Abstract
Although this book is called The Lost Message of Paul, it is perhaps more of an account of Steve Chalke’s own theological journey than a study of Paul. Presented in largely anecdotal style, Chalke weaves together a brief overview of aspects of the (not so) ‘New Perspective’ on Paul with reflections on his own upbringing in a form of conservative Protestant Orthodoxy that sees Judaism as inescapably fixated on legalist ‘works’ from which God-in-Christ saves sinners through the atoning power of the cross. Chalke acknowledges the hugely formative work of Ed Sanders in challenging this caricature of both Paul and first-century Judaism, and the deeper roots of the ‘New Perspective’ in Stendhal and others. But the main debating partners here are James Dunn and especially Tom Wright, for whom Chalke has a clear but critical appreciation.
From this summary engagement with Pauline studies, Chalke rightly relocates Paul in a broader stream of emerging Judaism(s) as someone mostly concerned about the liberation from the power of sin and death that demonstrates God’s righteousness or faithfulness. The gospel is not about the tortured individual conscience of the Western imagination but the realignment of the social groupings that vigorously excluded Gentiles from the Jewish covenant. The Western Church thus distorts Paul seriously when he is reduced to addressing guilt-ridden and depraved individuals worthy only of eternal punishment, from which escape is possible only through a narrowly dogmatic evangelical theology. Paul was not like that: he is essentially a universalist who sees the redemption of all people as the goal of God’s action in Christ.
This leaves Chalke struggling, of course, with precisely those passages in Paul – and elsewhere in the New Testament – that seem to imply some form of judgement for those who insist on rejecting God’s gracious gift. Here, Chalke parts company with Wright, and argues that it is inconceivable that a God of love would ever exclude anyone permanently from paradise. So Chalke moves into a slightly questionable discussion about the nature of God’s wrath, and to the conclusion that images of damnation in Christian theology need to be reinterpreted as a kind of reformed purgatory – the refiner’s fire.
This book is clearly aimed at laypeople from conservative evangelical backgrounds, as snippets of NT scholarship are juxtaposed with personal stories drawing on Chalke’s important work with the Oasis charity he founded. Through this work with vulnerable people from challenging backgrounds, Chalke has come to recognize the greater mystery and generosity of God, which shakes established Western certainties about theology in general and damnation in particular. While acknowledging this experiential learning, however, the book would have benefited from a stronger engagement with a greater range of more recent Pauline studies. One suspects, for example, that Chalke’s argument would have been significantly strengthened simply by listening to the ongoing dialogue between Douglas Moo on the one hand, rigorously defending a modified form of Protestant Orthodoxy, and Douglas Campbell on the other, with his hugely controversial study The Deliverance of God (Eerdmans, 2009). This might have helped steer the book away from the more sermonic interludes and occasionally grating comments on, for example, hermeneutics, or the slightly misleading readings of Luther and Calvin. But the book is worth reading for the account it offers of Chalke’s own journey, and it should serve its intended lay readership well.