The title of Philip Esler’s New Testament Theology is ill-chosen. Although the book provides a good introduction to a number of aspects that qualify the task of writing a New Testament theology, the book itself is not a New Testament theology by any stretch. At most, it is a highly selective prolegomenon to the task of “doing” New Testament theology. That is not to say, however, that the book is not worthwhile to read—it is simply to say that readers will have to look elsewhere if they really want a New Testament theology.

One of the better features of this book is its discussion of the New Testament’s indebtedness to a dualistic anthropology, which is especially welcome in light of the current trend to argue that the New Testament’s anthropology is really fundamentally monistic. Esler exposes the shortcomings of the numerous attempts to sell readers on a monistic anthropology through a highly selective and tendentious reading of certain passages. (In the process, he also shows that Rene Descartes is not the extreme dualist he is often painted to be by today’s Enlightenment-bashers.)

Esler also steers clear of another trendy but misguided conceit when he affirms the intentionalist hermeneutic basic to the New Testament. But his chief argument in support of authorial intention, I think, is an unnecessary complication of what should be a much more straightforward task: he invokes the idea of the “communion of the saints” in order to say that we owe the “saints” enough respect to listen to what they intend (present tense), and not just what their texted artifacts can be made to say on the basis of a strong misreading. This is an intriguing argument, but it is rather circuitous and perhaps even costly in terms of commitments. Why not just say that we should look for what the author intended because the purpose of their writing in the first place was to convey an intention?

Reviewed by John C. Poirier

Originally published on the Pneuma Foundation (parent organization of PneumaReview.com) website. Later included in the Fall 2025 issue.

Bruce McCormack, the Frederick and Margaret L. Weyerhaeuser Professor of Theology at Princeton, is the most interesting and helpful Barthian working today. He has made his mark working to correct a certain North American distortion of Karl Barth’s thought. His contributions now include a number of edited works, including this one, which gathers the essays presented at the 2005 Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference.

As always with an edited work, the articles collected here are of uneven quality. They are also of varying atmosphere. Most of the essays breathe the air of British evangelicalism (which theologically has a lot of variation within it), while others are academic versions of something one might find in Christianity Today. Now and again, the staler air of the World Council of Churches wafts through the volume. The contributors vary from biblical scholars, to historical theologians, to systematic theologians. McCormack classifies some of the contributors as holding to a form of “classical theism”, and others as being more “‘progressive’ … in their willingness to pose questions to concepts of divine timelessness, impassibility, and so forth” (pp. 9-10). The decision to include biblical scholars was perhaps a move toward a broader outlook, but as everyone’s topic appears to have been assigned, the gain of including biblical scholars in the program has been minimized. The program as a whole has a systematic-theological stamp through and through. Topics like “divine simplicity” and “divine aseity” are not on the radar screen of biblical scholars, and for a good reason: they’re not on the radar screen of the Bible.

McCormack’s own contribution consists of a suit against Open Theism. Although McCormack’s admirers have already applauded this essay (on the internet), it ultimately fails to convince. He tries to show that Barth’s dissolution of metaphysics (as if that were conceptually possible!) presents a better solution to the problems that Open Theism has adduced. (McCormack prefers to think that God’s election “stands at the root of God’s being” [p. 210], but I think that is as nonsensical as it sounds. I much preferred Paul Helm’s case against the McCormack-Barth dissolution of metaphysics, found earlier in the same volume.) Much depends on one’s starting point. McCormack really only shows that Open Theism is incompatible with Reformed presuppositions, but he in no way shows that it is a poor fit for Christian theology in general. (Throughout many of these essays, this reader was constantly reminded that, for the Reformed tradition, the word “Protestant” basically means “Reformed”.)

This volume packs a lot of food for thought, and should be rewarding reading for those interested in a somewhat safe entry into the speculative side of modern theology. Those interested in biblical theology, however, will find considerably less of a reward.

Reviewed by John C. Poirier

Read an excerpt from Westminster Theological Seminary: www.wtsbooks.com/common/pdf_links/Excerpt_McCormack_Engaging.pdf [available as of June 6, 2014]

Originally published on the Pneuma Foundation (parent organization of PneumaReview.com) website. Later included in the Summer 2024 issue.

There have been a number of studies published recently on Paul’s epistemology – several of them trying to show that Paul’s epistemology was somehow “narratival”. The notion of a narrative epistemology is not that easy to grasp and is often confusing, especially since different people mean different things by it.

Ian Scott’s Paul’s Way of Knowing belongs squarely within this turn toward a narrative epistemology. Although there are problems with this position, it must be said that Scott avoids the gravest pitfalls. This is especially because he generally avoids confusing the issue of knowing with the issue of truth (a pitfall that mars a recent book by Andre Munzinger). Once in a while, however, a tendency toward the wilder side of the turn to narrative shows through, as in Scott’s confusion about where “meaning” lies (pp. 116-17), and it certainly doesn’t help Scott’s case that he uses Hans Frei as a support.

