Tom Holland

Contours of Pauline Theology, A Radical New Survey of the Influences
on Paul’s Biblical Writings. Tom Holland.
Mentor/Christian Focus, Rosshire 2004; pp £np ppc ISBN 1-85792-469-X

Tom Holland rejects the liberal view that Paul’s religion was a synthesis of Judaism and Hellenism, in favour of the traditional view that Paul’s influences were almost entirely those of the Old Testament interpreted in the light of the cross and resurrection. His arguments strongly support his claim that Paul can only be rightly understood as a faithful Jewish exegete and theologian of the Old Testament.

Dr Holland believes that the New Exodus theme as fulfilled by Jesus Christ is the proper paradigm for understanding Paul. He successfully shows that Paul must not be understood to be writing to individuals, but to communities, with the result that previously invisible corporate and covenantal themes come suddenly but clearly into view. They are the relationship between the Passover on the one hand, and community, soteriology, and Christology on the other. His insights are challenging and exegesis provoking.

As an aside, a weakness in my view is his attempt to show that many of the baptismal passages have nothing to do with the sacrament. Here he betrays a strongly non-sacramental presupposition, and in this point at least, he is out of step with orthodox readings of the texts.

Dr Holland is to be applauded for his critical engagement with the whole range of modern scholarship, particularly Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, who is at the storm centre of contemporary Pauline studies. While generally supporting his covenantal reading of Paul, with qualifications, he disagrees that the Reformation was wrong to think that justification included the imputation of Christ’s personal righteousness to the church. He makes a strong defence of it by showing from Romans 5 that since Adam’s personal guilt is imputed to us, it is right and proper for Christ’s personal obedience also to be credited to our account. No doubt this particular defence of a central doctrine will be welcomed in many circles. This is a timely and scholarly contribution, which I warmly commend.

Roger du Barry
The Journal of The Church of England(Continuing)
Issue No: 31 April 2005

Contours of Pauline Theology: A Radical New Survey of the Influences on Paul
Currents in Theology and Mission,  August, 2007 by Graydon F. Snyder

Contours of Pauline Theology: A Radical New Survey of the Influences on Paul. By Tom Holland. Fearn, Scotland: Mentor, 2004. 382 pages. Cloth. $22.99.

Tom Holland teaches New Testament and Hermeneutics at the University of Wales. This book on Paul was written in the context of his work in that university. While not a simple study, Holland’s theses are straightforward. First, the theology of Paul depends more on the Hebrew Scriptures than on Hellenistic thinking (pp. 109, 288). Second, Paul speaks of communal deliverance rather than individual salvation (p. 110). Third, the Exodus or Paschal motif formed the basis of Paul’s Christology (pp. 167-72, 225, 290).
Though the Exodus motif depends on Pentateuchal narratives, especially Exodus, Holland finds in the prophet Isaiah the most immediate use of the motif for Paul, especially the doulos passages (pp. 31-34). The believer enters the Christian Paschal community through baptism in the death of Jesus (Rom 6:1-6; pp. 141-54). That death of Jesus, which opens up the New Israel, reflects one primary motif–the Passover (Rom 3:21-26 and the meaning of hilasterion; pp. 157-82). So in Paul divine justification references the whole process of redemptive history. It speaks of the “corporate salvation accomplished by Christ’s death and resurrection” (p. 209). Holland appreciates the New Perspective on Paul that tries to erase the assumed antagonism between Paul and Judaism (e.g., Sanders, Dunn, and Wright), but he believes their view of the Jewish law as covenantal nomism doesn’t quite allow covenant to be defined in terms of the Exodus rather than boundary markers, such as circumcision, Sabbath observance, and kosher food (pp. 183-205).

Finally, Holland wrestles with another major theme of the historical Exodus and the theology of Paul: the firstborn. As he is aware, the joining of Jesus as the suffering servant with the firstborn does not easily satisfy the reader or even Holland himself (pp. 237-86). He does derive some satisfaction from the secondary Pauline hymn found in Col 1:15-20 where Christ is the prototokos from the dead.

As indicated, this book is complicated. The language is clear, but the ideas, and the discussions with other scholars, reveal procedural difficulties. Holland assumes that his covenantal thesis goes back to the Reformation. He assumes that he is a conservative and that those who disagree with him are liberals (p. 53). To be sure, liberals do tend to be sociologically individualistic, but no more so than conservatives and fundamentalists who seek the personal salvation of unbelievers. In fact his covenant motif resembles the older Heilsgeschichte theology in which the redeeming act of God occurs in the context of God’s people. A wide spectrum of scholars were associated with this position. Few people would call this reviewer conservative, yet I find myself in considerable agreement with the communal approach presented by Holland. That is, baptism joins the person to the body of Christ, eucharist celebrates the formation of the new Israel, and redemption references acceptance into the people of God. Holland does well to stress once more the communal nature of the Christian faith.

Graydon F. Snyder
Chicago, Illinois
COPYRIGHT 2007 Lutheran School of Theology and Mission
COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale Group

This review appeared in the Spring newsletter of the Evangelical Theological College of Wales (now WEST). The text of the review is available as a PDF file (239Kb).

