An Apocalyptic Rereading of "Justification" in Paul: Or, an overview of the argument of Douglas Campbell's The Deliverance of God-by Douglas Campbell

This essay summarizes my book The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul in two main stages. First it describes the book's distinctive account of a problem in modern Pauline scholarship in relation to several key debates and some of their most important representative figures-Wrede, Sanders, Stendahl, and Martyn. It then describes how the book offers in its first half (Parts I-III) an underlying unified and theological account of these issues-the unwitting release of Arianism within Paul's interpretation in the specific form of a conditional conception of salvation in terms of a sequence of contracts. Following this the essay charts quickly the solution to this conundrum offered by the book's second half (Parts IV and V): a non-contractual reading of all the texts in Paul that could generate a problematic contractual and conditional construal. This rereading concentrates on Romans 1-4 (1:16-5:1), and, within that passage, on the especially important 1:18-3:20, which is construed as a Socratic argument and thereby unconditionally in the broader setting of Romans.