A GIFT EXPECTING RETURN: A REVIEW OF PAUL AND THE GIFT, BY JOHN BARCLAY
John Barclay’s 2015 book Paul and the Gift wades into one of the more contentious debates in Christian theology: the meaning of grace in Paul’s thought. Situating Paul in his first-century context, Barclay approaches grace under the lens of gift-giving more generally. Significantly, the Greek term that is most often translated as “grace” in the New Testament, χάρις (charis), can also mean “gift.” Thus Barclay begins by tracing the concept of gift-giving from ancient times until today. He emphasizes that throughout antiquity and often in later periods, “gifts were given with strong expectations of return.” (1) In other words, it is expected that the one who gives a gift will receive something as well, though this might not be material in nature. This expectation of reciprocity was common in antiquity, attested in both Jewish and non-Jewish texts. The modern conception of a “pure” gift, i.e. a gift given without an expectation of return, is a relatively recent phenomenon. It emerges in Martin Luther’s theology, and is made “a universal ethical idea” by Immanuel Kant. (2)
Barclay next discusses the various ways people have “perfected” grace. The phrase “perfecting grace” appears throughout this book and has a specific, if counterintuitive, meaning. By “perfection,” Barclay, following Kenneth Burke, means “the tendency to draw out a concept to its endpoint or extreme, whether for definitional clarity or for rhetorical or ideological advantage.” (3) This differs from merely emphasizing one aspect of something, and Barclay points out that employing a concept does not mean one is perfecting it. Barclay gives an example of perfecting a different concept: someone may critique a scholar as being “‘purely academic,’” meaning that the academic is not engaged with society and does not offer anything useful to it. (4) In this way the critic “perfects” academia to be antithetical to practical matters. Thus to perfect grace is to emphasize what one thinks is fundamental to it, often by using extreme rhetoric to convey grace in its “‘pure’” or “‘perfect’” form. (5) Barclay then outlines six perfections of grace:
Superabundance: the gift is quite large in terms of its “size, significance, or permanence.” (6) This refers to the scale of the gift rather than its content.
Singularity: a gift is given solely out of a concern for the well-being of the recipient. In perfections of grace this often involves differentiating God’s gift that leads to salvation from the act of judgment. (7)
Priority: the gift is given before the recipient does anything.
Incongruity: the gift is given without consideration of the recipient’s worthiness.
Efficacy: the gift completely accomplishes its intended purpose.
Non-Circularity: the gift does not expect a return. This has often been called a “pure gift.”
The different ways people perfect grace are not trivial. Rather “[r]ival claims to maintain or defend the principle of ‘grace’ may turn out to constitute not different degrees of emphasis, but different kinds of perfections.” (8) Thus even when various scholars and theologians discuss the same phenomenon, e.g. grace in Paul’s writings, the definition they work with is different.
Using these perfections, Barclay analyzes select interpreters of Paul, Jewish thinkers from antiquity, and Paul himself. His analysis of Pauline interpreters begins with the second century figure Marcion and ends with a number of biblical scholars and other writers from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Space does not permit a full description of this analysis but suffice it to say that Barclay demonstrates that scholars and theologians have perfected grace in various different ways. He then examines five Jewish thinkers from 100 BCE to 100 CE. (9) While this is by no means exhaustive, Barclay notes that all five authors surveyed are similar in that they all perfect the superabundance of God’s grace, but none of them perfects its non-circularity. Yet there remains great diversity in the other perfections of grace. Incongruity was a particularly prominent site of disagreement. Speaking of Jewish thought in this time period, Barclay emphasizes that “grace is everywhere; but this does not mean that grace is everywhere the same.” (10) In light of this, Barclay examines one more Jewish thinker: Paul. (11)
Barclay then focuses on Galatians and Romans, probably the two most controversial Pauline epistles in discussions of grace. He argues that Paul emphasizes the incongruity of grace in Galatians; “the Christ-event has recalibrated all systems of worth, creating communities that operate in ways significantly at odds with both Jewish and non-Jewish traditions of value.” (12) This conviction undergirds Paul’s gentile mission. Paul also emphasizes the priority of grace, insofar as God has already acted through Christ, but grace is emphatically circular: it is expected that believers act in certain ways in community with one another.
