Joseph R. Dobson, Paul the Rabbi Philosopher: Stoic and Jewish Philosophy in the Apostle’s Thought (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2026)
In this work, Dobson’s goal is to move beyond the divide that has long plagued scholarship of parsing out and dividing St. Paul’s thought into Greek and/or Jewish categories by arguing that the apostle is at the same time a Jewish rabbi and a Greek philosopher. In his words, “Paul represents a multidimensional, culturally impacted author who strategically utilizes the common vernacular, philosophies, and stories surrounding him to communicate the good news to all people in relatable, understandable, and authentic ways” (6).
To accomplish this end, Dobson divides his work into an introduction, two parts each with five chapters, a postscript, an appendix, and a bibliography. In the introduction (“Introduction: Paul, the Man of Twists and Turns,” 1–7), Dobson lays out the above-mentioned goal and the book’s structure. The first part (“Paul the Rabbi and the Jewish Tradition”) introduces the Wisdom of Solomon (11–16) and contains five chapters that read St. Paul’s letter to the Romans alongside the Deuterocanonical work, the Wisdom of Solomon. In the first chapter (“Death, Sin, and the Devil in Wisdom and Romans,” 17–32), Dobson explores death, sin, and the devil in Wisdom and Romans, concluding that in the former death is a motivation to achieve salvation, while in the latter death explains that Christians already possess salvation. The second chapter (“The Cosmic Avenger and the Groaning Mother in Wisdom and Romans,” 33–44) examines how both Wisdom and Romans personify creation. In Wisdom, creation has fought and will continue to fight for God’s people, while in Romans she suffers with them until the eschaton. In the third chapter (“The Rebuking and Interceding Spirit in Wisdom and Romans,” 45–56), Dobson surveys the Holy Spirit in Wisdom and Romans, concluding that in the former the Spirit brings the sinful thoughts of humans before God, while in the latter the Spirit brings the prayers of Christians before God. The fourth chapter (“The Perennial Problem of Israel in Wisdom and Romans,” 57–72) chronicles the history of Israel in Wisdom and Romans. Dobson contends that in Wisdom wrath disassociates the Lord from punishing Israel and in Romans the Torah is disentangled from Israel’s salvation from it. In the fifth chapter (“The Intractable Problem of Evil in Wisdom and Romans,” 73–84), Dobson explores how Wisdom and Romans treat the rule of evil powers and the suffering of the righteous.
The second part (“Paul the Philosopher and the Stoic Tradition”) contains an introduction to Seneca (87–90) and five more chapters in which Dobson compares St. Paul’s letters to the writings of the first century AD Stoic philosopher Seneca. In the sixth chapter (“The ‘Crucifixions’ of Seneca and Paul,” 91–104), Dobson examines Seneca’s metaphorical use of crucifixion in his On the Happy Life and the apostle’s use of it in Galatians, highlighting their similarities and most importantly for this chapter their differences. The seventh chapter (“Crucified Heroes: Seneca’s Regulus and Paul’s Christ,” 105–19) surveys Seneca’s treatment of the crucified general Marcus Atilius Regulus and St. Paul’s of Jesus the Messiah. In the eighth chapter (“Roman Feasts and Homoerotic Activities in Epistle 95 and Romans,” 120–34), Dobson reads Seneca’s invective against the degrading passions of humans in Epistle 95 with St. Paul’s in Romans 1 underscoring the similarities between the two accounts. The ninth chapter (“The Yonder Man and the Hypocrite in Epistle 59 and Romans,” 135–49) argues that Seneca’s Epistle 59 parallels St. Paul’s rhetorical hypocrite in Romans 2 and that in the latter the apostle “sounds just like the Stoics and that his diatribe fits their classic indictment of the pretentious philosopher” (138). In the tenth chapter (“The Curious Case of Apocalyptic Eschatology in Seneca and Paul,” 150–69), Dobson compares apocalyptic, by which he means works that “contain revelations of life after earth given by a celestial figure” (151), texts that are eschatological to the Senecan and Pauline corpora.
The work’s final chapter (“Postscript,” 171–72) rearticulates Dobson’s thesis: that St. Paul is a diverse “figure who not only brings the divine message to humanity but is also able to adroitly twist and shift to faithfully interpret it to Gentiles, Romans, Greeks, and Jews” (171). And in its appendix (“Personification and Powers,” 173–77), Dobson provides a discussion of the apostle’s personification of powers.
Paul the Rabbi is thoughtful, well-researched work that demonstrates in a sophisticated way the benefit of engaging with Jewish and pagan sources to illuminate early Christianity. It exemplifies the fruitfulness of such research that has moved beyond the older and outdated divide of whether a Jewish or pagan idea influenced St. Paul. As Dobson’s volume shows, the apostle was a Jewish rabbi and a Greek philosopher at the same time. Therefore, I recommend picking up your copy today from Hendrickson!
I am grateful to Hendrickson for the gratis copy of this work, which in no way influenced my reading of it.
