On the ninth day of Jimmy...

... we get his 1998 synthesis of Paul's theology: The Theology of Paul the Apostle

Thus far in this series:
1. The Evidence for Jesus (1985)
2. Baptism in the Holy Spirit (1970)
3. Unity and Diversity in the New Testament (1977)
4. Christology in the Making (1980)
5. "Once more, ΠΙΣΤΙΣ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΥ" (1991)
6. The New Perspective on Paul (2005)
7. The Partings of the Ways (1991)
8. The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon (1996)

Some of the other books he wrote or edited are mentioned at the bottom.

1. When you are as prominent a scholar as Jimmy Dunn, you begin to write summative works and series as you approach retirement. The Theology of Paul the Apostle (1998) was one such work, where Dunn tried to provide a synthesis of Paul's theology. It came out five years before his retirement in 2003.

Biblical theology was clearly a matter of great interest to Jimmy. While he wrote several commentaries and numerous micro-studies, he was always interested in the overarching themes and patterns. Baptism and Jesus and the Spirit were theologies of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. Unity and Diversity was an early attempt to identify overarching New Testament theology.

By the way, this is probably as good a place as any to mention two collections of his essays that appeared in the late 90s. The two volumes were titled, Christ and the Spirit, with one volume on Christology (1998) and one on Pneumatology (1997).

2. Dunn had lectured on aspects of Paul's theology numerous times at Durham. He seems to indicate in his Preface that those notes were transformed into this marvelous tome from Easter to the end of summer 1996 (cf. p. xvi), which a draft for this 737 page masterpiece off to Eerdmans by the end of September. Unbelievable.

I never heard Jimmy lecture to undergraduate students. I picture him lecturing from a manuscript, much like those who preach from a manuscript. I welcome insight from others but at least that possibility alleviates my writing envy a little. He clearly had been thinking about this book for a long time and I suspect had a fair amount of notes to start with.

3. The question of how to approach such a complex subject as the theology of someone like Paul is somewhat daunting. You wouldn't want to proceed chronologically through his writings. That wouldn't give you a systematic overview. Ridderbos had tried in 1966, before new perspectives on Judaism had kicked in. Johann Christiaan Beker had also tried in 1980, trying to play the "coherent" elements of Paul's theology against its "contingent" elements. 

In the end, Dunn decided to use Romans as the focal point from which to look at his overall theology. In most respects, it is hard to complain about the results. As usual, this is a highly accessible and understandable book. It seems much more accessible than N. T. Wright's Paul and the Faithfulness of God, which in the end is striving to be much more than a biblical theology. Wright seems to analyze Paul's "worldview" in the light of his complex context. Yet Dunn's headings are a lot more self-explanatory than something like Wright's, "A Cock for Asclepius" or "Athene and Her Owl."

Dunn's approach amazingly seems to work with the general outline of Romans. The topics are theological and proceed logically, yet they correspond roughly to the train of thought in Romans: God, humankind, sin, law, gospel, Christology, salvation, experience of salvation, Israel, the church, ethics.

If you had been following Jimmy's writings over the years, you would not be surprised by the content of these sections. You would indeed have systematic access to Jimmy's work. The Theology of Paul the Apostle thus becomes a kind of encyclopedia of Jimmy's interpretations of Paul. When you get to his treatment of Christ's pre-existence, you are not surprised to hear him conclude that Christ for Paul was the embodiment of God's pre-existent Wisdom (292). When you get to his sense of the Christian in relation to sin, you are not surprised to find that he disagrees with the majority and sees Romans 7 as the ongoing struggle of a believer (472).

Meanwhile, he engages Paul's other writings from the base camp of Romans. He does not consider the Pastorals to be the genuine voice of Paul, so he does not really engage them. He engages 1 Corinthians quite a bit when he gets to Paul's ethics.

5. It seems to me there is something lost by using Romans as a base camp. In a way it's too easy. Galatians and Romans reflect Paul when he is engaging his conservative Jewish opponents. Yet their concerns do not dominate 1 Thessalonians or 1 Corinthians. Certainly he manages to work in other themes, like participation in Christ. But it seems like there would be a more "indigenous" way of organizing Paul's world.

I say "world" because of course even to organize Paul around theology is to follow the ideological predilections of Western scholarship. In his own way Wright tries to supersede these tendencies with his own categories of story and praxis.

6. I wonder if the categories of Dunn's conclusion might have made a more interesting outline, even if not one that would have served as well as a resource. In the conclusion he suggests a kind of archaeology of Paul's theology. First, there is the ground layer of Paul's thinking, his fundamental Jewish understandings. Then there is the "center" of Paul's thinking, his basic understandings of Christ formed in keeping with his conversion to the Jesus sect. Finally, there was the part of his thinking that was in dialog with various situations that arose in the course of his ministry.

As for development, Dunn did not see a good deal of development in the roughly ten years of Paul's core writings. He sees rather some possible shifts in emphasis. Perhaps at Thessalonica Paul shifted his teaching on the parousia. Perhaps after Galatians he emphasized his role as apostle more. Perhaps after emphasis he talked more about suffering.

Nevertheless, I personally don't think any of the new glut of Pauline theologies have as much to offer us as Dunn's.
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Other books or compilations by Dunn mentioned thus far:
Jesus and the Spirit (1975)
Romans 1 and 2 (1988)
Jesus, Paul, and the Law (1990)
Jews and Christians (1992)
Galatians (1993)
The Theology of Paul's Letter to the Galatians (1993)
1 Corinthians (1995)
Paul and the Mosaic Law (1996)
Colossians/Philemon (1996)
Acts (1996)
Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels (2011).