1 Corinthians: A Theological, Pastoral and Missional Commentary. By Michael J. Gorman

Michael Gorman has produced the kind of commentary that will be appreciated by professors, students, and pastors alike. As a biblical scholar, his appreciation of the text and the history, the context, and scholarly debates around the same inform his considerations. In addition, Gorman takes into account the theological, pastoral, and missional concerns and implications of the letter, applying these to contemporary settings. This is not merely, and perhaps not even primarily, a commentary for the academy, but also for the church. It is a commentary written through an ecclesial lens. Moreover, it is comprehensive, reflecting an enormous amount of work on this extraordinary, thought-provoking, and strangely contemporary letter. In terms of Pauline scholarship, Gorman adopts a broad and generous perspective which he describes as mostly ‘participationist’ but also sharing the concerns of other approaches: the new perspective, the narrative-intertextual perspective, the apocalyptic perspective, and the anti-imperial perspective (p. 6). As well as a fairly lengthy introduction dealing with some of the scholarly questions about the text, followed by the more traditional verse-by-verse commentary, readers will find that each chapter ends with spiritual, pastoral, missional, and theological reflections, and questions for those who read, teach, and preach. It is worth reading these reflections and questions for the contemporary pastoral questions that Gorman raises, which are often not mentioned in the commentary proper. There is then a list of further reading broken into highly accessible books, mid-level books, and more technical works.