Abstract
Michael Gorman’s recent commentary on 1 Corinthians sets out to be ‘accessible while also being robustly theological and grounded in solid scholarship’ (p. xix). The commentary is built around ‘what Christians have come to call the marks of the church: that it is called to be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic’ (p. 67). The four marks are drawn together in the focus on the participation in the community of God. Gorman finds the focus of the letter grounded in 1 Cor 1:9, with the fellowship with God and one another serving as ‘a good summary of Paul’s four-dimensional but integrated agenda’ (p. 74). The fourfold marks provide Gorman’s framework for the commentary, grouping the different issues Paul addresses as ecclesial (chs. 1–4), moral (chs. 5–7), liturgical (chs. 8–14), and theological (chs. 15–16) chaos.
Gorman argues for a distinctly Christological and cruciform reading of Paul’s corrective of the Corinthian interpretation of the Spirit’s gifts and presence as a ‘resurrectional, charismatic cruciformity’ (p. 65, emphasis original). Paul calls the Corinthians to a community united to each other and through the Spirit—or ‘Spirit-ually’ to use Gorman’s terminology (p. 64)—united to God in Christ. Readers familiar with Gorman’s earlier work will see the result of years of study in this theological framework, as it draws the letter together in a coherent unity that preserves the diversity of the topics addressed throughout the letter.
Gorman’s familiarity and engagement with the secondary literature is clearly visible, especially in where he presents the different views on a passage or the general scholarly consensus. The minimal use of footnotes means that there are often not page numbers for readers to focus their further reading, but the bibliographies of the two introductory chapters, which include introductory, intermediate, and advanced works, provide plenty of resources for further study. Gorman uses Greek in a targeted manner, and grammatical arguments made with accessible language and examples, like the exegesis of Jesus’s appearing in 1 Cor 15 (pp. 377–378). Gorman also engages with multiple translations so that readers without Greek can still engage with his more detailed arguments. The introduction to Paul and Pauline studies is also worth special mention as both accessible and insightful, describing ten ‘outlooks’ rather than particular ‘schools’ (pp. 4–6). It is an excellent initial map to the maze of secondary Paul scholarship.
In this book, Gorman brings his decades of engagement with both the text of 1 Corinthians and the conversations in the secondary literature and does so in a manner that is both accessible and applicable. There are topics in the book that will stretch readers with less background in the field, but Gorman avoids technical language and consistently draws his readers back to the individual and communal applications of the text for the world today.