Barclay’s reading of Romans is similar. Like Galatians, grace is both incongruous and circular. But in Romans Paul more explicitly develops grace in regard to the election of Israel; in Romans 9–11 the incongruity of God’s gift is precisely why God will save Israel through Christ. Also present, but less emphasized, is the superabundance, priority, efficacy, and potentially the singularity of God’s grace. This last perfection must be qualified as pertaining only to the ultimate goal of God’s intervention; “there are multiple references to God’s hardening, wrath, and severity, alongside God’s grace, both in relation to Israel (11:7-10) and in relation to Gentile believers (11:20-22).” (13) Lacking here, as in Galatians, is any notion of a non-circular grace. Galatians foregrounds the uniqueness of the Christ-event, whereas Romans contextualizes it in terms of both the past and the future, but common to both is the emphasis on incongruous grace.
There is a lot of merit to Barclay’s work, and I believe that it has a lot to offer to the Church. First of all, his six different perfections of grace give us language that can clarify our liturgies and devotional lives. When we pray and we thank God for God’s grace, are we thanking God that it is given to us as unworthy people (thus perfecting its incongruity), because it is a pure act of love (thus perfecting its singularity), some combination of the two, or something different altogether? When a child asks what grace is, how do we respond? Of course, such questions were not absent before, but Barclay’s work might help us ask them with greater clarity – even if we do not use his scholarly language when speaking with a child. We also need not limit our discussions to the perfections Barclay outlines. But keeping in mind these six perfections can help shape the prayers we pray, our responses to important questions, and the songs and hymns we write and sing.
Just as Barclay’s six perfections of grace can illuminate our devotional lives, they may also bring clarity to ecumenical discussions of grace. Lutherans and Catholics, for instance, may well agree on the incongruity of grace, but is there (still) a discrepancy regarding whether and how grace is non-circular? Do recent documents like the 1999 Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification show continuity or discontinuity with how Lutherans and Catholics have perfected grace in the past? Is it enough for Christians of various stripes to agree on how to perfect grace, while disagreeing on other aspects of grace?
From an interfaith perspective, Barclay’s work is valuable in that it may help Christians be more charitable to Jewish people in our theology and lay to rest harmful polemics. His insistence that, in ancient Jewish thought, “grace is everywhere; but this does not mean that grace is everywhere the same” can help prevent caricatures of Judaism as a supposed religion of works-righteousness in contrast to Christianity as a religion of grace. Barclay is not the first to note the prevalence of grace in ancient Jewish thought. (14) Yet by pointing out the diversity of views on grace, he moves us away from characterizing ancient Judaism as a uniform entity, which often yields to the temptation to define Judaism in Christian terms. (15) Furthermore, the diversity of Jewish views of grace cautions us against reading Paul as non-Jewish or anti-Jewish because of his own views on grace.
Finally, Barclay’s analysis of Paul has implications for how we as the Church read Scripture and for our theology more generally. This of course, relies on the degree to which Barclay is convincing. While I am not satisfied with every aspect of Paul and the Gift, I think Barclay is right to emphasize that, for Paul, grace is emphatically incongruous and decidedly reciprocal: the grace given to the unworthy expects a return. (16) Although Luther remains a respected conversation partner throughout the book, and Barclay thinks Luther was correct in some respects, I, as a Lutheran, think Barclay’s portrait of Paul should give pause to Protestants in general and Lutherans in particular. Regarding Galatians, Barclay admits that Paul “is not countering an erroneous soteriology dependent on the good works of the devout” but rather the idea that one needs to adhere to Torah in order to receive grace. (17) Even if one does not assent to every component of Barclay’s argument, it remains the case that if gospel is no longer defined against the view that one is saved by one’s own effort, then Paul’s emphasis on reciprocity may well stand in tension with Lutheran theology. (18) In contrast to Lutheran theology, where good works are owed to our neighbor and are in some sense enabled by God but are emphatically not owed to God in order to secure or maintain the gift of grace, Barclay’s Paul emphasizes that grace expects a return in how one lives within the believing community.
To be sure, readings that challenge Lutheran portrayals of Paul are not new in biblical scholarship. Yet the issue for Lutherans – and Protestants more generally – is that it is precisely grace which has come into question. There are two reasons for this tension. First, a strict distinction between grace and works is fundamental for Lutheran theology and the theology of many other Protestants. Second, whereas most other scholarship that takes issue with Lutheran readings of Paul do so by emphasizing that Paul has different concerns than Luther, Barclay uses the same framework, gift-giving, to address grace in both Paul and later theologians. Given Barclay’s insistence on the circularity of grace in Galatians and Romans, Paul and the Gift poses a challenge for all those who view works as the antithesis of grace, including those in the Anglican Communion who cherish Thomas Cranmer’s teachings on faith and works. (19) But it is not necessarily the death knell. In my own tradition of Lutheranism, the gospel is emphatically proclaimed throughout Scripture, not just Paul. (20) Furthermore I think it is folly to assume that a reading that places the biblical authors in their historical contexts is determinative for the Church’s interpretation of Scripture. Yet the question remains: how far apart does Paul need to be from Luther and the Lutheran Confessions before Lutheran theology runs into trouble? This matter cannot be sorted out here. (21) But Barclay’s work calls us to wrestle with Scripture and our theological systems. What could be more faithful than that?
