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Book Reviews
435
J. Ayodeji Adewuya,Holiness in the Letters of Paul: The Necessary Response to the
Gospel (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2016). 206 pp. $20.00 paperback.
J. Ayodeji Adewuya is a pastor and a former missionary to the Philippines. Currently, he serves as Professor of New Testament at Pentecostal Theological Seminary located in Cleveland, Tennessee. Adewuya has written extensively on holiness within the Pauline corpus and in addition to the work being reviewed here, he has authored A Commentary on 1 & 2Corinthians(2009) and two other works on holiness:Transformed by Grace: Paul’s View of Holiness in Romans 6– 8 (2004) and Holiness and Community in 2Cor. 6:14–7:1—A Study of Paul’s View of Communal Holiness in the Corinthians Correspondence(2001). Adewuya’s lat- est book is Holiness in the Letters of Paul: The Necessary Response to the Gospel (2016).
As a child of the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition and as a scholar whose work primarily concerns the topic of holiness, Adewuya’s views on holiness are that of an insider able to speak to those inside and outside of Holiness movements. He begins in the preface by setting the foundation for the discussion: the mean- ing of holiness. Adewuya observes that most definitions of holiness are lim- ited to categories of status and/or state. In other words, is holiness given by being in Christ? Is holiness a status we obtain based on Christ-like behavior? For Adewuya, this problem is a false dichotomy. The basis of the believer’s actions is the believer’s relationship with God; you cannot have one without the other because “positional and ethical Holiness are not mutually exclusive” (xi). Moreover, because of this relationship holiness is not individualistic but rela- tional. “Holiness is a definitive-dynamic experience, that is, a dynamic, ongoing relationship” (xi) which extends to the believer’s community. Adewuya con- cludes that Paul’s understanding of holiness is, relational not merely positional, dynamic not prescriptive, and communal not individualistic.
In the first chapter, Adewuya sets out to establish the Old Testament as foundational to Paul’s understanding of holiness. He states, “Paul grounds his exhortations and doctrinal instruction in Old Testament soil …” (1) Therefore, he asserts that the Old Testament provides the concepts and categories for defining holiness, this assertion is supported by several axioms, Paul’s almost exclusive usage of theLXX, and theLXX’s accuracy and consistency in translat- ing the “αγιος” word group in the OldTestament (2).These lead him to a concise and excellent study of holiness in the OldTestament. In this short but insightful chapter, Adewuya defines holiness as multifaceted—there are various under- standings of holiness that should not be truncated into notions of separate- ness. Adewuya concentrates heavily on Leviticus and Deuteronomy observing that holiness in the Old Testament derives from God, and is expected by God,
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defined by God’s actions and expectations for God’s people.These expectations areevidentinLeviticuswhichservesnotonlyasritualisticinstructionforIsrael, but as ethical standards of behavior in relationship to others (14).
The subsequent chapters read like a series of commentaries on the Pauline corpus, the first commentating on the letter to the Romans. According to Adewuya’s work, holiness in Romans may be summarized as responsibility and cooperation. He believes that holiness is the result of righteousness. Adewuya states, “God’s Holiness describes his glorious divinity and the justice with which he rules the world and deals with humanity” (23). God’s holiness is not a mere separateness but also a kind of nearness that involves God “dealing” with humanity justly. Comparably, holiness apart from being a kind of set-apartness is a certain presentness that is responsible for past actions towards God and others, charged with the responsibility for future actions that follow a new kind of life (25). Sanctification consequently requires cooperation by presenting the totalityof ourselvestotherighteousnessof God,thatis,tonewrighteousbehav- ior (26).
According to Adewuya, I andIICorinthians concentrate on both the individ- ual responsibility of the believer towards the redeemed community of Christ and the expectation of the community towards the individual believer. We find inthe Corinthian correspondencethe relationalandcommunal aspects of holi- ness. The church in Corinth is holy because of its set-apartness, called to be the people of God. As a community, they are holy insofar as they belong to God. “The starting point for Paul is the community, and the individual is seen as a constituent part of the community” (41). Therefore, he states, “the integrity of the church is dependent on the integrity of each individual member,” and vice- versa (63). This theme is carried throughout the second correspondence to the Corinthians in which Paul’s usage of terms and images are thoroughly commu- nal (63–65).
Inlikemanner,AdewuyaminesthePaulinecorpusforthe“αγιος”wordgroup to discover practical implications for the church today. When words in the “αγιος” word group are not found, as in the letter to the Philippians, he focuses on concepts and allusions to holiness as defined in the previous chapters. In these instances, Adewuya asserts that the same pattern of holiness is present throughout the Pauline corpus and the ethical imperative to be holy is, as the book title suggests, the necessary response to the Gospel (110).
He relies heavily on his own tradition when interpreting the Pauline corpus and at times writes of the possibility of living without sin and the obtainabil- ity of ethical perfection. Although expected from a Wesleyan-Holiness Pen- tecostal scholar these statements, at times, feel forced and/or contradictory to Adewuya’s own reading of the pericopes in question (28, 29, 116). Overall,
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whether one agrees with all of Adewuya’s conclusions should not deter one from reading Holiness in the Letters of Paul. His work is both a rich resource for anyone interested in the topic of holiness and a seminal engagement partner for any future work on holiness. The author manages to present a Pauline the- ology of holiness worthy of further thought and examination by other scholars and is a welcome addition to the growing scholarship on holiness studies from a Pentecostal perspective.
Juan C. Rivera
Pentecostal Theological Seminary, Cleveland, Tennessee [email protected]
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