This chapter contrasts the traditional Protestant understanding of justification with two rival ways in which contemporary exegetes conceive of the anatomy of God’s justifying act: the salvation-historical proposal of N. T. Wright and the apocalyptic reading of Douglas A. Campbell. Like the reformers, N. T. Wright understands justification as a forensic event. Unlike them, Wright thinks about justification primarily in ecclesiological and eschatological categories. Justification is to be declared a member of the eschatological covenant family. Douglas A. Campbell thinks of justification as a saving rather than a juridical account. To be justified is to be set free and delivered. The chapter argues that, on close analysis, Wright is not as far from Campbell’s position as is usually thought - not least by Wright himself. Wright’s description of what actually happens in justification goes far beyond a juridical declaration. On both the salvation-historical and the apocalyptic account, justification is centered on resurrection and thereby the result of an eschatological divine intervention.

The relationship between Christ and history has been the point of contention between the two major exegetical conversations: the salvation-historical and apocalyptic readings of Paul. The salvation-historical tradition reads Paul as taking Christ to be the climax of God’s covenant with Israel. Christ embodies God’s faithfulness to a journey with God’s people that has stretched over ages. The apocalyptic reading of Paul conceives of Christ’s coming as an apocalyptic, disruptive invasion in this world. Both readings locate Christ and his work in the context of God’s relating to creation in reconciliation, conceiving of the difference that Christ makes as God’s response to the problems of evil and sin. This chapter argues that this betrays an ultimately deficient Christological logic. Based on Colossians and Ephesians, it is argued that Paul makes Christ also central to creation and eschatological consummation, as the pre-orderly center of all that is. This in turn offers a perspective on the relationship between Christ and history that incorporates the notions of “salvation history” and “apocalyptic revelation” in a larger, supralapsarian Christological narrative.