Review of: Nijay K. Gupta. Paul and the Language of Faith Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020. Pp. xiii + 225. ISBN 9780802873439

Abstract

The debate surrounding the Pauline term πίστις has spawned many studies of modern biblical scholarship. Each author speculates on exactly how the terms πίστις, πίστεως [Ἰησοῦ] Χριστοῦ, δικαιοσύνη, ἐν Χριστῷ [Ἰησου], σωτηρία, and others refer to each other, to the life in the Mediterranean world of the Apostle to the Gentiles in the first century, and to Christian life today. Nijay Gupta enters into polemics with well-known scholars in his peer-reviewed, ambitious work Paul and the Language of Faith, which offers a kind of synthetic blend of semantic, cultural, linguistic, and contextual analyses of the Apostle to the Gentiles' language of faith. The author of the monograph argues that ‘covenantal pisticism’ best contributes to an understanding of Pauline models of religion (ix, 18-19, 154-55). Gupta's covenantal pisticism rejects images of πίστις that ‘refer to ...a kind of passive reliance on Christ’ and alternatively proposes that Paul's πίστις presupposes ‘a relational covenantal dynamic ... that expects fidelity and reciprocity with trust at the core’ (ix, 143).