Acknowledgments

I was initiated into the complexities and pleasures of reading Paul by Hendrikus Boers, with whom over the course of forty years I had the pleasure of long-night conversations about Paul, and Romans in particular. It was with him that I learned the challenges of a “humanistic” interpretation of the New Testament (even though our theological perspectives were quite different). The first fruit of that interest was my book Reading Derrida / Thinking Paul: On Justice, which interrupted work on the current project and also reoriented it. The former book was published before Hendrik’s untimely death.

This book could not have been written without the critical and enthusiastic engagement of many students in seminars on Romans beginning in Mexico in 1984 and continuing for many years at the Chicago Theological Seminary. In addition, students in my seminars that engaged contemporary continental philosophy have made many important contributions. I am as always grateful to them and for them.

I am grateful to Adam Kotsko, who graciously agreed to cast his expert eye over the manuscript, to the anonymous readers for the Press who made several helpful suggestions, and to the editors at Stanford, Emily-Jane Cohen and Hent de Vries, who encouraged the publication of this book. Tim Roberts and the editorial team have made invaluable contributions to the readability of this book.

The book is dedicated to all those I have been privileged to meet in many parts of the world who are engaged in the struggle for a new society, a democracy to come perhaps, in which exclusion and exploitation are ended and all enter into the messianic radiance.