JSNT2& 3 (2006) 353-362 Copyright 2006 SAGE Publications

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DOI 10 1177/0142064X06063247
TUT
A Decontextualized Paul?
A Response to Francis Watson's
Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith

Christopher D. Stanley
St Bonaventura University
St Bonaventure, NY 14778, USA
CSTANLEY@sbuedu

There is much to like about Francis Watson's new book, Paul and the
Hermeneutics of Faith} Watson is clearly a superb reader of texts, and his
thinking is always creative even when it fails to command assent. One has
to admire a scholar who has both the imagination and the temerity to
propose an entirely new approach to the long-standing problem of the
origins and meaning of Paul's central theological concepts.
To his credit, Watson doesnotclaimtooffera comprehensive explanation
of Paul's theology; in fact, he states explicitly that there are important
elements of Paul's thought that cannot be explained by his thesis. But he
does think that he can explain the background of Paul's crucial theological
beliefs about faith,righteousness,the law, election, promise and similar
topics. As Douglas Campbell has indicated in his review, Watson traces
Paul's thinking on these issues to a contextual reading of the Pentateuch.
More specifically, he argues that Paul was seeking to resolve two crucial
contradictions that he discovered while reading the narrative chapters of
the Torah through the lens ofChristian faith. Thefirstis the tension between
the unconditional election of Abraham's descendants in Genesis and the
inauguration of a conditional covenant in the giving of the Torah at Mount
Sinai. The second is the conflict between the Torah's promise to give 'life'
(i.e. well-being) to those who obey it and the accounts of what actually
happened to the generation that received the laws of Torah. Instead of
enjoying 'life', they were condemned to die in the desert when they

1. Watson 2004 Numbers in parentheses in the following discussion refer to page

numbers of this book
354 Journalfor the Study of the New Testament 28.3 (2006)

showed themselves unable to live by the stipulations of the Torah.

Amoment's reflection will show that these are precisely the tensions that
Paul highlights in the dense biblical argumentation of Rom. 4 and Gal. 3.
Indeed, it is tempting to think that Watson's entire project originated with
a moment of insight in which he decided to explore the possibility that the
biblical arguments in these chapters were not secondary attempts to justify
Paul's beliefsfromscripture but recapitulations of the pattern of reasoning
by which Paul arrived at his present theological position. In any event, Paul
is clear (as is Watson) that the resolution of these contradictions is to be
found in God's unconditional saving work in Christ, apartfromthe laws of
Torah.
Watson's emphasis on the vital linkbetween Christ andscripture provides
a useful starting point for a critical examination of his argument. In the
introduction to his book Watson argues that Paul does not simply impose
a set of preconceived ideas onto the biblical text, but rather engages in a
three-way conversation that involves his own faith and experience, the
text of scripture and the ideas of non-Christian Jewish interpreters of
scripture. Watson does not claim that Paulframedhis ideas as a direct
response to the writings ofother Jewish authors. Instead, Watson uses these
other texts (Jubilees, the Qumrmpesharim, Philo, Josephus etc.) as a foil
to demonstrate what is common and what is distinctive aboutPaul's interpre-
tations of the biblical text. The pages in which Watson compares Paul's
readings of scripture with those of other Jewish authors are among the
strongest parts of his book.
When he attempts to spell out his understanding of the dialogue between
Paul and the text of scripture, on the other hand, Watson's language
becomes rather murky. In the introduction he insists that Paul respects the
integrity of scripture and allows it to shape his thinking even as he reads
the biblical text through the lens of his Christian faith. Watson wants to
draw a sharp line between his own views and those of scholars like E.P.
Sanders who (Watson claims) treat Paul's appeals to scripture as a secondary
and dispensable element of both his argumentation and his theology.
Unfortunately, Watson's presentation of Sanders's view is thoroughly
one-sided; he seems to miss the significance ofhis own quotation of Sanders
in which Sanders insists that Paul 'arrived at a position which led him to
read scripture and to understand God's intention in a new light' (p. 16).2
This sounds remarkably similar to some of Watson's own statements, such

