The doctrine of grace, which was at the centre of theological discussion in the early Reformation, had, by the late eighteenth century, washed up in two unpromising shallows. On the one hand there was the view that the sacraments ‘mediate’ grace to enable the living of a Christian life, so that Newman could long for ‘a higher gift than grace’, and on the other hand ‘amazing grace’ spoke to the sense of release from guilt for the individual believer and seemed to have little bearing on society as a whole. In the early twentieth century John Oman attempted to recast the doctrine, anticipating by some decades Barth's account of creation as grace, but it is above all reflection on the nature of the gift relationship, stemming from Mauss's seminal essay of 1925, which has moved the doctrine of grace back in to the theological centre. In this magisterial book John Barclay makes a fundamental contribution to this discussion which puts not just New Testament scholars, or specialists in Paul, but anyone interested in Christian theology in his debt.

The book has four parts. It begins with a sketch of the anthropological discussion (which has generated, of course, a large economic literature, the focus of much discussion of alternatives to neo-liberalism), and offers a masterly discussion of gift and reciprocity in the Graeco-Roman world where, Barclay shows, the idea of the gift which calls for no return, ‘for nothing’, was unknown, but where gifts functioned to create and cement the web of social relationships. A short but very important chapter proposes a six-fold taxonomy of gift, or grace, and the way in which different accounts can be elaborated and pushed to an extreme, then underwriting the claim that this or that account is ‘the’ meaning of grace. Had this taxonomy been available it could, given charity and patience, have transformed the debates of the first three decades of the Reformation. So attention can be drawn to the excess of the gift (e.g. Jean Luc Marion), to the fact that it is the product solely of benevolence, to the way in which it anticipates the needs or wishes of the beneficiary, to the fact that it is given without regard to the worth of the recipient, to its efficacy, or, finally, to the fact that it is given freely, for nothing, expecting nothing in return. The first part concludes with a reception history of the idea of grace, paying special attention to Augustine and above all Luther, whom Barclay identifies as the source of the idea that grace is non-reciprocal, but going right up to Sanders and Badiou. All the classic figures (and I include Barth here) are minefields of interpretation, and specialists with regard to any of them may be inclined to quibble, but no one can read this long chapter without profit.

The second part puts Paul in his context in Second Temple Judaism, but also addresses the tired idea that there was something called ‘Judaism’ which opposed ‘law’ to grace. Examining five texts (Wisdom of Solomon, Philo, Qumran Hodayot, Pseudo Philo and 4 Ezra) Barclay shows that there were manifold meanings of grace amongst Paul's Jewish contemporaries and this diversity shows that not only old clichés but also Sanders's idea of ‘covenantal nomism’ cannot be justified as accounts of what first-century Judaism believed. This section is far from merely of historical interest. How Barth would have loved this discussion (a thought which occurred to me throughout). For example, how interestingly the material on Wisdom of Solomon complements and challenges Barth's account of the perfections of God, and opens up fundamental theological questions.

The last two parts are roughly a hundred pages each on Galatians and Romans, followed by some general conclusions. Both sections can be read as stimulating and meticulously researched accounts of each book, and in both it is incongruity (the fourth aspect of Barclay's taxonomy) which is a key hallmark of what is meant by grace. In both, too, in a way deeply congenial to Barth, grace is identified with the ‘Christ event’ which ‘re-maps God's dealings with humanity’ (p. 421).

Barclay situates his reading of Galatians in relation to the interpretations of Luther, Dunn, Martyn and Brigitte Kahl. He argues (in my view rightly) that what happens in Christ implies a revaluation of values, ‘creating communities that operate in ways significantly at odds with both Jewish and non Jewish traditions of value’ (p. 350). If the second century Apologists are to be trusted something like this does seem to have happened, and to have constituted an impressive fact which accounts for much of the appeal of the Early Church. Although the gift of God in Christ is unconditioned it calls forth an answering obedience. In fact, ‘the meaning of that event, and its quality as unconditioned gift, is discovered only in its social embodiment’ (p. 440). In this sense the gift implies reciprocity.

The ‘Christ event’ also decentres Torah, making it an interlude in history, but this does not imply any supersessionism, for ‘Torah beholden Jews’ remain heirs. Here Barclay is at odds with some contemporary continental theology which, in response to the Shoah, insists still on the centrality of Torah to God's self-revelation, and relegates Paul to a postscript (for example Boer, Deliverance from slavery, Leiden 2016).

In Romans, Barclay argues, Paul wants to insist not just that we are dealing with a ‘Christ-gift’, but that this gift is from God. In this letter, too, questions about Torah and the status of Israel are taken further. To some extent Paul ‘rights the boat’, making clear that Gentiles are not privileged vis-à-vis Jews, but that new creatures, both Jew and Gentile, are created from the resurrection of Christ which entails obligations and allegiances. The incongruity of grace proves to be the interpretative key to the history of Israel, which does not annul it but puts it in a much broader, indeed universal, context.

Simon Gathercole suggests setting aside two days to read this book. To do that, I would say, would be to miss a great deal, not least the energetic debate with a vast literature on Paul and on the themes of gift and grace, which constitute the footnotes of this book, and which are not least amongst its pleasures. I cannot think of another book which deals in a more exemplary fashion with this central theme, so crucial in re-thinking humanity's social, cultural and economic realities in response to climate change and all the other planetary boundaries that we are corporately transgressing.

Barclay notes that Paul's gospel of grace calls into being communities which are socially and ideologically distinctive – ‘innovative, counter cultural communities of faith’. The question that Augustine already faced is – where are such communities to be found? His answer was to run the dialectic of visible and invisible Church through every congregation, if not through every believer. In face of the by and large conformist, if not downright reactionary, character of much of what constitutes ‘church’ one can understand the tentativeness, if not outright incredulity of exegetes like Dick Boer and Ton Veerkamp. Barclay promises us a further volume on the social configurations of gift in Pauline and Christian ethics. We look forward to this, and to the guidance that it may offer in our present perplexities.