This commentary on Paul's Second Letter to the Corinthians is volume forty-eight of the Wisdom Commentary series published by Liturgical Press. The series aims to bring the best of feminist scholarship to bear on the interpretation of Scripture to an audience that includes ministers and teachers, as well as scholars and students. Wire, the Robert S. Dollar Professor Emerita of New Testament Studies at San Francisco Theological Seminary, is best known for her influential monograph on First Corinthians, The Corinthian Women Prophets: A Reconstruction through Paul's Rhetoric (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990; reprint; Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2003).

Those women prophets loom large in Wire's reading of 2 Corinthians. She supposes that the women who Paul authoritatively commanded in 1 Corinthians to cover their heads in worship (1 Cor 11:10) and to be silent while in the assembly (1 Cor 14:34) have continued prophesying and exercising a leading role in the community's public prayer. Paul's tactic in 2 Corinthians is then to approach the community as a vulnerable brother—not as a commanding apostle—who seeks reconciliation with them, in large part because he desires the Corinthian church's generous participation in his collection for the church in Jerusalem.

In terms of basic critical interpretative issues, Wire takes traditional positions. She argues for the unity of 2 Corinthians (indeed, she makes a strong rhetorical case for it, against those who partition the text into a collection of letter fragments). She understands the so-called “tearful letter” (2 Cor 2:4) to be a reference to canonical 1 Corinthians and the so-called “offender” punished by the Corinthians (2 Cor 2:5–8) to be the man living with his father's wife (1 Cor 5:1–13). These positions are held by many of the letter's earliest interpreters.

Wire works through the text in thirteen large blocks (roughly matching the chapter divisions of the letter). The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible is the base text, although she provides in places her own translation. In each chapter, Wire approaches the text through a feminist lens with three foci. The first focus sets forth Paul's vision as a whole with regard to the subject matter at hand. The second focus is on the social, political, and setting, that is, the world behind the text. Here is where Wire highlights feminist concerns such as patriarchy, colonialism, and ecological issues. In particular, she captures well some of the tensions Paul experienced as someone who, on the one hand, benefited from imperial realities and who, on the other hand, proclaimed a gospel that contains anti-imperial implications. The third, more sharpened, focus is on Paul's rhetoric as he engages directly with the Corinthians.

It is within this third focus that Wire's project of reconstructing Paul's attempt to reach out to the Corinthian women prophets is most prominent. She claims to read Paul without either dismissing him or deifying him. Wire is faithful to this claim as she engages the text with respect and determination. This engagement includes a hermeneutic of suspicion. For instance, is Paul's desire to reconcile with the women prophets motivated mostly by his concern for the collection, rather than the sake of reconciliation itself? To be sure, although Wire raises questions from this hermeneutical perspective, she also provides some nuance. Paul's manifold use of the term charis in 2 Corinthians 8–9 could be labeled by feminists as involving a “totalizing vision” of God, who is characterized by “the male will to dominate and be glorified” (181). Nevertheless, Wire provides a cogent interpretation of Paul's theology here that mitigates such a characterization.

As someone whose work on 2 Corinthians Wire would likely deem as “deifying” Paul, I appreciate many of the perspectives and insights she puts forth. She opens up fresh interpretative possibilities. Wire's concern for the world “in front of the text” is very important and relevant. Second Corinthians invites an actualization marked by reconciliation within the church and the promotion of all the baptized in the work of the church's ministry—including women. I would, however, recommend this book's use with students only after their having been exposed to readings of 2 Corinthians that spotlight Paul's rich Christological, pneumatological, and pastoral insights from commentators whose approach to the apostle are more sympathetic to these central aspects of his presentation in the letter.