Pauline studies

Review: Paul’s Gospel in Romans

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Cover image of "Paul's Gospel in Romans" by Jarvis J. Williams

Paul’s Gospel in Romans

Paul’s Gospel in Romans, Jarvis J. Williams. Baker Academic (ISBN: 9781540963291) 2026.

Summary: Argues that Paul in Romans articulates a gospel with vertical, horizontal and cosmic dimensions.

Volumes have been written about Paul’s gospel in Romans. Some emphasize the vertical dimension of justification by faith, forgiveness of sins, reception of the Spirit and deliverance from God’s wrath. Others emphasize the horizontal dimension, including living righteously through the Spirit, in unity with other believers including between Jews and Gentiles. Yet others focus on the cosmic dimensions of the gospel, the deliverance of all creation from death, the resurrection of our bodies, and the new creation.

If Jarvis J. Williams were asked to choose which most faithfully describes the gospel in Roman, he would answer “yes.” In this book, he proposes that the best way to understand the gospel in Romans is that it is vertical, horizontal, and cosmic. All three are present. And by exegesis of selected texts, he shows how Paul elaborates each of these.

However, Williams begins by contending that we must first consider the “matters of first importance” that Paul elaborates in 1 Corinthians 15. These are Christ’s death for sins, bodily resurrection, ascension, and return. Then, before discussing the three dimensions in Romans, He shows how these “matters of first importance,” particularly the resurrection and death of Jesus in that order are present in Romans.

In introducing the three dimensions, he says they are interdependent but that the vertical good news is foundational. Williams then devotes one chapter each to the three dimensions. In each, he offers an extensive exegetical treatment of relevant texts.

For the vertical dimension, he shows the sinfulness of all humanity. Then he discusses justification, forgiveness, deliverance from wrath, and reconciliation. All are aspects of the gospel. Under the horizontal dimension, he shows how the Spirit transforms us to live lives of sacrificial love. He also renews our minds. Lastly, he restores relationships across all boundaries. Paul’s cosmic gospel is one of liberation for all creation that is subject to futility because of sin. As co-heirs with Christ, we await resurrection and the final defeat of death.

Williams offers a brief applicatory conclusion. He contends that we ought focus first on the matters of first importance rather than repentance in our proclamation. While we may not emphasize all the dimensions at any one time and must prioritize the vertical as the basis for the others, we have a great and expansive gospel to share. That was my takeaway from this book. We have a great gospel that touches every dimension of life and all of time and space. Furthermore, Williams show how all these dimensions cohere as one great gospel of the crucified, risen, ascended, and returning Lord. And he does all this in a clear and concise 144 pages.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Enabling Grace

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Cover image of "Enabling Grace" by Susan Mathew

Enabling Grace

Enabling Grace, Susan Mathew. Langham Global Library (ISBN: 9781839732782) 2025.

Summary: A disability reading of Paul’s letters focusing on 2 Corinthians 12:7b–10, asserting the grace of God amidst human weakness.

In recent years the church has begun to recognize the importance of welcoming and supporting those with disabilities. In the U.S., it is estimated that 28.7 percent of our people have some form of disability. The reality is that that at some point in our lives, most of us will have some form of disability. In all our communities, this group represents a significant part of our mission field.

Much of the writing has focused on what churches can do to accommodate persons with disabilities. Increasing thought is also being given to how we support families of those with disabilities. For most of us, when asked for the biblical grounds for such work, we might appeal to both the Great Commandments to love God and neighbor and the Great Commission to make disciples of all the nations and those within them.

But how does God regard, and how ought we regard those with disabilities? Dr. Susan Mathew is uniquely equipped to address these questions. She not only has a doctorate in biblical studies and teaches New Testament at Faith Theological Seminary in Kerala, India. She is the parent of a son, Jyothish, with cerebral palsy. As she sought to address the needs of her son, she recognized many other families in Kerala with children with special needs. This led to founding the Deepti Special School and Rehabilitation Centre, which she directs. Thus, she combines biblical scholarship and extensive personal experience in this book.

Her focus is on select letters of the Apostle Paul, his use of the language of weakness including his “thorn in the flesh.” She considers how God works in human weakness and how the body of Christ may honor its weakest members. Mathew begins by addressing definitions and models of disability. She also identifies the passage in 1 and 2 Corinthians she will discuss. She lists the words used, with a focus on asthenia or “weakness.” Before turning to more detailed examination of relevant passages, she discusses disability in antiquity. Sadly, the fate of infants with disability was abandonment and death. In Judaism, disabilities excluded people from temple service. Many viewed disabilities as the result of sin or God’s curse.

