新約聖書の『パウロ書簡』の著者であるパウロ（c.5-67年）は、キリスト教会史上、最も大きな影響力を持った人物です。後に成立するキリスト教理論は、伝道者で神学者、宗教的な意味での天才といわれるパウロが著した手紙に書かれていることが土台となっています。パウロの基本的信念と、時に複雑ともいえるその実践方法に目を向け、大きな影響力を持ったパウロの人となりを鮮やかに描く貴重な一冊です。
   

• Paul is the most powerful human personality in the history of the Church
• He was a missionary, theologian, and religious genius
• His letters laid the foundations on which later Christian theology was built

  
Paul is the most powerful human personality in the history of the Church. A missionary, theologian, and religious genius, in his epistles he laid the foundations on which later Christian theology was built.

In his highly original introduction to Paul's life and thought, E. P. Sanders, whose research on Paul has substantially influenced recent scholarship, pays equal attention to Paul's fundamental convictions and the sometimes convoluted ways in which they were worked out.