John J. Collins, Apocalypticism as a Worldview in Ancient Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2026)
The goal of this work is to provide an overview of the apocalyptic worldview of ancient Judaism gleaned from early Jewish apocalypses such as Daniel, 1 Enoch, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. To accomplish this end, Collins divides his work into six chapters with an introduction, an epilogue, an acknowledgment, a bibliography, and three appendices.
In the introduction (“Critical Issues in the Contemporary Debate,” 1–5), Collins introduces the volume, setting out his above-mentioned purpose and the ancient sources he uses to achieve it. Chapter 1 (“Genres, Constellations, and Worldviews,” 6–28) relates the history of the study of apocalyptic literature as an academic discipline; discusses the definition of an “apocalypse,” which Collins defines as “a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial insofar as it involves another, supernatural world” (12);[1] and introduces the concept of worldview, which relates to epistemological assumptions about the world, including space, time, and human existence and has implications for “human values and conduct” (25).
In chapter 2 (“Changing Views of History,” 29–51), Collins explores a distinctive feature of the apocalyptic literature, which undergirds the ancient Jewish apocalyptic worldview: long reviews of history, often the rise and fall historical empires, that tend to be presented as prophecy already fulfilled with an unfulfilled pending act of God in the near future, which will bring about some kind of restoration. This end, however, is not final and one of the notable elements of apocalyptic eschatology is the desire for “another kind of life” not “subject to death and decay” that is “beyond human experience” (51).
Chapter 3 (“Mythic Frameworks,” 52–74) examines the myths and symbols, often of superhuman evil in the world, in the ancient Jewish apocalyptic worldview that are drawn from other cultures around Second Temple Jews. For apocalypticists, the world is under the control of malign non-human forces and these myths and symbols help to communicate that.
In chapter 4 (“The Open Heaven,” 75–98), Collins discusses one of the main concerns of the ancient Jewish apocalyptic worldview: the current cosmic context in which humans live and the desire for God’s people to be transformed in the near future and to live in his presence everlastingly. Much of this cosmic context remains hidden from humans and consists of a cosmic war with angels and demons, good and evil.
Chapter 5 (“The Pursuit of the Millennium,” 99–116) looks at two concerns of the present world in the ancient Jewish apocalyptic worldview: the fact that the locus of many apocalyptic visions is some kind of distress and that the ultimate hope for this world is its transformation.
In chapter 6 (“Apocalyptic Literature Transmitted by Christians,” 117–32), Collins reviews apocalyptic literature that Slavonic, Syrian, and Ethiopic Christians transmitted but probably did not compose, 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, 3 Baruch, for example, which revolutionized our understanding of ancient Judaism and its theological diversity.
The epilogue (Epilogue: “The Legacy of Apocalypticism,” 133–37) explores the legacy of apocalypticism in the modern West in two areas: in fundamentalism and in secularism. Collins observes that “fundamentalist Christians continue to expect that the prophecies of Daniel and especially of Revelation will be fulfilled in the near future” (133). In the process, he discusses postmillennialism, which was prominent in the 18th century, and premillennialism, which arose in the late 19th and early 20th century, in the United States. On the other hand, secular apocalypticism, which goes back to the 18th century, is the belief that there is the end of the world is imminent and cataclysmic, but it rejects a belief in angels and demons.
The final portions of Apocalypticism contains an “Acknowledgements” (139–40), a “Bibliography” (141–68), and three indices: “Index of Authors” (169–74), “Index of Subjects” (175–76), and “Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Sources” (177–82).
This work is pure John J. Collins and thus it is excellent. Apocalypticism is clear, concise, and well informed (especially among non-English speaking scholarship). For this reason, this volume is and probably will remain definitive. One particular strength, which is also found in all of Collins’s voluminous scholarship, is that he takes nothing-for-granted in his discussions. Rather, he always begins with the basics of any argument or thesis and from those basics, he makes his well-reasoned and thoughtful arguments. Consequently, I encourage everyone to pick up their copy from Eerdmans!
I am grateful to Eerdmans for the gratis copy of this work, which in no way influenced my review of it.
[1] Collins derives this definition from his work, “Introduction: Towards the Morphology of a Genre,” Semeia 14 (1979): 9.
Michael J. Gorman, Paul and John in Harmony: A Theological and Historical Exploration (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2026)
The goal of this book, which began as a series of lectures at the Lanier Theological Library, is to explore theological aspects of Christology and discipleship in St. John’s Gospel and 1 John that are in harmony with the undisputed Pauline letters (Romans, 1–2 Corinthians, Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, Philippians, and Philemon) and to begin the historical task of reevaluating the relationship between St. John and St. Paul.
Gorman has structured this book in six chapters, a brief epilogue, a bibliography, and three indices: one of subjects, another of modern authors, and one of Scripture.
In the first chapter (“Why This? Why Now?,” 1–16), Gorman lays out the objective for this book and places his volume within the scholarly conversation, especially concerning the relationship of St. John to St. Paul.
