ABSTRACT
The study of Paul and the New Testament generally is in the midst of a major transition that began in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Horsley 1994; Schüsssler Fiorenza 1983: 68-95, esp. 70-1). With regard to Paul, one can detect steady erosion in the longstanding scholarly consensus about the centrality of justification in his theology by looking chronologically at chapter and section headings of review literature on Pauline scholarship from the last two decades. “Justification by Faith” is the fourth chapter of Joseph Plevnik’s six-chapter look at Pauline scholarship in 1986, What Are They Saying about Paul? (Plevnik 1986). A year later Hans Hübner’s review of post-war scholarship on Paul appeared in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt. There, treatment of Pauline justification appears in a section entitled “Rechtfertigung als Mitte paulinischer Theologie?” – “Justification at the Heart of Paul’s Theology?” – and what follows is a lengthy presentation of alternative centers (Hübner 1987). More recently, in Veronica Koperski’s What Are They Saying about Paul and the Law?, we find a chapter entitled “The New Center?” opening with these words: “There is emerging an increasing consensus that justification by faith alone can no longer be considered the center of Paul’s theology” (Koperski 2001). The trend is obvious.
