Participating in Christ: Explorations in Paul’s Theology and Spirituality by Michael J. Gorman

Abstract

Reviewed by: Participating in Christ: Explorations in Paul’s Theology and Spirituality by Michael J. Gorman Thomas Schmeller michael j. gorman, Participating in Christ: Explorations in Paul’s Theology and Spirituality (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019). Pp. xxiv + 294. Paper $30. “As in real estate, so also in soteriology: location is everything” (p. 194). In an exegetical work, this comparison is somewhat surprising, but it is a precise summary of Michael J. Gorman’s main thesis, which he explains in the following way: “Jesus the Messiah became, for us, God’s righteousness and thus was the ‘location’ of God’s righteousness, God’s saving act of restorative justice; he is now the location of believers, who are ‘in’ the Messiah. For that reason, those who are in Christ can ‘become,’ or embody . . . the sort of justice/righteousness that is characteristic of the God who has acted in Jesus Christ” (p. 194). The book is mainly about these theological concepts: about what God did “in Christ” and how the ones who are “in Christ” participate in this event. But “participation” does not come alone; its indispensable companion is “transformation,” that is, “theosis, deification, divinization, Christosis, and Christification” (p. xvi). Thus, G.’s thesis has consequences for ecclesiology, ethics, and other fields of theology. In this book, G. continues the “participationist perspective” (p. xxii) of his earlier monographs, but he gives a new direction to it by focusing on 2 Cor 5:14–21. If we look closer at what he is doing, the main issue is the relationship between participation and justification or righteousness, between participation and the imitation of Christ, and “between a cross-centered and a resurrection-centered spirituality and theology” (p. xxiii), a relationship he calls “resurrectional cruciformity” (p. xxiii). The book begins with a chapter in which G. clarifies what, in his eyes, Paul means by “in Christ,” “with Christ,” and related expressions, giving an overview of Pauline theology and spirituality and concentrating on “four closely related topics: the cross, cruciformity, dying and rising with Christ, and mission” (p. 27). The first two of these topics are dealt [End Page 506] with in the second (the cross) and the third (cruciformity) chapters, but then this clear sequence gives way to extensive and intensive interpretations of specific texts, the most important of which are Phil 2:5; Gal 1:16; 2:15–21; 4:4–6; 2 Cor 2:15–21; 4:7–12; Romans 4; 5:12–21; 6. All of these texts and topics are dealt with in part 1 of the book. In a much shorter part 2, G. writes about “Paul and Participation Today,” trying “to bring Paul more directly into conversation with the contemporary Christian church” (p. 237). He takes up Martin Luther King’s sermon “Paul’s Letter to American Christians” and develops it into a long message of Paul to North American Christians in the twenty-first century. Finally, the book offers reflections on spiritual and ethical implications of Paul’s witness to the resurrection for the life of the church today (pp. 255–62). It is not possible, of course, to do justice to G.s learned argumentation in this short review. I will limit myself to highlighting one idea that I find most interesting, although I do not agree with it. Starting with 1 Cor 2:2, where Paul limits his proclamation to the cross, G. asks about the relationship between cross and resurrection: How can believers participate in Christ’s cross and in his resurrection at the same time? G.’s answer is not only that this relationship is paradoxical (an interpretation that is shared by many). He insists that one has to go further: “[W]e must maintain Paul’s emphasis on the cross and therefore grant the word ‘cruciform’ a certain priority” (p. 55). Cross and resurrection do not function on the same level: participation in Christ has the form of the cross, but it has the quality of the resurrection (p. 58). Thus, “the cruciform life is suffused with the power of the resurrection; it is resurrectional, but not resurrectiform” (p. 61). In the context of 1 Cor 1:18–2:5, Paul’s statement...