You're listening to OnScript, a new podcast bringing you conversations on current Biblical scholarship.

We're your hosts, Matt and Matt. Thanks for joining us. Greetings. This is OnScript, a new podcast featuring conversations about recent biblical scholarship.

There's a song that perhaps some of our listeners have heard before, maybe once or twice, or perhaps not. I'm not sure. It's a bit obscure, but just in case a few

listeners may have heard it, I'll mention it. It's called Amazing Grace. If I were to sing a couple

lines of the song, a few of you perhaps just might recognize it, but I'll refrain. Trust me, when I tell you that you do not want to hear me sing. I'm your host today. This is Matt Bates, and I'd like to welcome our special guest, Professor John M. G. Barclay of Durham University. John, I'm very excited about our conversation. Thank you very much, Matt.

I'm looking forward to it. We'll be talking to John today about his book, Paul in the Gift,

a new release with Erdman's. In the conclusion of Paul in the Gift, John, in fact, makes reference

to that obscure song, Amazing Grace, when he states that Paul's new missional context

makes grace relevant today, but not simply as an individualized theology of Amazing Grace,

but as something more countercultural and communal. I suspect that John, as this interview progresses,

will be able to say more about how Paul's amazing

grace presses beyond an individualized theology.

Let me properly introduce our guest.

John M. G. Barclay is Lightfoot Professor of Divinity at Durham University in England,

one of the most highly regarded professorships in the theological world,

a post which John has held since 2003.

Previously, he was a professor at Glasgow University, and it served as a lecturer at the

University of Cambridge.

John's previous research work has been both wide-ranging and field-shaping.

John's early work on Galatians, Obeying the Truth, 1988,

is a classic study among Pauline scholars,

and perhaps John will be able to comment

...