Book Review: Reading Paul
Or should we say, Reading Paul Selectively
Interpreters, in my view, should at least try to let the author speak.
If you wanted to make an argument for what C. S. Lewis thought about a topic, for instance, it would not do to neglect significant portions of Lewis's corpus that directly address that topic. That would be a very selective reading of Lewis. An analysis of Lewis's view of hell, for example, that did not show any awareness of The Problem of Pain or The Great Divorce would be severely impoverished.
I think the book Reading Paul by Michael Gorman should be called Reading Paul Selectively. I did not enjoy it. It was not all bad; it had its moments. But, if I could summarize the reading experience in one word, I would say that I was mostly disappointed.
I was disappointed because a book which was supposed to be an introduction to Paul did not even interact with half of his letters. The result is what you might expect: Gorman’s reading of Paul is highly selective. This so obviously skewed the conclusions of the book that it was painful to read.
Let me give an example.
One of Gorman's chief arguments in the book is that Paul was against empire and saw the church as a countercultural political entity (p. 9). When I first read that, I immediately wondered how he was going to deal with Romans 13:1-7. In that passage, Paul encourages Christians to submit to local authorities and pay taxes because God has put the rulers of the empire in place as his servants:
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God's servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, busy with this very thing. Pay to all what is due them—taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due. (Rom 13:1-7)
On the surface, this does not seem to suggest that Paul is against empire.
Unfortunately, Gorman never seriously engages with this passage. His only interaction with it in the entire book is a brief dismissive sentence: “Based on a misinterpretation of Romans 13:1-7, Paul is often portrayed as a political conservative” (p. 18). That is it.
Seriously?
Perhaps many people have wrongly interpreted Romans 13:1-7 as suggesting that Paul was not wholly against empire. But if they are wrong, Gorman never provides an alternative interpretation of Romans 13:1-7 showing why.
That is pretty disappointing for a book claiming to know what Paul thought about empire.
Here is another example. Gorman claims that for Paul, God’s justice is only saving or restorative, which, as opposed to Roman justice, never involves the punishment or destruction of the enemy.
He writes:
Roman justice … required a system of punishment … [involving] the exclusion and even the destruction of the enemy. … The saving, restorative justice of God revealed in [Paul's] gospel is an alternative way of setting people right with God. … It does not require the destruction of the enemy. … ‘the justice of God’ does not mean punitive justice. (pp. 119-20)
So, according to Gorman, Paul's understanding of the justice of God does not involve God punishing, destroying, or excluding.
To see how selective this reading of Paul is, simply compare Gorman's statements with the following passage from Paul:
For it is indeed just of God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to give relief to the afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. These will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, separated from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might. (2 Thess 1:6-9)
Well, that is awkward. What Paul is saying here about what it means for God to be just sounds like the opposite of Gorman's thesis. I therefore would have expected Gorman to at least interact with this passage, even if only to dismiss it like he did for Romans 13:1-7.
Yet, in the entire book, he never even acknowledges it.
So, for me, this book essentially fails. Gorman dismisses or ignores key texts that might conflict with, or at least nuance, his reading of Paul. That is not a good model for reading the Apostle, or anyone else for that matter. But it is a good model for reading Paul selectively.
If you want to read about what Paul actually said, I suggest a different book.