2026/01/01 by Collin Cornell · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Religion, Theology, History, Judaism, Christianity #Biblical Studies and Interpretation #Augustinian Studies and Theology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1177/00405736251378506
openalex publication_date 2026/01/01 · openalex created_date 2026/01/08 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/15
2016 at Princeton Theological Seminary under the supervision of Beverly Gaventa.It is a book, but not only in the sense of being nicely bound, roughly 250 pages long, and emblazoned with an arresting image on the dust jacket-a Renaissance painting of the expulsion from paradise (left margin) and the annunciation (center), suggesting a visual segue from divine wrath to mercy.It is a book in the sense of making a grand, concerted, concentric argument rather than just a specialized study.To be sure, a particular passage, Romans 9-11, features in the book's subtitle, but this one text is, according to Dixon, a microcosm: God's wrath and mercy shown to Israel in this section of Romans constitute "a test case-the test case-for the gospel of Romans 1-8" that pertains to all humankind (161).Paul's discourse about wrath and mercy in turn receives and activates theological possibilities running throughout the "Jewish Scriptures."Dixon's argument is nested: one passage within a letter, one apostle within his scriptural "thought world" (73), and, zooming out yet further, the Jewish Scriptures within "Greco-Roman Thought" beside them and Christian biblical interpretation after them.The result is a book about Paul-but really also a book about divine judgment and mercy in Christian theology.As such, it will interest readers far beyond the guild of Paul scholarship or New Testament research.Paul and the Wrath begins with a 23-page introduction.This chapter introduces the principal concern of the work, the putative opposition between divine wrath and mercy, and it lofts the constructive proposal, that in Paul's letters, divine mercy contains wrath."Judgment is not an addition to but a component of mercy" (12).A brief literature review establishes that the book meets a need: several "movements" in recent academic Paul studies have not produced any focused or integrative treatments of wrath.The "schools" Dixon covers are threefold: the New Perspective, the apocalyptic reading, and the "Grace School" surrounding John Barclay at Durham.Notably missing from this roster are any references to the burgeoning "Paul within Judaism" approach (or its more recent offshoot, "Paul within Paganism").