Chapter 2 (“Paul, John, and Jesus: Christology, and Its Implications for Discipleship” 17–60) explores the significant and similar linguistic, structural, and theological of Philippians 2:6–11 and John 13:1–20: both contain “a two-dimensional story of Christology/soteriology . . . and of participatory discipleship, or spirituality . . .”; both are stories “about God, about incarnation, and about divine self-revelation”; both are stories “of Christ’s divine vulnerability, humility, downward mobility, and self-enslavement followed by exaltation”; both are stories “of self-giving love”; and both are paradoxical in that they feature “Christ’s free choice and obedience.”
In chapter three (Paul, John, and Participation in Christ: Spirituality, and Its Roots in Christology I: Overview,” 61–86), Gorman examines the similar locative and residential rhetoric in St. John’s Gospel and the Pauline letters, namely that Christians reside in Jesus and in God. Thus, he looks at the Greek verbs menō, “to remain,” and oikeō, “dwell,” and the prepositions en, “in,” and meta, “with,” in St. John’s Gospel and 1 John as well as the prepositions en, “in,” and syn, “with,” the latter of which is often found attached to certain verbs in St. Paul’s letters.
Chapter 4 (“Paul, John, and Participation in Christ: Spirituality, and Its Roots in Christology II: Four Common Aspects of Their Locative Language,” 87–128) takes the observations from the previous chapter and considers the locative and residential rhetoric of St. John and St. Paul more in depth. He argues that the use of such rhetoric by both authors is mutual, identity-defining, Trinitarian, active, and transformative. In particular, the mutual and intimate indwelling that St. John and St. Paul discuss “permits believers to share in” the divine identity of God and to be transformed into the image of the Messiah, which is to become more like God (126). Since God the Father and Son are “on the move, this Godlike Christlikeness is inherently and inevitably missional in character, enabled by the Spirit of the Son and the Father” (126). Nevertheless, there are differences in St. John’s and St. Paul’s locative and residential rhetoric. The former does not talk about the body of the Messiah as St. Paul does, St. John does not speak of being “in the Messiah,” and St. Paul rarely notes that Christians are “in Jesus.” The reason for these differences is that St. John’s Gospel “reflects a time when Jesus was doing his earthly ministry,” while St. Paul was focused on the risen Messiah and Lord (126).
In chapter 5 (“Prequels and Sequels,” 129–56), Gorman investigates the “prequels” and “sequels” to the Gospel of St. John and the letters of Paul noting that both corpora highlight that the Father sends the Son and the Spirit, that one must believe in Jesus, be in him, and dwell in him, and that both underscore God’s life-giving salvific activity. All these observations serve as the foundation for Gorman’s last chapter and suggestion about the relationship between St. John’s Gospel and St. Paul.
Chapter 6 (“Similarities and Sources,” 157–80) reviews the genetic question about which New Testament author influenced whom, observing the three ways that scholars have answered this question: (1) each author wrote independent of each other and drew on common sources; (2) St. Paul influenced St. John’s writings, either through his own writings or the tradition associated with him (which is the commonest view) or St. John and his writings influenced St. Paul; and (3) St. Paul’s traditions and writings and Johannine tradition and writings influenced each other. Gorman offers a new proposal: St. John influenced St. Paul. The main reason is that “it makes more sense to think of Paul as translating Johannine narratives and metaphors into new idioms for new situations . . . than it does to think of the author of John taking Pauline words, phrases, metaphors, and narratives and placing them on the lips of Jesus and in his own hands as the Gospel narrator” (167). He provides two ways in which this happened: (1) the soft version: either St. Paul knew of Johannine traditions or an early version of St. John’s Gospel or (2) the hard version: St. Paul knew of St. John’s Gospel “more or less as we have it” (168). Gorman points out that the soft version is not as controversial because even Raymond Brown concluded that some Johannine traditions date between AD 40 and 60. The hard version, however, is contrary to almost all historical-critical scholarship on St. John’s Gospel, that its final form dates to the mid AD 90s.
Nevertheless, Gorman gives eight reasons to support his proposal. The first is that provided St. Paul knew of John 13–17, with what other parts of John was he familiar? He suggests that it is likely the apostle knew the Gospel was a whole, save for John 21. The second is that an early date for St. John’s Gospel is not out of the realm of possibility because hard evidence for a post AD-70 date is lacking. The third reason is that there is no reason why St. John’s Christology postdates St. Paul’s. The fourth is that St. John’s Gospel may have been composed in the AD 40s. The fifth reason is that if St. John knew and used St. Mark’s Gospel and possibly also St. Matthew’s, then all three Synoptic Gospels possibly date before AD 50. The sixth is that this dating of the Gospels explains several aspects of Pauline theology such as the similarities between St. Paul and St. John, St. Paul’s similarity to St. Mark’s understanding of the cross and discipleship, and St. Paul’s citations of St. Matthew’s and St. Luke’s Gospels [what citations he does not provide]. The seventh reason is that St. Paul’s use of St. John’s Gospel resembles how the author of 1 John uses St. John’s Gospel, too. And, the eighth reason is that St. Paul probably gained access to St. John’s Gospel as it circulated among early Christians.