Then chapter three considers God’s choice of the weak and foolish, described in 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:7. God works through the ultimate expression of weakness, the foolishness of the cross to subvert society’s norms and worldly wisdom. God identifies with and choose the weak as objects of his grace. Chapter four then turns to Paul’s teaching on gifts and the interdependence of the body of Christ. Among the gifted are those with disabilities, revealing God’s power working through human weakness. This calls for mutual concern and the honor of the less honorable. Above and over all is the love of 1 Corinthians 13. Chapter four also deals with 1 Corinthians 15 and the resurrection of the body. In this is both continuity and discontinuity, most notably, the transformation of all weakness and disability.

But what hope is there for the suffering and affliction caused by disabilities in this life? Chapter five turns to this question, looking at 2 Corinthians 1:3-10 and 12:7-10. Mathew considers the role of patient endurance, our partnership in suffering, and the comfort we have in Christ. Then she turns to an in depth study of Paul’s “thorn in the flesh.” She explores what this may have been, Paul’s prayer and how Christ met him in weakness.

The final chapters unpack all this. Chapter 6 recounts the author’s personal story and her experience of God’s power in her Christian community. In the final chapter, she explores what a holistic theology of grace means in the context of disability, including how Paul’s disability deepened his understanding of enabling grace.

This book is a good beginning toward a theology of disability. Coupled with the author’s personal testimony, it speaks powerfully of God’s enabling grace for persons with disabilities. And it calls us to be communities of mutual care and interdependence, recognizing the grace and gifts of God on those with disabilities.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Paul Through the Eyes of the Reformers

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Cover image of "Paul Through the Eyes of the Reformers" by Stephen J. Chester

Paul Through the Eyes of the Reformers, Stephen J. Chester. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802878489) 2025.

Summary: Challenges misconceptions of Reformation readings of Paul and proposes constructive approaches.

At times, one gets the impression in Pauline studies that there is either the perspective of the Reformers, and particularly Luther, or the New Perspective on Paul in its covenant and apocalyptic forms. And one gets the impression that we miss the meaning of Paul if we read him through Luther’s personal crisis and his liberating grasp of justification as God’s imputation of Christ’s righteousness through faith in Christ. We miss Paul’s concerns for covenantal boundaries and the inclusion of the Gentiles.

Stephen J. Chester, in this work, demonstrates the over-simplifications and misconceptions in such views. For one thing, Reformed and New Perspectives share in a much larger interpretive history. Chester traces the exegesis of Augustine, of the medieval scholars and their nominalism and the rise of humanism that preceded the Reformation. He also acquaints us with the parallel to New Perspective scholarship in the rise of Lutheran scholarship, including Bultmann.

Chester examines the careful exegetical work of Luther and his peers that led to a radical departure from Augustinian interpretation. He contends that New Perspective scholars need to reckon with that exegesis and recognize that there is far more than Luther’s guilty conscience involved in Luther’s elucidation of sin, law, the work of Christ, and grace. Chester develops an engagement that recognizes ways the New Perspective depends on the Reformers, ways it intensifies some aspects, ways it makes false assumptions, and ways it is truly in conflict.

Chester also argues that while the Reformers shared a commitment to justifying faith that looks to Christ to receive an alien righteousness, they had varied understanding how this was experienced by believers. In Part Three of the work, he offers an extended study of Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin. Both Luther and Calvin stressed the idea of our union with Christ by faith. Melanchthon, by contrast, focuses more on justification being on account of Christ. In addition, Calvin, in contrast with Luther stressed union with Christ in both justification and sanctification without confusing the two.

Chester focuses in the concluding part of the work on how the idea of union with Christ may be fruitful in contemporary studies. This proposal typifies Chester’s approach throughout. Rather than oppose interpreters, Chester looks for the places of engagement. He affirms advances in New Perspective scholarship while inviting a better reading of the Reformers. I found this a far more constructive engagement than, for example, the polemical exchange between John Piper and N.T. Wright. His history of Pauline exegesis sets both the Reformers and the New Perspective within a larger context. And through it all, he points us to Paul’s marvelous apprehension of the grace of God.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Paul, Apostle of Grace

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Cover image of "Paul, Apostle of Grace" by Frank Thielman

Paul, Apostle of Grace, Frank Thielman. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802876294) 2025.

Summary: An introduction to the life and world of Paul based on Acts, his letters, and other sources including archaeology.

The sheer number of books on Paul, discussing aspects of his life and theology, attest to his continuing importance to our understanding of the early Christian movement. But often, these discussions focus on a particular book or theological theme. In addition, many of these discussions reflect the narrower scholarly consensus regarding the Pauline corpus. Many relegate Acts to secondary status.

