that had now been carried over to the church without remainder. Indeed, since Justin Martyr19 the church has seen itself as ‘the true spiritual Israel’ (Dial. 11), the sole inheritor of the promises, scripture, and name of the Old Testament people of God, and the people in whom the line of salvation history beginning with Abraham found its unique continuation.” (Page 7)
“Paul continues to believe that the only hope of salvation for Gentiles lies in their becoming proselytes to Israel prior to the eschaton, but his Damascus experience has led him to redefine Israel (and thus proselytism) in terms of Christ.” (Page 236)
“Instead, it is peripheral and derivative, arising out of and fashioned to defend a set of independent and already-held convictions, among which was the conviction that the Gentiles were included in the salvation accomplished in Christ.” (Page 12)
“Paul’s repeated and insistent tendency to treat his Gentile converts as members of a christologically redefined Israel” (Page 236)
“then it follows that ‘Israel’ can be retained as a positive category only if it is redefined in a nonethnic manner.” (Page 7)
Not since E. P. Sander’s Paul and Palestinian Judaism has there been such a sustained effort to understand Paul by locating him in his native religion, late Second Temple Judaism. Donaldson constructs Paul’s context by looking particularly at ancient evidence, both scriptural and social, as it pertains to Jewish views of and interactions with Gentiles. The result is a breathtakingly ambitious survey and analysis of Jewish thought on ‘the Gentile questions,’ combined with a close reading of the epistles and, consequently, a coherent and plausible reconstruction of Paul’s mission and motives. In this book, Terry Donaldson brings together ancient and modern sources with imagination and conviction to advance his own original hypothesis explaining how this ‘Hebrew of Hebrew’ came to see the incorporation of Gentiles as the logical extension of his commitment to Christ and to the redemption of Israel.
—Paula Fredriksen, William Goodwin Aurelio Chair Emerita of the Appreciation of Scripture, Boston University
Terence Donaldson has pursued one specific question with such methodological rigor as to cast light on many aspects of Paul’s convictions, theology, and rhetorical stance in general. This is an important book.
—Lloyd Gaston, emeritus professor of New Testament, Vancouver School of Theology
Donaldson interacts honestly and incisively with the main lines of thinking that are now current and offers a new dimension of thought that has not yet been presented.
—Scot McKnight, Karl A. Olsson Professor in Religious Studies, North Park University
- Title: Paul and the Gentiles: Remapping the Apostle’s Convictional World
- Author: Terence L. Donaldson
- Publisher: Fortress Press
- Print Publication Date: 1997
- Logos Release Date: 2013
- Pages: 432
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Paul, the Apostle, Saint; Bible. N.T. Epistles of Paul › Theology; Gentiles in the New Testament
- Resource ID: LLS:PLGNTLSRMPPNGPS
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-02-12T05:06:26Z