2. The quote is from Sanders 1983: 46.

 STANLEY A DecontextualizedPaul? 355

as his claim that 'Paul's rereading of scripture is determined by his single

apostolic preoccupation with the Christ-event, which must be interpreted
through the lens of the scriptural witness' (pp. 16-17). Elsewhere he admits
that Paul's Christian faith sometimes led him to engage in 'strong mis-
readings' of the biblical text and asserts that 'for Paul as for any preacher,
interpreting scripture is always a means to the particular ends he has in
view' (p. 22). It is hard to see how statements like these, which are scattered
throughout the book (e.g. pp. 22,294,298,340,437), can be squared with
Watson's repeated insistence that Paul respects the integrity and limits of
the biblical text. This is certainly not a dialogue between equal partners.
Still, one would be hard pressed tofindmany scholars these days who
would disagree with Watson's assertion that Paul read the text of scripture
in light of Christ while simultaneously using scripture to clarify the signifi-
cance of the Christ-event. So what makes Watson's approach different?
According to Watson, prior interpreters of Paul's letters have failed to
recognize how closely Paul's theological statements are tied to his biblical
hermeneutic. Paul's statements about 'justification by faith', the role of
the law, therelationbetweensinanddeath, and so on, should be understood
notaselementsofanabstracttheologicalsystem,butratheras the immediate
fruit of Paul's Christian engagement with the text of scripture. As Watson
frames it, 'Paul's so-called "view of the law" is nothing other than his
reading of a text; his "theology of justification" is in reality a scriptural
hermeneutic; and the reading and the hermeneutic are intertwined, since
the hermeneutic is itself an exegetical construct based on selected key
texts' (pp. 2-3).
The bulk of Watson's book is dedicated to clarifying what he means by
these statements. In thefirsthalf of the book he lays out the evidence for
his belief that Paul's arguments in Rom. 1-4 and Gal. 3, including his
concept of 'righteousness by faith', reflect a Christian reading of the book
ofHabakkukand the Genesis narrative of Abraham's life. Dozens of pages
are devoted to showing how Paul's interpretation of these passages both
resembles and differsfromthe views of other Jewish authors of his time.
In the second half of the book Watson labors to demonstrate that Paul's
assorted statements about the Jewish laws are the product of a selective
but coherent reading of the narrative chapters of the Torah. Watson's
analysis of Paul's Torah quotations leads him to the conclusion that
'Paul's "view of the law" is nothing other than his reading of Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy' (p. 275). As in thefirsthalf of the
book, Watson devotes substantial time to comparing Paul's readings of
356 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 28.3 (2006)

the Torah narratives with those of other Jewish interpreters.

One of the surprising things about Watson's analysis is how much
weightheplaces on a few key biblical verses that Paul quotes in his letters.
Watson claims thatmuch of Paul's argumentation in Romans and Galatians
was designed to signify to his audience that the biblical passages that he
cites are the hermeneutical Grundlage upon which his assertions are
based. Yet Watson is ambivalent about the precise nature of this link
between Paul's biblical quotations and his fundamental theological ideas.
In the early chapters of the book he focuses on the role of biblical citations
in the surface texture orrhetoricofPaul's letters. Much of Watson's detailed
exegetical work in these chapters aims to show that Paul's statements
about sin, justification, the law and so on reflect a Christian reading of
particular biblical passages. The ultimate goal of Paul's biblical argumen-
tation, according to Watson, was to convince his audiences that his view
of the Christ-event was plausible in the light of scripture. Implicit in this
understanding of Paul's rhetorical purpose is the presumption that Paul's
audiences would have been able to retrace and approve the reasoning that
lies hidden behind his quotations.
Yet Watson seems unwilling to leave matters there. Scattered throughout
his book are many other passages in which he seems to suggest that Paul
actually derived many of his key theological ideasfromthe biblical texts
that he quotes in his letters. Again and again he speaks of Paul 'finding' or
'discovering' things in the text of scripture (pp. 24,290), 'learning' things
from his reading of a particular passage (pp. 214,422,452), 'deriving' an
ideafromhis engagement with the biblical text (p. 380; cf. p. 362) and
being 'led' to certain conclusions through his dialogue with the language
ofscripture (p. 193). In fact, the bulk of his book is devoted to explicating
how Paul 'read' the text of scripture as a Christian. How these two forms
of 'reading' (i.e. the rhetorical and the theological) relate to one another is
never clarified.
This is not to say that Watson's reconstructions ofPaul ' s biblical reason-
ing are poorly executedin fact, the opposite is true. Watson is a creative
reader, and he does a good job of making his readings appear plausible.
But likemostrecentattempts to retrace the way in whichPaul read particular
passages of scripture, Watson offers no criteria for evaluating the validity
of either his methodology or his readings. As a rule, Watson begins with
one of Paul's explicit quotations and explores how Paul's use of the text
relates to its present rhetorical context, its original literary context and its
broader interpretive context (i.e. how the same text was read by other
 STANLEY A DecontextualizedPaul? 357

