This is an astonishingly good book – astonishingly partly because of the potential for readers to be divided by its eye-catching title, but mostly because that title scarcely conveys all that this book offers by way of a comprehensive reading of Pauline theology. True, Pauline passages which use maternal imagery provide the starting-point, together with the implications of Paul's self-designation as both woman in labour and as nurse for his understanding of apostleship; indeed, we are even told that, ‘however recent generations of readers have neglected them, earlier generations of Christians read these passages closely and drew upon them when they spoke of Paul’, the Acts of Paul providing one of several examples: ‘when the executioner struck off his head, milk spurted out upon the soldier's clothing’. Here, however, the metaphors under discussion find their meaning within a reclaimed ‘apocalyptic’ account of Paul's understanding of the Gospel. The pivot lies in the birth-pangs of creation in Romans 8, a passage similarly read by the reviewer in Can These Dry Bones Live? (SCM Press, 1982).
Most of the chapters of this book are revised versions of articles published in a variety of places over more than twenty years. The work of revision and integration has generally been well done, and the long gestation of the book gives it a certain authority. Developments in the author's thinking are acknowledged and objections to the apocalyptic reading of Paul are dealt with sensibly and convincingly. Indeed, the critique of the readings of a number of scholars is well taken.
The book is set up in two parts, the first largely dealing with specific texts which use maternal imagery. Thus chapter 1 undertakes to sort out the mixed metaphor of I Thessalonians 2:7, while chapters 2 and 3 explore Galatians 4:19 and 1 Corinthians 3:1–3a; together these texts provide occasion for discussing the complex use of birthing and nursing images to illuminate the apostolic task. Romans 8:22 is the subject of the next chapter: it is the whole cosmos that labours, awaiting God's glorious apocalypse. The final chapter of the first part is, on the author's own admission, a digression; yet it anticipates later exploration of the radical, invasive gospel by addressing the way in which Galatians, an epistle ostensibly dealing with an exclusively ‘guy thing’ (circumcision), in fact challenges all norms.
In part 2, Galatians remains the focus of chapters 6 and 7, as the singularity of the Gospel becomes its unifying theme, the apostle's role being caught up in the ‘apocalypse of Jesus Christ’; the fundamental antithesis is between new creation in Christ and the old cosmos. The final four chapters turn to Romans, arguing first that the phrase ‘God handed them over’ (1:24, 26 & 28) belongs within the picture of cosmic conflict; second, that the power of sin is cosmic – more than mere transgressions; and third, that the community consists of those whom ‘God has chosen’ and ‘freed from the tyrannical powers of Sin and Death’, who wait ‘for their full redemption along with that of all creation’. The themes of Romans are brought together in the final chapter by focusing on God's freedom: this God is not to be ‘taken for granted’.
Particularly to be commended is the unifying reading of Galatians, with its excellent account of how the autobiographical passages actually function in the overall argument, and the recognition that the classic ‘feminist’ text (Gal 3:28) is not simply an egalitarian statement – rather it means that ‘those who are in “Christ” cannot also be in the identity business of being first of all male or female’.
