Paul's statement that 'letter kills but the spirit gives life' 2 Corinthians 3.6] has had an extraordinary impact on Christian thought through the ages. It has been read both as affirming the saving power of the new covenant in comparison to the old, and as a key to hidden, spiritual meanings in the text of scripture. It is, however, an ambiguous phrase, followed by a tangled story. This book explores the Pauline distinction both in its original context and in its aftermath in the early church, the Reformation and modern Biblical Studies. It then considers a postmodern reversal, where ideas...

This book aims to create a Christian theology of wisdom for the present day, in discussion with two sets of conversation-partners. The first are writers of the "wisdom literature" in ancient Israel and the Jewish community in Alexandria. Here, special attention is given to the biblical books of Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes. The second conversation-partners are philosophers and thinkers of the late-modern age, among them Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, Julia Kristeva, Paul Ricoeur and Hannah Arendt. In the late-modern period there has been a reaction against an inherited conception of the...