On the fifth day of Jimmy...

... his writings gave to me, faith in Jesus Christ.

4. Christology in the Making (1980)

3. Unity and Diversity in the New Testament (1977)

2. Baptism in the Holy Spirit (1970)
and The Evidence for Jesus (1985)

1. In November 1991 I attended my second Society of Biblical Literature meeting. It was in Kansas City. I was just finishing up my first semester as a Teaching Fellow at Asbury Seminary, teaching beginning Greek. I was loving it. One of the best years of my life.

It was Tuesday morning, the last set of seminars. Tuesday morning is for the really hard core. Often a lot of people have already left. The book room starts shutting down. I checked out of my hotel room and took my luggage to one last session before I had to catch a flight to Florida for Thanksgiving.

It was one of those moments in biblical studies history that you don't know is about to happen. It was Jimmy Dunn and Richard Hays, squaring off on one of the big debate points of New Testament scholarship. What did Paul mean by the phrase, pistis Iesou Christou in Galatians 2:16 and Romans 3:22? The "faith of Jesus Christ." Is it "faith in Jesus Christ" or the "faithfulness of Jesus Christ"?

Here is the Common English Bible's rendering of Galatians 2:16: "However, we know that a person isn’t made righteous by the works of the Law but rather through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. We ourselves believed in Christ Jesus so that we could be made righteous by the faithfulness of Christ and not by the works of the Law—because no one will be made righteous by the works of the Law."

2. I have skipped two of Dunn's publications to get to that moment in 1990. The first was actually quite significant. In 1988 Dunn's two volume Romans commentary came out in the Word Biblical Series. It is an excellent commentary, surely in the top two or three Romans commentaries.

I have wondered if he wrote it just a little too soon. Probably wouldn't have made a big difference. But he started writing it just as the "new perspective on Paul" was on the rise. He incorporated some of the insights from that emerging discussion in the commentary. Might he have changed his mind on a couple other issues if there had been more gestation time? Again, probably not.

For example, perhaps the greatest failing of his commentary, I would say, is the fact that he largely follows the traditional interpretation of Romans 7. The old perspective was that Paul did not believe a Christian could successfully live without sinning. Most scholars now recognize that Paul was not speaking of his current struggle with Sin in Romans 7. He was dramatizing the plight of someone who might want to keep the Law but did not have the Holy Spirit.

Incidentally, Dunn came to speak at Asbury during my last year in town, early 1993. Joe Dongell recounts teasing him at a dinner about his position on Romans 7. In his wry way he asked, "So, is there any exegetical decision you might regret in your Romans commentary, maybe Romans 7." Dunn responded that he felt quite comfortable with his interpretation.

Another matter on which Dunn never changed with time is the "faith of Jesus Christ" debate. It took me a long time myself to figure out what I think on that question. I think that Dunn was more or less correct on the majority of Paul's references to faith. That is to say, most of the time Paul had human faith in view rather than the faith of Jesus.

However, I think Hays was right on the key passages of Galatians 2:16 and Romans 3:22. I think Paul begins these conversations with the faithfulness of Jesus unto death in view, but then that he shifts to speak of human faith. I also agree with Hays that faith in Romans 4 is primarily theo-centric (God the Father centric) rather than Christo-centric. This perspective actually fits better, in my opinion, with Dunn's Christology. I had an article published in CBQ giving my conclusions, suggesting that Paul argued "from Hays to Dunn."

In the Kansas City debate, later published in the fourth volume of the Pauline Theology Group, Dunn took the "objective genitive" position. This is the position that the expression "of Jesus Christ" is the object of faith--faith in Jesus Christ. Hays took the "subjective genitive" position. This view sees Jesus as the one having the faith--the faith of Jesus Christ, primarily his faithfulness to death.

3. 1990 also saw the publication of a collection of Dunn's articles and papers: Jesus, Paul, and the Law. This is a collection of fine essays. The only reason I am not featuring it as one of the twelve is because some of these essays also made their way into a later volume that I will mention soon enough.

This collection is a reminder that Dunn wrote on more than just Paul in this period. For example, Mark and Jesus feature in the first three chapters. Here we also see the beginnings of the new perspective on Paul, about which there is more to come. His seminal essay from 1982 is in this book, "The New Perspective on Paul."

I also want to mention in particular the chapter called, "The Incident at Antioch." This 1980 article stands at the heart of my understanding of Galatians 2 and Acts 15. I don't know what my students think about it, but I usually somewhat dramatize this event in class (the more caffeine, the better it is). My dramatization has a lot of Dunn in it. I don't have a tight video of it, but you can get my gist from this video.