Finally, in the last chapter (“A Brief Epilogue,” 181–82), Gorman provides a short summary of Paul and John in Harmony.
This work is quintessential Gorman: well-written, easy to read, descriptive, precise, filled with summaries of his arguments, and thought provoking. I have noted the similarities between Philippians 2:6–11 and John 13 for years in my own study and preaching and Gorman has convinced me that there is a relationship between St. Paul and St. John’s Gospel. What is more, for the past few years, especially since I read Jonathan Bernier’s Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament (2022) (which I review here); J. A. T. Robinson,Redating the New Testament (1976), and Brant Pitre, The Case for Jesus (2016), I now question the entire scholarly edifice on which the reconstruction of early Christianity is based, especially the dates of the New Testament works (I am in the data collection process of a new introduction to the New Testament that re-examines the dates of the twenty-seven canonical works). Therefore, I welcome Gorman’s new proposal that the best explanation for the similarities between St. Paul and St. John that the former knew and read the latter’s Gospel (save for John 21): Bravo!
In sum, this is an excellent and important read and I encourage you to get your copy of Paul and John in Harmony today directly from Baker Academic!
I am grateful for the gratis copy of this book, which in no way influenced by review of it.
Jamie Davies, Theology on the Run: Apocalyptic Pastoral Theology in Paul’s Thessalonian Letters (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2025)
In this work, Davies has two main goals: to read 1–2 Thessalonians apocalyptically and to demonstrate how such a reading contributes to understanding St. Paul as an apocalyptic pastoral theologian then and now.
His work is divided into four parts: an introduction, one section devoted to “Paul as an Apocalyptic Pastoral Theologian,” another devoted to “Apocalyptic Pastoral Theology in the Thessalonian Letters,” and a conclusion.
In the introduction (“Introduction,” 1–14), Davies lays the groundwork for his reading and interpretation of 1–2 Thessalonians. He assumes that the apocalyptic urgency of the faith has been present in the movement since Jesus’s ministry, that Christianity is an “apocalyptic faith” from the beginning, that St. Paul composed both 1 and 2 Thessalonians (some scholars doubt that the apostle is responsible for 2 Thessalonians), and that apocalyptic is the center of St. Paul’s theology. Davies locates his work in scholarship, noting that it is the first in-depth study of apocalyptic theology in 1–2 Thessalonians (even though apocalyptic language abounds in the two epistles) and he lays out his goals of examining the apostle’s apocalyptic theology in its historical context and application for the Church today.
Part 2 consists of two chapters that set the scene for Davies’s apocalyptic reading of 1–2 Thessalonians. The first chapter (“Paul as an Apocalyptic Theologian,” 17–40) introduces 1–2 Thessalonians and how these missives express St. Paul’s apocalyptic theology. Davies contends that the center of the apostle’s coherent theology is apocalyptic, which is understood best in three separate but interrelated strands of apocalyptic DNA: epistemology, eschatology, and cosmology. For the apostle, these strands express and disclose the true nature of reality and thus they are his apocalyptic metaphysics. Davies, then, goes on to introduce them. Epistemology is concerned with sources and modes of knowledge, which for St. Paul is the apocalypse or “unveiling” of God’s plan through Jesus the Messiah. Scholars have tended to understand the apostle’s eschatology in light of a Second Temple Jewish two age schema of the present (evil) age and the (blessed) age to come. Davies nuances this, noting that while St. Paul speaks of “the present age,” he tends to avoid “the age to come.” The reason he does this is because “the apocalypse of Jesus Christ does not merely inaugurate or advance the eschatological timeline but reshapes the notion of time itself . . . For Paul, it is no longer possible to speak simply of an ‘age to come,’ since what has happened is not merely the advance foretaste of another piece of marked-out time but the gift of God’s kind of time in ours in the incarnation of Jesus” (32). Concerning the final strand of St Paul’s apocalyptic DNA, cosmology, it has to do with the shape of the cosmos and the forces that are in it. Aside from his comment that there are three heavens (2 Corinthians 12:2), the apostle does not extrapolate much about the cosmos’s shape. He does, however, speak quite a bit about the forces in it: “Paul views the world as involved in cosmic warfare, invaded by the forces of evil and counter-invaded by the once and future incursion of Jesus . . . The essence of Paul’s apocalyptic cosmology is this: The power of the gospel and of God’s new age has invaded this present world, recapturing it from hostile powers, and so the Christian life is caught up in a cosmic conflict, the reality of which has been revealed in the gospel” (37–38).
