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not sufficiently historical but simply represents the later tradition's "ideal" of how things
should have been. In this masterful survey Hess musters textual and archaeological evidence to prove that there was, in fact, a segment of the population that did practice
orthodox Yahwism.
R. ANDREW COMPTON

University of California, Los Angeles

Gordon D. Fee, Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theobgical Study. Peabody, Mass.: Hen-

drickson, 2007. Pp. 744. $39.95, cloth.

Fee's large volume is quickly becoming recognized as both a landmark text in Pauline
studies and one that has filled a remarkable lacuna in scholarship since it is the first
major scholarly work devoted exclusively to Pauline Christology
Fee sets out to provide an absolutely comprehensive study of every single Pauline text
that touches on Jesus Christ. The book is prefaced with a highly detailed table of contents that lists each concept and passage that Fee attends to in his study Additionally, for
easy reference, there is an exhaustive scriptural index at the back of the book with especially important treatments of specific passages in bold. Fee admits in the preface that
the book is not easy to read straight through. Therefore, the analytic table of contents
and the scriptural index enable the interested pastor, student, or scholar to jump quickly
to discussions of relevant passages and motifs.
The Pauline material is arranged according to Fee's conservative estimation of the
dates in which Paul's letters were written, beginning with 1 Thessalonians and ending
with 2 Timothy. With the exception of 1-2 Thessalonians and Colossians-Philemon
being grouped together, each of Paul's letters receives its own chapter. By proceeding
letter by letter, in chronological order. Fee hopes to build up a picture of the coherence of
Paul's christological thought that is sensitive to the contingent nature of Paul's letters.
Fee accepts all thirteen letters of the canonical Paul as authentically Pauline and gives
numerous Unes of reasoning in defense of a view of Pauline authorship that has been on
the wane for over a hundred years. Fee also helpfully analyzes the pitfalls of scholarly
discussions of supposedly pre-Pauline traditions in Paul's letters, as if such traditions
have been incorporated into the letters by Paul without any reflection on the congruity
of thought between them and his own theology.
Every exegetical chapter includes its own appendix with the Greek (and English
translations) of all of the Pauline christological texts in a given letter. Fee helpfully places
every (exegetically determined) reference to Christ in bold and underlines every reference to God the Father throughout the work. A second chapter-by-chapter appendix
gives a detailed numerical analysis of Paul's usage of christological terms and names
(Lord, Jesus, Christ, son, etc.) in each letter, as well as their use in conjunction with terms
for God.
The amount of data and explanation in Fee's book is extensive. This fact can make
the book seem overwhelming, but also leads to its greatest strength, that of setting out
the panoramic sweep of Paul's "high" Christology. Fee maintains throughout his book
that Paul has an extremely high Christology of "divine identity," and that this Christology is present from the very beginning of Paul's writing career. Even for those modern

