Michael J. Gorman. <i>1 Corinthians: A Theological, Pastoral, and Missional Commentary</i>

Approaching 1 Corinthians as Christian Scripture, and written as “an act of worship” (p. xviii), this “midlevel commentary” exposits both the letter’s theological content and its “spiritual, pastoral, and missional implications for today” (p. xvii). The volume’s long introduction is an expanded version of an essay by Gorman that appeared in The Paulist Biblical Commentary, and the commentary section an expansion of his “minicommentary” on the letter that appears in his book Apostle of the Crucified Lord.A veritable distinctive of this commentary is that it applies the Nicene (or Niceno-Constantinopolitan) Creed as a hermeneutical lens for reading the letter. From the creed, Gorman highlights four themes, or “marks”—namely “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic”—each of which he finds present “in all sections of the letter” (p. 77).The book itself contains two parts, the first consisting of three “Introductions,” and the second of “Commentary with Reflections and Questions.”In roughly twenty-five pages, the first introduction covers Paul’s life, theology, and spirituality, including, in impressively succinct fashion, coverage of all the standard introductory issues. The second introduction very briefly reiterates Gorman’s approach to the letter as Christian Scripture, in harmony with the later creeds and relevant for today. The third is an introduction to 1 Corinthians of standard length for a major commentary. Here Gorman identifies the “fundamental issue” behind the letter as a failure on the part of the Corinthians to understand “the real-life consequences of the gospel of ‘Jesus the Messiah—that is, Jesus the crucified Messiah’ (1 Cor 2:2 MJG)” (p. 31). This failure manifests in a “four-dimensional” array of chaos: ecclesial chaos, moral chaos, liturgical chaos, and theological chaos (p. 55), correlating respectively with 1 Cor 1:10–4:21; chapters 5–7; chapters 8–14; and chapter 15. Gorman maintains that from chapters 1 to 15, Paul’s “primary theological and pastoral agenda is clear: he wishes the Corinthians to become a resurrectionally cruciform charismatic community: a Spirit-filled church in the shape of Christ’s cross” (p. 33).The four sections of the letter correlating with the four types of “chaos” provide the basic structure of the commentary proper. In all, Gorman divides the letter into six sections: an opening (1:1–9), the “four movements” (1:10–4:21; chapters 5–7; chapters 8–14; and chapter 15), and a closing (chapter 16). Ingeniously, Gorman also adds another layer of correlation, in which the four main sections and four main movements correlate respectively with the four marks of the Nicene Creed: one (1:10–4:21), holy (chapters 5–7), catholic (chapters 8–14), and apostolic (chapter 15).The commentary section offers helpfully concise coverage of the interpretive options on problem texts, along with judicious and generally unidiosyncratic exposition of the text, while reading the text unapologetically through a Christian lens and interweaving theological and practical application. Footnotes are kept to a minimum, though “dialogue” with other scholarship is at work behind the text. At the end of each section are included subsections on “further reflections,” “questions,” and “suggested reading,” the last of these divided into “highly accessible” and “midlevel” books and less frequently “advanced/technical” books.Gorman is appropriately sensitive to terminology issues, sometimes preferring nontraditional terms like “Christ-followers” or “Christ-participants” over “Christians,” or giving serious consideration to the dilemma of whether Paul was “converted” or “called,” while also boldly retaining theological terms often eschewed in scholarly discourse, like “Trinity” and (as he will often say) “Christian.” The reader is refreshed by Gorman’s occasional use of a more pastoral dialect, for example, employing colloquial expressions like “holy huddle” (p. 93) or “drive-through baptism” (p. 190), proffering analogies from baseball, or inserting humorous informal asides, like: “For Paul (as today we say about real estate), location is everything” (p. 18).Although Gorman identifies himself as a Methodist (p. xvii), he draws ample insights from ecumenical traditions. In keeping with his post at a Catholic seminary (St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore, Maryland), he occasionally construes Pauline concepts in distinctively Catholic ways, for example, understanding the Lord’s Supper for Paul as a “sacrament” (“a liturgical event of grace, a sign and means of divine beneficence”; p. 302) and justification not merely as “being counted righteous” but being “made just,” or righteous, where sanctification is then the “actualization of baptism and justification” (p. 187). Commentary, reflections, and chapter questions are replete with quotations from Christians not only of diverse traditions but also of various ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.Gorman does not scruple to discuss contemporary social and political issues in his applications, wherein he is admirably forthright in critiquing stances in a way that will surely irk some on both the right (nationalism, gun ownership, warfare) and the left (abortion, an “idolatry of rights”), a prudent balance achieved likely by some deliberate effort, though surely also by Gorman’s conviction that he is going where Paul’s theology truly points.The great strengths of the commentary are its “mnemonic” qualities. Gorman has a knack for coining new terminology and phrases to encapsulate concepts and aid memory (“charismatic cruciformity,” “salvific intentionality”). Certain themes recur throughout the commentary, like the four “marks,” which also helpfully pair with the structure of the letter, Paul’s “bifocal” understanding of the Christ-event; and koinōnia. Particular stress is laid upon the theme of cruciformity. In this regard, Gorman draws attention to a repeating theological pattern in Paul’s presentation, of the form “Although [x] not [y] but [z],” which in essence captures the cruciform pattern that we see in texts like Phil 2:6–8. We also find homiletic-like alliteration, as for example the “four Rs” to describe Paul’s understanding of the resurrection: revelatory, representative, redemptive, and reconciliation (pp. 15–16). Besides, Gorman includes an abundance of tables, many of which helpfully illustrate parallels between different Pauline passages.In sum, this is an excellent commentary that, with its wide-ranging interests in both the content and the theological, pastoral, and missional aspects of 1 Corinthians, informed by contemporary scholarship and viewed through a traditionalist lens, truly reads this letter “for all its worth.”