Review of Douglas Harink’s Paul among the Postliberals: Pauline theology beyond Christendom and Modernity

In Paul among the Postliberals, Douglas Harink offers a comprehensive introduction to Pauline scholarship as well as an introductory survey to his primary lens, postliberal theology. Harink tracks the postliberal conversation from its forefathers Stendahl and Barth, through to a more detailed engagement with Hauerwas’ and Yoder’s ethical and political readings of Paul. He traverses four major theological strands in the process:

(1) The New Perspective;

(2) The Apocalyptic Perspective;

(3) The Faith of Jesus Christ; and

(4) The Political Perspective.

Harink encourages us to consider Protestantism’s misunderstanding of Justification, largely through the mistranslation of the phrase Pistis Iesou Christou. By engagement with Yoder, Harink points out that politics are central to Jesus’ mission, who was ultimately crucified for his apparent threat to the ‘powers’ in Jerusalem. This Christological focus is enhanced through the apocalyptic theology of Stanley Hauerwas, which highlights the radical revelatory nature of the Christ event, particularly in Galatians. Through his engagement with this literature, Harink develops a deep theological and socio-political understanding of God’s “new creation”, which is invited to participate in God’s work through: the imitation of Christ; gathering together (marked by fraternal admonition, breaking of bread, baptism, and the priesthood of all believers); engaging with broader cultural groups and ‘powers’; ethical, cultural, religious, social and political practices that remain distinct from other people; not replacing Judaism but becoming one people reconciled to each other through Jesus Christ and the power of the Spirit; a people who operate out of, or resemble, the Jewish synagogue. These expectations remain deeply Jewish in outlook and reflect Paul’s commitment to his tradition, which has often been dismissed in Christian theology and Pauline studies.

Harink goes a long way in opposing this dichotomy, with a strong engagement with N.T. Wright’s supposed supersessionist theology. Similarly, Harink rightly expounds the importance of Paul’s context in shaping his outlook (and its similarity to today’s religious and cultural pluralism) via a thorough engagement with Romans and 1 Corinthians. Finally, and thoughtfully, Harink addresses a number of criticisms of the neoliberal approach from the universality of Christianity and its relation to other religions, to the Christian witness and its engagement with the other, finishing with a short but exhaustive summary of “how to preach Paul”.

Ultimately, Harink’s work is a truly authentic Evangelical (re)reading of Paul. Very important to his argument is the translation of Pistis Iesou Christou and the implications of this for the Protestant doctrine of atonement. This is an extremely important step in theology, and one that, through its subversion of long held understandings, often fails to gain traction. However, no-one could possibly question the integrity of the postliberal approach to the biblical text, one that draws its very inspiration from the Protestant reformers.

Harink’s genuine wrestling with scripture encompasses various other important theological questions, none more important than the primacy of the “revelation of God in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection”. This focus on the biblical text as the defining witness for Christians has equal potential to damage as it does to enrich. Namely, postliberal theologians must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater by reacting too strongly against liberal methodologies and rational and experiential socio-political critiques. As an Evangelical I am happy to affirm the importance of scripture as a guiding light for the Christian tradition, however, there is a danger that fundamentalism might evolve from this approach, whereby isolated readings of the text and tradition can become normative rather than informative. This highlights another criticism of the postliberal approach, which through its prioritizing, and interpretation of the text, privileges the theologian and biblical scholar as ‘keepers of the text’. This results in the tradition itself becoming an ‘object’ of the academic as opposed to the ‘subject’ of the gathered people. However, the postliberal theologian would most likely rebuke this critique with an understanding that the community is ‘the keeper of the text’, and that our wrestling with scripture together is the true ‘God event’, rather than the text being a self-apparent entity. This idea is certainly touched on by Harink, but not explored in any depth.

Furthermore, Harink seems to privilege the North-American social imaginary in his survey of postliberalism. One wonders whether religious engagement and vocabulary of postliberalism could be equally relevant in the socio-political discourse of a more ‘secularized’ country such as France or Australia.  For this reason, I believe that if the postliberal prerogative is to be an ongoing force in the global theological and socio-political discourse, it must more thoroughly engage with secularized postmodern and postcolonial critiques. While Harink briefly does this with passing reference to John Milbank (and others), further research needs to address the parallax gap between postmodern ‘proper’, and neoliberal theology’s absolutizing and universalizing claims.

This ‘totalizing’ approach, inherent within postliberal theology, also fails to reckon with both the problem of evil and postmodern ‘weak’ theology. While many postliberal theologians would no doubt default to Barth’s engagement with the problem of evil, as the work of the ‘other’ hand of God, this in no way settles the question of evil: particularly when engaging with secularist discourse. As for the postliberal engagement with ‘weak’ theology, there remains a seemingly insurmountable dichotomy between the postliberal Power of God, and Caputo’s embrace of the weakness of God. This too needs to be the focus of further research.

These criticisms aside, Harink’s work certainly offers the reader a comprehensive and comprehendible foray into Paul’s theology and the postliberal conversation. It is clear that hermeneutical assumptions are central to the debate, and whilst I would personally take a ‘lower’ view of scripture, I see the necessity and value of such a respectful and serious engagement with the biblical witness: centered in the apocalypse of Jesus Christ. Ultimately, a theology must be judged by its fruit, and in this case (in my humble opinion) the ends certainly justifies the means. Here we see a theology drenched in ‘the Power of God’, ‘the authenticity and authority of Scripture’, and ‘the revelation of Jesus Christ’; resulting in communities that radically ‘embrace of the other’ and stand against ‘social and political oppression’. These realizations open the door (for all) to the possibility whereby Christianity and social/political action might stand on the same side of the barricade.