I should point out, however, that this book is less about narrative than the title implies. In fact, it was originally published by Mohr Siebeck under the title Implicit Epistemology in the Letters of Paul, which is a better title, as it more accurately relates the contents of the book. I say that because the current subtitle “Story, Experience, and the Spirit” does not describe much of the contents of the book, including, perhaps, its main points. One wonders whether the folks at Baker were just trying to capitalize on the current narrative craze.

A lot of what this book deals with are issues of central importance for the study of Paul, and readers can learn a lot about the present state of Pauline studies from this book. Scott’s judgments are refreshingly level-headed, and at times he makes welcome departure from problematic trends. For example, on pp. 183-85, he bucks the trend by rejecting the reading of pistis Iesous Christou as a subjective genitive.

This is a book for serious students of Paul. Its language is accessible to a wide range of readers, and I certainly recommend it for seminary students, but I fear the importance of its subject matter might escape most lay readers.

Reviewed by John C. Poirier

Preview Paul’s Way of Knowing: books.google.com/books?id=m96VFOxBKlkC

Originally published on the Pneuma Foundation (parent organization of PneumaReview.com) website. Later included in the Summer 2024 issue.

Bruce McCormack is the Frederick and Margaret L. Weyerhaeuser Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. He instantly became one of the world’s leading interpreters of Karl Barth’s thought with the publication of Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development, 1909-1936 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995). The present book, a collection of essays from journals and books, is the long-awaited follow-up punch to that 1995 book. “Punch” is not too strong a word, as these essays should go a long way toward revising the dominant North American view of Barth’s theology. It will be interesting to see how it stirs things up.

I personally do not agree with Barth’s theology, so there is much about this book that I cannot accept on a prescriptive, theological level. But when judged in comparison with other books on Barth, especially those under the influence of “Yale theology” and its attempt to turn Barth into a narrative theologian, I find the theology here much more philosophically consistent than anything that English-speaking Barthians have produced in the past forty years. It is also much more palatable to a student of the New Testament. I am thus torn. I am not in favor of Barthianism, but if there must be Barthians, then I much prefer that they be of the McCormack sort (which appears to be more faithful to Barth himself) than of the Hans Frei sort.

The writing in this book is always clear, even when the subject is obscure. One drawback for the beginning reader, of course, is that much of the discussion will seem in-house, as inevitably is the case with anything that is Barth-related but which is not an introduction. Those coming to Barth studies from the side of biblical studies will especially have a difficult time making out the terrain. Nevertheless, the importance of Barth for understanding present-day theology makes this an important book for teachers of theology.

This book is unfortunately marred by an instance of verbatim repetition: some of the wording on p. 273 is identical with wording found on pp. 296-97. (If students are punished for recycling their own words, then why is it alright for scholars to recycle their own words? That spate of laziness comes back to bite when the essays in question are gathered into a single collection, as they are here.)

Reviewed by John Poirier

Preview Orthodox and Modern: books.google.com/books?id=60bomlwgOB0C

Excerpt from the publisher: assets.bakerpublishinggroup.com/processed/book-resources/files/Excerpt_McCormack_Orthodox.pdf?1362589720

Originally published on the Pneuma Foundation (parent organization of PneumaReview.com) website. Later included in the Spring 2024 issue.

Theophilus of Antioch is one of the so-called Apologists of the second century, and perhaps the most undervalued among them. He is widely regarded as the first Christian actually to refer to the NT writings as inspired in a sense that might approximate what many Christians today mean by “inspiration.” (But there is a difference, in that Theophilus also supposed many non-scriptural writings to be inspired as well.) Theophilus is also known for his influence on Irenaeus, so he is somewhat of a link in a chain of development. Parsons introduces the reader to Theophilus’ exegesis, and tries to make a case for elevating Theophilus’ view of Scripture. He also seeks to uncover Theophilus’ mode of operation when quoting Scripture, arguing that he often quoted from memory rather than from immediate, direct access to a written copy.

It needs to be pointed out that Parsons’s work is marred by a couple of misapprehensions. For one thing, he relies on a psychology experiment conducted by Robert McIver and Marie Carroll to detect when a writer is quoting from memory (pp. 46-48, 50, 63). Unfortunately, he appears to misunderstand their study and what it claims to have proved, as he applies it in a way that makes little sense to the original premise. McIver and Carroll had cited a sixteen-word phrasal agreement as marking the point at which we must deduce direct access to a parallel written writing, and Parsons takes this to mean that quotations of another writing shorter than sixteen words in overall length derive from memory. The problem with this is that the sixteen-word threshold was meant to identify a string of consecutive words in a longer account that parallels another writing, rather than the overall length of a parallel account (verbatim or otherwise). Thus, Parsons does not make his case for Theophilus having quoted from memory (although there is nothing unlikely about that view).

