Stephen Westerholm undertakes a mammoth task in his latest effort to summarise and critique scholarly interpretations of Paul's view of the law. In less than 500 pages he navigates the course from Augustine to N. T. Wright. He nonetheless provides both a fair overview of Paul's various interpreters and a nuanced discussion of the issues. Lest the journey grow too tiresome, Westerholm intersperses his critique with delectable wit.

Perspectives Old and New on Paul provides an update of Westerholm's 1988 Israel's Law and the Church's Faith: Paul and His Recent Interpreters, in which he scrutinised almost exclusively modern scholarship, offering only a ten-page overview of Luther's interpretation of the law. In the current book, Westerholm proffers three sections, ‘Portraits of the Lutheran Paul’ (a significantly expanded 94 pages), ‘Twentieth-Century Responses to the “Lutheran” Paul’ (157 pages) and ‘The Historical and the “Lutheran” Paul’ (184 pages).

In Part One, Westerholm explores the ‘Lutheran’ Paul; he uses the term to indicate the traditional approaches of Augustine, Luther, Calvin and Wesley. He outlines their basic theology and concludes with a summary of their broad agreements, including humanity's corruption by sin and justification by grace through faith. Westerholm's survey may be overly broad, but the thorough exposition helps to prevent caricature.

In Part Two, Westerholm provides overviews of sixteen modern scholars who disagree with the ‘Lutheran’ interpretation, five scholars who defend the more traditional viewpoint, and five scholars who focus their research elsewhere but nonetheless find value in the ‘Lutheran’ understanding.

Westerholm begins by exploring the argument that justification by faith does not lie at the centre of Paul's thinking (William Wrede, Albert Schweitzer). Westerholm then explores the idea that Paul wrongly understands Judaism (Claude Montefiore, Hans Joachim Schoeps, E. P. Sanders). Next, he considers the concept of Paul's ‘robust conscience’ – that Paul, as a Pharisee, never despaired of fulfilling the law (W. G. Kümmel, Krister Stendahl). Westerholm then explores various interpretations of ‘righteousness of the law’ (Rudolph Bultmann, Ulrich Wilkens, E. P. Sanders), demonstrating the lack of consensus among scholars. This leads Westerholm to consider the question of consistency in Paul (John W. Drane, Hans Hübner, Heikki Räisänen).

These chapters from Wrede to Räisänen do not offer major revisions over Israel's Law and the Church's Faith. With the chapter on ‘St. Paul against the Lutherans’, however, Westerholm begins to cover significant new ground. Here he considers the argument that Paul's interpreters mistakenly ascribed to Paul a legalistic understanding of Judaism when Paul actually directed his ire at national pride and Jewish boundary markers (N. T. Wright, James D. G. Dunn, Bruce Longenecker, Terence Donaldson).

Next Westerholm offers a ‘Lutheran’ response by those who reject the notion that ‘works of the law’ refers only to boundary markers. Rather, these scholars argue that the law was a temporary measure meant to convict humanity of sin and the need for divine intervention (C. E. B. Cranfield, Thomas Schreiner, Andrew Das, Frank Thielman, Mark Seifrid).

Westerholm also considers other areas of Pauline studies that nonetheless benefit from the ‘Lutheran’ perspective: anthropology (Timo Laato), rhetoric (Lauri Thureìn and Jean-Noël Aletti), apocalyptic (J. Louis Martyn), and theology of the cross (Jürgen Becker). He then provides a helpful summary of ‘The Quotable Anti-”Lutheran” Paul’. First, New Perspective proponents argue that Judaism preaches grace. Second, these scholars vary in their understanding of what Paul finds wrong with the law. Third, they maintain that justification by faith is a matter of belonging to the covenant people of God. Westerholm concludes: ‘the issue that divides the “Lutheran” Paul from his contemporary critics is whether “justification by faith, not by works of the law” means “sinners find God's approval by grace, through faith, not by anything they do”, or whether its thrust is that “Gentiles are included in the people of God by faith without the bother of becoming Jews”’ (p. 257).

In Part Three, Westerholm offers his critique of the New Perspective. He begins by defining ‘righteousness’. Against those scholars who argue that righteousness is covenantal in character, Westerholm argues that righteousness is a matter of doing what one ought, and thus being made righteous involves more than simply transfer into the people of God. He then discusses the meaning of the ‘law’ in Paul's thought, arguing that the term most frequently refers to the Sinaitic legislation, which requires ‘doing’. These chapters require attentive reading in order to keep track of the intricate arguments.

Next Westerholm responds to Sanders by reviewing rabbinic documents and suggesting that Judaism involved a combination of grace and continued covenant-keeping (i.e., works). This chapter would be strengthened if Westerholm presented a more well-rounded view of first-century Judaism through the inclusion of some of the earlier Jewish literature.

Westerholm then presents a letter-by-letter review of Paul's work in order to explore Paul's concept of justification by faith. Westerholm does not try to force such language where it does not appear (e.g. 1 Thess), but rather discusses the full range and context of Paul's interest in the subject. This survey offers a good overview of Paul's varying emphases.

The final two chapters summarise Westerholm's overall response to New Perspective proponents. Westerholm generally supports the ‘Lutheran’ position, arguing that Paul believes humans are sinners who are not able to do the good that the divine law commands; thus, the law cannot be the means of salvation. Instead, the law was intended to highlight sin and make humans aware of their need for God's grace in Christ. Nonetheless, Westerholm supports some New Perspective ideas, including the argument that Jews did not think they earned their salvation. Westerholm disagrees, however, with the strong emphasis New Perspective proponents place on grace in Judaism: to imply that works were excluded is not true to Judaism, he argues. Overall, Westerholm offers this critique: ‘the critics have rightly defined the occasion that elicited the formulation of Paul's doctrine and have reminded us of its first-century social and strategic significance; the “Lutherans”, for their part, rightly captured Paul's rationale and basic point’ (p. 445).

Regardless of one's position on the issue, this book provides a helpful and thorough investigation of Paul's view of the law. Westerholm's wide-ranging discussions help to illustrate the diversity of interpretations both old and new. These interpretations could be clarified by the addition of a chart highlighting the stances of various scholars on the major points of contention. Overall, however, Westerholm offers an excellent discussion of recent intepretations of Paul's perspective on the law.