John M. G. Barclay, Paul and the Gift (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 11, here speaking particularly about antiquity.
Barclay, Paul and the Gift, 57.
Barclay, Paul and the Gift, 67.
Barclay, Paul and the Gift, 68.
Barclay, Paul and the Gift, 67.
Barclay, Paul and the Gift 70.
Barclay argues that Luther perfects the singularity of “the gift of Christ, who comes to us only as the Savior who gives, not as a Legislator or Judge who demands.” Barclay, Paul and the Gift, 110, emphasis original.
Barclay, Paul and the Gift, 70; emphasis original.
These are the Wisdom of Solomon, the writings of Philo of Alexandria, the Hodayot found at Qumran, Pseudo-Philo’s Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum, and 4 Ezra.
Barclay, Paul and the Gift, 319.
In a brief but informative analysis of Romans 9–11 Barclay notes that “Paul participates in a number of Jewish conversations concerning God’s beneficence toward Israel and the world, such that his themes, his questions, and many of his answers stand in close proximity to those of other Second Temple Jews.” Barclay, Paul and the Gift, 328.
Barclay, Paul and the Gift, 350.
Barclay, Paul and the Gift, 557.
For one of the first works to stress this point, see E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1977).
Even with Barclay’s treatment such temptations remain, and should be avoided by scholars and Christians alike.
For example, even as Barclay maintains that Paul was a Jew (see fn 10), I find that his analysis of Galatians’s treatment of “systems of worth” – which includes Torah – distances Paul too much from contemporaneous Jewish thought. Barclay, Paul and the Gift, 388–422, 430–31. By contrast, Paula Fredriksen, writing after and engaging with Barclay’s work, persuasively argues that Paul expected gentile believers in Christ to adopt certain behaviors like worshipping the God of Israel alone that were recognized in antiquity as distinctively Jewish behaviors. While Fredriksen addresses Paul in general, she also points out that Paul’s admonition in Gal 5:14, addressed to gentile believers, links ethical and social teaching to adhering to Torah. Paula Fredriksen, Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 108–30.
Barclay, Paul and the Gift, 444.
Scholars responding to Paul and the Gift have seen various levels of compatibility between it and Lutheranism. Three responses show the range of scholarly opinion: On one end of the spectrum, Anthony Giambrone sees it as generally compatible with Lutheranism, though he notes that the Christocentric dissolution of previous “systems of worth” may be troubling to certain Lutherans, like the Missouri Synod. More towards the middle, Jonathan Linebaugh sees a good deal of resonance between Barclay’s reading of Paul and Lutheran theology insofar as grace for both is Christological and incongruous, but rightly notes a significant difference in regard to Law. Nonetheless, he thinks Luther would ultimately be complementary of Barclay’s articulation of Paul’s gospel. At the other end of the spectrum, Nathan Eubank claims that “anyone who is satisfied with Barclay’s account of human agency in Paul would in my view be able to assent to the definition of merit set down by the Council of Trent, even if the word ‘merit’ remains a real, if superficial, stumbling block.” Anthony Giambrone, review of Paul and the Gift, by John M. G. Barclay, The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review 82 (2018): 287–92, especially 287–88; Jonathan Linebaugh, “Incongruous and Creative Grace: Reading Paul and the Gift with Martin Luther,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 22 (2020): 47–59; and Nathan Eubank, “Configurations of Grace and Merit in Paul and His Interpreters,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 22 (2020): 7–17, quote from 16.
I am indebted to my editor, Ben Wyatt, for this observation about Anglicanism.
Philip Melancthon, Apology of the Augsburg Confession (1531): IV. See also Edmund Schlink, Theology of the Lutheran Confessions, trans. Paul F. Koehneke and Herbert J. A. Bouman, 3rd ed. (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1961), 6.
In my view, a constructive theological treatment of whether Barclay’s reading of Paul stands in tension with Lutheran theology needs to go beyond Barclay’s six perfections and ask whether and how the Lutheran Confessions portray obedience as a necessary response to the Christ-gift, and if this creates unresolvable tension with Paul’s theology.