Todd Still and David Wilhite are editing a series of books on Paul’s reception among the church fathers. The point of the series appears to be that of allowing expertise in Paul and expertise in the patristic writings to mingle and sharpen each other in a new appreciation of Paul’s early reception. The work under review is the second volume to appear in the series.

A proper education in the New Testament usually includes a foray into the Apostolic Fathers (viz. 1 & 2 Clement, Epistle of Polycarp, Martyrdom of Polycarp, the epistles of Ignatius, the Didache, Epistle of Barnabas, Shepherd of Hermas, and the Epistle to Diognetus), so working with the latter probably did not require any retooling on the part of the NT scholars involved in this project. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to discern which contributors are primarily NT scholars and which patristic scholars merely on the basis of their writings in this volume. (This is less true of the first volume in the series, which is about Tertullian.)

Todd D. Still, The William M. Hinson Professor of Christian Scriptures in the George W. Truett Theological Seminary of Baylor University

David E. Wilhite, Professor of Christian Theology at George W. Truett Seminary

The book includes eleven chapters on Paul’s reception among the Apostolic Fathers, along with an Introduction by Wilhite and an Afterword by Andrew Gregory. The chapters include discussions of all the Apostolic Fathers, including those that make no overt uses of Paul. In addition to the editors and Gregory, contributors include L. Stephanie Cobb, David J. Downs, David L. Eastman, Paul Foster, Paul Hartog, Clayton N. Jefford, Harry O. Meier, James Carleton Paget, and Clare K. Rothschild. A great deal is packed into these chapters, and the discussion benefits throughout from recent scholarship’s improved understanding of the more sophisticated ways in which early exegetes (including the NT authors) used Scripture. While this volume cannot take the place of an introduction to the Apostolic Fathers, it provides a good introduction to the transition from the apostolic to the subapostolic periods. Included in that is a sharpened understanding of how the Pauline corpus traveled as a unit, and how the New Testament came to be viewed as Scripture.

Reviewed by John C. Poirier

Publisher’s page: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/apostolic-fathers-and-paul-9780567672308/

This is an enlightening book about the role that Christian understandings of the dignity of the individual have had in the modern push for human rights. In four chapters, it offers vignettes about pioneers in the human rights movement(s), and showcases the role of the distinctively Christian element in their arguments. As such, the book provides a valuable historical offset to some recent attempts to set the notion of rights over against Christian commitments, and presents a clearer view of the playing ground than some other treatments might give.

I referred above to the “individual,” but Moyn intentionally steers clear of that term, preferring instead to speak of the “person” as something borne of neither individualist nor communitarian notions. Here a little more explanation on his part would have been helpful, especially as the question of the “person’s” status vis-à-vis the community is the most obvious issue defining the “playing ground” that I mentioned above. Moyn’s use of “person” is intended in service to the thinking of “personalism,” a notion “linked quickly to spiritualism and humanism and not infrequently to European identity,” and which functioned to dispute the opening moves of “liberalism and communism” (p. 69). This use of “person” only made me wish all the more for a detailed map of Moyn’s operating concepts. (The “individual” is something that can be “depersonalized,” as it was [Moyn says] in the French Revolution [p. 37].)

It is important to note that Moyn places the dawn of Christian human rights in the wake of World War II, with some attention to events shortly before that. (The book lacks a subtitle, which could have made this limitation in scope clear.) Moyn says little about the role of Christian thinking in the so-called “invention” of the individual, often attributed to the Enlightenment. Instead, his chapters discuss figures that cash out this individualism (or personalism) in the service of common decency—figures like Boris Mirkine-Guetzévitch, Éamon de Valera, Jacques Maritain, and Gerhard Ritter (the “first historian of human rights”). Most of this history, of course, is not Anglo-American, and many of the names will probably be new for most readers.

I recommend this book for anyone interested in ethics, or in modern history. It is also helpful for thinking through philosophical anthropology, although it is the need for the perspective this book offers (rather than the depth of its treatment) that makes it valuable on this score.

Reviewed by John C. Poirier

Publisher’s page: http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/1716.html

Larry Hurtado is well known for his books on Christ-devotion among the earliest Christians, and for his text-critical work on the New Testament. In this new book, which began life as a lecture series at the China Graduate School of Theology in Hong Kong, he shows how the religion that sprang from Jesus’ activities and from the efforts of his disciples differed from other religions around the Mediterranean. In other words, it reads as a sort of “yes, but …” to balance all that has been written to show how early Christianity fits in with the other religions surrounding it.

