I want to do a final wrap-up of my impressions of Douglas A. Campbell, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul.
Obviously, in a book of 936 pages (plus a couple hundred pages of end-notes), one will find far too many areas of agreement and disagreement to outline thoroughly. In case you’re dying with the suspense, I’ll summarize with what is sure to be a huge 
disappointment to my readers: I agree with everyone else. The book is fantastic in its positive program of the apocalyptic reading, especially from Romans 3:20 onward, and unpersuasive in what precedes.
Having said that, I should also say that, should Campbell prove to be entirely right, it will lend further credibility to my thesis that resurrection is a primary key for making sense of Paul’s argument in Romans. (This will become more clear as I go on in this post and the next.) So, I would love for Campbell to be completely right. I’ll spend a couple days working through what I find compelling before spending a day on critique.
For me, the good stuff starts on p. 601. This is where Campbell works out his program of “apocalyptic rereading” with a discussion of Rom 1:16-17 and 3:21-31. DAC rightly insists on reading these two passages together–a move that should only be augmented by making the same insistence about chs. 4 and 10, where the terminology is once again densely rehearsed.
Campbell provocatively, and largely correctly, insists that pistis in these passages be seen as something along the lines of fidelity, something even roughly equivalent to obedience. I wouldn’t go as far as DAC as to say that these are “interchangeable” (612), but I would agree that pistis is manifest in obedience, as Rom 1:5 makes clear.
Campbell argues that Rom 1:17 cites Hab 2:4 Christologically as an indication of Jesus’ death and resurrection (613). I had argued previously, “God’s righteousness is unveiled, not in a general resurrection of the just… but in the resurrection of the one who showed his justice by becoming faithfully obedient unto death… Rom 1:1-4 prepares the readers of the letter to interpret Hab 2:4 as a first demonstration of resurrection hermeneutics in the letter: the One who was righteous by faith now lives” (Unlocking Romans, 47). Campbell makes a similar connection between Rom 1:1-4 and 1:17 (615).
As he goes on, DAC also makes some compelling arguments about the nature of faith as fidelity toward God. Moreover, the Christological reading of pistis terminology provides the strongest basis for Paul’s language that God’s righteousness is revealed: it is truly revealed when Jesus comes and acts. When he turns to reread Rom 3:21-26, he insists on keeping hold of this “Christological key,” to good effect. Only a Christological reading of ek pisteos can make sense of Paul’s claim that Jesus is put forward as a hilasterion, by faith, in his blood.” How do ” by faith” and “in his blood” function as correlative modifiers of “sacrifice of atonement [or mercy seat]“? When they both connote the same reality of Jesus’ death on the cross.
As Campbell makes the argument for his reading of Rom 3:20-26, he musters some of the best evidence for pistis Christou to be read as a subjective genitive that I have yet seen. This section is worth its weight in gold.
As I argued in Unlocking Romans, so in Deliverance of God Campbell makes the point that Rom 1:2-4 creates the expectation among
readers that Christ’s resurrection and enthronement are the keys to the narrative of Jesus we encounter in the book, an expectation affirmed when we see it worked out in Rom 1:17 and Hab 2:4 and picked up in Rom 4:25. Campbell builds on this facet of the letter to argue that “justification” has a liberative, resurrection sense even in 3:20-26. This is a compelling reading, one of those places where I sense that his project is making significant progress in our reading of Romans (656-65; 672ff.).
One facet of Campbell’s argument in this regard is his reading of Rom 6:7, where Paul says, “The one who died has been justified from sin.” He follows Robin Scroggs (as I did previously in Unlocking Romans, 113-14) in arguing that Christ is the subject here. He works out the liberative connotations of resurrection to further support his reading of justification along those lines. Both in adding his voice to the chorus of a Christological reading of 6:7 and in stretching our understanding of justification, Campbell provides rich fare for future exegesis of Romans.
Next time, we’ll continue analyzing the book’s strengths with a dip into Campbell’s arguments about “the righteousness of God” and about father Abraham.
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of Deliverance of God from the publisher, but with no stipulation either that I would review it or review it positively. I also received a free copy of Unlocking Romans, but you probably already knew that.