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readers who share Paul's (and Fee's) high Christology, the sheer magnitude of statements
reflecting these beliefs in Paul can be hard to appreciate until it is laid out with something
like Fee's unrelenting thoroughness.
Nonetheless, this extensiveness verges on tedious repetition at points. While Fee is
aware of this problem, it can become distracting. For example, 1 Cor 8:6 receives extensive and sustained treatment in at least five different places throughout the book. While no
one will fault Fee for a lack of comprehensive coverage of the issues, some trimming of
repetitious material could have been helpful. Because it is easy to get lost in the mass of
details in the exegetical chapters, a good strategy (which Fee himself recommends) is for
the reader to begin with the six synthetic and summarizing chapters at the end of the
book. Then, with a knowledge of the major christological themes that emerge from
Paul's letters, the reader wl be better equipped to use the book-by-book chapters as
needed for individual exegesis (by looking up passages in the index or table of contents).
One of the major contentions of Pauline Christology is that Paul's christological beliefs
operate on a presuppositional level of thought. That is to say, Paul rarely gives explit
warrant for the way in which he thinks of Jesus as a fuUy divine figure. Being the strict
Jewish monotheist that he was, it is remarkable to note the ways in which Paul simply
places Jesus into the divine identity. Building on the work of such scholars as Larry Hurtado and Richard Bauckham, Fee sees a coherent picture emerge from the Pauline material in the ways in which Jesus is depicted as doing what only Cod does in the Bible, One
of the major manifestations of this approach is the extensive detailing of the way Jesus is
called Lord {kurios in Creek) throughout Paul's letters. Since Paul's Bible was primarily
the Creek Septuagint, this is a hugely significant fact: Lord in the Creek OT is consistently an appellation of Cod alone. Fee also notes that Paul almost always uses Lord to
describe Jesus Christ, rather than Cod the Father, which would be unthinkable were
Jesus anything less than the Cod of the OT,
Another way in which Paul's high Christology shines through his letters is Paul's
habitual connection of Christology and soteriology Paul's Christology takes as its point
of departure that Jesus is the divine savior, in the same way that Cod is the savior of his
people in the OT. One of the most intense manifestations of Paul's understanding of
Jesus' divinity, the worship that Paul ascribes to him, is motivated largely by the salvation
that Christ accomplished and applies to believers through the Holy Spirit, Christsoteriology strongly presupposes full divinity, Christian worship has a message aioMiJesus
and the salvation that comesfi-omhim as its focus (e,g,. Col 3:16), Hymns are even sung
to Christ (as in Eph 5:18-19),
In Fee's examination of prexistence and the incarnation, he again appeals to Paul's
presupposed high Christology, Paul does not so much argue for the incarnation of the
eternally prexistent Son of Cod, as he argues ^ro! this firmly estabhshed belief to prove
other things. For example, in 1 Cor 8:6, both Cod the Father and Jesus Christ are portrayed as the direct agents of creation (thus Christ must have existed before creation), Paul
need not explicitly appeal to Christ's eternal prexistence here (elsewhere he simply says
that Cod is the only creator, as in Rom 11:36, which uses very similar language). Instead,
Jesus Christ's agency in creation is mentioned to convince the "weak" Christians in
Corinth that Christ is truly the wisdom and power of Cod,

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Fee's insights into Jesus' role as the Son of God (a major theme that emerges in the
book) are particular helpful. He carefully distinguishes between (1) Pauline Son of God
language that derives from Israel's special status as God's beloved son (Exod 4:22-23),
language that developed in the messianic hope for a future (human) king to redeem
God's people (based on 2 Sam 7:13-14; Ps 2; etc), and (2) Son of God language that
reflects Paul's understanding of Jesus as an eternally prexistent, divine person (revealed
in the intimacy of Jesus' relationship with the Father, seen, e,g,, in Rom 8:32),
Throughout his study Fee does not shy away from speaking of Christ and ontology.
While many scholars are reticent to talk of Jesus in terms of an ontology of divinity. Fee's
study should put such fears to rest. Fee's study highlights the various ways in which Paul
is comfortable speaking of Jesus' identity in the ontological categories of prexistence and
agency in creation. Nonetheless, it is certainly true that Jesus' ontological status becomes
known precisely through the salvation he accomplishes as the truly human Messiah, the
one human who perfectly reflected the image of God in all its glory. Fee's emphasis on how
Christ's life, death, and resurrection fit into the biblical story line of creation, fall, and
redemption is also quite salutary. Ontology (Christ's divine nature) and economy (Christ's
actions as the Messiah) are not antithetical categories for describing Paul's Christology,
Fee includes two major appendices at the end of his book, one dealing with the modern
scholarly argument that Paul's Christology is a "wisdom Christology," in which Paul hcis
to some degree or another placed Christ into the role of wisdom in the OT and Second
Temple Jewish literature. Fee strongly disputes this claim, basing his argument on two
main lines of evidence: the lack of references to wisdom in the usual Pauline texts
appealed to (such as Col 1:15-18), and the fact that wisdom is simply a literary personification, and is not even mentioned as the agent of creation in wisdom texts such as the
Psalms, Proverbs, or Wisdom of Solomon, The second appendix is a summary of the data
from Fee's book detailing Paul's quotations of (and allusions to) kurios ("Lord") texts from
the Septuagint in reference to Christ,
The christological content of much of Paul's letters is not always easy for the modern
reader of the Bible to pick up on since it so often operates on the presuppositional level,
Christians and non-Christians alike are simply too used to thinking of Jesus in Trinitarian terms to even notice how radical it is for Jesus to subtly, and consistently, be placed
into the role of God in Paul's letters. Although Fee pays special attention to this presuppositional aspect of Paul's Christology, in the final chapter he also does an excellent job
of showing the "proto-Trinitarian" nature of Paul's teaching on Christ, According to
Fee, the ancient Trinitarian controversies were simply theologically reflective attempts to
make explicit what Paul simply assumed: Jesus Christ does what God alone does, is
called what God alone is called, and is worshiped as God alone is worshiped, because he
wGod,
Despite Fee's consistently high understanding of Pauline Christology, it is inevitable
that even the most conservative of readers will disagree with Fee at points. For example,
many will not be convinced that in Rom 9:5, Titus 2:13, and 2 Thess 1:12 we do not find
an explicit affirmation of Christ's divinity With a book containing as much exegesis as
Fee's it is impossible that all will find every interpretation plausible. Regardless, Fee's case
is most definitely not dependent on the interpretation of a few isolated texts. The most
dramatic and helpful feature of Pauline Christology is the breathtaking view one gets of the