While there is some value in highlighting the ways in which early Christians fit in with other religionists of their day, the task of doing that has been pursued for so long and so proficiently in certain circles that there’s a danger of losing sight of Christianity’s distinctiveness. Hurtado appears to be reacting to a certain one-sidedness one might find in some books. (There is, however, little interaction with other scholars in the main text.) Hurtado’s book is written on a semi-popular level (and with endnotes rather than footnotes), perhaps aiming at a readership more in thrall to what they read than scholars might be.

Reviewed by John C. Poirier

Publisher’s page: http://www.baylorpress.com/Book/484/Destroyer_of_the_gods.html

This volume is a collection of twenty essays (one previously unpublished) from the pen of David E. Aune, Walter Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at the University of Notre Dame. Aune’s expertise in the areas of early Christian prophecy and in the book of Revelation is well known, thanks to his publication of a major tome in each area. The essays gathered in the present volume, dating from 1980 and later, represent his developing expertise in both those areas, although the selection is heavily weighted toward studies on the book of Revelation. (There are also discussions of the idea of “holy war”, varieties of eschatology, and sociological investigations of apocalyptic.) All of the essays reveal a scholar at home in his subject matter, never lagging but always presenting something new and relevant to the field. In spite of the often-technical nature of the discussion, all the essays are easily readable. The variety of topics suggests that most will not be equally interested in all the essays, but anyone interested in the topics of apocalypticism, prophecy, and early Christian magic will want to own this volume. We can be thankful to Baker Academic for publishing an affordable edition of a volume that elsewhere (under a different imprint) retails for over $200.

David E. Aune

It is always disappointing to read a book and to discover that a lengthy section on one page repeats an earlier section verbatim. In the case of a compilation of previously published essays, it shows that the author does not scruple to recycle previously published wording for an altogether new essay. This is the case here, as we find identical wording on pp. 90 and 169. But this is a minor quibble in comparison to what the volume offers. The book’s principle value rests in its contribution to the study of Revelation. For those interested in Revelation, I highly recommend this book, especially as a companion volume for Aune’s three-volume commentary.

Reviewed by John Poirier

Originally published on the Pneuma Foundation (PneumaReview.com’s parent organization) In Depth Resources index on October 1, 2009.

This book takes an in-depth look at the resurrection of Jesus, as it figures in the writings of the New Testament and in the Church’s subsequent use of the resurrection as an idea. Alkier begins by taking a close look at the resurrection in Paul’s writings, and he shows, at every turn, that Paul’s gospel was contingent upon the “reality” of the resurrection. The connection between the resurrection and the saving power of the gospel can also be gleaned from the remaining books, although it is laid out in a less direct way.

After five chapters of exegesis on Paul, Hebrews, the Synoptic Gospels and Acts, the Johannine Writings, and the Catholic Letters, Alkier presents four chapters of “systematic interpretations”. Here the book takes a rather odd turn, as Alkier calls on the semiotic theory of Charles S. Peirce to examine the phenomenology of the resurrection in terms of “firstness”, “secondness”, and “thirdness”. It is not altogether clear what is to be gained by this. Perhaps if Alkier had spent more time selling the reader on Peirce’s ideas, and on explaining their value, there might be more to say in their behalf.

In connection with this use of Peirce, there arises a significant concern in the guise of Alkier’s continual attempt to sideline the importance of the “empty tomb”. At this point, we are led to wonder whether “reality”, as it appears in the book’s title, really means reality (The knowing reader cannot help but recall Luke Timothy Johnson’s ill-fated attempt to redefine the word “real” in relation to “the real Jesus”). There is a foreshadowing of Alkier’s misgivings already on page 1, where the posing of questions about the emptiness of Jesus’ tomb and the objectivity of the resurrection appearances is said to amount to an “extensive reduction of the discussion”. As we see later on, these historical questions are, for Alkier, not merely the pincers of a reducing movement, but wholly dispensable aspects. Naturally, this is a disappointment for those who might want to believe that “reality” means reality.

In the third and final section of the book, Alkier discusses the resurrection in relation to “ecclesial and educational praxis”, including its role as a theme in the funeral service, in “religious school instruction”, and in the Lord’s Supper. From Alkier’s point of view, it makes sense that the discussion of Peirce should intervene between the exegetical chapters and the application of the resurrection as an idea within the church. The semiotic analysis, in a way, “processes” the resurrection for its use in the church.

Those interested primarily in learning what the New Testament says about the resurrection can profit from reading the first five chapters. That, after all, is what the book’s subtitle suggests the book is about. Beyond that, it’s difficult to say what one might find of value. Without more explanation of why Peirce’s ideas move us forward, it’s difficult to see what they add.

Reviewed by John Poirier

Publisher’s page: http://www.baylorpress.com/Book/387/The_Reality_of_the_Resurrection.html