Frank Thielman has written an overview to Paul’s life and world that sets his travels, mission, and writings in a wider historical and cultural context. Unlike some works, Thielman bases his account on all thirteen canonical letters of Paul as well as Acts. He also draws upon non-canonical sources and archaeology to round out this chronological account of Paul’s life, mission, trials, and death.

Beginning with Paul prior to the Damascus road, Thielman traces his travels and the context of each city and region in which he worked. He notes the theologically formative aspects of his training, his early meeting with Peter, and the developing vision of God’s grace for Jew and Gentile alike, formed at Syrian Antioch and elaborated throughout his ministry.

For example, Thielman develops the Jewish opposition Paul encountered in Syrian Antioch, Asia Minor, and Achaia over the inclusion of Gentiles without circumcision. For Paul, their inclusion, and table fellowship as one new people was essential in testifying to the grace of God in Christ. Likewise, Gentile solidarity with the Jerusalem church drove Paul’s collection.

Also, Thielman helps us understand the role and movements of Paul’s companions, notably Prisca and Aquila, Silas, and Timothy. And he fits the composition of each of the letters into Paul’s travels, and later, his imprisonment. He discusses the concerns occasioning each letter, how Paul responds, and how the letters may have been carried to their recipients.

Thielman argues for the reliability of Acts as a source and Luke as a historian and creates a chronology drawing both on letters and Acts. He does take positions on the chronology of Paul’s life that he describes as “outliers.” He equates the Jerusalem conference of Acts 15 with that described in Galatians 2. Thielman argues for Galatians as the earliest of Paul’s letters and affirms a southern hypothesis. He also argues for 1 Timothy, Titus, and 2 Timothy being written within the time covered by Acts. Thus, he argues that Paul was not released from his imprisonment and later re-imprisoned.

Thielman defends his reliance upon Acts and all thirteen canonical letters in his first appendix. And he discusses the imprisonment and the timing and manner of Paul’s death in appendices two and three.

The strength of Thielman’s work is that it reflects a scholarly account that reflects conservative convictions. He accepts the full Pauline corpus and the reliability of Acts. More than that, his account sets Paul’s ministry amid Jewish opposition, imperial concerns, and religious and commercial culture.

Thielman admits at the outset:

“Writing a book about Paul’s life is like putting together a puzzle of a thousand pieces, but a puzzle whose pieces can fit together in different ways. The best one can hope for, perhaps, is a picture that is reasonable and that, at least in some cases, is probable.”

On one hand, Thielman succeeds admirably in putting all the pieces together. However, this book is touted as a successor to F. F. Bruce’s Paul: The Apostle of the Heart Set Free. As a cohesive reckoning of all the details in a theologically conservative account, that certainly is the case. Thielman incorporates scholarship to which Bruce did not have access. But, in comparison to Bruce, this account seemed too concerned with all the puzzle pieces. While Thielman gets the theology of grace right, I felt the book lacked the overarching vision of grace’s liberating power for Paul and his ministry that I found in Bruce.

Nevertheless, this book is a great resource to read alongside Acts and the letters of Paul. It offers the “big picture” of Paul’s life. We see Paul’s ministry and his letters in context rather than just as disparate biblical passages. Thielman lays a good foundation for anyone pursuing further studies of Paul, the apostle of grace.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

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Review: Paul the Storyteller

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Cover image of "Paul the4 Storyteller" by Christoph Heilig

Paul the Storyteller: A Narratological Approach, Christoph Heilig. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802878953) 2024.

Summary: A narratological approach showing that Paul combines implicit and explicit narratives, making him a gifted storyteller.

In my biblical training, we learned to distinguish genres, with the gospels generally consisting of narrative, whereas the letters of Paul were examples of discourse. Of course, neither of this is strictly true. Furthermore, two key New Testament scholars, Richard B. Hays and N. T. Wright pioneered “narrative approaches” to Paul. However, they dismissed the idea of explicit narratives in Paul, observing “narrative substructures (Hayes) or “implicit worldview narratives” (Wright).

Christoph Heilig, while appreciating the pioneering work of these scholars, believes they are wrong in dismissing explicit narratives. He wrote a 600 page dissertation (in German) in 2018. This work follows the organization of the dissertation but is about half the length and in English. He takes the narrative approach a step further, engaging in narratological analysis at a linguistic, grammatological level. While he confirms the use of implicit narrative, he also demonstrates that Paul incorporates a number of explicit narratives.

