Paul Today: Challenging Readings of Acts and the Epistles

There is a freshness and clarity to Paul Today that both encourages and inspires the reader to grapple with thorny aspects of Pauline thought. Stephen Need is a gifted theologian-teacher-scholar and writes with great pastoral insight, guiding us sensitively through polemical issues and highlighting layers of historical confusion. Paul the pastor emerges, ‘a thundering type of personality’ who never left Judaism at all, but received a radical reorientation within it, so that Christ and not the Law became the source of justification. Whether he is discussing women, homosexuality or original sin, Stephen Need steers us gracefully through the misguiding lenses of later theological controversies to rediscover the authentic pastoral concerns of Paul himself. This is a book to be greatly welcomed and cherished by students and pastors who struggle, like Paul, to deepen faith in all its contextual complexities.

Those who have a negative image of Paul’s teaching, or who associate him with such doctrines as ‘original sin’ and ‘justification by faith’, will find this book enlightening. Focusing on some notoriously difficult passages, Stephen Need distils recent scholarly work on Paul and shows how many common beliefs about his theology are gross misinterpretations of his thought. Paul Today will help many who have previously dismissed Paul as a bigot and a bore to study his letters with renewed interest and respect.

Well-informed overviews of important texts and critical issues initiate the reader painlessly into the complexities of interpreting the Pauline letters.