John Barclay’s Gift to Theology

John Barclay’s Paul and the Gift wonderfully clarifies Paul’s understanding of gift and grace. Two features stand out: Paul “perfects” the incongruity of grace; grace is unconditioned by any measure of human worth. But Paul does not “perfect” the non-reciprocity of grace; grace is not unconditional, but evokes and expects faithful obedience in return. First, I suggest that this Pauline relation between incongruous grace and reciprocal ethics is faithfully mirrored in Barth’s Church Dogmatics (which remains under-explored in this book). I go on to probe the relationship between divine being and incongruous grace in Paul. How does Paul’s doctrine of God ground his doctrine of grace, and how does his doctrine of grace inform his Trinitarian theology? Finally, I ask whether Barclay’s understanding of dikaiosynē almost exclusively as “worth” sidelines the possibility of exploring the relationship between grace and justice in Paul