DESCRIPTION
Paul's teachings are vital to the Christian gospel, so the turbulent, long-running debate over how to interpret Paul's message is crucially important. Richard Longenecker's
Paul, Apostle of Liberty has long stood — and still stands — as a significant, constructive, evangelical study of Paul's theology, especially of the creative tension between law and liberty that runs throughout his thought.
When this book was originally published in 1964, Longenecker then presciently anticipated several subsequent debates, addressing many of the same questions that such scholars as E. P. Sanders and Richard Hays did years later. This second edition of
Paul, Apostle of Liberty includes a substantial foreword by Douglas Campbell and a lengthy addendum by Longenecker discussing the major developments in Paul studies over the past fifty years.
REVIEWS
Religious Studies Review
“Longenecker provides a holistic reading of Paul that is textually grounded and sensitive to the Jewish world of the apostle. . . . The re-publication of Longenecker’s classic study is welcome. In a scholarly climate that is quick to forget previous studies—particularly anything pre-Sanders—one can hope that a new set of students and scholars will benefit from this republished work.”
Douglas A. Campbell
— from the foreword
"The republication of Richard Longenecker's Paul, Apostle of Liberty is potentially a very important moment for modern Pauline studies. . . . This book is, if nothing else, an analysis of truly impressive breadth and sophistication, while it is still more incredible to think of all the debates that it anticipated by decades. . . . It is more and more apparent to me on reflection what a tour de force this sustained explanation of Paul's thinking is, and hence my enthusiasm for its republication. It deserves to be much more widely known than it currently is."