Jewish interpreters ofhis day). Watson's lengthy reconstructions of Paul's

manner of reading presuppose that Paul reflected deeply on the context of
his quotationsnot only the immediate literary context, but also the
broader context provided by an entire book or collection of books (i.e. the
Torah narratives). When we ask how Watson knows that this is the way
Paul interacted with the text of scripture, however, we find few clear
answers. The amount of space that he devotes to exegesis suggests that he
presumed that the validity of his approach would be apparent from the
quality of the readings that it generated, but this is never explicitly stated.
The only place where Watson makes a serious effort to justify his
approach to Paul's quotations is in chapter 1, where he argues that the
presence of 'unusually close' lexical and semantic associations between a
quotation and its Pauline antecedent (i.e. the assertion that the quotation is
meant to support) 'indicate that the antecedent has been formulated with
the citation already in mind' (p. 46). From this Watson concludes that the
verse that Paul quotes serves as the foundation for the ensuing argument.
But this is a non sequitur. The presence of such artificial links reveals
only that Paul found it useful in a particular case to integrate the source
text more closely into his argument in order to strengthen the impression
that the authoritative text supported his assertion. Such a construction
says nothing about the role played by the quoted text in the ensuing
argument. It is certainly possible that Watson's analysis of Paul's argument
is correct, but better evidence is needed to support such claims.
For similarreasons, Watson'speriodic hints that Paul might have arrived
at his positions on importanttheological questions as aresult ofhis reflection
on the biblical passages that he quotes in his letters are difficult to evaluate.
The fact that Paul chose to cite a verse of scripture in one ofhis letters
indicates only that he found the verse useful for advancing his argument;
it says nothing about what role this text might have played in the develop-
ment ofhis ideas. Even if Watson were correct in his descriptions of the
relation between Paul's Torah quotations and the Pentateuchal narratives,
this would show only that Paul was able tofindsupport for his ideas in the
text of the Pentateuch, not that he derived his ideas from his reading of
those particular passages. While it is possible that Paul did in fact choose
to quote the biblical texts that led him to his views, this cannot be inferred
from the way he cites scripture in support ofhis arguments.
Behind both of these lines of thought lies the unstated presumption that
Paul's explicit quotations contain the key to his 'hermeneutics of faith'. In
fact, Watson's entire project is built around the assumption that Paul's
358 Journalfor the Study of the New Testament 28.3 (2006)

quotations reveal the essential nature ofhis hermeneutical engagement

with the textofscripture. Unfortunately, Watson fails to explain why Paul's
quotations should be privileged over other forms of engagement with the
Jewish scriptures. Watson virtually ignores Paul's more oblique references
to scripture (i.e. his allusions and echoes) on the grounds that these materials
wouldhaveaddedlittleto whatcanbe gleanedfromthe quotations (p. 521).
How Watson can know this without engaging in a careful examination of
the evidence is unclear. In fact, one could argue that these less explicit
references to scriptureofferamorereliablepoolof data for analyzing Paul's
personal engagement with the Jewish scriptures than do his quotations,
since the influence of Paul's rhetorical agenda is less apparent in his use
of allusions and echoes.
The problem with using Paul's quotations as the sole basis for charac-
terizing his interaction with the text of scripture is that quotations are not
rhetorically neutral. Paul quotes the words of scripture in order to enhance
the persuasiveness ofhis arguments, not to indicate where he got his ideas.
His decision to introduce biblical quotations into his letters is shaped as
much by his perception of the rhetorical situation as by his own prior
reading of scripture. Watson is clearly aware of the rhetorical dimension
of Paul's quotations (pp. 40-53), but he says virtually nothing about how
Paul's use of explicit biblical quotations might relate to the circumstances
that gave rise to a particular letter. In other words, Watson's analysis of
Paul's quotations (along with the rest of Paul's arguments) takes place in
a historical and rhetorical vacuum. This omission is not necessarily fatal
to Watson's enterprise, but it certainly casts a cloud over his work. The
possibility of distortion always lurks on the horizon whenever Paul's
letters are divorcedfromtheir historical context.
Watson acknowledges this omission in hisfinalchapter (p. 531), but he
does not see this decontextualization of Paul's quotations as a problem.
According to Watson, Paul developed his interpretations of scripture in
dialogue with the views of other Jews who interacted with the same texts,
not in response to the concrete circumstances ofhis local churches. Paul's
reading of scripture was motivated by a concern to make sense of the
Christ-event in light of his ancestral scriptures and vice versa, both for
himselfand for his audiences. In other words, Watson's Paul is a reflective
theologian who pores over the text of scripture in an effort to clarify his
own ideas and commend them to others, not a pragmatic theologian who
turns to the scriptures for aid in dealing with the issues and problems that
troubled his churches.
 STANLEY A Decontextualized Paul? 359