In the second chapter (“Paul as a Pastoral Theologian,” 41–68), Davies considers St. Paul’s application of his apocalyptic DNA to the situation in Thessalonica. The apostle composed these letters shortly after his expulsion from the city (see Acts 17:1–10) to address the suffering in the form of “harassment, oppression, or social ostracism (possibly involving sporadic physical violence) at the hands of the residents of Thessalonica” that his converts were experiencing (45). St. Paul’s response is to call his congregants to stand firm in the Lord (1 Thessalonians 3:8) and he ministers to them as infants and a nursing mother.
The second part of the book consists of Davies’s explication of St. Paul’s apocalyptic pastoral theology in 1–2 Thessalonians, which he divides into three chapters. In chapter 3 (“The Word of the Lord and Christian Formation: Paul’s Apocalyptic and Pastoral Epistemology,” 71–101), Davies explores St. Paul’s apocalyptic epistemology or the source by which he attained knowledge. In the process, he focuses on the apostle’s use of the phrase “the Word of the Lord” and the like in 1–2 Thessalonians, noting that it could mean the gospel message (1 Thessalonians 1:5), a prophetic oracle, or received tradition about Jesus. Davies contends that St. Paul’s knowledge of God is apocalyptic because it stems from God (1 Thessalonians 2:13), consists of his revelation through Jesus (1 Thessalonians 2:13; 4:5), and is not only a verbal message but a “speech-act” that creates and sustains the Christian community through the Holy Spirit (1 Thessalonians 2:13). Consequently, the “church is an apocalyptic, new creation community spoken into being by, daily shaped by, and bearing witness to the revelation of Jesus Christ. It is a community of the word of revelation in its constitution, its formation, and its mission” (91). The apostle’s response, then, to the suffering of the Thessalonian Christians is to preach the word of the Lord “afresh” to them focusing on the gospel’s divine power (93). St. Paul’s apocalyptic theology speaks to us today amid our own problems by calling us back to its “revelatory character” (93), which is the heart of pastoral ministry: “The preaching of the word of God . . . powerfully remakes the ‘real world’ in which pastoral practices takes place” (94). This is clear in our culture’s desire to “self-actualize” or “self-realize.” For Paul, “Human identity and formation . . . cannot be self-made, constructed from the ground up, evaluated or measured according to the criteria of this world” (96). Rather, according to the apostle, “the very nature of identity and formation are driven by christological apocalyptic epistemology. Because human knowledge, including knowledge of ourselves, is established in and dependent upon divine revelation, human identity cannot be a matter of looking ‘within one-self,’ or to any natural law abstracted from that revelation” (98).
Chapter 4 (“The Coming of the Lord and the Christian Life: Paul’s Apocalyptic and Pastoral Eschatology,” 103–66) probes St. Paul’s apocalyptic eschatology in 1–2 Thessalonians as well as its pastoral implications for the Thessalonian Church and Christians today. Davies begins by noting that one of the key eschatological passages in all St. Paul’s letters, 1 Thessalonians 4:13–5:11, is pastorally minded and the apostle composed it to comfort the Thessalonian Christians who had lost loved ones (1 Thessalonians 4:13). He examines 1 Thessalonians 4:13–5:11, 2 Thessalonians 2:1–2, and the concept of the Parousia in the two letters. He notes that the imminence of the Parousia in 1 Thessalonians and the events that will precede it in 2 Thessalonians are typically explained by St. Paul pushing back the Second Coming to sometime in the distant future. In contrast, Davies argues that one should not reduce Jesus’s return to a “plot on a timeline.” Rather, it is “The Event that plots all others . . . Eschatology is thus concerned not really with the ‘end of a line’ but with the way in which God’s life is made present (hence παρουσία) to this world in Christ” (121). This affects how the apostle ministers to the Thessalonians. In 1 Thessalonians 5:4–8, for example, he reminds his original audience that they are children of light or new creations who belong to the Day, which is the eschatological Day of the Lord that the Old Testament prophets predicted: “They are those who live in the light of the παρουσία, at the boundary between this world and the world to come, at the dawn of the Day that comes from on high, in a world interrupted and cut by the coming of Christ” (142–43). Davies, then, looks at how St. Paul’s apocalyptic pastoral theology speaks into grief, work, and sex. I will focus only on the first. The apostle’s pastoral advice for those who grieve the loss of loved ones is that they grieve but not as those who don’t have hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13, 18). He concludes that St. Paul’s goal “is not the elimination of grief (as a sign of weakness, say) but rather the elimination of hopeless grief and, thus, its eschatological transformation” (148).
