John M.G. Barclay, Paul and the Power of Grace. Grand Rapids MI, William B. Eerdmans, 2020, 15,2 × 22,2 cm, xviii-184 p., ISBN 978-0-8028-7461-0

The symphony of Pauline theology, according to Barclay (henceforth B.), is comprehensible from its internal grammar – “the grammar of grace and the gift of Christ” (p. 114). Unlike the tripartite nature of human linguistics – phonetics, morphology and grammar – B. dispenses with phonetics, but retains morphology and grammar. For him, composite and cognate referent words of charis – eucharistia, charisma – and other roots signifying “gift” and “giving” – doma, didômi,dôrea, dôrèma, (p. 1), all fall within the taxonomy of “gift”–charis: Paul aligns these words to formulate a syntax or grammar of “gift” (p. 114), that comprises “giving,” “receiving” and “re-giving” (pp. 3-5). B. moves from the known (anthropology) to the new – Pauline theology. From the anthropology of “gift,” around the experiences of the Pacific Rim, B. bases his hypothesis on Marcel Mauss’ book, “The Gift” (1990) or “Essai sur le don” (1925), where gifts, giving are part of cultural anthropology. Fundamentally, B. avers, gifts create relationships between givers and recipients of gifts. It is paramount to know when to give, receive and reciprocate gifts, in Mauss’ anthropology of “gift.” B. argues that Pauline concept of “gift” follows a theological foundation different from Mauss’s anthropological conclusions (p. xvii-xviii). It is the tapestry, on the basis of the morphologico-grammatic variants of “gift,” of “gift-theology,” that B. offers us as a “gift” in his two books, of similar contents but different lengths and years of publications (Paul and the Gift, 2015 and Paul and the Power of Grace, 2020). Since B. refers (p. 1 footnote 2) readers of the 2020 summary version to the opus magnum of 2015, my review is that of 2020 version, but with symbiotic enrichment from the 2015 version, to avoid misrepresenting his ideas. I must confess that there are additions to the 2020 version that are missing in that of 2015, especially the discussion on Phil 2:6-11 (B. 2020, pp. 119-122). B. combs pre-Pauline and extra-Pauline sources – Second-Temple Judaism, Qumran and Greco-Roman (pp. 1-37) – as pretexts to demonstrate their conception of “gift” as different from Paul’s; he further confronts Paul’s grammar of “gift” with Catholic, Protestant and Western post-modernist understanding of “gift” (pp. 137-159). The middle or centre of his book (pp. 38-136) is dedicated to “updating” the debates around Pauline themes of “justification” as a fulcrum for harmonizing “grace,” “gift” and “sin.” The underlying presupposition, of course, is God’s intervention in human history in the person of Jesus Christ. To understand the concept of “gift” and its variegated meanings, the legitimacy and novelty of the Christ-event is the point of hermeneutic for Paul. It follows that Paul and the Power of Grace makes Christ the primordial “gift” on the basis of whom B. finds a “mirror reading” of Pauline literatures. If Christ is the foundational gift of God to humanity, for B.’s analysis of Pauline corpus (basically Galatians and Romans), the fundamental impact of “grace” or “gift” is anthropological (xvi-xviii). B., from the very first chapter (pp. 1-5), engages the social or relational function of anthropology, as it comes into contact with “grace” and “gift.” Contrary to the Greco-Roman and Western understanding of “gift” as reciprocal, its Paul meaning is unique by Paul’s “incarnation” of “grace” as Christ, and “gift” as the relationship God creates among human beings through the Christ-event (pp. 5-11). The brilliance and novelty of B.’s book features prominently in his “adjectival” analyses. The whole of chapter two (12-23) is dedicated to this “forgotten” truism – the fact that every adjective delimits and circumscribes the meaning of every …