This picture of Paul is problematic to say the least. As Richard Hays

showed clearly in his influential study Echoes of Scripture in the Letters
of Paul (1989), Paul's personal engagement with the text of scripture,
insofar as it is revealed in his letters, seems to have been motivated by a
desire to uncover God's intentions for the community of Christian disciples
(i.e. ecclesiology), not to understand what God had done in Christ (i.e.
Christology or soteriology). Paul clearly believed that the coming of
Christ had taken place in accordance with scripture, but he usually relies
on traditionalformulaewhenhe wants to underline this point. If we consider
the full breadth of Paul's use of scripture in his letters rather than limiting
ourselves to a few well-chosen quotations, the evidence is overwhelming
that Paul read the Jewish scriptures with the needs and problems ofhis
churches in mind. In short, Paul's reading of scripture was rooted in his
own historical context.
This is not the only area in which Watson has to decontextualize Paul in
order to make his thesis more plausible. Watson bases his conclusions
aboutPaul's 'view of the law' and his 'theology of justification' on a small
(though important) selection of texts drawn almost exclusively from
Galatians and Romans. The selectivity ofhis argument becomes apparent
when we note that Watson overlooks many other passages in which Paul
expresses similar ideas without reference to the Jewish scriptures (e.g.
Rom. 5.6-11; 2 Cor. 5.17-21; Gal. 2.15-21; Phil. 3.7-10). Why Paul should
have felt the need to cite scripture in some contexts and not others is
never explained. Watson also has to play down or ignore several quotations
from the Pentateuch that do not fit readily into his thesis about the way
Paul construed the Torah narratives (Rom. 12.19; 1 Cor. 5.13; 9.9; 15.45;
2 Cor. 8.15; 13.1; Gal. 5.14). Even more surprising is Watson's relative
neglect of a number of quotationsfromthe Prophets and the Writings that
relate directly to Paul's thinking about justification and the law (e.g. Rom.
9.25-29; 10.11-12). In fact, Watson discusses only one passage in which
Paul quotesfromthe Prophets (Rom. 1.16-17 ; cf. Gal. 3.11) and one from
the Writings (Rom. 3.10-18), even though the great majority of Paul's
quotations come from these two sections of the canon. Once the textual
material has been circumscribed in this manner, it is no wonder that Watson
is able to 'discover' a direct link between Paul's statements about justifi-
cation and the law on the one hand and the Torah narratives on the other.
The use of such a limited body of evidence raises serious questions about
the validity of Watson's conclusions.
Yet another element that is missingfromWatson's analysis is the pre-
360 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 28.3 (2006)

Pauline Christian interpretive tradition. In Watson's model Paul engages

infreshreadings of the Jewish scriptures without any apparent guidance
from earlier Christian readers of scripture. Their voices are notably absent
from the three-way 'conversation' that Watson claims gaveriseto Paul's
ideas. Yet there is ample evidence that Christians were using the Jewish
scriptures to make sense of the Christ-event and to guide the life of the
church long before Paul penned his letters. Paul himself seems to acknowl-
edge that the idea of 'righteousness by faith' did not originate with him,
but was accepted by those who disagreed with him on other points (cf.
Gal. 2.14-16). Precisely what Paul learnedfromthose who were Christians
before him is unclear, but we can assume that it included information
about the relation of the Christ-event to the Jewish scriptures (cf. 1 Cor.
15.3-4)andbeliefsaboutthewaysinfiilhumansare restored to a 'righteous'
relationship with God. Paul obviously developed these ideas further over
time, but his letters provide no clear evidence that he discovered any of
them for the first time while perusing the words of scripture. His own
engagement with the biblical text seems to have been driven by questions
arising out ofhis missionary experience that were not adequately addressed
in the instruction that he had receivedfromothers, such as the relevance
of the Torah for Gentiles or the place of Jews and Gentiles in God's plan.
Theonlyplace where the localized context of Paul's letters comes clearly
into view in Watson's study is when he suggests that Paul used quotations
as a means of inviting his audience to reread familiar biblical passages
from a new angle in order to confirm the validity ofhis arguments (p. 78).
This understanding of Paul's intentions is vital to Watson's interpretation
ofhis letters, since he insists that Paul's quotations are designed to point
his audiences to the biblical passages upon which his arguments are based.
Unfortunately, Watson's suggestion fails to take seriously the real-world
social context of Paul's letters. In thefirstplace, Watson ignores the fact
that most people in the Greco-Roman world (perhaps 80-90 percent,
according to the best studies) were illiterate and thus incapable of reading
the biblical text on their own. He also presumes that a sizeable contingent
of biblical scrolls would have been available for consultation and review
by those few members of Paul's churches who would have been able to
read them. But scrolls were expensive in antiquity, and Jewish synagogues
were not alwaysfriendlyto people who were associated with the nascent
Christian movement. Further problems arisefromWatson's presumption
that Paul expected the literate members ofhis churches to be able to recon-
struct the reasoning behind his often allusive references to scripture and
 STANLEY A Decontextualized Paul? 361