In chapter 5 (“The Triumph of the Lord and the Christian Struggle: Paul’s Apocalyptic and Pastoral Cosmology,” 167–209), Davies examines the third strand of St. Paul’s apocalyptic DNA, cosmology, in the Thessalonian letters. Recall that cosmology is about the shape of the cosmos and the dualistic conflict within it. It is this latter aspect of cosmology that Davies treats in this chapter: “The essence of Paul’s apocalyptic cosmology, interwoven with his epistemology and eschatology, is that the power of the gospel and of God’s new age has invaded this present world, and so the Christian life is caught up in a cosmic conflict, the reality of which has been revealed in the gospel” (169). In the Thessalonian correspondence, the enemy in this conflict is Satan, the tempter (1 Thessalonians 2:17–18; 3:5), and the Lawless one (2 Thessalonians 2:3–12), concluding that the latter is not a “coded reference to one particular Roman ruler but to invoke a broader apocalyptic cosmological trop of a satanically inspired blasphemous king who exalts himself at the ‘time of the end’” (177). Opposing these figures are the archangel Michael, who is the restrainer (2 Thessalonians 2:6–8), and the holy angels (1 Thessalonians 3:13). What is more, the Thessalonian Christians do not wage this war with human weapons and according to a human standard but with divine power mediated to them through St. Paul’s motherly care and self-giving love. One of the apostle’s pastoral methods in 1–2 Thessalonians is to name and identify these enemies and to proclaim God’s eschatological defeat of them, which will allow the Thessalonian congregants “to stand against them in the time that remains” (198). Moreover, St. Paul’s apocalyptic pastoral theology challenges the Church today to “avoid retreating into anthropology and existentialist therapeutic solutions and . . . [to] attend to circumscribing these with an apocalyptic cosmology, naming the complex powers that supervene on human existence and their role in the agonism of the Christian life” (199). For Davies, these complex powers may be the human structures and systems (202).
In his conclusion (“Conclusion: Paul’s Apocalyptic Theology and Pastoral Ministry in the ‘Real World,’” 211–15), Davies asks, in light of St. Paul’s apocalyptic theology, what is the real world? He concludes that the apostle’s “apocalyptic theologizing teaches us that we must subject our claims of knowledge about the ‘real world’ to the revelation of Jesus Christ and to what God has disclosed about the cosmos and its future” (212). The result is that we cannot “think about the Christian life as if any part of this world remains unaffected by the revelation of Jesus” (213). In particular, St. Paul’s apocalyptic epistemology should cause us to rethink what is real: “Paul’s apocalyptic epistemology reminds us that our theological projects in this world are not about ‘relevance,’ nor are they one set of human truth claims among others, but are ever in the mode of response divine revelation from without—we are the ones who are addressed. And, in particular, it exposes the problems of one of the most dominant narratives of our age, that human life is a project of self-actualization” (213). The apostle’s apocalyptic eschatology “transforms what we know about history and the future” (213). Consequently, we live not only under the cross but also under the Second Coming. This should affect our Christian ethics in that they are not “according to this present age.” Rather, we should live “as signs of the world to come” (214). Finally, St. Paul’s apocalyptic cosmology “transforms how we understand life in this world.” We live amid conflict and must discern the powers at work in the world. We confront all anti-God powers “not with force but with the ‘news’ of the gospel” (214).
This work is well written, well researched, nuanced, and (unlike some scholarly works!) practical. It is the fruit of years of detailed study of apocalypses and the Apocalyptic Paul. I, who interpret the apostle as an apocalyptic theologian, found myself in agreement with Davies in most of his major conclusions. In particular, aside from Ephesians 1:21; 2:7, I too am bothered by the lack of references in the Pauline corpus to “the coming age,” even though St. Paul refers to the “present age” quite a bit (Romans 12:2; 1 Corinthians 1:20, 2:6, 8; 3:18; 2 Corinthians 4:4; Ephesians 1:21; 2:2; 1 Timothy 6:17; 2 Timothy 4:10; Titus 2:12). I appreciate his solution to the problem: it is about the type of time, God’s time. However, I am uncertain as to whether this is the case. Nevertheless, Davies’s work has stimulated my own thinking and for that I am appreciative! I highly recommend this work and you can pick it up from Baylor University Press directly by clicking here.
I am grateful to Baylor University Press for this gratis review copy, which in no way influenced my work.
Frank Thielman, Paul Apostle of Grace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2025)
Thielman’s goal in this work is to compose a biography of Paul, in the same vein as F. F. Bruce’s magisterial Paul Apostle of the Heart Set Free, that helps the general reader to understand what motivated St. Paul’s extraordinary life and ministry.[i]
In short, this volume asks the question: what made the apostle tick? Thielman’s answer is that St. Paul’s experience of the Risen Messiah and his subsequent relationship with the Resurrected Jesus fundamentally changed him so much that the apostle spent the rest of his life doing everything he could for the gospel’s sake.
To accomplish this work’s goal, Thielman reconstructs St. Paul’s life from all thirteen canonical Pauline letters, which he considers to be authentic, Acts of the Apostles, other early Christian works, pagan literary sources, and archaeological evidence, attempting to present the most probable portrait of the apostle. This biography consists of twenty-six chapters with three helpful appendices and six maps interspersed throughout the work (for a list of these and their page numbers, see below). Instead of footnotes, Thielman has placed his copious references, mainly to secondary sources, in endnotes, while leaving most primary source references in the body of the text.
