One of the most perplexing problems in Pauline studies is the meaning of the phrase pistis christou. Is Paul speaking of our faith in Christ or of Christ’s own faithfulness toward God? Here noted contemporary New Testament scholars join forces–and lock horns–to shed light on the answer by presenting rigorous exegetical studies from both sides of the debate. They also bring fresh creative proposals to bear on the problem, and place the discussion in the wider spectrum of historical, biblical, and systematic theology.

The most penetrating and comprehensive attempt to date to grapple with the significance of Jesus’ faithfulness and obedience for Christian salvation, and the extent to which it is represented in key biblical texts.

CONTRIBUTORS
University of Durham luminary James D.G. Dunn authors an erudite foreword; and editor Michael Bird introduces the problems and prospects for a New Testament conversation on the topic. Debbie Hunn, Stanley E. Porter, and Andrew W. Pitts contribute essays about the background of the pistis christou discussion. Douglas A. Campbell, R. Barry Matlock, Paul Foster, and Richard Bell clarify Pauline texts in contention. Mark A. Seifrid, Francis Watson, Preston M. Sprinkle, and Ardel B. Caneday explore Pauline exegesis, hermeneutics, and theology. The witness of the wider New Testament is covered by Peter G. Bolt, Willis H. Salier, Bruce A. Lowe, and David deSilva. Finally, Mark W. Elliott and Benjamin Myers offer historical and theological reflections from the church fathers, Karl Barth, and others.

“Catholicism met this challenge by building intellectual walls around the church, thus temporarily dropping out of the story we are tracing here. Protestantism first met it by making the doctrine of scriptural authority into an antecedent basis for theology’s claims. Thus traditional natural arguments for the reliability of Scripture came to bear a new load: we may, it was said, believe Christian doctrine because it is drawn from the Bible, whose truth can be made antecedently plausible. Seventeenth-century Protestant systems’ doctrine of Scripture thus already carried the modern prolegomenal burden.”

Catholicism built walls and retreated from the anti-supernatural claims of modernity’s epistemological Pelagianism; Protestantism granted the modern presupposition and tried to meet it head on via its doctrine of Scripture. Both attempts failed. The epistemological presupposition of modernity never should have been granted in the first place.