The English-speaking world has not seen much of Peter Stuhlmacher’s celebrated work prior to the translation and publication of these eleven essays. As a collection of essays written over several years this book has obvious limitations, yet as a sampler of the work of a scholar who is productfully engaged in the biblical-theological enterprise this book is of special interest.

Stuhlmacher adopts a traditio-historical approach to his NT themes, tracing them back to their antecedents in the OT by way of Judaism. By this means he hopes to ‘reconstruct the verbal and experiential context from which the principal themes of New Testament theology and proclamation arose’ (p. xiv). To get a flavour of these eleven essays we will attempt to summarize Stuhlmacher’s thoughts on the three topics of reconciliation, law and righteousness.

For Stuhlmacher the theme of reconciliation is not to be credited to Paul or the early church alone, but originates in the ministry of Jesus in which he set himself forth as Messiah, the ‘incarnation of God’s word about reconciliation’ (p. 12).

So reconciliation is consistent not only with an historical reconstruction of Jesus’ ministry, but also with his interpretation of his own death. In his first essay Stuhlmacher argues that Jesus’ death came as a result of his Messianic mission, but the meaning of his death as an atonement was not enunciated until after the resurrection, and then by the early church. Thus Mk. 10:45 reflects the primitive community’s post-Easter perspective on the crucifixion. However, in his second and later essay, an analysis of Mk. 10:45, Stuhlmacher changes his mind. Mk. 10:45 (Mt. 20:28) is ‘authentic Jesus tradition rather than a tradition derivative either from the theology of the early Christian community or simply from Old Testament-Jewish martyr tradition’ (p. 17).

The turning-point seems to have been Stuhlmacher’s discovery of the traditio-historical link for Jesus’ saying not so much in Is. 53:10–12 as in Is. 43:3–4. Here the true equivalent for lutron, kopher (rather than the asam of Is. 53), is used in the context of Yahweh giving Egypt for Israel’s ransom (43:3); people (adam) in exchange for Israel’s life (nephesh). ‘The Son of Man in Mk. 10:45 takes the place of the people whom Yahweh will give as a ransom for Israel’s life’ (p. 23). So Jesus rejects the exalted position of the Son of Man in Dn. 7 and, rather than being served by angels and worshipped by nations, he himself serves and gives his life for the many, thus embodying the creative and sacrificial love of God. Since Is. 43:3–4 ‘plays no significant role in early Christian arguments from scripture’, its parallel with Mk. 10:45 confirms the authenticity of this Jesus saying.

A final essay on Eph. 2:14 (chapter eleven) picks up the theme of peace and reconciliation in its post-Pauline trajectory. Stuhlmacher views this passage as a Christological exegesis of Is. 9:5–6; 52:7 and 57:19, two passages held together by the catchword ‘peace’. The law, conceived in cosmic terms as a hostile wall of separation between Jews and Gentiles as well as between God and man, is abolished by Christ. Thus a new community emerges, established by Jesus’ atoning death and characterized by peace between Jew and Gentile, God and man.

Stuhlmacher views both Jesus’ and Paul’s understanding of the law as building upon a theological tradition found within Jewish Scripture. For Stuhlmacher it is necessary to maintain a distinction between the Sinai torah and the Zion torah of the prophets (e.g. Is. 2:2–4). The latter will bring the Sinai torah to completion and, aided by God’s Spirit, go forth to the nations. Jesus’ authority, his inauguration of a new age of salvation, as well as his proclamation of an original will of God, can best be understood in terms of this expectation of a Zion torah. This theological insight was developed by the Hellenistic Stephen circle in its understanding of a new covenant and torah superseding the covenant and torah of Sinai. Paul’s understanding of the law develops along these same lines, though his theology was more profoundly and directly shaped by his personal encounter with Christ on the Damascus Road. The epiphany of the crucified and now risen and glorious Christ meant that the law which had condemned the Christ to death was now nullified by God’s action in raising Christ from the dead. Christ introduces a new age in which the power of the law has been broken by the cross; he is both the end of the law and the obedient Son who fulfils the true intention of the law. The Sinai torah, which had been only a caricature of God’s good will, dominated as it was by sin, has been brought to an end and God’s will has been demonstrated in Christ, manifest in the ‘law of Christ’. Thus the unique element in Stuhlmacher’s treatment of the law is this distinction between the Sinai and Zion torah. But the essays on law have limited relevance to present-day discussions because there is no interaction with the views of E. P. Sanders, whose views have reoriented the scholarly debate. One wishes that at least an extended footnote had been added.

Perhaps the most challenging of Stuhlmacher’s essays are those dealing with the topic of righteousness.Building upon and correcting his well-known dissertation (Gerechtigkeit Gottes bei Paulus, 1986), Stuhlmacher no longer views the righteousness of God as a terminus technicus always meaning God’s own righteousness. He now argues for a synthetic range of meaning in both Jesus and Paul in which the righteousness of God is both God’s creative power in bringing new life for sinners and the quality of that new life conferred. The overriding theme is not God’s judgment, but his mercy and grace by which he reclaims a lost creation. Stuhlmacher finds the term ‘satisfaction’ to be an unbiblical way of speaking of the atonement (p. 48 n. 2) and he will not use the term ‘propitiation’ (hilasterion = mercy seat/place of atonement), though he does view Jesus’ death as a ‘vicarious sacrifice’ (p. 42). ‘God’s righteousness is to show itself as a power creating new life for sinners in this way, that the sinner-destroying no (in biblical terms, the wrath of God) strikes the Son of Man who takes the place of sinners and not those who are really guilty’ (p. 42). In this Stuhlmacher is pointing the way towards a recovery of the eschatological context of atonement, an emphasis too frequently lost in classical debates as well as evangelical restatements of the atonement.

There is much food for thought in these pages and, as with the work of Martin Hengel, readers will be encouraged, not to say challenged, by the evangelical themes emanating from Tübingen.

---