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majesty of Christ. Paul can hardly contain the intense devotion to Jesus that he has come
to know as the result of the salivation he has experienced in the divine Son of God, the
one who took on true flesh precisely in order to sufler and die for an utterly sinful and
undeserving people.
BEN DUNSON

Durham University

Michael Bird, The Saving Righteousness of God: Studies on Paul, Justification, and Ute New Per-

spective. Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock and Milton Keynes, U.K.: Paternoster, 2007. Pp.
xvii + 266. $30.00, paper.
Chapter 1 introduces the basic perspective of the book (many chapters of which have
previously appeared in journals). Bird's goal is to provide a historically and theologically
sensitive via media between Reformed readings of justification in Paul and those of new
readings (mainly the New Perspective on Paul, henceforth NPP).
For Bird, the NPP is basically right in what it affirms (the importance of Jew-Gentile
unity in Paul), but wrong in what it denies (reducingjustification to having purely or primarily social significance). Additionally, Bird notes that the NPP has helped alter certain
nineteenth- and twentieth-century caricatures of first-century Judaism.
Bird summarizes his approach to justification in this way: it is forensic (not transformational), eschatological (God's final judgment verdict is announced in advance
through faith alone), covenantal Qews and Gentiles are one people of God, which is not
a merely peripheral concern in Paul), and effective (justification and sanctification
should not be confused, nor separated).
Chapter 2 is an attempt to explicate the meaning of righteousness language in Paul.
Importantly, Bird attempts to answer the dispute over whether OT righteousness is relational or concerned with adherence to a norm (natural law, God's character, etc.). Bird
believes that it is both relational (i.e., persons can be covenantaUy righteous in relation to
God and others, rather than perfectly sinless) and that it entails adherence to a norm
(faithfulness to God's covenant stipulations).
Bird then looks at whether righteousness is transformative or forensic. In good Protestant fashion Bird opines that the charge of antinomianism against Paul makes no sense if
justification is transformative, rather than declarative. However, he also maintains that
righteousness understood as "saving power" is bibhcal, even if this designation has
tended to blur the distinction between justification and sanctification among some proponents. Bird helpfully surveys the unmistakably forensic nature of righteousness in the
OT, where to justify someone simply means to declare that they have done what is legally
right.
Bird helpfully highlights OT contexts in which righteousness terminology is used in
conjunction with language for God's salvation. However, his contention that the two sets
of language are essentially synonymous rests on the assumption that their common
usage together implies synonymity. It would be better to say that God's righteousness
entails faithfulness to his covenant(s), both in blessing and in cursing.
Bird's primary point is that God's righteousness is his faithfulness to his covenant with
Israel to save her despite all obstacles, which finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, though