If you've ever been bothered or confused by the way in which Paul uses the Old Testament Scriptures in his letters, then this is a book with which you need to get acquainted. In the first four chapters, Hays uses a variety of passages to offer his explanation for the interpretive freedom Paul exercises when dealing with Scripture.

In short, Hays argues that Paul employs an ecclesiocentric hermeneutic that springs from his conclusion that the church-an unlikely combination of Jew and Gentile Christians-is the goal or focus of God's redemptive activity revealed through the death, burial, and resurrection and witnessed to by the Law and the Prophets. This conclusion allows him to shape his interpretation of the Old Testament Scriptures he quotes or alludes to in his letters in surprising ways that, while speaking directly to the issues important to the churches to whom he is writing, would cause him to flunk most seminary courses on exegesis.

In the final, and for me, the most provocative and helpful chapter, Hays asks the question: Can or should we read Scripture with the same interpretive freedom as Paul? (Assuming of course that his assessment of Paul is correct). His answer-yes. He concludes with the following summary of what such readings would look like:

• If we learned from Paul how to read scripture, we would learn to read it primarily as a narrative of election and promise, as a witness to the righteousness of God. God's faithfulness ensures that the story of his dealings with Israel extends into the present time and encompasses it.

• The story that Paul finds in scripture is an account of God's dealing with a people. Consequently, if we learned from Paul how to read Scripture, we would read it ecclesiocentrically, as a word for and about the community of faith.

• Because the sense of Scripture is disclosed in the nexus between text and community, interpretation should never be severed from preaching. If we learned from Paul how to read Scripture, we would read it in the service of proclamation.

• The presupposition for Paul's practice of reading Scripture as a word addressed immediately to his community is his urgent conviction that they are the ones "upon whom the end of the ages have come." If we learned from Paul how to read Scripture, we would read as participants in the eschatological drama of redemption.

• Above all, Paul provides us with a model of hermeneutical freedom. If we learned from Paul how to read Scripture, we would learn to appreciate the metaphorical relation between the text and our own reading of it. Thus, we would begin to cherish the poetics of interpretation, allowing rhetoric to lie down peacefully with grammar and logic.

Hays anticipates the question: Would such readings be free of hermeneutical constraints? His answer--No. To keep the kind of hermeneutical freedom for which he is arguing from becoming a free-for-all, Hays suggests that the following criteria should used to evaluate all readings of Scripture:

• God's faithfulness to his promises. No reading of Scripture can be legitimate if it denies the faithfulness of Israel's God to his covenant promises.

• Scripture must be read as a witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ. No reading can be legitimate if it fails to acknowledge the death and resurrection of Jesus as the climactic manifestation of God's righteousness.

• Because readers who discern the true message of Scripture behold the glory of God in Jesus Christ, Paul tells us, they are "changed into his likeness." No reading of Scripture can be legitimate, then, if it fails to shape the readers into a community that embodies the love of God as shown forth in Christ. True interpretation of Scripture leads us to unqualified giving of our lives in service within the community whose vocation it is to reenact the obedience of the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us. Community in the likeness of Christ is cruciform; therefore right interpretation must be cruciform.

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