Re-examines Paul within contemporary Jewish debate, attuned to the significant theological issues he raises without imposing upon him the frameworks developed in later Christian thought

How far did Paul stray from the view of salvation handed down to him in the Jewish tradition? Following a hunch from E.P. Sanders's seminal book Paul and Palestinian Judaism,Preston Sprinkle finds buried in the Old Testament's Deuteronomic and prophetic perspectives a key that starts to turn the rusted lock on Paul's critique of Judaism.

Following recent intertextual studies, Kyle B. Wells examines how descriptions of ‘heart-transformation’ in Deut 30, Jer 31–32 and Ezek 36 informed Paul and his contemporaries' articulations about grace and agency. Beyond advancing our understanding of how these restoration narratives were interpreted in the LXX, the Dead Sea Literature, Baruch, Jubilees, 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra, and Philo, Wells demonstrates that while most Jews in this period did not set divine and human agency in competition with one another, their constructions differed markedly and this would have contributed to vehement disagreements among them. While not sui generis in every respect, Paul's own convictions about grace and agency appear radical due to the way he reconfigures these concepts in relation to Christ.

Jason Maston reassesses the understanding of divine and human action in second temple Judaism. Sirach and the Hodayot are used to establish the diversity of opinions. The Apostle Paul is situated into this Jewish debate through an analysis of Rom 7–8.

Yoonjong Kim analyses the divine-human relationship in Paul's theology, focusing on Paul's portrayal of the relationship in Romans 1–8. Kim stresses that previous studies of this relationship have not paid sufficient attention to the fact that it is not static, but rather exhibits progression and development towards a goal. To address the significance of the human agent's role in the relationship, Kim employs a social psychological theory – interdependence theory – offering a consistent analytic framework for diagnosing the interactions in a dyadic relationship in terms of the dependency created by each partner's expectations of outcomes. Kim explores several key stages of the divine-human relationship and the direction in which the relationship develops throughout Romans 1–8, in order to highlight the significance of the human partners in the course of the development. He focuses in particular on betrayal (1.18–3.20), restoration (3.21–26; 5.1–11), the oppressive relationship with Sin (5.12–8.11), and the investment for the future (8.12–39), and concludes that although the foundation of the relationship rests on God's initiative, the divine outworking guides the relationship so that it facilitates mutual participation of the human partners in the restoration and development of the relationship toward the ultimate goal.

La 4e de couverture indique : "For the Apostle Paul, humans do not identify and act on their own but are constituted, in part, by relationships. Samuel D. Ferguson shows that, according to Paul, the work of the Holy Spirit further attests to this, as Christians realize their new life through Spirit-created relationships of sonship and communal interdependence"

In God and Grace in Philo and Paul, Orrey McFarland examines how Philo of Alexandria and the Apostle Paul understood divine grace. While scholars have occasionally observed that Philo and Paul both speak about God’s generosity, such work has often placed the two theologians in either strong continuity or stark discontinuity without probing into the theological logic that animates the particularities of their thought. By contrast, McFarland sets Philo and Paul in conversation and argues that both could speak of divine gifts emphatically and in formally similar ways while making materially different theological judgments in the context of their concrete historical settings and larger theological frameworks. That is, McFarland demonstrates how their theologies of grace are neither identical nor antithetical.