Grace and Agency in Philo and Paul

On the homepage of Simon Gathercole, now at The University of Aberdeen, there is a link to a conference called Divine and Human Agency in Paul and his Cultural Environment , August 18-21 (it must have been in 2004, though it doesn't say so). Following the link you will find further links to the lectures presented at this conference.

Among these there is also one on Philo by John M.G. Barclay, ‘By the Grace of God I am what I am’: Grace and Agency in Philo and Paul. "The Jewish philosopher Philo and the Jewish apostle Paul were contemporaries whose paths never crossed and whose minds moved within startlingly different frameworks. Both, however, were profoundly engaged in the interpretation of the Jewish Scriptures, both reflected deeply on God, and both placed human action within the context of divine grace. A comparison which gives attention to the differences as well as the similarities between these two figures seems well justified, and has good precedent in recent scholarship.[1] Of course, comparative projects have well-known procedural pitfalls: in this case we have a huge volume of Philo’s philosophical exegesis, in three modes (allegory; exposition; questions and answers), to place alongside just seven highly contextualised letters from Paul; and neither author is famed for his systematic consistency. On our topic there are also strong undercurrents which can skew the balance of the comparison. Both Philo and Paul consider it the height of impiety to fail to acknowledge the prior gracious action of God, and they have bequeathed to us the presumption that a higher or truer expression of religion is one which places God more clearly and more radically at the root of the process of causation.[2] In its specific Christian expression – the priority of grace over works – this has spawned polemical assaults on Judaism, as well as internal polemics against ‘Pelagian’ or ‘Arminian’ tendencies. The issues at stake are huge: the place of Paul, or Christianity in general, in (or against) the history of religion. To allow this undertow to determine our comparison might cause us to exaggerate differences between Paul and Philo; to compensate overmuch in the opposite direction might lead us to homogenise two parallel but non-identical patterns of thought." You should read the rest of the article here.