Shorter Reviews

Abstract

Luke TimoThy Johnson is one of the preeminent Catholic exegetes of our time. He has written commentaries and monographs, as well as a significant introduction to the writings of the New Testament. An insightful interpreter of Paul, he has cogently argued against the scholarly consensus that discriminates between the disputed and non-disputed Pauline letters. The present volume is the completion of a two-volume project on The Canonical Paul that was inaugurated in 2020 with Constructing Paul. Johnson insists, however, that his work should not be construed as a theology of Paul, a genre that he says sacrifices the creativity and vitality of Paul’s thought by forcing it into a philosophical system. Accordingly, rather than trying to fit Paul’s theology into a comprehensive framework, Johnson adopts a deconstructive approach that deals with aspects of Paul’s theology as revealed in and through the questions and issues Paul dealt with. The present volume consists of twenty-three essays, thirteen of which were previously published, and ten of which were written for this volume. All are uniformly good and engaging and deal with important aspects of Paul’s thought such as Christology, soteriology, ethics, and ecclesiology. Many of them also touch on important contemporary issues such as truth telling, reconciliation and homosexuality. In all of them, Johnson highlights the centrality of resurrection life and the experience of the Spirit in Paul’s thought. The end result is that he provides pastors, students, and young scholars with a reliable model for interpreting Paul. Most importantly, these essays allow us to see how an accomplished exegete teases out Paul’s theology by focusing on concrete problems and issues that the apostle faced as he deals with all the letters that comprise the canonical corpus of Paul’s writings. Having written a Pauline theology that takes into account all of Paul’s letters, I was especially interested in Johnson’s criticism of this discipline, which is always in danger of trying to encapsulate the apostle’s thought in a systematic presentation. As I read Johnson’s essays, I found much of his critique compelling. But I remain convinced that there is a place for trying to bring things together, not in a final statement, but in a way that will allow us to see in a provisional way the whole as well as its parts.