He begins with a definition of narrative by Kindt and Köppe: “A text is a narrative if and only if it deals with at least two events that are ordered temporally and connected in at least one further meaningful way.” He shows different ways this may be done and discusses the interpretation of story, using biblical examples. Then in chapter two, he turns to the grammar of narration and all the ways events may be linguistically connected. This is not for the faint of heart, running to nearly 100 pages. Grammar nerds will love it, especially Greek grammar nerds.

Chapter three turns to narratives within the wider context of Paul’s works. Explicit narrative connects to a broader frame narrative of Paul’s letters, Chapter four then turns to implicit “protonarratives” in Paul, offering numerous examples of these. Then, in chapter five, he returns to Hays and Wright, confirming aspects of their proposals, and arguing for much closer attention to the way Paul implicitly and explicitly narrates. Particularly, he critiques Wright’s worldview narrative approach as focused more on overarching plot rather than building up from careful analysis of both explicit narrative and implicit protonarratives.

As you may deduce, this is a rigorously technical account, putting forth an argument for a narratological approach to Paul. In addition to contributing to a larger scholarly conversation, Heilig offers resources to enrich the exegesis of Paul’s writing, foundational work, first for commentators, and then for preachers. While it is not easy work, good exegetical work never is. I hope Heilig will build upon and model this work in a commentary (or two!) on one of the Pauline letters.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Paul and Imperial Divine Honors

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Cover image of "Jesus and Divine Honors" by D. Clint Burnett

Paul and Imperial Divine Honors, D. Clint Burnett. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing (ISBN: 9780802879851) 2024.

Summary: Studies inscriptional evidence in three cities offering a nuanced treatment of the Roman imperial cult.

“Jesus is Lord; Caesar is not.” This statement by a prominent New Testament scholar summarizes the conflict early Christians faced in the Roman empire. In particular, it is assumed that Roman subjects were required to offer sacrifices to the Roman emperors, who were considered divine. Thus Christians faced a dilemma that could lead to alienation at the very least and persecution at the most.

While D. Clint Burnett does not disagree outright with this contention, he believes the actual situation was more complex and varied by the particular city considered. He does so on the basis of the inscriptional evidence from several Roman cities to which the Apostle Paul wrote: Philippi, Thessalonica, and Corinth. Specifically he surveys literary, epigraphic, numismatic, and archaeological evidence.

In his introductory chapter, he offers the example of another city, Gythium. He shows how imperial divine honors were “intertwined with the public lives of Greco-Roman communities and had political, economic, social, and religious components that one cannot neatly separate.” They were public, often part of festivals, and similar in character to worship of other gods. A key motive was to express gratitude for benefactions, not only to divinized deceased rulers but to their living counterparts, even though these often had not yet attained the status of divus. This was first accorded by the Roman Senate, and then adopted by local officials, though this varied by city.

After his introduction, Burnett devotes a chapter each to the evidence from Philippi, Thessalonica, and Corinth. In each chapter, he reviews the archaeological evidence pertaining to the imperial divine honors accorded different Roman emperors. Then, he considers the imperial cultic officials who were priests and benefactors, the location of imperial divine honors, and of what imperial honors consisted. Synthesizing this data, he then considers the implications for early Christians in each city.

Burnett concludes that differences in practice and the character of each city, as well as that of the respective churches resulted in different experiences. In Philippi, where conservative values ruled and imperial divine honors focused on the deceased divi (with the exception of Tiberias), proclamation of Jesus as Lord resulted in imprisonment for some. By contrast, Thessalonica saw their gods working through the Julio-Claudian line to prosper the city. Hence, they granted imperial divine honors to both living and deceased Julio-Claudians. The Thessalonian Christians’ aggressive evangelism jeopardized the harmonious status quo, leading to their mistreatment.

Corinth differed both in bestowing divine honors only posthumously and extended these to non-Julio-Claudians. What sets apart the Corinthian church is that non-believers in Corinth failed to see how counter-cultural were the gospel claims. This had to do with both the Jewish apocalyptic beliefs of Christians and the un-Christian behavior of some. Consequently, they were able to live peaceably in the surrounding culture.

Burnett’s study is valuable in two aspects. First, he helps the reader understand what the Roman imperial cult looked like in these different cities. While there were commonalities, it was anything but uniform. And second, he shows that the Christian experience of the imperial cult was anything but uniform as well. This does not undercut the radical implications of saying “Jesus is Lord.” Rather, Burnett shows that the reception of this message was shaped by local, and not just empire-wide factors. Likewise, the contrast between Philippi and Thessalonica on one hand, and Corinth on the other also underscores the matter of Christian faithfulness in forthright proclamation. The culture will not trouble the church whose proclamation is muted, unclear, and morally compromised.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

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