The legacy that Paul received was the Jewish scriptures that he quoted extensively in Greek from the Septuagint. This was a legacy not widely appreciated, for various theological reasons, until relatively recently. However, a count of Paul's citations, quotations from and allusions to scripture comes to over 250. Paul's thinking was framed by his re-reading of scripture and emphasises how Jewish was his historical context and theological frame of reference. How this affects our interpretation of Paul's theology is illustrated by four examples from Wisdom, the Psalms in general, Ps 78 in particular, and Paul's rewriting of the Shema Israel in 1 Cor 8.6. There are some brief comments on the difficulties that Paul's use of scripture leaves us with.

After some opening reflections on the place of justification in recent Pauline scholarship, the essential argument is that both Catholic and Lutheran readings of Paul on justification, regardless of their strict exegetical accuracy, serve to articulate key principles of Christian existence under grace which need not only to be conjoined or placed alongside each other but need to be allowed, in the spirit of Receptive Ecumenism, to inform each other. In the Catholic case the need is for an expansion in the direction of a more effective and genuinely Pauline emphasis on the dynamism of grace. There are three sections. First, a detailed exploration, presented in a number of subsections, of the historic theological background to the issues at stake in the ecumenical dialogues and the way in which these might be best conceptualised. Second, situated against this backdrop is a summary exposition of some of the key achievements of the 1999 affirmation of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification by the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church. Third, note is taken of some of the criticisms that have been made of the Joint Declaration, identifying the need for receptive ecumenical learning if its best intentions are to be realised. This generic need is illustrated in relation to one area of potential receptive Catholic learning from Lutheranism concerning the effective dynamism of grace and the character of Christian life as confident trust in this as a continually renewed event.

This essay discusses the reading of Paul offered by the contemporary French philosopher, Alain Badiou. Badiou's emphasis on event and unconditioned grace is supported by readings from Galatians, such that his philosophical notion of ‘event’, with its militant and universal effects, may claim real consonance with Paul. However, Paul's strong notions of divine creation from nothing, and of the benevolence of the Christ event, require that God be reinserted into Paul's theology, while Badiou's focus on the resurrection, rather than the cross, misses the social radicalism latent in Paul.