This review appeared in vol 146: Theological Reflection, 2005 edition of Contact magazine. The text of the review is available as a PDF file (312Kb).

A New look at Paul
‘Contours of Pauline Theology’
A Radical New Survey of the influences on Paul’s Biblical writings
By Tom Holland    Christian Focus:Mentor 2004  £14.99
ISBN 1-85792-469-X
Reviewer: Trevor Reynolds

As Christians, we frequently read our Bibles exclusively in terms of how it applies to ‘me’ rather than ‘us’. Thus, perhaps unwittingly, we become even more embedded in the individualistic ‘me culture’ of today. In this new book, Dr Holland forcefully argues that we need to read the Scriptures in a much more corporate way. He does this by showing how Paul wrote his letters from the viewpoint of one who had been schooled in the corporate/covenant categories of the Old Testament which he went on to apply to his understanding of Christianity. As a Jew, Paul would have thought of salvation primarily in terms of the Exodus and Passover sacrifice, categories which are fundamental to a proper understanding of Paul’s writings.

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Tom Holland, Contours of Pauline Theology (Scotland, Fearn, Ross-shire: Mentor Imprint, Christian Focus Publications, 2004)

Contours of Pauline Theology, the outcome of many years of doctoral research by its author (a lecturer at the Evangelical Theological College of Wales) is a significant new work encompassing a vast range of scholarly study.  It is a carefully researched, thought-provoking and helpful work.  Noting that, ‘For generations scholars have claimed that Paul was the creator of Christianity’, as also that ‘Paul Hellenised the Jewish message’ (p.11), Dr Holland demonstrates above all how Paul operated totally within Jewish parameters of thought, particularly in his theology of the Gospel as a New Exodus.

This is a book to be placed in the hands of serious academics, Jewish or Christian, who are interested in Pauline studies and the relationship between Christianity and Judaism.  But it is also a book for those of us who are involved in Jewish evangelism as we seek to show our Jewish friends that Paul’s Gospel is wholly Jewish.

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Contours of Pauline Theology
Tom Holland
Mentor Press, Ross-Shire, 2004

There is, at present, a huge debate going on in theological studies over the interpretation of Paul and his letters. Among Protestants the massive influence of Luther and Calvin has established a widely accepted understanding of Paul, legalistic religion, the atonement and justification by faith. However, this orthodoxy has been significantly questioned through the present debate. E.P. Sanders provided evidence that first century Judaism had been badly misunderstood by Protestants. The Jewish background to the rise of Christianity was not a religion of works but a much more sophisticated “covenantal nomism”. Evangelicalism has been forced to rethink its understanding of these issues particularly with the influential work of N.T.Wright. To cap it all, at a very popular level, the new perspective has even had its bearing on the recent controversial book from Steve Chalke  - The Lost Message of Jesus.

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Contours of Pauline Theology
Tom Holland
Fearn: Mentor, 2004
382pp, h/b, £14.99
ISBN 1-85792-369-X

The purpose of this important book is to demonstrate that, in contra-distinction to most contemporary New Testament scholarship, Paul was not the innovator who created Christianity but a faithful disciple of Jesus who never left his inherited religion of the Old Testament. The present reviewer, an Old Testament specialist, finds Holland’s arguments as largely compelling and would suggest that Holland has re-integrated the faith of Old and New Testaments in a manner that serves effectively to emphasise the unity of Scripture.

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Contours of Pauline Theology
A Radical New Survey of the Influences on Paul’s Biblical Writings

Book Review

Tom Holland, Scotland, UK: Mentor, 2004, 392 pp.
Generally speaking, conservative Reformed criticisms of the new perspective on Paul strike me as lackluster and predictable. That cannot be said, however, of Tom Holland’s new book, which is bound to shake loose some long-standing presuppositions in Pauline studies.

The book is not without its weaknesses. Holland’s apparent anxiety about the contributions of liberal scholarship (a hallmark of conservative works) can be slightly distracting. One may also question whether Holland has adequately made his case that the literature of second-temple Judaism is too fragmentary to provide much insight into Pauline studies, while at the same time apparently presupposing that nothing stood culturally between the texts of ancient Israel and Paul’s understanding of those texts. The significance of intertestamental writings, many of us believe, is that they serve as reference points in recovering the way in which Jews of that time understood their Scriptures, and considering the fact that we know Paul only through a scattered collection of letters bearing his name, one could very well argue that understanding the apostle’s thought is actually more challenging than understanding the thought of other authors of the time, and quite frankly we can use all the help we can get.

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Contours of Pauline theology
Tom Holland
Christian Focus (Mentor)
382 pages
ISBN 1-85792-469-X

This is a book for scholars and those with a particular interest in Paul’s theology.

If Tom Holland’s conclusions are accepted, then it would mean a radical rethinking in the way we approach some of the well-known passages of Paul’s letters.

The author’s aim is commendable. He seeks to be rid of the old liberal idea that Paul was the creator of Christianity, that he introduced Greek influences, and transformed the original message into something quite different from what Jesus had proclaimed.

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