St Paul and Philosophy: An Introduction to the Essence of Christianity
By (Author) Olivier Boulnois
Translated by Andrew Sackin-Poll
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Bloomsbury Academic
8th January 2026
United Kingdom
Professional and Scholarly
Non Fiction
Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy
Jewish philosophy
Medieval Western philosophy
Western philosophy from c 1800
Writings of the Early Church Fathers
208
Width 156mm, Height 234mm
Olivier Boulnois investigates the relation between Paul, as apostle of Jesus Christ, and the philosophy at work in his letters. Boulnois lays bare the manner in which Paul adapts Greek thought to his own purposes. This sheds light on the work of an entire range of philosophers who have identified themselves with the Pauline effort to hold thinking open to the claims of Christian life and doctrine, from Augustine to Kierkegaard, as well as more recent figures who have engaged Paul from a greater distance, including Heidegger and Ricoeur. Boulnois also draws on modern and contemporary scholarship, and reveals his reservations about the turn to Paul appearing in European philosophy in the work of such thinkers as Agamben and Badiou. Successive chapters take up Paul's logic of the Cross; cosmology; approaches to being in the world, law, evil and good; messianism; salvation and history.
Originally delivered as a series of lectures at Cambridge and at the Institut Catholique de Paris, St Paul and Philosophy is at once a painstaking study of Paul's own thinking and an open exploration of its continued relevance for modern and contemporary reflection on Christian religion. This book is an important demonstration that theology and philosophy are at their best when brought into dialogue with one another around perennial questions and themes.
Olivier Boulnois is Full Professor (Directeur dtudes) at lcole Pratique des Hautes tudes, Paris, France.
Andrew Sackin-Poll is a doctoral researcher in the French department at the University of Cambridge. He has translated works by Jean-Louis Crtien, Emmanuel Falque and Michel Henry.