In the preface, Thielman lays out some of his distinctive assumptions about St. Paul and his life that the reader will meet in the volume. The first is Thielman’s use of the abovementioned sources, including all thirteen of the apostle’s letters and Acts. He notes that he has laid out his case for accepting these letters as Pauline and the historical reliability of Acts in appendix 1.
The second assumption is that Thielman considers Galatians 2:1–10 and the Apostolic Council of Acts 15 to refer to the same event. Thus, he does not accept the view common among more “conservative” leaning scholars that Galatians 2:1–10 refers to St. Paul’s and St. Barnabas’s visit to Jerusalem in Acts 11:27–30. However, unlike other scholars who equate Acts 15 with Galatians 2:1–10, Thielman believes Galatians is Paul’s earliest canonical letter and that he composed it to the churches in southern Galatia. Therefore, he holds to what is known as the Southern Galatia Hypothesis for the destination of Galatians, which means that Thielman believes that the apostle composed the letter to the churches in the province of Galatia that did not consist of ethnic Galatians and that he and St. Barnabas missionized in Acts 13:13–28. It is noteworthy that many scholars who accept the identification of Galatians 2:1–10 with Acts 15 posit that Galatians is not St. Paul’s earliest canonical letter and they tend to subscribe to the Northern Galatia Hypothesis vis-à-vis the destination of Galatians, which means that they propose that the apostle addressed Galatians not to the people in southern Galatia but to ethnic Galatians who lived in the province’s northern portion.
The third assumption of Thielman’s is that St. Paul composed the Pastorals in the timeframe that Acts narrates. Consequently, unlike many scholars who accept Pauline authorship of the Pastorals and have a habit of placing one or more of these letters in the life of St. Paul after the events recorded in Acts, Thielman perceptively finds space for them in Luke’s narrative, and he lays out his arguments for this in appendices 2 and 3.
Overall, this work is thoughtful, clear, concise, engaging, and historically informed. Thielman’s primary source driven volume does a masterful job of contextualizing St. Paul’s world of Second Temple Judaism, early Christianity, and Greco-Roman society and positioning the apostle in it. His work is too vast for me to comment adequately on it so I will discuss two important points that Thielman makes that influence his reconstruction of St. Paul. First, in his discussion of the revelation of Jesus to the apostle on the Damascus Road, Thielman rightly and convincingly argues that St. Paul was converted, not just commissioned or called as an apostle. From St. Paul’s letters, he stresses the discontinuity between the apostle’s pre-Christian and Christian life, noting that what happened to St. Paul—his life being transferred into the Resurrected Messiah (2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 2:20; 6:15; Romans 6:4–11; Philippians 1:21)—is so “radical” that only the term conversion is appropriate (22–25).
Second, his appendix in which he defends Pauline authorship of all thirteen canonical letters of the apostle is well informed not only concerning the phenomenon of pseudepigraphy (or false writings in the name of someone) in Greco-Roman antiquity but also related to the discussion of the authenticity of these letters among prominent Church Fathers. For example, Thielman notes the difficulty in determining the authenticity of any document from antiquity, quoting St. Augustine who asked how people of his day knew that Plato, Aristotle, etc. composed the works attributed to them. St. Augustine’s answer: these writings have been passed down through the ages as genuine and thus they should be accepted as such. Similarly, St. Augustine argues that we can know that canonical books are genuine because “they have been handed down as genuine from one generation to another in the church from the time of their composition” (344).[ii] Thielman notes that this is not a “bad argument” and
“If no other arguments for or against a particular Pauline letter’s genuineness are decisive, and if the ancient world was awash in forgeries, then it made, and makes, sense to consider the antiquity of the document itself and the antiquity and reliability of those who testify to its authorial claims. The disputed Pauline letters fare reasonably well under those considerations, and so it seems intellectually justifiable to use them as sources to construct the apostle’s career and thought” (344–45).
In my opinion, this argument for Pauline authorship of all thirteen letters is not a bad one, either. It is honest, well thought out, humble, and, at the end of the day after the dust clouds of grammar, theology, and vocabulary have settled, presents the best defense of Pauline authorship of all epistles in the Pauline corpus. I am grateful for Thielman for expressing it so eloquently.
For this, and for many more reasons that space and time prohibit me from discussing, I highly recommend this work to any interested student of St. Paul, layperson, clergy, or scholar.
I am grateful to Eerdmans for a gratis copy of this work, which in no way influenced my review of it.