explain them to others. Anyone who has worked on Paul's quotations

knows that the reasoning behind his readings is often opaque; indeed,
Pauline scholars with all of their resources have been unable to reach
agreementonwhatPaul was doing in many cases. Finally, Watson assumes
that Paul's audiences would have been willing to accept Paul's readings
of scripture as valid once they hadfiguredout his reasoning. Yet Watson
himselfpoints again andagain to the existence of alternative interpretations
of most of the biblical passages that Paul cites in his letters. Why should
we presume that the literate members of Paul's audiences would have
chosen to accept Paul's often tendentious readings inplace ofother interpre-
tations thatfrequentlymademore senseofthepassage that he cites? Watson
never addresses this question.
If in fact Paul did expect the members ofhisfirst-centuryaudiences
even the literate elitesto be able to uncover the implied links between
his quotations and their original contexts and then to accept his interpre-
tations without question, heprobably would have been sorely disappointed.
Fortunately, a thorough study of the rhetoric of Paul's quotations reveals
that Paul typically surrounded his quotations with enough explanatory
material to ensure that his audiences could grasp his central point even if
they knew nothing about the original context.3 This suggests that Paul did
not expect his audiences to go back and reread the passages that he cited
(assuming that they couldfindthem) in order to validate his arguments.
This brings us to one last problem with Watson's methodology. Watson
argues repeatedly in his book that the real meaning ofmany ofPaul's theo-
logical terms and arguments can be found by examining the way in which
these terms are used in the biblical passages that Paul cites in his letters.
For example, Watsoninsiststhatthe term 'righteousness' refers to the status
of humans before God because that is what it means in Hab. 2.4, while the
term 'faith' signifies belief in God's unconditional promise, since that is
how it is used in Gen. 15.6. When we look at how Paul actually uses these
terms in his letters, on the other hand, their meaning is more ambiguous.
Other scholars have argued that Paul's usage points toward different senses
for both words. Watson's claim that the meaning of Paul's terms should
be derivedfromthe way they are used in the Jewish scriptures rather than
from Paul's own usage violates one of the fundamental tenets of discourse
analysis. In actuality, a careful study of Paul's rhetorical practices shows
that Paul often uses biblical quotations to introduce language and ideas

3. This idea is developed further in Stanley 2004.

362 Journalfor the Study of the New Testament 28.3 (2006)

whose full meaning he plans to unpack and develop in the course of the
ensuing argument.4
More could be saidaboutthe details ofWatson's analysis, but these com-
ments should be sufficient to show that his arguments and conclusions are
based on a shaky foundation. Watson's interpretation of Paul's thought is
attractive onfirstreading, not only because it is erudite and well argued,
but also because, as Douglas Campbell has pointed out, it offers theological
advantages over the traditional approaches to some of the questions that
Watson seeks to address. In the end, however, it does not hold up under
scrutiny. Paul remains an enigmatic figure whose ideas come to us only
through letters that are inseparably tied to specific historical and rhetorical
contexts. Watson's book shows once again that no study of Paul's thought
that fails to take these contexts seriously can hope to be successful.

References
Hays, R.B.
1989 Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University
Press).
Sanders, E.P.
1983 Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (Minneapolis: Fortress Press).
Stanley, CD.
2004 Arguing with Scripture: The Rhetoric of Quotations in the Letters ofPaul
(London: T&T Clark International).
Watson, F.B.
2004 Paul and the Hermeneutics ofFaith (London: T&T Clark International).

4. See again Stanley 2004.

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