Incongruous and Creative Grace: Reading Paul and the Gift with Martin Luther

Abstract

AbstractPaul and the Gift by John Barclay advances an interpretation of Paul’s theology of grace that resonates with Martin Luther’s reading: God’s gift is God’s Son, Jesus Christ, given for and to the unworthy. To imagine Luther reading Paul and the Gift is thus to conjure images of deep and fundamental consensus. But questions remain. Is the law a cultural canon of worth that God’s gift of Christ ignores, or is it, as God’s law, a fixed judgement that God’s grace contravenes? Does God give only ‘without regard to worth’ and thus with a kind of divine indifference to cultural indices of value, or does the gift of Christ contradict the conditions of its receipts and thus come in a way that is actually incongruous? With these questions, Luther might push back against Barclay. With others he would ask Barclay to go further. Is not God’s incongruous grace also and characteristically creative? How is the gift of Christ that God gave present to and for recipients as the gift God now gives? In all these ways, Luther’s theology of the word poses questions to or invites expansions of Barclay’s theology of grace.