List of the content of Thielman’s Paul Apostle of Grace:
Paul before His Encounter with Christ (1–16)
A Revelation from God (17–26)
Following Christ in Damascus and Arabia (27–37)
Return to Jerusalem (38–52)
Ministry in Syria and Cilicia (53–66)
Forming and Expanding the Multiethnic Church of God (67–78)
Advancement and Opposition in Southern Galatia (79–87)
Resistance to the Multiethnic Church (88–103)
Advancing Westward with the Gospel (104–113)
Church Planting and Suffering in Macedonia (114–127)
A Cool Reception in Athens and Laying a Foundation in Corinth (128–142)
An Urgent Letter from Corinth to Christians in Galatia (143–154)
Urgent Letters to Thessalonica and Overcoming Opposition in Corinth (155–166)
A Visit to Jerusalem, a Collection for Its Needy Christians, and a New Beginning in Ephesus (167–77)
Ministry in Ephesus and a Letter to Christians in Corinth (178–192)
Trouble in Corinth and Strange Teaching in Ephesus (193–205)
“Fighting Without and Fear Within” (206–219)
A Turning Point (220–232)
Back to Jerusalem with the Collection Delegation (233–246)
Violence and Arrest in the Jerusalem Temple (247–262)
A Taste of Roman Justice in Caesarea-by-the-Sea (263–270)
A Turbulent Journey West and Respite on Malta (271–285)
House Arrest in Rome (286–298)
Visitors from Philippi and the Lycus River Valley (299–313)
Fighting from Prison against Discouragement in Ephesus (314–322)
Paul Finishes the Race (323–335)
Appendix 1: The Evidence for Paul (337–352) Appendix 2: The Historical Setting of Paul’s Imprisonment Letters (353–362) Appendix 3: The Place, Manner, and Time of Paul’s Death (363–370)
Map 1: The Roman World in the First Century AD (xviiii) Map 2: From Syrian Antioch to Cyprus to Southern Galatia and Back to Syrian Antioch (72) Map 3: From Syrian Antioch to Southern Galatia to the Aegean Region to Jerusalem and Back to Syrian Antioch (105) Map 4: From Jerusalem to Syrian Antioch to Southern Galatia to Ephesus to Macedonia, Illyricum, Achaia, and Back to Jerusalem (173) Map 5: The Temple (253) Map 6: From Caesarea to Rome (272)
[i] While his main audience is general, Thielman notes that those with a knowledge of Roman history and geography will benefit most from his work.
[ii] “You are so hardened in your errors against the testimonies of Scripture, that nothing can be made of you; for whenever anything is quoted against you, you have the boldness to say that it is written not by the apostle, but by some pretender under his name. The doctrine of demons which you preach is so opposed to Christian doctrine, that you could not continue, as professing Christians, to maintain it, unless you denied the truth of the apostolic writings. How can you thus do injury to your own souls? Where will you find any authority, if not in the Gospel and apostolic writings? How can we be sure of the authorship of any book, if we doubt the apostolic origin of those books which are attributed to the apostles by the Church which the apostles themselves founded, and which occupies so conspicuous a place in all lands, and if at the same time we acknowledge as the undoubted production of the apostles what is brought forward by heretics in opposition to the Church, whose authors, from whom they derive their name, lived long after the apostles? And do we not see in profane literature that there are well-known authors under whose names many things have been published after their time which have been rejected, either from inconsistency with their ascertained writings, or from their not having been known in the lifetime of the authors, so as to be banded down with the confirmatory statement of the authors themselves, or of their friends? To give a single example, were not some books published lately under the name of the distinguished physician Hippocrates, which were not received as authoritative by physicians? And this decision remained unaltered in spite of some similarity in style and matter: for, when compared to the genuine writings of Hippocrates, these books were found to be inferior; besides that they were not recognized as his at the time when his authorship of his genuine productions was ascertained. Those books, again, from a comparison with which the productions of questionable origin were rejected, are with certainty attributed to Hippocrates; and any one who denies their authorship is answered only by ridicule, simply because there is a succession of testimonies to the books from the time of Hippocrates to the present day, which makes it unreasonable either now or hereafter to have any doubt on the subject. How do we know the authorship of the works of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Varro, and other similar writers, but by the unbroken chain of evidence? So also with the numerous commentaries on the ecclesiastical books, which have no canonical authority, and yet show a desire of usefulness and a spirit of inquiry. How is the authorship ascertained in each case, except by the author’s having brought his work into public notice as much as possible in his own lifetime, and, by the transmission of the information from one to another in continuous order, the belief becoming more certain as it becomes more general, up to our own day; so that, when we are questioned as to the authorship of any book, we have no difficulty in answering? But why speak of old books? Take the books now before us: should any one, after some years, deny that this book was written by me, or that Faustus’ was written by him, where is evidence for the fact to be found but in the information possessed by some at the present time, and transmitted by them through successive generations even to distant times? From all this it follows, that no one who has not yielded to the malicious and deceitful suggestions of lying devils, can be so blinded by passion as to deny the ability of the Church of the apostles— a community of brethren as numerous as they were faithful — to transmit their writings unaltered to posterity, as the original seats of the apostles have been occupied by a continuous succession of bishops to the present day, especially when we are accustomed to see this happen in the case of ordinary writings both in the Church and out of I”t (St. Augustine, Contra Faustus 33.6; translation taken from https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/140633.htm).
